Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds and Donald Trump's Middle East Envoy Steve
Speaker 1: Woodcoff can't name a single concession that Russia will make
Speaker 1: in the quote unquote peace deal house shotging, we have
Speaker 1: such a great show for you today the Lincoln Projects.
Speaker 1: Rick Wilson joins us to discuss Elon's profoundly dumb email
Speaker 1: to federal workers. Then we will talk to the Brennan
Speaker 1: Centers Michael Waldman about how they have been countering Trump's
Speaker 1: war on the judges.
Speaker 2: But first the news Smiley, I have to say I
Speaker 2: knew who main governor Jenet Mills was. I didn't know
Speaker 2: much about her game, but I liked her game this week.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, Maine has some really interesting politicians. I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about Angus King, who was a Republican became an independent.
Speaker 1: There's just a lot of super stuff here. Here's Janet Mills.
Speaker 1: She's at a meal with Trump with the governors, and
Speaker 1: Trump asks if she's at the event, and she says yes,
Speaker 1: and he says, in the typical trumpy fashion, you better
Speaker 1: do it because you're not going to get any federal
Speaker 1: funding at all if you don't. Now, FYI, this is
Speaker 1: really now how it's not supposed to work. Right, There's
Speaker 1: federalism exists for a reason, right, Trump says to Mills,
Speaker 1: who replied that she would follow state and federal laws.
Speaker 3: By the way, we want our.
Speaker 1: Lawmakers to follow the law, okay, Like that is the
Speaker 1: correct answer, right, Like we should want all of our
Speaker 1: politicians to follow the law. If you are a politician,
Speaker 1: you are doing something that is not following the law,
Speaker 1: you should not be holding office. She also told the
Speaker 1: President see you in court, which I think is really like.
Speaker 3: It was a pretty ball or move.
Speaker 1: Especially you're surrounded by other governors, you are in the
Speaker 1: White House, or you're in you know, he is intimidating guy,
Speaker 1: and she's you know, just this sort of older woman.
Speaker 1: And by the way, I would like to point out
Speaker 1: it does seem to me that older women are doing
Speaker 1: a lot more standing up to Trump than people like say, oh,
Speaker 1: I don't know, Jeff Bezos or you know they're right,
Speaker 1: I mean, or Zuckerberg. These are people who are not
Speaker 1: you know, who have billions of dollars and refuse to
Speaker 1: stand up to Trump. Miles also released a statement vowing
Speaker 1: if the President attempts to unilaterally deprive main school children
Speaker 1: of the benefit of federal funding, my administration in the
Speaker 1: Attorney General will take all appropriate and necessary legal option
Speaker 1: to restore that funding. And by the way, I just
Speaker 1: want to point out, like anyone who listens to this
Speaker 1: podcast knows that we've had a lot of Democratic attorneys
Speaker 1: generals and that they have been working their asses off
Speaker 1: to prepare the battle in court that will protect federalism hopefully,
Speaker 1: And so I just want to say, like, all of
Speaker 1: this is happening because these Democratic attorneys general did what
Speaker 1: they were supposed to be doing, prepare for Trump is
Speaker 1: I'm really just super impressed that they had the war
Speaker 1: withal to get on this immediately, and also good for
Speaker 1: her for standing up.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, ma, let's break a little news here. You
Speaker 2: and I are going to be putting up three YouTube
Speaker 2: videos every week that are different programming than what you
Speaker 2: hear on Fast Politics, because we're putting our foot into
Speaker 2: the world of YouTube and it's very good. We've done
Speaker 2: some tests so far they are amazing. You're killing it.
Speaker 2: But while I was studying for what we're going to
Speaker 2: do over the weekend. I have a tool called video iq.
Speaker 2: It tells me how many views a channel gets in
Speaker 2: a month. And something I noticed is Bernie Sanders and
Speaker 2: Chris Murphy each have singular videos that are more popular
Speaker 2: than the entire month of videos from the rest of
Speaker 2: the Democrats entire channels in the Senate.
Speaker 1: I just want to say two things here about us
Speaker 1: going to YouTube. One is that Jesse is actually a
Speaker 1: big YouTube celebrity already for music, so I will be
Speaker 1: cloud chasing him and two, I know and also embarrassing
Speaker 1: him on this podcast.
Speaker 3: That's what I do.
Speaker 1: But the other thing is that I think it's really
Speaker 1: important to realize that there are some really effective messengers.
Speaker 1: And it was a really good piece in The Times
Speaker 1: today about Murphy. Bernie too has been doing these huge
Speaker 1: town halls, and I think what's important about these two
Speaker 1: men is that they prove my theory that this is
Speaker 1: not actually an ideological issue, it's a messaging issue. So
Speaker 1: Bernie is very lefty, Murphy is very centrist. They are
Speaker 1: not the same, they do not represent the same wing
Speaker 1: of the party, but they are both breaking through and
Speaker 1: that's because they are very good communicators and they are
Speaker 1: flooding the zone with information, and so I think that
Speaker 1: would spend a lot of time, especially on cable news,
Speaker 1: arguing about whether or not Medicare should cover you know,
Speaker 1: or that we should do free glasses, or we should
Speaker 1: do rebreakfast.
Speaker 3: Or we should you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: And the truth is, this is not about policy, This
Speaker 1: is about persuasion. This is about connecting with voters. And
Speaker 1: so I am particularly thrilled by this combination of these
Speaker 1: two men because it really does show that, in fact,
Speaker 1: this is not an ideological issue. It is a communication issue.
Speaker 1: I think that's actually quite good. And thank you for
Speaker 1: letting me.
Speaker 3: Vent on that well.
Speaker 2: Speaking of venting, protesters at Republican events were told that
Speaker 2: your voice is meaningless.
Speaker 3: Yeah, shockingly.
Speaker 1: Look, these Republicans are so scared, right because as much
Speaker 1: as they think trumpsm is great, or maybe they don't. Basically,
Speaker 1: they're supporting Trump because they're scared of what Trump will
Speaker 1: do to them. They're supporting Musk because they're scared about
Speaker 1: what Musk will do to them.
Speaker 3: Do they believe this stuff?
Speaker 1: Certainly they believe in cutting the federal government, but I'm
Speaker 1: sure they don't believe in an unelected billionaire being the
Speaker 1: one who's deciding it via email. And so they are scared,
Speaker 1: and they are in a terrible situation, and they're going
Speaker 1: to have to defend the indefensible, as they have done before.
Speaker 1: Saturday's protests come as Trump made several policy decisions, including
Speaker 1: the creation of the Elon Musk Department of Government Efficiency
Speaker 1: as unofficial agencies established to executive orders operating the White
Speaker 1: House Task Force. The President has signed several executive orders
Speaker 1: enacting this conservative agenda. But you know, also the other thing,
Speaker 1: and I think this is worth remembering when it comes
Speaker 1: to executive orders, is that.
Speaker 3: They are very easy to undo.
Speaker 1: So many of these will not hold up in court,
Speaker 1: and many will be undone quickly. Now that said, there's
Speaker 1: going to be a real problem in the Office of
Speaker 1: Management and Budget whether or not Russ Vought will continue
Speaker 1: to impound the funds because Jesse and I know from
Speaker 1: our YouTube series that we did during the summer about
Speaker 1: Project twenty twenty five that Russ Vought is working real
Speaker 1: hard to make sure that the agencies that Congress allocated
Speaker 1: the funds for do not cut the money. And so
Speaker 1: I think that is what was will ultimately kick us
Speaker 1: into a slow rolling constitutional crisis.
Speaker 2: Speaking of constitutional crisises, one of the concerns was that
Speaker 2: the Supreme Court was going to uber stamp every one
Speaker 2: of Trump's aggressions on the federal government. And so far
Speaker 2: that's looking to actually not be the case, which is
Speaker 2: a pleasant surprise.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so Supreme Court looked at Trump's ability to fire
Speaker 1: the head of the federal agency that protects government whistleblowers.
Speaker 3: By the way, if you want transparency and government protecting
Speaker 3: whistleblowers who come out and say when people are doing
Speaker 3: corrupt things in the government, that's kind of how this goes.
Speaker 3: And remember Elon Musk, the real president keeps saying that
Speaker 3: he wants transparency.
Speaker 1: This is about transparency. He's protecting transparency. It is not
Speaker 1: about transparency. And you know it's not about transparency because
Speaker 1: they are not being transparent and also because they refuse
Speaker 1: to provide any transparentancy. That makes me think it's not
Speaker 1: about transparency.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, Now on to the bad news. Hawaii, who
Speaker 2: had probably the best response to the pandemic of all
Speaker 2: fifty states. Their governor, Josh Green, he said some pretty
Speaker 2: dark stuff on Friday.
Speaker 1: Let's just remember Elon Musk is cutting NIH funding. He's
Speaker 1: cutting funding that is working on cheers for cancer and
Speaker 1: also infectious diseases. And basically, Josh Green is saying states
Speaker 1: must prepare now for another pandemic, and man, he is
Speaker 1: totally right. Also important to remember that Elon Musk made
Speaker 1: all his money on scientific.
Speaker 3: Discoveries green energy.
Speaker 1: Here he is now making sure he's sort of closing
Speaker 1: the door to others. Josh Green is worried that there's
Speaker 1: going to be measles or bird flu or something like that.
Speaker 1: And I think he's right to be, and we all
Speaker 1: should be worried about this.
Speaker 3: But this is how the things start.
Speaker 1: Rick wills And is the founder of the Lincoln Project
Speaker 1: and the host of the Enemy's List. Welcome Back, two
Speaker 1: Best Politics.
Speaker 3: Rick Wilson, Molly.
Speaker 4: John Fast, Happy day to you, my friend, and.
Speaker 3: I am happy to be here with you. And you
Speaker 3: know why we're happy. Why are we happy?
Speaker 4: Because bad people are getting smitten from time to time
Speaker 4: now and smited, smited insmite rated.
Speaker 1: Yes, let's start with the beginning. Let's start with assessing
Speaker 1: the president. Elon Musk.
Speaker 4: He is our greatest president.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: He wrote a BCC email to the entire federal.
Speaker 4: Government impressive, I have to say, honestly impressive. And it's
Speaker 4: it's it's sheer dumbfuckery level. Levels of dumbfuckery previously unknown
Speaker 4: to science were achieved.
Speaker 1: It's one of these things where it's like I get
Speaker 1: being high on your own supply because everyone has had
Speaker 1: a moment like that, including myself.
Speaker 3: I know you're shocked to hear this.
Speaker 1: But I still think, like there was no one who said,
Speaker 1: before you send this one email to everyone in the
Speaker 1: federal government, let's game out what happens.
Speaker 4: Yeah, what are the consequences of this email?
Speaker 5: Boss?
Speaker 4: Like all megalomaniacs, he has reached the point where he
Speaker 4: believes that nothing that he wants is wrong and that
Speaker 4: no impulse could have other consequences. And the fact of
Speaker 4: the matter is he's actually proving to a lot of
Speaker 4: people that while Elon has a certain cunning, much like Trump,
Speaker 4: it's narrow and awfully dumb in some ways.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's a really good point, that he
Speaker 1: has a very narrow field of vision. And I do
Speaker 1: think what you're saying is right. And I do think also,
Speaker 1: like as someone who has sort of been a fame hobbyist,
Speaker 1: a person who has often thought a lot about how
Speaker 1: fame affects people and wealth and power. One of the
Speaker 1: things that I think is so interesting about him is
Speaker 1: that he had quite a lot of goodwill, and maybe
Speaker 1: that was what created this sort of invincibility. But there
Speaker 1: really is a feeling when you watch his behavior that
Speaker 1: he thinks that the tides will never turn for him
Speaker 1: when it comes to popularity. And there were a lot
Speaker 1: of polls this week that showed otherwise.
Speaker 4: There were a lot of surveys And by the way,
Speaker 4: my favorite thing of the week is Donald Trump declaring
Speaker 4: he's at seventy one percent approval, and I'm like, motherfucker,
Speaker 4: you're not even at seventy one percent approval in your
Speaker 4: own family.
Speaker 1: Well, not to hand it to Donald Trump, but seventy
Speaker 1: one percent approval, we do not live in a country
Speaker 1: where that is going.
Speaker 4: To be Our country doesn't work that way anymore. It
Speaker 4: did back in the day. But he could cure cancer
Speaker 4: tomorrow and people would be like, no, right, And the
Speaker 4: same thing could have applied if George Bush had cured
Speaker 4: cancer or whatever. Well, you just wear a divided country
Speaker 4: in that respect. I think I don't see that changing
Speaker 4: in the near term.
Speaker 1: So let's just talk through a little bit. So we
Speaker 1: got MOSK sending this mass email. We have FRINT divisions
Speaker 1: including cash Battel, Welcome to the Resistance, cash Battel. Just kidding, oh,
Speaker 1: saying ignore the Elon email, right, because the thing is,
Speaker 1: here's a guy who's saying he's going to fire whoever
Speaker 1: doesn't write back something that makes him happy. You know,
Speaker 1: I want to like pause or a second and just
Speaker 1: talk about this. Nobody wants waste. No one is served
Speaker 1: by wasting your tax dollars. That said, just writing an
Speaker 1: email to the entire federal government and then reading I
Speaker 1: don't know who's going to read all of these emails,
Speaker 1: but the idea is that someone will, and that that person, oh.
Speaker 4: Oh, AI is going to read all these emails. That's
Speaker 4: the thing here. They're going to have AI reading them
Speaker 4: and say, oh, this person must go. They have not
Speaker 4: displayed sufficient fealty to Lord Alon.
Speaker 1: I was actually just reading an article in the New
Speaker 1: Yorker which made me think about this, Which is part
Speaker 1: of what Elon is banking on, is that we all
Speaker 1: think AI is further along than it is.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 1: AI can certainly do a lot of things like edit
Speaker 1: little changes in voice or whatever. It can't necessarily actually
Speaker 1: figure out who's doing what in the federal government, or
Speaker 1: it can't do the sort of nuances that would be
Speaker 1: needed in this moment.
Speaker 4: It is not yet the magical box.
Speaker 3: It will be soon, unfortunately.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean we're racing toward that. My favorite story
Speaker 4: of last week was there's a new AI that's purpose
Speaker 4: is to hack other AIS.
Speaker 3: Great, it's probably fun.
Speaker 4: Fine, No, but you're right. I mean he is doing
Speaker 4: this as part of his broader campaign to terrify the
Speaker 4: federal workforce and to dishearten the federal workforce. And look,
Speaker 4: it has been somewhat effective to date.
Speaker 3: Right, they are terrified.
Speaker 5: I think it's worked.
Speaker 1: You know, you made smart people have a terrible time
Speaker 1: and feel like shit.
Speaker 3: Congratulations Yet.
Speaker 1: In suject yeah, I mean, like these are people who
Speaker 1: could have made more money in investment banking.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I look at it as what I call the high
Speaker 4: skill skill cuts.
Speaker 5: Okay.
Speaker 4: I talked to somebody today who got fired from an
Speaker 4: agency because she had gotten her scholarship and internship through
Speaker 4: a women in science program.
Speaker 3: Right, which is Dhi DEI.
Speaker 4: They didn't care that she's a talented and very highly
Speaker 4: educated person. In her field doesn't matter. You're out. You're
Speaker 4: a dei hier if you're a woman, right well obviously
Speaker 4: or black, I mean then, or if you're a forty
Speaker 4: year combat veteran in the Joi Cheesus staff, or the
Speaker 4: chief of Naval operations. Right that was a woman who
Speaker 4: spent twenty years of her forty year career at sea
Speaker 4: commanding destroyers. But now they're being replaced by a guy
Speaker 4: whose main criteria not that he's a successful combatant commander
Speaker 4: or ran a major staff organization that he was the
Speaker 4: was a fighter pilot. Is who got Donald Trump's attention
Speaker 4: for making his guys wear red hats?
Speaker 3: Yeah wow cool? You know fieldy to the king in
Speaker 3: the court.
Speaker 1: Very unsurprisingly, Trump continues to lose.
Speaker 4: Donald Trump is having a terrible run in the courts.
Speaker 4: I think it's getting a little hard for them now
Speaker 4: because I am seeing the rhetoric coming from Elon, because
Speaker 4: you can always watch Elon. He sort of like preps
Speaker 4: the battlefield, like he prepped the battlefield on Ukraine. Now
Speaker 4: he's prepping the battlefield on the judges. Satis that judge
Speaker 4: must be impeached. And I promise you that the House
Speaker 4: of Representatives is gonna gonna rev up the the old
Speaker 4: impeachment wagon any minute now, Yeah, because Elon wants it.
Speaker 3: Who's he going to impeach?
Speaker 4: The House? Is going to try to impeach judges in
Speaker 4: the Senate, it's going to say hamanahamanahamana.
Speaker 5: No.
Speaker 3: So here's a bit of weirdness.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's weirdness, but I think it's like, actually,
Speaker 1: good is the Supreme Court on Friday prevented Trump from
Speaker 1: firing the head of the watchdog agency.
Speaker 3: That is not nothing.
Speaker 1: You know, we love to pooh pooh how incredibly demented
Speaker 1: this court is, but it's nice to see that there
Speaker 1: are still a fee.
Speaker 4: Once in a while you get a moment out of
Speaker 4: this court where they say, no, thank you, we don't
Speaker 4: choose today to be the day that we burned the
Speaker 4: Constitution to the ground. Yes, it could happen anytime, mind you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: It's funny because as I watched this continual shit show
Speaker 1: going on, and I think this is worth talking about
Speaker 1: for a minute. You have all these federal employees who
Speaker 1: have been fired for no reason. Some are there back
Speaker 1: to try to rehire them. I'm thinking nukes, FDA FAA.
Speaker 1: It's been clear that a lot of the wrong people.
Speaker 1: It turns out that just firing people, you fire a
Speaker 1: lot of the wrong people, people.
Speaker 3: You really need. But you did.
Speaker 1: Really what Elon did, which I think is is pretty spectacular,
Speaker 1: is he has radicalized the federal workforce.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, look, I mean the bad news I probably
Speaker 4: should even say this, but the bad news is the
Speaker 4: ones that stay. If you think you've seen malicious compliance before,
Speaker 4: get ready for something entirely new. I said that there
Speaker 4: are the high skill low skill cuts, and they both hurt.
Speaker 4: These people that are quote probationary offense because they changed
Speaker 4: a job, not because they're new. And there was a
Speaker 4: belief initially on Elon's part in the in his team's part,
Speaker 4: that anyone who was probationary must have been put in
Speaker 4: there as a sleeper agent by Joe Biden.
Speaker 3: Well, I don't think they understand what probationary means. There
Speaker 3: have been a number of points where it.
Speaker 1: Becomes clear that Elon doesn't actually know how any of
Speaker 1: those works, Like when he learned about judges.
Speaker 4: You mean any day that ends in a why, right, But.
Speaker 1: When he learned about judges, that was amazing. He was like, well,
Speaker 1: that means that we couldn't do everything we want, And
Speaker 1: I was.
Speaker 4: Like, may I introduce you to Chief Justice John Marshall.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, Roberts.
Speaker 4: I think the other part of this starting to Marshall,
Speaker 4: I'm talking about Barbari versus Madison.
Speaker 3: And oh that's what I thought you were to.
Speaker 4: Actual division of the.
Speaker 1: Yeah, ware to go, Rick Wilson owning Jesse Cannon with
Speaker 1: his continue Yes, sir.
Speaker 4: The other cuts that I think are actually starting to
Speaker 4: penetrate in the minds of a lot of voters are
Speaker 4: things like park rangers, firefighters, USDA inspectors.
Speaker 3: Wait, you want food that doesn't make you sick?
Speaker 4: You call me crazy, but I picked that one up
Speaker 4: this weekend that the new problem that's happening is they're
Speaker 4: laying off all these food inspectors and so now the
Speaker 4: farmers who are trying to sell their product can't get
Speaker 4: it to market. And aside from you raw milk goons,
Speaker 4: most of us don't want to have listeria or salmonella
Speaker 4: or rotavirus or any the other assorted parade of things
Speaker 4: that at least a cursory inspection by a trained human
Speaker 4: being might help prevent.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, Ai can probably do that. No, agree, Well,
Speaker 3: I don't even think that.
Speaker 4: They're not thinking that exactly.
Speaker 3: No, I know they are thinking that.
Speaker 1: I just feel like we can't say this enough. This
Speaker 1: is all to pay for tax cuts.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and they say, oh, it's four point seven billion
Speaker 4: dollars in the tax cut. The actual debt that will
Speaker 4: be accumulated from it in the first five years of
Speaker 4: the tax cut is ten point nine trillion dollars. Now,
Speaker 4: Elon Musk is out there and so far they've managed
Speaker 4: to find about eighty billion dollars in cuts. Most of
Speaker 4: those cuts are bullshit. Most of it's made up in
Speaker 4: their heads.
Speaker 3: Some of it is just the zero in the wrong place.
Speaker 4: Right, some of it is they missed a comma. But
Speaker 4: the crisis ahead for them, and I think this is
Speaker 4: a meaningful and real thing they need to sort of
Speaker 4: grapple with. Is this tax cut for Elon and Bezos
Speaker 4: and Zuckerberg and a handful of other people, Because remember, folks,
Speaker 4: if you don't make over about five hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 4: a year, the tax cut is actually a tax increase
Speaker 4: for you, and not to mention, you're going to be
Speaker 4: hit with another tax increase, not counted in the score
Speaker 4: so far, which is the tariffs, which will cause another
Speaker 4: tax increase.
Speaker 3: For you make for yourself.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but all of this comes down Molly, I think too.
Speaker 3: Now I'm kidding, of course, No.
Speaker 5: I think all this.
Speaker 4: Stuff comes down to they don't understand what they're doing,
Speaker 4: but they're not really trying to do anything consistently or
Speaker 4: ethically or meaningfully. They're trying to cause as much chaos
Speaker 4: own the Libs as hard as they can on the
Speaker 4: front end of this deal, because I think there's a
Speaker 4: small slow recognition beginning to creep in that this may
Speaker 4: be the happy sixty days of the administration and the
Speaker 4: rest of it goes show south.
Speaker 1: Last week we saw that the market had a really
Speaker 1: bad week. If you don't think Donald Trump has his
Speaker 1: eye on the.
Speaker 5: Market, oh think again again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there were a lot of New York people who
Speaker 1: wanted him in that job because they thought there'd be
Speaker 1: a big market rally. And the fact that he can't
Speaker 1: even get a big market rally. He is trying to
Speaker 1: juice the economy right now. He wants an interest rate
Speaker 1: cut that you know, he has sort of plans to
Speaker 1: juice the economy. So I think a lot of us
Speaker 1: thought it would crash in a year or two years.
Speaker 1: But you know, there's a real chance that he doesn't
Speaker 1: even get at the rally that he wants.
Speaker 4: I think he's doing things that are going to make
Speaker 4: the rally much harder to achieve. I don't think there's
Speaker 4: any person on Wall Street, any any serious person on
Speaker 4: Wall Street in the equity space at all, who wakes
Speaker 4: up in the marning and says, you know what would
Speaker 4: be great, massive tariffs on trade. That would be fantastic.
Speaker 4: That's the solution to our national problem. None of that's real.
Speaker 3: We saw this.
Speaker 1: Week a lot of big fund managers, including Steve Cohen,
Speaker 1: came out and said that they were adjusting, that they
Speaker 1: didn't think their outlook was good. Like Donald Trump may
Speaker 1: not care about American democracy, but he cares when rich
Speaker 1: people think he's.
Speaker 4: He cares about what the market does.
Speaker 3: And he cares about very rich people.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he cares about very rich people. And he cares
Speaker 4: about the international market climate because it affects his friends
Speaker 4: in Saudi Arabia and thus Jarret and thus the family business.
Speaker 4: I think he cares a lot more about markets than anybody.
Speaker 4: Let's on inside of his world.
Speaker 1: There's also this other thing which I feel like we
Speaker 1: have not focused on because because the blood letting at
Speaker 1: the federal government is so humongous, but we are hurtling
Speaker 1: towards a government shutdown because there is no budget.
Speaker 3: So let's talk.
Speaker 4: I think the Democrats need to play the hardest game
Speaker 4: of hardball in the history of hardball. There is no
Speaker 4: reason for a single Democratic elected official to go out
Speaker 4: there and save Mike Johnson's ass, not a single one.
Speaker 5: Do not.
Speaker 4: And I will tell my Democratic friends what they're going
Speaker 4: to try to do. They're going to say, well, you
Speaker 4: need to make sure your programs for your district are
Speaker 4: in place. Man, we're gonna you know it might you
Speaker 4: might lose snap, or you might lose this, this or that.
Speaker 4: These people are going to lose these things anyway. These
Speaker 4: things are. These things are going away no matter what
Speaker 4: they do. And if they play or played for suckers
Speaker 4: by Mike Johnson and they save him when you should
Speaker 4: be looking for every day, if you're a Democratic elected official,
Speaker 4: to show the chaos, to show the confusion, to show
Speaker 4: the bullshit, to show the nightmare of all of the
Speaker 4: madness that's happening. This is a golden opportunity for Democrats
Speaker 4: to say we told you so. And that is satisfying,
Speaker 4: not to a lot of people who really like think
Speaker 4: about like, I'm going to do good. I'm going to
Speaker 4: make sure that my people are taking care of everybody's
Speaker 4: going to have to suffer a little short term pain.
Speaker 3: Well, there are no choices.
Speaker 4: The matter is whether you suffer short term pain in
Speaker 4: a way that destroys and breaks the Republican majority for
Speaker 4: twenty twenty six, or if you suffer long term pain
Speaker 4: by not having to bother with future elections.
Speaker 3: Right, that's not perhaps not that that's a.
Speaker 4: Sub optible outcome in my view.
Speaker 3: I want to do two more seconds now.
Speaker 1: I actually think that there's a school of thought that
Speaker 1: is a little bit worrying, which is that these guys
Speaker 1: are such nihilists that they would actually relish a government
Speaker 1: shutdown because they want to break the federal government and
Speaker 1: they think a shutdown might help them do it.
Speaker 3: Again, I'm not sure. I'm just like, that's a devil's
Speaker 3: addicate question.
Speaker 4: No government shutdown has ever helped the party in.
Speaker 3: Power, right, No, for sure.
Speaker 1: Today The Times had a big piece about Chris Murphy
Speaker 1: and how effective he has been at producing a lot
Speaker 1: of content which people have seen. I sent this to
Speaker 1: a friend of mine who's the comms Democratic Comms, and
Speaker 1: the Democratic Comms person wrote back and said, I'm not
Speaker 1: one hundred percent with the message, and I was like,
Speaker 1: you fucking moron.
Speaker 4: Yes, the technical phrase you should be using is you
Speaker 4: fucking morons?
Speaker 3: Right? I was really impressed with what Chris did.
Speaker 1: And Jesse is now texting saying what Bernie has been
Speaker 1: saying for years. I know, yes, correct, And Bernie has
Speaker 1: been doing a really good job traveling around the country
Speaker 1: talking to people.
Speaker 6: Stand by for news. Yes, I agree with Jesse. Holy shit, no,
Speaker 6: I do.
Speaker 4: I think that there is a moment we're in right now,
Speaker 4: and people haven't utterly thought it all through yet, but
Speaker 4: there's a moment we're in it on this day in
Speaker 4: the Year of our Lord, that really has a chance
Speaker 4: to break loose some of the very deeply solidified bullshit
Speaker 4: on the right because the consequences are actually real for
Speaker 4: people now and that oh my god, my cousin, my friend,
Speaker 4: my neighbor is losing their job or I'm losing my
Speaker 4: job over this. I thought they were going to get
Speaker 4: the DEI people out not me. I thought it was
Speaker 4: the black people going to be fired, not me. And
Speaker 4: the size of the federal government actually matters in this case.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of federal government. There's a whole lot
Speaker 4: of it, and these people that thought this was going
Speaker 4: to be painless and consequence free are in the throes
Speaker 4: of the finding out. Rick Wilson as always a pleasure.
Speaker 4: My friend.
Speaker 1: Michael Waldman is the President and CEO of the Brennan
Speaker 1: Center for NYU School of Law.
Speaker 3: Welcome back to Fast Politics, Michael.
Speaker 5: It's great to be here in this interesting time in
Speaker 5: which we live.
Speaker 1: It's funny because it's like here we are in this
Speaker 1: moment where Republicans in Congress have really just beclowned themselves
Speaker 1: even more than usual. But it does feel like there
Speaker 1: have been some incredible moments in the courts.
Speaker 3: And I would love you to first talk.
Speaker 1: Us through this most recent decision with the mayor and
Speaker 1: Trump and what is going on.
Speaker 3: Just talk us through this.
Speaker 5: Well, the big picture is you're right that the trial courts,
Speaker 5: a lot of these judges are really stepping up, which
Speaker 5: is very encouraging. The New York City situation is an example.
Speaker 5: It's kind of an unusual one. As you know, Eric
Speaker 5: Adams was indicted for corruption. And the question is not
Speaker 5: whether it actually thought the case was on the week,
Speaker 5: to be perfectly honest, but he was indicted for corruption.
Speaker 5: He spent a lot of energy going to Mura Lago,
Speaker 5: sucking up to Trump trying to finagle a pardon. Instead
Speaker 5: Trump's Justice department, his defense lawyer who's acting in charge
Speaker 5: of the Justice Department for a lot of this.
Speaker 1: Oh wait, wait, wait, is a mule Bove actually the
Speaker 1: defense lawyer of Mayor Adams?
Speaker 3: Two?
Speaker 5: No, he's the defense lawyer of Trump. Right, No, No,
Speaker 5: adams defense lawyer is Elin Musk's lawyer.
Speaker 1: Oh excellent. It's important for everyone to have the same lawyers.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, you know, you got to keep up with
Speaker 5: this season of suits or whatever. But they said, we're
Speaker 5: not wrapping the charges. In fact, we don't care whether
Speaker 5: the troupe, We don't know if the charges were valid,
Speaker 5: and we don't care. We're going to hang them over
Speaker 5: your head so that you'll cooperate with us on immigration
Speaker 5: and other things like that. And they made Adams Trump's poodle.
Speaker 5: And there was this deeply embarrassing thing where home and
Speaker 5: the border securities or trotted Adams around on Fox and Friends.
Speaker 3: Yes, we saw it. Talk about it though.
Speaker 5: Was so condescending to him. Can you imagine Julianius mayor
Speaker 5: Michael Bloomberg or coch or any of these mayors putting
Speaker 5: up with this. This is New York. And Adams giggled along.
Speaker 5: And anyway, as you know, the prosecutors, including acting head
Speaker 5: of the Southern District of New York Federal Prosecutors, which
Speaker 5: is a very legendarily independent body, she resigned, and the
Speaker 5: Thelliant prosecutors resigned and they are all died in the
Speaker 5: Wold Federalist Society. Conservatives. These are not squishes, these are.
Speaker 3: Not we're talking about to soon here, right right.
Speaker 5: And she was a you know, I think she was
Speaker 5: an Alito clerk or Scalia clerk. She was on the
Speaker 5: fast track. It was a gutsy thing she did, because
Speaker 5: she didn't just resign. She said, I was in a
Speaker 5: meeting where basically the Quippro quote was arranged and you
Speaker 5: confiscated all our notes, and it was quite an accusation. Anyway,
Speaker 5: it all went before the judge in the case, who's
Speaker 5: a judge named Dale Hoe. Judge Hoe may have been
Speaker 5: on your show. For all I know, he was the
Speaker 5: head of the voting team at the ACLU until he
Speaker 5: was on the federal bench. He's arguing a number of
Speaker 5: important cases and successfully in front of the Supreme Court.
Speaker 5: He heard the Justice Department and Adams's lawyers the other
Speaker 5: day both said, oh, this was fine, there was no
Speaker 5: corrupt deal here. So what he did on Friday was
Speaker 5: he said, that's not good enough. I'm appointing a lawyer
Speaker 5: to argue for why the case shouldn't be dropped, in
Speaker 5: other words, to argue why this is a real problem.
Speaker 5: And the lawyer he chose was a guy named Paul Clement. Now,
Speaker 5: in the legal world, I mean I was kind of
Speaker 5: looking at the news cover shouldn't It was like, you know,
Speaker 5: judge orders lawyer. In the legal world, this is big news.
Speaker 5: He is the leading conservative Republican litigator in front of
Speaker 5: the Supreme Court. He is somebody who people he was
Speaker 5: the Solicitor General. He is somebody who people assumed might
Speaker 5: be on the Supreme Court someday. Maybe Trump isn't going
Speaker 5: to be so interested in that anymore. And he's taken
Speaker 5: on this job of arguing, no, you shouldn't drop the
Speaker 5: case and so in the legal world, the fact that
Speaker 5: it's Paul Clement, it suggests that at least some you know,
Speaker 5: I think we're seeing this phenomenon where all the law breaking,
Speaker 5: all the antics, all the constitutional violations, so many of
Speaker 5: the people in and around government know it's bad, so
Speaker 5: many of them are afraid to speak up. This prosecutor
Speaker 5: was not afraid, and that Clement took this on, you know,
Speaker 5: is another sign that it's only one month in, but
Speaker 5: political reality has not been repealed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the courts continue to be really the only check.
Speaker 1: We saw a sort of situation where the courts were
Speaker 1: providing a check on a lot of the real corrupt
Speaker 1: stuff that this admin wants to do. What we're edging towards,
Speaker 1: which I want you to talk us through, is a
Speaker 1: constitutional crisis where they ignore the court or we're already
Speaker 1: seeing shades of that.
Speaker 3: How do we get here on? How do we get
Speaker 3: out of it?
Speaker 5: So the courts, many courts have stepped up. It's important
Speaker 5: that we remember these are the trial judges and that
Speaker 5: the higher up these cases go to the US Supreme Court.
Speaker 5: We need to remember that as a very ideological, often
Speaker 5: very partisan court, this is the same Supreme court that
Speaker 5: gave Trump to all presents vast immunity from prosecution for lawbreaking.
Speaker 5: So I think the courts are doing an important thing here.
Speaker 5: We want them to do the important thing. I don't
Speaker 5: think they are the only check, but I think we
Speaker 5: need them to do their job, and many of them
Speaker 5: have done that. The response to the rulings, and you know,
Speaker 5: they've ruled that birthright citizenship is in the Constitution. They've
Speaker 5: ruled that in a bunch of different cases that the
Speaker 5: Elon Musk crew and you know, the in cels who
Speaker 5: are going in and rummaging through all these federal agencies,
Speaker 5: that they can't do that, that they have to follow rules.
Speaker 5: They've ruled that a number of the firings of independent
Speaker 5: agency heads or of the Inspectors General and other people
Speaker 5: are illegally. These are basic constitutional checks and balances or
Speaker 5: laws that are being upheld. Elon Musk and JD. Vance
Speaker 5: responded by saying, well, why should we have to follow
Speaker 5: court orders? And that's actually something Vance has said over
Speaker 5: the years.
Speaker 3: The irony here is said JD.
Speaker 1: Vans went to Yale Law school, so if he knows anything, it's.
Speaker 5: That, well, maybe they teach that there. I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 5: But what's interesting is Trump felt compelled to say, oh, no,
Speaker 5: of course, we're going to follow court orders. That's because
Speaker 5: it really would be quite extraordinary and a constitutional crisis
Speaker 5: of sorts for a president to just say, oh, I
Speaker 5: don't like the court order, I'm not going to follow it.
Speaker 5: Following court orders is something presidents have done for one
Speaker 5: hundred and fifty years, basically since the Civil War. There's
Speaker 5: a little bit of complexity here. For example, a number
Speaker 5: of the courts or ordered them to not freeze all
Speaker 5: the funding for this program or that program, or all
Speaker 5: the federal grants or all the federal loans, and they said, oh, yeah,
Speaker 5: we're following that. We're going to heel, which is what
Speaker 5: you're supposed to do if you have a court ruling
Speaker 5: you don't like a lot of times, the money doesn't
Speaker 5: get turned back on. This bigot is non Now is
Speaker 5: that a quiet contempt of the court rulings? Is it
Speaker 5: that it's actually hard to turn the federal government on
Speaker 5: and off like a toggle switch? We don't know. This
Speaker 5: is also something that other presidents have done, sort of
Speaker 5: edged around complying with these individual judges. The bigger crisis
Speaker 5: would come if the Supreme Court made a ruling and
Speaker 5: Trump said, the hell with you.
Speaker 1: It's vance has been musing. I just want to drill
Speaker 1: down on this for one second. Does this mean that JD.
Speaker 1: Vans is actually kind of more anti democratic than Donald Trump?
Speaker 5: At the very least plays around with authoritarian, highly right
Speaker 5: wing language and ideas more than Trump has. In other words,
Speaker 5: very much embracing the idea of basically, things are so
Speaker 5: messed up in society, we need to be willing to
Speaker 5: have dictators court. You know, we don't have to listen
Speaker 5: to the corts. This is sort of an alt right
Speaker 5: idea of what edgy ideas are. He's sort of dabbled
Speaker 5: in that stuff even when he was just a kind
Speaker 5: of punt it before he was the Cenator. Remember, he's
Speaker 5: only been in office for two years, and you know,
Speaker 5: who knows what he really believed. This carily wasn't what
Speaker 5: he was saying eight years ago when he was an
Speaker 5: anti Trump writer.
Speaker 3: Right when he was writing for The Atlantic and anti Trump.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but there's a kind of a school of thought
Speaker 5: that thinks that even originalism and a lot of these
Speaker 5: other things the Federalist Society have been working on for
Speaker 5: years and years that that's not right wing enough, that
Speaker 5: you really need a kind of Christian nationalist jurisprudence and
Speaker 5: legal system that is trying to impose morality, impose a
Speaker 5: certain kind of vision of morality on the whole country.
Speaker 5: So we care a lot. I care a lot run
Speaker 5: the Brendan Center. We care a lot about making sure
Speaker 5: that the federal courts are followed. And that has been
Speaker 5: really important throughout the country's history. It's how the civil
Speaker 5: rights laws were enforced over very rare, calcil trend racist
Speaker 5: state governments, you know, in the nineteen fifties and the
Speaker 5: nineteen sixties. Presidents don't really like following these court rulings
Speaker 5: very often. I mean, I work for a president in
Speaker 5: some White House seats always like following those rulings by
Speaker 5: any means. But they do it because they know how
Speaker 5: important it is. There's a little bit of complexity.
Speaker 1: Remember Judge Kasmeric, Yeah, Matthew Kizmerck from Texas's Amarillo.
Speaker 3: It's the one judge in that district.
Speaker 5: Right And there's a lot of problems in the federal
Speaker 5: courts right now where basically you can find a judge
Speaker 5: to agree with you. It's called, not surprisingly judge shopping
Speaker 5: and if you want to bring a right wing case,
Speaker 5: go to Amillo, Texas. And Judge Kasmerick, for example, was
Speaker 5: the one who ruled that methapristoe, the medical abortion drug
Speaker 5: that has been approved by the FDA a quarter century ago,
Speaker 5: and it's been very successfully that they had done it
Speaker 5: all wrong and that it was now illegal. And a
Speaker 5: lot of us at the time said, there's a problem with,
Speaker 5: as I put it at the time, a judge with
Speaker 5: a gamble and a grudge, you know, making a ruling
Speaker 5: like that for the whole country. And we knew then
Speaker 5: that liberals do bring these cases and conservatives do too,
Speaker 5: and so it's probably not a good system that one
Speaker 5: judge maybe can make this kind of ruling for the
Speaker 5: whole country. At least there's an argument around that. But
Speaker 5: what you have to do is you appeal the ruling.
Speaker 5: You don't just say, oh, we're not going to do it.
Speaker 5: But what I want to remind my fellow liberals about,
Speaker 5: we have a very big set of fights in front
Speaker 5: of the Supreme Court coming up. Some of these cases
Speaker 5: that are going to get there. For example, Trump on
Speaker 5: the first day tried to by executive order and birthright citizenship.
Speaker 3: The fourteenth Amendment.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, And that's the idea that if you're born
Speaker 5: in the United States physically your citizen. That's literally in
Speaker 5: the Constitution. It's why they wrote the fourteenth was that.
Speaker 5: And I think even the Supreme Court will rule Trump
Speaker 5: can't do that. There are other cases coming up where
Speaker 5: I think the very right wing supermajority in the Supreme
Speaker 5: Court can't wait to rule with Trump. Thinking about what
Speaker 5: the ability, for example, to fire independent agency commissioners, which
Speaker 5: Trump is doing with a bunch of different things that
Speaker 5: involves a case called Humphrey's Executor from the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 5: They can't wait to overturn that. They were trying to
Speaker 5: overtrain that when Trump was still a liberal Democrat. I'm
Speaker 5: going to the Playboy managers. They were trying to overturn that.
Speaker 5: Where I think it's really important that they step up
Speaker 5: and where I have a lot of nervousness about it,
Speaker 5: or on some of these very basic cases having to
Speaker 5: do with what the power of Congress and what Elon
Speaker 5: Musk is doing. The idea that if you're going to
Speaker 5: have a system of checks and balances, the idea that
Speaker 5: even puts out that he's the wealthiest person in the world,
Speaker 5: that one presidential aid can go in with no authorization
Speaker 5: from Congress and just stop the spending, shut down programs,
Speaker 5: with no laws being passed. That upends the constitution that
Speaker 5: makes the president of king or dictator. And that's what
Speaker 5: a lot of these cases are about. And that's where
Speaker 5: a lot of cases in front of the Supreme Court
Speaker 5: will be. And so I think we all need to
Speaker 5: be shouting from the rooftops that they need to do
Speaker 5: the right thing and do their job. I would say,
Speaker 5: given the configuration of this court, it's going to be
Speaker 5: case by case.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think Komi and Roberts are not rubber stamps for
Speaker 1: the real badg hit staff, but everything else I think
Speaker 1: there's a real chance they're.
Speaker 3: Able to do.
Speaker 5: Yeah. And you know, she's interesting. She didn't know that
Speaker 5: much about her Let they put her in the court.
Speaker 3: No they didn't, Thank god.
Speaker 5: She's the one with the greatest potential for cutting her
Speaker 5: own intellectual path.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she's very smart.
Speaker 5: Kavanaugh tends to follow the political needs of the party
Speaker 5: that put him in power, and he's a very strong
Speaker 5: supporter of a strong presidency. Roberts, you know, a lot
Speaker 5: of people said about Roberts, Oh, he's an institutionalist. He's
Speaker 5: above all trying to preserve the credibility of the Supreme Court.
Speaker 5: Occasionally he would make rulings where he didn't even agree
Speaker 5: with really the outcome, but he knew it would be
Speaker 5: really bad for the Supreme Court injecting it into politics
Speaker 5: to make the rulings. But then again, he did this
Speaker 5: ruling on presidential immunity that was so much worse than
Speaker 5: people expected, so much worse than it could have been.
Speaker 5: And according to coverage by Jodi Kant and Adam Liptak
Speaker 5: in the New York Times, the liberals in the court said,
Speaker 5: let's work together. We can make this the unanimous ruling
Speaker 5: to limit presidential prosecutions. And he said, no, I want
Speaker 5: to work just for the conservatives. He can go jump
Speaker 5: in a lake. And so I wouldn't assume John Roberts
Speaker 5: is the John Roberts of liberals dreams.
Speaker 1: No, No, I don't think so either. But I do
Speaker 1: think all is not lost, Like there's a lot of
Speaker 1: room between. All is not lost, and this is going
Speaker 1: to be okay, right.
Speaker 5: I think the laws of political gravity have not been repealed.
Speaker 5: The laws of reality have not been repealed. The impact
Speaker 5: of all the craziness on the stock market, on tariffs,
Speaker 5: on the economy, inflation, all of those things are real.
Speaker 5: And I think that these court rulings, first of all,
Speaker 5: they're very important. In twenty seventeen, it's pretty interesting. In
Speaker 5: twenty seventeen, I really thought that it was the Women's
Speaker 5: March that set the tone, that encouraged and empowered the
Speaker 5: judges back then to stand up this time. You know,
Speaker 5: you've heard so much doom and gloom and oh, there's
Speaker 5: nothing anybody can do. There's nothing anybody can do. This time,
Speaker 5: it's a lot of the judges who were the first
Speaker 5: ones to stand up. And three days into the term,
Speaker 5: a Reagan judge judge appointed by Ronald Reagan, said about
Speaker 5: the birthright citizenship thing, so this is flavorly and constitutional
Speaker 5: and question basically the law license of the lawyer who
Speaker 5: was arguing the case in front of them. You know,
Speaker 5: I think that should give the rest of us, and
Speaker 5: some of the people in Congress, some of the Republicans
Speaker 5: in Congress, some courage. Here. If people believe something for
Speaker 5: their whole lives, they don't have to chuck those views
Speaker 5: aside just because Donald Trump is present.
Speaker 3: Thank you, thank you, thank you, Michael.
Speaker 5: Thank you. Interesting times, no momentle fuck.
Speaker 4: Rick Wilson, Molly jong Fast.
Speaker 1: If you have a child with Elon Musk, do you
Speaker 1: know how you can communicate with him?
Speaker 4: There's a large audience for this. I mean, we know
Speaker 4: of thirteen. It could be a much larger pool of people.
Speaker 4: I don't know how many it could be. But every
Speaker 4: time you go out on a date with Elon ladies
Speaker 4: and he says, let's do kennymine that make a baby
Speaker 4: in a laboratory, you should try to get something up
Speaker 4: upfront on paper.
Speaker 1: Again, Rick is kidding because he doesn't know what Elon does.
Speaker 3: That said.
Speaker 1: I would think you could do a DM and not
Speaker 1: an actual tweet. But it turns out that if you
Speaker 1: have had a child with Elon Musk and you need
Speaker 1: to get his attention, the way to do it is
Speaker 1: to tweet to him, Dear Elon, our child is dot
Speaker 1: d dert or I'm suing you for debt because that
Speaker 1: is really the only way to get his attention.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this week, both Grimes a baby mama of two
Speaker 4: of his babies, three three of his babies. Excuse me,
Speaker 4: Jesse and Ashley something or another.
Speaker 3: Some conservative influencer. She rolled off the MAGA also a
Speaker 3: writer quote unquote, is.
Speaker 5: She now.
Speaker 4: Rolled off the MAGA influencer production line somewhere? I mean
Speaker 4: the other part of this, This is the party of
Speaker 4: Christian Values. This is the part of the pro life party.
Speaker 4: And you know, I'm sorry. At some point, guys, just
Speaker 4: put his statue icons in your Twitter avatar of Roman
Speaker 4: generals does not make you a man.
Speaker 3: Speak for yourself.
Speaker 4: Just being a rich dipshit elon does not make you
Speaker 4: a man. Taking care of your family that would be
Speaker 4: the definition of making you man.
Speaker 3: Oh Man Mars, I can't get.
Speaker 4: That first rocket to Mars. He is welcome to go.
Speaker 4: I encourage it. Rick Wilson, my Jung Fast the pleasure
Speaker 4: as always, my friend.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
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Speaker 3: Thanks for listening.