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 Beijing has called JD. Van's ignorant
Speaker 1: over his Chinese peasant remarks. We have a great show
Speaker 1: for you today. Risk Reversal's own Dan Nathan.
Speaker 2: Stops by to tell us about.
Speaker 1: The business world's reaction to Trump's insane tariffs.
Speaker 2: They don't like it.
Speaker 1: Then we'll talk to John Allen and Amy Parnis about
Speaker 1: their new book, Fight Inside the Wildest Battle for the
Speaker 1: White House.
Speaker 2: But first the news smile.
Speaker 3: You know who I think of. I want spying on
Speaker 3: my data to see if I'm saying things bad and
Speaker 3: slack or whatever. Your workplace thing is a guy named
Speaker 3: big Boss.
Speaker 2: Oh, we're back to big balls. Big balls.
Speaker 1: Yes, So it turns out the Environmental Protection Agency, though,
Speaker 1: by the way, it is so insane that Elon. While
Speaker 1: Donald Trump is ruining the capital markets, crashing the gap markets,
Speaker 1: Elon is continued taking a chainsaw to the federal government
Speaker 1: doge spying on federal workers for anti Trump, anti Musk messages. Shockingly,
Speaker 1: the Environmental Protection Agency here are the people who just
Speaker 1: want to protect the environment. Supposedly, the DOGE staff are
Speaker 1: using AI to spy and communication sent by federal workers
Speaker 1: to detect anti Trump or anti Musk language. What are
Speaker 1: we doing here? First of all, why do you even care?
Speaker 1: Right people say bad things about you? This is one
Speaker 1: of the facts of being a famous person. I'm sorry, guys,
Speaker 1: like this is what it is.
Speaker 3: Man, It's called a workplace in America.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well not for these two. Reuters cites two anonymous
Speaker 1: people with knowledge of the matter. By the way, everyone
Speaker 1: in the federal government is now leaking.
Speaker 2: Like a fucking SIEV.
Speaker 1: Who said this happened to the ep They had been
Speaker 1: told so by Trump appointed officials. By the way, I'm
Speaker 1: sure this's happening in every branch of the federal government.
Speaker 1: If they're doing it at the EPA, they're doing it everywhere.
Speaker 1: We have been told they're looking for anti Trump or
Speaker 1: anti Musk language.
Speaker 2: Before they were.
Speaker 1: Just looking for DEI right, anti racism. Now they're looking
Speaker 1: for naughty speak. By the way, I'm going to ask you, Jesse,
Speaker 1: I don't think that Elon Musk is a free speech absolutist.
Speaker 3: Well, what we've learned is that thing is facts. Don't
Speaker 3: care about your feelings less they're his feelings.
Speaker 2: That's right, baby.
Speaker 1: In true Axio style, we can ask ourselves why it matters.
Speaker 1: It matters because it's against law, and it's also I
Speaker 1: mean again, it may not be against law, depending on
Speaker 1: what kind of waivers or legal machinations you've signed on to,
Speaker 1: but it is pretty bad and it certainly undermines the
Speaker 1: whole idea that these people care about free speech. Elon Musk,
Speaker 1: the billionaire CEO of both Tesla and SpaceX, which have
Speaker 1: been taking a hammering lightly due to Donald Trump's Tara fiasco,
Speaker 1: is leading efforts of DOGE to cut what it identifies
Speaker 1: as fraud or waste, though technically a lot of that
Speaker 1: fraud is government programs he doesn't like. Trump has long
Speaker 1: railed against what he calls the deep state, the federal government,
Speaker 1: and anyone who he thinks is not going along with
Speaker 1: his agenda. Look, this is just yet another way to
Speaker 1: turn the federal government against you, to dehumanize these people.
Speaker 1: And by the way, I want to just say this
Speaker 1: one more time. The people work in the federal government
Speaker 1: are working in the federal government because they believe in
Speaker 1: what the federal government is doing. Many many, many of
Speaker 1: these people could make a lot more money in the
Speaker 1: private sector the way Elon Musk did. But these people
Speaker 1: are doing this because they believe in the sort of
Speaker 1: good work that the government does. And it is really
Speaker 1: disheartening to watch these people cut it up.
Speaker 3: Speaking of cutting it up, many people notice that Social
Speaker 3: Security is website crashed this week. Guess what caused it?
Speaker 3: It was doge And now there's a very very interesting
Speaker 3: reaction to this.
Speaker 2: So I know you're going to be shocked again.
Speaker 1: But part of what's happening here is that what Trump
Speaker 1: and Elon considered to be fraud, waste, and abuse are
Speaker 1: things they don't like. One of the things they don't
Speaker 1: like is Social Security because it's expensive and it makes
Speaker 1: up a lot of the government spending money that Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you know this, but yesterday Donald
Speaker 1: Trump said that they're going to up the Pentagon budget
Speaker 1: a ton.
Speaker 3: Right by trillion dollars, by.
Speaker 1: Trillion dollars, and that money needs to come from somewhere,
Speaker 1: and they would like it to come from Medicare, Medicaid,
Speaker 1: and Social Security.
Speaker 3: So who do we think we'll get some of that
Speaker 3: Pentagon budget?
Speaker 1: I don't know, certainly not private contractor Elon. So, look,
Speaker 1: they want social Security not to work so that people
Speaker 1: can't collect it.
Speaker 2: And that's what we're seeing here.
Speaker 1: The website is used by about seventy million Social Security
Speaker 1: benefit recipients. By the way, you pay into social Security.
Speaker 2: This is your money. This is not Elon Musk's money.
Speaker 2: What to know.
Speaker 1: The website has experienced multiple crashes and errors in recent weeks.
Speaker 1: Just like Elon did to X nay Twitter, he is
Speaker 1: now doing to Social Security. Earlier this months, some disability
Speaker 1: payment recipients received notice on the my Social Security porthole
Speaker 1: that they were no longer receiving benefits. The Washing Post
Speaker 1: has a really heart wrenching story of a mother with
Speaker 1: a disabled son who got an email that she was
Speaker 1: not getting his Social Security benefits anymore. There's just a
Speaker 1: ton of real hardship here. People are being retraumatized by
Speaker 1: Elon Musk. And know this man, this is what he does,
Speaker 1: so be prepared, non surprised.
Speaker 3: So also speaking of things that does not surprise me.
Speaker 3: The Supreme Court fucking sucks. This ruling they made about
Speaker 3: deportations is not good.
Speaker 1: Yes and no, this is a complicated ruin. They said
Speaker 1: that Trump has a little more time on this, right,
Speaker 1: they weren't going to get the guy back in the
Speaker 1: time that they needed, So in that way, I don't
Speaker 1: think it was a total victory for Trump, and I've
Speaker 1: I've read a bunch about this. Basically, Barrett sided with
Speaker 1: the liberals. They are saying that he can use this
Speaker 1: Alien Enemies Act for deportation, but they're saying that these
Speaker 1: people are entitled to due process, despite the fact that
Speaker 1: they are not in this country legally. Trump world took
Speaker 1: this as a big win, but the reality is Trump
Speaker 1: World had been saying that people not in this country,
Speaker 1: we're not entitled to do process. This decision says they
Speaker 1: are entitled to do process. So well, Trump is able
Speaker 1: to use the Alien Enemies Act, which is, by the way, bonkers, right,
Speaker 1: it's a wartime power. You know, there's no war, so
Speaker 1: it's completely bonkers. But at least there is one good thing,
Speaker 1: which is it means that these people are entitled to
Speaker 1: do process, which we all knew to be true. That
Speaker 1: said Sonya, So to my air my one of my
Speaker 1: favorite Supreme Court justices wrote a staggering descent. We as
Speaker 1: a nation and a court of law should be better
Speaker 1: than this. But there are five.
Speaker 2: Fox News justices who say otherwise.
Speaker 1: Dan Nathan is a c NBC contributor and co host
Speaker 1: of the podcast Risk Reversal.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Fast Politics, Dan Nathan.
Speaker 4: Molly, it's great to be back with you.
Speaker 2: Explain to us what is going on with the public markets?
Speaker 5: All right, So we have a situation here where there's
Speaker 5: very little guidance coming out of the White House. I
Speaker 5: think there's very little clarity about what they're trying to
Speaker 5: achieve with their tariff policy.
Speaker 4: There's fears that the.
Speaker 5: Tariff situation right here, if not resolved anytime soon, is
Speaker 5: going to cause an economic recession. Markets usually try to
Speaker 5: sniff that out ahead of time.
Speaker 4: I think that's what they're doing here.
Speaker 5: And so again you're going to hear this again and again,
Speaker 5: and I've heard it on your podcast over the last
Speaker 5: couple weeks. We can get talking about this. Public markets
Speaker 5: do not like uncertainty. They like a level of clarity,
Speaker 5: at least if they can't figure out what the endgame is.
Speaker 5: They like to know the rules. And I think right
Speaker 5: now the rules aren't particularly clear, and that's why you've
Speaker 5: had this swoon lower in stocks, which really started in February.
Speaker 5: But I think it was just a little bit of
Speaker 5: trepidation that normally happens in the markets when you have
Speaker 5: uncertainty about the economy. But then you throw in this
Speaker 5: monkey wrench that really could you know, upend the US
Speaker 5: economy and thus the global economy, and therefore investors start
Speaker 5: discounting future earnings right, which basically causes them to sell stocks.
Speaker 5: And that's what we've had over the last couple weeks.
Speaker 1: Everyone is going to listen to this on Wednesday, and
Speaker 1: so we'll have more volatility, whatever that looks like. But
Speaker 1: I'm curious if you could just explain to us sort
Speaker 1: of what you think would help the markets at this moment.
Speaker 5: Yeah, one thing that helped yesterday was the notion that,
Speaker 5: you know, there might be a push out of the
Speaker 5: tariffs that are going into place this week, and I
Speaker 5: think the rumor and it was unfounded that there was
Speaker 5: going to be a ninety day moratorium basically on these
Speaker 5: and giving some time to do these bilateral talks with
Speaker 5: first Canada and Mexico and the EU and Japan. And
Speaker 5: so that caused a massive rally in the stock market
Speaker 5: that had been down fifteen percent in three trading days.
Speaker 5: So here we are today, it's Tuesday, on the open.
Speaker 5: The market followed through to the upside. So as we
Speaker 5: say as traders, we see a sea of green out
Speaker 5: there and a lot of stocks that got really over sold,
Speaker 5: a rallying, and some of the ones that are meant
Speaker 5: to be the hard hit by tariffs. Right, So you've
Speaker 5: had this momentum back to the upside. But if nothing materializes,
Speaker 5: you know, over the next few days or so, you're
Speaker 5: going to see market participants kind of sell stocks again
Speaker 5: because they don't again have the clarity. One thing I
Speaker 5: want to be really clear about also is that you
Speaker 5: know I just mentioned earnings, right, those are the drivers
Speaker 5: of stocks for the most part. Every year, every quarter
Speaker 5: we see four times that companies report their earnings and
Speaker 5: they give guidance going forward about how they think that
Speaker 5: those earnings are going to be over the next three
Speaker 5: months or so.
Speaker 4: That starts this Friday.
Speaker 5: Some of the biggest banks, JP, Morgan, Wells, Fargo, Morgan Stanley,
Speaker 5: They're all going to be reporting earnings, and what these
Speaker 5: CEOs have to say about the current environment and then
Speaker 5: looking past, let's say the next few months is going
Speaker 5: to be really important for market sentiment. And so if
Speaker 5: Jamie Diamond, the CEO of the largest bank in the
Speaker 5: world on Friday morning, suggests that we don't have a
Speaker 5: lot of clarity about how consumers are going to be spending,
Speaker 5: how businesses are going to be spending, that's the sort
Speaker 5: of thing that could really weigh on the stock market
Speaker 5: as we get into this Q one earing season.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that Trump World is pushing
Speaker 1: back with is they're saying, well, there are people coming
Speaker 1: to the negotiating table. We saw best and say that,
Speaker 1: Terasury Secretary Scott Besson. But overnight we saw China go yeah,
Speaker 1: but we're not. And in fact, they are sort of
Speaker 1: escalating the trade war. And then Trump came back with
Speaker 1: more tariffs, which would eat cool some crazy number of
Speaker 1: you know, more tariff than the cost of the good
Speaker 1: talk us through where that is.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So, and I think you and I talked about this
Speaker 5: a couple of weeks ago, and it was last done.
Speaker 5: I mean, I think a lot of folks, at least
Speaker 5: in the markets, feel like, you know, the Trump administration
Speaker 5: did this ass backwards. Right if you had gone to
Speaker 5: our largest trading partners, which are also our largest allies
Speaker 5: or most important allies and really behind the scenes struck
Speaker 5: some deals that could have been used as a framework
Speaker 5: right as you kind of expand out some of this
Speaker 5: kind of tariff talk beyond those folks, you could have
Speaker 5: then had a united front against China and really try
Speaker 5: to get the rest of the world behind you and
Speaker 5: the leadership and really kind of focus on, you know,
Speaker 5: some of the ills that are kind of you know,
Speaker 5: China and they're manufacturing have placed on the rest of
Speaker 5: the world, and so that you know, the situation right
Speaker 5: here is like as soon as you get.
Speaker 4: A Japan deal or an EU deal, or a Canada.
Speaker 5: Or Mexico, then the biggest target is China. And so again,
Speaker 5: the Chinese are sitting back here and yeah, they're not
Speaker 5: particularly excited about all the threats from Trump, but they're
Speaker 5: looking at, you know, the fraying of relations between the
Speaker 5: US and some of their biggest partners, and it goes
Speaker 5: beyond just the economic implications. It goes to security and
Speaker 5: the like. And you know, before this trade situation got
Speaker 5: all dialed up, we were focused on the war in
Speaker 5: Ukraine and some other geopolitical situations, and so they're looking
Speaker 5: around and saying, you know what our economy is weak.
Speaker 5: We're willing to stimulate it right now to kind of
Speaker 5: help abate some of the kind of worst case scenarios
Speaker 5: as it relates to this trade war. And we're also
Speaker 5: going to play a heavy hand back to them because
Speaker 5: you know the Chinese, you know that whole notion of face.
Speaker 5: They don't like to be embarrassed. So the ratcheting up
Speaker 5: of this with China really only makes the stakes that
Speaker 5: much higher. And ultimately, if you do get some sort
Speaker 5: of deal, it may end up being the sort of
Speaker 5: situation that's not particularly palatable to either economy or either country,
Speaker 5: and it could weigh on global growth and thus put
Speaker 5: the potentially the world in a recession, which will not
Speaker 5: be obviously a good thing from an economic standpoint, from
Speaker 5: a political standpoint, and then also as you think about
Speaker 5: what's going on in markets, which is kind of important
Speaker 5: if you just think about the wealth of nations, the
Speaker 5: wealth of consumers and the like. The last time we
Speaker 5: had a major global recession was the financial crisis, obviously,
Speaker 5: and you could think about COVID and you know, financial
Speaker 5: assets get absolutely destroyed in those environments.
Speaker 1: Trump has a sort of opportunity now to sort of
Speaker 1: make some deals and then sort of back down and
Speaker 1: save face the way he kind of did with NATO
Speaker 1: the first time, right where he sort of renegotiated a
Speaker 1: deal that didn't really make any difference. And you know,
Speaker 1: he's kind of like been very good at solving problems
Speaker 1: that he created, very very good at that. But if
Speaker 1: China keeps going with this trend ward, he won't be
Speaker 1: able to is that right?
Speaker 5: Well, it really depends that you think about, you know,
Speaker 5: the Chinese and their manufacturing infrastructure, and you know when
Speaker 5: he looks at the deficit that we have, you know,
Speaker 5: we import a lot more than they import from us.
Speaker 5: That is really at the crux of kind of the
Speaker 5: way he's thinking about this as zero sum game, and
Speaker 5: it just isn't that, you know what I mean When
Speaker 5: you think about it, China is one of the largest
Speaker 5: holders of our debt. When they hold our debt in
Speaker 5: dollar terms, they help fund our debt, right, So the
Speaker 5: idea that we export more to China, right then they
Speaker 5: export to us. Well, when they have that net difference,
Speaker 5: they're buying US treasuries because US treasuries are meant to
Speaker 5: be the safest risk asset on the planet. Also, more
Speaker 5: demand for US dollars, right, which helps US fund our debt.
Speaker 5: So if a big part of this trade policy or
Speaker 5: these tariffs are basically to help lower our debt and deficit,
Speaker 5: you know, it doesn't make a lot of sense that
Speaker 5: you're going to, you know, basically deenalize some of the
Speaker 5: largest holders of our debt. So you know, it's obviously
Speaker 5: pretty complicated. If you're sitting out here and you listen
Speaker 5: to Mali and you're a politico and you're trying to
Speaker 5: make sense of this, you know, maybe what I'm speaking
Speaker 5: to is a little bit of Greek. But when I
Speaker 5: think about what I'm hearing from the Trump administration by
Speaker 5: supposedly some very smart people like Treasury Secretary Scott Besson,
Speaker 5: they're not making a lot of sense. When I hear
Speaker 5: Besson go on Meet the Press on Sunday morning and
Speaker 5: I listen to what he's trying to articulate to a
Speaker 5: bunch of folks that are not staring at markets every day, right,
Speaker 5: They're not that in tune with what goes on with
Speaker 5: the economy. I don't think it's a particularly calming sort
Speaker 5: of commentary that he had. And by the way, I
Speaker 5: don't know if you saw this. He looks really nervous
Speaker 5: and he wasn't making a whole a lot of sense.
Speaker 5: So I think a lot of folks watching this over
Speaker 5: the weekend. Maybe they weren't paying attention last week, but
Speaker 5: they certainly were paying attention over the weekend. And I
Speaker 5: think that when they see their four to one ks
Speaker 5: lose value in the speed in which they did, they
Speaker 5: start thinking to themselves, wait a minute, we have a
Speaker 5: real confidence problem. And when investors lose confidence in the
Speaker 5: leaders who are meant to kind of steer the ship,
Speaker 5: that's when you get the sort of volatility, at least
Speaker 5: the downward volatility that we've seen over the last week
Speaker 5: and a half or so.
Speaker 1: Some of this stuff Trump Blantz is not actually deliberable.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about the EU. He's very mad at the
Speaker 1: EU for any number of reasons. He said that it
Speaker 1: was set up to cheat the US. The EU has
Speaker 1: a bunch of fees that are not really tariffs, but
Speaker 1: that everyone has to pay.
Speaker 2: He is very offended by this.
Speaker 1: I mean, doesn't this seem like a situation that would
Speaker 1: be theoretically at least impossible to win.
Speaker 5: It would because he's trying to change tax policy in
Speaker 5: these countries or this block, right, And that's one of
Speaker 5: the things, is like it's one thing if you want
Speaker 5: to impose tear it kind of even the playing field
Speaker 5: as you think about, you know, you kind of being
Speaker 5: disadvantaged in one way, shape or form. And obviously autos
Speaker 5: is a big part of this. You know, the Germans
Speaker 5: obviously produce a lot of automobiles. And he's pissed off
Speaker 5: that we sell so much fewer, right cars into let's say,
Speaker 5: the EU than the vice versa.
Speaker 4: But they make better cars.
Speaker 5: It's just that simple, right, And they make different cars
Speaker 5: that have different you know, kind of sensibilities as it
Speaker 5: relates to you know, size and power and all that
Speaker 5: sort of stuff and energy consumption or whatever. So you know,
Speaker 5: some of these things are just for him. He's locked
Speaker 5: in the eighties and we know this, you know, when
Speaker 5: the US was at this economic war over autos with
Speaker 5: you know Japan and you know the Japanese. It's the
Speaker 5: same sort of situation. He bitches and moans about that
Speaker 5: there's no US cars you know on the on the
Speaker 5: on the roads in Japan. Well, it's the same sort
Speaker 5: of thing. They have different sensibilities, they make better cars.
Speaker 5: Their people want to buy those cars. So a lot
Speaker 5: of this stuff and I think you just said it,
Speaker 5: and you know, he's looking through the lens of kind
Speaker 5: of forty years ago. He creates problems, he tries to
Speaker 5: create his own solutions so he can kind of, you know,
Speaker 5: kind of I don't know, you know, suggest that he
Speaker 5: got to win. So yeah, and it's just not working
Speaker 5: with global trade. It's just, you know, the more globalization
Speaker 5: we have, the more that we depend on each other,
Speaker 5: you know, for manufacturing and parts and all this sort
Speaker 5: of stuff, the harder it is to kind of put
Speaker 5: these sort of economic barriers on because you do have
Speaker 5: the potential for the sort of dislocation that the markets
Speaker 5: are pricing in right now.
Speaker 1: We have historically always had American guards and they're actually
Speaker 1: really good.
Speaker 2: But the problem is a lot of them are enormous.
Speaker 1: So you're not going to be selling Chevy suburbans or
Speaker 1: Chevy tahoes too small countries in Europe with tiny cobblestone streets.
Speaker 1: It's just not going to happen. And I think that
Speaker 1: is also a consideration. I'm curious this is, you know what.
Speaker 1: There's also we talk a lot about those sort of
Speaker 1: market numbers. But these tariffs, they're not even in effect yet, right,
Speaker 1: and they're already making.
Speaker 2: Things more expensive. Talk to me about where we're going
Speaker 2: to see that. I was reading online that guyde work
Speaker 2: where he's one of my favorites, and he was talking
Speaker 2: about how surt's are even twenty thirty dollars more already.
Speaker 2: Explain to us why trade wars are so inflationary.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, if
Speaker 5: Trump is trying to convince US companies to reshore manufacturing, right,
Speaker 5: and so if that really is you know, what they're
Speaker 5: trying to do, then all of a sudden, you know,
Speaker 5: demand here in the US, you know, for the manufacturing
Speaker 5: of these factories is going to cause inflation.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 5: It's going to hit margins of companies that manufacture this
Speaker 5: sort of stuff, So they're going to have to raise prices,
Speaker 5: which is going to actually have an effect on demand.
Speaker 5: Right when you think about that, So you get in
Speaker 5: a situation where you can foresee that the dislocations of
Speaker 5: supply chains which we saw during COVID made the price
Speaker 5: of goods and services go up, right, So if you're
Speaker 5: forcing US companies to bring back manufacturing here, there's no
Speaker 5: other way that it's going to raise prices because of
Speaker 5: all the costs to kind of reorient that, to retool
Speaker 5: factories or build factories, to kind of hire workers here.
Speaker 5: They're a lot more expensive here than they are in
Speaker 5: Vietnam or China and the like here. So when you
Speaker 5: think about all this in the near term, all this
Speaker 5: uncertainty causes companies outside the idea of you know, reshoring
Speaker 5: manufacturing to kind of slow up some other sort of
Speaker 5: expenditures that they have, which is capax you know, outside
Speaker 5: of manufacturing or R and D I'm in the like.
Speaker 5: And so you get into a situation that we've talked
Speaker 5: about for a while. If that slows growth right and
Speaker 5: demand is weakened because of weakening economy, then you get
Speaker 5: in the stagflationary sort of environment, which again is not
Speaker 5: a good situation.
Speaker 4: To be in.
Speaker 5: We haven't been there since kind of the mid to
Speaker 5: late seventies or so, and so again, what's different about
Speaker 5: this time versus let's say the seventies, is just the
Speaker 5: increased globalization, the reliance that we have on all of
Speaker 5: these supply chains, whether it's manufacturing of cars here and
Speaker 5: parts coming from Mexico or Canada, whether it's housing here
Speaker 5: and the reliance on you know, lumber from Canada. I mean,
Speaker 5: it's reliance on rare earth materials and electric batteries that
Speaker 5: come from China into Tesla cars or other evs here
Speaker 5: in the US, right, whether it's our reliance on energy
Speaker 5: from those sorts of things. So if you have this
Speaker 5: tip for Tad and you go back and forth with
Speaker 5: your trading partners ratcheting up the taxes, and make no
Speaker 5: mistake about it, these tariffs are on taxes, it's going
Speaker 5: to cause inflation. And we know that inflation hurts the
Speaker 5: middle class and lower earners here in the US. So
Speaker 5: again that's the risk of causing consumer slow down and spending,
Speaker 5: corporate slow down and spending based on all of this
Speaker 5: demand for reshoring of manufacturing here, which you're going to
Speaker 5: take a long time to do. It's going to take three, five,
Speaker 5: ten years for a lot of this sort of stuff
Speaker 5: to happen. And that's one of the reasons why you
Speaker 5: see now the billionaire class. Ken Griffin one of the
Speaker 5: richest men here in the US. He runs Citadel, which
Speaker 5: is one of the most successful hedge funds. He's out
Speaker 5: this morning suggesting that this is a horrible policy. We've
Speaker 5: seen this by a bunch of others, Stan Druckemiller, who's
Speaker 5: also one of the wealthiest men in the world, also
Speaker 5: a hedge funder. This is the sort of stuff that
Speaker 5: might actually start to get into the thick skull of
Speaker 5: Treasury Secretary Beston, who, by the way, used to work
Speaker 5: for drug a Miller.
Speaker 4: Right, so a lot of.
Speaker 5: These folks speak his language, but for some reason he's
Speaker 5: speaking the language of Trump, which gives you know, I
Speaker 5: think it gives a CEO class and consumers less confidence
Speaker 5: in the.
Speaker 1: Policies explained to us about stagflation, because we've talked about
Speaker 1: it a lot.
Speaker 2: It's the nightmare scenario. Just give us two minutes on
Speaker 2: what it is and what it does.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and so this goes back to the whole idea
Speaker 5: of restoring or just increased costs that are you know,
Speaker 5: kind of put on a US consumer. Let's just focus
Speaker 5: on the US here because of you know, these teriffs, right,
Speaker 5: and then that causes a.
Speaker 4: Slowing of growth. Right.
Speaker 5: Two thirds of our GDP of our economy basically is
Speaker 5: US consumer spending, which also speaks a little bit too,
Speaker 5: why we have these trade deficits. We are addicted to consuming, right,
Speaker 5: We also like cheap goods. So if you have a
Speaker 5: situation where growth is slowing, unemployment is going higher because
Speaker 5: of the tariffs, right, and you have inflation that's sticking
Speaker 5: around for a lot of the same reasons, then you
Speaker 5: get into the stagflationary environment, which actually hurts consumer spending.
Speaker 5: Going back full circle here, and so it's just an
Speaker 5: environment that if you're focused on investments, if you're focused
Speaker 5: on your four oh one k, it will not be
Speaker 5: good for us corporate earnings, which goes back to what
Speaker 5: we were just talking about, which should be one of
Speaker 5: the major drivers, right of the stock market. And so
Speaker 5: stagflation bad for risk assets, bad for employment, bad for
Speaker 5: you know, like consumers who are trying to kind of
Speaker 5: keep a nest egg here. And so that's one of
Speaker 5: the situations where I think a lot of folks are
Speaker 5: very worried about protracted trade war causing stagflation at a
Speaker 5: time where we're worried about that last year before we
Speaker 5: got into this trade war.
Speaker 4: And so that's one of the reasons why I think
Speaker 4: a lot.
Speaker 5: Of folks want to see a quick end to this.
Speaker 2: Trade war and stagflation is sort of self perpetuating. Right.
Speaker 1: Often in the recession, things will get cheaper, but this
Speaker 1: is a recession with inflation, so it means everything is
Speaker 1: more expensive. Plus the economies in a downturn. Right, that's
Speaker 1: the night nurse scenario now.
Speaker 5: And you might see the headline numbers of inflation come
Speaker 5: in a little bit, especially as consumers have less buying
Speaker 5: power and there's less demand for goods and services. But
Speaker 5: you have to think of it now as the cumulative
Speaker 5: nature of inflation over the last four years. You also
Speaker 5: have to think about the fact that interest rates are
Speaker 5: likely to stay high to battle inflation, because the last
Speaker 5: thing they want to do is kind of go into
Speaker 5: a situation where inflation picks up a great deal at
Speaker 5: a time where going back to the growth where growth
Speaker 5: is kind of weak. Right, So that's the push and
Speaker 5: pull here. And the last thing I'll just say about
Speaker 5: this is that in past recessionary environments, what the US
Speaker 5: Federal Reserve would do is lower interest rates.
Speaker 1: One thing Trump desperately wants and is trying to transmit.
Speaker 5: He's trying to transmit that he doesn't have control over
Speaker 5: the US Federal Reserve, which sets policy as it relates
Speaker 5: to interest rates. They don't want to lower interest rates
Speaker 5: because they feel like that could stoke inflation once again.
Speaker 5: So the Trump administration has kind of backed themselves in
Speaker 5: a corner coming out so aggressive on the terrace, because
Speaker 5: if they are not able to strike some sort of
Speaker 5: deals right at this point, then there's really nothing that
Speaker 5: they can do because the Fed is most focused on
Speaker 5: really keeping inflation at bay, and they're also really focused
Speaker 5: on the jobs market.
Speaker 4: They have a dual mandate.
Speaker 5: It's stable prices, that's as you speak about inflation and
Speaker 5: full employment, and they're worried about a recession causing employment
Speaker 5: to go basically much lower it Right now, you know,
Speaker 5: the unemployment rate is really near lows at four point
Speaker 5: two percent or something like that. So the Fed has
Speaker 5: a really tricky job and the White House has kind
Speaker 5: of backed themselves in a corner. But they've also put
Speaker 5: a lot of pressure on Fed shairpal to do something
Speaker 5: that he does not want to do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's really not up to Trump, it's really
Speaker 1: up to the Fed. So we will see more push
Speaker 1: and pull, and again I'm interesting to see everybody come
Speaker 1: out against this.
Speaker 2: We'll see how it goes. Dan Nathan, thank you so much.
Speaker 4: Thanks Molly. Great to be back with you.
Speaker 1: John Allen is a senior national political reporter at NBC.
Speaker 1: Amy Parnis is a senior correspondent at The Hill, and
Speaker 1: they are both the authors of Fight Inside the Wildest
Speaker 1: Battle for the White House. Welcome to Fast Politics, Amy and.
Speaker 2: John, Thanks Molly, thank you. Let's talk about this book. Fight.
Speaker 1: First of all, it starts with the debate that basically
Speaker 1: changed everything.
Speaker 2: You get into people's heads.
Speaker 1: You have a bunch of sort of different people who
Speaker 1: are processing the debate. I know why you started there,
Speaker 1: but I also want to know, like, as it was happening,
Speaker 1: because all of this just happened, were you guys like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is where we're going to start this.
Speaker 6: So interestingly, Molly, when the debate happened, we didn't even
Speaker 6: have a book deal. We were not planning to write
Speaker 6: a book about this election. We wrote one about the
Speaker 6: twenty sixteen election. We were on about the twenty twenty election,
Speaker 6: and we were off on a different project and this
Speaker 6: debate happens, and we had looked at this election as
Speaker 6: kind of I don't want to say.
Speaker 4: Dull, but maybe a little more doll.
Speaker 6: I mean you've got Joe Biden running against Donald Trump
Speaker 6: in a rematch, and it.
Speaker 2: Just wasn't Yeah, double haters.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's right. It was the double hater election. Like
Speaker 6: who's going to be least aided by the double haters?
Speaker 6: And so when the debate happened, we didn't even know
Speaker 6: we were going to write. And then, you know, a
Speaker 6: week into the Democratic infighting, maybe ten days, the publisher
Speaker 6: called an asked us if we would do an election book,
Speaker 6: and we were so like, we jumped out it. We
Speaker 6: were like, absolutely, because whatever happens from now until November
Speaker 6: is going to be the most electric, most intense, most
Speaker 6: revealing period of American politics in our entire lives. And
Speaker 6: it turned out to be all of that.
Speaker 2: Do you think that's true?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 6: Why would I say that if I didn't.
Speaker 1: I'm just like thinking through sort of that's a bold statement,
Speaker 1: my friend.
Speaker 7: I mean, what election results in a candidate switch to
Speaker 7: attempted assassinations? It was intense. We've covered quite a few
Speaker 7: of these, John, and this was pretty much the most
Speaker 7: intense one.
Speaker 1: Let's sort of go through writing this book. It's very
Speaker 1: heavily reported, but then told in a sort of novelistic way.
Speaker 1: You know, it's funny because it's like the thing that
Speaker 1: the right will seize on and they're not wrong to do.
Speaker 1: It is just how out of it Biden was. Everything
Speaker 1: I've read so far, it doesn't seem like there's a
Speaker 1: concerted cover up. It seems like there's a lot of
Speaker 1: anxiety about his age. He's definitely sort of back and forth.
Speaker 1: But it doesn't I don't quite see like the kind
Speaker 1: of nefariousness.
Speaker 6: This is not written as a book about a cover up.
Speaker 6: I do think that there's collective neglect. I do think
Speaker 6: that there are decisions that put their own interests or
Speaker 6: different sets of interests above, you know, either the Democratic
Speaker 6: Party's interests or the country's interests. And I think for
Speaker 6: most of the people in the Democratic Party they believe
Speaker 6: the party's interests are the country's interests. I don't look
Speaker 6: at this and say, here was this massive cover up
Speaker 6: to sort of pretend there was a president who wasn't
Speaker 6: fully there or anything like that. What I do think
Speaker 6: is that if you are somebody who gets to the
Speaker 6: very top working for President Biden or really working for
Speaker 6: any other president, you're not the type of person that
Speaker 6: raises your hand and says Hey, wait a second. Guys,
Speaker 6: you're not in the position where you're like, hey, wait
Speaker 6: a second, maybe what we're doing is wrong here, or
Speaker 6: maybe what we're doing here isn't going to work. Powerful
Speaker 6: people tend to surround themselves those sick events that and
Speaker 6: even close family members become, you know, part of the ride.
Speaker 4: This is the you know.
Speaker 6: One person said to us that Mike Donellan, who is
Speaker 6: basically the closest Biden advisor, explained why he was running
Speaker 6: for reelection in the first place, and the answer was,
Speaker 6: you know, nobody wants to give up the playing the
Speaker 6: helicopter in the house. Further, the person that we were
Speaker 6: talking to and their own view was not only was
Speaker 6: the staff highly invested in trying to keep Biden in offices,
Speaker 6: they were the best jobs they were going to ever have,
Speaker 6: but that the first lady, Jill Biden, was you know,
Speaker 6: doubly so invested in you know, this is the best
Speaker 6: thing that's going to be there for her. And frankly,
Speaker 6: I think Joe Biden, whether accurate or delusional or whatever,
Speaker 6: like I think Joe Biden truly believed he was the
Speaker 6: only person who could beat Donald Trump. Like I don't
Speaker 6: think that's fake. I think he really believes it. I
Speaker 6: think he believed it even after the debate where everyone
Speaker 6: in the Democratic Party realized that there was a problem,
Speaker 6: and you know, long after I think most of the
Speaker 6: Republican Party realized that there was a problem.
Speaker 7: Though he could win even after the election, right, No,
Speaker 7: he said that, yeah, yeah, I read that part about
Speaker 7: the First Lady had wanted him not to run and
Speaker 7: written on her stomach no.
Speaker 2: But there was like a huge changeover Will you explain that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that was two thousand and four, and so over
Speaker 6: twenty years, you know, her huge change that I think
Speaker 6: being first Lady was a pretty good deal. And in
Speaker 6: two thousand and four she had a variety of sets
Speaker 6: of reasons for why she didn't want him to run.
Speaker 6: But by twenty twenty four, as they're running for reelection,
Speaker 6: it means giving up a lot if he doesn't run.
Speaker 6: And by the way, I think one of the interesting
Speaker 6: things that you see in this book, and one of
Speaker 6: our sources called it the quote unquote original sin, is
Speaker 6: that there was no discussion about whether Biden should seek reelection.
Speaker 6: It was about Owen when he would announce. You know,
Speaker 6: he decided in his mind he was going to run
Speaker 6: for reelection. There was no real debate internally within the
Speaker 6: inner circle about doing that, and he set his party
Speaker 6: and himself on a course that I think, you know,
Speaker 6: all of them are disappointed with now, and put himself
Speaker 6: in it, I think, a vulnerable position. I mean, anybody
Speaker 6: that watched that debate, it's hard not to feel sympathy,
Speaker 6: you know, in that moment of him struggling so mightily,
Speaker 6: and in other moments that we'd seen before that, but
Speaker 6: not in quite such dramatic fashion, And in other moments
Speaker 6: that we've seen since that, again not in quite so
Speaker 6: dramatic fashion.
Speaker 1: And what I thought was interesting, what you had in there,
Speaker 1: was that there was really no love lost between Obama
Speaker 1: and Biden.
Speaker 2: Will you talk about that.
Speaker 7: It's a very interesting relationship that they have. You know,
Speaker 7: they were close when they were partners after the Obama administration,
Speaker 7: actually before it ended. He wanted to run for president
Speaker 7: but president and Obama at the time preferred Hillary Clinton,
Speaker 7: and that caused a lot of tension. Obama's aid sort
Speaker 7: of pretty much told Biden at the time that he
Speaker 7: shouldn't run, and Biden remembered it and wrote about it
Speaker 7: in his book, And you know, so it starts there,
Speaker 7: but fast forward to this election. I think President Obama
Speaker 7: doesn't think that his former vice president now president is
Speaker 7: a good candidate. We report in the book that he
Speaker 7: talks to Nancy Pelosi several times to figure out what
Speaker 7: to do about him post debate. We also report that
Speaker 7: he has his own conversation with Joe Biden where he's
Speaker 7: not telling him to leave the race, but he's kind
Speaker 7: of prodding and asking him questions and seeing what his
Speaker 7: plan is, and the relationship remains pretty divisive. I think
Speaker 7: to this day.
Speaker 1: One of the really interesting parts is that George Clooney
Speaker 1: is somehow and again you saw that with the op ed,
Speaker 1: but he's sort of had this sense that there's something off.
Speaker 7: Yes, So the whole George Clooney thing, really it happens
Speaker 7: also around the time that Nancy Pelosi's out there kind
Speaker 7: of saying that Biden had a decision to make. George
Speaker 7: Clooney comes out with this letter. The Biden campaign knew
Speaker 7: about it, and they were trying to kind of put
Speaker 7: the cabash on it for a couple of days. They
Speaker 7: have Jeffrey Katzenberg reach out and try to kill it,
Speaker 7: but it ends up running and that was really one
Speaker 7: of the I think it was one of the nails
Speaker 7: in the coffin.
Speaker 1: Right, there's sort of a group with the George Clooney
Speaker 1: Obama crew. It does seem to me like the takeaway
Speaker 1: from this is that Democrats were not harsh enough with
Speaker 1: their own that they sort of let him keep going
Speaker 1: even when they had doubts.
Speaker 2: Do you think that's correct?
Speaker 4: Correct?
Speaker 6: But I also think that it's very difficult to get
Speaker 6: a sitting president to step aside or to have a
Speaker 6: real primary process. You know, the DNC and the White
Speaker 6: House work to change the primary calendar to put South
Speaker 6: Carolina first so that anybody that was going to try
Speaker 6: to beat Biden would have to basically beat him in
Speaker 6: his best state starting out out of the gate. I mean,
Speaker 6: there were a lot of moves made to protect the president,
Speaker 6: which is not and when they say that, I mean
Speaker 6: politically protect him, which is not unusual. It's not unusual
Speaker 6: for the president's team to find a way for them,
Speaker 6: the best way for the to win reelection. I do think,
Speaker 6: Molly that like there are these scenes in the backstabbing,
Speaker 6: all that stuff. It's very exciting for the news headlines
Speaker 6: and for the clips and and we obviously are willing
Speaker 6: to talk about all that stuff. I do think what
Speaker 6: you get out of this book is you start to
Speaker 6: get a sense of which of the leaders in the
Speaker 6: Democratic Party, which are the people in the Democratic Party
Speaker 6: put their party in their country above their own interests,
Speaker 6: and those who let their own interests become more important
Speaker 6: than what they thought what collectively the Democratic Party thought,
Speaker 6: and by that I mean the voters thought was the
Speaker 6: biggest thing here, which was to prevent Donald Trump from
Speaker 6: becoming president of the United States.
Speaker 4: And you can.
Speaker 6: See how these jealousies, these ambitions.
Speaker 2: So tell us who those people are.
Speaker 6: One of the things that comes out of this book
Speaker 6: is that Nancy Pelosi is probably the person in the
Speaker 6: Democratic Party who is best at identifying what the interests
Speaker 6: of the party. And again, you know what Democrats believe
Speaker 6: were the interests of the country above her own interests.
Speaker 6: She didn't want to get in a fight with Joe Biden.
Speaker 6: She really likes and cares about Joe Biden. She didn't
Speaker 6: want to be seen as being in a cabal to
Speaker 6: take him out. She didn't want her fingerprints at the
Speaker 6: scene of the crime. And at the same time, she
Speaker 6: belie believe that he needed to get out of the race.
Speaker 6: She helped that along, and she took on a role
Speaker 6: that so many of her colleagues were just unwilling to do.
Speaker 6: I mean, you know, you talk to members of Congress.
Speaker 6: We would talk to members of converse anonymously and they say, yeah,
Speaker 6: Biden's got to get out, But they wouldn't call for
Speaker 6: him to get out because they were worried about dividing
Speaker 6: the Democrats in their own districts and in their own
Speaker 6: states and hurting themselves for reelection. You know, you go
Speaker 6: through the various characters. Joe Biden wants to hold on
Speaker 6: to power so much so that even when he gets
Speaker 6: out of the race three and a half weeks after
Speaker 6: a debate performance that I think most people believed should
Speaker 6: have been disqualifying. When he gets out of the race,
Speaker 6: he pushes Kamala Harris to not run her own race,
Speaker 6: to not distance herself for things that aren't working for
Speaker 6: his campaign and break apart. He keeps telling her no daylight, kid,
Speaker 6: that there can't be any daylight between them. And by
Speaker 6: the way, he's still the sitting president of the United States,
Speaker 6: So there's any inherent or an implicit threaten that that
Speaker 6: if she gets too far away from him, he's gonna
Speaker 6: punish her for it, you know, or come out again
Speaker 6: InTru in some way. You know, he made her beg
Speaker 6: for an immediate endorsement because he wanted to bask in
Speaker 6: the glory of his exit and take a victory lap
Speaker 6: and talk about how he was like George Washington when
Speaker 6: she really needed an immediate endorsement from him to lock
Speaker 6: down the delegates to get the nomination, which eventually happened,
Speaker 6: but only and we report in detail on this conversation,
Speaker 6: two conversations between them on the day that he gets
Speaker 6: out where he's basically saying, I'm not going to endorse
Speaker 6: you for a while, and she's like, you got to
Speaker 6: endorse me now, and eventually he does it. But I
Speaker 6: think you can see in that like a with that
Speaker 6: set of people, you know, where the loyalties and the
Speaker 6: ambitions and and the selflessness. I think that there's there
Speaker 6: are rare acts of selflessness in this story. You get
Speaker 6: to see that in those people. And I also think
Speaker 6: that it's an important lesson for voters to see the
Speaker 6: difference between you know, what some of these public officials
Speaker 6: are saying, some of these party leaders are saying out
Speaker 6: in public and what they are saying behind the scenes,
Speaker 6: and the gulf between what the voters need and should
Speaker 6: be demanding from their leaders in terms of honesty and
Speaker 6: fidelity to parties goals and what is actually going on.
Speaker 6: And so as you look forward to twenty twenty eight
Speaker 6: and the twenty twenty mid Times, I think there are
Speaker 6: just a lot of lessons here for voters in terms
Speaker 6: of grassroots donors and activists in terms of what do
Speaker 6: they need to be seeing from their candidates. Who's going
Speaker 6: to put the interests of the public put the interests
Speaker 6: of the party voters first?
Speaker 2: What were the sort of worst hipocrisies you saw?
Speaker 6: I guess the way that I would put it is
Speaker 6: that less hipocrisy and more gas lighting.
Speaker 1: Okay, so what was the worst case of gas lighting
Speaker 1: that you report in the book.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: So, by the way, this is reporting in the book,
Speaker 6: this isn't our objective analysis. I mean, right after the debate,
Speaker 6: the campaign leadership team is meeting with the national finance
Speaker 6: team for the campaign in a hotel in Atlanta where
Speaker 6: the debate was the next morning, and a campaign leadership
Speaker 6: is telling all the donors everything's spine. There was nothing
Speaker 6: really wrong with Joe Biden. It was a bad night,
Speaker 6: and their donors are like, like, what the fuck are
Speaker 6: you talking about? It backfired, like the whole exercise in
Speaker 6: you know, you have to repeat our talking points and
Speaker 6: believe what we're telling you instead of what you saw
Speaker 6: with your own eyes. I mean, it just totally backfired
Speaker 6: on the campaign. You know, we talked to people in
Speaker 6: the campaign who felt like their leadership, with the leadership
Speaker 6: of the campaign was gaslighting the lower level campaign people
Speaker 6: about Joe Biden's standing about Kamala Harris is standing. David
Speaker 6: Pluff went out and told the country that she was
Speaker 6: going to win seven swing states. Kamala Harris believed on
Speaker 6: election night, we report on you know, we go into
Speaker 6: the Vice President's residence on election night. You know, a
Speaker 6: conversation she's having and the feeling she's having as she's
Speaker 6: crestfallen because she's shocked. She thought she was in position
Speaker 6: to win. Yeah, and then she loses. And I don't
Speaker 6: want to spoil the end of the book, but you know,
Speaker 6: let's just say that she felt gas lit.
Speaker 7: Too, and so did Tim Walls. By the way, we
Speaker 7: also take you inside his hotel room and he's sitting
Speaker 7: there and doesn't know what to say. His wife has
Speaker 7: to talk because he can't find the words.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I noticed, just from my
Speaker 1: own experience of this campaign was that they were pretty
Speaker 1: afraid of their own shadow and unwilling to engage with
Speaker 1: I mean, you could see this just clearly, like unwilling
Speaker 1: to engage in podcasts and social media and just very
Speaker 1: sort of locked down. Did you see this? And also
Speaker 1: do you think that this is some of why they lost?
Speaker 7: Yeah, And you know, they were criticized by Itt Molly
Speaker 7: coming out of the convention. You know a lot of
Speaker 7: people thought that they were just running out the clock
Speaker 7: at the time and that they didn't have to do
Speaker 7: any media interviews. And at the same time, you're seeing
Speaker 7: Donald Trump going on various podcasts everything, doing all of it.
Speaker 7: And you know, we report in the book that she
Speaker 7: does try to go on Rogan's podcasts, but it turns
Speaker 7: into this whole you know, like they're negotiating back and
Speaker 7: forth and Rogan is coming back and maybe his people
Speaker 7: aren't being as forthcoming as they should be. They're negotiating
Speaker 7: and it never amounts to anything. She ends up moving
Speaker 7: a whole entire rally to Texas so she can be
Speaker 7: in the place where Rogan is and that doesn't happen. Meanwhile,
Speaker 7: Trump is everywhere, as you said, and he is relying
Speaker 7: on his son Baron, which we report in the book.
Speaker 7: Baron is giving guidance to him on how to reach
Speaker 7: these younger people and it ends up being really successful
Speaker 7: for him.
Speaker 1: Just tell me one last thing. Do you think that
Speaker 1: this consultant class around Harris should be in charge of
Speaker 1: other elections for Democrats? Do you think they made good decisions?
Speaker 6: I think that the term consultant class kind of nails
Speaker 6: at Molly.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking the precision strategy crew that came in from
Speaker 1: Pluff to Cutter.
Speaker 6: Yeah, no, I know, David Pluff and Stephanie Stephanie Kenner dept.
Speaker 6: For O'Malley Dillon. You know, look, we say this in
Speaker 6: the book about about O'Malley Dillon. It's interesting she chooses
Speaker 6: to run this campaign, which most people would not have
Speaker 6: done usually if you want a campaign, and she was
Speaker 6: a campaign manager for twenty twenty, which I think was
Speaker 6: a lot closer than a lot of Democrats wanted to
Speaker 6: think about. Out of forty four thousand votes over three
Speaker 6: states in the electoral College. Most of them, you know,
Speaker 6: were like, I'm going to go off on a high
Speaker 6: note and I'm not going to risk losing my second election.
Speaker 6: She made a different decision there, and I think that
Speaker 6: that was at least in large part due to feeling
Speaker 6: some loyalty to the president and thinking she'd be good
Speaker 6: at it, right. But yeah, I think they make bad decisions,
Speaker 6: and I think they make bad decisions that are just
Speaker 6: jaw dropping. And I'll give you an example from the book.
Speaker 6: And this is not The reason that this is important
Speaker 6: is not necessarily the impact of the episode itself, but
Speaker 6: just how it's so emblematic of the problem. The transad
Speaker 6: that the Trump campaign ran, which had video of Kamala
Speaker 6: Harris endorsing the state of California paying for trans surgery
Speaker 6: for illegal immigrants in prison or you know who have
Speaker 6: been in prison in California, that ends with the tagline,
Speaker 6: Kamala Harris is for they them, President Trump is for you.
Speaker 6: That's the most effective political ad I've ever seen. The
Speaker 6: first time I saw it, I was like, this is
Speaker 6: unbelievably effective. I can't imagine a better set of issues
Speaker 6: for them to hammer her on in SOMs of it's
Speaker 6: like a perfect blight, three or four issues that are
Speaker 6: intertwined there with imprisoned immigrants and transsurgery and the them
Speaker 6: versus you, I mean, the whole thing, and an economic
Speaker 6: issue because the state's paying for it. But we report
Speaker 6: that Bill Clinton saw this ad on the campaign trail
Speaker 6: and he called everyone he could find to say, please
Speaker 6: respond to this ad. This is killing her. People are
Speaker 6: talking to me about it on rope lines. I just
Speaker 6: keep hearing about this trans ad. Please respond. And the
Speaker 6: answer he got back from the campaign brass and at
Speaker 6: this point Harris campaign. But it's the same people that
Speaker 6: were running the Biden campaign. The answer they got back
Speaker 6: is we tested that ad, and we tested possible responses.
Speaker 6: Our data shows us that it's not that effective. It's
Speaker 6: not that big of a deal. This way of thinking,
Speaker 6: we're like, you're so tied.
Speaker 2: To data that does nothing for you, and that's been wrong.
Speaker 6: I was just going to say, you're making strategic decisions
Speaker 6: that are so fundamentally at odds with like what anybody
Speaker 6: who knows anything about politics would believe based on incremental
Speaker 6: differences in your data.
Speaker 1: So interesting, you guys, I'm sorry we ran along, John Amy,
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3: They're no momental secretly, Jesse Cannon my junk fast. So
Speaker 3: we have had Justice Allison Riggs on this podcast many
Speaker 3: times because this is a thing that you and I
Speaker 3: find very alarming in how a little coverage it gets. Well,
Speaker 3: the Supreme Court has gotten involved with her race, which
Speaker 3: is the last race to be decided of the twenty
Speaker 3: twenty four election, and it is fucking April.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so basically, the Republican you are lost, and the
Speaker 1: Republicans have decided that if they lose sometimes they just
Speaker 1: decide that they're going to not go along with it,
Speaker 1: and they're going to demand recan after recann after recant. Now,
Speaker 1: Judge Griffin has cea dismissed the ballots cast by sixty
Speaker 1: five thousand people. He has argued that a majority of
Speaker 1: them were ineligible to vote because they did not supply
Speaker 1: certain required identifications.
Speaker 2: This is what Republicans do.
Speaker 1: This is all, by the way, caused by Donald Trump's
Speaker 1: twenty twenty election, where he was like, I didn't win
Speaker 1: and so it was not fair.
Speaker 2: You will see more of this.
Speaker 1: It is just incredibly fucked up, and that is why
Speaker 1: it is our moment of fuckery.
Speaker 2: That's it for.
Speaker 1: This episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday,
Speaker 1: and Saturday to hear the best minds and politics make
Speaker 1: sense of all this chaos. If you enjoy this podcast,
Speaker 1: please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.