Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds and Trump Media CEO, former Congressman Devin Nunas,
Speaker 1: has stepped down after the company lost seven hundred and
Speaker 1: twelve million dollars last year. We have such a great
Speaker 1: show for you today. The New Republic's Meredith Shiner stops
Speaker 1: by to talk to us about the enormous vibeshift changes
Speaker 1: in Congress. Then we'll talk to the wraps on Michael
Speaker 1: Calderon about the upcoming White House Correspondence dinner and the
Speaker 1: immense drama we may see. But first the news.
Speaker 2: So, Molli, you know you and I live in mom
Speaker 2: Donnie Stan the Social State, and you know we're always
Speaker 2: hearing about these giveaways.
Speaker 3: But it's funny.
Speaker 2: The place where all the corporations get the giveaways is
Speaker 2: really from the Trump administration. And we're seeing this with
Speaker 2: half a billion dollars going to Spirit Airlines to build
Speaker 2: them out. Now you can argue this is an essential
Speaker 2: way people get around this country, especially people.
Speaker 3: No, you can't, No poorer people use Spirit Airlines.
Speaker 1: Doesn't give him a fact, No, he doesn't terrible and
Speaker 1: also this is socialism. But the thing is, because it's
Speaker 1: the Trump administration, the question is why is the Spirit
Speaker 1: CEO making a donation to Like, if we look at
Speaker 1: Trump World, then we look at Mega. We know that
Speaker 1: there's something rotten in the state of Denmark. So what
Speaker 1: is it? Is it that the Trump administration has some
Speaker 1: kind of relationship with Spirit? Why is Donald Trump using
Speaker 1: our tax dollars to bail out Spirit Airlines? Earlier in
Speaker 1: this season of Donald Trump destroys America, we saw him
Speaker 1: use some of that money to bail out Latin American countries.
Speaker 1: We've seen him use our tax dollars for any number
Speaker 1: of sortied things. But my big question is what is
Speaker 1: he getting back? The deal will be five hundred million
Speaker 1: dollars for Spirit equity warrants for the government, because what
Speaker 1: our business to spend tax payer dollars? And then airlines
Speaker 1: notoriously stable. Actually, Donald Trump has already lost his shirt
Speaker 1: once with airlines. You'll remember the Trump shuttle. So of course,
Speaker 1: if there's an airline on the wall in the first decade,
Speaker 1: it will go off sooner rather than later.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 2: Okay, So there's lots of people questioning mister Trump's mental
Speaker 2: health these days. So this is where we get into
Speaker 2: some very fun modern stuff. So there is this man
Speaker 2: known as al Yakobe who's been caught many times making
Speaker 2: pro Israeli propaganda out of AI. So he today shared
Speaker 2: a meme that said breaking the Islamic Republic is preparing
Speaker 2: to hang out women and people who are good at
Speaker 2: detective AI are all digraphic saying this is the most
Speaker 2: AI that has ever AI imaged of all time.
Speaker 1: The thing that's amazing to me about this story is
Speaker 1: that this is Internet people on acts. But the thing
Speaker 1: that they don't realize is that those of us whose
Speaker 1: son subscribed to the New York Post know that this
Speaker 1: was the cover of the New York Post today. So
Speaker 1: these women, quote unquote, if they're women, if they're not women,
Speaker 1: we're on the cover of the New York Post this morning.
Speaker 1: So maybe there AI. It certainly seems like they may be.
Speaker 1: But either way, they were on the cover of the
Speaker 1: New York Post. So I don't know what is happening here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So Trump demanded that Aron not execute them, and
Speaker 2: now the White House has put out a statement saying
Speaker 2: that they've just been informed that they're not going to
Speaker 2: be killed and taking a win for saving AI lives.
Speaker 1: We think that they're not real anyway, I think is
Speaker 1: the net net right?
Speaker 2: It seems that the consensus on the Internet as of
Speaker 2: now is that this was made up, and because the
Speaker 2: person who initially spread this as such a bad past
Speaker 2: of making AI images and getting caught for it, it
Speaker 2: is not seeming very likely. And if that is the case,
Speaker 2: this is a real egg on the face of mister Trump.
Speaker 1: Yes, welcome to post truth America, where who even knows
Speaker 1: what the fuck is happening? Did you really look very
Speaker 1: AI ish? One of them looks like Alena Habba, one
Speaker 1: of them looks like Kai Trump, one of them looks
Speaker 1: like none of them look like actual people.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Like my thing would be is like, if these are
Speaker 2: people who are captured, did they go to a bodilely
Speaker 2: agency into a kidnapping.
Speaker 1: It is very strange. They're so attractive and they're also
Speaker 1: so blonde.
Speaker 3: Well, that's what mister Trump loves to save.
Speaker 1: That's right, He's very into saving blonde people.
Speaker 2: Okay, So we saw a congressional here yet again this
Speaker 2: week with RFK Junior, and there was noises made that
Speaker 2: I didn't know humans could make from his mouth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Darth Vader. This is we'll remember he's zinned.
Speaker 1: He did zin. We saw him zin before.
Speaker 2: For people who don't know what zin is, it's a
Speaker 2: tobacco pouches you too. Mostly popular with twenty year olds
Speaker 2: who have millennial perms. But the line that is really
Speaker 2: sticking out to people is that he said I've never
Speaker 2: been anti vaccine.
Speaker 3: That's the fucking brand.
Speaker 1: Yeah, here's what's happened. Okay, Donald Trump is pulling through
Speaker 1: the floor. He's pulling is bad. He's not popular. Things
Speaker 1: have really gone off the rails. Now. Donald Trump has
Speaker 1: this guy RFK Junior. He represents MAHA. He helped Donald
Speaker 1: Trump win the anti vax stuff. It's super unpopular. So
Speaker 1: what does Donald Trump do. He's got RFK Junior out
Speaker 1: there doing a sort of was I anti vax? Maybe
Speaker 1: I wasn't anti vax and he's lying. These people really
Speaker 1: like to lie. But you've heard him under oath line before.
Speaker 1: I mean, RFK Junior has lied under oath pretty much.
Speaker 1: That's sort of one of the central themes of this whole.
Speaker 1: So don't believe any of these people. I mean, this
Speaker 1: administration is just completely shock a block with people who
Speaker 1: don't tell the truth. But here's the quote, I have
Speaker 1: never been anti vaccine. It's like when Sean Hannity says
Speaker 1: he's not a reporter, he's a talk host. He has
Speaker 1: been anti vaccine. And later in the hearing he denied
Speaker 1: things he said, he has spread lies. He is trying
Speaker 1: to get them to not use the know what's going
Speaker 1: on here. This guy is a total liar.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And this is what he does every time, is
Speaker 2: he denies things he said on podcasts that we have
Speaker 2: tape of every time. This is just what he does
Speaker 2: because he doesn't want to actually have to answer for
Speaker 2: these things because I'll shock you here. He would not
Speaker 2: go so well on the stand up. He had to
Speaker 2: defend things like what he says about black children and
Speaker 2: being raised and things like that. On podcasts. You can't
Speaker 2: defend the indefensible, but MAGA tries anyway. The Southern Poverty
Speaker 2: Law Center, which many people may know as being the
Speaker 2: investigative body that goes after extremist groups, has been targeted
Speaker 2: by the DOJ and Cashpitel.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So the Southern Poverty Law Center is a really
Speaker 1: incredible organization that has been around for a long time
Speaker 1: and works on trying to expose the KKK. Now, Donald
Speaker 1: Trump doesn't like that, because I don't know why he
Speaker 1: doesn't like people who expose the KKK. It's odd, but
Speaker 1: he doesn't like this is the guy that's good people
Speaker 1: on both sides. That guy does not want them to
Speaker 1: go after the KKK. So here's the idea. Southern Positarity
Speaker 1: Law Center has paid informants the way the FBI does.
Speaker 1: They're called field sources. They engage in their informants and
Speaker 1: they get paid and they inform and thus this organization
Speaker 1: learns about the KKK and stops them from doing crimes.
Speaker 1: And also more importantly, they are able to monitor them.
Speaker 1: Now this administration doesn't like people to monitor the KKK.
Speaker 1: Another interesting thing, and so they are going after the
Speaker 1: Southern Property At Law Center. Again, like, this is Todd
Speaker 1: Blanche trying to keep his job. This is Todd Blanche
Speaker 1: knowing that Pam Bondy got fired because she did not
Speaker 1: do the kind of what hunts that Donald Trump wanted.
Speaker 1: So Todd Blanche has cooked this thing up. It's never
Speaker 1: going to go. You know, he got an indictment from
Speaker 1: Alabama from the Trumpiest part of Alabama. It's not a
Speaker 1: real case, like they're going to go after them for wirefraud.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just completely ridiculous. And this is what
Speaker 1: Trump World does. They twist the laws and the rules
Speaker 1: to give the guy something. So there we are. Meredith
Speaker 1: Shiner is a contributing editor at The New Republic.
Speaker 4: Welcome, Thank you, Mollie, it's so great to be back.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about Virginia. Yesterday, Democrats Republicans Virginians voted on
Speaker 1: whether or not to redistrict Democrats one. It is now
Speaker 1: it has to be signed off on by the court,
Speaker 1: but it looks like it's going to be a ten
Speaker 1: to one map, which is really something. Republicans are very mad.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, this is a really big deal. First
Speaker 4: and foremost Republicans are mad because they thought they were
Speaker 4: always going to be the only ones.
Speaker 1: Who could do this.
Speaker 4: Republicans have been jerrymandering these maps. They've been trying to
Speaker 4: have mid cycle redraws of maps for a very very
Speaker 4: long time. And one of the things that they banked
Speaker 4: on was that Democrats were going to be so committed
Speaker 4: to the rules and democracy and looking like they were
Speaker 4: above it that they would continue to take state houses
Speaker 4: across the country that they would continue to read house
Speaker 4: maps to shape the power in the United States Congress.
Speaker 4: And what you're seeing, I think in Virginia is a
Speaker 4: recognition from the electorate that that no longer serves us.
Speaker 4: It does not serve democracy. It doesn't serve the people
Speaker 4: of Virginia, and it doesn't serve people in purple states
Speaker 4: across the country. You know, it exists sort of on
Speaker 4: two levels. Even saying purple state, I had to take
Speaker 4: a pause because I think our conception of what a
Speaker 4: Republican state is, a blue state, a purple state, and
Speaker 4: a red state is actually really informed by which states
Speaker 4: are overly jerrymandard and which aren't. States like North Carolina
Speaker 4: where Republicans permanently tried to entrench a super majority with
Speaker 4: the way that they drew lines. So I think this
Speaker 4: is a big step in the right direction in terms
Speaker 4: of how we think about local politics.
Speaker 1: But I also think it's.
Speaker 4: Really important in terms of how we think about national politics,
Speaker 4: how democrats can act across the country, and the kinds
Speaker 4: of steps were quiet to actually reclaim democracy that we
Speaker 4: have lost, because it no longer is beneficial to pretend
Speaker 4: like we live in an ideal world and.
Speaker 1: Hope that it bounces back.
Speaker 4: What you're seeing in Virginia is that fifty one percent
Speaker 4: of voters there see the world we're living in, don't
Speaker 4: like it and want to do something about it. And
Speaker 4: they're doing that in a world where there's been rampid misinformation,
Speaker 4: where the information ecosystem about what's even happening is completely broken.
Speaker 4: I saw a really great video from Jammel Boui yesterday
Speaker 4: and he was talking about the kinds of mailers and
Speaker 4: ads that he was seeing, right because he lives to
Speaker 4: ma genulate democratic voters against this choice. And I think
Speaker 4: the overwhelming sentiment about where the country is going and
Speaker 4: that we need to actually act to do something superseded
Speaker 4: all of the other bad factors in play in order
Speaker 4: to send this message not just to people in Virginia,
Speaker 4: but I think people across the country.
Speaker 1: And I want to talk about one of these sphereheads
Speaker 1: of this legislation, a woman called she's the President pro
Speaker 1: temp for of the Virginia Senate. She's a Democrat. Her
Speaker 1: name is Lois Lucas. She is eighty four years old
Speaker 1: and has been just a powerhouse, very tough black woman
Speaker 1: who has who represents Chesapeake Bay and has been in
Speaker 1: the Senate from nineteen ninety two. She represents the eighteenth district.
Speaker 1: The reason why I want to bring her up is
Speaker 1: any number of reasons. But she's got a very good
Speaker 1: Twitter game, which again is cool, but she also just
Speaker 1: is very tough. And you know, sometimes we criticize the
Speaker 1: older members, and we're going to talk about that in
Speaker 1: a minute, because there's a member of Congress who has
Speaker 1: died in office. But this woman is just awesome. And
Speaker 1: she did push back, you know, a lot. There was
Speaker 1: a real tension in Virginia between Democrats who wanted a
Speaker 1: jerrymander that was like the California jerrymander where you get
Speaker 1: it five seats and not like a jerrymander, which is
Speaker 1: like a killer jerrymander, which is ten seat, ten to one.
Speaker 1: And she pushed back and was like, no, we are
Speaker 1: going to fight back the way Republicans are fighting back here.
Speaker 1: And that gives Democrats a little bit of a buffer
Speaker 1: in case the Supreme Court does something really insane or Florida.
Speaker 4: Push it in case or when with a Supreme Court,
Speaker 4: it's more of a when or not if. Look, when
Speaker 4: we talk about the jar intocracy. I think in a
Speaker 4: lot of ways, what we're doing is using a technocratic
Speaker 4: word for out of touch. And for some members, I
Speaker 4: think the issue is not that they are old. It
Speaker 4: is that they're completely out of touch with the lived
Speaker 4: experience on the ground for the people that they are
Speaker 4: supposed to represent and paying attention to these issues, understanding
Speaker 4: them fully. It's not necessarily a function of age. You
Speaker 4: could have a twenty five year old in Silicon Valley
Speaker 4: who doesn't really get the fall of democracy or the
Speaker 4: rise of authoritarianism, and so I think what you saw
Speaker 4: here was someone who has lived through some of the
Speaker 4: changes that we've had in this country since the nineteen sixties, right,
Speaker 4: and the process of progress and retrenchment, and is familiar
Speaker 4: with the opposition and their tactics and wanted to adapt
Speaker 4: in a way that was commensurate to the moment. And
Speaker 4: that is not a function of age. I think that's
Speaker 4: a function of awareness of living in some of these
Speaker 4: state legislatures, like what happens in Washington, I think because
Speaker 4: we see capitol buildings across the country, and we see
Speaker 4: the US capital and we see politicians, there is this
Speaker 4: tendency to flatten them, or to flatten what their work
Speaker 4: is or how they engage with their constituents. And I
Speaker 4: think what you saw here was an example of a
Speaker 4: politician who saw the reality, who saw what was happening
Speaker 4: across the country, and who recognized her own agency and
Speaker 4: power to do something about it. And that's the second
Speaker 4: piece of I think why people are complaining about the
Speaker 4: gerontocracy or writers in Washington is because they're out of
Speaker 4: touch with what's happening. They're trying to pretend that they're
Speaker 4: living in a different reality than the one we live
Speaker 4: in now because grappling with that reality is uncomfortable for them,
Speaker 4: and they're denying their own agency in any context where
Speaker 4: they could make a difference. They're not choosing to pull
Speaker 4: every arrow in their quiver in the way that some
Speaker 4: of these people in the States are, because we've been
Speaker 4: living with the collapse of the federal government for a
Speaker 4: really long time. And conversely, and I think this was
Speaker 4: an embedded eater question. Also, Molly, we've seen what Republicans
Speaker 4: do at the state level and how that can really
Speaker 4: ladder up to national politics. Republicans forever have wanted to
Speaker 4: use the states as a peatrie dish to practice some
Speaker 4: of their policies or their oppression and try to export
Speaker 4: it to the rest of the country. It has been
Speaker 4: probably two decades since Gail Collins is as GHEs Texas,
Speaker 4: But the entire theory of that book was how everything
Speaker 4: that happened in the Texas State House and in the
Speaker 4: governor's mansion in the eighties and nineties ended up in
Speaker 4: some way creeping into our federal law making, you know,
Speaker 4: decades later.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so.
Speaker 4: We're looking at this map, we're looking at how everything
Speaker 4: has become fractured. And I think the people who are
Speaker 4: going to far the best in the eyes of history
Speaker 4: are the people who look at reality, look at the
Speaker 4: kind of tools they have available to themselves, and really
Speaker 4: carve out of space where they can fight and make
Speaker 4: a difference. And that's what you saw in Virginia, and
Speaker 4: I think it's what you're going to continue to see
Speaker 4: in states across the country, especially if we're not seeing
Speaker 4: as much action in Washington as we should be.
Speaker 1: And Fox News, trying to silence her, made a big
Speaker 1: graphic that had a picture of her face, right because
Speaker 1: Fox they want you to know that she's a black woman.
Speaker 1: They can harass her, And underneath there was a quote
Speaker 1: that said you all started it and we fucking finished it.
Speaker 1: And they were doing this in order to get Trump
Speaker 1: to retweet it to harass her, and she just retweeted
Speaker 1: it herself, which I think is such a great example
Speaker 1: of what to do when mag verse comes after you,
Speaker 1: which is to just because the moment you start apologizing
Speaker 1: for yourself, the moment you start saying, oh, maybe I
Speaker 1: did something wrong, that's the moment you engage them. But
Speaker 1: the moment you are unapologetic about the about what pushing
Speaker 1: back looks like, about meeting Republicans where they are, that's
Speaker 1: the moment you have real power. Yeah.
Speaker 4: You know where my brain immediately went when you started
Speaker 4: talking about Fox News was also this week, Fox News
Speaker 4: has been attacking Elmo and Sesame st because Rommy Yusef
Speaker 4: did a bit on Sesame Street where he called Elmhabibi
Speaker 4: and it was just like it was such sweet, wholesome content.
Speaker 4: And I remember the second that I saw that video
Speaker 4: post from Sesame Street and Rommi Ramy's an Arab American comedian,
Speaker 4: a Muslim American comedian, and I was like, Oh, Fox
Speaker 4: News is gonna have a field day with this because
Speaker 4: they have a formula, they have people that they're looking for,
Speaker 4: they have things that they're looking for, and their rage
Speaker 4: machine runs on just the most fabricated rage.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and black women. It turns out people who.
Speaker 4: Are super cool and contribute to our society but don't
Speaker 4: look like old white men are people they don't want
Speaker 4: actually in a discourse or us familiarized with. And I
Speaker 4: just feel like there's a natural ceiling to that kind
Speaker 4: of propaganda. And I mean, when you look at what
Speaker 4: happened in Virginia, I think that that shows it that
Speaker 4: they have a particular base that they are activating, whose
Speaker 4: minds they are melting. But then the rest of us
Speaker 4: are out here and in some ways reachable, And how
Speaker 4: do we think about telling people concrete steps they can
Speaker 4: take to make change? And I think that's sort of
Speaker 4: the last part of you know, Okay, Republicans are creating
Speaker 4: this cartoon version of who a state representative is versus
Speaker 4: thinking about the people who are looking for change we are,
Speaker 4: you know, I would say, like six seven months away
Speaker 4: from a midterm and wanting to know concretely what they
Speaker 4: can do to make a difference in our lives and
Speaker 4: for our democracy and to make government work again. And
Speaker 4: I think the cool thing in Virginia or California pursuing
Speaker 4: this proposition is it something concrete, it's tangible, it's easy
Speaker 4: to explain why it is necessary, and people are voting
Speaker 4: for it. And so if there is there's a lesson here,
Speaker 4: it's that Republicans sure they're going to continue to try
Speaker 4: to find tweets or paint this reality that makes it
Speaker 4: seem like Democrats are the aggressors now, even though they're
Speaker 4: just showing up, you know, twenty five years late to
Speaker 4: the table that Republicans set, and we can't take that bait.
Speaker 4: You're right, you know, we can't. We can't let democrats
Speaker 4: be like, well, we don't. We don't want to be
Speaker 4: positioned as the bad guy, so we're not going to
Speaker 4: be assertive. I don't think that's the right tactic. I
Speaker 4: think the takeaway year should be voters want this, voters
Speaker 4: want to fight, and they believe in a democracy in
Speaker 4: a country that works, and so let's give them options
Speaker 4: and let's state it clearly and let's see what happens.
Speaker 4: And it turns out, at least this week in Virginia
Speaker 4: it was successful and what kinds of ideas, platforms, messages
Speaker 4: are you going to cultivate and expand upon in the
Speaker 4: next half a year before midterm, And what kind of
Speaker 4: promises are you going to make in order to motivate
Speaker 4: people in the way that they were motivated at Virginia yesterday.
Speaker 1: And I would add just to go into Fox News
Speaker 1: for a minute, and it's anti Muslim racism for lack
Speaker 1: of a better word, because that's what it is, xenophobia. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we saw Obama this week and Obama has not done
Speaker 1: a ton of campaigning, so I think is really notable
Speaker 1: when he sort of gets involved in things. He went
Speaker 1: with Zoran to do some photos with these pre k
Speaker 1: kids in the South Bronx. This is a free pre
Speaker 1: k It's a big thing that Zoran is highlighting, and
Speaker 1: I think it's important. I have like two things I
Speaker 1: want to say about it. One which is that I
Speaker 1: think it's good politics, good retail politics, and seeing Obama
Speaker 1: highlight it shows that I think Obama also thinks it's
Speaker 1: good retail politics. But there was another thing that Zoran
Speaker 1: did that I'm really impressed by and I want you
Speaker 1: to weigh in on it. He was on Meet the
Speaker 1: pras yes this week and Kristen Walker, who I think
Speaker 1: it does a very good job in a very tough
Speaker 1: job because this is not you know, network television is
Speaker 1: really hard, pushing these people a lot of times, very hard.
Speaker 1: But she did this question that journalists often do with Democrats,
Speaker 1: and Democrats always fall for it, which is, who is
Speaker 1: your twenty twenty eight pick? It is not the midterms yet,
Speaker 1: it is an insane question, and I think even it
Speaker 1: was worse than that. I think it was like, oh,
Speaker 1: do you support Harris running for president? And twenty twenty eight? Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's a great if you're an interviewer trying to
Speaker 1: get a viral moment, which is part I mean she is.
Speaker 1: That's what she's doing, right, and that's what a lot
Speaker 1: of people do when they're in this job. And he
Speaker 1: said to her, I am laser focused on affordability, which
Speaker 1: I think is the only way to answer that question
Speaker 1: because it's not up to him, it's up to the midterms,
Speaker 1: it's up to primary voters, and honestly, who cares what
Speaker 1: he thinks? What do you think about that?
Speaker 4: Well, to break apart the two parts of your question,
Speaker 4: I frankly thought you were going to ask me about
Speaker 4: his moment yesterday where he was asked by a reporter
Speaker 4: whether or not he'd curse the Mets and whether he
Speaker 4: could uncurse them because they haven't once since he hugged
Speaker 4: mister Met, right, which is my back, my favorite Zora
Speaker 4: Mandabie moment.
Speaker 1: That's well, that's because in your post, which is owned
Speaker 1: by Rupert Murnoch, had a big story yesterday about how
Speaker 1: he did curse the Mets.
Speaker 4: The Mets, which have always been in the metal team,
Speaker 4: are genetically cursed. Like that is the point of the Mets,
Speaker 4: is that they are cursed. But I don't want to
Speaker 4: side rail our conversation more than I already have with.
Speaker 1: The Barack Obama visit.
Speaker 4: I the thing that I took away from that was
Speaker 4: that zoramm Donnie is really good at this, and he's
Speaker 4: really popular, and Barack Obama actually wanted to attach some
Speaker 4: of his currency to that person, which yeah, and I
Speaker 4: think that's really notable to show up there and to
Speaker 4: be like, you are doing really good work. This is
Speaker 4: a really good opportunity and I want to be there
Speaker 4: for it. And we haven't seen Barack Obama do a
Speaker 4: lot of that with other politicians and I think that
Speaker 4: is a little bit of game recognizing game.
Speaker 1: Trump. But both Trump and I love mon Dami because
Speaker 1: they see game.
Speaker 4: And that's not even really engaging with the ideological questions
Speaker 4: of where Zaura mom Dannie is or where Barack Obama
Speaker 4: was in terms of their impact. But I think it's
Speaker 4: this recognition that you are doing this in a way
Speaker 4: that is compelling to people, and I want to maintain
Speaker 4: my relevance in being compelling to people.
Speaker 5: So that's the first part.
Speaker 4: The second part is that I think it's really important
Speaker 4: to not engage with questions that don't matter to other people.
Speaker 4: So this idea of who's going to be the nominee
Speaker 4: in twenty twenty eight, that is a parlor game question
Speaker 4: that is more interesting to people within the beltleigh who
Speaker 4: want to talk about it at cocktail parties afterwards. And
Speaker 4: you're right, it doesn't say anything about what the task
Speaker 4: at hand is. It doesn't say anything about how do
Speaker 4: we win the midterm. It does say anything about what
Speaker 4: kind of assurances do we need to make to voters
Speaker 4: in terms of investigations, accountability, and change in order to
Speaker 4: win back the House.
Speaker 1: And aside from that, that's not even soral mom. Donnie's job.
Speaker 4: He is Mayor of New York, and that is a
Speaker 4: big enough and busy enough and hard enough job without
Speaker 4: actually playing the role of political pundit. And so you
Speaker 4: saw in that moment that he was really capable and
Speaker 4: competent at that. There was another moment recently where Secretary
Speaker 4: Mayor Pete Buddha Judge was on CNBC and he was
Speaker 4: fighting with I forget the token Republican.
Speaker 1: He's not a toe.
Speaker 5: He's not a toe.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of token Republicans on there, but
Speaker 1: that was that was the best frend of Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: Joe Kiernan also is often whenever you watch him, whenever
Speaker 1: he is a Democrat on he makes them disavow, either
Speaker 1: find a Republican to disavow, or a Democrat to disavow,
Speaker 1: or someone who they he thinks is last I've seen
Speaker 1: him break people making them disavow Hassan Piker.
Speaker 4: So this clip was amazing because Joe Kiernan was like, oh, well,
Speaker 4: inflation is so bad and Democrats promise to like get
Speaker 4: rid of inflation, and inflation was so bad in COVID
Speaker 4: and people did just didn't take the bait. He's like well,
Speaker 4: the president promised to do this and he has it,
Speaker 4: Like you said, it would be X, and it's why.
Speaker 4: And when someone was like, well, why don't you talk
Speaker 4: about Z, He's like, I'm not here to talk about Z.
Speaker 4: We're talking about X and Y and its basic math.
Speaker 4: And it was so simple and it was so straightforward.
Speaker 4: And I think that there has been this preference or
Speaker 4: habituation to fear from Democrats because while there's overall a
Speaker 4: discourse that the media is biased towards liberals, part of
Speaker 4: the correction I think that reporters do, even if it's subconsciously,
Speaker 4: is to take some of those Republican talking points and
Speaker 4: put them towards Democrats in sort of this proof that
Speaker 4: they're not actually liberals. But what that has done is
Speaker 4: fundamentally skew our discourse towards Republican talking points and made democrats,
Speaker 4: I think, fearful to either reject the premise at the
Speaker 4: outset or speak their peace because all of the rules
Speaker 4: of the game are designed by people who functionally are
Speaker 4: not aligned to their outcomes. Right.
Speaker 1: No, I think that's a really good point speaking of gerontocracy,
Speaker 1: and you and I both critical of this often, but
Speaker 1: today we have a Democrat, an eighty year old Democrat
Speaker 1: has died in office, David Scott. He is one of
Speaker 1: the many backbenchers in Congress. He is eighty. It's very
Speaker 1: sad he's died, but it also means that the shift
Speaker 1: in the Democrats do not have the majority. Republicans of
Speaker 1: the majority, but it's very tight. Let's talk for a
Speaker 1: minute about what last week. We saw Eric Swawell, who
Speaker 1: has been on this pot guest and who I knew
Speaker 1: and was friendly with then who turns out to be
Speaker 1: accused of some pretty heinous stuff. He resigned, And at
Speaker 1: the same time they had a Republican called Tony Gonzalez resign.
Speaker 1: It was sort of a one from one. Gonzalez had
Speaker 1: an affair with a staffer who set herself on fire
Speaker 1: and is accused of having other affairs with staffers and
Speaker 1: also perhaps sexual harassment too, so both were both resigned
Speaker 1: at the same time. There's also another member of the
Speaker 1: House of Republican, Corey Mills, who is accused of some
Speaker 1: really heinous stuff and also has an ethics investigation against him.
Speaker 1: Plus we have Cheryl Scherphilis McCormick who has resigned. She
Speaker 1: was long story, but she's alleged to have taken five
Speaker 1: million dollars in COVID funds and use them for campaigning.
Speaker 4: Discuss So you're gonna have to invite me back so
Speaker 4: we can spend more time talking about the culture of
Speaker 4: misogyny and absolute ethical morass that exists on Capitol Hill.
Speaker 4: But to your question, I actually think this relates back
Speaker 4: to what we open with and the idea of gerrymandering
Speaker 4: and what is fairness and what undergirds our democracy. Any
Speaker 4: chamber where one person dying could upend the balance of
Speaker 4: how we function as a government is probably not a
Speaker 4: really stable system. And the idea that Tony Gonzalez could
Speaker 4: not or would not be released from Congress until Eric
Speaker 4: Swalwell also proved to be a monster in this insane
Speaker 4: sort of eye for an I Hamabi's code of bad
Speaker 4: people who need to be kept on a ledger because
Speaker 4: one vote could make the difference on whether or not
Speaker 4: the current president of the United States gets to run
Speaker 4: around completely untracked and with no congressional investigations.
Speaker 1: That's a bad system.
Speaker 4: And when we think about everything that has contributed to
Speaker 4: this moment, whether it is jerry mandering, whether it is
Speaker 4: the Electoral College to determine our president. Whether it is
Speaker 4: a Congress that has pretty much self neutered itself and
Speaker 4: stepped away from its Article one obligations because Republicans.
Speaker 1: Are in charge.
Speaker 4: But you have the quote unquote people's House where people
Speaker 4: are being held around, unethical people, bad people, people who
Speaker 4: hate women, people who hate laws are being kept around
Speaker 4: because that one vote makes a difference. That is not
Speaker 4: in the service of the American people. It's not in
Speaker 4: the service of their constituents, and that's a really tough
Speaker 4: place for us to be as a country.
Speaker 1: Meredith, thank you, thank you, thank you. Will you please
Speaker 1: come back? Yes, I will come back anytime you want
Speaker 1: to have.
Speaker 5: Me, Molly.
Speaker 1: Michael Calderon is the media editor of The rep. Michael Calderon,
Speaker 1: Welcome to Fast Pontank.
Speaker 5: Thanks so much, Molly, you're here.
Speaker 1: You might beloved an editor for like five years or something.
Speaker 5: We had a form of this phone call like every day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's great to have you here. And you've
Speaker 1: come on to talk about the White House Correspondence Weekend,
Speaker 1: which is at best. You know, there was actually Paul Fari, Yeah,
Speaker 1: was a really smart Washington Post media critic. Washing Post died,
Speaker 1: and now he's at the Atlantic and he had a
Speaker 1: really good piece today about how even at its best,
Speaker 1: the Correspondence Dinner is highly fraught, but this is not
Speaker 1: at its best discuss no.
Speaker 6: I mean, there has been a running critique of the
Speaker 6: Correspondence Center that it just shows the kind of coziness,
Speaker 6: the chumminess of Washington between reporters and the people that
Speaker 6: they covered, the people they're supposed to be holding accountable.
Speaker 5: And so a lot of people have criticized the dinner
Speaker 5: over the years.
Speaker 6: The New York Times stopped going in two thousand and
Speaker 6: seven and hasn't come since because of this. They just
Speaker 6: felt it's bad, the optics are bad, it's a bad look.
Speaker 6: We can just cut the whole thing. The Correspondent Center
Speaker 6: always invites the president, whether it's a Democrat or Republican,
Speaker 6: and they did that throughout Donald Trump's first term.
Speaker 5: He never came.
Speaker 6: The first year of his second term, he didn't come.
Speaker 6: And now they're coming. And that's where the problem is.
Speaker 6: It's not inviting a Republican president. It's inviting a president
Speaker 6: who has attacked the press mercilessly throughout the last fifteen
Speaker 6: months and whose administration has clamped out on press access,
Speaker 6: has threatened news organizations, and Trump personally has sued news organizations.
Speaker 6: So you're going to have the guest of honor a
Speaker 6: guy giving a speech sitting up on this platform who
Speaker 6: has undermined the press, you know, throughout his second term.
Speaker 5: That's why it's not normal.
Speaker 1: Yes, he has undermined the press again. Like one of
Speaker 1: the big problems. One of the big themes we see
Speaker 1: in Trump world is like norms versus laws. So there
Speaker 1: are a lot of things like like smashing the East
Speaker 1: Way that is not illegal technically, but nobody ever tried
Speaker 1: to do it until now. So talk us through this
Speaker 1: sort of There are a lot of When you look
Speaker 1: at the Washington Press Corps, they are governed by a
Speaker 1: lot of norms.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you know, there's no law that reporters have to
Speaker 6: be in the West Wing that they get to ask
Speaker 6: the Press Secretary questions on a given day. These are
Speaker 6: all these are all built out of relationships between the
Speaker 6: Press Corps and the White House, regardless of who's in power.
Speaker 6: These are the negotiations that happen in terms of access,
Speaker 6: in terms of getting questions of the president. And so,
Speaker 6: for instance, the White House Correspondence Association has long been
Speaker 6: able to determine which reporters covered a president as part
Speaker 6: of the pool. This is like, you know, if he's
Speaker 6: in a small setting in the Oval Office, he's traveling,
Speaker 6: he's at mar A Lago. It's very important to have
Speaker 6: small group reporters that can cover it for the wider
Speaker 6: press corps, for hundreds of other journalists. And one of
Speaker 6: the first things this administration did in the second term
Speaker 6: was take that away. They put it under the control
Speaker 6: of the White House. One of the other first things
Speaker 6: they did was bar the Associated Press from covering the
Speaker 6: president up close because they refused to call the Gulf
Speaker 6: of Mexico the Gulf of America. And it was these
Speaker 6: types of restrictions that start in the beginning. And it's
Speaker 6: not just that the White House. We saw this at
Speaker 6: the Pentagon where the Pentagon put forth restrictions last fall
Speaker 6: that drove dozens of news organizations to leave, including CBS News,
Speaker 6: which is invited Pete hegset to sit at one of
Speaker 6: their tables at the Correspondence And I think that's why
Speaker 6: it feels different than past years, and that you have
Speaker 6: administration officials like Pete Hegseth and even Brendan Carr, the
Speaker 6: FCC chair who has targeted broadcasters, was invited by Paramount.
Speaker 6: And of course Donald Trump is going to be sitting
Speaker 6: up on the top of the stage.
Speaker 1: I want you to talk about what's happening right now
Speaker 1: with Paramount CBS. Barry Wise is a favorite of the
Speaker 1: right wing billionaire class, is very involved in this Paramount murder.
Speaker 1: CBS is about to to be part of this enormous
Speaker 1: engine that is both TikTok and CNN if it passes.
Speaker 1: She has not increased viewership at CBS, but she has
Speaker 1: undermined a lot of the really good reputation that CBS
Speaker 1: had as being nonpartisan. A lot of people of theories
Speaker 1: about her are like why she's brought in or what
Speaker 1: she's doing? What's yours?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, I think David Ellison, who his company
Speaker 6: Skydance merged with Paramount. Now he's trying to merge and
Speaker 6: take over Warner Brothers Discovery, which is even bigger. It
Speaker 6: means that not only will he control CBS, but would
Speaker 6: control CNN potentially by the end of this year or
Speaker 6: early next year. And you know, Ellison then bought The
Speaker 6: Free Press for one hundred and fifty million dollars and
Speaker 6: installed Barry Weiss, and I think he's given her a
Speaker 6: lot of leeway. She has a lot of latitude to
Speaker 6: make changes, and she is And I think one of
Speaker 6: the issues with her early on was she abruptly pulled
Speaker 6: a CBS sixty Minutes segment, which was extremely unusual. It
Speaker 6: was hours before in a broadcast, this was after it
Speaker 6: was being promoted. And I think one of the questions
Speaker 6: with her is she making some of these moves for
Speaker 6: political reasons, and certainly some people inside CBS think so,
Speaker 6: Or is it just that she's a novice. She's never
Speaker 6: worked in TV news. She hasn't even worked very much
Speaker 6: in reporting or investigated reporting. Primarily, she's been a commentator,
Speaker 6: and she's somebody who started a website that is largely
Speaker 6: around her worldview, a kind of more right leaning, anti
Speaker 6: woke point of view. That's fine, but she has never
Speaker 6: done the type of journalism that you see at a
Speaker 6: place like sixty Minutes And so the big fear now
Speaker 6: at sixty Minutes is that their season is over in May,
Speaker 6: and there's an expectation that she's going to really shake
Speaker 6: up that broadcast. Now she already shook up the CBS
Speaker 6: even news put Tony de cooppele there. She's made changes elsewhere.
Speaker 6: But the issue at sixty minutes, this is their highest rated.
Speaker 1: TVD crazy numbers, right, what are the numbers on sixty minutes?
Speaker 5: This is a show that brings in ten million people.
Speaker 1: It's crazy. By the way, there's nothing that brings in
Speaker 1: ten million people.
Speaker 5: It's an anomaly.
Speaker 6: And so if you have a show that's doing really
Speaker 6: strong journalism and is popular and you want to break
Speaker 6: it up. So that's the issue right now inside sixty minutes.
Speaker 6: And then so you have Barry Weis is going to
Speaker 6: be at the dinner, David Ellison presumably be at the dinner.
Speaker 6: They're reportedly throwing some kind of private function that said
Speaker 6: it was not even an honor of just sixty it
Speaker 6: was not even just an honor of CBS journalist, but
Speaker 6: in honor of the Trump White House.
Speaker 5: And yeah, playing out as they need.
Speaker 6: Regulatory they need a regulatory approval to finish the Warner
Speaker 6: Brothers Discovery merger. And that's the big one down the line.
Speaker 1: You know, it's funny because there is another Fed governor
Speaker 1: who I've talked to before, and she is constantly talking
Speaker 1: about she's the one Democrat still on the committee, and
Speaker 1: she talks about how a lot of stuff friend of
Speaker 1: Carr is threatening, he can't actually do. Like, so much
Speaker 1: of what we've seen is that the right has threatened
Speaker 1: things and people have just rolled over. I'm thinking of
Speaker 1: like Sherry Redstone canceling Colbert like things that just they're
Speaker 1: just doing it because they're like, whatever is more than
Speaker 1: obeying in events, obeying plus plus plus in advance. Where
Speaker 1: else do you see that?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean we saw this last year when Paramount
Speaker 6: was trying to merge with Skydance, and within weeks before
Speaker 6: they finally got that approval, you know, Paramount negotiated this
Speaker 6: multimillion dollar settlement with Donald Trump over his loss and
Speaker 6: fifty minutes.
Speaker 5: We've seen this before.
Speaker 6: Abe Disney also settled with Donald Trump just as he
Speaker 6: won the presidency over him suing because of something.
Speaker 5: George Stephanopoulos said.
Speaker 6: Donald Trump issued a lot of news organizations, and usually
Speaker 6: these ins organizations fight back. The Wall Street Journal has,
Speaker 6: the New York Times is, the BBC is But we
Speaker 6: saw Paramount settle as they were trying to complete this merger,
Speaker 6: and so you know, you're talking about Brendan Carr can't
Speaker 6: control everything, and in some ways, the FCC is they
Speaker 6: largely control even broadcast and radio. They can't control cable
Speaker 6: and you know, other sort of platforms.
Speaker 5: So he is limited in what he can do. But
Speaker 5: the threats he can make.
Speaker 6: You know, if a company has a merger down the line,
Speaker 6: that's obviously going to make them think twice.
Speaker 1: But it is funny because it's like, if you think
Speaker 1: about Elon and the way in which Elon has really
Speaker 1: done illegal stuff right with his companies, and even we've
Speaker 1: seen him, you know, he'll say things like if Democrats
Speaker 1: really investigate this, I'm going to jail, you know, that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. That's not verbatim, but he's definitely intubated
Speaker 1: that he's done stuff that has at best flaut of
Speaker 1: the laws and at worst is illegal. But Democrats don't
Speaker 1: seem to threaten that same way. They don't seem to Yeah.
Speaker 5: They've never done with Brendan car did.
Speaker 6: Which is an FCC chair saying that the president is
Speaker 6: quote winning against the fake news media. I mean he's
Speaker 6: taking a victory lap for Colbert for other instances in
Speaker 6: which the media has seem to cave that has never
Speaker 6: happened before, and we can we can play this game
Speaker 6: a million times of could you imagine if Obama's FCC
Speaker 6: chair was going after Fox News day in and day
Speaker 6: out coverage was looked like it's something we've we've never
Speaker 6: seen this, this kind of brazen this before, or you know,
Speaker 6: trying to take a win for the president and it
Speaker 6: comes as Trump as attacking. So to have the SEC
Speaker 6: chair kind of echoing that the president is winning, it's
Speaker 6: a whole new ballgame, and it's it's why all of
Speaker 6: this is not particularly normal moment to invite the president
Speaker 6: and his cabin and other officials to the Correspondence Center.
Speaker 1: When you talk about the media, a lot of times
Speaker 1: we end up talking about because the media is sort
Speaker 1: of owned by a lot of rich, powerful people like
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos, like Loreen Pale Jobs. Now, Loreene has been
Speaker 1: a really good star war right, she owns the Atlantic,
Speaker 1: She's very building up right. Bezos has tried to crush
Speaker 1: the Washington Post and has made it as small as
Speaker 1: possible and has undermined the editorial page any which way.
Speaker 1: So when we have this conversation about media, it often
Speaker 1: just goes up to billionaires because billionaires own media, a
Speaker 1: lot of billionaires on media. Do you think, as we're
Speaker 1: watching this that we're a year and a half into
Speaker 1: this Trump administration, what we've seen is that billionaires have
Speaker 1: just signed off on everything, and as the normal people
Speaker 1: who have been the brave ones, are you surprised by that?
Speaker 1: Because remember we all live through that news cycle where
Speaker 1: like Jeff Bezos was going to save democracy.
Speaker 6: Yes, I mean, I think I think it was the
Speaker 6: most telling moment was on day one of this whole
Speaker 6: second term when we saw Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk
Speaker 6: and Mark Zuckerberg all standing there with other captains of industry,
Speaker 6: in the tech world, in the media world. And I
Speaker 6: think the relationships between media owners has come under more
Speaker 6: scrutiny in this term because we're seeing how is Patrick Schushan,
Speaker 6: the owner of the Los Angeles Times, interacting with both
Speaker 6: Trump and with Magoworld, Or what about Jeff Bezos. I mean,
Speaker 6: and you know Jeff bezosg you know Amazon MGM, you know,
Speaker 6: bought the Milania Trump documentary. Now, Jeff Bezos has said
Speaker 6: that he wasn't involved in that position, but clearly his
Speaker 6: company spent a tremendous amount of money to buy and
Speaker 6: market a documentary, a flattering documentary about Malania Trump at
Speaker 6: the same time that he's cutting.
Speaker 5: Three hundred jobs from the Washington Post.
Speaker 6: And so, yeah, I think it's I think it's it's
Speaker 6: it's imperative to look at ownership and what are there
Speaker 6: other you know, what is their other business before government?
Speaker 6: And the thing is Amazon has other business for government,
Speaker 6: so does you know Apple and Meta, but some other
Speaker 6: media companies, you do have some individual owners who don't
Speaker 6: have that. They don't have broadcasting license that could be threatened,
Speaker 6: and they don't have, you know, other regulatory hurdles that
Speaker 6: they have to get over. If you're just an independent,
Speaker 6: rich person and you own a publication news site, you
Speaker 6: might be in a different place than a bigger media
Speaker 6: apparatus that has to worry about the broadcast license for
Speaker 6: you know, TV and radio.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about Trump has been doing this
Speaker 1: thing where he when he gets into trouble, he calls reporters.
Speaker 1: So he's been calling around reporters.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 1: Maggie Haberman, who's been covering him for a million years
Speaker 1: and who covered him when he was just a New
Speaker 1: York Whealis guy, said that this is kind of what
Speaker 1: he's always done where he calls around reporters. The New
Speaker 1: York Press Corps is a very sort of tough group
Speaker 1: where you like, this is sort of the tabloid culture
Speaker 1: of calling up reporters and giving them scoops, and by
Speaker 1: giving them scoops you can shape the way that they
Speaker 1: cover you, and also that you can make news by
Speaker 1: saying lies. Explain to us what you see there and
Speaker 1: why he seems to be able to use it to
Speaker 1: such great success.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean I have to back up Maggie. I mean,
Speaker 6: she's covered him closer than anyone. But I say this
Speaker 6: when I was very young, before I was a media reporter,
Speaker 6: as a real estate reporter in New York, and one
Speaker 6: of the interesting things was probably the easiest famous person
Speaker 6: to get on the phone was Donald Trump, which as
Speaker 6: a very young reporter was surprising. This is somebody who
Speaker 6: seemed larger than life, big in New York. Real estate
Speaker 6: was on TV. But if he called his office, they
Speaker 6: would often put you through to him because he wanted
Speaker 6: to give quotes, he wanted to be out there publicly,
Speaker 6: and he's he's always lived that way. And that's why
Speaker 6: with when the Iran War starts. Most of what we've
Speaker 6: been hearing heard from Donald Trump, especially early on and
Speaker 6: even throughout the past month or so, is little bits
Speaker 6: of pieces that he tells reporters on the phone.
Speaker 5: And there was a period where he must.
Speaker 6: Have called a dozen or two dozen reporters over a
Speaker 6: week period, and you know, oftentimes saying things that conflict
Speaker 6: from one call to the next, but each one is
Speaker 6: kind of treated as a headline. It's treated as big news.
Speaker 6: And you see the White House reporters often going on
Speaker 6: X and saying, just got off the phone with the President.
Speaker 5: He tells me such and such about Iran. And you
Speaker 5: know that can have an impact. I mean that can
Speaker 5: move markets.
Speaker 6: He's the president that can also generate other headlines, and
Speaker 6: so you know, it created, especially early on, this kind
Speaker 6: of fog of war where Trump was talking so much
Speaker 6: to reporters and bits and pieces, and that's that's just
Speaker 6: how he operates. And even reporters like Maggie Haberman he
Speaker 6: attacks on true's social and it reportedly will have her
Speaker 6: to the White House because she's writing a book on Trump.
Speaker 6: It was all sorts of I think almost every reporter
Speaker 6: who's been close to him has probably been attacked publicly,
Speaker 6: but he still takes their calls and he often calls
Speaker 6: them up when he has something to say.
Speaker 1: He clearly is able to a lot of times win
Speaker 1: the news cycle. One of the dynamics that I think
Speaker 1: is really interesting about the Iranians is that Trump will
Speaker 1: say things about Iran and the Iranians will be like,
Speaker 1: s true. How unusual is it to have an American
Speaker 1: president who's being debunked by the Iranians?
Speaker 5: Yeah? I mean, but this is the challenge with this
Speaker 5: administration at war. You would think being.
Speaker 6: At war you would have kind of very sober press
Speaker 6: conferences daily. At the Pentagon, we haven't had any of that.
Speaker 6: Pentagon's press conferences are few and far between. They're certainly
Speaker 6: not day and when we do have them, half the
Speaker 6: time is Pete Hegsath berating the press corps, even though
Speaker 6: half the people in that room now are from conservative,
Speaker 6: right wing outlets, right wing influencers, because most of the
Speaker 6: traditional press corps is gone, sometimes they let some of
Speaker 6: the you know, major news outlets in there. That's the
Speaker 6: thing that it's it's attacking the news media saying they're
Speaker 6: against Trump, saying they're you know, unsupportive or the Pharisees
Speaker 6: or whatever he's saying. That's one of the biggest problems
Speaker 6: with the administration getting just accurate basic information. It's hard
Speaker 6: to trust when when we've seen time and time again
Speaker 6: Trump say things that are not true or dependagon, you know,
Speaker 6: attack reporters instead of just giving the basic information at
Speaker 6: the start of a press conference.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it is also just nuts. So I have
Speaker 1: one last question for you, Cash. Patal is going to
Speaker 1: sue The Atlantic for writing that he was an alcoholic.
Speaker 1: Is he going to win?
Speaker 5: Is it going to win?
Speaker 6: I think I think it'd be really hard. Anyone can
Speaker 6: sue for defamation. He's suing for two hundred and fifty
Speaker 6: million dollars. Trump has sued outlets for ten million dollars.
Speaker 6: I mean, you can put any number you want on it.
Speaker 6: But he's going to have to prove that the Atlantic
Speaker 6: acted with blatant disregard for the facts. They acted with
Speaker 6: actual malice. And I think that's going to be our
Speaker 6: just knowing the Atlantic and knowing the type of reporters.
Speaker 6: And there's no doubt that lawyers vetted this story before
Speaker 6: it was published, There's no but probably multiple editors read
Speaker 6: this story and the thing about you know, anonymous sources,
Speaker 6: they're not anonymous to the reporter, so that the reporter
Speaker 6: and their editors know who these sources are and they
Speaker 6: have trust in these confidential sources.
Speaker 5: So no, I think I think it'd be very hard.
Speaker 6: Like a lot of defamation suits, it's very hard to
Speaker 6: prove that an outlet, especially like The Atlantic, is doing
Speaker 6: this to get him versus they're trying to put something
Speaker 6: out there in the public. But it's with hit me
Speaker 6: right to sue, and it just goes, it goes across
Speaker 6: with this whole thing we've been talking about, which is
Speaker 6: like Trump and his allies in the administration either attacking journalists,
Speaker 6: suing journalists, threatening journalists, and this is all playing out
Speaker 6: as we're going to celebrate the First Amendment on Saturday.
Speaker 1: Unbelievable. Michael Calder and I hope you'll come.
Speaker 5: Back, definitely, thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: There.
Speaker 1: No cool Jesse.
Speaker 3: Cannon by Joan Fastoo.
Speaker 2: You know, one of the things that we always thank
Speaker 2: our lucky stars for is the competence in the Trump administration,
Speaker 2: But rarely do you hear from a voice inside the
Speaker 2: house just how bad it was. And a ex Pam
Speaker 2: Bondi aid a profile on Todd. Blanche is saying what
Speaker 2: we all know, which is these people are so incompetent
Speaker 2: and bad at their jobs that they can barely make
Speaker 2: it happen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank god. So the career prosecutors, the smart people
Speaker 1: don't want to do the job, only the dumb people
Speaker 1: and also the alcoholics. I mean, that's what we're seeing.
Speaker 1: So right now, the people fighting for the Pam Bondi
Speaker 1: job are har Meet to Dylan and Judge Box of Wine,
Speaker 1: a crew that is like they can't even shoot straight period.
Speaker 5: Paragraph.
Speaker 1: But this is Chad Mizell. He is Pam Bondi's former
Speaker 1: chief's deaf, so he knows what goes on in that office,
Speaker 1: and he thinks she was too dumb to ever get
Speaker 1: anything done, something all of us have long suspected about
Speaker 1: MAGA world, their dumbness, and it's nice to see they
Speaker 1: are just as dumb as we thought they were. Bonnie's
Speaker 1: biggest failures in the eyes of the public or her
Speaker 1: handling of the Epstein files her incredible stupidity, you know,
Speaker 1: and Donald Trump felt she did not move fast enough
Speaker 1: for him. So this is something we say all the
Speaker 1: time on this podcast, which is thank God, they're stupid,
Speaker 1: because otherwise we would all be in even more Trump.
Speaker 2: You know if this makes me think of one of
Speaker 2: Ashley Sinclaire's recent videos where she talked about how she'd
Speaker 2: go to these right wing conferences and it would be
Speaker 2: like party, Party, Party, everybody's fucking each other, doing drugs
Speaker 2: and drinking. Then she'd go to the Democrat ones. They're like,
Speaker 2: all right, I'm gonna leave now, my families in the hotel,
Speaker 2: see you later everyone.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're all that substance abuse problem. 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.