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 a few research centers. Study found
Speaker 1: a fifty three percent of you as adults rated America's.
Speaker 2: Morals and ethics as bad.
Speaker 1: We have situhow for you today ms Now's own Ali Bell.
Speaker 1: She stops by to talk about Epstein and the economy
Speaker 1: and the third Golf War. Then we'll talk to Semaphore's
Speaker 1: Dave Weigel about the mid term battles he's watching.
Speaker 2: But first the news.
Speaker 3: All right, Bali, we did not get to tape yesterday,
Speaker 3: so we did not get to discuss that Christine Nobles out.
Speaker 3: Mark Wayne Mullin is in. I like to think of
Speaker 3: him as the senator from Idiocracy because he talks like that.
Speaker 2: Mark Wwayne Mullin, do.
Speaker 3: You share my sentiment that Trump probably hired him because
Speaker 3: he's the most belligerent responder to any reporter at any pushback.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, I think Mark Wayne had been like on
Speaker 1: a tour or on an audition tour. Remember, Trump's hiring
Speaker 1: tends to reflect who he thinks will be good on television,
Speaker 1: so this makes a lot of sense that Mark Wayne
Speaker 1: would catch his eye. Mark Wayne has been like every
Speaker 1: camera he's seen, he's ran to look. Mark Wayne is
Speaker 1: an interesting guy because he is quite stupid, and he
Speaker 1: speaks in a very you know, it's not entirely clear
Speaker 1: what he's talking about a lot of time. He is, however,
Speaker 1: a US senator, which makes me wonder, like I do
Speaker 1: wonder why. You know, Mark Wayne is from a very
Speaker 1: red state, and I don't totally understand why you take
Speaker 1: this job, Like you know, I mean, there's not going
Speaker 1: to be a third Trump administration. There's no way Christy
Speaker 1: Nome is going to be the last cabinet member to
Speaker 1: be fired. She's likely the first.
Speaker 3: Let's also remember he's one of the senators who's most
Speaker 3: enriched himself with stocks too, so he's giving that up shockingly, right,
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 1: To just enrich himself from working in the admin, which
Speaker 1: I think he'll probably do too.
Speaker 2: It seems like Christy did exactly.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about Christy Nomes's hearings, one in
Speaker 1: the Senate, one in the House. In the Senate, there
Speaker 1: were a couple moments that I think really or clearly
Speaker 1: the reporting says sealed her fate. One was the Louisiana
Speaker 1: Senator John Kennedy who asked her why she had spent
Speaker 1: two hundred and twenty million dollars on advertisements with her
Speaker 1: face on them, and she said Trump signed off on it,
Speaker 1: and then Trump said he didn't sign off on it,
Speaker 1: leading us to like one of these weird moments in
Speaker 1: Trump's second term where it is as likely that he
Speaker 1: is lying that she is lying discuss.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the right hypothesis, but like, you can't believe
Speaker 3: like this amount of advertising for something like this, and
Speaker 3: it's why we see her everywhere in the freaking airports,
Speaker 3: everywhere you can look. That's even aside from the fact
Speaker 3: that it seems like a lot of this fucking graft
Speaker 3: that never happened, none of it when anywhere, and we
Speaker 3: still see her fucking face everywhere.
Speaker 1: Yeah, every time you go on a TSA line, there
Speaker 1: she is with the cowboy hat. But I do think
Speaker 1: it's pretty interesting that, like we have more and more
Speaker 1: moments in Trump two point zero where you absolutely have
Speaker 1: no idea who's lying, because there's as much a likelihood
Speaker 1: that Donald Trump said it's okay that she ran it
Speaker 1: by him, right. But what I thought was really interesting
Speaker 1: about those hearings, and I want to talk about it
Speaker 1: for a minute. And I actually talked to some members
Speaker 1: of Congress about this because I was curious what.
Speaker 2: The reasoning was.
Speaker 1: They kept asking, Uh, there was a California congresswoman and
Speaker 1: then Jared Moskowitz this is the next day, and in
Speaker 1: the Congress there was this this California congresswoman said are
Speaker 1: you having sexual relationships with Corey Lewandowski? And it was interesting.
Speaker 1: She said, oh, this is tabloid gossip and.
Speaker 3: Muttered it up slut shaving.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you know what, she didn't say.
Speaker 4: That she's not doing it.
Speaker 1: And then Jared Mosfoot's friend of the pod asked her
Speaker 1: again later on and said, here's an opportunity for you
Speaker 1: to set the record straight.
Speaker 2: And again yeah.
Speaker 3: Shot back, no denial, just said he's slutshaving her and
Speaker 3: it's nuts.
Speaker 1: But here's an interesting thing. So she is refusing to
Speaker 1: perjure herself on this, yep. And it's interesting to me
Speaker 1: because like there are clearly people in this administration who
Speaker 1: perjure themselves all the time.
Speaker 3: Right, we're about to see Pam Bondi held accountable for
Speaker 3: instancee they're bringing her back to the standard girl eying about.
Speaker 1: Her exactly, So it's just interesting to me. And then
Speaker 1: also another interesting thing was and what we should have
Speaker 1: seen where it was really out of control was on Thursday,
Speaker 1: she had her husband sitting behind her and then she
Speaker 1: said he need to catch a flight, so he missed
Speaker 1: when the congress woman asked her if she was having
Speaker 1: sexual relationships with Coreyla Nandawski, I'm sure that Christy Nolmes
Speaker 1: husband is glad he wasn't there for that.
Speaker 3: Well, it turns out Corey's very good at buying ads
Speaker 3: inside Trump media organizations for her. But yes, we have
Speaker 3: other fish to fry. Molly, he's not going.
Speaker 1: To stay for the Marcoyne at dude is shockingly he's out.
Speaker 3: Just now they said he's out yet, So Bai, we
Speaker 3: got to talk about a fellow named Congressman Tony Gonzalez
Speaker 3: who we've been talking about a bud share for those
Speaker 3: who aren't up to speed. He was texting a staffer
Speaker 3: wooed things at one in the morning, making sexual advances
Speaker 3: to her that she lit herself on fire. Now fast
Speaker 3: forward to that he has dropped out and this leaves
Speaker 3: one Brandon Herreraz, the nominee in this district, who brags
Speaker 3: about having a really good copy of mind cuff, goose
Speaker 3: steps and videos to white power songs, all sorts of
Speaker 3: just unhinged white power Nazi stuff.
Speaker 1: First, let's talk about Gonzales because this is really important.
Speaker 1: The entire Gonzales staff basically had a mutiny, at least
Speaker 1: in that district office where the woman killed herself. You
Speaker 1: had other staffers talking about how he wouldn't show up
Speaker 1: at the office and how she had shown her coworkers
Speaker 1: the texts. The texts were really seemed as if they
Speaker 1: were really bordering on sexual harassment. So they may have
Speaker 1: had an affair, but then it did certainly seem as
Speaker 1: if there was a lot of one sided stuff there.
Speaker 1: She did light herself on fire, which is pretty awful,
Speaker 1: and he did try and spin this as like he
Speaker 1: went on a conservative podcast. He said that his wife
Speaker 1: and God had forgiven him. I think that this is
Speaker 1: a really I think it's it's worth talking about this
Speaker 1: for a second because there are a bunch of MAGA
Speaker 1: members of Congress who are women, and that's MTG.
Speaker 2: Is out now.
Speaker 1: But Nancy Mace, Lauren Boepert, who said that they would
Speaker 1: start ethics investigations on Gonzales if he did not resign
Speaker 1: now again or he did not drop out from running again.
Speaker 1: I think that what's interesting here is, look, Mike Johnson,
Speaker 1: who is supposedly super Christian and super religious and cares
Speaker 1: about the family, will not tell Tony Gonzalez to drop out.
Speaker 1: That's because Republicans have a one seat majority and Mike
Speaker 1: Johnson still wants to be the Speaker of the House.
Speaker 1: But he can't say that because he's just such a hypocrite.
Speaker 1: So he's sort of saying, well, it's up to him.
Speaker 1: And you know, it's really watching Mike Johnson defend Trump.
Speaker 1: It is at real everything Trump touches die stuff. But
Speaker 1: also these women have decided some of these maga women
Speaker 1: are so sort of mad, Mike Johnson. You'll remember that
Speaker 1: Annie Carney reporting from earlier this year. They're mad like
Speaker 1: they're not on they're not heads of committees. These women
Speaker 1: have really been sort of sidelined. We're seeing Staphonic is
Speaker 1: not running again. A lot of women are trying to
Speaker 1: get out of the House. You know, there's only so
Speaker 1: much sexism and misogyny you can practice on the women
Speaker 1: in your party before they start to push back. And
Speaker 1: so as much as this Gonzales story is a terrible story,
Speaker 1: it also shows a little bit that the women of
Speaker 1: the House Maga Caucus are actually sort.
Speaker 2: Of pushing back.
Speaker 1: Which we shouldn't congratulate them for it by any stretch
Speaker 1: of the imagination, but I do think it's noteworthy.
Speaker 3: I think it's another thing where we keep seeing that
Speaker 3: the actions of this party's of morality keep shipping away
Speaker 3: at its core and falling off some people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's also like they thought they could take
Speaker 1: the women back to the nineteen fifties, but actually, like
Speaker 1: some of that is just to die, is so cast
Speaker 1: there's nothing you can do hard agree.
Speaker 3: I want to take us back to when Jimmy Carter
Speaker 3: supposedly ruined his presidency with the Debbie Downer speech. How
Speaker 3: do you think that compares to when Trump is asked
Speaker 3: if Americans should worry about I read retaliating on US soil?
Speaker 3: He said, I guess, like I said, some people will die.
Speaker 1: You know, for you and I who came of age
Speaker 1: during the Gulf War two and also GO four one,
Speaker 1: I mean I lived through nine to eleven, and there's
Speaker 1: something so incredibly disturbing about a president who's basically like,
Speaker 1: you know, if it happens again, it happens again. We
Speaker 1: should be so focused on preventing this kind of thing.
Speaker 1: It's kind of disturbing to have a president who just
Speaker 1: seems as if he's kind of agnostic to the possible
Speaker 1: killing of Americans. You know, I like what he says.
Speaker 1: By the way, I'm not convinced the quote is better.
Speaker 1: We're six days into this war. You know, Donald Trump
Speaker 1: has spent six billion dollars because the war costs more
Speaker 1: than a billion dollars a day, somewhere between one and two.
Speaker 1: Trump responds, So he's talking to everybody in the world
Speaker 1: because he's trying to sell the war now that he's
Speaker 1: already in it. A lot of people would have tried
Speaker 1: to sell the war before. But okay, he said, I guess,
Speaker 1: but I think they're worried about that all the time.
Speaker 1: We think about it all the time. We planned for it,
Speaker 1: but you know, we expect some things. The longer quote
Speaker 1: is even worse. Like I said, some people will die.
Speaker 1: President added, when you go to war, some people will die.
Speaker 1: You know, who's not serving in this war, anyone with
Speaker 1: their last name Trump or vance yep I mean, just
Speaker 1: to watch them completely stop pretending at all to be
Speaker 1: for anything but the worst possible stuff is amazing.
Speaker 3: Some lastly, Molly, the Trump administration says, it's just doesn't
Speaker 3: have the time to get to these terra free funds
Speaker 3: for US pleabs.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I want to point out the Supreme Court said no more,
Speaker 1: you can't do the tariffs. They are illegal, and so
Speaker 1: they're supposed to issue refunds. And we have all these
Speaker 1: big companies that are now suing the Admin for refunds,
Speaker 1: and Trump is like, sorry, we can't comply with the
Speaker 1: order to start terraf refunds.
Speaker 2: Why not? Why not? Here's my question, why the fuck not?
Speaker 3: Where there's no will, there's no way.
Speaker 1: A key tension in the refunds saw guys emerged. It
Speaker 1: should not be a saga. The court wants to move
Speaker 1: fast and get refunds out the door, but the government
Speaker 1: Donald Trump, They're going to send you the check, but
Speaker 1: they're not going to sign it. We have exciting news
Speaker 1: over at our YouTube channel. The third episode is out
Speaker 1: now from our series Project twenty twenty nine, are reimagining
Speaker 1: where we examine what went wrong with democrats approach to
Speaker 1: policy and how we can correct it and deliver changes
Speaker 1: for the American people. The first episodes dove into campaign finance, reform, antitrust,
Speaker 1: and regulation. Our newest episode is on how we solidify
Speaker 1: reproductive rights for women. We talk to the smartest names
Speaker 1: in the field, like Abortion every Day is Jessica Valenti,
Speaker 1: the Center for Reproductive Rights Nancy Northam, UCLA is oh
Speaker 1: Mary Ziegler, and the gout Macher Institute's Kelly Badden. Republicans
Speaker 1: were prepared for when they got the levers of power.
Speaker 2: Democrats need to be too.
Speaker 1: So please head over to YouTube and search Molly John
Speaker 1: Fast Project twenty twenty nine or go to the Fast
Speaker 1: Politics YouTube channel page and you'll find it there. Help
Speaker 1: us spread the word. Ali Belchi has an anchor from US. Now.
Speaker 2: Welcome, Welcome, Ali Beauchi.
Speaker 5: This is fun. Got to be with you here. I
Speaker 5: don't really have you on my show this. I've got
Speaker 5: to be in the receiving end. If I've done anything
Speaker 5: wrong to you, You're going to fix that right.
Speaker 2: Now, certainly not.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm a fan of yours, and actually this
Speaker 1: is the moment. You know, there are so many things
Speaker 1: that you and I are both interested in that are
Speaker 1: happening at this very moment, and I think we have
Speaker 1: to I think we should start with the Epstein files
Speaker 1: being back.
Speaker 2: This is Trump.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you saw this, but this Trump news that
Speaker 1: Trump had put I mean, this is just senior Department.
Speaker 1: Justice Department publishes documents with sexual allegations against Trump.
Speaker 5: They're back, yes, yeah. And here's the thing I think
Speaker 5: about this, Admitisi's Trump administration from the Department of Justice
Speaker 5: on is all about loyalists, right, Like people have to
Speaker 5: be reminded. Pam Bondy was Donald Trump's lawyer. Todd Blanch
Speaker 5: was Donald Trump's layer. And the thing people need to
Speaker 5: think about is that when you're somebody's lawyer, your legal
Speaker 5: obligation to them and to your attorney client privilege never ends.
Speaker 5: If they stop being your lawyer, they're still they cannot
Speaker 5: tell the public things that you've discussed with them.
Speaker 2: Number one.
Speaker 5: Number two, this is why you don't have your lawyers
Speaker 5: do this stuff, because this will all come out one day.
Speaker 5: It may not come out during the Trump administration. It
Speaker 5: may come out after the midterm elections when the Trump
Speaker 5: administration realizes they're in real trouble. It may come out
Speaker 5: when Todd blanch and Pam BONDI realized that they do
Speaker 5: not have the protections against prosecution for lying under oath
Speaker 5: that Donald Trump has. But it will come out one day.
Speaker 5: There will be a real administration, a real Department of
Speaker 5: Justice that will get to the bottom of this, and
Speaker 5: they'll get all the documents and they will actually speak
Speaker 5: to the actual witnesses and the truth will come out.
Speaker 5: My concern, Molly is that as I cover this war
Speaker 5: in Iran, I'm thinking to myself, is this the Epstein War?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 5: Is all that happens now a way to get you
Speaker 5: to stop talking about Epstein on a daily basis?
Speaker 1: And you know, this is my theory of the case. Right,
Speaker 1: It's a war without a cause. It's sort of wag
Speaker 1: the dog, except.
Speaker 2: It's a real place.
Speaker 5: If you actually had a cause, you could say, well,
Speaker 5: we needed to actually have this war with Iran. We're
Speaker 5: that we're doing it now timing wise, But no one's
Speaker 5: made the case. No one has actually made the case.
Speaker 5: And on Saturday night, the first bodies will be brought
Speaker 5: back from Iran, the first American bodies, six bodies, I
Speaker 5: think five will be brought four or five will be
Speaker 5: brought back On Saturday night, and that's where it's going
Speaker 5: to start to hit home. I think we become numb
Speaker 5: to this with all the death in Afghanistan and in Iraq.
Speaker 5: But the fact is you're now going to see that
Speaker 5: people are dying for you not really being able to
Speaker 5: articulate a reasons for this war. And I remind people
Speaker 5: it's not that long ago this administration led about stuff.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 5: They said that Venezuela was about drugs, of that's all.
Speaker 2: They said.
Speaker 5: It was about pentanyl. There's no pedanel that comes from Venezuela.
Speaker 5: Then they just generally said about drugs. But the boats
Speaker 5: that they were bobbing were headed not to America and
Speaker 5: couldn't get to America anyway. And then within an hour
Speaker 5: of that thing, Donald Trump comes on and says it's
Speaker 5: about the oil. Right, So they lied to us.
Speaker 2: Then I don't know what the story is.
Speaker 5: This oil is just something else.
Speaker 2: What is this war about?
Speaker 1: You're not supposed to say this, but Marco Rubio did
Speaker 1: say it was because of Israel.
Speaker 2: Which is too. Also weird are we renting.
Speaker 5: Out our army now to our military whoever wants it?
Speaker 2: And it's an insane thing to say.
Speaker 1: I mean, even if it's true, so much of American
Speaker 1: life is built around the idea that it's not true.
Speaker 2: But that was a shocking moment to me.
Speaker 1: And then he walked it back, and then he got
Speaker 1: mad at the journalist who asked the question, because ultimately
Speaker 1: their enemy is not themselves, and they're shifting up explanations
Speaker 1: for things, but instead the media that reminds them of it.
Speaker 5: And one thing that was very notable that flew under
Speaker 5: the radar this week is that like Trump, Netta, who's
Speaker 5: got legal trouble and continuing to be the Prime Minister
Speaker 5: of Israel, like Trump, is his best inoculation about against
Speaker 5: getting into any sort of trouble. He's supposed to have
Speaker 5: an election this year, it hasn't been called yet, which
Speaker 5: is a little bit weird. And wars generally get people
Speaker 5: to rally around the flag. But there has been some
Speaker 5: pressure on the Israeli president Hertsog to harden Netaniaho and
Speaker 5: he won't do it. So Trump threatened Hertzog with some
Speaker 5: sort of personal sanctions on him for not part of
Speaker 5: I mean talking. This is what a weird story. Donald
Speaker 5: Trump's involved in internal Israeli politics now to protect Neataniel
Speaker 5: like the world's upside.
Speaker 1: Down, right, And I want to get to your idea
Speaker 1: of rallying around the flag because I think it's important
Speaker 1: to realize that this war is a war. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know what it's a warrior, yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: dragging in different you know, the Emirates are now involved
Speaker 1: the UAE. I think it's very hard to keep this contained.
Speaker 1: Is as unpopular as anything has ever been. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't know who said this first, but Rick Wilson
Speaker 1: always says it to me, which is, your war will
Speaker 1: never be more popular than it is on day one
Speaker 1: hundred percent.
Speaker 5: Think about Afghanistan. That was a real rally around the flag.
Speaker 5: Someone had attacked America and so America was attacking someone else.
Speaker 2: And if people signed.
Speaker 5: Up who weren't going to be in the military, people died,
Speaker 5: and they still thought it was a cause worth fighting.
Speaker 5: Then he get I rack a little less clear, but
Speaker 5: the Bush administration made some effort to legally do what
Speaker 5: it needed to do and sell it to Congress and
Speaker 5: sell it to the UN.
Speaker 2: Right they went.
Speaker 5: He went to the UN two times to sell this war.
Speaker 5: Then he got this, and it's not popular to start
Speaker 5: with I was doing some looking at some polling the
Speaker 5: other night. It was about about fifty nine percent of Americans.
Speaker 5: I think that Donald Trump should have gotten authorizations from
Speaker 5: Congress if he wanted to have a war, which maybe
Speaker 5: it would have gotten.
Speaker 2: Maybe he wouldn't have sixty forty issues.
Speaker 5: Right, And remember thirty five is Donald Trump's floor.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 5: We can literally set fire to people and they will
Speaker 5: still thirty five percent of the population will still support him.
Speaker 5: So very few people support this to start with. There's
Speaker 5: no rallying round the flag because nobody understands why we're
Speaker 5: doing this war. And they don't get more popular as
Speaker 5: body bags come home and costs mount, and it's not
Speaker 5: just your gas prices oils up fifteen percent, so your
Speaker 5: gas prices will be up fifteen percent. Unlike tariff sware
Speaker 5: company might say I'm going to save my customers from
Speaker 5: this because they might go away. I might pass it on,
Speaker 5: I might not pass it on. There's confusion about that.
Speaker 5: There's no confusion about gas prices ever, boil those up.
Speaker 5: Gas prices go up.
Speaker 2: End of story. And then there's a third thing.
Speaker 5: Afghanistan and I Rock cost us different estimates between four
Speaker 5: and eight trillion dollars, which is a very big part
Speaker 5: of our national debt now because it keeps mounting because
Speaker 5: of interest. Right, so we're still paying the ice for
Speaker 5: those two wars that maybe some people understood and maybe
Speaker 5: some people supported.
Speaker 2: Nobody supports this one.
Speaker 5: And it's between one and two billion dollars a day
Speaker 5: so far that it's costing us.
Speaker 2: Yeah that I was.
Speaker 1: Going to say at least a billion dollars a day.
Speaker 1: So we're six days in or really and then the
Speaker 1: straits of Hermuth, which hadn't been now is blocked. That's
Speaker 1: twenty to twenty five percent of worldwide.
Speaker 2: Oil and gas.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So there's a theory of the case that said,
Speaker 5: because we now know that Venezuela was about oil, if
Speaker 5: you Venezuela's got more oil reserves than anyone in the world,
Speaker 5: including Saudi Arabia. So if you can bring Venezuela into
Speaker 5: America's orbit. Remember, this was not about the people of
Speaker 5: Venezuela or democracy or anything else that was.
Speaker 2: Actually see rodrigaz in there, correct.
Speaker 5: So we'd have a puppet government in Venezuela, which is
Speaker 5: kind of annoying to the Venezuela and diaspora who actually won.
Speaker 2: These guys ousted, so they are fault for having any
Speaker 2: faith in this administration.
Speaker 5: Yes, so now you have in theory, you've got access
Speaker 5: to Venezuelan oil. So in theory, Iran blocking a fifth
Speaker 5: of the world's oil from getting through the straight of
Speaker 5: Horror moves is offset.
Speaker 2: That's the theory.
Speaker 5: The practice is that Venezuelan oil is for quality oil,
Speaker 5: and because their infrastructure is so degraded, it's going to
Speaker 5: take up to ten years to get that oil on
Speaker 5: the market. So if you wanted to do this and
Speaker 5: then ten years from now bomb Iran, you might actually say,
Speaker 5: you know what, Iran's got no leverage over anybody right now,
Speaker 5: That's just not true anymore. It runs for the moment,
Speaker 5: it runs, got this leverage of the straight of hor moves.
Speaker 1: But the hilarious bit of all of this is that
Speaker 1: what Donald Trump has done is he's canceled all of
Speaker 1: these clean energy projects. So China has you know, solar
Speaker 1: and wind and all, and even nukes can do what
Speaker 1: we need with much less environmental cost. And also once
Speaker 1: you set up a solar point, you don't have to
Speaker 1: pay for it anymore.
Speaker 4: That's correct.
Speaker 2: So there's a lot of things going on.
Speaker 5: But the other thing about China that's worth keeping in
Speaker 5: mind is we have sent these two strike carrier groups
Speaker 5: to Iran right to prosecute this war. One of them
Speaker 5: was in East Asia, and that was the security blanket
Speaker 5: for Taiwan that there is a strike carrier group. We
Speaker 5: could bring more in. But if China invades Taiwan, we've
Speaker 5: actually got we we got allies, and we have a
Speaker 5: military strength.
Speaker 2: Now we moved it. Now it's gone.
Speaker 5: Shannas might be sitting here thinking this is a good
Speaker 5: time to take over Taiwan.
Speaker 2: Now what's America going to do.
Speaker 5: They've got a war in Iran that they need all
Speaker 5: those terriers, and then they've got this war here. And
Speaker 5: by the way, a lot of that naval power in
Speaker 5: and around Iran is because of the Strait of Horror moves.
Speaker 5: America is the only naval power that can push back
Speaker 5: on Iran trying to mine the Straight of Horror Moves
Speaker 5: or send missiles across. It's twenty one miles at its
Speaker 5: narrowest point, so that's one channel this way and one
Speaker 5: channel the other way. Here's the problem with that. Those
Speaker 5: aren't military ships. Those are ships carrying goods. And oil
Speaker 5: that has to be ensured. No one will insure you
Speaker 5: to go through a war zone. Lloyd's of London will,
Speaker 5: but it'll cost so much money that it's not worth it.
Speaker 5: It will be worth it. So these ships, it's like, Okay,
Speaker 5: maybe the American military is over here, the Iranian militaries
Speaker 5: over here, and the American military will cancel out the
Speaker 5: Iranian military as I sail my boat very slowly through
Speaker 5: the Strait of horror moves. But how about I just
Speaker 5: don't because how about I don't want to die and
Speaker 5: I don't want my oil to all go into the ocean.
Speaker 1: And that's a Venezuela problem too, is you have trouble
Speaker 1: convincing American companies that it's worth the risk correct starting
Speaker 1: a business there. Talk about that.
Speaker 5: Well, remember, by the way, I just want to remind
Speaker 5: you all about Somalia all those years ago, right ten
Speaker 5: or fifteen years ago, with the Somali pirates were operating
Speaker 5: in the Red Sea, and then around there these are
Speaker 5: Somali pirates like these are guys on little bloat boats
Speaker 5: with small guns who can at best jimmy up the
Speaker 5: side of a boat and capture it, right and then
Speaker 5: that's not quite clear what they're going to do with
Speaker 5: that afterwards.
Speaker 2: This is the Iranian military.
Speaker 5: This is a country of ninety three million people that
Speaker 5: has to one hundred and fifty active tix, one hundred
Speaker 5: and fifty thousand active tubes proof and another three hundred
Speaker 5: and fifty that they can draw on in reserve. So
Speaker 5: a million troops on the ground. This is a massive
Speaker 5: army with a massive navy, navy and missiles. This is
Speaker 5: not from Ali pirates. Also the same situation with Venezuela,
Speaker 5: we blockaded their oil. There was a sort of shadow
Speaker 5: fleet that was moving oil because Venezuela is technically blockaded.
Speaker 5: But the axis of resistance which we talk about with
Speaker 5: Iran and Russia and North Korea actually involves Venezuela. Venezuela
Speaker 5: was this node in that whole thing which has been lost.
Speaker 5: But for the moment, there's mayhem in this situation. As
Speaker 5: far as oil getting around the world, here's the interesting thing.
Speaker 5: Most of Venezuela's oil was going to China. It's China,
Speaker 5: while it's got nuclear and solar and wind, also uses
Speaker 5: more oil than anyone else does and needs more oil
Speaker 5: at the moment because they can't. They can't get that oil.
Speaker 5: We may have just made things better for Iran because
Speaker 5: they've got it built in by for all the oil
Speaker 5: that China was getting from Venezuela. So this just doesn't
Speaker 5: seem like anyone thought this out very well.
Speaker 2: And if they did, tell us right and clearly.
Speaker 1: I mean, if we know one thing about Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: he's never two moves ahead.
Speaker 2: He's really just right where he is.
Speaker 1: We are also in a moment where US shipbuilding has
Speaker 1: been way behind, so all of a sudden, we need
Speaker 1: a navy that we don't really have, right because the
Speaker 1: shipbuilding has been into con.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and it's a weird situation to be waging either
Speaker 5: war or needing a military presence in so many parts
Speaker 5: of the world as we currently do now. So we
Speaker 5: had these ships in Venezuela, then it took him a while.
Speaker 5: They sailed through the strikes through Gibraltar into the Mediterranean,
Speaker 5: which it can now be used for Iran. Then we
Speaker 5: took the Abraham Lincoln Strike Group, moved it into the
Speaker 5: Red seat, and then we've got this tension in Asia.
Speaker 5: This would make sense if you're the non war president, right,
Speaker 5: you're the the FIFA beef prize winning president, the first
Speaker 5: one in history. You're a contender for the Nobel Prize
Speaker 5: of apparently until Maschado gave Donald Trump hurt no belt.
Speaker 2: Now he has one. So now he's got one.
Speaker 5: Like, this is a weird position to be in if
Speaker 5: you're this administration. Right, The administration says we're not doing
Speaker 5: forever war. We're not going to be the worst. Wow,
Speaker 5: we've got ruers and we don't have enough navy for
Speaker 5: all the wars we either are in or might need
Speaker 5: to be it.
Speaker 1: The good news though, is FIFA is not going to
Speaker 1: ask for that prize back.
Speaker 2: Correct, weirdest thing in the world.
Speaker 1: That, Yeah, it made a prize, you get to keep
Speaker 1: I think the theory here, though, is that Trump. Why Trump,
Speaker 1: I think thinks he's successful is because he does these sort.
Speaker 2: Of regime change.
Speaker 1: Without regime change, you keep the regime in but you
Speaker 1: make it look like you're changing it.
Speaker 5: But he can't do that, no, because it's really hard
Speaker 5: and really complicated. So Venezuela, there's a Venezuelan diaspora that
Speaker 5: would have been very supportive of Donald Trump getting rid
Speaker 5: of the community right, right, But he did it right
Speaker 5: and and Venezuelan society is many layers deep, because this
Speaker 5: was not only Maduro but as before that, So for
Speaker 5: decades it's been layers of everybody. So if you run
Speaker 5: a museum or a nonprofit in Venezuela, you are you are.
Speaker 5: Your fealty is to the party. That's just the way
Speaker 5: it has to go. We learned this in We learned
Speaker 5: this in Iraq. Right that you you thought you decapitated
Speaker 5: the leader, but every institution in the country is people
Speaker 5: who are are like minded. So that's the problem in Iran.
Speaker 5: If you think Iraq was serious and you think Venezuela
Speaker 5: is mired, Iraq's way more complicated than.
Speaker 2: That, right, because it's a religious state.
Speaker 5: So it's two parts. It's the religious state where this
Speaker 5: is the prevalent of the pope. Right, it's it's the
Speaker 5: Iyatola is a religious leader thought to be divinely inspired, right,
Speaker 5: not like a president or prime minister. But on top
Speaker 5: of that, the significant or an equal weight of power
Speaker 5: in Iran is the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, which which is
Speaker 5: involved in business, it's involved in religion, it's involved in
Speaker 5: state craft, it's involved in the military. So you could
Speaker 5: end up with a worse situation in Iran than you
Speaker 5: actually had. I'll remind you, and I have no love
Speaker 5: for the Iranian regime. They are murderous, they murder their
Speaker 5: own people. But we were actually in negotiations with them
Speaker 5: one time. We actually got to deal with them one time.
Speaker 5: We even might have been negotiating with them as recently
Speaker 5: as last Thursday one time. Yeah, there's some dispute as
Speaker 5: to what was going on. The Omanis and the Iranians
Speaker 5: say that they were making progress. Steve whit Costs says
Speaker 5: they weren't.
Speaker 2: And if you.
Speaker 1: Can't trust a random real estate friend of Donald Trump's,
Speaker 1: who can.
Speaker 5: Is What a world?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 5: What a world in which we're we're trying to weigh
Speaker 5: who do I actually believe in this whole thing? But
Speaker 5: I will say I kind of believe the Omanis, who
Speaker 5: are the go betweens.
Speaker 2: It's because they have no interest in lying about this.
Speaker 5: In fact, they've been targeted by Iran now because they
Speaker 5: host an American base. So we had headroom, right, people
Speaker 5: in the State Department who think about these things state,
Speaker 5: we had headroom. We had more space to go before
Speaker 5: a war. A war really kind of needs to be
Speaker 5: your last choice. Unless you think you can prosecute it
Speaker 5: very effectively, and it's lightning strikes and it's power, and
Speaker 5: it's done. Namely the last war that that happened in
Speaker 5: it just doesn't happen anymore. Russia thought it was going
Speaker 5: to be done in Ukraine in a week, if you recall, right,
Speaker 5: and we Donald Trump like it seems to be thinking
Speaker 5: about this, and Pete Hextas seems to be thinking about
Speaker 5: it like video game war. Yeah right, but this is
Speaker 5: not how this goes.
Speaker 1: No, And I mean, and we haven't had and the
Speaker 1: drone stuff is really game changing. I want you to
Speaker 1: talk though about the jobs numbers, because these jobs numbers
Speaker 1: are bad.
Speaker 2: Top us through them and explain what's going on.
Speaker 5: So normally you should be creating one hundred and fifty
Speaker 5: thousand new jobs a month as your floor. Three hundred
Speaker 5: is what you need to do to sort of grow
Speaker 5: your economy, right, because we have more people dying or
Speaker 5: retiring than we have coming in. Now, we have the
Speaker 5: Saddin troblem where we've stopped immigration for all intents and purposes,
Speaker 5: or we've scared immigrants into not working, or whatever the
Speaker 5: case is. So you have a bigger problem. We locked
Speaker 5: ninety two thousand jobs in February. Here's the rub. This
Speaker 5: will now be the fifth month in a year that
Speaker 5: we have lost GOG. But often it's because of revisions
Speaker 5: that come after the fact. So on the job's day
Speaker 5: you get the word that you created all these new jobs,
Speaker 5: and then you know months later or the next month
Speaker 5: you find out revise. Now we've lost jobs for five months.
Speaker 5: That gets recession bells ringing in my head. So if
Speaker 5: you're going to have a recession, then you want to
Speaker 5: make sure that your interest rates are under control, that
Speaker 5: your economic growth is under control, that people don't have
Speaker 5: to pay more for things than they should i e.
Speaker 5: Tariffs Right, it's not doing the right thing. We haven't
Speaker 5: had a recession for a while. They are cyclical, they
Speaker 5: come around, and now we're setting ourselves up for things.
Speaker 5: The one thing that tends to offset recessions sometimes is war,
Speaker 5: because we make the world's munitions right. So in fact,
Speaker 5: Iran sends a missile up the interceptor, whether it's a
Speaker 5: Patriot or a Thad, is an American made missile. But
Speaker 5: ever since the war in Ukraine started, we have been
Speaker 5: running our foundries which are here in America. Three shifts
Speaker 5: twenty four hours a day. You go to foundery in Pennsylvania,
Speaker 5: free shifts. So we're ammunition is running out around the world,
Speaker 5: Missiles are running out around the world. Fads and patriots
Speaker 5: are running out around the world. We are building all
Speaker 5: of them. We build all the planes. All those Arab
Speaker 5: countries that are fighting the war with Iran, they fly
Speaker 5: at fifteens and f sixteens American made planes. So yes,
Speaker 5: we could offset some of this. In fact, our unemployment
Speaker 5: numbers would be higher because we actually have a wartime
Speaker 5: economy right now that we have so many people building arms.
Speaker 5: It may not be enough in this case. So Donald
Speaker 5: Trump might be in a real pickle come November. We
Speaker 5: might have a prolonged war or something going on in Iran.
Speaker 5: I think he'd like it to be over. And now
Speaker 5: he says eight weeks, We're.
Speaker 2: Not eight weeks. And he may have a recession.
Speaker 5: He's got a wildly unpopular government that the Zaxteme thing
Speaker 5: doesn't go away for him. Yes, we saw for the
Speaker 5: first time somebody bowing to pressure Donald Trump getting rid
Speaker 5: of Christy. No, I don't think it's the last one
Speaker 5: you're going to see. So now not looking good.
Speaker 2: Will you come back anytime you want. I love talking
Speaker 2: to you.
Speaker 1: Dave Weigel is a reporter at setafore Welcome, Welcome, Dave.
Speaker 4: It's good to be here. For having me.
Speaker 1: This story is actually like become a really big story.
Speaker 1: So Texas is the first primary of the midterms, you know,
Speaker 1: along with North Carolina and also Arkansas.
Speaker 6: Yes, Arkansas. Everyone forgets Arkansas. There is a Democratic gain
Speaker 6: in the state legislative race, but I didn't know any
Speaker 6: reporters who went there. Whoever they were going to get
Speaker 6: one my case, tex Ethiopian Barbecue in Dallas.
Speaker 1: Right, So three primaries and this primary, this Senate seat
Speaker 1: is a really interesting primary. And I want you to
Speaker 1: first talk about the Democratic part of the primary because
Speaker 1: it's interesting but it's settled. Talk us through sort of
Speaker 1: the forces at play there, because it's pretty interesting situation.
Speaker 6: In the Democratic primary. I don't probablyn't even the entire
Speaker 6: history of Democrats in Texas. They've not want anything in decades.
Speaker 6: And Richardson, yeah, and richards and then there was a
Speaker 6: one twenty nine to zero up wins Street.
Speaker 4: They've come close, batok close.
Speaker 6: Ken Paxson, who's the Republican Attorney general running per Senate.
Speaker 6: He almost lost in twenty teen, but they don't lose,
Speaker 6: and so James Tallerico, who was a rising star in
Speaker 6: the party. He flipped a suburban Austin seat North Austin
Speaker 6: Williamson County in twenty eighteen and got reelected. He was
Speaker 6: making noise that he would run again. Colin Alright, who
Speaker 6: lost his twenty twenty four bit against tag Cruz, was
Speaker 6: running again. It was them for a minute, and then
Speaker 6: at the very end of filing, Jasmine Crockett got into
Speaker 6: the race.
Speaker 4: Colin Allred got out.
Speaker 6: Became a two person Democratic race, which actually was very
Speaker 6: helpful to the party. I'm not trying to be the
Speaker 6: pr man for Colin Alright, but he saved the Democrats
Speaker 6: from a runoff by dropping out. He ran for his
Speaker 6: old seat again, and the dynamic was that there were
Speaker 6: two very well known Democrats, very big followings.
Speaker 1: I just want to point something out in Texas, if
Speaker 1: you don't get fifty percent, you have to go to
Speaker 1: a runoff, even if you definitively win.
Speaker 6: Yeah, if you get forty nine point eight percent and
Speaker 6: the next person gets fifteen percent, you stole a runoff
Speaker 6: and people have lost in that condition before, so it
Speaker 6: became me sprint for three months between tall Rico and Crockett,
Speaker 6: and he had already staffed up a very big campaign.
Speaker 6: He had a very big social media following that from
Speaker 6: TikTok to old fashion magazines and to TV. Crockett had
Speaker 6: a very big following too, different kind of following, different
Speaker 6: kind of reputation and different argument. They had the same policies.
Speaker 6: They both wanted to break up Ice. They wanted to
Speaker 6: get rid of Christie Ome, which happened. That was one
Speaker 6: of the big I noticed when I was a tallerco
Speaker 6: his biggest applause line was in peach Christine Nome, So
Speaker 6: he needs a new one. He ran just a better campaign,
Speaker 6: but also more of an argument that he can flip
Speaker 6: general election voters. But I don't want to downplay how
Speaker 6: well Crockett did.
Speaker 1: She did actually much better than the polling showed she
Speaker 1: was going now better.
Speaker 6: Well, So she she led in the polls that people
Speaker 6: knew she was and then she trailed at the end,
Speaker 6: but she got more than a million votes. If you
Speaker 6: told any Texas Democrat in December JASMC. Crockett's going to
Speaker 6: get a million votes, they'd assume she wins. Talla Rico
Speaker 6: actually expanded the electorate very effectively in Latino areas and
Speaker 6: in suburbs.
Speaker 4: She crushed him in cities anying were anywhere with.
Speaker 6: Black voters, really so East Texas, Dallas and Parthy Houston.
Speaker 6: But she did not expand behind her base. But she
Speaker 6: turned she They were not wrong. Either of them were lying.
Speaker 6: She said she could turn out her base, and she did.
Speaker 6: He said he could find new voters, and he did.
Speaker 1: I mean, and that is sort of like a lesson
Speaker 1: from Trump a little bit, which is Trump won by
Speaker 1: growing the electorate. That's why they were secret Trump voters
Speaker 1: was because they were people. They were ones and twos,
Speaker 1: low frequency voters and that you couldn't pull for. And
Speaker 1: so what crockett theory of the case was that she
Speaker 1: could over turn out her base the way that Trump
Speaker 1: did right where he got those Hispanic men. And tell
Speaker 1: Rico's case was that he could grow the electorate in
Speaker 1: a different way.
Speaker 4: That was the case they were making.
Speaker 6: They were also in some campaigns the Cans don't like
Speaker 6: to talk about strategy. These candids did talk about strategy.
Speaker 6: They articulated, like you said, and tell Rico thought there'd
Speaker 6: be a lot of people who voted for Trump or not,
Speaker 6: so he wasn't saying people who don't vote.
Speaker 2: And this is this.
Speaker 6: Is something that Democrats have had several cycles of unlearning.
Speaker 6: There was a very popular idea that this pool of
Speaker 6: non voters around the country, if you just gave him
Speaker 6: an aspiring message, they might turn out or not. I
Speaker 6: want to be two patronized. He told them like, we're
Speaker 6: gonna give you Medicare for all, then they might turn out.
Speaker 6: And data after twenty twenty four, I've not seen this contradicted,
Speaker 6: but it's it's kind of blue rose. It's the more
Speaker 6: centrist electability part of the Democrats have done this, but
Speaker 6: I haven't seen progressive contradict It was no actually, non
Speaker 6: voters know who don Trump is, would have voted for him.
Speaker 6: If it was Australia and every person had to vote
Speaker 6: legally or face a fine, Trump would one buy more.
Speaker 6: And Talerico was out there saym Matt, I would say
Speaker 6: that because set it up.
Speaker 4: But I was saying, they're just a lot.
Speaker 6: Of your neighbors who've stopped listening to Democrats, and you,
Speaker 6: the person of the audience, maybe haven't talked to them.
Speaker 4: And I found this covering him.
Speaker 6: There'd be people who were voting for him, and I'd
Speaker 6: ask where they got their their news, which is a
Speaker 6: very enlightening question. Typically, and they would talk about their
Speaker 6: family members, who they avoid them on Facebook because they'll
Speaker 6: send them crazy in their view, crazy things, well probably
Speaker 6: crazy things, you know, like AI generated stuff to make
Speaker 6: their point. Or they would tell them that Republicans rel
Speaker 6: is to tell them they can't be a Catholic because
Speaker 6: they're Democrats and Democrats love abortion. And they were recepted
Speaker 6: this idea. Oh well, not just my relatives, but maybe
Speaker 6: there's more people who want a less combative candidate, somebody
Speaker 6: who talks about his faith all the time. Now, that
Speaker 6: was not the crocket. Armen Crockett was making more of
Speaker 6: the old style. Everyone can see how bad things are
Speaker 6: under Trump, and I am such a charismatic receipts carrying
Speaker 6: this the shield trum, but receipts receives carrying a candidate
Speaker 6: that I will go out there and destroy Republicans with
Speaker 6: the power of my arguments. That was also pretty compelling
Speaker 6: for people, just one hundred thousand or so less fewer people.
Speaker 6: But those were the two cases they made, and that matters.
Speaker 6: I think because Republicans were ready to run against either
Speaker 6: they wanted Crockett, they were ready get a run against
Speaker 6: either of them because they know and I'd talked to
Speaker 6: I'm talking about this. He's a very liberal Presbyterian. He
Speaker 6: has used the teachings of Jesus to talk about trans writes,
Speaker 6: non binary nature of God, how many genders there are,
Speaker 6: white supremacy, just ways that if you were growing a
Speaker 6: candidate lab for Texas, you wouldn't have him say that stuff.
Speaker 4: And he actually had.
Speaker 2: They dropped it.
Speaker 6: He dropped out the primary. There was a more conservative
Speaker 6: Democrat in the primary who wasn't already who hit him
Speaker 6: on that, and when he got in the race and
Speaker 6: then he couldn't raise any money, he dropped out, not
Speaker 6: saying he was more electable. But the Republicans are saying,
Speaker 6: you might think this guy is going to appeal to
Speaker 6: your cousin.
Speaker 4: We think that he will not.
Speaker 6: We're going to make it him so famously liberal that
Speaker 6: none of that will matter. And the Tallery argument is
Speaker 6: he's already has one for it, which is corporate media
Speaker 6: wants you to be divided on stupid things and ignore
Speaker 6: the fact that they're wrecking the country from inside.
Speaker 1: You know what, I want you to do a minute
Speaker 1: on all of the incumbents who lost in Texas. Chip
Speaker 1: Broy's going to run off, but there's also Al Green.
Speaker 1: I think Al Green's going to run off too. But
Speaker 1: just talk about the non power of incumbents.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, most incumbents got renominated, but two kinds of
Speaker 6: people who lost. One were one FETO type I guess
Speaker 6: are the people who were in districts that Republicans redrew
Speaker 6: and forced them into with their colleagues.
Speaker 4: That's how most Jerry Manderin works.
Speaker 6: That's Julie Johnson in Dallas and Christian Menafie and Al
Speaker 6: Green in Houston. Kalinad Red dropped out Senate, Rays started
Speaker 6: running again for this Dallas seat, and he ran ahead
Speaker 6: of Johnson.
Speaker 4: That's a member of member race.
Speaker 6: Same thing. In Houston. Green did better than some people expected.
Speaker 6: He actually he did worse than Houston, did better in
Speaker 6: the suburbs where he I think was better known from
Speaker 6: his I think protesting every state union that Trump part
Speaker 6: of it tried to be.
Speaker 2: Green is also isn't He's seventy eight years old.
Speaker 6: She is, I think a little bit younger than that,
Speaker 6: but he is in his late seventies, and this is
Speaker 6: this is another issue, probably a beau time to get into.
Speaker 4: There are a number of not.
Speaker 6: Just Democrats, but Congressional Black Caucus members who are refusing
Speaker 6: to retire at a furry advanced stage. I mean Maxie
Speaker 6: Waters is the oldest in her in her late eighties
Speaker 6: at this point. But that was part of the issue
Speaker 6: in the race. The way Green flipped it was that
Speaker 6: crypto packs came in for Christian Memicry.
Speaker 2: He's seventy eight years old.
Speaker 6: Seventy eight, you were right, Okay, yeah, wow, And it
Speaker 6: became pretty competitive. They're gonna have to spend more money
Speaker 6: for a safe seat. The other kind of people who
Speaker 6: lost were Republicans who had who had crossed Trump and
Speaker 6: I want to rub the money. And you mentioned ship
Speaker 6: Roy Dan Crenshaw, who was given you Yeah, he was
Speaker 6: given new conservative precincts where if you were in those
Speaker 6: areas you were less likely to have voted for Dan
Speaker 6: Crenshaw in the past. You never had Maybe you weren't
Speaker 6: were not aware of his media profile which he built
Speaker 6: up for the years.
Speaker 4: And kind of had faded.
Speaker 6: He had a podcast, he had rallies, he had all
Speaker 6: this stuff to make him himself a conservative, but not
Speaker 6: necessarily one hundred percent mega figure. His challenger, Steve Toath,
Speaker 6: was a state a very conservative state senator who ran
Speaker 6: against Crenshaw with Tucker Carlson argument that he is a
Speaker 6: not Tucker's words, but it's been used by other people.
Speaker 2: I Patrick McCain, that he's a neo.
Speaker 6: Con he doesn't love America first, et cetera, et cetera,
Speaker 6: et cetera. And Carlson actually gave tothe a long interview
Speaker 6: on his show. I guess he only does hour long
Speaker 6: plus interviews. But I don't know if Crenshaw was ever
Speaker 6: ahead of that race, because it was a landslide defeat.
Speaker 6: He lost everything that was in Toat's old Senate district. Well,
Speaker 6: he's the first member for Congress to lose renomination and
Speaker 6: handily and without a scandal or something, just for ideological reasons.
Speaker 6: I would add to this list Tony Gonzalez, who was
Speaker 6: going to be gone, a congressman from West Texas. Republicans
Speaker 6: readrew his seat thinking they would be easy for him
Speaker 6: to win, and then I don't know how familiar listeners
Speaker 6: are with his scandal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Tony Gonzalez had an affair with the staffer, maybe
Speaker 1: sexually harassed her too.
Speaker 2: She set herself on fire and died.
Speaker 6: Yes, So it's a really good summary. Always was taking
Speaker 6: you much longer than say what was happening. Anyway, He
Speaker 6: already was in trouble because he'd voted for gun control
Speaker 6: legislation after Viovalde massacre, which was in his district. He
Speaker 6: was facing a rematch with the Second Amendment influencer, which
Speaker 6: is a way to say this. You know this, this
Speaker 6: YouTuber who shoots guns off and talks about his love
Speaker 6: for World War two history, not just our side of
Speaker 6: World War Two, but up at the other side. And
Speaker 6: he was already competitive, and then he beat it. He
Speaker 6: beat him in the first round. They were going to
Speaker 6: run off. Gonzales is not going to run for a
Speaker 6: new term, So this guy, Branda Herreras is going to
Speaker 6: be in Congress. That's the way Texas works. You pull
Speaker 6: out of your reelection the election's over on the margins.
Speaker 6: That will probably hurt John Cornyn a little because this
Speaker 6: was one of the parts of the state in the
Speaker 6: prime Mury that Cornyan did best in against Kem Paxton.
Speaker 6: And there's not going to be a Republican primary for
Speaker 6: Congress anymore. Gonzal' is not trying to save himself, so
Speaker 6: there's going to be a new very right wing Republican
Speaker 6: nominee in West Texas. Gonzale was saying I could win
Speaker 6: and Democrats couldn't. But this is something I saw all
Speaker 6: over Texas. It is very tough to convince Republicans who
Speaker 6: if you're forty five, you can't remember a Democrat winning
Speaker 6: in your state. Very tough to convince them. Oh, this
Speaker 6: is the year when it's all going to fall apart.
Speaker 1: I want you to talk about this. Cornan Paxton race,
Speaker 1: Paxton trumpier than Trump right was impeached.
Speaker 2: I would love me to.
Speaker 1: Just talk about for two seconds where he went around
Speaker 1: to state senators and threatened them.
Speaker 2: Tell us about that, well.
Speaker 6: State legislators of both kinds. So Taxa has been unfailable
Speaker 6: to his wife, accused of bribery by former employees of
Speaker 6: his office, and he was impeached. And of course Texas
Speaker 6: Republicans run the state legislature, so his impeachment included a
Speaker 6: lot of Republicans voting against.
Speaker 2: Him and his wife, Angela.
Speaker 6: Yes, his wife a state senator, and he was acquitted
Speaker 6: in the Senate and got revenge on the Republicans vote
Speaker 6: against him. I was in the state for a little while.
Speaker 6: In twenty twenty four, he and conservative donors went back
Speaker 6: into these districts, including the Speaker of the House who
Speaker 6: won but then retired. He was retiring now, and their
Speaker 6: argument was basically, these are fake conservative, These fake conservatives
Speaker 6: went against Ken Paxton. They went against this ally of
Speaker 6: Donald Trump, who helps him sue to overturn the twenty
Speaker 6: twenty election. I would just say that I keep talking
Speaker 6: about Trump and MAGA, but also Paxton's one of the
Speaker 6: conservative attorneys general who will act immediately when conservatives, let's
Speaker 6: say the turning point wing of the party won him
Speaker 6: to So you want to shut down abortion clinics, who
Speaker 6: he will sue. You want to ask hospitals for information
Speaker 6: about transgender patients, he will do that.
Speaker 4: He'll get the information.
Speaker 6: You want to sue media matters because they are writing
Speaker 6: unkind things about.
Speaker 2: Elon Musk, He'll do that too. Him.
Speaker 6: He was one of the very active conservative movement ags
Speaker 6: and he has a base from that. He did not
Speaker 6: run a very good primary campaign. He did the bare minimum,
Speaker 6: but he's still got forty. Talk about Cornan, Well, yeah,
Speaker 6: Cornyn is well, he's a little bit younger than Al Green.
Speaker 6: He'd bilb eighty if he serves his full term. But
Speaker 6: he's going for a fifth term. The party had been
Speaker 6: moving away from him in a way that you've talked
Speaker 6: about and everyone's talked about. And he was the former
Speaker 6: leader of Republicans Senate efforts and they like him. He's
Speaker 6: their colleague. JHN Thune likes him. Trump was different. He
Speaker 6: had criticized Trump in between his presidencies, but it wasn't
Speaker 6: out there casting. You know, Lincoln Schafeye votes right. He
Speaker 6: just was not liked Ted Cruz rushing in and taking
Speaker 6: point on some conservative cause. He's been somebody that the
Speaker 6: movement wanted to beat for a while. And this primary
Speaker 6: was the most expensive for any incumbent Republican senator in history. Now,
Speaker 6: remember the Tea Party movement helped beat a couple of
Speaker 6: Republican incumbents a decade ago, decade plus ago, a lot
Speaker 6: of money in that. This was more than eighty million
Speaker 6: dollars spent by mostly the Senate Leadership Fund its affiliates,
Speaker 6: the super Pac. Donnell started at one Cornyn and portray
Speaker 6: him as a as a true magic conservative. Two to
Speaker 6: go after Paxton very personal terms, and three to go
Speaker 6: after Wesley Hunt, this congressman from Houston who got into
Speaker 6: the race kind of famously, and I think Notice has
Speaker 6: good stuff about this. Famously just got tired of paying
Speaker 6: congress God give it a safe seat and just was
Speaker 6: bored and wanted to either move into the administration or
Speaker 6: be a senator.
Speaker 2: They beat him up. That was very helpful.
Speaker 6: So what they wanted to do, and this has been
Speaker 6: playing out since Tuesday night, what the PAC.
Speaker 2: Wanted to do.
Speaker 6: Corners reporters want to do is just make sure that
Speaker 6: Cornan got more votes than Paxton the primary, so they
Speaker 6: could go back to Trump and say Paxton is not
Speaker 6: going to win the primary. If you want to be
Speaker 6: a winner, since we're going to spend money for corn anyway,
Speaker 6: just go endorse Cornyn and this thing and Trump has given.
Speaker 6: Trump has said he will make an endorsement. We don't
Speaker 6: know who the bet is that he will be talked
Speaker 6: into endorsing Corny, and he's done stuff like this before.
Speaker 6: In New Hampshire, Johnson UNU to the former senator, not
Speaker 6: the form of governor he's running. He had criticized Trump
Speaker 6: throughout his his presidency. Scott Brown has run for US
Speaker 6: Senate and Brown is an ally, and Trump was convinced
Speaker 6: to endorsement to Johnson Dodo.
Speaker 1: I just want to talk about Paxton for a second,
Speaker 1: because Paxton is super nutty. He told Real America Voice
Speaker 1: he's not going to drop out even if Trump endorses
Speaker 1: Cornyan again, who knows.
Speaker 2: But then he.
Speaker 1: Tweeted that the only way he'll drop out is if
Speaker 1: the if they kill the filibuster and pass the Save Act,
Speaker 1: which there's about a million reasons why that will be undoable,
Speaker 1: the votes, etc. But a lot of people think that's
Speaker 1: a political move talk us through that.
Speaker 6: Yes, well, he's doing that because he wants to draw
Speaker 6: attention to the fact that the Save Act, which Donald
Speaker 6: Trump wants, is not passing, and he wants to tell Trump,
Speaker 6: you send me to the Senate and would I would
Speaker 6: vote to get rid of the filibuster to do what
Speaker 6: you want, which is something that.
Speaker 4: Trump asks for quite often. Trump did this in his
Speaker 4: first term.
Speaker 6: Hey we're not getting something through, I'm going to tweet
Speaker 6: the which pear of the philibuster reporters would go to
Speaker 6: Mitch McConnell, Ben John Thune now and they would say,
Speaker 6: we're not going to do that. It's just this endless
Speaker 6: or boroughs of react quotes about what Republicans are going
Speaker 6: to say about not getting rid of the philibuster. They're
Speaker 6: not going to get rid of it. Conservatives are tired
Speaker 6: of this. The turning point wing of the party would
Speaker 6: love and this. Mike Lee, couple other Republicans who flipped
Speaker 6: because they were for the filibuster. Now they're for the
Speaker 6: talking filibuster, which is their form Democrats wanted years ago.
Speaker 6: They want to get rid of it, and they have
Speaker 6: the confidence that it's not going to happen. I don't
Speaker 6: think the cynical conservatives are incorrect here. There are people
Speaker 6: like Susan Collins who have said, yes, I support the
Speaker 6: Save Act, I support citicismship check requirements for voting, and
Speaker 6: and everything else in that bill.
Speaker 4: But asked them if we're the filibuster, they won't do it.
Speaker 6: They just want to be on record that they're for
Speaker 6: passing this bill, and Conservats are sick of that.
Speaker 2: They are like, no, that's what's.
Speaker 6: The difference between not supporting it at all and saying
Speaker 6: you're going to support in some way that won't happen.
Speaker 6: That's what Paxton's trying to get to send me to
Speaker 6: the Senate.
Speaker 4: And I'm going to be on Mike Lee. I'm not
Speaker 4: going to be a Jhon Cornyn.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So interesting.
Speaker 1: I think of you as like very smart and very
Speaker 1: on the ground and like that you see everything that's
Speaker 1: going on.
Speaker 2: What do you think the chances are?
Speaker 1: And I know this is a really mean question because
Speaker 1: it's like asking candidate to raise their hand, but I'm
Speaker 1: going to do it anyway.
Speaker 2: What do you think the chances are the Dems can
Speaker 2: flip the Senate?
Speaker 6: I would say twenty percent. I think they need to
Speaker 6: buy all terrible economic numbers today war in a run.
Speaker 6: There's a world like two thousand and six where their
Speaker 6: bottom falls out of them because people are so tired
Speaker 6: of how they're governing thing.
Speaker 4: Because that's the world where I think Democrats win the Senate.
Speaker 1: But twenty percent is pretty good. You think Alaska is
Speaker 1: the key to that. They have to pick up everything
Speaker 1: right Alaska, Ohio.
Speaker 6: It basically be flip North Carolina, flip Main hold Michigan,
Speaker 6: hold Georgia, flip Alaska, flip one of something else flipping
Speaker 6: three seats. Losing nothing gets them fifty seats in the Senate.
Speaker 6: That prevents a lot of Republicans do but they would
Speaker 6: still control the floor of the gabbles. Let's say there's
Speaker 6: a Supreme Court opening, Replicans still do it. One more
Speaker 6: person and they most often mentioned Iowa, Ohio, and Texas.
Speaker 6: One more win would mean that they control the Senate
Speaker 6: and they can block Trump for the rest of the two.
Speaker 2: And the most likely movement that is Ohio.
Speaker 6: Right, But this is the thing, and Republicans will say,
Speaker 6: and they're self interested in saying so that if Paxton
Speaker 6: is the nominee against tall Rico, then they think Texas
Speaker 6: could flip. But you can hear they're self interested how
Speaker 6: they're attacking right now. And I was trying to say
Speaker 6: this before when describing the primary, that Republicans will tell
Speaker 6: you that they want to run against Crockett, they were
Speaker 6: ready to run against tall Rico, saying that he's a
Speaker 6: woke liberal, fake Christian, et cetera, et cetera, he's actually evil.
Speaker 6: I've seen a couple Republicans say that because he's pro abortion,
Speaker 6: they're doing that. They're saying he's kind of a liberal
Speaker 6: whimp who we can beat easily. At the same time,
Speaker 6: they're trying to convince Trump that John Corny's the only
Speaker 6: guy who can beat him. It is not coherent, but
Speaker 6: you do not need to prove with an algebraic equation
Speaker 6: to Trump. This is how it's going to happen. You
Speaker 6: just need to be in the room, make the best sale,
Speaker 6: and get him to say something that's hard for him
Speaker 6: to take back.
Speaker 4: That's what they're trying to do.
Speaker 6: Just please say enough in the room with Trump that
Speaker 6: he decides that he needs to endorse a corner. That
Speaker 6: is the whole game there. Republicans do think Paxton versus
Speaker 6: tall Rica. So even though they're attacking now, if Paxton's
Speaker 6: a nominee, it'd have some trouble raising money.
Speaker 4: To Tylerico is a good candidate.
Speaker 6: They could lose it so that I would say that
Speaker 6: would become the fourth likeliest thing to flip after Alaska.
Speaker 2: Wow, thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 4: Dave, thank you so much.
Speaker 2: No mo.
Speaker 3: Jesse Cannon, so Molly, we got bury you louder Milk
Speaker 3: a character I feel like just shows up kind of
Speaker 3: as a cameo from season to season. He wants to
Speaker 3: go after charges for Cassidy Hutchinson if you remember from
Speaker 3: the January sixth hearings, Yes, I.
Speaker 1: Saw that, and I'm not surprised. Very louder Milk, you'll
Speaker 1: remember Barry louder Milk being the member of Congress that
Speaker 1: Mikey Cheryl came on this podcast and said, was remember
Speaker 1: giving tours.
Speaker 2: I do remember this. Yep.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Look, Cassidy Hutchinson is this very young girl who
Speaker 1: worked in MAGA who came out and testified against McCarthy.
Speaker 1: Like it's just an insane thing to do, but you know,
Speaker 1: this is what they're doing. They're trying to target people.
Speaker 1: But I do think it's interesting they've had so little
Speaker 1: success targeting people. I mean, it's just you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: she's twenty nine years old. I've met her before. She's
Speaker 1: really a sweet girl. But you know, they want to
Speaker 1: scare people. They want to prevent people from speaking about this.
Speaker 2: Admin.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
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Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.