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 Trump says the US should retake
Speaker 1: the Panama Canal if they do not lower.
Speaker 2: The transit fees.
Speaker 1: It's nice to see him trying to build consensus. We
Speaker 1: have such a great show for you today, the Lincoln Projects.
Speaker 1: Rick Wilson joins us to discuss Donald Trump getting his
Speaker 1: own Donald Trump and.
Speaker 2: Whatever that means.
Speaker 1: Then we'll talk to author Tim Wiener about what a
Speaker 1: weaponized FBI could look like.
Speaker 2: But first the news Somali.
Speaker 3: This is one of those nightmare things that I don't
Speaker 3: think every American thinks about. But I read a tool
Speaker 3: Gawandhi's book on the World Health Organization years ago, the
Speaker 3: Checklist Manifesto, and realized how important it is. They really
Speaker 3: lower death, they really help us have a better world.
Speaker 3: And yean day one, their Trump administration is going to
Speaker 3: pull out of.
Speaker 1: Who yeah, the World Health Organization. Look, they're going to
Speaker 1: do all this stuff again. And by the way, the
Speaker 1: last Trump administration and I don't think Trump could have
Speaker 1: I think perhaps some of the things he could have
Speaker 1: done would have lessened the death toll. But I'm not
Speaker 1: sure that he would that any president would have been
Speaker 1: able to avoid the pandemic. That said, you would think
Speaker 1: that having just presidented through a pandemic, one might want
Speaker 1: to not have another one and be more careful about
Speaker 1: such things.
Speaker 2: But RFK Junior and.
Speaker 1: The rest of the crew have decided that no, thank you.
Speaker 1: Donald Trump's transition team is pushing to pull the United
Speaker 1: States out of the World Health Organization on the first
Speaker 1: day of the new administration, according to experts who warn
Speaker 1: of the catastrophic impact it will have on global health.
Speaker 1: Members of the Trump team told experts of their intention
Speaker 1: to announce a withdrawal. I mean, by the way, this
Speaker 1: is like Trump World, right, They're going to get out.
Speaker 1: They're going to leave the World Health Organization. It will
Speaker 1: damage the world's ability to respond to public health crisis
Speaker 1: is such as the coronavirus pandemic. America is going to
Speaker 1: leave a huge vacuum in the global health financing and leadership.
Speaker 1: I see no one that is going to come in
Speaker 1: and fill the breach. As anyone surprised by this, I
Speaker 1: am not surprised by this, but you're going to see
Speaker 1: a lot of this Trump World trying to get out
Speaker 1: of things.
Speaker 2: That are small.
Speaker 1: By the way, a lot of these things are like
Speaker 1: a rounding error. It's not millions and zillions of dollars,
Speaker 1: but it is, for whatever reason, something that Trump wants
Speaker 1: to cut. And we're going to see more of that,
Speaker 1: where they cut things that are absolutely not at all
Speaker 1: not worth doing, but and the returns on it are
Speaker 1: going to be. It's just very stupid. So I don't
Speaker 1: think anyone could be surprised by this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Trump, the Heritage Foundation, whoever it may be. So
Speaker 3: In other not fun news, it seems people are getting
Speaker 3: a little more urgency about getting rid of money in
Speaker 3: our politics and super PACs because they're realizing with the
Speaker 3: richest men on earth now threatening the primary everyone via
Speaker 3: tweet all the time, that things are not good.
Speaker 1: I think this is a case of something that happened
Speaker 1: too little, too late, right, I mean, the idea that
Speaker 1: now is the moment for super path to be banned,
Speaker 1: when in fact we have a whole crew of very
Speaker 1: rich people trying to influence elections. And this has been
Speaker 1: going on for some time, right, Like the right is
Speaker 1: obsessed with George Soros and the Koch Brothers have been
Speaker 1: doing this forever. But Elon is much more blatant, He's
Speaker 1: much more right.
Speaker 2: Even.
Speaker 1: I think Elon seems much more passionate in a way
Speaker 1: that even the Koch brothers perhaps were able to hide
Speaker 1: their zeal a little better.
Speaker 3: One could argue Elon's expressing his passion with action, whereas
Speaker 3: the Koch brothers they were just spending enough to keep
Speaker 3: their taxt.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but they did a lot of bad stuff, like
Speaker 1: right to work stuff.
Speaker 4: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: But what I would say is, I do think all
Speaker 1: of these ambitions are worthy. But the problem with with
Speaker 1: any legislation like this is the Supreme Court is completely
Speaker 1: in the tank for rich people. So good luck trying
Speaker 1: to create legislation that would in any possible way try
Speaker 1: to tamp down on the oligarchy. Because remember, you have
Speaker 1: a six to three court, and six of those guys
Speaker 1: are real, you know, I mean two of them are
Speaker 1: like on and off Carlan Crowe's private jet every day.
Speaker 1: I mean, there was reporting in the New York Times
Speaker 1: this weekend. Justice Thomas didn't report is even more private
Speaker 1: jet trips than he previously reported, and.
Speaker 2: Well he was mad that they did get reported.
Speaker 1: Democrats did an ethics investigation and found that he lied
Speaker 1: about even getting even more stuff than he got from
Speaker 1: Harlan Crow. So it's hard for me to imagine the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court is going to do anything to stop billionaires
Speaker 1: from just doing whatever they want.
Speaker 3: Yeh, well, I find that disturbing. I remember that's in
Speaker 3: the first Trump administration. Jared and I Vanka were disturbed
Speaker 3: by a lot of things.
Speaker 1: Yes, the moral compass of Trump World, which says a
Speaker 1: lot about all parties.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so Molly I have news though, she'll be being
Speaker 3: disturbed from a distance this time in the next administration.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: For Avanka Trump's entire life, she worked for her father,
Speaker 1: She was on his television show, she was very tall.
Speaker 1: But now she said she's absolutely not coming back. Ivanka
Speaker 1: Trump is done with politics.
Speaker 2: Quote. I love my father very much, which is good.
Speaker 1: I guess this time around, I choose to prioritize my
Speaker 1: young children and the private life we are creating as
Speaker 1: a family. Iami, I do not plan to be involved
Speaker 1: in politics, she said in a twenty twenty two social
Speaker 1: media post after her father announced his third run for presidency. Again, okay,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe not. I mean, I don't take anything these
Speaker 1: people say.
Speaker 2: The bank.
Speaker 3: We'll see yeah, so may I have to say this
Speaker 3: is the one good thing I've seen. I recently watched
Speaker 3: a video on how bad sports gambling addiction is. I
Speaker 3: am continually disturbed when I see how much some of
Speaker 3: my younger employees who don't work on this podcast are
Speaker 3: addicted to it. And Congress is weighing actually getting involved
Speaker 3: because it's that ugly.
Speaker 1: I wait with baited breath for Congress to legislate, and
Speaker 1: they're very good at legislating things where I don't want
Speaker 1: to sound cynical here, okay, and someone who's sober since
Speaker 1: I was nineteen, I think of the many ways in
Speaker 1: which Congress could help with the treatment of addiction when
Speaker 1: it comes to drugs and alcohol, or even when it
Speaker 1: comes to the Internet. I mean, at every point Congress
Speaker 1: has had opportunities to legislate technology, and every point Congress
Speaker 1: has rejected those opportunities. The reason why sports betting and
Speaker 1: also politics betting and betting betting is exploding right now
Speaker 1: is because they've deregulated a lot of the betting markets, right. So,
Speaker 1: this is what happens when you deregulate things, they get
Speaker 1: out of control. You regulate them to put them in control.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is not rocket science here, so hard
Speaker 1: for me to imagine. First of all, it will be
Speaker 1: a Republican Senate, a Republican has and Donald Trump as president.
Speaker 1: So even if for some reason, and again, even if
Speaker 1: for some reason some Republican decides that they're going to
Speaker 1: make this work and they're going to pass the legislation,
Speaker 1: the minute Donald Trump sits on an airplane next to
Speaker 1: someone who likes gambling, or who owns gambling, or who
Speaker 1: benefits from gambling in any way, they're going to say
Speaker 1: to him, don't do that. That's a stupid thing, and
Speaker 1: he's going to go okay. So like this is going
Speaker 1: to be the problem for the next four years. Is
Speaker 1: even if somehow you could get the legislation together, you
Speaker 1: have Donald Trump, and if Donald Trump doesn't object to it,
Speaker 1: you have Mini Trump. Elon, who's going to say, well,
Speaker 1: you know, sports betting, I make a lot of money
Speaker 1: off sports betting. It's based, it's based and red pilled,
Speaker 1: and I want people to be able to do it
Speaker 1: and lose all their money because it's good for whatever.
Speaker 1: I mean, these people are so conflicted that, you know,
Speaker 1: Donald Trump makes money on a lot of things. Elon
Speaker 1: Musk makes money on gazillion things.
Speaker 2: And these are the people.
Speaker 1: Running our country now, so you know which unelected oligarch
Speaker 1: or the elected oligark. They're never going to be able
Speaker 1: to agree on anything. And it's too bad because the
Speaker 1: truth is, you know, gambling just like fent and all,
Speaker 1: just like alcohol, just like drugs, just like any of
Speaker 1: so many of these other things.
Speaker 3: Really, you know, it's my one last consolation prize before
Speaker 3: we head.
Speaker 4: Off into it.
Speaker 2: You've ruined Live.
Speaker 3: The holiday break. Last week on this very podcast, Rick
Speaker 3: Wilson laid out the big struggle between Trump World versus
Speaker 3: d Sanctimonius Fron de Santis World about who will be
Speaker 3: Marco Rubio's successor as an appointment temporarily in the Senate
Speaker 3: before Ron de Sanctimonius tries to jump into that seat.
Speaker 3: And we saw some big moves on this yesterday. What'd
Speaker 3: you see?
Speaker 1: So the big moves are that Lara Trump. You will
Speaker 1: remember her as being married to Eric. You know, someone
Speaker 1: has to.
Speaker 4: Be It's very easy to forget Eric.
Speaker 1: Lara Trump has said she will not run for the
Speaker 1: seat of Marco Rubio. Now here's what is happening. Marco
Speaker 1: Rubio going to this Cannabi Secretary of State very likely.
Speaker 1: Ron DeSantis probably wants that Senate seat. There was a
Speaker 1: theory that if Pete Hegsets got knocked out of DoD
Speaker 1: that Sanctimonius would.
Speaker 2: Be the pick.
Speaker 1: Now I am not convinced that Sanctimonius will be the pick,
Speaker 1: nor am I convinced that heg Sets will get DoD,
Speaker 1: though it's certainly possible either way. The setup was that
Speaker 1: you do something for me and I do something for you.
Speaker 2: But looks like that may not happen.
Speaker 1: Though again, with everything in Trump world, none of this
Speaker 1: could happen or all of this could happen, and you
Speaker 1: really do look foolish when you try to read the
Speaker 1: tea leaves. Remember this is chaos theory. Everyone is just
Speaker 1: doing chaotic things at all times.
Speaker 3: And on that note, we have a great show today,
Speaker 3: but from here on out we will be on vacation
Speaker 3: with some really really great interviews, and we both want
Speaker 3: to wish you some happy holidays.
Speaker 1: We'll be back on January fourth. Rick well And is
Speaker 1: the founder of the Lincoln Project and the host of
Speaker 1: the Enemy's List. Welcome back to our pre vacation episode
Speaker 1: of Fast Politics with Brick Wilson.
Speaker 4: Have a holly jolly Christmas, Molly junk fast.
Speaker 2: That's right, that radio voice we know and love.
Speaker 1: The government did not get shut down, but perhaps this
Speaker 1: is an indication of things to come and what the
Speaker 1: Elon Musk presidency is going to look like.
Speaker 4: Discuss it didn't get shut down, but only because Democrats
Speaker 4: saved Mike Johnson's weird skinny ass again again. I think
Speaker 4: what we have here is a preview of an endless
Speaker 4: stream of crises, one after another after another after another,
Speaker 4: that we are going to watch unfold in the first
Speaker 4: opening acts of the Trump administration. And then it's going
Speaker 4: to get really bad.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I'm not the person who cooked up this is
Speaker 1: a Josh Marshall. But Josh Marshall had a really good point,
Speaker 1: which is that Donald Trump now has a Trump.
Speaker 4: That's a great construction, it really is. That's a great
Speaker 4: way of thinking about it, is that Trump now has
Speaker 4: a Trump. He has somebody who is a chaotic disruptor,
Speaker 4: who does not care about any other social or political
Speaker 4: or personal pressure or persuasion, as they say, and so
Speaker 4: he will end up doing the maximum amount of chaotic
Speaker 4: damage he can all the time. Because that's fun for him.
Speaker 2: My favorite part about Trump's Trump is.
Speaker 1: That Trump actually now knows more about the federal government
Speaker 1: and how it works than Elon does discuss.
Speaker 4: Look, I mean, Donald Trump is arguably one of the
Speaker 4: dumbest motherfuckers to walk on two legs on the planet Earth.
Speaker 4: But he has now been exposed to certain things and
Speaker 4: concepts that an ordinary president would be exposed to as
Speaker 4: they entered into, you know, discussions about government programs and services.
Speaker 4: Elon thinks that this is all just like the rest
Speaker 4: of his life, play money and absurd obeisance by people
Speaker 4: who work for him or when we invest with him,
Speaker 4: or or who make money off of him. That's not
Speaker 4: how government works. That's not how it works even a little.
Speaker 4: And now what you've got is a guy who is
Speaker 4: going to act like an a hole to people, as
Speaker 4: we know, and it's going to be it's going to
Speaker 4: be very loud and very ugly.
Speaker 1: In my view, Elon has this theory. I'm not entirely
Speaker 1: sure if it's his theory. So many of the things
Speaker 1: that Elon preaches are these theories that are sort of
Speaker 1: long term Silicon Valley theories. So, for example, we are
Speaker 1: the media. Now that's a Mark Andreas and that's a
Speaker 1: meniscus mollbug.
Speaker 4: You can call him by his real name is Otis Jarvin.
Speaker 1: But you know, these are tropes that Silicon Valley has
Speaker 1: on trafficked in sure, and they're not new to Elon.
Speaker 1: So trying to replace the media with a bunch of
Speaker 1: far right guys, you know, with Jack Pisobiac is not new.
Speaker 4: All these people, Molly, and this I think is something
Speaker 4: really important to recognize as we go forward. All these
Speaker 4: people have a deep seated insecurity about who they are
Speaker 4: as humans. They are not confident in their actual ideas,
Speaker 4: and so they've lived in this bubble in Silicon Valley
Speaker 4: where they'll find something that pokes their little meme bubble
Speaker 4: in some way and they're like, oh, this is the
Speaker 4: coolest thing I've ever seen, and they adopt it as
Speaker 4: their whole personality. You know, for a long time Elon
Speaker 4: Musk was not a far right wing maga extremist dipshit.
Speaker 1: Well, or he didn't transmit it. I mean, who knows
Speaker 1: what he was If he had.
Speaker 4: That belief, he didn't admit it, but there was very
Speaker 4: little reason to believe that was what he believed. Okay,
Speaker 4: now we are in a much different era now, and
Speaker 4: it feels an awful lot like Elon Musk does believe
Speaker 4: that shit, and it feels an awful lot like he's
Speaker 4: embraced it. But these guys, they themselves up in this
Speaker 4: pseudo intellectual Silicon Valley, can't and these dorm room philosophy
Speaker 4: bullshit session ideas, and you're just like, grow the f up,
Speaker 4: who are you? What do you think is actually happening
Speaker 4: in this world that is amenable to the kind of
Speaker 4: shit that they're trying to convince themselves of.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that I think is really
Speaker 1: interesting is that now Elon has sort of decided he's
Speaker 1: going to play a government and he knows even less
Speaker 1: about government than Donald Trump, which in itself, again I'm
Speaker 1: not against the theory of disruption, like I think there's
Speaker 1: certainly something to be said for the theory of the case.
Speaker 1: But clearly what happened here last week, which I think
Speaker 1: is important because I think we're going to see a
Speaker 1: lot of this in the next four years of trump Ism,
Speaker 1: which is Elon found out about a cr which, by
Speaker 1: the way, has been the whole way that Mike Johnson
Speaker 1: has been running this government.
Speaker 2: This entire time CR.
Speaker 1: Right, because he can't legislate his way out of a
Speaker 1: bucking paper bag. So there's a huge, fatty CR filled
Speaker 1: with stuff everything from moving the stadium right, this is
Speaker 1: not what a CR supposed to look like at all,
Speaker 1: to just a lot of shit in there and a
Speaker 1: pay raise for members of Congress. And Elon gets furious
Speaker 1: because he doesn't want the government spending any money on anything.
Speaker 1: Irony abounds because Elon got rich on what government subsidies
Speaker 1: for clean tech, right, but he doesn't want that government
Speaker 1: money going to anyone but him. So he gets furious,
Speaker 1: says everyone should vote against it. Trump never meant, you know,
Speaker 1: a disruption. He doesn't want to get.
Speaker 2: Involved in agrees.
Speaker 1: Then Trump says, and also we should raise the debt
Speaker 1: ceiling government money, but also yeah, and then that gets
Speaker 1: the very few people who still have beliefs in the
Speaker 1: on the right, which happens to be people like Chip Roy,
Speaker 1: nobody's favorite but very much against government spending to engage.
Speaker 1: Trump then wants to primary chip Roy. I mean, bring
Speaker 1: it on the worst person you know could be. Right.
Speaker 4: Here's the thing, and I think this is important to remember.
Speaker 4: Say what you will about Chip Roy at least and.
Speaker 2: I will, yes, exactly, I mean that's right.
Speaker 1: No, Chip Roy has more real beliefs than Nancy Mays.
Speaker 4: Oh sure, I've seen enough of Nancy May's midlife crisis now. Honestly,
Speaker 4: I mean it's really tiresome.
Speaker 1: But also Nancy mayce, you know, she believes this. She
Speaker 1: believes that, she believes whatever, whereas Chip Roy is like,
Speaker 1: we are here to cut the government. We will not
Speaker 1: raise the deadly limit, even if our you know, God King,
Speaker 1: our Orange God King tells us too.
Speaker 2: It was real disarray.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of talk of primary every Republican member.
Speaker 4: Oh yes, well, look that that idea that you're going
Speaker 4: to primary anybody who opposes Elon at any time. I
Speaker 4: would like to remind people of, you know, one of
Speaker 4: the most fundamental pieces of creative literary merit of our era,
Speaker 4: and that is the Trump poem The Snake.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, I know it, well, the snake is Elon?
Speaker 2: Still tell you?
Speaker 4: Do you not understand it yet? You people? It's fucking Elon?
Speaker 2: Does you still tell this?
Speaker 1: You got you gotta tell the snake story?
Speaker 4: Okay. Trump does this piece of poetry at his rallies,
Speaker 4: and he loves doing this. He loves it so much.
Speaker 4: And folks, I'm not going to read the whole thing
Speaker 4: because it's just like, no, but Trump loves this piece
Speaker 4: of poetry. And it's from like a sort of a
Speaker 4: song in the nineteen thirties or something. Anyway, long story short,
Speaker 4: it's about a woman who takes in a snake and
Speaker 4: the snake is pretty and it says, oh, take me in,
Speaker 4: dear woman, and blah blah blah. Well she takes it in.
Speaker 4: The fucking snake bites her. Okay. Trump uses this as
Speaker 4: a parable about immigration. Here's the thing, y'all. Elon Musk
Speaker 4: is the snake. They took him in and now he's
Speaker 4: biting them. These people are not in any capacity able
Speaker 4: to say that Elon, no, fuck you, no, we won't
Speaker 4: do that. Do you know why? Because they realize that
Speaker 4: he has both a ton of money and that he
Speaker 4: is insane, and that Trump and Elon have formed this
Speaker 4: weird symbiotic partnership relationship however you whatever you want to
Speaker 4: call it, and that nothing right now is going to
Speaker 4: change in the way that Elon feels like he has
Speaker 4: control over the government and control over the United States,
Speaker 4: all of our future decisions about how we govern the country.
Speaker 4: Elon really thinks that's what he runs now. He believes
Speaker 4: he now has control of the United States government.
Speaker 2: And let us pause for a minute.
Speaker 1: You know what, sixty percent of the satellite enormous government
Speaker 1: contracts top secret clearance. I mean, he runs the government
Speaker 1: as much as anyone who is completely on elected.
Speaker 4: And you know what, Elon Musk is an unelected bureaucrat
Speaker 4: now and this is what he's doing. It is bureaucracy.
Speaker 4: He's playing with nothing about the future for for the
Speaker 4: Republicans is easy because he has now this capricious nature.
Speaker 4: He's always going to want control over everything. He's always
Speaker 4: going to want to have his way on all these matters.
Speaker 4: And when they say, yeah, Elon, that's really tough for
Speaker 4: us to do because of X or Y, you know,
Speaker 4: real world political factor. He doesn't feel bound by things
Speaker 4: like trivial things like law and statute and the human
Speaker 4: impact of what he wants to do. You know, And
Speaker 4: I'm all, I think you know, you certainly noticed this
Speaker 4: the other day that when they cut childhood cancer research
Speaker 4: out of the budget and got called on it and
Speaker 4: got in trouble on it, all of a sudden Elon's
Speaker 4: trying to make it and do a meme and make
Speaker 4: it funny and like ha ha haa cucks. Well that
Speaker 4: didn't work. That scared the shit out of people. But
Speaker 4: that's a sign of how utterly disconnected this guy is
Speaker 4: from the ordinary lives of real people.
Speaker 2: Yes, I have just read about this theory. This is
Speaker 2: something I want to talk about before.
Speaker 1: This theory of non playable characters that are characters. You know,
Speaker 1: they're ancillary, they are objects, they're not people.
Speaker 4: They're background characters in games. Yes, I know. I'm very
Speaker 4: familiar with it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's a sense in which, you know, Elon
Speaker 1: sort of treats the people of the United States.
Speaker 2: Like that, right, they're not they have no impetus.
Speaker 4: Well, going back to that Silicon Valley culture, there are
Speaker 4: a lot of people in Silicon Valley now who really
Speaker 4: believe that they are a separate species of human being.
Speaker 4: This is why people like Curtis Jarvin and some of
Speaker 4: these Dark Web idiots are arguing that the time for
Speaker 4: a republic, and at the time for a democratically elected
Speaker 4: government is passed and we need to just bow down
Speaker 4: to a new monarchy of our tech overlords.
Speaker 1: Right, oligarchy is sort of the play. Here we are
Speaker 1: in this sort of eline world. What I think is
Speaker 1: interesting is he then was saying, well, this now, this
Speaker 1: new CR is much lighter than the original legislation. The
Speaker 1: idea that somehow legislation should not be long is pretty stupid.
Speaker 1: And you know, there were a lot of things in
Speaker 1: that CR. It got very fatty, but there were a
Speaker 1: lot of things in there that were actually important, and
Speaker 1: like there was a revenge porn thing in there. There
Speaker 1: were different sort of piece of legislation that kind of
Speaker 1: got lost.
Speaker 2: You'd be shocked to hear. So he undid a lot
Speaker 2: of work.
Speaker 1: But what I wanted to bring up was this guy
Speaker 1: is the polling on him is still He's not that popular.
Speaker 1: He's making Trump crazy. He's in ma a Lago, He's
Speaker 1: making Johnson crazy. Like do you think this unlikely friendship?
Speaker 1: How long does the first body last?
Speaker 4: This romance is doomed at some point, it's doomed because
Speaker 4: you know, Trump is always there's not even like premas
Speaker 4: Enter Parees. Trump has to be the main character in
Speaker 4: the drama. He has to be the one person that's
Speaker 4: out there where everyone's paying attention to him. He has
Speaker 4: to be the radical center of a major and constant drama.
Speaker 4: And that's fine. You know, there's a part of that
Speaker 4: that is explicable in how we understand Trump. We get that,
Speaker 4: we get we get Trump as we get who Trump is. Okay,
Speaker 4: we all understand who Trump is. And because of that,
Speaker 4: he's going to get angry. And the attention that Elon's
Speaker 4: been getting has has been growing on the radar screen
Speaker 4: and you can start to see some of the leaks
Speaker 4: coming out of trump Land, which is clearly Susie Wiles,
Speaker 4: by the way, putting the knife in the guy as
Speaker 4: she does.
Speaker 1: You know, all of this chatter about trump World versus
Speaker 1: the mainstream media. I was thinking about it today because
Speaker 1: I was on a panel talking about it, and I'm
Speaker 1: thinking myself, like the biggest leads in the entire world.
Speaker 2: Donald Tnald J.
Speaker 1: Trump, Right, So I'm thinking, you know, if you want
Speaker 1: to shut down the mainstream media, instead of suing them,
Speaker 1: you could just stop leaking to them.
Speaker 4: These people leak well. And I always say this is
Speaker 4: one of my political rules that will someday go down
Speaker 4: in a book about my political rules. There are two
Speaker 4: kinds of leaks, administrations and organizations that work well leaked
Speaker 4: deliberately for a purpose. The ones that work badly leak chaotically,
Speaker 4: and they leak just because they leak. Donald Trump leaks
Speaker 4: constantly because he's a terrible manager.
Speaker 1: Well and also because everyone's trying to settle the score
Speaker 1: in the mainstream media.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, and look, let's also be realistic. Our friends
Speaker 4: of the mainstream media right now have a great difficulty
Speaker 4: in processing the fact that they don't work for Donald Trump,
Speaker 4: and a lot of them are scrambling in the wake
Speaker 4: of the ABC decision all these things. But you know,
Speaker 4: Trump is Trump's actually quite happy with the media right now.
Speaker 4: He's pretty delighted with the mainstream media right now. He
Speaker 4: likes where their behavior is at. He's even bragging about
Speaker 4: it to people. Oh they're nice to me these days.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: No, I know I saw that quid, But you know,
Speaker 1: I do think there is his complaints about media and
Speaker 1: his administration's ability to think that they can use media
Speaker 1: to get rid of each one.
Speaker 2: And you know, we see this all the time. I mean,
Speaker 2: part of why.
Speaker 1: It was so easy to write about Trump World was
Speaker 1: because you would have you know, somebody would be in
Speaker 1: there doing something and then all of a sudden we
Speaker 1: get pieces. You know, Corey's out, Corey is having an
Speaker 1: a you know this kind of thing, right.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, Look, the endless revenge battles inside that world
Speaker 4: where a feature of the kind of behavior Trump encourages
Speaker 4: in his people. He loves for them to fight with
Speaker 4: each other. He loves for them to be mad at
Speaker 4: each other. That's that's a delight for him.
Speaker 2: And it's proof of Fieldy, right.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, they're always He's always looking to make sure somebody's
Speaker 4: kissing his ass properly. He's always looking to make sure
Speaker 4: that somebody's gonna bend the knee publicly to him once again.
Speaker 4: And that's why a lot of these people come and
Speaker 4: go into Trump world. You know, Steve Bannon was the
Speaker 4: rogue genius in the beginning of twenty sixteen. Then he
Speaker 4: got thrown out of the White House by the beginning
Speaker 4: of twenty eighteen. You know, then he was scabby Steve.
Speaker 4: But now he's back again. These people always circle back through,
Speaker 4: they always come back around. And there's a reason Trump
Speaker 4: likes to keep hitting them against one another. He likes
Speaker 4: to keep making them fight with each other. It sounds
Speaker 4: immature and terrible and stupid. But that's Trump. He's immature
Speaker 4: and terrible and stupid. So he's going to make his
Speaker 4: people behave like he behaves. Yeah, Rick Wilson, Muther, Jack Fast,
Speaker 4: have a lovely Christmas and I will talk to you
Speaker 4: again next time.
Speaker 1: Tim Wiener is a New York Times correspondent and winner
Speaker 1: of the Poolhit Serprise and the National Book Award. He
Speaker 1: is the author of the Legis of Ashes and Enemies.
Speaker 1: His new book, The Mission the CIA in the twenty
Speaker 1: first Century.
Speaker 2: Will be out in June. Welcome to Fast Politics him.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: You've written two books on the FBI. Yeah.
Speaker 6: Well, I've written one book on the NBI book and
Speaker 6: history of the CIA, called Legacy of Ashes, right, and
Speaker 6: there was plenty of FBI and CIA in book.
Speaker 5: I wrote about my favorite president, Richard Nixon.
Speaker 1: First, the Trump Nixon parallels seem really so striking. Explain
Speaker 1: to us sort of the parallels between the two.
Speaker 5: Well, Trump is Nixon minus fifty points of IQ. He
Speaker 5: is an inveterate liar, he is secretive and conspiratorial. But
Speaker 5: Richard Nixon, bless his heart, had been vice president for
Speaker 5: eight years and a senator and congressman before that and
Speaker 5: had a fair amount of respect for the institutions of
Speaker 5: national security like the CI and the FBI, until he didn't.
Speaker 5: And the moment of truth with Nixon and the FBI
Speaker 5: came in the summer of nineteen seventy. Nixon was convinced,
Speaker 5: as Trump is today, that there is an enemy within
Speaker 5: this country, and the enemy was the left and the
Speaker 5: more liberal elements of the Democratic Party. Nixon was already
Speaker 5: using the FBI and the CIA despy on emerics that
Speaker 5: violated the CIA charter. The FBI does not have a chart.
Speaker 5: It does whatever the Attorney General and the President Teltive do.
Speaker 5: And what Nixon did was to call in the head
Speaker 5: of the A, the head of the National Security Agency,
Speaker 5: and the head of the FBI, who was of course
Speaker 5: Jaedgar Hoover. And at that point Hoover had been running
Speaker 5: the FBI for forty six.
Speaker 2: Years, right, it's a very long time.
Speaker 5: And he basically said, I want you to spy more
Speaker 5: on Americans. I want you to subvert through espionage and
Speaker 5: sabotage the institutions of the left. I want you to
Speaker 5: step up wire tapping, bugging, burglaries, black bag jobs, and
Speaker 5: I want you to crush the left, and for the
Speaker 5: first time in his life, Hooper said, no, he didn't
Speaker 5: want to sign a document. He didn't want to put
Speaker 5: his name to this plan because he was convinced that
Speaker 5: the FBI would get caught and that his great rule
Speaker 5: was don't embarrass the FBI. Every agent in the bureau
Speaker 5: knew that. So what did Nixon do. He set up
Speaker 5: his own bucket shop of retired CIA and retired FBI people,
Speaker 5: and two years later they broke into the Democratic National
Speaker 5: Committee headquarters at Watergate. The way Nixon fell was that
Speaker 5: he then ordered the head of the CIA, Richard Helms,
Speaker 5: a man I got to know quite well later, to
Speaker 5: call off the FBI investigation of the break in on
Speaker 5: grounds of national security. And that was the smoking Gum tape.
Speaker 5: And that was how Nixon fell. The difference today, more
Speaker 5: than fifty years later, is that cass Paatel will never
Speaker 5: say no to Donald Trump. He will do anything Trump
Speaker 5: tells him to do, no matter how illegal, immoral, or crazy.
Speaker 5: Why do you say that, because he has a track
Speaker 5: record of doing crazy things for Donald Trump, and I
Speaker 5: will cite a few examples. So, in the last year
Speaker 5: of Trump's presidency, to the horror of the Attorney General
Speaker 5: Bill Barr. Trump tried to make Patel the deputy director
Speaker 5: of the NBI, and Barr wrote in his memoir the
Speaker 5: very idea of moving Patel into a role like this
Speaker 5: showed a stocking detachment from reality on Trump's part, and
Speaker 5: he vowed that the appointment would happen, and I quote
Speaker 5: over my dead thought. So instead, Trump installed Patel as
Speaker 5: the top assistant to his new Director of National Intelligence.
Speaker 5: That's the bureaucracy that overseees the THEIA, the FBI, and
Speaker 5: sixteen other American intelligence agencies. That National Intelligence Director was
Speaker 5: John Radcliffe, his present nominee to run CIA, and what
Speaker 5: Radcliffe and Patel set out to do, on orders from
Speaker 5: Trump was to rans fact the tox secret files with
Speaker 5: the CIA and other intelligence agencies for anything that might
Speaker 5: fulfill Trump's desire to deny that he was Putin's chosen candidate,
Speaker 5: anything that would undermine what Trump called the Russia hoax,
Speaker 5: which was the incredibly well founded investigation of the FBI
Speaker 5: into connections between teen Trump and team Puten and Patel
Speaker 5: mounted an attack on THEIA, as you know, the headquarters
Speaker 5: of the deep state conspiracy, and both men tried to
Speaker 5: find fragments of raw intelligence in a flailing attempt to
Speaker 5: score political points for the president's re election campaign. After
Speaker 5: he lost the twenty twenty election, Trump fired the Secretary
Speaker 5: of Defense and made Patel Chief of Staff at depending
Speaker 5: on it affect the shadows Secretary of Defense. When that happened,
Speaker 5: the CI director told the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
Speaker 5: General Milly and I quote, we are on the way
Speaker 5: to a reglink coup. She saw it before it was happening. Then,
Speaker 5: in the final month of Trump's first term, he attempted
Speaker 5: to install Patel at the top of the CIA, and
Speaker 5: he planned to fire Chris Ray after decapitating the CIA. Haspell,
Speaker 5: the CIA director got Win to this plot and let
Speaker 5: Trump know that if she were going down, all the
Speaker 5: leaders with the American intelligence community would go down with her.
Speaker 5: A mass resignation and protest Trump back down to five
Speaker 5: days later, he summoned his supporters to Washington.
Speaker 1: Do you think this is a factocomplete? What do you
Speaker 1: think senators could do? I mean, it seems like Patel
Speaker 1: would be hoover ask I mean, do you think that
Speaker 1: I'm being hyperbolic? What do you think?
Speaker 5: Well again, Jay Edgar Hoover minus fifty IQ points. Under Hoover,
Speaker 5: the FBI took aim at the enemy within and on
Speaker 5: orders from President Eisenhower, Kennedy Johnson, Nixon and their attorney general,
Speaker 5: he conducted wardless wire taps, black bag jobs, political harassment
Speaker 5: of everybody, from Martin Luther King to the anti war movement,
Speaker 5: to journalists and to National Security Council stoffers. Under Nixon
Speaker 5: who were suspected of leaking to the press, among the
Speaker 5: principal members of the enemy with him, according to Patel
Speaker 5: and Trump are the press. Is the left in so
Speaker 5: far as there is such a thing in the United
Speaker 5: States body politic today, it's people who oppose Trump, and
Speaker 5: like Nixon and Hoover, Patel and Trump have an extensive
Speaker 5: enemies list. Patel has published one on the question of
Speaker 5: will the Senate confirm a man like Cash Battel or
Speaker 5: equally crazy and dangerous people like Chelsea Gabbert for the
Speaker 5: Director of the National Defense Pete Hedson for Secretary of Defense.
Speaker 5: I think they will roll right over and do it.
Speaker 1: It strikes me that Pete Hegseth is not the same
Speaker 1: as Cash Battel. Well, Pete Hegseth may have problems, and
Speaker 1: he may very likely. Again, I don't want to diagnose anyone,
Speaker 1: but he's clearly got a lot of real problems. Cash
Speaker 1: Battell has a sort of plan that strikes me as
Speaker 1: and the FBI is used against Americans when.
Speaker 2: It is at its worst. I mean, isn't that sort
Speaker 2: of what's happening here?
Speaker 5: You know, you have to take Trump's and his people
Speaker 5: at their word. Patel published last year in his book
Speaker 5: Government Gangsters, the people he wanted to see investigated and
Speaker 5: indicted his enemies list, and that list includes Joe Biden,
Speaker 5: Kamala Harris, Hillary Quinton, John Brennan, former director of the CIA,
Speaker 5: Merrick Garland, Bob Muller, General Mark Melly, and Chris Right Right.
Speaker 5: The FBI does not have a charter limiting its legal powers.
Speaker 5: The FBI does with the Attorney General and the President
Speaker 5: tell it to do. And if, for example, the FBI
Speaker 5: wants to launch an investigation against people Trump has publicly
Speaker 5: charged with treason, a crime punishable with death, those targets
Speaker 5: include Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and the former CIA director
Speaker 5: John Brenton. He accused them of spying on him, spying
Speaker 5: on his campaign and I quote the biggest single political
Speaker 5: crime in the history of our country. Interesting choice of words.
Speaker 5: A political crime, thought crime. If you will you start
Speaker 5: prosecuting people for their political beliefs, you're down the road
Speaker 5: to dictatorship of far peace.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know what I know.
Speaker 1: Oh and my grandfather's jailed by the FBI, Herbert.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, Well your grandfather was persecuted for his writings,
Speaker 5: Are I correct?
Speaker 1: Actually he was persecuted because it was brought up by
Speaker 1: the House on American Activities for his refusal to name
Speaker 1: the people who he was involved with in a fundraiser
Speaker 1: for post Spanish Civil War orphans.
Speaker 5: Was he a card carrying member of the Communist Party.
Speaker 1: Yes, he was, but that wasn't why he was I mean,
Speaker 1: theoretically he was jailed that he was sent to jail
Speaker 1: on contempt of Congress, But he was targeted because he
Speaker 1: was a communist.
Speaker 5: All right, So what is the favorite thing that House
Speaker 5: Republicans and some Senate Republicans liked to do. They like
Speaker 5: to hold hearings for clips on Fox News. They and
Speaker 5: Patel as a member of the incoming Fox News cabinet,
Speaker 5: will gin up political theater. At a minimum are they
Speaker 5: going to aren't arresting people for their political beliefs? Well,
Speaker 5: I mean, let's hope not. But that is what Trump
Speaker 5: and Patel have threatened to investigate, indict, and put in
Speaker 5: prison people for their political beliefs. Now, of course, Trump
Speaker 5: also said he was going to build a wall in
Speaker 5: Mexico pay for it. So some of this may deep
Speaker 5: blustering rhetoric. But people were right to be afraid of
Speaker 5: this guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a real terrifying reality. So now, if you
Speaker 1: could just talk us through what Cash Patel has at
Speaker 1: his disposal, if he is able to become head of
Speaker 1: the FBI, if.
Speaker 5: Cash Bateel is confirmed by the Senate, and if am
Speaker 5: Bundy is confirmed as the Attorney General, they have at
Speaker 5: their disposal thirty five thousand FBI agents and federal prosecutors
Speaker 5: appointed by Trump because all the federal prosecutors in every
Speaker 5: jurisdiction have to resign when the government changes hands to
Speaker 5: go after their enemies to investigate. First of all, if
Speaker 5: you are targeted by an FBI investigation, even if you
Speaker 5: have done nothing wrong, you are in a world of pain.
Speaker 5: You've got a lawyer up, You'll have to open up.
Speaker 5: If there's a warrant against you, your computer, your telephone.
Speaker 5: Just the harassment power alone, given the immense power of
Speaker 5: the prosecutor under American law, is enough to destroy people's lives.
Speaker 2: Well, that was what happened to my grandfather and his people.
Speaker 5: Sure, and that's just the beginning. If they are indeed
Speaker 5: helping on proving Trump's quaint that the President of the
Speaker 5: United States, Barack Obama and as Vice President Joe Biden,
Speaker 5: and the directors of the CIA and the FBI under
Speaker 5: Obama illegally spied on him, which is, in Trump's words, treason,
Speaker 5: they can not only rip apart those people's lives, but
Speaker 5: they can rip apart the CIA and the FBI. You know,
Speaker 5: the CIA is my wheelhouse. I have written a book
Speaker 5: about the FBI. But people are going to be confronted
Speaker 5: with a real moral choice. That is, the agents of
Speaker 5: the FBI and the officers of the CIA, will I
Speaker 5: obey an illegal order from the FBI director, attorney general
Speaker 5: or the president. You know, things could get very weird
Speaker 5: because the Supreme Court ruled in July that presidents can
Speaker 5: commit crimes in office without fear of prosecution, and it
Speaker 5: preemptively authorizes illegal searches and seizures and violation of the
Speaker 5: Bill of Rights and the Constitution. Writing in dissent from
Speaker 5: that decision, Justice Sotomayr wrote, quote a hypothetical president who
Speaker 5: admits to having ordered the assassinations of his political rivals
Speaker 5: or critics as a fair shot at getting immunity.
Speaker 1: Right, that's the Seal Team six scenario. Right, Could a
Speaker 1: president and hire Seal Team six to kill his political enemies?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 5: But if this president should choose to declare a political
Speaker 5: rival guilty of treason and deploy a paramilitary group on
Speaker 5: the CIA, from the FBI, from Seal Teams to assassinate
Speaker 5: that rival, and direct the Attorney General to sign a
Speaker 5: document saying this is cool, that death was necessary for
Speaker 5: the securing of liberty. That would be an official act
Speaker 5: for which the president is immut from presidentship. That's just
Speaker 5: the fact.
Speaker 1: So, I mean, do we think there's a moment when
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court, and again, I mean, I guess there's
Speaker 1: no way to know what the Supreme Court will go
Speaker 1: along with, right, because we've seen them go along with
Speaker 1: quite a lot of staff.
Speaker 5: You know, you and me and everybody else we know
Speaker 5: and all your listeners have been thinking all along, Well,
Speaker 5: the courts will think they will not. Oh, the law
Speaker 5: will state it will not. Okay, not now. And all
Speaker 5: of this flows from the conspiratorial belief of Troupe and
Speaker 5: Cash but Tel and the rest of the MAGA crowd
Speaker 5: that there is a deep state. The deep state is
Speaker 5: conspiracy of unelected soldiers and spies and diplomats and government
Speaker 5: officials who are secretly pulling the strings of the United
Speaker 5: States and usurping the power of the president. And they
Speaker 5: have made no bones about attacking and dismantling the deep state,
Speaker 5: which is in fact the state. And if they succeed,
Speaker 5: even marginally, what they will create is a shallow state
Speaker 5: in which institutions of government cannot perform their functions. They
Speaker 5: will follow out the government of the United States, agency
Speaker 5: by agency.
Speaker 1: That I think is the ultimate goal, but it is
Speaker 1: just so scary.
Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you, thank you, Tim.
Speaker 5: You are more than well.
Speaker 4: No, no moment, Rick Wilson, Molly John Fast.
Speaker 2: Who is your moment of fuckery?
Speaker 4: You know? My moment of fuckery this week is the
Speaker 4: story of the Republican Congresswoman Kay Granger down in Texas.
Speaker 4: And I want to say this first off, folks, I'm
Speaker 4: not being facetious when I talk about this, but Kay
Speaker 4: Granger has been in a memory care facility for some
Speaker 4: time now, since July. Now, that is not in and
Speaker 4: of itself something that is that is unexpected in America.
Speaker 4: Many millions of Americans have as they grow older, they
Speaker 4: have memory issues, they have Alzheimer's, they have they have
Speaker 4: various forms of dementia, et cetera. And it is more
Speaker 4: tragic than but the fact that we have had a
Speaker 4: Republican Party dedicated to saying that Joe Biden is senile
Speaker 4: and is broken and is a dottery old man who
Speaker 4: knows nothing and is senile, blah blah blah, while you
Speaker 4: have a member of Congress in a memory care facility
Speaker 4: who was apparently trotted out for several votes that she
Speaker 4: had no idea what she was voting on. It's kind
Speaker 4: of uncool. I gotta be real here, It's kind of sick.
Speaker 4: And I think that this is one of those things
Speaker 4: where if you don't think term limits or should be
Speaker 4: a thing, get your head examined. There is an upper
Speaker 4: boundary I think that we should really be looking at
Speaker 4: for service in the in federal offices, and this is
Speaker 4: one of them. It is sad, it is tragic, but
Speaker 4: it is real. And they lied about it. Her staff
Speaker 4: lied about it. Look, this is the same thing was
Speaker 4: happening with die Fi back in the day. Her staff
Speaker 4: lied about it. It's unacceptable in my mind, but here
Speaker 4: we are.
Speaker 2: The only thing I.
Speaker 1: Would say, I would just add is that Kay Granger
Speaker 1: is not the only one who's doing stuff like this,
Speaker 1: and Republicans do not have a lock on this, because
Speaker 1: I know for sure that there are Democrats who nobody
Speaker 1: has seen in the House. So the world that is
Speaker 1: creating this is a big fucking problem. And it's a
Speaker 1: really good case for term limits. It's a really good
Speaker 1: case for not being allowed to miss votes. It's a
Speaker 1: really good case for this is not how any of
Speaker 1: this should work.
Speaker 2: That's it. Fuck them, Yeah.
Speaker 4: Mollie, you and I both have older parents, and this
Speaker 4: is a real thing. It's a sad thing that this
Speaker 4: is something that has been for political advantage in a
Speaker 4: tightly divided House of representatives. They've been keeping this ghost
Speaker 4: in the situation that she's in. And I find it.
Speaker 4: I think it's a moral Honestly, I really do. I
Speaker 4: find it. I think it's a moral.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really bad, but it's happening on both sides,
Speaker 1: and there should be term limits and members should not
Speaker 1: be allowed to trade stocks.
Speaker 4: Look honest to God. If Elon muscle to clean up
Speaker 4: the processes in Congress, I could think of a dozen
Speaker 4: other ways than being a diletant dipshit trying to rewrite
Speaker 4: a cr You want to improve Congress, you want to
Speaker 4: make it work better, okay, Go for non partisan redistricting,
Speaker 4: you want to make it work better. Go for termal limits,
Speaker 4: you want to make it work better. Go for actual
Speaker 4: ethics reform. Those things would be I think great for
Speaker 4: the country. But that's no fun. It's not truly enough,
Speaker 4: and it doesn't cause enough people to get upset, and
Speaker 4: it doesn't take cancer money away from kids. So you
Speaker 4: know here we are, Rick Wilson, my John Fast. I
Speaker 4: will see you on the flip side of a holiday.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
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Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.
Speaker 6: H