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 according to a new KFF Health
Speaker 1: Tracker poll, about seven and ten adults that's seventy two
Speaker 1: percent are worried about a significant reduction in federal funding
Speaker 1: for Medicaid, which would lead to an increased share of
Speaker 1: uninsured children and adults in the United States. That's all
Speaker 1: hidden in the big, beautiful bullshit bill. We have such
Speaker 1: a great show for you today. The Lincoln Project's own
Speaker 1: Rick Wilson joins us to talk about Trump weaponizing the
Speaker 1: National Guard against protesters. Then we'll talk to David A.
Speaker 1: Graham about his new book, The Project. How Project twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five is Reshaping America. But first the news.
Speaker 2: Mai, So, David Hog callsed quite a stirred side the
Speaker 2: DNC for wanting to not have people who die in
Speaker 2: office constantly being we're sleeping open seats and diminishing our majority.
Speaker 2: And there's a weaked audio of DNC chair Ken Martin
Speaker 2: basically saying that what David Hogg did there supposedly has
Speaker 2: poisoned his enjoyment of the job, and he does not
Speaker 2: want to be there anymore. This seems bad at a
Speaker 2: time when we have our authoritarian presidents sending in the
Speaker 2: National Guard to California and we really need an opposition party.
Speaker 1: So here's the problem. Okay, the Democratic National Committee is
Speaker 1: an impossible situation. You have a base that is furious,
Speaker 1: largely agrees with David Hogg, wants democratic politicians really taking
Speaker 1: a new playbook. Remember Democrats ran on the idea that
Speaker 1: democracy was on the ballot. Trump is doing all sorts
Speaker 1: of anti democratic things. They want, they're elected members of
Speaker 1: Congress and senators to be absolutely pushing back in every
Speaker 1: way they can. But if you're the chair of the
Speaker 1: Democratic National Committee, you are trying to protect incumbents, right,
Speaker 1: That's part of what they do, and also quell this
Speaker 1: rage from the base. It's a very tough position. But
Speaker 1: let me tell you, Ken Martin was put in this
Speaker 1: job by state party chairs, so he has a relationship
Speaker 1: with the democratic state parties. This means that he really
Speaker 1: is a person who is involved in this sort of
Speaker 1: democratic machine. If he's smart, he will figure out a
Speaker 1: way to absorb the base's rage and channel that into
Speaker 1: more better leadership. Because there's money to raise from that.
Speaker 1: The problem is if he is too connected to trying
Speaker 1: to protect incumbents, that's going to be a real problem
Speaker 1: for him. This is a very very very very bad
Speaker 1: moment to be the DMC chair. That's just it. I mean,
Speaker 1: is he the right man for the job. They don't
Speaker 1: know enough about him. But the point is, and again
Speaker 1: here is I think a real tell. Right here in
Speaker 1: the recording, an emotional Martin describes being deeply frustrated by
Speaker 1: the fallout over Hog, who has ignited a firestorm in
Speaker 1: the party by vowing to spend twenty million in safe
Speaker 1: blue primaries to oust incumbent democrats he believes are ineffective. Look,
Speaker 1: I don't think you need to squash that necessarily, especially
Speaker 1: because some of these Democrats are not effective. But the
Speaker 1: reality is this is going to be a major, major,
Speaker 1: super important midterm where we really need to focus on
Speaker 1: Democrats winning back the House. So if that means primary
Speaker 1: one or two very old members of Congress who are
Speaker 1: not showing up for votes, that's one thing. But I
Speaker 1: don't know, this is almost a situation where Martin's response
Speaker 1: is kind of worse than the crime. And you got
Speaker 1: to remember somebody's leaking this yep.
Speaker 2: And it was pretty funny because David Hogg did screenshots
Speaker 2: showing that he did not return the reporter's requests for
Speaker 2: this try.
Speaker 1: To show it that it wasn't him.
Speaker 2: And then Malcolm Kenyada, who's also a part of the DNC,
Speaker 2: kind of called.
Speaker 1: Bull other vice chair, yeah.
Speaker 2: Called bullshit on it. So we have a lot of
Speaker 2: drama where we really need to be united pushing this back.
Speaker 2: So this is concerning, but it's also a fight we
Speaker 2: have to solve, right.
Speaker 1: It's clearly something we have to solve now. I do
Speaker 1: want to say Malcolm Kenyata is pretty great and I'm
Speaker 1: a little bit friendly with him, and he's quite smart.
Speaker 1: I have a lot of respect for him.
Speaker 2: Agreed, and be honest with you.
Speaker 1: I like all involved, But yeah, I don't know Ken Martin,
Speaker 1: but I like David too.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 2: So the Washing Post has a report that says the
Speaker 2: Trump administrations weighing how they cancel funding for California. We've
Speaker 2: discussed the stupidity of this before, but for the listeners
Speaker 2: who may have forgot, I think you have some very
Speaker 2: succinct thoughts on how disastrous this would be for Trump
Speaker 2: and his administration.
Speaker 1: So fourth largest economy, you stop giving them money, they
Speaker 1: stop giving you money. Literally, the best thing Donald Trump
Speaker 1: could ever do to Gavin Newsom is say, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to give you any more federal money. Because you
Speaker 1: know who pays the most federal money. The fourth largest
Speaker 1: economy in the world is California. So if you go
Speaker 1: into a pissing match with someone who desperately wants to
Speaker 1: be president, why there's no incentive for him not to
Speaker 1: just escalate and escalate and escalate, and you stop getting
Speaker 1: money federal money from California. The rest country's got a
Speaker 1: big fucking problem. I think this is a disaster for
Speaker 1: Trump is I want to add, this is so trumpy.
Speaker 1: They're looking for a reason to cut off the money, right,
Speaker 1: so they have the punishment but not the crime. As
Speaker 1: I want to mention that in this article it talks
Speaker 1: about how once Donald Trump is donely California, you know
Speaker 1: who's coming for please tell me Main and you know
Speaker 1: why because Maine has three trans athletes. Okay, I don't
Speaker 1: know if it's three, maybe it's five, but I mean
Speaker 1: it's some, you know, vanishingly small number. And I think
Speaker 1: it's important to realize you cannot appease this man. If
Speaker 1: you let him bully you, you lose, and you keep losing.
Speaker 1: And by the way, all weekend long, we saw more
Speaker 1: and more universities joining Harvard. You know why, because they
Speaker 1: see what's happening to Columbia. Just like those law firms
Speaker 1: that bend in the need for Trump, those guys losing
Speaker 1: clients because you know what happens when you bend the
Speaker 1: need of Trump. Trump just takes takes takes, so you
Speaker 1: cannot appease. And that's really something that the people at
Speaker 1: ABC should be thinking about one hundred percent.
Speaker 2: So I have a theory of the case. I'm curious
Speaker 2: what you think of, which is that one of the
Speaker 2: things that Democrats have missed an opportunity to run on
Speaker 2: is that Republicans constantly make bills like these trans bills,
Speaker 2: and now we have bills banning chemtrails that don't exist.
Speaker 2: Democrats need to say, we're trying to change your lives.
Speaker 2: They're trying making up fantasies that don't exist, and run
Speaker 2: against this because this is bullshit and people want bills
Speaker 2: that deliver and change their lives. What do you think.
Speaker 1: I think, yes, I think your thesis is correct. And
Speaker 1: I think, look, Republican, this is something they've been doing forever, right,
Speaker 1: fake bills to solve fake problems. Right, They're going to
Speaker 1: outlaw something that isn't real.
Speaker 2: Performative moronics is what we often called it.
Speaker 1: Right, performative moronics. So of course this is what's happening.
Speaker 1: And look, you have a health organization that's run by
Speaker 1: a guy who spent the weekend tanning. Okay, my man,
Speaker 1: he tends he swims in Rock Creek Park, he chews
Speaker 1: chewing tobacco. This is not a healthy person.
Speaker 2: You mean the high froth.
Speaker 1: I mean, what are we doing?
Speaker 4: Man?
Speaker 2: Somi. We had footage this weekend of tanks rolling into
Speaker 2: decent So unlike LA, this is for Trump's stupid parade.
Speaker 2: There's going to be counter protests to it all over
Speaker 2: America that I think our listeners might be interested in.
Speaker 2: Can you talk to us a little bit about this?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: So I just I did a reading in Princeton, New Jersey,
Speaker 1: at the library today, and what a lot of people
Speaker 1: talking about is a no King's Day. The idea is
Speaker 1: that Donald Trump has made himself a king. This is
Speaker 1: a two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the United States
Speaker 1: Military of the Army, but it happens to also be
Speaker 1: this same day as Donald Trump's birthday. The Navy and
Speaker 1: the Air Force don't get parades because they are not
Speaker 1: on the same day as Donald Trump's birthday. You know,
Speaker 1: Republicans are like, it's just a coincidence, it's for the army.
Speaker 5: It's not.
Speaker 1: Okay, it is not a coincidence. This is Trump doing
Speaker 1: authoritarian things. He's you know, I thought they were trying
Speaker 1: to save money. We know that having a insane group
Speaker 1: of tanks rolling through Washington, DC will not save anyone
Speaker 1: any money. It's just a complete None of us should
Speaker 1: be surprised by the performative moronics. And also, it really
Speaker 1: is the kind of thing that feels like a souloritarian
Speaker 1: want to be. Look, this is a guy who worships
Speaker 1: Victor orbon This is what you get when you worship
Speaker 1: Victor Orbona. Rick Wilson is the founder of the Lincoln
Speaker 1: Project and the host of the Enemy's List.
Speaker 3: Rick Wilson, OLLI, Jong, fast, have you been arrested this weekend?
Speaker 1: Not yet.
Speaker 3: A question I started asking people these days because you
Speaker 3: never can tell anymore.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about California. I want to just like
Speaker 1: mention something which is anecdotal and not reported, but I
Speaker 1: think important. A friend of mine who was in New
Speaker 1: York at the protests said that she found the police
Speaker 1: were trying there were there was a lot of them
Speaker 1: trying to get the protesters to act out.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I believe that. And I think that there is
Speaker 3: a degree to which Stephen Miller and Tom Holman and
Speaker 3: Christinoman the rest of these idiots they really really really
Speaker 3: want an excuse and Pete Hegseth, they really want an
Speaker 3: excuse to crackheads. Yeah, they want to. They want an
Speaker 3: excuse to start beating the hell out of people, and
Speaker 3: they want an excuse to say all Democrats believe in violence.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about protests because I want to like
Speaker 1: just talk about like protests throughout history, because one of
Speaker 1: the things we're seeing here is this is we're in
Speaker 1: these periods of these very rapid cycles of backlash to
Speaker 1: backlash to backlash. So I want to be cognizant of
Speaker 1: like where so for example, well, there are people who
Speaker 1: say that the nineteen sixties and the protests in the
Speaker 1: sixties opened the door to Nixon.
Speaker 3: Now I think you could absolutely make that case historically, by.
Speaker 1: The way, right, So I want to be cognizant of
Speaker 1: what's happening. That said, these protests are protests happening not
Speaker 1: because of something, but really because they because of extraordinary
Speaker 1: action from the Trump administration.
Speaker 3: Correct, this is not Vietnam. This is not so amorphous
Speaker 3: and so distant from people. This is happening in communities
Speaker 3: across this country right now. These are people, you know,
Speaker 3: that are being harmed by what DHS and Trump is doing.
Speaker 3: There's a reason they're not happy about it. It's because
Speaker 3: they shouldn't be. And you know, you're seeing some of
Speaker 3: these Republicans start to get very nervous, Like this morning
Speaker 3: in Florida, you had Salazar, a Republican congressperson from Miami,
Speaker 3: suddenly saying, Oh, I don't want all these people deported.
Speaker 3: They're good people. Oh oh are they? You might have
Speaker 3: mentioned that before your shill, but you know it is,
Speaker 3: but it is. This is larger and more organic and
Speaker 3: more dangerous for Trump. Then. I think that a lot
Speaker 3: of a lot of his allies have realized they look
Speaker 3: at this as Oh good, it's more Antifa going up
Speaker 3: against the cops. We always win that battle. I'm not
Speaker 3: sure you actually win this battle, because a lot of
Speaker 3: the people that are being affected by this have more
Speaker 3: ties into the communities that they're being expelled from than
Speaker 3: a lot of the Trump folks think.
Speaker 1: Well. I would also add, like Democrats sit around worrying
Speaker 1: about losing Hispanic voters, here's a really good way to
Speaker 1: lose Hispanic voters. Arrest them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, oh yeah, that's that's high them.
Speaker 1: To countries they haven't lived in in forty years.
Speaker 4: Or sending them to countries like Sudan.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Some of the stuff that.
Speaker 3: They're doing is so profoundly abusive, and in Florida in particular,
Speaker 3: they're now saying, Okay, well, we we hate communism so much,
Speaker 3: we have to send these people back to communist Cuba.
Speaker 3: We hate communism so much, we have to send these
Speaker 3: people back to Venezuela and in the Maduro regime. No interesting,
Speaker 3: interesting approach. Not what I would have thought of.
Speaker 1: Well, so here's the question. Then we have Steven Miller
Speaker 1: two weeks ago says I'd like to see more raids
Speaker 1: at the home depot.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 1: Today we see raids at the home depot in a
Speaker 1: Hispanic neighborhood in California. Stephen Miller comes from Santa Monica,
Speaker 1: has a certain hostility towards California. California fifth largest economy
Speaker 1: in the world. We see reporting the Trump administration trying
Speaker 1: to figure out ways to cut federal funds to California, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, this clearly is very intentional targeting.
Speaker 3: I think I think we could make a very strong
Speaker 3: case that a lot of the craziness that we're watching
Speaker 3: has to do with the pathologies of Stephen Miller's upbringing.
Speaker 3: And you and I have talked about, well, there is
Speaker 3: something wrong with that guy. There's something wrong with him
Speaker 3: at a really fundamental level, something broke in his childhood
Speaker 3: that we can't really understand, I guess, but he is
Speaker 3: a really, really messed up guy.
Speaker 1: And Jesse would the fact check California fourth largest economy.
Speaker 3: Well, there it is, right. I feel like there's a
Speaker 3: degree to which we have never had anybody like Steven
Speaker 3: Miller in the White House in a long time, in
Speaker 3: part because he is so quite obviously a broken individual.
Speaker 3: And this is like a this stuff is the acting
Speaker 3: out he's doing is so over the top and so dramatic,
Speaker 3: and so you know, I will or the beauty of
Speaker 3: the of the white race. Bullshit that it's ugly and
Speaker 3: it's terrible, but it's also vaguely intriguing, Like, how do
Speaker 3: you how do you psychoanalyze this guy? Because there's a
Speaker 3: lot wrong with this guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I also think there's this tension of
Speaker 1: Trump administration really wants you know, they've run on this
Speaker 1: white National List esque kind of racism.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: But now Trump has grown his coalition to include Latino
Speaker 1: He's grown his voting based with Latino men and black men.
Speaker 1: So if you're going to deport those people, there will
Speaker 1: be political consequences. Now, again, Trump is not running in
Speaker 1: the midterms. There's reporting that says he cares about the midterms.
Speaker 1: It's hard for me to imagine Trump caring about anyone
Speaker 1: who's not him.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I have a lot of trouble imagining Trump laying
Speaker 3: awake at night going, oh goodness, I wonder if if
Speaker 3: Mike Lawler is going to be okay, but you know.
Speaker 1: He doesn't want to get impeached again.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but you know what, if I were the Democrats,
Speaker 3: I wouldn't even mention impeachment right now. This is this
Speaker 3: is a guy who the criming is so extraordinary and
Speaker 3: so constant that you know, impeachment almost seems inadequate for it.
Speaker 3: I mean, this is a guy who quite literally every
Speaker 3: single day is involved in some some type or form
Speaker 3: of criminality that has never been imagined in the White
Speaker 3: House before. So, you know, I just I feel like
Speaker 3: I feel like it's it's a better argument in this
Speaker 3: point in the in the in the debate to tell
Speaker 3: the voters that you're going to have Donald Trump's cabinet
Speaker 3: members and the people he who work for him, and
Speaker 3: the people who are doing all this horrifying crap not
Speaker 3: only in America, but two Americans. They're they're going to
Speaker 3: hold him those people account. Well, you're going to have
Speaker 3: Christy Nome and Steven Miller and Tom Homan and and
Speaker 3: you know the rest of these nut jobs up in
Speaker 3: front of Congressional committees come next fall or come next
Speaker 3: spring and have fun. Because there's a sense of right
Speaker 3: now of immunity among the Trump world where nothing that
Speaker 3: Republicans can couldn't possibly lose Congress, and so they feel
Speaker 3: like they feel like nothing can go wrong.
Speaker 1: I think that's right. I do wonder though, as we
Speaker 1: look at this and we watch what's happening at this moment.
Speaker 1: There are going to be unintended consequences for Trump. Is
Speaker 1: like with the tariffs. So on Saturday, the steel tariffs
Speaker 1: came on. Now it is more expensive to buy steel
Speaker 1: if you want to manufacture in the United States. That said,
Speaker 1: if you want to bring in things that are made
Speaker 1: with steel, you don't necessarily have the same tariff structure.
Speaker 1: So again, yet another moment of unintended consequence.
Speaker 3: This administration is marked by a lot of not terribly
Speaker 3: smart people do things that they think will appeal to
Speaker 3: Trump's base. Yeah, and appeal to Trump and over and
Speaker 3: over again. As you just correctly pointed out, something like
Speaker 3: the these steel tariffs, it's one more layer of a
Speaker 3: really bad economic theory being applied unwisely by people who
Speaker 3: don't think things through. They have not thought any of
Speaker 3: this through at all. There's been no like, hmm, what
Speaker 3: could go.
Speaker 4: Wrong with this theory? When when a lot seems to
Speaker 4: go wrong with most of the things they do.
Speaker 1: All Elon's people want is for Trump and Eline to
Speaker 1: make peace because they know they're fucked right, Like David
Speaker 1: Sacks is like I poured all this money into.
Speaker 3: This and yep, so guys like David Sacks and and
Speaker 3: and the you know, the all in guys kind of
Speaker 3: nervousness is something to behold.
Speaker 1: I love it, Okay, So.
Speaker 3: I'm eating it up with a spoon.
Speaker 1: So ABC News reports on Friday, shortly after seven am,
Speaker 1: they called Trump. The journalist who calls him asks him
Speaker 1: about Musk. Trump says, you mean the man who has
Speaker 1: lost his mind? Right, He's not particularly interested quote unquote
Speaker 1: in talking to him right now.
Speaker 3: No, And I think I think one thing you're going
Speaker 3: to see here is like a lot of stuff in
Speaker 3: the in the Maga verse, they convinced themselves that the
Speaker 3: world looks one way and only that way, because you know,
Speaker 3: before this divorce, mommy and Daddy loved each.
Speaker 4: Other, right, and they.
Speaker 3: Were the super team and they were going to make
Speaker 3: the world. You know, they were those who was going
Speaker 3: to save seven trillion dollars the whatever random number. It was.
Speaker 3: That Musk represented a sort of new philosophical basis for
Speaker 3: the Republican Party on how they were going to handle things,
Speaker 3: and all of it was garbage, Yeah, every bility. It
Speaker 3: was just like h a fever dream. And so now
Speaker 3: you've got you know, guys like David Sachs, I can't.
Speaker 3: I think it was Stephen Colbert who said, like David
Speaker 3: Sachs desperately texting mommy to pick please pick me up
Speaker 3: from school?
Speaker 1: You know, well, I also just think, like David Zacks Trump,
Speaker 1: I think you see Elon being like, well, maybe we
Speaker 1: should make peace. But the reality is like Elon may
Speaker 1: be erratic, but Trump is a radic. Like Trump is
Speaker 1: not gonna be friends with him.
Speaker 3: Again, Let's remember this the four one of my one
Speaker 3: of my rules about Trump, the four things that motivate Trump,
Speaker 3: what makes him money, what keeps him in the spotlight.
Speaker 3: Sex used to be on the list more, but it's
Speaker 3: not as much now.
Speaker 1: Gradu turning seventy eight.
Speaker 3: Has something to do with it, and what humiliates people? Right,
Speaker 3: and now Elon is only in category four, right he
Speaker 3: And and you know, Michael Moritz, who's a big Silicon
Speaker 3: Valley guy, wrote a piece in the Financial Times today
Speaker 3: like basically saying to people who who thought they were
Speaker 3: getting like good things for Crypto and good things for
Speaker 3: the valley and good things for AI. He's like, if
Speaker 3: you guys just jumped in with Trump on this, you
Speaker 3: understand he's going to you know, completely f you and
Speaker 3: you know that's what Trump. I mean, part of the
Speaker 3: trust behavior is unclear to people at this late stage
Speaker 3: in the game.
Speaker 1: No, I agree, but it is. But it is unclear
Speaker 1: to people like those Latino voters voted for Trump even
Speaker 1: though the white people and some Latino people at the
Speaker 1: Republican National Convention were waving mass deportation now.
Speaker 3: Sometimes yeah, and look there there are there are two
Speaker 3: groups of people in this country that I think have
Speaker 3: been in the finding out box about Trump more than
Speaker 3: any other this year. A lot of those Arib Americans
Speaker 3: in Detroit, Michigan, Lacomb County who all said, we're going
Speaker 3: to teach Biden to lesson. We're going to show the
Speaker 3: Democratic Party that I've committed us on Israel from now on. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and we're gonna and we're gonna show. We're gonna show
Speaker 3: Killer Joe, you sure did good work. And now they're
Speaker 3: in a position where where you know, we have we
Speaker 3: have a country where if you were an African American,
Speaker 3: Trump looked at you as a prop, you know, as
Speaker 3: a stage prop, and if you're Hispanic, pretty much the
Speaker 3: same thing I heard from one point person around the
Speaker 3: campaign at one point that they never did anything with
Speaker 3: the air of American vote because they just couldn't believe
Speaker 3: it was actually happening, that anybody could be that stupid.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so that's pretty dark. So let's talk about
Speaker 1: what happens now. National Guard is in California. Not much
Speaker 1: for them to do now, pretty stupid. They've sent the
Speaker 1: National Guard to California before, during the Rodney King riot. Ye,
Speaker 1: there isn't really that's not what's happening here.
Speaker 3: This isn't really a an actual thing that calls for
Speaker 3: the for the inclusion or the use of federal military force.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that said, this is their cosplay. But they want
Speaker 4: some violence.
Speaker 5: They want violence.
Speaker 1: Now, we have seen a lot of stupid things that
Speaker 1: legislators have done to the Guard. For example, in New
Speaker 1: York City, the Guard is on our subway, have almost
Speaker 1: nothing to do there, but it's still you know, and
Speaker 1: so so it is something there is some precedent for it.
Speaker 1: But I think it's really important to remember that when
Speaker 1: you look at the Twitter account of one Stephen Miller,
Speaker 1: it's all this is an insurrection. This is an insurrection,
Speaker 1: this is the end of days. But what it looks
Speaker 1: like on the ground is people, people were pushing back,
Speaker 1: and now it's a little bit more, it's more subdued today.
Speaker 3: Look, I think I think we're seeing right now in
Speaker 3: Los Angeles a fairly understandable, explicable response to the very
Speaker 3: heavy handed nature of ICE, which is, you know, again,
Speaker 3: that is all Steven Miller. Every bit of that is
Speaker 3: Steven Miller's model for doing this. They want to bring
Speaker 3: in the heavily armed up, tooled up, tactical sort of
Speaker 3: idea so that they can provoke people to do something dumb.
Speaker 3: They want one person to push one cop so that,
Speaker 3: you know, Donald Trump can can do everything short of
Speaker 3: New King Los Angeles. It's really clear why they want
Speaker 3: to do it this way. It also is something that
Speaker 3: plays into the way their base works and thinks and
Speaker 3: looks and talks about everything. It's all Antifa, it's all
Speaker 3: a radical left wing conspiracy trying to destroy America. All
Speaker 3: these things are very like well known We've heard this
Speaker 3: song a lot of times. Let's put it that way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you know, I just want to point out
Speaker 1: one more time, between the Elon Trump trauma and the
Speaker 1: what's happening in California, there is a massive piece of
Speaker 1: legislation that has a lot of crap in it, a
Speaker 1: lot of crap. Now, some of it's gonna get shot
Speaker 1: down by a descent of parliamentarian. But there is also
Speaker 1: an opportunity here of Democrats are smart to push, push,
Speaker 1: push against his fucking bell on this app.
Speaker 3: Mollie, I could not agree with you more. It is
Speaker 3: a it is a moment that is rarely handed to
Speaker 3: this to the Democratic Party, where where all they have
Speaker 3: to do is take advantage of some basic luck.
Speaker 1: So let's talk if you were if you were working
Speaker 1: in Chuck Schumer's office right now, what would you do?
Speaker 3: Look, I would be doing well. First off, Yes, Line
Speaker 3: one in the in this thing is the parliamentarian. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that is. That is there's a lot of liquid, hot
Speaker 3: garbage in this thing that cannot survive. But round two
Speaker 3: is you got time now to talk about what this
Speaker 3: is going to do to real people and to voters
Speaker 3: in these in these in these Republican districts. And right
Speaker 3: now I haven't heard the Democrats aggressively doing that, to
Speaker 3: my mind enough, But they've got a moment here where
Speaker 3: they can start outlining the harm of this bill, they
Speaker 3: can start outlining the things that are in it. That
Speaker 3: are the stinkers that they that the Republicans all claim.
Speaker 3: I never had a chance to read.
Speaker 1: That, right, I didn't see the judis, but but I wonder.
Speaker 3: It's like what I said that I joked. I was like, oh, well,
Speaker 3: I didn't know that the throwing puppies in the wood
Speaker 3: Chipper bill would mean we would throw puppies in the
Speaker 3: wood chipper, right.
Speaker 1: The refusal to regulate AI, to not allow states to
Speaker 1: regulate AI, to put that for a decade, I mean
Speaker 1: insane lawmaking at every point. Here's the other thing I want.
Speaker 3: Decade from now, Molly, the robot overlords will have destroyed
Speaker 3: us all at this point.
Speaker 1: Well, and it's also but it's also I think a
Speaker 1: really important point, which is like right now, Elon Musk
Speaker 1: has said this bill is a no go. That is
Speaker 1: the biggest Republican donor. So you you know, if John
Speaker 1: Thune wants to go to war with the money for
Speaker 1: the Republican Party, bring it on.
Speaker 3: And look as Trump Trump tried to threaten Elon today
Speaker 3: with that whole like the very serious consequences if he
Speaker 3: does anything, gives up give money to other people. I'm thinking,
Speaker 3: you know, first off, yes, thank you very much for
Speaker 3: the once again reminding us that the Free Speech Party
Speaker 3: is anything but. And secondly, you know this is this
Speaker 3: is a pretty hollow threat. If klon Musk wants to
Speaker 3: spend his money, He's going to spend his damn money.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: And again, as you said, I strongly encourage Elon to
Speaker 3: pursue every possible rem to the harm that's been done
Speaker 3: to him, because.
Speaker 1: Yeah, heartily, heartily, heartily gray. David A. Graham is a
Speaker 1: writer at the Atlantic and the author of the project
Speaker 1: How Project twenty twenty five is Reshaping America.
Speaker 5: Welcome to Fast Politics, David.
Speaker 6: Graham, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: I think we should talk about this book you wrote
Speaker 1: about Project twenty twenty five, because the thing that I'm
Speaker 1: struck by and I feel like I'm going crazy because
Speaker 1: every day I'll be like, oh, yeah, this was in
Speaker 1: Project twenty twenty five.
Speaker 5: Oh this, this was.
Speaker 1: In Project twenty two. Like I was actually talking to
Speaker 1: someone political this morning who's a straight news reporter. We
Speaker 1: were like debating whether or not Trump is tireder than
Speaker 1: he once was, and he was like, well, he's gotten
Speaker 1: a ton done in the first hundred days, and I
Speaker 1: was like, yes, everything from Project twenty twenty five.
Speaker 6: Yes, totally. I have the same experience. I keep seeing headlines,
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, that's the that's there, just over and over
Speaker 6: every day.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: You read it the South and was like and were like,
Speaker 1: oh fuck, and then just wrote a book about it.
Speaker 6: I mean I read bits and pieces last summer, and
Speaker 6: then I actually didn't read I didn't sit down to
Speaker 6: read all through as one thing until after the election,
Speaker 6: and then read it really fast.
Speaker 1: And then you were like, oh fuck, what I like
Speaker 1: about it? And I haven't read the whole thing cover
Speaker 1: to cover. Is it a thousand pages? It's pretty big, right, Yeah.
Speaker 6: I think at the nine hundred and twenty two give us.
Speaker 1: The whole like elevator pitch about it, just for those
Speaker 1: who have not been who can sleep at night.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 6: So in twenty twenty two, the Heritage Foundation asked Paul Danz,
Speaker 6: who had been in the first Trump administration in a
Speaker 6: kind of low level position, to put together a bunch
Speaker 6: of contributors and have a plan for the next conservative president.
Speaker 6: And so they got seventy people, a bunch of them
Speaker 6: former Trump administration members, think tankers, conservative wonks, that sort
Speaker 6: of group, all from kind of across the whole MAGA, right,
Speaker 6: And they put together this plan for what they would
Speaker 6: do department by department and also how they would do it,
Speaker 6: and they produced this document. They put it online in
Speaker 6: September twenty twenty three. You know, as we're saying, it's
Speaker 6: been kind of the blueprint for how Trump is operated.
Speaker 6: And I think the thing that is notable about it
Speaker 6: is not just the things that they said they wanted
Speaker 6: to do, which is what I had been aware of,
Speaker 6: you know, last summer, but how carefully they laid out
Speaker 6: plans to do it, and in particularly the way they
Speaker 6: want to seize power for the president and take over
Speaker 6: powers that belonged to Congress or to other parts of
Speaker 6: the executive branch.
Speaker 1: My favorite part of the whole story, and by favorite,
Speaker 1: I mean, oh, my fucking god, was when everyone was like,
Speaker 1: he's going to do Project twenty twenty five. Because they're
Speaker 1: saying he's going to do Project twenty twenty five, and
Speaker 1: in the introduction is like, I'm doing Project twenty five five,
Speaker 1: and then Trump comes out and it's like, no, I'm not.
Speaker 1: I don't know anything about it, and everyone's like, oh, okay, yeah.
Speaker 6: It's amazing that it flew at all. I mean, these
Speaker 6: people are straight from his administration. I think about somebody
Speaker 6: like Russ Vote, who was the head of OMB in
Speaker 6: the first administration, ran his policy committee at the RNC
Speaker 6: in twenty twenty four and is now back at LMB.
Speaker 6: Never plausible at.
Speaker 5: All, never even and everyone was like, oh, okay.
Speaker 1: The thing that I got from it was a great
Speaker 1: expansion of presidential powers, creating a world in which each branch,
Speaker 1: like the DOJ, which used to be a separate entity,
Speaker 1: would really be an arm of the president'sy. We are
Speaker 1: seeing that so clearly with Air Force one Gate. I
Speaker 1: wonder if you could talk about that mechanism, which is
Speaker 1: that I feel like is one of the many new
Speaker 1: things in this.
Speaker 6: Yeah, there's a bunch of these things. And it's a
Speaker 6: mix of like blowing through informal guidelines or rules that
Speaker 6: existed that weren't laws, and then in some cases going
Speaker 6: right through laws, or trying to get the Supreme Court
Speaker 6: to approve overturning laws.
Speaker 1: Right or using laws that everybody had forgotten about because
Speaker 1: they were so stupid and insane.
Speaker 6: Exactly, or applying them in ways that no one had
Speaker 6: anticipated exactly. So the big things I think are one, yeah,
Speaker 6: taking over the Justice Department, which you know they point
Speaker 6: out it's the attorney general is appointed. But there've always
Speaker 6: been rules that not always there have been long been
Speaker 6: rules that insulated DJs, so there weren't abuses and their headituties.
Speaker 6: That is bad right where they've been, you know, firing
Speaker 6: civil servants in violation of the law. They want to
Speaker 6: convert civil servants to political appointments so they can fire
Speaker 6: them and also tell them what they want to do.
Speaker 6: They want to seize control of the independent regulatory agencies,
Speaker 6: so you know, the FCC, the FEC, so on and
Speaker 6: so forth. We've seen them trying to fire people in
Speaker 6: those positions in obvious violation of the law, and those
Speaker 6: are now in lawsuits. And then also there is the
Speaker 6: attempt to impound funds so to basically take the power
Speaker 6: of the purse away from Congress. So all of that
Speaker 6: combines to make a much more powerful presidency.
Speaker 5: Right, the imperial presidency.
Speaker 1: What I like so much about this is that since
Speaker 1: they do this thing where you say what they want
Speaker 1: to create an imperial presidency and they go yeah, mm hmm,
Speaker 1: like instead of being like, no, we don't want to
Speaker 1: do that they're like, yeah.
Speaker 6: I mean it's a to me that they just put
Speaker 6: this all online in summer of twenty twenty three. Here's
Speaker 6: our playbook, here's what we are going to do, and
Speaker 6: then they've done it. Well, you know, we can't say
Speaker 6: we weren't warned exactly.
Speaker 1: So what I like also about Project twenty twenty five
Speaker 1: is like everybody has a peccadillo, because these are highly
Speaker 1: aggrieved people who feel that they have never gotten their due, right.
Speaker 1: I feel like the entire trumpest regime sort of runs
Speaker 1: on conservative agreement, right that you know, I didn't get
Speaker 1: into Harvard. I only got into pen because Harvard was
Speaker 1: taking liberals, right, or you know the Charlie Kirk of it.
Speaker 1: I didn't get into college because other people who were
Speaker 1: less deserving got into college and they weren't white. Ergo,
Speaker 1: I am now going to do racism. Okay, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of that kind of aggrieved thinking in this book.
Speaker 1: Talk to me about the sort of in Project twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five. What are the kind of most aggrievedy kind
Speaker 1: of or whatever you've seen in there.
Speaker 6: Yeah, So there's like it operates on a bunch of levels.
Speaker 6: There's a kind of general grievance like liberals have taken
Speaker 6: over the culture. You know, they say, we're in the
Speaker 6: late stages of Marxist takeover. They're taking away the America
Speaker 6: we love. We have to take it back. So there's
Speaker 6: this kind of broad one. There's a sense that within
Speaker 6: the government, liberal elites have a stifled the ability of
Speaker 6: conservatives to do what they want or to control the government.
Speaker 6: You know, they stifled Trump in his first term. There's
Speaker 6: a sense of grievance about the twenty twenty election being
Speaker 6: supposedly stolen, and then also about the prosecutions of Trump,
Speaker 6: so they're very upset about that. And then you get
Speaker 6: kind of particular grievances to individuals and inside departments. So,
Speaker 6: I mean, I think Paul Dan's is a great example of.
Speaker 5: This, right, this is the most interesting.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Like Paul Dan's is angry that one of the
Speaker 6: reasons he wants better political appointments and why he focused
Speaker 6: on this is he's angry that he didn't get a
Speaker 6: better job in the Trump administration in twenty seventeen, and
Speaker 6: he thinks he was blocked by bush people and rhinos
Speaker 6: and he wanted real maga people in the government. And
Speaker 6: he has this real like crusade against who he sees
Speaker 6: what he says as bad political appoint ease. And then
Speaker 6: you get like, you know, in every individual chapter you
Speaker 6: have an element of this. So yeah, you know, I
Speaker 6: think about like the intelligence chapter complains that, you know,
Speaker 6: conservative dissenters have been not allowed to speak in intelligence,
Speaker 6: but they also say intelligence analysts need to keep their
Speaker 6: mouths shut and go along with the program. So there's
Speaker 6: a real contradiction there.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of abortion stuff in here that I
Speaker 1: feel like so much of the modern conservative movement we
Speaker 1: shouldn't even call it conservative because that's such a misnomer,
Speaker 1: but so much of this modern movement, ohs great credit
Speaker 1: to this sort of fillish slack play wing of insanity.
Speaker 1: Talk to me about that, this sort of anti feminism,
Speaker 1: et cetera.
Speaker 6: I want to go back real quickly. I mean, you
Speaker 6: said this, it's not conservative, and I think that's a
Speaker 6: great point. And I have been trying and not always
Speaker 6: succeeding to think about it that way, to talk about
Speaker 6: it that way, like it's right wing. But I don't
Speaker 6: think it's conservative. I think they're contemplating power grabs and
Speaker 6: approaches and use of government that conservatives have traditional lyrisistay.
Speaker 1: Right, I mean, and that's why you see on his
Speaker 1: own rand Paul just by himself being like, hey, hey,
Speaker 1: that's not what we are talking about.
Speaker 6: Yeah, there's I mean, there's a very anti feminist strain.
Speaker 6: The number of ideas they have for abortion, I think
Speaker 6: is remarkable. People. Obviously they would like a national abortion ban,
Speaker 6: but they also want to withdraw FDA approval from pristone.
Speaker 6: They want to prevent it from being mailed using this
Speaker 6: eighteen seventy three law. They want to create a database
Speaker 6: that tracks abortions at the state level, in part to
Speaker 6: track whether women are crossing state lines to get abortions.
Speaker 6: They want women mostly to be at home looking after children.
Speaker 6: They want men to be the breadwinners. So it is
Speaker 6: this very traditional schlafy esque kind of vision of how
Speaker 6: life should work.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about Comstock because I think of
Speaker 1: Comstock as one of these zombie laws.
Speaker 5: Right, those laws.
Speaker 1: That Comstock comes from, anti corruption laws. Anti corruption laws
Speaker 1: seemed so outdated that no one in Congress bothered to
Speaker 1: repeal them. I want you to talk to us about
Speaker 1: other zombie laws in this book, or other things that
Speaker 1: you saw that were leaziness had left them on the
Speaker 1: books or anything along those lines.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, you know, you see the Alien Enemies Act,
Speaker 6: I think is a great example of this. This is
Speaker 6: something that goes back to the late eighteenth century that
Speaker 6: they're resurrecting.
Speaker 5: More of eighteen twelve.
Speaker 6: Yeah, the Insurrection Act. Using it in other place, is
Speaker 6: trying to, you know, argue there's an invasion of the country.
Speaker 6: And so they're really clever about digging into the law.
Speaker 6: And these are people who spend a lot of time
Speaker 6: in government and understand government well, different from Elon, who
Speaker 6: you know, seems to be discovering how little he knows.
Speaker 6: These guys have done the work and they they've been
Speaker 6: spent a lot of time digging up where they see
Speaker 6: laws they can use like this and apply in totally
Speaker 6: novel ways.
Speaker 1: How does Elon sort of dovetail in this since on today?
Speaker 6: I think Elon has been a good vessel for a
Speaker 6: lot of the Project twenty twenty five people where they
Speaker 6: didn't anticipate him and when the you know, when they
Speaker 6: produced this report, he was not yet, he hadn't gone
Speaker 6: full Trump yet. But they've been really good just sort
Speaker 6: of pointing him where they want, and so they had
Speaker 6: they imagined, i think, a pretty slow attempt to shrink
Speaker 6: the federal workforce by firing a lot of people by
Speaker 6: using legal means, which they had thought about a lot,
Speaker 6: and they realized that they can sort of point eline
Speaker 6: at something and he'll just drive the bulldozer through. Some
Speaker 6: of those things will probably get knocked down in court,
Speaker 6: but I think there's going to be a permanent shift
Speaker 6: because you can't simply reconstitute these things. Once you've laid
Speaker 6: a lot of people off, they're not going to come
Speaker 6: back to work. They're not going to come back to
Speaker 6: work in the government. You're not going to restart these programs.
Speaker 6: And so he has been a really effective agent for them.
Speaker 1: I mean, tell me what's in there that really surprised
Speaker 1: you or that people are not talking about but Trippe
Speaker 1: or that's just weird.
Speaker 6: Yeah, God, there's so much that's just weird. I mean, like,
Speaker 6: you know, they want to ban porn entirely, and right,
Speaker 6: I love it.
Speaker 1: By the way. That's like I'm like, that's what's so
Speaker 1: great about the thing is that like nobody, not even
Speaker 1: Steven Miller, has read the whole time, right, So like
Speaker 1: they do want to ban porn? And everyone's like, no,
Speaker 1: that's not true, and it's like no.
Speaker 6: No, really do they want to, you know, eliminate regulation
Speaker 6: of forever chemicals. I mean it's just like in every
Speaker 6: section you can find something like that. I think the
Speaker 6: environmental stuff is starting to get attention, but has not
Speaker 6: sufficiently because it is I mean, they just want to
Speaker 6: eliminate almost all climate research. They want to get rid
Speaker 6: of climate regulation. It's such a sweeping assault on the
Speaker 6: data and on any protections for climateacation, and their answers like, well,
Speaker 6: private business and innovation will is the best way to
Speaker 6: take care of this, which is not an answer at all.
Speaker 6: I think that's really important. I mean, I think the
Speaker 6: assault on the Education Department and the desire to effectively
Speaker 6: snuff out public schools is really important and people have
Speaker 6: gotten a little bit of that, but maybe not quite
Speaker 6: how deep it is. And the family stuff, I mean,
Speaker 6: the way they want to use every arm of the
Speaker 6: federal government to encourage this biblically based vision of the family,
Speaker 6: I think is a really sweeping grab onto power as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's a really good point. The data stuff,
Speaker 1: the idea that somehow knowing things will make them true
Speaker 1: is super interesting. And that's like the war against the
Speaker 1: national the weather. Talk to me about that because that's
Speaker 1: a thing. It's just so strange, but it makes sound right.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean so much of their ideas like we
Speaker 6: want research with a for ordained conclusion. So they want
Speaker 6: research on, you know, the harm that abortion does to women,
Speaker 6: or they want research on how traditional families produce better outcomes.
Speaker 6: You've already declared what you want, and I think this
Speaker 6: is true. You know, when they talk about climate they
Speaker 6: say they want the federal government to do research and development,
Speaker 6: but then they talk about all the things they want
Speaker 6: to cut, and that includes funding for a lot of
Speaker 6: basic research and includes funding for understanding even what you know,
Speaker 6: what climate is doing. They want all that stuff privatized
Speaker 6: because it helps people who are related you know, Trump
Speaker 6: donors and people involved in the movement, but also because
Speaker 6: once you have good data that suggests climate change, it's
Speaker 6: very hard to argue against taking action, which they don't
Speaker 6: want to do.
Speaker 1: Some of it can be pretty easily undone, right, Like
Speaker 1: Trump did one hundred executive orders about things that are
Speaker 1: like Mark Olias makes me mad. I understand, he makes
Speaker 1: you mad, but that's not actually how any of it works.
Speaker 1: But is there anything else where you sort of see
Speaker 1: a real opportunity to undo or where you really say
Speaker 1: that it's going to be hard to get back from.
Speaker 6: I think it's a kind of question of how long
Speaker 6: we go. There's a lot of these things that Congress
Speaker 6: could stop quickly, but the or the courts will stop slowly.
Speaker 6: But the longer they go on, the harder they are
Speaker 6: to reverse. And so even if you can, you know,
Speaker 6: you can switch the executive order, you can cancel something,
Speaker 6: but I think some of the damage to like the
Speaker 6: sort of infrastructure of federal government is going to be
Speaker 6: a lot harder to undo. And also, like I mean,
Speaker 6: executive orders is exactly right. I mean, I remember how
Speaker 6: angry so many people in the Republican Party were when
Speaker 6: Obama was talking about using executive orders in twenty thirteen,
Speaker 6: twenty fourteen, and now they didn't have a legislative agenda.
Speaker 6: It's all just using executive power to force these things through,
Speaker 6: which is another reason why I think it's on. You know,
Speaker 6: it's not conservative at all.
Speaker 1: Rare, It's true, it's not conservative at all. It's something else.
Speaker 1: It's some strange kind of neo monarchist to function. A
Speaker 1: lot of people were surprised at how much Congress rolled over.
Speaker 1: I have not actually been so surprised by that. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think if you saw Trump one, you realize, like
Speaker 1: these people, you know, the few people who are not
Speaker 1: completely cowed to him, really did just lose their seats.
Speaker 1: I wonder, though, when he came into power, he swept
Speaker 1: in on a certain you know, he won the popular vote,
Speaker 1: he was in a better position than he had been
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen. And again, maybe I'm just a cock
Speaker 1: eyed optimist, but I wonder now we see that a
Speaker 1: lot of this is unpopular. We you know, the sort
Speaker 1: of thalt of trump Ism. You know, he wants to
Speaker 1: do a lot of stuff that's going to be expensive
Speaker 1: and unpopular. And you know, there really is the invasion
Speaker 1: that they had said was a thing is not, you know,
Speaker 1: Trende Aragua is not coming to Ohio and Republican the
Speaker 1: brand clearly he has tarnished. Do you think there's a
Speaker 1: way here that Republicans find bravery?
Speaker 6: You know, the one time I've seen Republicans do anything,
Speaker 6: it's interesting, was when Russfold tried to impound funds at
Speaker 6: the very start of the administration, and you had a
Speaker 6: group of Republican senators say, hey, wait a second, that's
Speaker 6: money that's going to our states, and immediately the White
Speaker 6: House back down. And that's the only time they've spoken up.
Speaker 6: And that was really striking to me. I do think
Speaker 6: it's really unpopular, and I think that will backfire. But
Speaker 6: I also think for the authors of Project twenty twenty five,
Speaker 6: they understood that. They mean, we had pulling from heritage
Speaker 6: last summer, that it was at polling over seventeen percent
Speaker 6: in battleground states, right, and then.
Speaker 5: Last even when people got to know about it, Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And so they were like, we need to get
Speaker 6: as much of this done in the first one hundred
Speaker 6: days and in the first two years as we can,
Speaker 6: because they knew they would be backlash and they just
Speaker 6: want to move the baseline as far as they can.
Speaker 6: And so for them, Trump is a means to that end,
Speaker 6: and if he becomes unpopular, it's less of a big
Speaker 6: deal for them because they're playing a long game.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 1: I really think that is the most salient point of
Speaker 1: this whole thing. And that again, and when you look
Speaker 1: at the war and the courts right, that moving the
Speaker 1: courts the right like they overturned row The things they
Speaker 1: want they're getting, and they're sort of moving fast and
Speaker 1: breaking things because ultimately they don't really care what happens
Speaker 1: to Trump.
Speaker 5: Trump is a vassal for those.
Speaker 6: Yeah, exactly. They're very clever about I mean, I think
Speaker 6: we saw this with Rowan and we see this year.
Speaker 6: They're very clever about playing a long game and thinking
Speaker 6: about the methods they want to do and thinking far ahead.
Speaker 1: People have been saying that Democrats should have a Project
Speaker 1: twenty twenty nine. Do you think that's a good idea
Speaker 1: or do you think that actually Project twenty twenty five
Speaker 1: has been largely harmful.
Speaker 6: I think the thing that Democrats need to take is
Speaker 6: about the planning and methods, Like it's not enough to
Speaker 6: have what you want to do, but you need to
Speaker 6: have an idea of how you want to do it.
Speaker 6: And I think that's really important. But I also think
Speaker 6: the thing that we really need that I've been thinking
Speaker 6: about is we need to empower Congress. Congress has been
Speaker 6: so disempowered. This is something that the Project twenty twenty
Speaker 6: five authors say, but a lot of people agree, and
Speaker 6: we see them rolling over to Trump. So the best
Speaker 6: thing I think to strengthen democracy is to find whey,
Speaker 6: is to get Congress back in action and defending its
Speaker 6: prerogatives in doing its work.
Speaker 1: And maybe having people who are not one hundred years old.
Speaker 5: Thank you, Thank you, David Graham.
Speaker 6: Thank you.
Speaker 1: No moment, Rick Wilson, Molly john Fast, what is your
Speaker 1: moment of fuck ray?
Speaker 3: Oh gosh, I mean Steven Miller is the easy, low
Speaker 3: hanging target. But actually I think my moment of fuckery
Speaker 3: right now is we're gonna go We're gonna go down
Speaker 3: to old Joe Rogan. This. Uh, I'm the great independent
Speaker 3: voice of the media. I'm not one of those people
Speaker 3: that censors myself. And the other day, when he's sitting
Speaker 3: with Cash Patel and Cash Patel tells him, by the way,
Speaker 3: Elon says that that Donald Trump is in the Epstein files,
Speaker 3: Joe Rogan immediately sobs and goes.
Speaker 4: What about Hunter Biden?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Wow, you know, I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: The act of independent journalism and fiery pursuit of truth
Speaker 3: is on the right is some horseshit of the of
Speaker 3: the highest order.
Speaker 1: Do you know what my moment of fuckery is?
Speaker 3: Do tell?
Speaker 1: It's uh? ABC news, Oh oh Man, and the senior
Speaker 1: national correspondent Terry Moran is suspended, and he is suspended.
Speaker 1: By the way, did you see this that maybe they
Speaker 1: didn't call in the National Guard?
Speaker 4: No, I have not.
Speaker 2: The newsom said that he confirmed they called it in.
Speaker 1: Okay, because ABC News is saying they're not. But anyway,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter. The point is, but here's Terry Moran.
Speaker 1: He says. The thing about Stephen Miller is not that
Speaker 1: he's the brains behind Trump is. Yes, he is one
Speaker 1: of the people who conceptualizes the impulses of Trump, the
Speaker 1: trump Is movement, and translated them into policy. But it's
Speaker 1: not what's interesting about Miller. It's the brain. It's not
Speaker 1: the brains, it's the bile. And then there's more about
Speaker 1: him being a world class hater. Somehow Trump World furious
Speaker 1: about that this. I would like to remind you that
Speaker 1: Donald Trump does stuff ten times worse than this every day.
Speaker 1: But the idea here is that journalists are not I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's fake out right.
Speaker 3: I gotta tell you, I gotta tell you this is
Speaker 3: this is so far short of I think what would
Speaker 3: be a justification for suspending a journalist like Terry, who
Speaker 3: is a professional, who is not a who is not
Speaker 3: a not a hack type guy. But again, the Party
Speaker 3: of free speech is all for free speech until it
Speaker 3: intrudes on the ego of a certain giant, jiggling, obese
Speaker 3: lard heap in the Oval Office. I also don't understand
Speaker 3: the possible motivation of ABC to say themselves, Hey, you
Speaker 3: don't want to be a great idea, let's comply in advance.
Speaker 3: Let's give it to Trump before something happens. It just
Speaker 3: it makes no sense whatsoever, and it gives me right.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry. This is not how this should work in
Speaker 3: a functioning republic.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Rick Wilson, See you soon. That's it for
Speaker 1: this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday,
Speaker 1: Thursday and Saturday to hear the best minds and politics
Speaker 1: make sense of all this chaos. If you enjoy this podcast,
Speaker 1: please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.