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 Donald Trump is mad at the
Speaker 1: reports that he did not win in a landslide after
Speaker 1: winning less than fifty percent of the popular vote. We
Speaker 1: have a show of shows for you today. To the contrary,
Speaker 1: author Charlie Sikes talks to us about staying sane in
Speaker 1: in Saturday. Then we'll talk to Democracy Forward Sky Perriman
Speaker 1: about fighting back against Trump's agenda using the courts.
Speaker 2: But first the news.
Speaker 3: So, Molly, one of the things we've been talking about
Speaker 3: that I think is most important about Trump's incoming regime
Speaker 3: is this mass deportation plan.
Speaker 4: What are you seeing here?
Speaker 1: I've been saying that we all need to keep our
Speaker 1: powder dry for when Donald Trump starts rounding people up.
Speaker 1: But our powder, I mean our outrage, you know, we
Speaker 1: have to save it for things that are really outrageous,
Speaker 1: like mass deportation. But before even Donald Trump has taken office,
Speaker 1: it has become clear that this mass deportation plan is
Speaker 1: going to be very expensive, not just the price of
Speaker 1: separating people from their families and flying them to countries
Speaker 1: that won't necessarily take them, but it will have enormous
Speaker 1: effects on agriculture. So there's reporting that agricultural output will
Speaker 1: fall between thirty and sixty billion dollars if Trump's flagshift
Speaker 1: policy is carried out.
Speaker 2: That's quite a lot.
Speaker 1: And remember, farmers are already suffering because climate change has
Speaker 1: made it harder to predict what crops are going to
Speaker 1: look like, what this sort of farming landscape, if you'll
Speaker 1: excuse the use of the word landscape, will look like.
Speaker 1: And so now deportation of all of the farm we'll
Speaker 1: add another wrinkle to an already very unpredictable business. And
Speaker 1: you'll remember Donald Trump ran on making things more affordable.
Speaker 1: Getting rid of the people who farm the farms will
Speaker 1: mean that everything will be more expensive. Farmers will have
Speaker 1: to pay more for labor, wildly inflationary, and restaurant owners
Speaker 1: are already and agricultural leaders are already calling foul on
Speaker 1: Donald Trump's plans, and he isn't even in office yet.
Speaker 4: Even Walmart is I mean, it's ridiculous.
Speaker 2: No, this is the whole thing is completely insane.
Speaker 4: It's okay, we'll all be eating the dogs and the
Speaker 4: cats soon.
Speaker 2: That's right, they're eating them.
Speaker 4: So speaking of other things, that seems like mister Trump
Speaker 4: wasn't telling the whole truth about on the campaign trail.
Speaker 4: So begetting to look a lot like something you and
Speaker 4: I said as coming true, which is that this whole
Speaker 4: thing is gonna be staffed by Project twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you'll be shocked to know that everything Donald Trump said,
Speaker 1: maybe not everything, but certainly this when he said he
Speaker 1: knew nothing about Project twenty twenty five and that Project
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five is not him. Well it turns out,
Speaker 1: you guys, I know you're gonna be shocked, but Donald
Speaker 1: Trump was saying a lie. In fact, Project twenty twenty
Speaker 1: five is basically Trump's transition And in fact, now we
Speaker 1: see what the campaign over. Trump's transition team is turning
Speaker 1: to Project twenty twenty five, even though they said they.
Speaker 2: Weren't going to.
Speaker 1: They're taking suggestions from for potential hires from their website,
Speaker 1: which was called Project twenty twenty five, a website.
Speaker 2: To staff the next Trump administration.
Speaker 1: How ironic that they actually are using the thing they
Speaker 1: said they would. It's a database, you know, it's been
Speaker 1: set up for a couple of years, so it has
Speaker 1: people have applied through it. Project's twenty twenty five massive
Speaker 1: book of conservative I was going to say conspiratorial, but
Speaker 1: it's sort of the same policy recommendations. It received the
Speaker 1: most attention from Democrats. It was a wishless and by
Speaker 1: the way, when people started googling it, they realized that
Speaker 1: all of the things were pretty dystopian. Now we get
Speaker 1: to see Trump try to enact them, we'll see what happens.
Speaker 1: But again, it's really important to realize that in fact,
Speaker 1: this is all Donald Trump's plan. And Russ Vatt is
Speaker 1: likely going to return to the OMB director and he
Speaker 1: was acting director, and he was deputy director before. He
Speaker 1: comes directly from Heritage Action, which is a branch of
Speaker 1: the Heritage Foundation. He wrote a chapter of Project twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five. His chapter covers the Executive Office of the Presidency.
Speaker 2: And you'll remember that the whole idea with.
Speaker 1: Project twenty twenty five is to expand the powers of
Speaker 1: the presidency to ncap the federal government and to make
Speaker 1: almost all aspects of the federal government arms of Trump's campaign.
Speaker 1: So you know, the DOJ will be his personal criminal
Speaker 1: prosecution arm. Every part of the federal government will be
Speaker 1: in the service of Donald Trump, and you'll be shocked
Speaker 1: to know that Russ Vott is in fact one of
Speaker 1: those parts.
Speaker 5: So this is interesting. Oftentimes I think people would get
Speaker 5: really excited around election, sees that we can get rid
Speaker 5: of the Marjorie Taylor Greens, of the Matt Gates is
Speaker 5: at the ballot box, and that didn't happen. But it
Speaker 5: turns out we are actually getting rid of Matt Gates
Speaker 5: and Congress. What are you seeing here?
Speaker 1: You'll remember that Matt Gates.
Speaker 2: I can't stop laughing.
Speaker 1: So last week Matt Gates resigned because the Congressional Ethics Committee.
Speaker 2: Known to be highly toothless.
Speaker 1: Okay, like the Congressional Ethics Committee has many times investigated
Speaker 1: people and found no need for anything here, they were
Speaker 1: about to release this report.
Speaker 2: Clearly there was some stuff in there that really worried
Speaker 2: Matt Gates.
Speaker 1: So he was designed and Trump made him his pick
Speaker 1: for Attorney general. Only in Trump world does such a
Speaker 1: series of events happen. But Mark Gates spent the week
Speaker 1: trying to avoid sort of the alleged story of him
Speaker 1: having sex with an underage girl. He resigned right before
Speaker 1: CNN ran another story about him allegedly having sex with
Speaker 1: another girl who was underage. So again their witnesses, there's
Speaker 1: just a ton you know, there's all of these VENMO payments.
Speaker 1: I mean, where there's Venmo payments, there's usually fire.
Speaker 4: Really twenty four thousand dollars to one girl, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, so now there was a question because Gates
Speaker 1: resigned before the next Congress, which he'd already won a seat,
Speaker 1: and if he would stay in Congress in Florida's first
Speaker 1: district or not. But yesterday, which was Thursday, because today
Speaker 1: is Friday and tomorrow you will be listening to this
Speaker 1: podcast on Saturday.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: I know how the days of the week work at.
Speaker 1: Gates told some news outlet, I'm going to be fighting
Speaker 1: for President Trump. I'm going to be doing whatever he
Speaker 1: asks of me as I always have. Oh, not even
Speaker 1: a news outlet. He told that to Charlie Kirk. But
Speaker 1: I think that eight years is probably enough time in
Speaker 1: the United States Congress. I think the rest of Congress agrees.
Speaker 1: Hours after Gates ended his big Trump announced longtime loyalist
Speaker 1: and former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondy as his new
Speaker 1: pick to head the Justice Department.
Speaker 2: God help us all, Samali.
Speaker 6: We have to discuss one last Trump phenomenee, wrestling magnate
Speaker 6: Linda McMahon. Turns out she's had some pretty bad things
Speaker 6: when it comes to being around children. What are you
Speaker 6: seeing here?
Speaker 1: So Linda McMahon helped co run Trump's transition team with
Speaker 1: Howard Lutnik. Linda McMahon really wanted to be Commerce Secretary.
Speaker 1: She's a big dop donor. She lost out on Commerce
Speaker 1: Secretary to Howard Lutnan, who really wanted to be Treasury Secretary,
Speaker 1: but lost to add to someone that Wall Street thinks
Speaker 1: is sane. We still don't know who that is because
Speaker 1: there's a lot of inviting about that one job. You
Speaker 1: can tell what jobs they think are important from how
Speaker 1: long it takes them to put together a nominee anyway.
Speaker 1: So McMahon now has been given the door prize in
Speaker 1: the Trump cabinet. She is the Secretary of Education if
Speaker 1: she gets through congressional approval. The hilarious part of this
Speaker 1: is that Donald Trump is planning, or at least thinks
Speaker 1: he can shutter the Department of Education. So here's the
Speaker 1: job that Trump is hoping won't exist. She has not
Speaker 1: without her scandals. She's the former CEO of the WWE,
Speaker 1: which is a wrestling federation. She found herself in a
Speaker 1: lawsuit against her, her husband, the WWE, and TKO Group Holding,
Speaker 1: it's the league's parent company, knowingly allowed employee Marvin Phillips
Speaker 1: Junior to use his position as ringside announcer and essentially
Speaker 1: exploit children again, you mean like QAnon. Charlie Sykes is
Speaker 1: the author of the newsletter to the Contrary and the
Speaker 1: book How the Right Lost Its Mind Welcome Back Too
Speaker 1: Fast Politics.
Speaker 2: My friend, Charlie Sikes, I.
Speaker 7: Actually wanted to talk to you, even what's your podcast.
Speaker 7: I want to talk to you about your about your
Speaker 7: strategy to remain sane, because I do think that this
Speaker 7: needs everybody has to have this on their agenda. How
Speaker 7: are you going to get through the next four years?
Speaker 7: What's your plan right now? Other than not doing the
Speaker 7: same thing we've done over the last eight years, we
Speaker 7: got got to mix it up, right, Bunnie.
Speaker 1: You should ask this because I actually wrote about this
Speaker 1: this week, and I think it's a pretty smart plan,
Speaker 1: if I do say so myself. My theory of the
Speaker 1: case is this, there is no knock novelty here, right.
Speaker 1: We know where this is going, and there are very
Speaker 1: few guardrails. Right, we have Democrats control no levers of
Speaker 1: the federal government, though the House is very very tight,
Speaker 1: and the Supreme Court has gone it is no longer
Speaker 1: the Roberts courts. It's the you know, it's basically it's
Speaker 1: like the Alito Court. It's not quite the allital Court,
Speaker 1: but it's the Kavanaugh Court for sure. So my theory
Speaker 1: of the case is that this needs to be a
Speaker 1: kind of triage. The focus needs to be norms and institutions,
Speaker 1: things that really will be undoable, like things where Trump
Speaker 1: really just structurally damaged the United States in ways that
Speaker 1: cannot be undone, and that those norms and institutions have
Speaker 1: to be job one, and that everything cannot be outrageous,
Speaker 1: because then nothing is well.
Speaker 7: I think this is the hard part is you know
Speaker 7: that we're about to go into this fire hose of
Speaker 7: outrage that you know, starting on January twenty I actually
Speaker 7: already started. Now it's going to be like twenty seventeen
Speaker 7: every single day, and it is gonna be hard not
Speaker 7: to set yourself on fire, particularly for the folks who
Speaker 7: have to have opinions every single day. This is one
Speaker 7: of the things I was thinking about earlier this year
Speaker 7: when I said I was stepping off the daily hamster
Speaker 7: wheel of crazy, which is not to you turn your
Speaker 7: back on it, but if you basically keep your face
Speaker 7: right up against that fire hose, it's going to make
Speaker 7: you insane because every single day you will try to,
Speaker 7: you know, fill space. You'll have the hot takes, and
Speaker 7: you have to react to whatever outrage, and some of
Speaker 7: those outre I mean, look, they're all outrages, but some
Speaker 7: of those outrages will matter, and some of them are ephemeral.
Speaker 7: So I think it's kind of separating out the big
Speaker 7: stuff from the little stuff and not being obsessed by it.
Speaker 7: I don't want to digress too much, but I don't
Speaker 7: want to be chasing every single moment when Nancy Mace
Speaker 7: is demagoguing something or the latest stupid thing that Marjorie
Speaker 7: Taylor Green is, because at the end of every week,
Speaker 7: we'll think, how did I get so stupid? And it's
Speaker 7: because I spent all my time I'm talking about Nancy
Speaker 7: Mace or Marjorie Taylor Green. Well, meanwhile, they're carting out
Speaker 7: all the furniture from the Department of Justice and they're
Speaker 7: dismantling the EPA I'd say, Okay, maybe we ought to
Speaker 7: focus on the big stuff.
Speaker 1: And I think that's exactly right. And look, Nancy Mace
Speaker 1: wants you to be outraged, right. I mean this is
Speaker 1: like democracy dies in darkness.
Speaker 7: Right, democracy dies in bullshit right.
Speaker 1: And Nancy Mays only exists if she can dictate the
Speaker 1: news cycle. Right, like she has learned at the knee
Speaker 1: of Marjorie Taylor.
Speaker 7: Green, do not take the bait. Just don't take the bait.
Speaker 7: That's at least one thing.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 7: How long we're going to be able to stick with that,
Speaker 7: I just don't know. So I was I was on
Speaker 7: a Canadian show this morning and the host says, so, Charlie,
Speaker 7: are people afraid? Are you afraid? And I had a
Speaker 7: very inadequate answer. I said, well, you know, the day
Speaker 7: after the election, someone suggested that I write a you know,
Speaker 7: on my substack newsletter to the contrary that I write
Speaker 7: the headline be not afraid. And I said, hell with that,
Speaker 7: because people should be afraid. People should be afraid, but
Speaker 7: they should not be frightened. And I think this is
Speaker 7: the key thing. People ought to be very aware of
Speaker 7: the danger, but not be so frightened that they cave
Speaker 7: in or obey in advance. If you act out of fear,
Speaker 7: I think it's one thing to be again on alert,
Speaker 7: to be aware, but to act out of fear is
Speaker 7: the dark place. That's what authoritarians want. They want us
Speaker 7: to cower. They want us to think, how can I
Speaker 7: not be noticed? How can I not make them mad?
Speaker 7: And of course there's a lot of that going on.
Speaker 7: And again that's not for me to say there's nothing
Speaker 7: to worry about. There's a lot to worry about them.
Speaker 2: There is really a lot.
Speaker 7: You worry about it, but you stand and you face
Speaker 7: it intelligently and effectively not run away. That's the key thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think that's really really so important. And
Speaker 1: that's what I think about a lot is like this
Speaker 1: is the break glass in case of emergency, right, Like,
Speaker 1: this is it. This is as dark as it's going
Speaker 1: to get. And so we need to be very thoughtful
Speaker 1: about how we proceed, right.
Speaker 7: And you can't break the glass every single day. The
Speaker 7: other thing that I'm I'm really trying to commit myself
Speaker 7: to is try to not chase every squirrel of outrage,
Speaker 7: you know, not every every single shiny object. But also,
Speaker 7: and this is really hard, and I think I'm going
Speaker 7: to be misunderstood here. I think we do have to
Speaker 7: keep a sense of humor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, no, agreed, A grade agrade, because I.
Speaker 7: Listened to some of just the grim people, you know,
Speaker 7: repeating the same talking points that they've been repeating and
Speaker 7: using the same jargon and everything, and they're depressed and
Speaker 7: they're all ere and everything, and as a fuck that.
Speaker 7: I mean, honestly, these people are They're absurd and they're dangerous,
Speaker 7: and I think that there's a balance there to say,
Speaker 7: you people are absolutely ridiculous. I mean people like Peter
Speaker 7: hegxitt yes, and An RFK and Matt Gaates. I mean
Speaker 7: they're risibly absurd human beings. Now that's not to say
Speaker 7: they're not also dangerous human beings.
Speaker 1: Yes, many things can be true, which I think is
Speaker 1: part of what we're experiencing here. These people can be dangerous,
Speaker 1: and they can also be ridiculous and look, and they
Speaker 1: can also more importantly be stopped. And that's what we
Speaker 1: saw with Matt Gates this week, right, because Matt Gates
Speaker 1: really did in the end, there were enough brave Republicans
Speaker 1: and we had questions and worries and dowds about this
Speaker 1: but there were enough brave Republicans, so Matt Gates will
Speaker 1: not be Attorney General.
Speaker 7: I would say there were enough nauseator Republicans.
Speaker 2: Right, we'll take it.
Speaker 7: No, okay, I want to take this in a positive
Speaker 7: point of view. I did write this morning that, you know,
Speaker 7: the fall of Matt Gates, which was is a splendid
Speaker 7: thing to watch, maybe more of a speed bump than
Speaker 7: a guardrail. We don't know how many brave Republicans there
Speaker 7: will be, but it is worth pointing out that Donald
Speaker 7: Trump went all out to get Matt Gates, including this
Speaker 7: report that they were going around telling senators, you know,
Speaker 7: if you don't bow the knee to Donald Trump and
Speaker 7: Matt Gates, we're going to primary you, and this guy
Speaker 7: Elon Musk is going to bankroll it. So you had
Speaker 7: basically this thuggish out in the open threat, and the
Speaker 7: Republicans didn't caved. And it also didn't work because there
Speaker 7: was a retreat they could have taken. They could have
Speaker 7: you done that craven recess appointment, They could have surrendered
Speaker 7: their power.
Speaker 1: Mitch McConnell, hero of the resistance, told them they couldn't.
Speaker 7: No fucking way. Mitch McConnell said not this time. Maybe,
Speaker 7: unlike Susan Collins, he has learned his lesson. I don't know.
Speaker 7: I don't want to be the lucy in the football
Speaker 7: again with these guys. But you do get the sense
Speaker 7: that maybe Donald Trump has seriously overplayed his hand by
Speaker 7: going to war with the Republican Senate as right out
Speaker 7: of the box. He insulted them, he threatened them, he
Speaker 7: tried to humiliate them, and he's still trying to humiliate
Speaker 7: them by shoving these nominees down their throat. And at
Speaker 7: least as you and I are speaking, they said, no,
Speaker 7: we're not going to do it, which again ought to
Speaker 7: be you know, let plant let's plant this, you know,
Speaker 7: rare flag of success.
Speaker 2: Enjoy it.
Speaker 1: I mean, I also do think like remember as soon
Speaker 1: as Trump won, Trump and Elon were like, we are
Speaker 1: going to install Rick Scott, the president for Mars Attacks
Speaker 1: as the majority leader.
Speaker 2: And that did not work either.
Speaker 7: No, Actually that that was really interesting. That was his
Speaker 7: first big failure, right that he was He clearly didn't
Speaker 7: want John Thune, you had, the Maga verse was all
Speaker 7: on fire about that, and they lost badly. In fact,
Speaker 7: that was the day you might remember, that was the
Speaker 7: day that he began, you know, rolling out some of
Speaker 7: the absurd original appointments. And it felt to me, having
Speaker 7: watched Trump this long, that that was a way of
Speaker 7: distracting attention from what otherwise would have been something that
Speaker 7: Trump hates more than anything else. People pointing out that
Speaker 7: you just lost, you just lost big on something that
Speaker 7: that is going to have long term ramifications. But I
Speaker 7: know that some people are really really surprised. I'm only
Speaker 7: mildly surprised that the you know, rape mcfoorhead was a
Speaker 7: bridge too far, or for this that it was such
Speaker 7: a ridiculous I stole that from somebody. No, I think
Speaker 7: I stole it from the guy who drops all the
Speaker 7: F bombs even more than me. We'll see what they
Speaker 7: do with Peter Hegsith.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now that Matt Gates is out of the lineup
Speaker 1: and Pam BONDI we actually know, is a lawyer, Matt
Speaker 1: Gates is also a lawyer, though that seemed more a
Speaker 1: little more circuitous.
Speaker 2: Who is the cabinet appointment who keeps you up at night?
Speaker 4: Now you know.
Speaker 7: That that's a hard one to choose. And this, this,
Speaker 7: I think is the and I'm doing air quotes here.
Speaker 7: The flood the zone with shit. Genius of all of this,
Speaker 7: because you know, the notion of putting Peter Hegsyth in
Speaker 7: charge of the Department of Defense keeps me up at night.
Speaker 7: The idea that we would put a Russian asset like
Speaker 7: Tlsea Gabbard in charge of the US intelligence community keeps
Speaker 7: me up at night. The fact that you have a complete, demented,
Speaker 7: deranged conspiracy theory nut job like Roberda F. Kennedy Junior
Speaker 7: dismantling the Department of Health and Human Services. I mean
Speaker 7: that one is not just absurd and dangerous, it's potentially deadly.
Speaker 7: If we go back to pre vaccination days. We have
Speaker 7: opened We've opened a Pandora's Box of medieval horrors here,
Speaker 7: so you pick your horrors. And also, as people have noticed,
Speaker 7: things are becoming more and more dangerous in the world,
Speaker 7: and I think they will become even more dangerous between
Speaker 7: now and January. And so that delta between what we
Speaker 7: would hope the kinds of people we would hope would
Speaker 7: be in charge of our intelligence agencies and the Department
Speaker 7: of Defense of the United States of America and the
Speaker 7: people that Donald Trump has put there is becoming wider
Speaker 7: and wider so great that you know, down goes Matt Gates.
Speaker 7: But we have this parade of grotesqueries and horribles in waiting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And I think the one who really keeps me up
Speaker 1: at night. I mean, I guess you're right, RFK Junior
Speaker 1: has to be the one because we did just live
Speaker 1: through a pandemic. By the way, we just lived through
Speaker 1: a pandemic that Donald Trump, you know, clearly again it's
Speaker 1: not fair to say that he killed people, but he
Speaker 1: certainly was not good for public health. Right.
Speaker 2: I think we can all agree on that A.
Speaker 7: Million people died and it has been completely memory hold,
Speaker 7: just completely memory hold.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a million people died.
Speaker 1: So let's let's put RFK, who does not believe in
Speaker 1: vaccines in charge of public health.
Speaker 7: Let's put a guy with literal brainworms in charge of
Speaker 7: deciding how to keep Americans safe from the next pandemic.
Speaker 7: And there will be a next pandemic. I mean, this
Speaker 7: is going to happen.
Speaker 2: Oh, no question, because of the climate stuff.
Speaker 7: Right. And that's not Donald Trump's fault, That's not RFK,
Speaker 7: that's just the nature of things. The question.
Speaker 2: It's Ronald Reagan's fault.
Speaker 7: Yes, go on is how we handle it, how we
Speaker 7: respond to it, whether or not we will we will
Speaker 7: actually be intelligent and serious and sober, or whether or
Speaker 7: not we have put one of the most dement I mean,
Speaker 7: where do you even start with him? The fact that
Speaker 7: he actually is out there saying that the first one
Speaker 7: was a pandemic obviously planned by the Trump administration. Who
Speaker 7: the freak knows what he's talking about.
Speaker 1: By the way, though I shouldn't laugh, but I'm laughing
Speaker 1: to keep keep from crying.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean, I love these quotes that are now
Speaker 7: surfacing about how you're saying, you know that the Trump
Speaker 7: is hitler and you know.
Speaker 2: Terrible, and that's good.
Speaker 7: This is this is I think the pre brainworm RFK,
Speaker 7: which is like, okay, you got it at one time
Speaker 7: before your brain turned to tapioca pudding whatever it was, before.
Speaker 1: The worm the brainworm had died. I think that was
Speaker 1: part of it right there. I think the brainworm is
Speaker 1: no longer a line.
Speaker 7: I think the brain worman was killed by what it
Speaker 7: was eating. I mean, I all know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm going to go out on Pete Hexth because
Speaker 1: if this happens, he will direct the United States military
Speaker 1: and he will be sending the message that it's okay
Speaker 1: to have numor allegations at the very least of sexual
Speaker 1: assaulted misconduct.
Speaker 7: Yeah, the details of that police reporter are interesting to dad. Yeah,
Speaker 7: did you see my newsletter today? I did the WWD
Speaker 7: question mark not this FS Yeah, what would Jesus do?
Speaker 1: Not this?
Speaker 7: For fuck's sake? Okay, So here's an interesting dynamic though
Speaker 7: in the whatever mar A Lago Oval office. The one
Speaker 7: argument you cannot make to the president elect is, hey,
Speaker 7: we can't put this man in charge of the Defense
Speaker 7: Department because he's been credibly accused of rape.
Speaker 2: That does not hold a lot of water to Trump.
Speaker 7: Right, because basically you will elect a rapist who grabs
Speaker 7: women by the pussy, and you know what, you are
Speaker 7: not going to be able to convince him that it's
Speaker 7: disqualifying to rape someone or grab somebody. So the only
Speaker 7: thing you can say is, yo, the votes aren't there,
Speaker 7: or this is a distraction.
Speaker 1: I think the votes aren't there is probably all you
Speaker 1: can say.
Speaker 7: That's the only thing you can say. I think that
Speaker 7: hag sith there's got to be a big question mark. Again, ironically,
Speaker 7: not because he may have raped someone. And by again,
Speaker 7: the details of these you know, clean yourself up and all.
Speaker 5: Of that stuff.
Speaker 7: Oh my god, not because of that, but you know,
Speaker 7: as the Wall Street Journal reports, the Trump transition team
Speaker 7: was amazingly blindsided by this. Who knew that these things
Speaker 7: like that would happen? When you basically say, we don't
Speaker 7: need FBI background, Yeah, we don't need to vet these people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, those cocks in the FBI.
Speaker 7: Yeah, we don't mind that you rape that girl, but
Speaker 7: you should have told us about it on your form.
Speaker 1: Right, right, right, there's social justice warriors in the FBI
Speaker 1: known for their liberalism. Yeah, I mean, we'll see, but
Speaker 1: it continues. The House has this very slim majority. You've
Speaker 1: got Mike Johnson in there. I'm wondering, the last time
Speaker 1: Donald Trump was elected to the presidency, we were all
Speaker 1: eight years better looking.
Speaker 2: Now we are.
Speaker 1: And I'm speaking about myself obviously, because I remember those
Speaker 1: salad days. Is it being in my thirties? Now we
Speaker 1: are all very old and exhausted. I'm curious, like Paul
Speaker 1: Ryan had to lead the House and then he and
Speaker 1: then he left the business altogether. Now we have Mike Johnson.
Speaker 1: Talk to me about the difference between Paul Ryan and
Speaker 1: Mike Johnson.
Speaker 7: I was just thinking about the salad days in my
Speaker 7: early sixties back then. So well, Paul Ryanland was of
Speaker 7: course much smarter than Mike Johnson, but he had a
Speaker 7: much bigger majority, right, right, they had quite an edge there,
Speaker 7: and so when you're talking about a two three four
Speaker 7: vote margin, particularly when you've seen that clown show that
Speaker 7: they've had, and then of course now they have vacancies,
Speaker 7: so Matt Gates is actually a vacancy. So for a
Speaker 7: few months it's going to be below two hundred and twenty.
Speaker 7: So I mean, we you know, what could go wrong? Well,
Speaker 7: you know they've been giving us the off Broadway version
Speaker 7: of what could go wrong for the last two years.
Speaker 1: So I do think that's worth watching a good line
Speaker 1: today on television.
Speaker 2: I'm going to steal your line and no, no, I'll
Speaker 2: let you use a birth.
Speaker 7: The other thing is that that right now everybody is
Speaker 7: you know, they're all in you know, swinging around, you know,
Speaker 7: VVAK and elon are swinging around their big dicks about
Speaker 7: how much they're going to cut government spending. You're going
Speaker 7: to need congressional approval, and so it's one thing to
Speaker 7: put out, well, Assie, I don't think they quite understand
Speaker 7: that all the things they're cutting, all of those spending programs,
Speaker 7: and I'm certainly not going to say there's not wasteful spending.
Speaker 7: There's a lot of wasteful spending. But every program exists
Speaker 7: for a reason, and there is a constituency for every
Speaker 7: single program. And once you step on some of those minefields,
Speaker 7: you're going to find out that even some MAGA adjacent
Speaker 7: congressmen are going to be very, very unlikely to vote
Speaker 7: to cut I don't know, veterans' healthcare, for example, That
Speaker 7: is just not going to happen. So it is going
Speaker 7: to be extremely messy. They're going to have to have
Speaker 7: real discipline and the kind of discipline that we have
Speaker 7: come to know they rarely are able to exercise.
Speaker 2: Charlie Sikes, will you please come back?
Speaker 7: I will come back anytime. I mean, I am a
Speaker 7: man without a podcast. I'm just sitting here in my
Speaker 7: robe in front of this it's rather pathetically unused microphone.
Speaker 2: So yeah, yes, please come back. You are just the best,
Speaker 2: and so.
Speaker 7: You're the only one who invites me, So I asked, Michael,
Speaker 7: you are the best anytime.
Speaker 1: Scott Perryman is the president of Democracy Forward. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to Fast Politics, Sky.
Speaker 8: Thanks for having me. Always get to chat with you.
Speaker 1: We're delighted to have you. So now we are in
Speaker 1: the dystopia. Donald Trump is about to become president for
Speaker 1: the second time, thus creating a tension where the courts
Speaker 1: are really the only thing that are going to protect
Speaker 1: the American people. So can you talk us through what
Speaker 1: that look like?
Speaker 8: Absolutely, you know, And part of it is we have
Speaker 8: a little bit of knowledge here because of his first administration.
Speaker 8: He engaged and his administration engaged in such lawless activity
Speaker 8: that was designed to create chaos. It was harmful, but
Speaker 8: fundamentally it was also against the law. And while the
Speaker 8: Supreme Court, of course has a majority of justices come
Speaker 8: from the conservative legal movement, and we have the far
Speaker 8: right legal movement that has obviously been responsible for cases
Speaker 8: like Dobbs and other things that have really shaped the court.
Speaker 8: The types of activities that this administration is expected to
Speaker 8: engage in are ones that I think even that court
Speaker 8: will stop in some instances. And the more important thing
Speaker 8: is that there are hundreds of federal courts across the
Speaker 8: country with judges that will fairly interpret the law and
Speaker 8: litigation is just going to be a huge piece of
Speaker 8: providing that check for the American people. So we can
Speaker 8: talk specifically about kind of what the cases would look like.
Speaker 8: But what we know in the last administration, the Trump
Speaker 8: administration lost nearly eighty percent of the time in court
Speaker 8: because of their you know, lawless activities. We intend, along
Speaker 8: with a lot of other organizations, to be really making
Speaker 8: sure that people and communities are represented in court moving forward.
Speaker 1: Yes, so that is a really good point. Say that again,
Speaker 1: what percentage of court cases did Donald Trump lose?
Speaker 8: You know, there's different estimates, but it was approaching eighty percent,
Speaker 8: and in the first year of his administration, I think
Speaker 8: it was around you know, seventy nine eighty percent.
Speaker 1: So, like the Muslim ban, it's like big pieces of
Speaker 1: quote unquote legislation, right.
Speaker 8: The Muslim ban, of course, was able to be successfully
Speaker 8: challenged in the lower courts once it finally got up
Speaker 8: to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court did issue an
Speaker 8: upolled part of that at you know, part of that.
Speaker 8: But the important thing is, like, let's just look at
Speaker 8: what he did across the board. So they appointed and
Speaker 8: this will sound familiar to you if you're watching and
Speaker 8: following the news right. They would corrupt commissions. They would
Speaker 8: appoint people from outside of government that were deeply tied
Speaker 8: to industries or to special interests that they curried favor
Speaker 8: with to commissions to try to shape the way the
Speaker 8: federal government operates. And they would do that and did
Speaker 8: that without complying with all of the transparency laws and
Speaker 8: other laws that we have in this country about how
Speaker 8: you do this. So they got sued on that a lot,
Speaker 8: and we've shut down a range of corrupt commissions. They
Speaker 8: sought to abruptly discontinue important federal funding funded bipartisan programs
Speaker 8: in cities like Baltimore and in counties like King County, Seattle,
Speaker 8: and we were able to sue and successfully restore those
Speaker 8: funding and stop their conduct there. They sought to reverse
Speaker 8: a lot of policies that were really important for working
Speaker 8: Americans and working families, and we were able to stop those.
Speaker 8: So I want to say, it's going to be a
Speaker 8: tough fight, and I don't have rose colored glasses. This
Speaker 8: is really such a critical moment for the country and
Speaker 8: it's going to take all of us doing our part.
Speaker 8: But we do know if the past is prologue, that
Speaker 8: the courts are going to be such a frontline in
Speaker 8: this battle, and we are ready to go. The lawyers
Speaker 8: at Democracy for the lawyers at so many other organizations,
Speaker 8: we are geared up and ready to go to ensure
Speaker 8: that if they break the law, that there is legal
Speaker 8: action to challenge it.
Speaker 1: Yes, what are we going to see as people that
Speaker 1: is really easily addressed in the courts? For example, give
Speaker 1: me the kind of things because Trump's going to do
Speaker 1: it a.
Speaker 2: Lot of stuff.
Speaker 1: He's got like numerous executive orders all lined up to
Speaker 1: start on day one. So explain to us what sort
Speaker 1: of the stuff that's going to be easier to challenge,
Speaker 1: and then this stuff is going to be harder to challenge.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean, look, I think there's a lot of
Speaker 8: we don't know entirely how they're going to do things right,
Speaker 8: but we know, for instance, when they say they're going
Speaker 8: to engage in mass deportations, You've seen the ACLU out
Speaker 8: there talking about what those challenges will look like swiftly
Speaker 8: and on day one. I'm not saying those are easy,
Speaker 8: but I'm saying that there will be swift legal challenges.
Speaker 8: We've seen, you know, Elon Musk and others say that
Speaker 8: they're going to remake the way the American government works,
Speaker 8: and Trump has said that he's going to create some
Speaker 8: type of commission or department to do that. The things
Speaker 8: that I've seen suggest that they're not going to be
Speaker 8: following the law when they create these commissions. And there's
Speaker 8: a lot of legal remedies that will be utilized. If
Speaker 8: they want to come after the civil service and engage
Speaker 8: in arbitrary mass firings of the civil service, which is
Speaker 8: what they've said that they want to do, there are
Speaker 8: legal remedies there reversing the last administration. They sought to
Speaker 8: just reverse a range of policies without going through the
Speaker 8: process that they had to go through. And so I just,
Speaker 8: you know, I think that this is not going to
Speaker 8: be an easy path because there's so much but you know,
Speaker 8: we're made to do hard things the courts right now
Speaker 8: because of the balance in Congress. The courts really are
Speaker 8: the tool at the federal level as well as I
Speaker 8: think being clear and you and I talked a lot
Speaker 8: about Project twenty twenty five before the election, and we're
Speaker 8: now seeing him accelerate try to accelerate Project twenty twenty
Speaker 8: five now that the election has been called for him.
Speaker 8: You know, this is a president elect that ran by
Speaker 8: telling the American people that he didn't know anything about
Speaker 8: Project twenty twenty five and sought to distance himself from
Speaker 8: all of these unpopular, you know, these unpopular policies. And
Speaker 8: so I do think that there's going to also be
Speaker 8: a role for the American people to really hold him
Speaker 8: to account. But also they're members of Congress to accounts
Speaker 8: when these Project twenty twenty five policies start rolling through,
Speaker 8: to say, wait a second, you know, this is not
Speaker 8: actually what the American people voted for. In fact, you know,
Speaker 8: he sought to this is himself he.
Speaker 1: Said, I have nothing to do for Ragic twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: And then, by the way, let's talk about Russ's voice.
Speaker 8: Well, I mean, look, either they're not slowing down at
Speaker 8: all to seek to really accelerate Project twenty twenty five.
Speaker 8: Russ was one of the architects of this entire extreme agenda,
Speaker 8: which again, in poll after poll, there was a lot
Speaker 8: of disputes over polls. Guess where there wasn't disputes over polls.
Speaker 8: In poll after poll, conservatives, liberals, and independents all broadly
Speaker 8: rejected Project twenty twenty five on the issues. But now
Speaker 8: they're going to seek to install Russ Voyd into the
Speaker 8: administration and he will have to be confirmed by the Senate,
Speaker 8: and I think that's going to be really important for
Speaker 8: Americans to make their voices heard in those confirmation battles,
Speaker 8: especially given them mis leading nature of the campaign where
Speaker 8: they really disavowed Project twenty twenty five. But the bottom
Speaker 8: line is, we also have that blueprint for over a
Speaker 8: year because they published it. We know what their plan is,
Speaker 8: and we know how to argue and we know how
Speaker 8: to bring cases against it because a number of the
Speaker 8: things that they are proposing are just flatly unlawful, and
Speaker 8: we're going to have to rely on our courts to
Speaker 8: do the right thing too. And that's really important that
Speaker 8: people are making sure that we're clear that we expect
Speaker 8: our courts to protect the rights of the American people,
Speaker 8: to protect our democratic institutions, and that is what they
Speaker 8: are here to do, and they're going to have to
Speaker 8: stand up to you know, stand up and do that,
Speaker 8: which we saw in many instances last time that happened.
Speaker 1: So I'm wondering if you Ross Vointe is being put
Speaker 1: in charge of budget. Yeah, will you explain why that
Speaker 1: is and what he has the opportunity to do there?
Speaker 8: Well, the Office of Management and Budget is really just
Speaker 8: like such a core office that really seeks and is
Speaker 8: able to help define the way the federal government operates
Speaker 8: across agencies, because it's really an agency that is cross cutting.
Speaker 8: This is, unfortunately for the American people, the type of
Speaker 8: position that will have a lot of influence over multiple policies.
Speaker 1: By controlling budget, he will have a certain sort of
Speaker 1: ability to cut off the finances.
Speaker 8: Right well, and what they've suggested is that this position
Speaker 8: would be the one that would seek to impose what
Speaker 8: is known as Schedule F to seek to reclassify our
Speaker 8: federal workers to make them more political, to make you know,
Speaker 8: reclassify civil servants as political appointees, to then enable the
Speaker 8: president to engage in mass firings. And then also this
Speaker 8: office potentially could seek, through much of that work, to
Speaker 8: undermine some of the more autonomous organizations like the consumer
Speaker 8: financial Protection Bureaus. So now that's what they say they're
Speaker 8: going to do again, I will just say like there
Speaker 8: is a broad and diverse effort, and I would encourage
Speaker 8: our listeners to go to democracy twenty twenty five dot org,
Speaker 8: where you can see so many of the organizations and
Speaker 8: groups that are lined up to really help represent the
Speaker 8: American people. When these agencies engage in that, these offices
Speaker 8: engage in unlawful activity to that is what they you know,
Speaker 8: attacking our civil service and our ability of government to
Speaker 8: deliver for people has been a censure piece of Project
Speaker 8: twenty twenty five. And so you know, if the Senate
Speaker 8: were to confirm us, you would really see an opportunity
Speaker 8: that he would have to accelerate or seek to accelerate,
Speaker 8: many of the harmful things in that policy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is really scary.
Speaker 4: It is.
Speaker 8: It's scary, but it should also be motivating. Trump and
Speaker 8: the GOP have been saying they have this mandate. I
Speaker 8: don't see that. What I saw in the election was
Speaker 8: deep red Missouri vote for abortion access and people in Florida,
Speaker 8: more people in Florida voting for the ballot initiative than
Speaker 8: if I have my figures right, then they voted for
Speaker 8: Donald Trump or Rond de Santis the last time, and
Speaker 8: people voting for a candidate in President elect Trump that
Speaker 8: blatantly throughout the campaign trail thought to deceive people about
Speaker 8: his connections to these very people and to these very policies,
Speaker 8: And so I think there's just a real moment for
Speaker 8: both those of us that work in the courts, but
Speaker 8: also for the American people and for those that are
Speaker 8: going to be going into Congress to check this extremism
Speaker 8: by staying vigilant and pushing forward. And so it is
Speaker 8: very scary, but there's not a mandate for this extremism.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm hoping you could talk about how pushing back
Speaker 1: in the court it's sort of the only way to
Speaker 1: stop a lot of this stuff, right because Democrats don't
Speaker 1: control any of the federal branches.
Speaker 8: Yes, and I think this is important to understand that
Speaker 8: the administration is poised to engage in a range of
Speaker 8: harmful activities, many of which are of those activities will
Speaker 8: have legal problems we can sue with the ultimate goal
Speaker 8: of stopping that harm for people in communities, and that
Speaker 8: is always the ultimate goal. And President Biden has appointed
Speaker 8: more than two hundred and twenty pro democracy judges. I
Speaker 8: believe at the end of this administration, if you look
Speaker 8: across the federal judiciary that you will see that the
Speaker 8: majority of those lower court judges have been appointed by
Speaker 8: pro democracy presidents. And I will also tell you that
Speaker 8: our team, as well as other teams, win in front
Speaker 8: of judges, including judges that were appointed by former President
Speaker 8: Trump and more conservative presidents. So I will say the
Speaker 8: courts remain a hugely important tool to stop some of
Speaker 8: this behavior. But more than that, litigation has a way
Speaker 8: of helping change behavior, even if you disregard how a
Speaker 8: court rules right, forcing people to every time they seek
Speaker 8: to harm the American people and seek to do so
Speaker 8: outside the bounds of the law, to have to show
Speaker 8: up in court and defend that, and to defend that publicly,
Speaker 8: for the public to be aware of those challenges, that
Speaker 8: is a critical, critical tool to really forcing the sort
Speaker 8: of extreme administration to account. And so there's really important
Speaker 8: impact beyond just how a judge rules. In the last administration,
Speaker 8: last Trump administration, let me give you one example, Trump
Speaker 8: created the Pence Cobalt Voter Commission, which was seeking to
Speaker 8: undermine votes, are seeking votes right exactly because he didn't
Speaker 8: like the popular vote count. Notice that no one's dispute,
Speaker 8: Notice that no one's disputing anything now, but he didn't
Speaker 8: like the popular vote count. Them and a range of
Speaker 8: organizations including ours. I was one of the lawyers who
Speaker 8: did this, but a range of organizations representing people in
Speaker 8: communities suit and in the face of that avalanche of litigation,
Speaker 8: the administration actually just abandoned their plans of the Commission.
Speaker 8: Now I'm not again, I don't have rose colored glasses,
Speaker 8: and I think that they're going to seek to do
Speaker 8: a range of very harmful things and are determined to
Speaker 8: do that. But we have seen time and again that
Speaker 8: even apart from how courts are rolling, litigation is important
Speaker 8: to force that there be some costs when extreme lawmakers
Speaker 8: are seeking to undermine the rights and privileges and well
Speaker 8: being the American people. And that's what we're committed to doing,
Speaker 8: and that's what hundreds of organizations are committed to doing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you are faced with this because you're in the
Speaker 1: court and your lawyer and your organization is faced with this.
Speaker 2: It is very stressful.
Speaker 1: Give us a two second tip because a lot of
Speaker 1: people who listen to those feel things the way that
Speaker 1: I feel things and the way that you feel things, like,
Speaker 1: we really take this personally, we really care, which is
Speaker 1: I always say, like the worst thing about.
Speaker 2: Me is I believe everything I see on television.
Speaker 1: So like, I actually I actually like think this is
Speaker 1: a real crisis.
Speaker 2: I don't think this is a game.
Speaker 8: I think we're a huge crisis.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're going to see if our institutions hold or not.
Speaker 1: And I think it's a real fifty to fifty question.
Speaker 1: And the best thing going for us is that Trump
Speaker 1: is erratic, and you know, he's nominating people who are
Speaker 1: completely unreasonable. Why do you worry about Pam Bondi because
Speaker 1: she is not as problematic as Matt Gates, but she's
Speaker 1: still very problematic.
Speaker 8: Well, I worry about so many of the people, and
Speaker 8: Bondi is one. These are people that have made their
Speaker 8: careers not engaging in the you know, just amazing opportunity
Speaker 8: that we all have as people to help protect people's rights,
Speaker 8: to ensure that our government is actually working for people
Speaker 8: and delivering the things that we need. But this is
Speaker 8: someone that's long been associated with a you know, a
Speaker 8: quite extreme age, Inda, And so I think that you know,
Speaker 8: we're the Department of Justice holds and just an incredibly
Speaker 8: important role in American society and then protecting our rights.
Speaker 8: And when you look at Project twenty twenty five, you
Speaker 8: see that there are a range of plans that this
Speaker 8: incoming administration has for perverting that institution and seeking to
Speaker 8: weaponize it against the American people. I haven't seen evidence that,
Speaker 8: and I'm an open minded person, so I'm going to
Speaker 8: be listening and watching in the days ahead. But I
Speaker 8: hadn't seen evidence that she is the type of person
Speaker 8: that would buck that political and ideological pressure that we
Speaker 8: see and know that the incoming administration would provide. And
Speaker 8: so the question is will she be an accomplice and
Speaker 8: seeking to accelerate some of the most harmful policies in
Speaker 8: Project T only twenty five, or would she be a
Speaker 8: good steward of the Department of Justice. I don't have
Speaker 8: evidence to show me it to suggests that she would
Speaker 8: be a good steward of that, but we will wait
Speaker 8: at watch. But I think it's concerting when you look
Speaker 8: at what they want to do to that institution, and
Speaker 8: I think it's high concerning that. Like they've also sought
Speaker 8: to prevent the release of information about Matt Gates, which
Speaker 8: is important for American people to know and understand.
Speaker 2: And I think that's a really good point.
Speaker 1: And I think that the one bright spot here is
Speaker 1: that you can absolutely bully.
Speaker 2: These people into doing the right.
Speaker 1: Thing if you're able to get their attention, and it's
Speaker 1: going to be four fucking years of.
Speaker 8: That, and we saw in the campaign. I don't think
Speaker 8: that it was a great day for Trump and his
Speaker 8: associates when they had to come out and disavow and
Speaker 8: distance themselves from Project twenty twenty five. I think it's
Speaker 8: deceptive and it's consistent with this pattern of conduct we
Speaker 8: see from him. But really it became such a problem
Speaker 8: because the vast majority of American people in this country
Speaker 8: reject that extremism and it is going to be incumbent
Speaker 8: up on all of us. Yes, there's a Republican majority
Speaker 8: in the Senate that there are senators that will be
Speaker 8: held to account in two years.
Speaker 2: Tom Tillis in North Carolina.
Speaker 8: Wow, here's an old war story. You remember in the
Speaker 8: first early days of the Trump administration the last time
Speaker 8: that Trumps was hell bent on repealing the Affordable Care
Speaker 8: Act and thought they had the majority in Congress to
Speaker 8: do that. And I will tell yeah, you know, many
Speaker 8: of us there would have been legal problems with some
Speaker 8: of the implications of that, and so there, you know,
Speaker 8: there was a court strategy there, but we never had
Speaker 8: to go to court because Congress ultimately did not deliver
Speaker 8: on what President Trump wanted them to do, because the
Speaker 8: American people pushed back. And that is the kind of
Speaker 8: retail level advocacy It is going to be required to
Speaker 8: save some of the institutions in our country in order
Speaker 8: to ensure that at some point we can be back
Speaker 8: on the track of moving forward as opposed to just
Speaker 8: preventing a backslide.
Speaker 2: Yep, yes, yes, yes, But.
Speaker 8: For your listeners, I think, like I know, we're all scared,
Speaker 8: and everybody is. You know, it's just a highly emotional situation,
Speaker 8: and we're moving into the holidays, but there is a
Speaker 8: lot we can do, and we just have to remember
Speaker 8: that we cannot give up our own power. And so
Speaker 8: lawyers are going to be doing that every single day
Speaker 8: on behalf of people in communities that people can do
Speaker 8: that too. And these extremists do not get to write
Speaker 8: the last chapter or the next chapter of what happens
Speaker 8: in this country. The American people do. And it is
Speaker 8: up to all of us to help galvanize people. And
Speaker 8: there's a lot of disaffected people who our institutions haven't
Speaker 8: delivered for, and our government hasn't delivered for and I
Speaker 8: think you see set in the voting patterns, and it's
Speaker 8: time to show up and do real things and to
Speaker 8: motivate people to engage in that work, to show up
Speaker 8: and do the real things. And that's what we're going
Speaker 8: to really be focused on.
Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you, thank you, Please come back.
Speaker 8: Thanks Molly a moment, Jesse Cannon, my Jen Fast.
Speaker 3: One of the things that is just so sad that
Speaker 3: we kind of knew would happen if mister Trump got
Speaker 3: re elected is well, the racists, the Nazis, the clan
Speaker 3: type people they will be, and we're seeing it play out.
Speaker 4: What are you see in here?
Speaker 2: I did not see it coming. Oh boy, oh a
Speaker 2: group of neil. But if you can't laugh about Nazis,
Speaker 2: who can you laugh about? Neo Nazi groups?
Speaker 1: Scattered flyers across lawns and doorsteps in three Waterloo, Iowa
Speaker 1: neighborhoods just before veterans state, the Handouds offered a chilling
Speaker 1: assessment of the group's proximity in capital letters, we are
Speaker 1: your neighbors. We are the random strangers holding the door
Speaker 1: open for you. We are everywhere. I'm not sure they are.
Speaker 1: A week later, a dozen people march through with parts
Speaker 1: of Columbus, Ohio that are known for arts and culture,
Speaker 1: or carrying Nazi flags, using it bullhorn to shout racist
Speaker 1: slurs against Jews and people of color. You'll notice they
Speaker 1: also wore masks.
Speaker 2: You know why they.
Speaker 4: Wore masks, Please tell me?
Speaker 2: Because they were scared of being identified.
Speaker 1: And that, my friends, is why if you're scared of
Speaker 1: being identified, perhaps you shouldn't be doing it.
Speaker 2: It's a good rule for life. I think that's it.
Speaker 1: For 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.