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 CNN's Harry Enton says jd Vance
Speaker 1: is most likely to be the GOP nominee in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty eight.
Speaker 2: We have such a great show for you today. Substacks
Speaker 2: owned Ken Klippenstein stops by to talk to us about
Speaker 2: the time the FBI showed up at his door. Then
Speaker 2: we'll talk to the Brennan Center's own Michael Waldman about
Speaker 2: the Brennan Center's report on how Trump is trying to
Speaker 2: rig the midterms with a number of insane proposals.
Speaker 3: But first the news Somali Trump's team is picking a
Speaker 3: fight with a big boy.
Speaker 4: I don't think they should mess with it because he's
Speaker 4: way smarter than them.
Speaker 2: He's smarter, he's richer, and he's tougher, and he's also
Speaker 2: just gonna win Governor Pritzker. Donald Trump very mad anyone
Speaker 2: who dare disobey his insane cryptocracy. Basically, the White House
Speaker 2: had a project to keep invasive fish out of the
Speaker 2: Great Lakes. Installed Why Donald Trump cares about invasive fish?
Speaker 2: I mean, my man doesn't believe climate change is real.
Speaker 2: But you know, the point is he's using something to
Speaker 2: blame pritz Gart.
Speaker 3: When I heard about this, I thought this was like
Speaker 3: the plot of the South Park episode the other night,
Speaker 3: like like an invasive fish, Like, what the hell is
Speaker 3: going on here?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I mean, look, I think it's important to take a
Speaker 2: minute here to talk about South Park.
Speaker 4: I watched last night. Was amazing.
Speaker 3: I can't believe I think South Park is amazing in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty five, but it was amazing.
Speaker 4: They did a great job.
Speaker 2: South Park is the new CNN. I think we should
Speaker 2: all agree that the White House Press Corps dreams of
Speaker 2: doing as good a job of summing up this White
Speaker 2: House as South Park. Thank you Trey and Matt for
Speaker 2: doing what the mainstream media cannot narrating our downfall into kryptocracy.
Speaker 3: Personally, I never thought i'd be spiling while dogs get shot.
Speaker 2: Yes, you're giving it away. And by the way, let
Speaker 2: me just say, if you don't think that Matt and
Speaker 2: Trey are going to end up in Seacott or Alligator Alcatraz,
Speaker 2: you are wrong, because Christy Nome has Actually, I think
Speaker 2: she responded to the episode numerous times.
Speaker 3: In fact, as did mister j Dvantz pretending he's hit
Speaker 3: on the joke when he very much is not.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, you really see how much politics is
Speaker 2: downstream of culture and how the culture does in fact dictate,
Speaker 2: and South Park is a great example of that. They
Speaker 2: have really just nailed it in a way that is
Speaker 2: important and also accurate.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you make a great point, like too much the
Speaker 3: character it doesn't resemble the actual person charactered, and this
Speaker 3: really is like just dead on showing what.
Speaker 4: They are like.
Speaker 2: It's actually weirdly more accurate because there's so much anxiety
Speaker 2: about all of the lawsuits and ways in which different
Speaker 2: groups have been targeted, and that anxiety has really worked
Speaker 2: to silence a lot of us. So to watch Matt
Speaker 2: and Trey just go after it, I mean, Bravo team.
Speaker 3: Speaking of that, there's actually been some really interesting pushbacks
Speaker 3: from journalists this week going much harder on politicians. This
Speaker 3: one you flagged for me, I think is really really
Speaker 3: great with.
Speaker 2: You, Nancy Mace, that was really that was really great.
Speaker 3: But this is Joe Scarborough versus Mike Waller, one of
Speaker 3: the biggest lying liars there is in our congressional body,
Speaker 3: which is really saying something.
Speaker 4: Let me play it for you.
Speaker 6: Well, respectfully, Mike. The Congressional Budget Office, which obviously is
Speaker 6: part of the institution where you serve, says that it
Speaker 6: should be about nine hundred billion to one trillion dollars
Speaker 6: in Medicaid cuts. If you look at the hospitals in
Speaker 6: your own district, Modi forty Nayak Hospital is already saying
Speaker 6: because of that vote, because of these cuts, they're going
Speaker 6: to have to cut back services, They're going to have
Speaker 6: to cut staff, they're going to have to cut care.
Speaker 6: Same thing with Westchester Hospital. Hospitals across your district are
Speaker 6: going to have to cut services and care and staff
Speaker 6: members and budgets because of your vote and because of
Speaker 6: this bill that passes. That's what they're saying. It's not
Speaker 6: some left wing focus. Well, I'm just telling you what
Speaker 6: they what they've said. Uh.
Speaker 7: And so what they're what you're parroting, what they're parenting
Speaker 7: is the same talking points being put out by the state.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 8: And you one to know their business matter.
Speaker 6: You know, you know their business better than they know
Speaker 6: their business. Conferenceman, you can keep talking if you want to,
Speaker 6: But are you saying that they know you know their business?
Speaker 8: You know doctor's business.
Speaker 6: You know hospital administrator's business better than they know their
Speaker 6: own business. Is that what you're telling us here.
Speaker 7: No, Joe, if you'd stop putting words in my mouth
Speaker 7: and let me answer the.
Speaker 2: Question, awesome, Yeah, awesome, awesome, awesome.
Speaker 3: More of that, especially because he's one of the main
Speaker 3: people who knows that the journalists won't push background, so
Speaker 3: he whis his ass off. He is one of the
Speaker 3: worst in the business at it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that is such an incredible piece of
Speaker 2: pushing back. And also you see like they just don't
Speaker 2: have an answer, and it's really why we have to
Speaker 2: when you're interviewing these people, you have to do it
Speaker 2: so molly.
Speaker 3: As we know, Democrats have fled Texas to not allow
Speaker 3: quorum and you know who's big Matt, Texas Governor Greg ABBITTT.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Look, they're threatening a lot to do a lot
Speaker 2: of stupid crap. But the reality is breaking quorum is
Speaker 2: not breaking the law. This is a sort of civil
Speaker 2: Texas and not an illegal, illegal thing. And despite the
Speaker 2: fact that John Cornyn called in for the FBI and
Speaker 2: Cash is making noise to make noise, this is not right,
Speaker 2: like they are representing their district and in fact, Trump
Speaker 2: one fifty six percent of the votes in Texas in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four, which means that redistricting would in fact
Speaker 2: make it so that Republicans controlled I don't know one
Speaker 2: hundred percent of the seats.
Speaker 4: Hm, it's not a representative of democracy.
Speaker 2: I think what Democrats are doing here is really good
Speaker 2: and really smart, and I also think that they should
Speaker 2: keep it going, and I don't think they should go back.
Speaker 2: There's some talk that maybe a Paxton an Abbott will
Speaker 2: try and call another special session, but you know, they
Speaker 2: could just stay. Like, there is no reason that those
Speaker 2: Democrats have to go back. I mean, obviously it sucks
Speaker 2: for them not to be at home, but like this
Speaker 2: matters more. This is like they're morally correct, they're politically
Speaker 2: on the right side of history. And the more that
Speaker 2: this builds, the more attention it gets, the better served
Speaker 2: everyone who is on this side of democracy is these
Speaker 2: Texas state reps are doing God's work and they need
Speaker 2: to keep doing it, and we need to keep telling
Speaker 2: them they're doing the right thing, because like this is
Speaker 2: undermining our democracy in a big, big way. Kenklippenstein is
Speaker 2: the author of the substack of the same name. Welcome
Speaker 2: to fast politics.
Speaker 5: Ken, Hey, go to be back with you.
Speaker 2: I was saying before this that I feel like you're
Speaker 2: the troublemaker I dream of being, and you are getting
Speaker 2: into you'll excuse the cliche, here some good trouble. So
Speaker 2: you have run a foul of the cash Patel FBI,
Speaker 2: and I would love for you to start with this
Speaker 2: story because it's amazing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you're talking about the nihilistic, violent extremist story.
Speaker 2: Well, I would love you to start with when they
Speaker 2: visited you, Like, I feel like there's a there's a
Speaker 2: long character r about car. Yeah, start with how the
Speaker 2: FBI came to recognize you.
Speaker 5: Okay, So the JD Vance vetting documents called the dossier.
Speaker 5: I feel like that elevates it a little bit higher
Speaker 5: than it should, because really what it was was the
Speaker 5: Trump campaigns just looking at different potential candidates for VP
Speaker 5: prior to when they picked Senator then Senator Vance and
Speaker 5: just listing out his liabilities and so you know, when
Speaker 5: I had this described me it ultimately sent to me
Speaker 5: by it was hacked by the Ran government and said
Speaker 5: I said that in the story so we could know yep,
Speaker 5: and that's what precipitated the FBI visit because I thought, well,
Speaker 5: you know, back during Clinton they'd published this stuff, and
Speaker 5: in this case, I look at it and there's no
Speaker 5: question that it's factual. If there was any question that
Speaker 5: it was factual, I would approach it differently. But it's
Speaker 5: all just open source stuff that you can go and verify.
Speaker 5: So I would, you know, I would feel bad just
Speaker 5: putting out like say, for instance, the Steele dossier has
Speaker 5: all these sensational claims that you can't really vet. So
Speaker 5: it's like I would feel bad post something like that.
Speaker 5: But like in the case of just open stories stuff
Speaker 5: on like his votes, on his comments on Trump in
Speaker 5: the past, just like explicitly political stuff. So I thought, well,
Speaker 5: why shouldn't this be out there as long as you
Speaker 5: explain to people the providence and let them come to
Speaker 5: their own conclusion so that they're not seeing that, you know,
Speaker 5: like the Uranians put this out there, they obviously have
Speaker 5: their set of reasons for doing so, you know, make
Speaker 5: of that what you will. And so that's what I did.
Speaker 5: And about two weeks later, I got a visit from
Speaker 5: a pencil neck, very young FBI special agent who looked
Speaker 5: like he might have tripped on his himbilical cord on
Speaker 5: the way here, because he was just so such a youngster,
Speaker 5: a nice guy, and he he introduced himself, you know,
Speaker 5: counter intelligence officer, blah blah blah. And so he's he
Speaker 5: reads me a written statement that he kind of opens
Speaker 5: up from his pocket. It's all very robotic and sort
Speaker 5: of stiff, and he's even sort of admitting. He's like, yeah,
Speaker 5: this is a little weird. I don't think the fbis
Speaker 5: necessarily should be always interacting with the media like this.
Speaker 5: But you know, I got sent here by Washington, so
Speaker 5: I got to read you the statement. So he says,
Speaker 5: you were the recipient of an Iranian government and then
Speaker 5: I kind off I said, yeah, I said that the story.
Speaker 5: He goes, you did I said, yeah, did you read it?
Speaker 5: He says no, he said when did you publish it?
Speaker 5: And I'm thinking to myself, this guy didn't even read
Speaker 5: the thing he's visiting to brief me on.
Speaker 2: So you just read the headline. I feel like this
Speaker 2: is a great example of someone just re reading the
Speaker 2: headline exactly.
Speaker 5: So he says, how long would you publish it? I said, ah,
Speaker 5: about two weeks ago, And I joked I was like,
Speaker 5: I thought you guys were going to consumer because I
Speaker 5: knew there would be a risk of something like this
Speaker 5: happening because of the politics involved. And he says, he says,
Speaker 5: two weeks that's pretty fast for the federal government, and
Speaker 5: so we're laughing about it. So the whole thing had
Speaker 5: this kind of kaugh Cask quality to it where he
Speaker 5: knew it was absurd. I knew it was absurd. He
Speaker 5: knew I knew it was absurd. So anyways, and then
Speaker 5: he leaves, Fortunately nothing happens, and then I got a
Speaker 5: second visit when I published the Manifesto of the Israel
Speaker 5: Embassy shooter in Washington several weeks ago, not to glorify him,
Speaker 5: and I very explicitly in the story say this is
Speaker 5: a terrible thing to have happened. And it wasn't a
Speaker 5: positive story. I talk about his Yeah.
Speaker 2: How do you get that that was leaked t L Yes, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: go on.
Speaker 5: So, so you know, in the story, I describe some
Speaker 5: of his personal problems and like kind of awful things
Speaker 5: he did to his friends. Like, I don't think anyone
Speaker 5: could look at that and say, this person who's glorifying
Speaker 5: what happened. I'm trying to tell what happens, that we
Speaker 5: understand what led up to this moment, and hopefully you
Speaker 5: can prevent the next one. So any case, I write
Speaker 5: that story, put it out there, the response is pretty positive.
Speaker 5: I thought it was going to be more angry, and
Speaker 5: so there wasn't much backlash until the FBI visit literally
Speaker 5: I think it was the next day, and this time
Speaker 5: it was much more aggressive than the first time. It
Speaker 5: was two older special agents that start saying, how did
Speaker 5: you get this? Why do you have this? And it's like,
Speaker 5: you know, I can't tell them who I got it from,
Speaker 5: but you know, you can guess that after something like
Speaker 5: this happens, this stuff is people are, you know, sending
Speaker 5: it around and so it's like pretty straightfward explanation. But
Speaker 5: D had this whole theory that, oh, did you have
Speaker 5: fore knowledge? I didn't have four knowledge of it. I
Speaker 5: found out the words like everyone else.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that wouldn't make any sense. I guess that's the
Speaker 2: only button they can press on that. But people, really,
Speaker 2: I mean releasing a manifesto, I mean there's a precedent
Speaker 2: for that too, right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, totally. To me, it's not about do you publish
Speaker 5: or now, it's how do you publish it? What kind
Speaker 5: of context do you include?
Speaker 4: Are you?
Speaker 5: Are you like it's a legitimate question, I ask, like,
Speaker 5: don't glorify it. But there's all kinds of ways you
Speaker 5: can talk about something. You can talk about it from
Speaker 5: the perspective of are there other people have these attitudes
Speaker 5: or something like this might happen? Are the things we
Speaker 5: can do to prevent or to kind of rebut these
Speaker 5: belief systems that lead people to do something like this,
Speaker 5: and so all of that I think is like a
Speaker 5: more healthy response to it, rather than sticking your head
Speaker 5: in the sand and being like, we're not going to
Speaker 5: talk about this because it's bad thing, and if people
Speaker 5: see it, they're just gonna, like the masuring candidate, just
Speaker 5: stand up and carry out order. It's like, people don't
Speaker 5: work that way. I have a higher respect for the
Speaker 5: public than evidently the FBI does.
Speaker 2: So what about talk to us about this? Nihil is this? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Talk to us about this?
Speaker 5: Yeah? Really?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 5: A third next chapter of this story. Yeah, So they
Speaker 5: have a new threat category the FBI that I first
Speaker 5: reported based on court documents that I found. I saw
Speaker 5: this phrases like wait, I've never seen this before. I
Speaker 5: pay very close attention to The FBI has all kinds
Speaker 5: of different designations for threat actors. This is a completely
Speaker 5: new and nihilistic violent extremist. So I look it up
Speaker 5: and start talking to some special agent. I have some
Speaker 5: friends at FBI. I don't want to give the impression
Speaker 5: that across the board there were good people in all
Speaker 5: sorts of agencies, including that one, right, And so I
Speaker 5: asked them about it, and they basically tell me, oh,
Speaker 5: this is the new thing from Washington. Basically it's going
Speaker 5: to shift attention away from the white supremacist groups and
Speaker 5: the January sixth style stuff that they were focused on
Speaker 5: under the previous administration, and that carries with it. It's
Speaker 5: a cold on a second, you just did this and
Speaker 5: there's no public debate about like that. Were like, first
Speaker 5: of all, what even is that? And I'll get into
Speaker 5: that in a second. A second, is it okay to
Speaker 5: let this replace and supplant these other categories that they've
Speaker 5: been using for years and years? And is this going
Speaker 5: to mean that there's a politicized component to how they're
Speaker 5: going after these things? And so if you look at
Speaker 5: the definition, the definition is consistent. They're like they believe
Speaker 5: nothing and so I start looking through and there's some
Speaker 5: stomach turning cases. I don't want to minimize how awful
Speaker 5: it is some of the groups that they're going after
Speaker 5: what they do, but to call them nihilist just erases
Speaker 5: their politics. In some cases they're neo Nazis. That's not nihilists,
Speaker 5: that's a belief system.
Speaker 2: Yes, but let me just push back on that. Isn't
Speaker 2: it good that they're still going after neo Nazis?
Speaker 5: Oh definitely. I'm not saying that they shouldn't.
Speaker 2: Just like I was worried that they had stopped doing
Speaker 2: that stuff because they were like, these are our guys.
Speaker 5: My concern isn't that they're going after people committing crimes.
Speaker 5: Absolutely do that, particularly neo Nazis. My problem is that
Speaker 5: when you designate it something, then at the end of
Speaker 5: the year, in their own internal data and what they
Speaker 5: brief to Congress and how what informs their priorities going forward,
Speaker 5: they're going to say, ooh, there was an increase in
Speaker 5: Nihilsic violent extremists. And what they're going to see also
Speaker 5: is suddenly, oh, look at that Neo Nazi extremism went
Speaker 5: down because you've reclassified it under a different category. That's
Speaker 5: my concern is it's not It doesn't seem to me
Speaker 5: to be the appropriate category for what's going on.
Speaker 2: Right no question. I mean, that's for sure true. So
Speaker 2: I would love you to sort of talk to me
Speaker 2: about what you kind of think the national security landscape
Speaker 2: looks like at this moment, because you have Cash Batal
Speaker 2: and Dan Bongino at the FBI. You have, I mean,
Speaker 2: you just have so many, so much weirdness happening there.
Speaker 2: I'm wondering if you could, yeah, talk us through what
Speaker 2: you think it looks, what these agencies look like right now.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: It's kind of ironic because Trump is trying to relitigate
Speaker 5: somebody having a decade ago Russia Gate and talking about
Speaker 5: the declassification of some of these records, which I'm not
Speaker 5: necessarily against, but it's like so long ago. And the
Speaker 5: biggest irony here is he's talking about how politicized that
Speaker 5: that whole thing was, which I in part can can
Speaker 5: see why he didn't like it and what his christims are,
Speaker 5: but then he's responding to it with this overtly politicized administration. Yes,
Speaker 5: everything he says is like, you know, call me and
Speaker 5: Hillary Clinton and the Democrats in Obama, It's like, are
Speaker 5: you kidding? I thought you said that you didn't like
Speaker 5: the politicization, so you're going to bond a fire with
Speaker 5: fire and it just doesn't make any sense. And if
Speaker 5: you look at the individual guys, I've been amazed at
Speaker 5: how much lack of vision in some ways there is
Speaker 5: because it is politicized, and they have this list of enemies,
Speaker 5: but it feels so dated, like who's thought about any
Speaker 5: of these names in ten years? And you know what
Speaker 5: I mean, It's like they're living in twenty sixteen. And
Speaker 5: then in addition to that, their ideas for the Bureau,
Speaker 5: this is very interesting. Initially the Trump proposed cuts to
Speaker 5: the bureau cash bat push back and said we actually
Speaker 5: need more money. I think what ended up happening at
Speaker 5: appropriations is they end up giving them that more money.
Speaker 5: So the kind of promise of shrinking the quote unquote
Speaker 5: deep state has just completely fallen by the wayside. And
Speaker 5: I don't think I don't think there's much appreciate. I mean,
Speaker 5: the paradox I think is most evident in the in
Speaker 5: the Epstein case, where they make all these lofty promises
Speaker 5: and then you see the Justice Department review, which if
Speaker 5: you read it carefully, has a sent incident that says
Speaker 5: Epstein had over a thousand victims, which suggests like, that's
Speaker 5: a that's more than I would have, that's more than
Speaker 5: we knew publicly before that prosecutor said it was something
Speaker 5: in the dozens. I thought it was two hundred. That's
Speaker 5: what they previously it said. And then in the final review,
Speaker 5: based on the documents and whatever, it's like, Okay, so
Speaker 5: there's something bigger here. I don't know exactly what, but
Speaker 5: like it's not unreasonable for people to say all those
Speaker 5: guys and just these two people did all of that.
Speaker 5: So but the administration is like pretending like nothing happened.
Speaker 5: They're just like, oh, what are you talking about? There's
Speaker 5: nothing there. It's like you just talked. You were just
Speaker 5: gas people up about this for the last eight years.
Speaker 5: So they're in this position where they have to deliver
Speaker 5: on demands for their base because they've failed in these
Speaker 5: different ways, like I'm talking about like the fbid budget,
Speaker 5: the Ebstein investigation, and that makes me nervous because it's like, well,
Speaker 5: how are they going to do that? And then you
Speaker 5: have these deployments to Los Angeles, you have the militarized
Speaker 5: FBI where they're blurring people's faces and public press releases.
Speaker 5: So it's like, I think they're under pressure to look
Speaker 5: like they're changing something, doing something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to go into Ebstein because it's just fascinating.
Speaker 2: So the polling for like releasing the Ebstein files is
Speaker 2: like eighty percent. Like all Americans, they don't necessarily believe
Speaker 2: in God, they don't believe in Santa Claus, they don't
Speaker 2: believe in climate change, but they do believe that they
Speaker 2: want to see those fucking files. And I feel like
Speaker 2: what's important about this story is it's a story about
Speaker 2: the base and not a story about you know, like
Speaker 2: it's one thing for people on CNN to be like,
Speaker 2: this is beyond the pale, but this is Trump. These
Speaker 2: are the people who put Trump in there. This is
Speaker 2: the Marjorie Taylor Greens. So do you think they're stay
Speaker 2: still feeling the same way, because I know, like Charlie
Speaker 2: Kirk and some of Trump's people have been like no, no,
Speaker 2: you know, but do you think there's still that ground
Speaker 2: swell number one and number two? Like what could they
Speaker 2: theoretically even do?
Speaker 5: Yeah, So you have to distinguish between the parts of
Speaker 5: the base that are like the influencers that are kind
Speaker 5: of like pushing Trump's agenda, and then just the ordinary voters.
Speaker 5: I would say the influencer class has largely been bought.
Speaker 5: If you look at like Charlie Kirk, he goes on
Speaker 5: his show and says, I'm done talking about Epstein for now.
Speaker 5: I'm going to quote this is a direct quote. I'm
Speaker 5: going to trust my friends in government. It's like, wait,
Speaker 5: I thought you were a conservative. The hell's frozen over
Speaker 5: that they got to can trust the government? It was yeah.
Speaker 5: And and then just to give you another example, there
Speaker 5: was Denesh Desuza him saying, oh, yeah, we got to
Speaker 5: move on and focus on other things. But if it's
Speaker 5: very interesting, if you look at the base, they're not
Speaker 5: having it, or at least when I looked at it
Speaker 5: this past couple of weeks, they were like, what are
Speaker 5: you talking about? This was one of your promises. And
Speaker 5: you know that the cash Betel talked about it repeatedly.
Speaker 5: And so I'm honestly sort of sympathetic to the base.
Speaker 5: Not that I have the same interpretation of what Epstein
Speaker 5: means that they do, but they're right. They were promised
Speaker 5: something and they haven't been given anything close to it.
Speaker 5: It was like a two page Justice Department review and
Speaker 5: a thousand victims. There's got to be a little bit
Speaker 5: more at least, right, So that's kind of my perspective
Speaker 5: on it. And it's interesting too because it parallels a
Speaker 5: collapse in the public support for the deportation regime. If
Speaker 5: you look at the polling right now, it's gone like
Speaker 5: straight down. So I wonder if Epstein is actually symptomatic
Speaker 5: of a deeper dissatisfaction with the administration. But that's an
Speaker 5: acceptable way to express it because you're not going to
Speaker 5: come out and say, oh, actually immigration, I'm okay, you're
Speaker 5: going You've got to sub media through something else, you
Speaker 5: know what I mean.
Speaker 2: I'm that's just really an interesting No, that's an interesting theory,
Speaker 2: and I hadn't. I mean, they're definitely there's something like
Speaker 2: the bottom has fallen out on Trump's support, So that
Speaker 2: makes a lot of sense that this would be a
Speaker 2: sort of palpable way to express it. I'm going to
Speaker 2: push you for a minute, just because I'm this is
Speaker 2: like my own edification here more than anything. What do
Speaker 2: you think is in there that like I always just
Speaker 2: assumed and we're just get we're just spitballing here. So
Speaker 2: this is not cable news like we can just we're
Speaker 2: just making guesses here. So but like I always assumed
Speaker 2: they went into the files saw there was nothing, maybe
Speaker 2: that Epstein had done some like low level government participation
Speaker 2: with certain stuff, you know, not like a high level
Speaker 2: CIA guy, but just someone who you know, they CIA
Speaker 2: has people who just sort of push on other people
Speaker 2: but aren't really like in it the same way, say
Speaker 2: like whatever is I mean? And that they just were like,
Speaker 2: it's all you know, stuff that implicates some celebrities or
Speaker 2: wealthy people, and also just nothing that makes anyone look good.
Speaker 2: But I mean, do you think there's more than that
Speaker 2: in there?
Speaker 5: I think that there needs to be more nuanced and
Speaker 5: how Epstein is a figure and how the intelligence community
Speaker 5: is characterized, because when people say, oh, was he an asset,
Speaker 5: they don't understand that there's different like levels of relationships
Speaker 5: that exist, right these agencies, Like it takes almost nothing
Speaker 5: to just fill out a confidential human source report and
Speaker 5: say hey, here's what somebody said. That doesn't mean that
Speaker 5: you're like meeting with them and paying them and directing
Speaker 5: them or anything. They processed. Just to give you another example,
Speaker 5: I was just we're gonna sorry about this. The CIA
Speaker 5: has a program called the National Resource Agency, I think
Speaker 5: it's called, and where they just process interviews of Americans
Speaker 5: coming back travelers coming back over abroad from countries of
Speaker 5: interests in CIA. So say you've traveled to I don't know,
Speaker 5: Russia or Ukraine or North career for whatever reason, and
Speaker 5: then they say, oh, what did you see there? What
Speaker 5: was the you know, did you see any weapons here
Speaker 5: in this town or something? And this is a routine
Speaker 5: thing that they probably do thousands and thousands of people
Speaker 5: just intake. And it's like, so that's not an asset relationship.
Speaker 5: You don't fill something out, you're not being tasked with things.
Speaker 5: It's just them asking a couple of things when they
Speaker 5: come back in, and it's like, that's the low level
Speaker 5: of association that I would expect to come out if
Speaker 5: they if just because Epstein knew everybody. And that's another
Speaker 5: part of this thing I think people are not entirely
Speaker 5: honest about, which is that this guy was an almost
Speaker 5: pathological collector of people in relationships and he just loved
Speaker 5: being around important people. That doesn't mean that he was
Speaker 5: like like, we probably all have this friend that's like,
Speaker 5: look at this photo I have of so and so
Speaker 5: famous person, you know what I mean. And it's like, okay,
Speaker 5: I'm sure that you kind of took a picture with
Speaker 5: him for a second and said hi, Like that doesn't
Speaker 5: mean that there's some sustained relationship there. So that to
Speaker 5: me is some of the nuance I'd like to see
Speaker 5: in this is like, Okay, yes he had an they
Speaker 5: say Epstein associate, like you and I and are associate
Speaker 5: right now, because you know what I mean, It's like,
Speaker 5: it doesn't mean that there's some deep financial relation so
Speaker 5: he did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's your take too, is that he just was
Speaker 2: sort of knew everybody is in photos.
Speaker 5: Let's be real. The guy was a con man, and
Speaker 5: he went around telling people that he has at these
Speaker 5: connections and it's very much as interest to do so
Speaker 5: because then he can dine out on these names. Is
Speaker 5: that I know Bill Clinton, I know so and so on?
Speaker 5: But who really knows what that means? You can't trust someone, right,
Speaker 5: an inveterate liar.
Speaker 2: Right, so just a con man, like he just was
Speaker 2: good at conning people out of money, right, and also
Speaker 2: blackmailing them.
Speaker 5: I have kind of a nuanced position on this, which
Speaker 5: is that I don't like when the major press just says, oh,
Speaker 5: this whole thing is a conspiracy theory because the attitude
Speaker 5: and the part of the public to look at this
Speaker 5: and see, Okay, there's a lot of influential people here
Speaker 5: and they seem okay with this world of whatever, all
Speaker 5: these young women. That's an appropriate reaction to this. This
Speaker 5: is kind of like a me too thing.
Speaker 2: I think definitely is.
Speaker 5: And so but that's different than he's cavorting with. You know,
Speaker 5: the CI is sending him here to target this guy.
Speaker 5: That's just a high society tolerating grossness thing, and that's
Speaker 5: bad and something should be done about that. And it's
Speaker 5: appropriate that people feel that something should be done about that.
Speaker 5: But it's different, I think, than something more, something more
Speaker 5: conscious or planned out, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2: So that's what I think it is, too, is that,
Speaker 2: like you know, the Weinstein stuff, it's like disgusting sexual malfeasance, rape,
Speaker 2: harassment of children, women who are between the ages of
Speaker 2: fourteen and eighteen, which is insane, but that it's not
Speaker 2: a sort of larger like you know, Seria is doing
Speaker 2: this to get this.
Speaker 5: To get that Donald Trump the president. Now, I don't
Speaker 5: know if anyone knew. Is on record in New York
Speaker 5: Daily News. I think in the two thousand.
Speaker 2: Thin York Magazine two say the joys beautiful women as
Speaker 2: much as I do, some of them are the many
Speaker 2: of them are on the younger.
Speaker 5: Isn't that bad enough? I mean, that's it, That's what
Speaker 5: the conspiracy, That's what the thing is here. That's bad
Speaker 5: enough that these guys look the other way on this stuff.
Speaker 2: I think that the fundamental important element here is that
Speaker 2: that is bad enough, that the fact that he was
Speaker 2: going around with teenage girls is bad enough. And in fact,
Speaker 2: he was on the sex predator there's like a sex
Speaker 2: predator registrary as sex offender registry, and Jeffrey Epstein was
Speaker 2: on it after two thousand and five, you know, and
Speaker 2: it was like his house, like on the map, you
Speaker 2: could see it. And I remember actually looking up and thinking, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: there's that rich guy who everyone knows is a sex predator.
Speaker 2: But for some reason it has avoided punishment this.
Speaker 5: Whole time, right, And that's where I hesitate to have
Speaker 5: the reaction that some quarters of kind of elite opinion
Speaker 5: have with are just like ew, this UFO style conspiracy stuff.
Speaker 5: It's like, no, there's something there. Even if it's not
Speaker 5: it's the extreme.
Speaker 2: It's also like it's Weinstein, right, It's like, you know,
Speaker 2: these people are doing something bad and you don't exactly
Speaker 2: know what it is, but you know, I mean I
Speaker 2: think it's you know, and you know, and you don't
Speaker 2: go to dinner at their house.
Speaker 5: Because his brand, he was kind of supposed to be
Speaker 5: the playboy ish guy who fucks and his hanging out
Speaker 5: like you can't tell me they didn't have some ink,
Speaker 5: Like come on, you know that's basically my position is,
Speaker 5: come on, like this does not reflect well. I mean,
Speaker 5: Noam Chowsky met with this guy, I think after the conviction,
Speaker 5: and this is somebody that loves yeah and said, you know,
Speaker 5: he did his time, and it's kind of like that's
Speaker 5: something that should be an attitude shift, like yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: Like I guess they don't necessarily need to be like
Speaker 5: exiled to an island, but there should be some attitude
Speaker 5: of like, Okay, has this person changed at all or
Speaker 5: no one seems to care about that and in the
Speaker 5: kind of highnxiety.
Speaker 2: I mean, we're out of time, but I want to
Speaker 2: quote the great Jesse Cannon, who just said to me,
Speaker 2: producer Jesse, who does not get a lot of respect
Speaker 2: on this podcast because I give him a very hard time,
Speaker 2: but he was the one who said, no one is
Speaker 2: ever canceled. That cancelation is like bullshit that these people
Speaker 2: always are able to whether it. So, if you are
Speaker 2: a sex predator of children, you should be canceled. I
Speaker 2: think we should go out and that should be like
Speaker 2: a bumper sticker.
Speaker 5: And that's what this is all about. If the public
Speaker 5: hadn't had the outcry that it did, he would have
Speaker 5: gotten off with the brief sentence he had and he'd
Speaker 5: be back doing the same thing he was doing. And
Speaker 5: that's why people don't trust the system, because I think,
Speaker 5: we'll look how you handled it last time. I honestly
Speaker 5: empathize with even the most extreme conspiraence miney people because
Speaker 5: I get why they don't trust them anymore. They really
Speaker 5: did blow this the first time around.
Speaker 2: And many many other things too. Ken. I hope you
Speaker 2: will come back. Michael Waldman is the president end of
Speaker 2: the Brennan Center for Justice. Welcome to past violand Michael Waldman.
Speaker 8: It's great to be with you again. Mollie.
Speaker 2: So you've head the Brandan Center for Justice, which is
Speaker 2: extremely important legal resource you provide towards You provide all
Speaker 2: of the work the NEAT for many of the nonprofits
Speaker 2: that protect our democracy. You guys have a truly harrowing
Speaker 2: report about the midterms and the Trump administration's plan for them.
Speaker 2: Can you talk us through it? And first, I would
Speaker 2: love you to talk just like before you even start
Speaker 2: talking us through it, just explain to us a little bit,
Speaker 2: just like a quick refresher on what Brennan does and
Speaker 2: where you are in this process.
Speaker 5: Sure.
Speaker 8: So we are a non partisan law and policy institute.
Speaker 8: We work to strengthen, to reform and when necessary, to
Speaker 8: defend the systems of democracy and justice in this country.
Speaker 8: So they worked for everybody, and so as you can imagine,
Speaker 8: this is an intense time given how much assault there
Speaker 8: is on our democracy and a lot of the details,
Speaker 8: a lot of the arcane stuff turns out to matter
Speaker 8: a lot. And so we're part of mostly a thank tank,
Speaker 8: also an advocacy group and a communications hub, and we're busy,
Speaker 8: and you know, it really feels in a lot of ways,
Speaker 8: like in the last week or two that the twenty
Speaker 8: twenty six midterms have kind of swung into view as
Speaker 8: the looming next year of political activity in this country.
Speaker 8: And the key thing is voters in our democracy have
Speaker 8: to have the final say, and they have to have
Speaker 8: the final say in twenty twenty six. And in the
Speaker 8: last several elections, there were a lot of pressures on
Speaker 8: the election system, from COVID to violence, but the system held.
Speaker 8: Election officials from both parties worked well together and the
Speaker 8: elections were accurate and safe and secure. But now, as
Speaker 8: our new analysis shows, there's a new factor that we've
Speaker 8: not had before, which is the federal government itself as
Speaker 8: a threat to the elections, a concerted campaign by the
Speaker 8: Trump administration to undermine the twenty twenty six elections. And
Speaker 8: some of this stuff is well known, more or less.
Speaker 8: Some of it is kind of under the radar, but
Speaker 8: it clearly is adding up to a concerted campaign. And
Speaker 8: in this new analysis that we published this week, we
Speaker 8: connect the dots.
Speaker 2: So the first thing is very well known, which is
Speaker 2: that Trump is trying to re gerrymander states in time
Speaker 2: for the midterms, and that he's even said, for example,
Speaker 2: he said in Texas that he was entitled to five
Speaker 2: more seats, So talk us through that because I feel
Speaker 2: like that's the first part of the story.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it is. And interestingly that came up so recently
Speaker 8: and so abruptly. It's not in this report, but there's
Speaker 8: no question that this is. There's a lot going on
Speaker 8: and that's visible now. Our report, as great as it is,
Speaker 8: doesn't have people, you know, hiding them in by the interstate.
Speaker 8: That thing of leaving Austin to avoid a quorum on
Speaker 8: jerrymandering is this is not actually the first time that's
Speaker 8: happened in Texas. This is kind of a bit of
Speaker 8: a tradition. We want Congress to be representative. Jerrymandering has
Speaker 8: been bad throughout American history. It's a bad thing for
Speaker 8: politicians to choose the voters rather than the other way around.
Speaker 8: What is happening in Texas is particularly egregious. It is
Speaker 8: just being explicitly done to squeeze five seats out for
Speaker 8: the Republicans. It's at the expense of, very often of
Speaker 8: voters of color. It's being done under the orders of
Speaker 8: someone who doesn't live in Texas, Donald Trump, and it's
Speaker 8: in the middle of the decade. Remember the census happens
Speaker 8: every ten years. And that's when you're supposed to draw
Speaker 8: the district lines. So it's a big fight that the
Speaker 8: Democrats have left the state to avoid a quorum. The
Speaker 8: Republican leadership of the state is trying to have them arrested.
Speaker 8: I don't think that's going to work. It's not a
Speaker 8: surprise that the Democrats in blue states are readying a
Speaker 8: response or are responding accordingly, and I don't think we
Speaker 8: should be surprised by that. I don't think it's a
Speaker 8: good thing ultimately for the country to have this kind
Speaker 8: of arms race. So the final answer, I think it's
Speaker 8: really important that we never lose sight of the following.
Speaker 8: The answer has to be ultimately national standards that apply
Speaker 8: to red states and blue states alike. And you know,
Speaker 8: the Supreme Court was going to do this and then
Speaker 8: backed out and said that federal courts cannot police parties
Speaker 8: and jerrymandering, but Congress could do it. The Freedom to
Speaker 8: Vote Act, which you've heard me rant about, came really
Speaker 8: close to passage two years ago. It would ban jerry
Speaker 8: mandering nationwide in red states and in blue states and
Speaker 8: bar mid decade redistricting. In other words, if it had
Speaker 8: become law, this would not be happening. And it's really
Speaker 8: critical that politicians who talk about democracy, who like to
Speaker 8: give speeches about democracy being under threat, that when they
Speaker 8: get their hands on the levers of power, do something
Speaker 8: about protecting democracy. Unrigged the system just as enthusiastically and
Speaker 8: energetically as some other politicians are rigging the system. So
Speaker 8: that's that piece of it, and you know you're going
Speaker 8: to see this play out in a bunch of states.
Speaker 8: California is considering putting a new map on the ballot
Speaker 8: in November because the Redistrict and Commission was created not
Speaker 8: by Democrats but actually by voters and by Governor Schwarzenegger
Speaker 8: backing it. He's a Republican. And in other states like
Speaker 8: Illinois and New York and Maryland, again the Democrats are
Speaker 8: looking to effect, you know, fight fire with fire. But
Speaker 8: ultimately the answer is national standards, I think. But that's
Speaker 8: only part of the story. Rights about voting and how
Speaker 8: and the threats to the voting system with a little
Speaker 8: less drama are really important and unnerving.
Speaker 2: So that is what I wanted to talk about next.
Speaker 2: So in this report, you have a bunch of different
Speaker 2: issues that the federal government is trying to mess with
Speaker 2: elections with and I would love you to talk about
Speaker 2: this attempting to rewrite election rules and interfere with election
Speaker 2: administration by executive order, because executive orders they don't have
Speaker 2: a ton of legal weight. It's more like just you know,
Speaker 2: they're not it's not real, but it's real if the
Speaker 2: Supreme Court will allow it to stand.
Speaker 8: So very often we're like a malevolent press release.
Speaker 2: Exactly, malevolent press release. I'm writing that down. That's very sark.
Speaker 8: So the key thing to start is to remember that
Speaker 8: under the law and under the constitution, states run elections,
Speaker 8: and the Congress can pass laws setting national standards, but
Speaker 8: the executive branch and especially the president, has almost no
Speaker 8: role in these elections under normal circumstances. So it's just
Speaker 8: Trump's impersonal attempts to seize control over the election system
Speaker 8: at all is its own form of an egregious breach.
Speaker 8: Among the things that are part of this kind of
Speaker 8: concerted strategy is an executive order. As you said, that
Speaker 8: was one of gazillions, and so it was easy to
Speaker 8: lose sight on that required would require, if it were
Speaker 8: to go into effect, you to show a passport to
Speaker 8: register to vote in the United States under the federal form,
Speaker 8: which you know half of all Americans don't have a passport.
Speaker 8: It wouldn't even allow a birth certificate, as problematic as
Speaker 8: that is. You need to have a passport or something
Speaker 8: like that. What the Trump White House has done as
Speaker 8: well is purge the election security officials and agencies that
Speaker 8: have been doing a good job of helping states protect
Speaker 8: their elections. It is requiring trying to require states to
Speaker 8: turnover voter data to DOGE because you know what, could
Speaker 8: ye find the fraud just like they found all those
Speaker 8: non existent frauds whatever security And according to the Associated Press,
Speaker 8: in the last few days, nineteen states already have gotten
Speaker 8: demands or requests from the Justice Department for their voter records.
Speaker 8: So this is happening. The whole of the federal government
Speaker 8: is being sort of weaponized in this way. And of course,
Speaker 8: as you know, Trump himself went to the Justice Department,
Speaker 8: spoke to the cheering attorneys who he had appointed there
Speaker 8: and said, I want you to prosecute election officials. Yeah,
Speaker 8: and it's a whole gearing up of the prosecution mechanisms
Speaker 8: to threaten these election officials. And when you think about
Speaker 8: what happened in twenty twenty. You know, it was a
Speaker 8: handful of Republican very often officials at different levels of
Speaker 8: government who, whatever they might have done wrong or right,
Speaker 8: other realms of their work stood up. Whether it was
Speaker 8: Brad Raffensberger, the Secretary of State of Georgia, who you
Speaker 8: know wouldn't quote find eleven thousand votes, or Attorney General
Speaker 8: bar who told Trump that this is that it was
Speaker 8: a Barnard epithet, that his claims that were bs. So
Speaker 8: you know, now the administration is stocked with election deniers.
Speaker 8: So all of this adds up to something new. We
Speaker 8: haven't had this before in this country. To have the
Speaker 8: old federal government weigh in put some on the scale
Speaker 8: in this way.
Speaker 2: So you have the executive orders, and then you have
Speaker 2: what's happened in I think it's already happened in Wyoming,
Speaker 2: right where some red states are mandating proof of whatever.
Speaker 8: Well, you know, some states are trying to have done
Speaker 8: it and actually backed off doing it because it turned
Speaker 8: out it disenfranchised so many eligible voters, including.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Trump voters too, because Trump has us low frequency.
Speaker 8: There's a reason why states don't do this, and yeah,
Speaker 8: now you know, so there's a lot of this goes
Speaker 8: back to this conspiracy theory that there's lots of non
Speaker 8: citizens who are voting, and it's just not it's not true.
Speaker 8: And states have very robust systems in place to make
Speaker 8: sure that only citizens are voting, only citizens should vote.
Speaker 8: But that good news is only citizens basically do.
Speaker 2: Vote, and there's very little evidence of non citizens voting.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and you know people, I you know as you can.
Speaker 8: We have found when we make these arguments to people
Speaker 8: publicly that it's less effective to point out that it
Speaker 8: doesn't happen or that it's illegal already many times over
Speaker 8: could but but but more that the states take this
Speaker 8: really seriously and have a lot of safeguards in place
Speaker 8: to prevent cheating of that kind.
Speaker 2: So executive orders, and then one of the scarier ones
Speaker 2: is messing with the machine, the election of quote. So
Speaker 2: talk us through that.
Speaker 8: So if you remember, one of the key things Trump
Speaker 8: tried to do in twenty twenty was to seize the
Speaker 8: voting machines. I don't know what that would have told him,
Speaker 8: but the executive order that they did earlier in the
Speaker 8: year would basically decertify take away the approval for the
Speaker 8: use of the voting machines that are used all over
Speaker 8: the country. One of the notions that sometimes Trump and
Speaker 8: his people have is that all ballots should be counted
Speaker 8: by hand. And that's a really bad idea because you
Speaker 8: actually get more errors that way, and it also would
Speaker 8: delay the counting and the reason we as a society
Speaker 8: have moved past counting our fingers. But a lot of
Speaker 8: these things, as you say, are in this executive were.
Speaker 8: One of the things that's happened, broadly speaking, is the
Speaker 8: courts have stepped up on a lot of these things.
Speaker 8: In particular, this is something the Brennan Center did. We
Speaker 8: represented the League of Women Voters in a lawsuit on
Speaker 8: this executive work, and a federal court actually blocked some
Speaker 8: of the worst parts of it, the parts that where
Speaker 8: Trump is pretending to order an independent agency that he
Speaker 8: has no authority over to do these things. But it's
Speaker 8: still playing out in the courts and the story isn't
Speaker 8: finished yet.
Speaker 2: So you have the seizing machines, which is really scary,
Speaker 2: and then you have another thing, which I also thought
Speaker 2: was horrifying, accessing sensitive voter file data. Explain to us
Speaker 2: what this story there is.
Speaker 8: Well, the states keep these voter records. There's lots of
Speaker 8: sensitive stuff in it, often social security numbers, other things
Speaker 8: like that. The federal government has no place demanding that
Speaker 8: data just to look at it. What it seems to
Speaker 8: be the case is that this will be used to say, Aha,
Speaker 8: look at all the fraud and to try to undermine
Speaker 8: the elections in advance. A lot of this violence, privacy rules,
Speaker 8: a lot of it is illegal. Some of it, as
Speaker 8: I said, came in this demand that the states turn
Speaker 8: over these records to DOGE or they will lose federal money.
Speaker 8: Now you're starting to see the Justice Department make these demands,
Speaker 8: and there are now task forces set up in the
Speaker 8: Justice Department, in the US Attorney's Office in Washington, DC
Speaker 8: and other places that are very explicitly rattling the cage
Speaker 8: to threaten election officials, to threaten prosecutions of election officials
Speaker 8: who do their job. And there's a guy named Chris Krebs.
Speaker 8: I don't know if you have heard it, but he
Speaker 8: was just the head of cybersecurity in the Trump Department
Speaker 8: of pum Land Security in twenty twenty, and he said
Speaker 8: accurately that the twenty twenty election was secure and the
Speaker 8: most secure in history. And Trump fired him at the time,
Speaker 8: and now he's having him investigated. And the goal here
Speaker 8: is to rattle and shake the confidence and shake the
Speaker 8: courage of state and local officials so that when it
Speaker 8: should be necessary, when the moment comes and they need
Speaker 8: to show their backbone, they'll be afraid to do it.
Speaker 8: So far, the state and local officials have been great.
Speaker 8: They know their job. You know, none of them signed
Speaker 8: up for being high stakes combatants and politics. They're not
Speaker 8: the big glamour jobs. A lot of the stuff that
Speaker 8: they're being asked to do is illegal. We and others
Speaker 8: are talking to lots of lawyers to make sure people
Speaker 8: know what their legal remedies are and that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's really scary to me that it's largely an
Speaker 2: intimidation campaign, right, Yes, I.
Speaker 8: Think it's an intimidation campaign that will grow in intensity
Speaker 8: over the months. And the question again is, well, why's
Speaker 8: the what's the endgame? Why do this?
Speaker 7: You know?
Speaker 8: And I do think that undermining public confidence in the results,
Speaker 8: making people think wrongly that there's lots of fraud, endlessly
Speaker 8: discovering Aha, now we found the smoking gun of the
Speaker 8: of the of the phantom vote, and this and that
Speaker 8: kind of stuff, to create a fog of misinformation about
Speaker 8: the elections in advance seems to be one of the goals.
Speaker 2: So what can people do If you're listening to this
Speaker 2: and you're freaking out, or you read it last weekend
Speaker 2: and with your husband and both freaked out about it.
Speaker 2: What can people do?
Speaker 8: So, first of all, back up those state and local officials.
Speaker 8: Let them know that you understand what they're going through.
Speaker 8: They need to stand strong, they need to do their part.
Speaker 8: They need support from all across the political spectrum.
Speaker 5: You know, as the.
Speaker 8: Elections draw closer, there are all kinds of things people
Speaker 8: can do, working with law enforcement and others, poll watching
Speaker 8: and those things. Though it's a little early for that.
Speaker 8: It's really important that courts do their part as well.
Speaker 8: And like I said, a lot of them have, but
Speaker 8: we haven't heard from the Supreme Court on a lot
Speaker 8: of this stuff. So much of this effort is illegal,
Speaker 8: and courts need to continue to rule when that comes
Speaker 8: before them on that. And ultimately, I think that it
Speaker 8: is a lot harder to rig an election. There's a
Speaker 8: lot harder to stealing election when lots of people are
Speaker 8: voting and lots of people are yelling and lots of
Speaker 8: people are watching. And the more focus on this there is,
Speaker 8: the better it is because I think one of the
Speaker 8: things that I hope comes out of this period of
Speaker 8: democratic destruction is a renewed commitment to fixing our democracy
Speaker 8: and making sure that this kind of thing can happen again.
Speaker 8: I worry that, like as you may have followed, you know,
Speaker 8: there's a lot of chatter, oh, you know, what issues
Speaker 8: are there?
Speaker 4: Gee?
Speaker 8: You know Biden talked about democracy that means it's a.
Speaker 9: Dud, right, And I think that what we're seeing with
Speaker 9: the Texas gerrymander shows that no, these issues are really
Speaker 9: vital and that it's we need some courage from some
Speaker 9: politicians to actually take action when they have the chance
Speaker 9: to strengthen democracy and not just issue cresh releases.
Speaker 2: Right, And I'm in that is like gonna come later.
Speaker 2: Right now, Probably the only thing anyone can do is
Speaker 2: try to protect our midterms so that they are so
Speaker 2: that people have the freedom to go and vote, and
Speaker 2: so that the votes are you know, that no one
Speaker 2: messes with anything. One of the things they spend a
Speaker 2: lot of time thinking about is if we do have
Speaker 2: if there are free and fair elections and Democrats are
Speaker 2: able to regain the levers of power, there has to
Speaker 2: be an anti corruption legislation. Like Democrats have spent a
Speaker 2: lot of time not legislating for any number of reasons.
Speaker 2: Sometimes it's a Kirsten Cinema that derails them. Sometimes it's
Speaker 2: their own anxiety about seeming you know, seeming overly partisan
Speaker 2: or whatever.
Speaker 8: Yeah, So to give credit to Nancy Pelosi and people
Speaker 8: like that, you know, they really push the Freedom to
Speaker 8: Vote Act and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act,
Speaker 8: which were really important bills that would have addressed dark
Speaker 8: money in politics, that would have addressed theair remagering that
Speaker 8: we've strengthened early voting and automatic voter registration, a lot
Speaker 8: of the other things, restored the Voting Rights Act. Those
Speaker 8: bills had pass the House, they had a majority in
Speaker 8: the Senate, and the problem then was that two Senators
Speaker 8: mansioned in cinema who supported supposedly the bills wouldn't change
Speaker 8: the philibuster rules to enable them to overcome the Republican blockade.
Speaker 8: I think it's the case now that Democrats part of
Speaker 8: the lesson they drew from that whole period was they
Speaker 8: were going to change the filibuster rules to enable it
Speaker 8: to pass it. You know, last year when visions danced
Speaker 8: in some of their heads about a trifecta, they made
Speaker 8: clear they were going to pass that bill, those bills
Speaker 8: with a majority vote. I think that right now there's
Speaker 8: a lot of looking at what the most important reforms
Speaker 8: are today because of the extraordinary corruption and the breaches
Speaker 8: of law and norms that we see from this administration.
Speaker 8: And so what are the corruption measures to deal with
Speaker 8: an era of Elon m and Donald Trump and the
Speaker 8: monetization of government. How can we address the Supreme Court
Speaker 8: and the role it plays. I think there's a lot
Speaker 8: of enthusiasm for something like term limits as part of
Speaker 8: any reform package. I think that it makes partisans of
Speaker 8: all parties uncomfortable. But I think there ultimately needs to
Speaker 8: be something on redistricting as there was, and voting of
Speaker 8: course as well. So there's a lot of issues in
Speaker 8: play and formulating what that package looks like. What counts
Speaker 8: as not just what one is against, but what one
Speaker 8: is for. And if you don't have a really robust
Speaker 8: vision for how to strengthen democracy, people are going to
Speaker 8: think it's just partisan wind. The main problem, honestly in
Speaker 8: twenty twenty one and twenty twenty two was they waited.
Speaker 8: The White House under President Biden waited a long time
Speaker 8: to try to move that bill. And that's the kind
Speaker 8: of thing one needs to do right at the start,
Speaker 8: and not worry about twelve editorial boards if those exist anymore,
Speaker 8: saying oh whoo, this is partisan.
Speaker 2: Michael Wallman, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you
Speaker 2: for for than keep.
Speaker 8: Us sane and educated.
Speaker 6: They're normal fu Jesse Cannon, Molly.
Speaker 4: So I'm going to tell you a really tragic story.
Speaker 3: Please, big balls driving through the d C in a
Speaker 3: very heavily policed area, he was attacked by a group
Speaker 3: of teenagers in a carjacking. Police came literally as it
Speaker 3: was happening. And now Trump says, you know, we got
Speaker 3: to basically declare Marshall in DC. Is probably the next
Speaker 3: step of whatever many people are assuming. But they're going
Speaker 3: to order federal law enforcement officers to patrol the DC streets.
Speaker 2: We saw this happen in California. We've seen this happen
Speaker 2: when Governor Hocal sent National Guard into our subways. It's
Speaker 2: just a waste of everybody's time, right he's going to
Speaker 2: federalize it. He's going to send all these people. They're
Speaker 2: going to sit on the street and stare at their
Speaker 2: phone and have nothing to you. And no one will
Speaker 2: be better off for it, and it will be like
Speaker 2: Trump's big power grab, but it won't do anything, and
Speaker 2: it's just incredibly wasteful and stupid and makes no sense.
Speaker 2: And he'll do it.
Speaker 3: You say, no one will be better off for it.
Speaker 3: But candy Crush is going to make a lot of money.
Speaker 2: Candy Crush, Instagram. Those are the things that will benefit
Speaker 2: tech companies, will TikTok, because you know TikTok, the Chinese
Speaker 2: government will.
Speaker 5: Make some money.
Speaker 4: Oracle Larry Awesome.
Speaker 2: Merry Christmas to all whose help. That's it for this
Speaker 2: episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday
Speaker 2: and Saturday to hear the best minds and politics make sense.
Speaker 5: Of all this chaos.
Speaker 2: If you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a
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