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 the latest you gove Economist Poul
Speaker 1: found that forty five percent respondents filled Trump had been
Speaker 1: not at all or not very transparent about his health.
Speaker 1: We have such a great show for you today, the
Speaker 1: Think Like an Economist podcast. Justin Wolfers gets us up
Speaker 1: to date on where we are with the stupid tariff saga.
Speaker 1: Then we'll talk to can't Win Victory Funds Kate Compton
Speaker 1: Barr about how running candidates who can't win could help
Speaker 1: DEM's win.
Speaker 2: But first the news.
Speaker 3: My let me tell you Doge it was just so
Speaker 3: effective at hitting its two trillion dollar goal and then
Speaker 3: the one trillion dollar goal that they pushed back to that.
Speaker 3: Now Trump needs help from Congress to help with nine
Speaker 3: point four billion and Doge cuts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is one of my favorite stupid stories because
Speaker 1: it's so stupid. So the White House is planning to
Speaker 1: send a nine point four billion dollar recisions package to
Speaker 1: Congress next Tuesday, giving lawmakers the opportunity to codify some
Speaker 1: of the potential cuts identified by Dog. Now let us
Speaker 1: just think about this for a minute, Doge came in
Speaker 1: took power away from Congress. Was like, Congress, we know
Speaker 1: you're supposed to have the power of the purse, but
Speaker 1: now Elon gets the power of the purse because he
Speaker 1: gave a lot of money in Trump. Now Elon is
Speaker 1: either out or pretending to be out.
Speaker 2: He is either. We don't really know what.
Speaker 1: The truth is, but either way, these cuts which were
Speaker 1: identified by such people as big Balls. You'll remember Big
Speaker 1: Balls with his big haircut. Is that nice cauliflower haircut?
Speaker 1: That guy has found some cuts he'd like to make
Speaker 1: in the federal government. And so now the administration is
Speaker 1: going to Congress to get help from them, castrating them.
Speaker 1: If you are a member of Congress, you have power,
Speaker 1: or at least you used to have power. Stop fucking
Speaker 1: giving it away. Pretend to care about your job. These
Speaker 1: proposed cuts would trim one point one billion dollars, by
Speaker 1: the way, a rounding error from the Corporation of Public
Speaker 1: Broadcasting eight point three billion, and foreign assets from USAID
Speaker 1: and Africa Development Foundation. So you're gonna USAID is like
Speaker 1: impoverished people who need malaria medicine. The statistics I have
Speaker 1: read three million people a year will die from these cuts.
Speaker 1: The USA cuts, you know, they won't be able to
Speaker 1: get food, they won't be able to get medicine, they
Speaker 1: won't get all soft power from America will evaporate. China
Speaker 1: will eat our lunch. Most of NPR and PBS's money
Speaker 1: comes from non government sources, but the corporation allocates about
Speaker 1: five hundred and thirty five million in federal funds annually
Speaker 1: to them.
Speaker 2: This is a rounding error.
Speaker 1: It is a banishingly small amount of money in the
Speaker 1: federal government, but it is because Trump World ideologically wants
Speaker 1: to fuck over the mainstream media, wants to just make
Speaker 1: life miserable for everyone. The Office of Management and Budget
Speaker 1: has identified foreign eight grants that is convinced will bolster
Speaker 1: its case for cutting relief for USAID. They're going to
Speaker 1: cut President's Emergency Plan for AIDS relief. This is a
Speaker 1: bush legacy thing. PEP far AIDS relief prevention really important.
Speaker 2: Donald Trump going to get rid of it.
Speaker 3: So, speaking of getting rid of things, he's going to
Speaker 3: cut aid for state unemployment systems, which that seems like
Speaker 3: a really, really, really bad way to keep people from
Speaker 3: slipping into homelessness after they get laid off. From many
Speaker 3: of the stupid things that people are getting laid off
Speaker 3: for today, like when paid a loan services and other
Speaker 3: loan services layoff people for AI and then go oops,
Speaker 3: we got to hire everyone back.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Look, I don't think any of us should be
Speaker 1: surprised by any of this. A lot of it is
Speaker 1: trying to make government less effective so people can get
Speaker 1: less from it. I want to read this sentence because
Speaker 1: I think it's explained a lot. The White House is
Speaker 1: terminating four hundred million in funds for states meant to
Speaker 1: modernize their unemployment insurance systems. So remember when Trump and
Speaker 1: Elin were like, we're going to cut fraud, waste, and abuse,
Speaker 1: We're going to modernize systems. What they meant was, we're
Speaker 1: going to make it harder for you to get this
Speaker 1: stuff that the federal government has been giving you. And
Speaker 1: this great example of that. These systems needed to be
Speaker 1: reshored during the pandemic because there was so much unemployment
Speaker 1: and that led to a lot of fraud and a
Speaker 1: lot of delays for beneficiaries. You got to update these systems.
Speaker 1: This is how we've gotten a lot of our problems.
Speaker 1: Updating system saves money, right, because it spots fraud, it
Speaker 1: ends waste and abuse.
Speaker 2: These are the things.
Speaker 1: This is what Elon was saying he was actually doing,
Speaker 1: and now they're preventing it from happening. So it just
Speaker 1: shows that so much of what Trump World said it
Speaker 1: was doing wasn't real. So much of these things were
Speaker 1: just not true. It's projection, it's lying, it's gaslighting, but
Speaker 1: it's fundamentally Project twenty twenty five. It's fundamentally saying we
Speaker 1: are going to make the government work less well, so
Speaker 1: people believe us in the federal government, so we can
Speaker 1: grip down the federal government to the studs and cut
Speaker 1: taxes for very rich people.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So, Maia, when I was reading this earlier, I was
Speaker 3: wondering if I was reading The Handmaiden's Tail times, since
Speaker 3: that's what this reads like. The Big Beautiful Bill treats
Speaker 3: single parents differently, because as we know, there's many people
Speaker 3: inside twenty twenty five who want to punish single parents
Speaker 3: for apparently not staying in terrible marriages.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that we keep seeing in
Speaker 1: Trump administration, behind the sort of ethos behind a lot
Speaker 1: of these Project twenty twenty five theories, is that there
Speaker 1: are these sort of moral components, these ways in which
Speaker 1: they think that they can de incentivize things by making
Speaker 1: it harder to get them, so de incentivize people from
Speaker 1: losing jobs. I actually think they don't really care what
Speaker 1: happens to people. But this is one of these things.
Speaker 1: So again, the thing that Democrats should be screaming about
Speaker 1: and are bafflingly not is that they want to put
Speaker 1: in something that means that if you have a child
Speaker 1: over the age of seven, you must work eighty hours
Speaker 1: a month in order to qualify for SNAP benefits.
Speaker 2: So it used to.
Speaker 1: Be that if you had a child under seventeen, you could,
Speaker 1: you didn't need to work.
Speaker 2: There was no work requirement for SNAP.
Speaker 1: This is food okay, food stand If you are staying
Speaker 1: at home with your child, you can get food simps.
Speaker 1: But now if your kid is over the age of seven,
Speaker 1: they have to be on their own. You have to
Speaker 1: figure out childcare so you can work eighty hours a
Speaker 1: month in order to qualify for SNAP benefits.
Speaker 2: Again, this is the cruelty, is the point.
Speaker 1: They don't want people who need SNAP to have children, right,
Speaker 1: I mean that's what those those and again like this
Speaker 1: is not a ton of money, right, Like they're growing
Speaker 1: the you know the what the Pentagon is getting a
Speaker 1: trillion dollars. I mean, this is not about saving money.
Speaker 1: And even the Big Beautiful Bill in fact grows the
Speaker 1: deficit three point seven trillion dollars. So this is not
Speaker 1: about saving money. This is about just complete and utter
Speaker 1: it's just yeah, the conservative wish casting of influencing behavior
Speaker 1: among citizens that has gone on for forty years now,
Speaker 1: of stupidity and failed policy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just all the worst of everyone.
Speaker 3: So we've talked about a lot of the ills of
Speaker 3: the Big Beautiful Bill, which seems ironically named at best.
Speaker 3: It looks like Senate Democrats actually have a tool to
Speaker 3: stop it. Now, wonder if they will.
Speaker 4: What do you think?
Speaker 1: So this I think is important just to in case
Speaker 1: you haven't been to explain this. The Big Beautiful Bill
Speaker 1: will be passed under reconciliation. Reconciliation is controlled by the
Speaker 1: Senate parliamentarian. There are certain things, and you'll remember this
Speaker 1: from the Biden administration, that can go in reconciliation, and
Speaker 1: there are certain things that the parliamentarian rules that are
Speaker 1: not okay to go in reconciliation. For example, reconciliation is
Speaker 1: supposed to be about budget and not about say he
Speaker 1: trying to limit judicial power, which the Republicans did.
Speaker 2: Sneak in there.
Speaker 1: Right, there's something in there about limiting judges power to
Speaker 1: control the administration for the larger orders. So again the
Speaker 1: parliamentarian should rule, because you'll remember in twenty twenty the
Speaker 1: parliamentarian world. That's certain things right. For example, Democrats had
Speaker 1: things they wanted to put in that bill, the parliamentarian
Speaker 1: rule that they were against parliamentary procedure. We'll see what
Speaker 1: happens here, but for sure, one of the things in
Speaker 1: here is that the parliamentarian said that they could not
Speaker 1: nullify the Environmental Protection Action waiver allowing California to set
Speaker 1: its own air policy standards on vehicles. They were given
Speaker 1: this authority for a cleanout in nineteen seventy, so the
Speaker 1: parliamentarian said they could not change it. While Republicans, I
Speaker 1: know you're going to be shocked to hear this, they
Speaker 1: decided that they would overrule it. So now California has
Speaker 1: a chance. And by the way, I would think this
Speaker 1: piece really opens the door to that. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of chances that Democrats have here to the parliamentarian.
Speaker 1: If the parliamentarian signs off on a lot of stuff,
Speaker 1: it will be unprecedentedly crazy. My guess is that a
Speaker 1: lot of this stuff she's going to be like, no
Speaker 1: fucking why. And once she starts saying no way, I
Speaker 1: think that there is going to be that There's quite
Speaker 1: a lot that can fall by the wayside. I think
Speaker 1: that we're going to see more of that, and if
Speaker 1: Democrats are smart. I mean again, I don't know what
Speaker 1: Democrats are going to do because they had not at
Speaker 1: this moment been.
Speaker 2: Covering themselves with glory.
Speaker 1: But I hope that they will use this to push
Speaker 1: Justin Wolfer is a host of You Think Like an
Speaker 1: Economist podcast and a professor at the University of Michigan.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Fast Politics, Justin.
Speaker 4: Wolfers Fast Politics and Fast Economics.
Speaker 2: That's right, speak very quickly.
Speaker 5: Let's talk about where we are at this moment.
Speaker 1: Fifty percent tariffs on the EU No wait, just kidding, No,
Speaker 1: they don't start till July. Is it undermining Donald Trump's
Speaker 1: own authority to be back and forth on something so major?
Speaker 4: I think the question might actually be leading the witness. Nah,
Speaker 4: there are complicated times. I look, I'm coming on your
Speaker 4: show right now as professor of economics. And I think
Speaker 4: the best thing that I can give your audience is
Speaker 4: the advice that nasal breathing can help calm you down.
Speaker 4: And maybe we should just do a little bit of
Speaker 4: that meditation.
Speaker 2: Then, right now, talk us through where we are.
Speaker 5: Right now?
Speaker 2: Are we in a pause in the trade war?
Speaker 4: That's what Russ said to Rachel.
Speaker 2: Right, are we in a pause in the trade war?
Speaker 4: No, now we're in multimar from multipolar. I don't know
Speaker 4: what multipolar means. It sounds fancy, multi front. Yeah, trade war. Look,
Speaker 4: it's funny. Someone told me how to d They said,
Speaker 4: you know, justin you're really funny. I know this is
Speaker 4: about the economy, not about me, but I'm getting somewhere.
Speaker 2: I'll take it.
Speaker 4: And I'm like, no, I'm not funny, but jeez, the
Speaker 4: world is giving us some cial right now.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So it turns out if you just literally describe what's happening,
Speaker 4: people find it really funny when they're not crying. So
Speaker 4: let me do that. The President on April second, declared
Speaker 4: Liberation Day. The American economy would be fixed. He was
Speaker 4: going to use his favorite tool, tariffs. Tariffs were going
Speaker 4: to do a lot of things they were going to
Speaker 4: get rid of fentanyl, illegal immigration, secure national security, bring
Speaker 4: manufacturing jobs home, raised revenue, allowed tax cuts for the rich,
Speaker 4: and balance bilateral trade deficits. I think some other things,
Speaker 4: qre toe fungus. So he announces that on April second,
Speaker 4: April ninth, markets have freaked out. Everyone has called the
Speaker 4: White House and said, don't do this. You're destroying the
Speaker 4: American economy. Rather than the media was wrong in the
Speaker 4: President Revers's course and says, I was just kidding. I
Speaker 4: didn't actually want tariffs. What I wanted was negotiating power
Speaker 4: the deal out of the deal right right exactly the
Speaker 4: partly incoherent tariffs he took off, declared a NY pause,
Speaker 4: kept ten percent tariffs on every country around the world,
Speaker 4: and said we're going to make deals. A couple of
Speaker 4: weeks later said in an interview, I've now made two
Speaker 4: hundred deals. The Treasury Secretary reported, in fact that he
Speaker 4: meant sub deals, not deals a new word. They reported
Speaker 4: that they were already had been called by dozens and
Speaker 4: later more than dozens of countries. They said they were
Speaker 4: making trade deals left, right and center, and they already
Speaker 4: made a dozen or more. But in Navarro says they
Speaker 4: were going to make ninety deals in ninety days. A
Speaker 4: typical trade deals, by the way, from a fully staffed,
Speaker 4: coherent White House, takes two years from one country. We
Speaker 4: have one hundred and ninety two trading partners, so Navara says,
Speaker 4: in ninety days later, on about halfway through the ninety
Speaker 4: day pause, people start asking about thirty days into this
Speaker 4: ninety day paus and they have to get ninety one
Speaker 4: a day done. And we're currently batting zero, which is
Speaker 4: a very low test score, low batting average. We're getting zero,
Speaker 4: and so people get answer and they're like, hey, where's
Speaker 4: the deals man. So the next day, the White House
Speaker 4: announces a trade deal with Britain. In a subsequent press conference,
Speaker 4: the British Prime Minister, when asked did you expect to
Speaker 4: be announcing a trade deal today, said no. I was
Speaker 4: called halfway through the Arsenal football game. So that says
Speaker 4: literally the night before someone from America called and said
Speaker 4: we're in the middle of something, but we now need
Speaker 4: to announce tomorrow. So they announced a lot of pomp
Speaker 4: and ceremony. The President declared it the greatest trade deal
Speaker 4: ever made. You read the document, which wasn't released that day.
Speaker 4: I was released the next day. The document ends with
Speaker 4: both sides acknowledged that this is not illegally binding agreement.
Speaker 4: So at that point where now zero trade deals. The
Speaker 4: Trump does not call president. She makes it very clear.
Speaker 4: He didn't call president. She President. She makes it clear
Speaker 4: he didn't call Trump. It's somehow miraculously they communicated. There
Speaker 4: was a meeting in Geneva. The Treasury Secretary went over
Speaker 4: and at the end they declared a trade deal. What
Speaker 4: you actually saw was they had incredibly high tariffs on
Speaker 4: each other, prohibitively high. One hundred and forty five percent
Speaker 4: is what we had on China. They had under twenty
Speaker 4: five percent on us. They both said, this is point.
Speaker 4: Let's let's let's move it back down. They did you
Speaker 4: read the agreement? The agreement. The deal is the United
Speaker 4: States and China agrees to have mechanisms by which we
Speaker 4: can talk in the future.
Speaker 2: Right, but that's not a deal.
Speaker 4: Okay, so we still move forward. Navarro is still saying
Speaker 4: we're ninety deals in ninety days. Time moves on, and
Speaker 4: then suddenly Trump discovers this is not a joke. He
Speaker 4: discovers that if you try to make ninety deals, ninety
Speaker 4: countries will try and call you at the same time,
Speaker 4: and metaphorically, the White House switchboard gets jammed, right, So
Speaker 4: he says, well, actually, we're not going to have ninety
Speaker 4: deals in ninety days. Some of these deals, we're just
Speaker 4: going to send them a letter.
Speaker 5: Right now.
Speaker 4: Moly, I'm in a relationship, and when Betsy and I
Speaker 4: want to organize our lives together, we sit down and
Speaker 4: meet and we talk about it, and there's give and take,
Speaker 4: and I say what I want and she says which
Speaker 4: she needs. But if I instead just said, Betsy, I'm
Speaker 4: going to send you a letter. Whatever it is that
Speaker 4: Betsy and I trade back and forward would no longer
Speaker 4: be traded. That's not a deal. So the new deal
Speaker 4: is that we're going to send everyone a letter. Fair enough,
Speaker 4: except they're going to make deals now with the eighteen
Speaker 4: biggest trading partners, which becomes very complicated because Australia starts
Speaker 4: calling me and they say a wee eighteenth or nineteenth
Speaker 4: It depends which table you look up right, no one knows,
Speaker 4: and then I know I'm going on. But this is
Speaker 4: just no.
Speaker 2: This is where we need to get caught out on
Speaker 2: the back for us.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and okay, so we're still at no trade deals.
Speaker 4: And in the midst of all this, the President says,
Speaker 4: and I kid you not, this is the craziest thing.
Speaker 4: The President says, the European Union and not negotiating in
Speaker 4: good faith.
Speaker 2: Yeah, why what's the driver on that?
Speaker 4: Honestly, the Europeans take trade seriously and they want grown
Speaker 4: up talks, and they are hard to deal with. I mean,
Speaker 4: someone who's printch for crying out loud, but I mean,
Speaker 4: I just want you to understand the context of this. Right,
Speaker 4: He's failed to get anything done with anyone. And in
Speaker 4: the middle of the pause, and it's literally a pause,
Speaker 4: it's pause talk, July nine says, well, they're not even
Speaker 4: doing anything good faith, to which I believe the Europeans
Speaker 4: are entitled to the old response. I thought we were
Speaker 4: on a pause, and so he says, they're not acting
Speaker 4: in good faith. So I am going to raise tariffs
Speaker 4: on the European Union to fifty percent. He did that
Speaker 4: last Friday, to be clear, because it's a high wage
Speaker 4: country set of countries, as the United States is, A
Speaker 4: fifty percent tariff effectively means stop the boats. It's an embargo.
Speaker 4: Nothing's coming in I also want to impress upon people
Speaker 4: of steaks.
Speaker 1: Here.
Speaker 4: You might be thinking, oh, well, if liberals are going
Speaker 4: to have to do without their French wine, you'll have
Speaker 4: to drink Spanish wine like no, no, even Spanish, boy,
Speaker 4: You'll have to drink Argentinian, although I would recommend Australian.
Speaker 4: And maybe people felt good about your next New York
Speaker 4: party having slightly less fancy wine. Malysian. That's how you
Speaker 4: spend your days, right, is it? I mean you don't.
Speaker 1: I don't drink, so I don't have a I don't
Speaker 1: have a horse in this race. But I do understand
Speaker 1: this is not just about wine and cheese. And I
Speaker 1: hope you all in late exactly. Mulley's stealing all my
Speaker 1: economics points.
Speaker 4: So one of the things that's happened weeks is Molly
Speaker 4: has graduated from political commentator to economic analyst. And I'm
Speaker 4: not making fun of Molly. I'm proud, proud of my girl,
Speaker 4: am I let's say that.
Speaker 1: Yes, No, I mean I did write a lot about subprime.
Speaker 2: So I have had some but yes.
Speaker 4: Oh I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: No, No, listen if you want to.
Speaker 1: It is different than subprime, and and you know these
Speaker 1: are different things.
Speaker 4: You know, and if you want to be a serious
Speaker 4: political analyst in the current moment, you do need to
Speaker 4: think about and understand the economics, which is why you've
Speaker 4: been doing your seduous sleep. What following, let's get back
Speaker 4: to the story.
Speaker 5: Let's get back.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, yes, you know, my therapist told me to
Speaker 4: keep going. Okay, so what we get? So what do
Speaker 4: we get from Europe? Actually the most important thing is
Speaker 4: like precision machinery. So if you want to build a
Speaker 4: factory in America, if you want to get your stuff
Speaker 4: packaged out the door. You know those big conveyor belts
Speaker 4: that look so gleaming and sexy, most of them come
Speaker 4: from Germany readily. So if you're halfway through building a
Speaker 4: factory and you just found out the price of your
Speaker 4: equipment if you buy it goes up fifty percent, you
Speaker 4: might actually just stop building the factory, right President, We
Speaker 4: get chemicals, we get pharmaceuticals. In fact, most of what
Speaker 4: we get from Europe you would classify as inputs into
Speaker 4: American production wine and cheese.
Speaker 2: So that's things like parts of cars, parts of things.
Speaker 4: Electronics parts. This is how you sabotage the American industry.
Speaker 4: That's all right, you might be upset about it. I
Speaker 4: was on Friday, but don't worry. We got all the
Speaker 4: way through to Monday before the president back down. And
Speaker 4: I think basically the European Union called and said, hey,
Speaker 4: we're on a pause. Why do you think we can
Speaker 4: negotiate a trade deal in less than ninety days, given
Speaker 4: that your entire trade team has been off doing all
Speaker 4: sorts of other things instead. Yeah, So now the pause,
Speaker 4: the ninety day pause that came into effect on April ninth,
Speaker 4: that he then paused, So he paused the pause on Friday.
Speaker 4: On Monday, he paused the pause on the pause, resuming
Speaker 4: the original pause that paused July fourth, right, or the ninth.
Speaker 4: July fourth is when we enjoy freedom from tyranny and
Speaker 4: we celebrate small government ironically, Yes that we will.
Speaker 2: We celebrate lot steeped in irony.
Speaker 4: Yes, we celebrate we move away from a single king.
Speaker 2: Yes, towards a single king.
Speaker 4: We shall celebrate it like no other. So anyway, the
Speaker 4: pause that was paused got unpaused, and so we're back
Speaker 4: to the original pause, which means now that as of
Speaker 4: July ninth, we'll learn what's happening with trade with the
Speaker 4: European Union. Okay, now to rewind. Our trading situation with
Speaker 4: the European Union is currently unknown until July ninth. Our
Speaker 4: trade situation with Britain is currently unknown because we have
Speaker 4: no agreement, but we've agreed to continue talking. Trading situation
Speaker 4: in China is unknown because all we agreed is to
Speaker 4: continue to keep talking. And there are one hundred and
Speaker 4: eighty nine other countries around the world, none of whom
Speaker 4: have made headlines, with the exception of course, of the
Speaker 4: Herd mcdonaldet Islands, which the Trump administration subsequently discovered is
Speaker 4: uninhabited and therefore they are unlikely to do a deal
Speaker 4: with that particular set of penguins.
Speaker 1: Right now, we have the highest tariffs ever since World
Speaker 1: War Two.
Speaker 4: I'd say since nineteen thirty four. It depends on the day.
Speaker 2: In the nineteen twenties, the LTE nineteen twenty it's.
Speaker 4: Just so god so the is I never did smoot,
Speaker 4: so you could just trick. But I hear that a
Speaker 4: lot of things happening background then, not the LEA tariffs,
Speaker 4: the Depression era as smooth Haly tariffs, which a couple
Speaker 4: of weeks ago, our tariff rates were higher than smoot Hay,
Speaker 4: then they got lower. If the European unions at fifty percent,
Speaker 4: it's hard to do math in my head might be
Speaker 4: higher again. But actually, let me simplify it for our audience.
Speaker 4: For an industrialized country, the standard tariff right is round
Speaker 4: about one to two percent. The tariffreate that almost every country,
Speaker 4: with a few small exceptions charges the United States is
Speaker 4: about one to three percent. So if the United States
Speaker 4: has an average tariff rate as of today, I'll remember
Speaker 4: ten percent on the whole world, thirty percent on China,
Speaker 4: twenty five percent on orders. It gets very, very complicated.
Speaker 4: We have very large spreadsheets. I've got friends who are
Speaker 4: maintaining all of this. But roughly speaking, the American tariff
Speaker 4: rate is ten times higher than it was on January first,
Speaker 4: ten times highed and similar countries, and ten times highed
Speaker 4: in our trading partners. So this is, you know, when
Speaker 4: you're not tarift from one hundred and forty five percent
Speaker 4: down to thirty percent, as we do with China. That
Speaker 4: sounds like a lot, but it's not. It's moving from
Speaker 4: an embargo to lunacy, right.
Speaker 1: I think that's a really good point in a bargo
Speaker 1: to lunacy. So where are we now a China. I
Speaker 1: thought we were down to ten percent with China.
Speaker 4: We are so here, and I want to be very
Speaker 4: careful with my language, and I want your listeners to
Speaker 4: follow the same habit. So Molly didn't say, but many
Speaker 4: others would say. They'd say, I thought we had a
Speaker 4: thirty percent tariff on China and they have a ten
Speaker 4: percent tariff on us. That gets the numbers right, but
Speaker 4: it gets the words wrong. What you have is a
Speaker 4: thirty percent tax on Americans who buy from China, right,
Speaker 4: They have a ten percent tax on Chinese people who
Speaker 4: buy from America. By the way, that thirty percent probably
Speaker 4: hurts us a lot, right. So if you're doing any
Speaker 4: sort of importing, and it's not just finished goods, remember
Speaker 4: a lot of what we buy in fact from China
Speaker 4: as equipment. If you're a tradesman, a lot of your
Speaker 4: tools might come from China, You're going to be charged
Speaker 4: a thirty percent up charge order. The point what I
Speaker 4: want you to realize is that in every other country
Speaker 4: around the world, if you want to build a factory
Speaker 4: and buy Chinese made equipment for that factory, you can
Speaker 4: do so without a thirty percent up charge. The only
Speaker 4: country that gets this thirty percent up charge is the
Speaker 4: United States, and that might make you really mad. You
Speaker 4: might be really mad at China. Why is China charging
Speaker 4: me a thirty percent up charge? It's not that's not Beijing,
Speaker 4: that's Washington, right right right. In addition, Beijing is taxing
Speaker 4: Chinese people who buy from the United States. That's going
Speaker 4: to lead on balance some number of purchases, particularly of
Speaker 4: agricultural goods and commodities. Why would you pay more to
Speaker 4: buy from an American They're going to purchase from elsewhere.
Speaker 4: So that's what's going to hurt, particularly the farmers. Basically,
Speaker 4: they're going to have to cut their prices in order
Speaker 4: to sell their goods.
Speaker 2: Farmers are going to have to cut their prices in
Speaker 2: order to sell their goods.
Speaker 4: Well, if we've got a thirty percent tariff from China,
Speaker 4: if you were trying to sell stuff to China before,
Speaker 4: the Chinese are not going to pay thirty percent extra
Speaker 4: for American so beans. They'll buy their so ebens from
Speaker 4: someone else.
Speaker 2: But there aren't huge There aren't huge tech, there aren't
Speaker 2: huge margins with farming.
Speaker 4: There's not huge margins on lots of things.
Speaker 5: Yes.
Speaker 4: So, by the way, huge margins. I know you want
Speaker 4: to talk about farmers, but you know what has high
Speaker 4: paying jobs, that has really fat margins, and that you
Speaker 4: don't have to walk out in your field and do
Speaker 4: backbreaking work and when you're not at the mercy of
Speaker 4: the weather.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Education. I am one of America's great exporters. I know
Speaker 4: I don't farmer, I don't even sound like an American,
Speaker 4: but I have students come from all around the world
Speaker 4: who want to fly into the University of Michigan to
Speaker 4: do exactly what we're doing right now. Molly, talk economics
Speaker 4: together for long, baby, Right, I'm not allowed to export.
Speaker 4: It's one of the few goods we're in order to Normally,
Speaker 4: when we export, we send the goods abroad. When we
Speaker 4: export services. You come into America, you get the service,
Speaker 4: you leave, but you're leedy cash behind. They're not letting
Speaker 4: them in the country. You're don't let them in. They
Speaker 4: they're not going to send their checks. If they're not
Speaker 4: sending their checks, then there's going to be I know,
Speaker 4: I get it. No one likes the feed liberals and
Speaker 4: higher education and indoctrination and all of that, but actually
Speaker 4: we are the future. The question for your listeners is
Speaker 4: do you want your kids to grow up and work
Speaker 4: in a factory that was created because of Trump's tariffs
Speaker 4: or would you rather them have the sort of job
Speaker 4: that I am so privileged to have where I get
Speaker 4: to wake up and read and talk to interesting people
Speaker 4: and educate and I get paid more and your kids
Speaker 4: will get paid more if we grow the higher education sector.
Speaker 4: And so just the very direct since my industry is
Speaker 4: directly under threat, the set of jobs that surround that industry,
Speaker 4: the people who work for the University of Michigan and
Speaker 4: universities across the country, and that's before we get into
Speaker 4: the rest of everything else that higher education brings to
Speaker 4: our lives. Just so that I put a little ad
Speaker 4: in for my industry, mate.
Speaker 1: I wonder it would just see so much back battling
Speaker 1: with the tariffs, which I think is actually thank God
Speaker 1: for that, remember, because there were weeks and weeks where
Speaker 1: he wouldn't back battle. But I wonder again, like, you
Speaker 1: can't predict the future, but you can sort of read
Speaker 1: the past. So, uh, what do you think what would
Speaker 1: a good resolution of this problem look like? And what
Speaker 1: would a sort of trumpy resolution of this problem look like.
Speaker 4: Okay, let me start on backpedaling. Liberals have taken particular
Speaker 4: delight that the president takes in a super mucho stance
Speaker 4: and then a week later backs off. This time it
Speaker 4: was three days later, but you know sometimes at lasts
Speaker 4: even more days than that. I don't think they should. So,
Speaker 4: first of all, realize the what do you The things
Speaker 4: he's backed off on are the profoundly insane, like the
Speaker 4: truly fruit loopy. So the April two tariffs that he
Speaker 4: called reciprocal tariffs, where he was putting a fifty percent
Speaker 4: tariff on Lsto because he thought Lesotho was somehow must
Speaker 4: be protecting. It's the industries because they don't buy much
Speaker 4: from us, but we buy a lot of diamonds from them.
Speaker 4: Understand the insane of that that he had a reciprocal
Speaker 4: tariff on Korea, a country with which we actually have
Speaker 4: a free trade agreement. So the word reciprocal was a lie.
Speaker 4: The level of the tariffs was unconscious, not only unconscionable
Speaker 4: and uneconomic, but unmoored from any sense of reality. And
Speaker 4: then that's what's currently on a pause. Okay, So that
Speaker 4: was literally the worst trade decision of my lifetime, he paused.
Speaker 4: The good thing about the president is if you thought
Speaker 4: that was the worst thing of your lifetime, just wait
Speaker 4: two weeks. And then we got one hundred and forty
Speaker 4: five percent tariff on China, which is among the top
Speaker 4: two worst trade decisions of my lifetime. That we got
Speaker 4: that back down to thirty percent, And then I am
Speaker 4: sure this is only the third worst trade decision of
Speaker 4: my lifetime, the fifty percent tariff on the European Union,
Speaker 4: which he then knocked back down to ten percent until
Speaker 4: July ninth. Right, what relief does several weeks of low
Speaker 4: word tariffs. But this is your point earlier, Molly, the
Speaker 4: average tariff right around the world is probably going to
Speaker 4: be about seventeen eighteen nineteen percent. The average tariff right
Speaker 4: for an industrialized country is two percent. The idea that
Speaker 4: Trump always backs down isn't quite right, right, because they're
Speaker 4: still terrible worst excesses. The unimaginably stupid he gets talked
Speaker 4: out off right, the merely profoundly mistaken and intensely damaging
Speaker 4: he sticks with. And that's where we're at. So, Molly,
Speaker 4: is you know I want to let everyone in on
Speaker 4: the joke, because apparently it's funny Molly's referring to the
Speaker 4: taco trade. Trump always chickens out, so one everyone likes
Speaker 4: tacos to The most recent chickening out was on a Tuesday,
Speaker 4: So this is all terrific. But notice that Trump doesn't
Speaker 4: always chicken out. He walked into the British negotiations and said,
Speaker 4: the tariff is ten percent, even though you buy more
Speaker 4: of our stuff than we buy of yours, and that
Speaker 4: ten tariff is one hundred percent stuck. And that's where
Speaker 4: we're still at very high tarot We're still at thirty
Speaker 4: percent with China, We're at ten percent with every other
Speaker 4: country around the world. Still this is an end higher
Speaker 4: in some industries. So this remains an enormous and intentionally
Speaker 4: damaging set of tariffs. That wasn't answering the question that
Speaker 4: was you picked up He always backtracks. Let's talk about
Speaker 4: that as sort as sometimes does a bit, but let's
Speaker 4: not overstate it because that makes it feel like there's
Speaker 4: no damage. There's a lot of damage. Second, you said,
Speaker 4: what does a good solution look like? This one's easy
Speaker 4: and I've only really just gotten my head around it
Speaker 4: because it's so simple. The right answer is for Congress
Speaker 4: to do its job. The Constitution gives the power of
Speaker 4: taris to Congress full stop. Past Congresses delegated authority emergency
Speaker 4: powers to the president, and the President declares everything an emergency.
Speaker 4: I'm incredibly hopeful, but I'm not a lawyer. I'm hopeful
Speaker 4: that at some point all of this will be ruled
Speaker 4: unconstitutional because in fact there's no emergency. But we don't
Speaker 4: need to wait for the courts. Congress stops all of
Speaker 4: this tomorrow if Congress wants to. So I want people
Speaker 4: to hold onto that the madness of the Trump administration
Speaker 4: is one hundred percent fully enabled by Congress. And if
Speaker 4: you don't like it, call your congressman, and if you're
Speaker 4: still unhappy, call him or her again, because this is
Speaker 4: the greatest abrogation of responsibility I've seen, and it's infuriating.
Speaker 4: So they can Why does Trump go with tariffs rather
Speaker 4: than other things? Because he can? Yeah, the enabler there.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 4: He can't just do what he wants on fiscal policy.
Speaker 4: He can't on monetary policy, but in this he can,
Speaker 4: and that's why the damage is being done. They gave
Speaker 4: him the loaded gun and then they're surprised he's waving
Speaker 4: it around. That's what good looks like. Okay, what's actually
Speaker 4: going to happen? Oh no, I mean, as far as
Speaker 4: I can tell, we're in one big soap opera. And
Speaker 4: it's great because normally soap operas are about complicated emotions
Speaker 4: that economists like me don't really understand, things like betrayal, jealousy.
Speaker 4: But this one's all about trade deficits and tariffs. I mean,
Speaker 4: I think it's a fabulous soap opera, just a shitty
Speaker 4: economic policy.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 4: The The analogy here is it's a totaler with the
Speaker 4: remote control justin Wolfs. They get bored, they thump at it,
Speaker 4: they change it, and that is American tariff policy justin Wolfers.
Speaker 5: Thank you, Thank you.
Speaker 1: Keith Compton Barr is the founder of Can't Win Victory Fund.
Speaker 5: Welcome to Fast Politics, Kate.
Speaker 6: Barr, Hi, Mollie, thank you for having me. I am
Speaker 6: so excited.
Speaker 1: Oh well, I'm excited to have you. I want you
Speaker 1: to talk about how you got into this. I think
Speaker 1: of you as a kind of your sort of how
Speaker 1: you can win pundon.
Speaker 2: Right a little bit. I'm a huge fan of losing
Speaker 2: actual Oh.
Speaker 1: So great, start with that that I think tracks with
Speaker 1: their origin story, right, yes, so get us going there.
Speaker 6: So, like most good things in life, all of this
Speaker 6: started when I was drinking. I was standing in line
Speaker 6: for a glass of wine at like a local festival
Speaker 6: we have in my tiny town, and someone said, hey, Kate,
Speaker 6: you want to run for state Senate. And it was
Speaker 6: a joke because our state Senate maps had just come
Speaker 6: out and they were horribly jerrymandered in our state senate
Speaker 6: district was a real loser, and we kind of joked
Speaker 6: around about what might happen to run a campaign that
Speaker 6: was just radically transparent about what a total loss it
Speaker 6: would be. And my background is in behavioral science and
Speaker 6: in persuasive communication, and I couldn't let go of the
Speaker 6: idea about using this as a way to bring jerrymandering
Speaker 6: down to like real people level, get it out of
Speaker 6: the political science sphere and into why should a voter
Speaker 6: give a shit about their voting map? And so when
Speaker 6: I was slightly more sober, frankly, it still seemed like
Speaker 6: a good idea. And then my friend, who is now
Speaker 6: a member of the Can't Win Victory Fund, we were
Speaker 6: talking about it and she said the phrase clear eyes
Speaker 6: fullhearts can't win, and I was just like, that has
Speaker 6: to exist in the world.
Speaker 2: I guess we are doing this and here we are.
Speaker 5: So tell me what happened when you ran.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 6: So I filed for office and announced my loss the
Speaker 6: same day. I actually honestly think I could be kind
Speaker 6: of an awesome candidate and a real district.
Speaker 2: You know, I am a public school kid.
Speaker 6: I went to University of North Carolina a couple of times.
Speaker 6: I've been on town planning boards and nonprofit boards, and
Speaker 6: I have like kids, I'm pto president, Like, there's a
Speaker 6: lot of stuff I would want and my representative or senator.
Speaker 6: And the campaign was to make the point that no
Speaker 6: matter who you are as a candidate, your fate is
Speaker 6: determined by how the math lines are drawn, and that
Speaker 6: that's fundamental problem in our democracy. So I ran the
Speaker 6: whole thing as a protest against jerrymandering. People call me
Speaker 6: in the streets still Kate bar can't win, and all
Speaker 6: of our shirt said things like loser, and it caught on.
Speaker 6: We were not expecting that. I expected to go right
Speaker 6: back to my day job after November fifth. I mean
Speaker 6: I also expected a president Harris.
Speaker 2: So you know what do I know.
Speaker 6: Yeah, alas falling into that fantasy for a moment, but
Speaker 6: it like built and built. And then there was a
Speaker 6: story that came out in the Washington Post in September,
Speaker 6: and then I spent the next three weeks on like
Speaker 6: national and international news, and we thought, wow, there's really
Speaker 6: something here in this message. It's like cutting through during
Speaker 6: a presidential election cycle, and we started thinking about what
Speaker 6: it might look like to do this on a larger scale.
Speaker 6: So November fifth, I lost, as predicted, but a couple
Speaker 6: of important things also happened in my district. The bulk
Speaker 6: of the district is made up by this one county,
Speaker 6: Ayerdell County, and it is super red and it has
Speaker 6: been read for a really long time, but it got
Speaker 6: bluer and it was one of only eight counties in
Speaker 6: our whole hundred county state that got bluer last cycle,
Speaker 6: and that felt meaningful. You know, it's hard to know
Speaker 6: what to attribute that to, but having a state Senate
Speaker 6: candidate who like actually showed up for the voters in
Speaker 6: that area couldn't hurt. We also saw that so my
Speaker 6: district overlapped with a hyper competitive state house district, and
Speaker 6: the candidate Beth Helfrich in that district won pretty handily,
Speaker 6: frankly and broke the state House super majority, and all
Speaker 6: credit to Beth for that, but helpful to have two
Speaker 6: candidates who were actually out knocking doors on the ballot.
Speaker 6: So it was like, let's see what could happen if
Speaker 6: we grow this and try to make a path for
Speaker 6: more people in these unwinnable seats to run, especially because
Speaker 6: like we've been ignoring voters in those places for far
Speaker 6: too long because the seats are unwinnable. And so maybe
Speaker 6: you get a name on the ballot and it's like
Speaker 6: one hundred and fifty out of one hundred and seventy
Speaker 6: districts in our state qualify as unwinnable, and so that's
Speaker 6: one hundred and fifty districts worth of people who aren't
Speaker 6: being heard, who aren't having local politicians show up for them,
Speaker 6: and who fundamentally like don't have real representation and don't
Speaker 6: have a real way to hold their leaders accountable.
Speaker 1: Here's my hottest take, and again this comes from a
Speaker 1: woman called Demand Aliment, who I'm sure you know, which
Speaker 1: is that if you run a candidate and I guess
Speaker 1: this is what you were saying too, if you run
Speaker 1: a candidate, even if you lose, you win.
Speaker 6: Absolutely. I think it matters how you run. And I
Speaker 6: heard when Amanda was on she's talking a lot about
Speaker 6: representation and the importance of having people who actually like
Speaker 6: represent the district therein and the lack that and our legislatures.
Speaker 2: At all levels of government. I think if you have
Speaker 2: a candidate really.
Speaker 6: Show up for voters and like, do the candidate things
Speaker 6: like kiss the babies and go to the fairs and
Speaker 6: knock on the doors, that is meaningful to people.
Speaker 2: I also think the Democratic.
Speaker 6: Party right now has a bit of a trust problem
Speaker 6: where you know, like you've got Trump out there saying
Speaker 6: whatever the fuck comes into his mind, but it seems
Speaker 6: really authentic and honest because it feels unfiltered, and then
Speaker 6: Democrats seem really scripted, not all of them obviously.
Speaker 1: Yes, one hundred, yes, yes, yes, Okay, So let's talk
Speaker 1: about this because I absolutely think this is true. Consultants,
Speaker 1: all consultants, the consultant class has made Democrats way too
Speaker 1: afraid of their own shadows and unwilling to say personal stuff.
Speaker 5: Discuss yep.
Speaker 6: And it's a amazing when you knock on somebody's door
Speaker 6: and you are radically honest with them, and you're like,
Speaker 6: I am running for state Senate and I am going
Speaker 6: to lose. As soon as you say that, your credibility
Speaker 6: with that person increases like one hundred percent, and the
Speaker 6: thing you say next is so much more meaningful. So
Speaker 6: I used that to basically knock doors for Alison Riggs.
Speaker 6: I mean, I was knocking doors as a candidate, but
Speaker 6: I was talking about me at the doors. I was
Speaker 6: talking about Justice Riggs. Because the whole point is I'm
Speaker 6: going to lose because our maps are drawn unfairly so
Speaker 6: that politicians can preserve their power. If you want that
Speaker 6: to be different, you have to vote for Justice Riggs.
Speaker 6: That'll flip for twenty twenty six and it'll be If
Speaker 6: you want that to be different, you have to vote
Speaker 6: for Justice Earls. And in a state like out especially
Speaker 6: where I mean we just saw Justice Riggs but win
Speaker 6: by seven hundred and thirty four votes, like all of
Speaker 6: that matters.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, And I mean I think that's such an
Speaker 1: important point. There is a kind of trust situation, and
Speaker 1: I do think part of what people liked about Trump, right,
Speaker 1: and again I'm not here on Nobody in this podcast
Speaker 1: is saying Trump is good in any elation to perform,
Speaker 1: but the sort of fake honesty, the kind of feeling
Speaker 1: that you weren't just sitting there or hearing somebody read
Speaker 1: a white paper.
Speaker 2: Yes, or a teleprompter.
Speaker 6: And when you know you're going to lose, a couple
Speaker 6: of important things happen. One is that consultants don't care
Speaker 6: about you, and so they go along. And the other
Speaker 6: thing is you actually can't screw it up, so you
Speaker 6: can say anything at all. And so I really see
Speaker 6: these districts as opportunities for us to innovate our playbook,
Speaker 6: because we can try anything. You're going to lose anyway,
Speaker 6: So try some wacky shit and let's see what happens.
Speaker 6: Maybe we learn something that helps us win somewhere else.
Speaker 2: At minimum, you.
Speaker 6: Have candidates who are running as their like authentic selves,
Speaker 6: who are ready when we get fair maps in twenty thirty,
Speaker 6: who have anson then who can run again to actually win,
Speaker 6: but they haven't like wrecked their chances by trying to
Speaker 6: tell people they can win for two or three ciples
Speaker 6: when obviously they couldn't. Like voters aren't dumb. They in
Speaker 6: these communities, they know who's gonna win in these elections
Speaker 6: because they've been living that reality for so long. Most
Speaker 6: of them have never had a politician come to their door.
Speaker 6: And so if we show up for them consistently and
Speaker 6: we are honest and authentic in how we do it,
Speaker 6: I think we can make some pretty incredible inroads in
Speaker 6: places that we just haven't. Also, it's cheap, Like my
Speaker 6: Comson vote was like a dollar forty. That's insanely cheap,
Speaker 6: and I didn't even need all that because no, you know,
Speaker 6: there's just it's so easy to occupy the airspace because
Speaker 6: there's no one competing for it.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: It's not those It's not like one of those tiny
Speaker 1: district where everybody is stuck, you know, a place where
Speaker 1: the media market gets expensive despite the fact.
Speaker 5: That it's small.
Speaker 1: I wonder if you could sort of talk us through
Speaker 1: a case of sort of where you think the places
Speaker 1: are where Democrats should be running people that they're not.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so I think we should be running people anywhere
Speaker 6: we can get a great community candidate, So someone who
Speaker 6: is already like a pillar of the community, ministers, like
Speaker 6: Scout leaders, PTO parents, that kind of thing. In North
Speaker 6: Carolina last cycle, we ran Democrats in one hundred and
Speaker 6: sixty eight out of one hundred and seventy state legislative seats.
Speaker 6: So we did a good job of running people, but
Speaker 6: about a third of those folks were only names on
Speaker 6: the ballot, and I truly don't know if that is
Speaker 6: as useful as the effort it takes to recruit for
Speaker 6: those spots. But if you have someone who's willing to run,
Speaker 6: we should run absolutely everywhere. And I'm looking at like
Speaker 6: South Carolina is another one where we need to be
Speaker 6: doing this. Utah, Florida. I mean, they're thirteen. According to
Speaker 6: the Princeton Jerrymandering Project, there are thirteen states that fail
Speaker 6: their jerrymandering test, and frankly, three of those are Democratic
Speaker 6: jerry manders. So both parties do it, and it's like
Speaker 6: bullshit on both counts. And we need to be showing
Speaker 6: up in all of those R plus fifteen districts with
Speaker 6: kick ass candidates who can just say I'm not going
Speaker 6: to win. I can't win. The lines are drawn so
Speaker 6: that I can't win, and that actually makes it easier
Speaker 6: for them to run because it's hard to come out
Speaker 6: as a Democrat in a super red place. But when
Speaker 6: you come out saying like I'm fighting for the principle
Speaker 6: of our democracy. I got so many maga handshakes. I
Speaker 6: had to like bathe and hand sanitizer while I was
Speaker 6: doing this, because they really get it. Everybody gets it
Speaker 6: that it's about democracy, not trying to be like, you know,
Speaker 6: take down their incumbent who has been there forever. You're
Speaker 6: running against a system, and it just makes the path
Speaker 6: a lot easier. You also don't have to fundraise a
Speaker 6: ton and you can say literally anything you want, which
Speaker 6: feels really good.
Speaker 1: Like the idea here is that you should engage. So
Speaker 1: I used to think that you shouldn't engage.
Speaker 2: This is we can just let's just.
Speaker 5: Talk about me.
Speaker 2: I would like to thank you.
Speaker 1: Since I'm so used to talking about myself at this moment.
Speaker 1: I used to think you shouldn't go on spaces, you know,
Speaker 1: like you shouldn't go on Bill Maher or Joe Rogan,
Speaker 1: that you should just only go to places where you
Speaker 1: agree with them or where you feel that they don't
Speaker 1: espouse views you don't agree with or like or find
Speaker 1: objectionable for any number of reasons, real or imagined. And
Speaker 1: I have completely changed my tune on this. I now
Speaker 1: think you should go everywhere and engage everyone. And part
Speaker 1: of that is because like when you sit down with
Speaker 1: someone who is maga and I have actually because I
Speaker 1: have some friends who are.
Speaker 5: Actually real die in the world.
Speaker 1: You know people who think like Trump is shaking things up,
Speaker 1: and they are people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like they may.
Speaker 1: Be wrong on any number of things, but they are people.
Speaker 1: And I think what you're talking about with the jerrymanderin
Speaker 1: is think the same phenomenon.
Speaker 6: Yes, we need to be talking to each other, whether
Speaker 6: it's you know, in real life or digitally human to human.
Speaker 6: And I spent a lot of my career doing tailored communications,
Speaker 6: which means, you know, maybe I need to get out
Speaker 6: a message to someone or to a group of people
Speaker 6: about why quitting smoking would be good. My background is
Speaker 6: public health. Sorry to all the people who love smoking
Speaker 6: in the world. And if you're not a pregnant person,
Speaker 6: you don't need to hear about how cigarettes can harm
Speaker 6: a fetus. And so we could develop algorithms that would
Speaker 6: put content together like legos, so that each person would
Speaker 6: see the content that was relevant to them, presented in
Speaker 6: a way that we thought would be most likely to
Speaker 6: reach them. And we see that happening in the way
Speaker 6: like in politics, you see people segmenting themselves like self segmenting,
Speaker 6: self tailoring their content. And so if you only go
Speaker 6: the places where people already agree with you, and that
Speaker 6: includes running for office, if you're only running in districts
Speaker 6: where you think you can win or know you can win,
Speaker 6: you never grow. And so one of the fun things
Speaker 6: that we do as we're raising money is it's a
Speaker 6: very long story, but we're building AI.
Speaker 2: Models that think like target voting groups.
Speaker 6: And the first step in that is generating a huge
Speaker 6: range of messages that we might show to that target
Speaker 6: voting group. And so we go to people's houses and
Speaker 6: they have parties, and we put up an example persona
Speaker 6: of someone who voted for Trump that we would like
Speaker 6: to convince to vote for Democrats in the future, and
Speaker 6: the folks in that room work together to try to
Speaker 6: come up with messages that they think would be effective
Speaker 6: for that person. And you know what, message is never effective?
Speaker 2: I told you so, right. It's never effective to say,
Speaker 2: are you sorry now? And so we.
Speaker 6: Start to build some empathy in the room for why
Speaker 6: someone might have made that choice, and we generate this giant,
Speaker 6: like unique list of messages that we can then go
Speaker 6: test and use to train our AI models so that
Speaker 6: in the future we can predict message performance less expensively
Speaker 6: and more quickly. But it's also just like an interview
Speaker 6: for all, So I do.
Speaker 5: That i'd be doing anything with AI.
Speaker 6: AI can't make the messages for what it's worth if
Speaker 6: you ask it to make. It looks like some North
Speaker 6: Korea would put out. I mean maybe that I don't know,
Speaker 6: maybe we got to test some of that shit too,
Speaker 6: because here we go down that it's pretty slope, right.
Speaker 1: But the point I think is that there is quite
Speaker 1: a lot of opportunity here for a number of getting
Speaker 1: to people you might otherwise not get to.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and to learn how to best reach them. Like
Speaker 6: I wake up in the nighttime and think, like, what
Speaker 6: if we had said big money for small business instead
Speaker 6: of opportunity economy.
Speaker 5: Right, that would have been good.
Speaker 2: I mean I probably wouldn't have done it.
Speaker 6: But you know, no, tax on tips worked really well
Speaker 6: for the Republicans.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and they're definitely not going to do that.
Speaker 2: No hate bar. Thanks for coming on.
Speaker 6: Mollie john Fast, thanks for having me.
Speaker 4: No more.
Speaker 3: Second, Jesse Cannon Smiley, we covered a report that said
Speaker 3: that Pambondi is just a actor doing the spokesman job,
Speaker 3: and that Steven Miller is running the ship on many,
Speaker 3: many things. And now this latest report from Axios is
Speaker 3: that Stephen Miller has told, in stern words to Christy
Speaker 3: nom another person who's been accused of kaya just being
Speaker 3: a spokesperson, that she better get to arrest and a
Speaker 3: lot more people because he ain't having all these immigrants
Speaker 3: running around the country causing chaos.
Speaker 1: Look, first of all, there aren't even that many people
Speaker 1: coming here anymore.
Speaker 2: This is all to scare people.
Speaker 1: This is all to make everyone unhappy, un scared, And
Speaker 1: all Stephen Miller ever wanted to do was arrest immigrants.
Speaker 2: This has nothing to do with reality. This is just
Speaker 2: who he is.
Speaker 1: Ice is already completely out of control, disappearing grad students,
Speaker 1: Ignore these people, don't do this. Let's just be responsible
Speaker 1: and good and not do this kind of bullshit because
Speaker 1: it's terrible.
Speaker 2: People are being hurt and hated.
Speaker 5: 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 2: Thanks for listening.