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 Steve Bennon says, billionaire CEOs or
Speaker 1: supplicants to Trump, we have such a great show for
Speaker 1: you today. Democracy Dockets. Markellized stops by to talk about
Speaker 1: the legal battles of the Trump two point zero era.
Speaker 1: Then we'll talk to the Brennan Centers Michael Waldman about what.
Speaker 2: This whole thing is going to look like. But first
Speaker 2: the news.
Speaker 3: Somali the big, big controversy on the internet. Of course
Speaker 3: over the weekend, there was lots of them, but one
Speaker 3: of them really was that TikTok was banned for a
Speaker 3: few whole hours. What are you seeing happening here?
Speaker 1: You and I are on both different sides of the
Speaker 1: TikTok fiasco.
Speaker 2: You are a TikToker, I am not.
Speaker 3: I'm a TikToker who believes it should be sold to
Speaker 3: a US A company.
Speaker 2: The company.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, so but whatever, we can both agree that
Speaker 1: how this has been handled by Biden world is words.
Speaker 3: I mean, who disagrees with that?
Speaker 2: At this point? Nobody disagrees with it. I think even
Speaker 2: Biden would be like, whoops.
Speaker 1: So what happened here was both branch is the House
Speaker 1: and the Senate said we need to ban TikTok.
Speaker 2: It's owned by the Chinese government.
Speaker 1: There's no aggmirate transparency, there's no transparency at all, and
Speaker 1: so we pretty much everyone was like, this has to stop.
Speaker 1: One of the very few times that our government chose
Speaker 1: to legislate, and it was enacted today, the ban, and
Speaker 1: soon after, like Lucy with.
Speaker 2: The fucking football, Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: Was teed up to undo the ban via executive order.
Speaker 2: And there was enough latitude with.
Speaker 1: The way that the law's written that it's not actually
Speaker 1: technically illegal. He's not using his executive order to break
Speaker 1: a law because it's not written quite so clearly.
Speaker 2: But so now TikTok is is bad and Trump.
Speaker 1: Is it looks like a hero to anyone under the
Speaker 1: age of thirty. And this is why Democrats, while having
Speaker 1: very good ideas, still continue to lose elections.
Speaker 2: Congratulations, guys, that was that was not of it.
Speaker 3: We should say, so TikTok is back for ninety days
Speaker 3: after he does this order. But they would still suppose
Speaker 3: they need to sell the at least fifty percent of
Speaker 3: the company to you a US company to have a
Speaker 3: holding in it.
Speaker 1: Yes, and Donald Trump has some of the the Byteedance,
Speaker 1: which is the company that owns TikTok. People up on
Speaker 1: the dais with him during the inauguration, so you can
Speaker 1: see where Donald.
Speaker 2: Trump comes down.
Speaker 3: Great stuff. So in other tech, nice work if you
Speaker 3: can get Trump tech news. He launched a scam coin,
Speaker 3: a meme coin whatever we want to call it, and
Speaker 3: is now twenty five billion dollars richer.
Speaker 2: Yes, trump coin.
Speaker 1: And there was a great headline in the FT which
Speaker 1: proclaimed and I think this is pretty great. The president
Speaker 1: elect of the United States is promoting a shit coin.
Speaker 1: So that's from FT. That's something. Let me tell you
Speaker 1: a shit coin. Yes, And from that shitcoin he has
Speaker 1: made twenty five billion dollars and also lost the respect
Speaker 1: of a lot of crypto people for whom crypto is
Speaker 1: actually a real thing, including the guy who owns Barstool Sports,
Speaker 1: who is Dave Fortnoy yet not a feminist icon by
Speaker 1: any stretch of the imagination. Very mad about Trump's shit Now?
Speaker 1: Is he mad because he himself can't launch a shit coin?
Speaker 2: Who knows?
Speaker 1: I'm going to read you what I just I have
Speaker 1: a dumb two part question This is from Dave port
Speaker 1: Noi Feminist Icon. What's the difference between the Hawk two coin,
Speaker 1: which was Tua whatever, the Hawk Tua coin and the
Speaker 1: Trump coin besides nothing? And then part two?
Speaker 2: Can I string up my.
Speaker 1: Own coin now and tell people it's a Ponzi scheme
Speaker 1: from the jump and I'm going to pull the rug
Speaker 1: at some point anyway, The point is welcome to the
Speaker 1: resistant feminist icon.
Speaker 2: Dave Portnoy.
Speaker 3: Yes, And for people who are in fluent, the Hawk
Speaker 3: to a Girl who became meme famous that pull did
Speaker 3: a meme coin has now been in hiding ever since
Speaker 3: she did it because she got such a huge backlash.
Speaker 2: Right. She also she was a Ponzi scheme.
Speaker 1: So congratulations Donald Trump, You and the Hawk to a
Speaker 1: Girl have have more in common than not.
Speaker 3: I could see it. So the other big scam news though,
Speaker 3: is that Trump's inauguration has been moved in doors through rotunda,
Speaker 3: where now they will be able to keep two hundred
Speaker 3: million dollars of contributions.
Speaker 1: My hottest take is they're going to keep a lot
Speaker 1: of the money anyway. Also, remember they wanted him to
Speaker 1: be indoors anyway, so he Trump has moved the inauguration inside.
Speaker 1: It means that a lot of his people who bought
Speaker 1: tickets now have to go go to their members of
Speaker 1: Congress to get them refunded. They're not offering refunds. Technically
Speaker 1: it will be less expensive. Also, it is very cold,
Speaker 1: so that's one of the reasons why they're moving in inside.
Speaker 2: And also remember Trump.
Speaker 1: Has had a lot of violence directed towards him. I
Speaker 1: think him moving in inside is largely a better idea. Now,
Speaker 1: you know what's not a good idea, all the stuff
Speaker 1: that Trump wants to do once he's in office.
Speaker 3: I agree.
Speaker 1: Today we had the Wall Street Journal out with that
Speaker 1: he's going to declare a national emergency at the United
Speaker 1: States Mexico border. This we'll see this tomorrow and Tuesday. Look,
Speaker 1: all weekend we had different bits of news. Remember we
Speaker 1: had Tom Holman, who's the new Border securiti Zar, who
Speaker 1: had been on television saying they were going to enact
Speaker 1: parts of the Project twenty twenty five agenda. You'll remember
Speaker 1: the Project twenty twenty five agenda being all the stuff
Speaker 1: that was so unpopular that Donald Trump pretended he wasn't
Speaker 1: going to do it. Well, now he's going to do it.
Speaker 1: So part of it is these they're going to use
Speaker 1: these emergency these emergency declarations as a way to skirt
Speaker 1: a lot of law to give himself a legal framework.
Speaker 1: You'll remember that last time, in twenty seventeen, twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, Trump enacted the Muslim ban, and that was
Speaker 1: not able to stay, not because it was unconstitutional, though
Speaker 1: certainly there's an argument for that, but because the Supreme
Speaker 1: the United States Supreme Court fild Trump didn't do it
Speaker 1: the right way and didn't dot the i's.
Speaker 2: And cross the t's.
Speaker 1: So this time Trump is vowed to use the military
Speaker 1: to assist with deportations, and to do that he has
Speaker 1: to use these emergency and wartime powers acts. There are three.
Speaker 1: The Insurrection Act and that is the one that we've
Speaker 1: talked a lot about. That's the one that would be
Speaker 1: where he would be able to go after protesters or
Speaker 1: send the army after Americans. There's the National Enemies Act,
Speaker 1: and then there's the Alien Enemies Act, to which you
Speaker 1: and you may remember on this podcast, we've done a lot.
Speaker 2: Of talking about that act.
Speaker 1: That's that act where you can put you can say
Speaker 1: that members of countries you're at war with, are enemy
Speaker 1: combatants and then put them in camps.
Speaker 2: I think that is going.
Speaker 1: To be the hardest one because it has only been
Speaker 1: used three times during three different wars. But you know,
Speaker 1: this is what we're going to get to see is
Speaker 1: a sort of Trump doing crazy stuff with the law
Speaker 1: in order to try to get to do things that
Speaker 1: are extra judicial, that are things that are not within
Speaker 1: the normal bounds of the law. And I think we're
Speaker 1: going to see more and more about that. And I
Speaker 1: want to just say right now, because we're just going
Speaker 1: into this Trump and I'm saying this for myself as
Speaker 1: much as.
Speaker 2: For anyone else. He wants shock and awe.
Speaker 1: He wants people to be upset, like the Tom Holman
Speaker 1: stuff in Chicago that he was planning a raid. Part
Speaker 1: of this is to get people scared, right. Part of
Speaker 1: him saying he's going to go after his enemies is
Speaker 1: to make people, you know, obey in advance. I mean,
Speaker 1: just like what's happening at Meta. He wants that to
Speaker 1: happen with everyone. So it's worth just remembering that when
Speaker 1: you start seeing these these headlines come out, some of
Speaker 1: this is certainly real, and some of this is meant
Speaker 1: to get people upset, and you'll remember, the cruelty is
Speaker 1: the point, but it's also just the sort of the
Speaker 1: fear to make people scared. And so as much as
Speaker 1: there's a lot of scary stuff that's going to happen,
Speaker 1: there's also we all just you know, we have gotten
Speaker 1: through one Trump admin and we will get through another.
Speaker 1: Mark Elias is the founder of Democracy Dockett.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to Fast Politics.
Speaker 4: Mark, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Okay, so first we're going to talk about how you
Speaker 1: superheroed in to the Justice Riggs situation. North Carolina Democrat
Speaker 1: won re election in the Supreme Court and the Republican
Speaker 1: was like, no.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this should be a much bigger story than it is.
Speaker 4: In twenty twenty, we all understood that what Donald Trump
Speaker 4: was trying to do after the election was still an
Speaker 4: election by trying to throw out tens of thousands of
Speaker 4: legal votes in a number of different states, and we
Speaker 4: all stood up and I was happy to represent President
Speaker 4: Biden and defeat that effort in court. But that's what's
Speaker 4: happening in North Carolina. That's what we've seen in the
Speaker 4: last since election day. Alison Riggs, incumbent Democratic state Supreme
Speaker 4: Court justice won a narrow victory that was confirmed in
Speaker 4: a recount. It was confirmed in a second recount, and
Speaker 4: the Republican National Committee, along with the state party and
Speaker 4: the candidate there have been trying to pitch this theory
Speaker 4: that there were sixty thousand voters who, by the way,
Speaker 4: were legal, like, there's no question these were not fraudent voters,
Speaker 4: but they're saying that those voters votes should be thrown
Speaker 4: out because essentially they think the state law was not
Speaker 4: requiring certain information on their voter registration forms, which is,
Speaker 4: by the way, bunk in and of itself. But even
Speaker 4: if it wasn't bunk like, this is the information the
Speaker 4: state saw it from these votersister. I'm of two minds of.
Speaker 5: This, Molly.
Speaker 4: One is that this is about stealing a state Supreme
Speaker 4: Court seat, and I think that probably for the candidate,
Speaker 4: that's it. But I think that the other thing that's
Speaker 4: going on here is that why you see the RNC involved,
Speaker 4: Because you know it's a five to two court already, right,
Speaker 4: Republic's already controlled this court seat, So why is the
Speaker 4: RNC involved. I think the rnc's involved because they view
Speaker 4: this as if they win this, if they're able to
Speaker 4: pull this off, then they're able to say that Donald
Speaker 4: Trump in twenty twenty was right, like in a weird way.
Speaker 4: This is them trying to vindicate a larger question of
Speaker 4: you know, throwing out sixty thousand votes after an election's
Speaker 4: taking place.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think that's exactly right.
Speaker 1: And I think that what is interesting here is that
Speaker 1: this is the kind of stuff that is really bad,
Speaker 1: and that is really the legacy of Trump's twenty twenty
Speaker 1: crusade is that if you don't like the results of
Speaker 1: an election, you can just say no. And it is
Speaker 1: the sort of ethos of Trumpism, too, right. I mean,
Speaker 1: like I was just talking with a guest about Restvott.
Speaker 1: Restvaught's whole thing was that he went into omb and
Speaker 1: was like, no, I don't want to give you money for.
Speaker 4: That now, right, Yeah. So I would say it's not
Speaker 4: just the East ethos. I think it's the animated principle
Speaker 4: of trump Ism. People want to know, like what is mechanism,
Speaker 4: and they like contort themselves to try to find a
Speaker 4: some coherent theory of government with Donald Trump, which there isn't.
Speaker 4: I think the only consistent thing is abuse of the law.
Speaker 4: I mean think about it, like, you know, what is
Speaker 4: what was Donald Trump known for before he became a politician. Well,
Speaker 4: you know, he wanted his roy cone. He wanted to
Speaker 4: ignore building code, you know, building codes or whatever or
Speaker 4: whatever the I mean his father did with the you know,
Speaker 4: the civil rights violation. Like he has always been about
Speaker 4: abusing the legal system.
Speaker 5: He sues.
Speaker 4: He you know, think about all the frivol's laws since
Speaker 4: he's brought against people. And so you know what you
Speaker 4: say about omb it's like the animating principle is we
Speaker 4: don't have to follow.
Speaker 2: The law, right, No, No, agreed.
Speaker 1: And I think what has been interesting is that trump
Speaker 1: Ism does not scale right. Trump is a separate brand
Speaker 1: from the Republican Party. Republicans are hoping now. I think
Speaker 1: what I think is was interesting in Trump one point
Speaker 1: zero was that in Trump one point zero, Republicans were
Speaker 1: sort of went along to get along, and they thought
Speaker 1: that he would help their brand. Now I think they've
Speaker 1: realized that it doesn't transfer. So they're just trying to
Speaker 1: sort of get as much of his sort of magic
Speaker 1: fairy dust or whatever it is, probably fame on them
Speaker 1: in the hopes that they can take over.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think that Actually, you're right that in the first
Speaker 4: term they thought he might help their brand. I think
Speaker 4: in the second term they are resigned to the fact
Speaker 4: that he has replaced their brand. You know, in many usbecs,
Speaker 4: you know, Mike Johnson is not really the leader of
Speaker 4: the House Republicans, Donald Trump is, you know. I mean,
Speaker 4: like there really aren't any Republican leaders who independent of
Speaker 4: Donald Trump exert any authority or power. And so I
Speaker 4: think what they are they're like, Okay, fine, we have
Speaker 4: no brand. There is no Republican brand, and now they're
Speaker 4: going to see whether if they just throw in to
Speaker 4: Trump's brand, like you said, does any of it rub off,
Speaker 4: and then they be they gain power derivatively of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And we saw this with the election to a certain extent,
Speaker 1: I mean, because we saw voters who voted for Trump
Speaker 1: and left the bottom of the ticket.
Speaker 4: Bye, that's exactly right, you know, and we've seen Look,
Speaker 4: we've seen it, not just in that we've seen it.
Speaker 4: You know, Trump had reverse coattails like kind of what
Speaker 4: you're saying, Like Democrats did better in the Senate than
Speaker 4: they did at the presidency, and they did better in
Speaker 4: the House even still, and that is because there is no,
Speaker 4: there's no there's no Republicanism. There is just Donald Trump
Speaker 4: and then sort of his his merry band of siccophants.
Speaker 4: And so I think that Trump two point zero is
Speaker 4: about how do you fold into that? I mean, look
Speaker 4: at the business community, look at the look at look
Speaker 4: what it's doing. I mean, it's it's folding into that.
Speaker 2: It is unbelievable.
Speaker 1: And you and I actually talk offline about this all
Speaker 1: the time.
Speaker 4: I wasn't going to say that, but we do.
Speaker 2: We do. We're friends.
Speaker 4: We're friends, and we've thought and we worry about it. Yes,
Speaker 4: we jgularly for people who don't know. Off air, we
Speaker 4: worry about this and talk about it as well.
Speaker 1: Yes, because it's unbelievably scary. I mean, you know, since
Speaker 1: Donald Trump won the election, basically every billionaire, every single
Speaker 1: company that is going to have any kind of legislation
Speaker 1: in front of him, has been like, you know, how
Speaker 1: much can we donate to you?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's remarkable. You know, Normally raising money for things
Speaker 4: like the inauguration is really hard because like a lot
Speaker 4: of companies don't want to get involved in what they
Speaker 4: historically would perceive to be you know, sort of giving
Speaker 4: money for a party for the incoming president. Now, not
Speaker 4: only are corporate CEOs and corporations eager to do so
Speaker 4: when they ran out of benefits to give, corporations are
Speaker 4: still giving them, like they're giving them money even not
Speaker 4: getting tickets that I think they're doing it just to
Speaker 4: be able to show Donald Trump that they that they
Speaker 4: are supporting. And the other thing is Molly. It's like
Speaker 4: sometimes the corporations give it and sometimes actually the billionaire
Speaker 4: just gives out of their own pocket.
Speaker 1: It's just remarkable, Yes, And I think what's really interesting
Speaker 1: about this is that as we see these billionaires making
Speaker 1: these choices, they are not even trying to excuse themselves.
Speaker 1: And then we see today and I feel like at
Speaker 1: every point they keep getting undermined by Trump, so like
Speaker 1: they give all this money, and then we see the
Speaker 1: Jack Smith stuff come out, and it shows that Trump
Speaker 1: has even done more right there. He's been a little
Speaker 1: bit even, you know, just putting out this sort of
Speaker 1: information of how he was involved in trying to overturn
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty election is pretty you know, if you
Speaker 1: have any moral compass, you're like, wow, this guy. And
Speaker 1: then today we saw that all of these former presidents right.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know if you saw this because
Speaker 1: it's breaking news, but that in fact, all of these
Speaker 1: former presidents are refusing to go and to his inauguration.
Speaker 1: It's not just and for this one, it's Barack Obama,
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton, George W. Bush all will not attend Trump's
Speaker 1: traditional inauguration lunch. I guess they don't want to suck
Speaker 1: up to tech bros.
Speaker 4: Right, and again, you know, the thing that I find
Speaker 4: most remarkable is that these tech pro billionaires, you know,
Speaker 4: they strut around as if they are the most important
Speaker 4: people on earth. They're all powerful, all knowing all everything,
Speaker 4: and they have kind of turned themselves into like the
Speaker 4: court jesters of Donald Trump. You know, he summons them
Speaker 4: when he wants to be entertained. He's going to like,
Speaker 4: you know, he's seating them, like there's going to be
Speaker 4: some seating area for them. You know, he's doing this
Speaker 4: to humiliate them, and.
Speaker 2: He's got them fighting against each other.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Right, they think they're especially he's doing good to so
Speaker 4: they'll be this visual of how he is. Essentially, he's
Speaker 4: made them all sick with one another.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of theories out there about Trump
Speaker 1: and Elon and whether are this romance end? And you know,
Speaker 1: I've heard everything under the sun from like Elon loves
Speaker 1: Trump because he feels like he's a father friguer too.
Speaker 1: Trump is using Elon as a fog guy for when
Speaker 1: things go wrong. And I mean, if you were to
Speaker 1: just look historically at Trump one point oh versus Trump
Speaker 1: two point zero and Trump one point oh, there were
Speaker 1: a number of fall guys.
Speaker 4: Oh, with Trump, the one thing there always is is
Speaker 4: a fall guy. Like the thing about authoritarians is that
Speaker 4: it can never be their full like whatever it is,
Speaker 4: whatever the thing is, large or small. You know, remember
Speaker 4: after the first inauguration, they go back to the White
Speaker 4: House briefing room, there's a press conference with Sean Spicer.
Speaker 4: It goes horribly wrong on crowd size. It was Sean
Speaker 4: Spicer like shortly thereafter like fall guy, and Mike is
Speaker 4: out right and so like it can never like and
Speaker 4: that was a small thing, right, that was like like
Speaker 4: who cares? Like who cares what the size of the
Speaker 4: crowd was other than Donald Trump. But with Donald Trump,
Speaker 4: there always is going to be fall guys. So of
Speaker 4: course it will be at some point whoever it'll be,
Speaker 4: you know, it'll be Steven Miller. It'll be Remember one boy,
Speaker 4: Steve Bannon got exiled from Trump World. And if Elon
Speaker 4: Musk thinks he's any different, he's kidding himself. If what's
Speaker 4: his name Zuckerberg thinks he's any different, Like Zuckerberg already
Speaker 4: was the fall guy once for Donald Trump. But yet
Speaker 4: he's groveling back his way in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and even like we're seeing reporting, you know that
Speaker 1: Trump is already making fun of Steve Bannon for how
Speaker 1: racist he is, right that he the guy loved you know,
Speaker 1: there's some line in there about how.
Speaker 2: You know he loves immigration so much.
Speaker 1: I mean, the thing that I think is so interesting
Speaker 1: about like trump World destroying the mainstream media, which is
Speaker 1: basically what's happened at this point, is that Trump loved
Speaker 1: the mainstream media. That like, without a mainstream media, there
Speaker 1: will be no Trump because these stories are all being
Speaker 1: reported because there are leakers.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, that's exactly right, and you're spot on. I mean,
Speaker 4: the weird thing about trump Ism and Donald Trump is
Speaker 4: that trump Ism acts like the mainstream media is irrelevant,
Speaker 4: like completely irrelevant. But Donald Trump, there is nothing more
Speaker 4: relevant to Donald Trump that his coverage in the mainstream
Speaker 4: I don't understand it, honestly, because you know, as you
Speaker 4: and I have talked, like, I'm more of a critic
Speaker 4: of the mainstream media than probably you are. But nobody
Speaker 4: loves his mainstream media more than Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we go back and forth on this conversation to
Speaker 1: the mainstream media. My whole thing is just that the
Speaker 1: reporting is so important and we're not going to get
Speaker 1: it anywhere else. That said, I feel a little bit
Speaker 1: good because and this is like a place I used
Speaker 1: to work and was not a good place for me,
Speaker 1: But I think is I'm very excited that The Atlantic
Speaker 1: is going to do more reporting.
Speaker 4: Oh, the Atlantic is fabulous, And I do single out
Speaker 4: in individual publications, by the way, and I've singled out
Speaker 4: the Atlantic before. I think the Atlantic is fabulous. I
Speaker 4: think it does phenomenal reporting.
Speaker 1: And they're picking up a lot of the reporters who
Speaker 1: you know, they're not saying at the Watching Post.
Speaker 2: So like Ashley Parker, who I think is very.
Speaker 1: Talented, is going to the Atlantic, and even like the
Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal, which is owned by pretty much one
Speaker 1: of the sort of architects of trump Ism. But at
Speaker 1: least you know, they have done some good reporting. I
Speaker 1: personally have to separate the weed from the shaft when
Speaker 1: it comes to because I just think without this reporting,
Speaker 1: we're sunk.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think the place where you and I differ is
Speaker 4: whether that has to exist or whether it should exist
Speaker 4: in a consolidated, large scale newspaper format. I mean, I
Speaker 4: would say one of the strengths of the Atlantic is
Speaker 4: that it's actually not a daily.
Speaker 2: Newspaper, right for sure, it's small, yeah, and.
Speaker 4: So like to me, it therefore allows it to do
Speaker 4: reporting in a way that makes it less accountable to
Speaker 4: the day and day day out transactional relationships with you know,
Speaker 4: for example, a Trump Whitehouse. And so that's I think
Speaker 4: probably one of the difference between you and I is
Speaker 4: I wouldn't put the I wouldn't put The Atlantic in
Speaker 4: the bucket of traditional legacy media in the way that
Speaker 4: I would the Washington Post.
Speaker 5: For example.
Speaker 2: Right, but the Washington Post.
Speaker 1: I mean again, there was this letter this week four hundred.
Speaker 2: I mean, all of these editors like.
Speaker 1: Leading with Bezos to just like we need to go
Speaker 1: back to the Watergate Washington Post, and I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't think that's happening.
Speaker 4: But but that's I think my point is that I
Speaker 4: think that the big paradigm shift that we have learned
Speaker 4: after the election is we assumed for many, many years
Speaker 4: that if you had a large news institution that was
Speaker 4: very prominent, very prestigious, and well funded, it would be
Speaker 4: able to stand up to Donald Trump and people like him,
Speaker 4: It would be able to hold people in power account
Speaker 4: and that the problem with smaller independent media is that
Speaker 4: they wouldn't have the resources to fight those fights. And
Speaker 4: what it turns out is it's actually the opposite, because
Speaker 4: it is those large institutions, because they have so many
Speaker 4: holdings that government can touch, they're actually they you know,
Speaker 4: like they are they If you're Disney, okay, you have
Speaker 4: so many pieces of gus of business for the federal government.
Speaker 4: Are you really going to be on Donald Trump's bad side?
Speaker 4: If you are Jeff Bezos? You know, not that I'm
Speaker 4: defending Jeff Bezos or Disney, but I think you know,
Speaker 4: he would say like, I have so many you know,
Speaker 4: or he wouldn't say, but one might say about him,
Speaker 4: you know, he has rockets he wants to launch, he
Speaker 4: has aws services he wants to sell, and so like,
Speaker 4: how much are you willing to be on the bad
Speaker 4: side of a narcissist president, whereas if you are a
Speaker 4: smaller publication or an independent publication, the government has no
Speaker 4: leverage over you. Donald Trump doesn't have any leverage over you,
Speaker 4: and so you can afford to be tougher on them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, agreed.
Speaker 1: And I also think you know this is why we're
Speaker 1: not supposed to have monopolies, right. This is the case
Speaker 1: against monopolies is that if you own everything, you're conflicted
Speaker 1: on everything.
Speaker 5: Correct.
Speaker 4: That's I think you've actually just put it probably better
Speaker 4: than I could. It is classic anti trust theory and
Speaker 4: why monopolies are bad.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, how down on democrats are you?
Speaker 1: Because this has been a very tough three months for me,
Speaker 1: and I have cycled through self blame other blame. I
Speaker 1: think of you as very tough, and that is one
Speaker 1: of the many things I respect about you. You are
Speaker 1: very tough in a way that a lot of Democrats
Speaker 1: are not. I mean, do you think democrats come around?
Speaker 1: Are you furious with them? What is your takeaway.
Speaker 2: From all of this?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 4: So I have two takes on it. The first is
Speaker 4: I am less down on democrats than a lot of
Speaker 4: people are. I think that the internal finger pointing between
Speaker 4: whether it was the fault of this faction or that faction,
Speaker 4: or this tactic or that tactic or this campaign. I
Speaker 4: think is like just wasted time. And I think that
Speaker 4: you can find a million reasons when you lose a
Speaker 4: close election to blame everybody, and when you win a
Speaker 4: close election, you can vidamilitary reason to credit everyone, and
Speaker 4: I don't think that gets you anywhere. So like, I
Speaker 4: have no time for that. And I think that there
Speaker 4: are you know, people who say Democrats are not tough.
Speaker 4: You know, I would point out it is hard to
Speaker 4: look at what the Democratic Party did last summer, which
Speaker 4: was you know, whether it was Nancy Pelissia, Chuck schumera King,
Speaker 4: Jeffers or whomever you know that you know went to
Speaker 4: President Biden and showed him the handwriting on the walls.
Speaker 4: It's hard to say that's not a tough party. And
Speaker 4: I think if you look at Democrats' ability to hold
Speaker 4: their caucuses in close legislative chambers and the House, in
Speaker 4: the Senate, charges say that they're up tough. I think
Speaker 4: that where that there are places where people think I
Speaker 4: am tough. It's because I am willing to use every
Speaker 4: legal means in every legal tactic to protect democracy and
Speaker 4: to advance my client's interests. And you know, I listened
Speaker 4: to Merrick Garland's closing remarks to the Department of Justice,
Speaker 4: and frankly, I couldn't disagree with him more. I mean,
Speaker 4: he basically said that the strength of the Department of
Speaker 4: Justice and this is you know, his quote, it's the
Speaker 4: obligation of each of us to follow our norms, not
Speaker 4: only when it's easy, but when it's hard, especially when
Speaker 4: it's hard, And he says, it's the obligation each of
Speaker 4: us sudhere to our norms even when, especially when circumstances
Speaker 4: we face are not normal. And like you know, I
Speaker 4: wrote this piece for Democracy Doc about you know, bringing
Speaker 4: norms to a Trump fight. Like you know, I have
Speaker 4: no patience for that. We cannot have a situation in
Speaker 4: which Democrats are held to one standard and hold themselves
Speaker 4: to one standard, and Republicans are held to no standard
Speaker 4: and hold themselves to no standard. Like we have to
Speaker 4: fight with the tools as they are, not as we
Speaker 4: wish they are. They it means following the law. You know,
Speaker 4: we don't cross the line. But the idea that somehow
Speaker 4: norms are the guideposts here, I just reject.
Speaker 2: Yeah, correct, Mark, thank you, thank you, thank.
Speaker 4: You, thank you.
Speaker 1: Michael Waldman is the President and CEO of the Brennan
Speaker 1: Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to Fast Politics, Michael.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much for having me in these interesting times.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm so delighted to have you. And the first thing.
Speaker 1: I want to talk to you about is you run
Speaker 1: the Brennan Center. You guys, just do God's work. We
Speaker 1: are Monday will be the first day of Trump two
Speaker 1: point zero. He is planning shock and awe. How can
Speaker 1: the courts save the American people from or mitigate some
Speaker 1: of the shock and the awe.
Speaker 5: So it's important, I think, to remember that shock and
Speaker 5: awe didn't work out so well in Iraq for the
Speaker 5: American side when we swept in.
Speaker 1: The wording is suspect, Yes, continues sorry.
Speaker 5: Well, the wording is suspect. But it's a lot of
Speaker 5: the same idea. When they say they are going to
Speaker 5: issue a slew of executive orders on the first day,
Speaker 5: in the first hour of the new presidency, in part,
Speaker 5: they're trying to imprint the idea that they're all action
Speaker 5: and changing everything. In fact, a lot of the executive
Speaker 5: orders that any president's issue don't have nearly as much
Speaker 5: teeth as legislation.
Speaker 2: That's a really important point.
Speaker 5: I worked in the White House, as you know, for
Speaker 5: Bill Clinton on the day he took office in nineteen
Speaker 5: ninety three, and we also issued a bunch of executive orders.
Speaker 5: Some of them are really meaningful, and some of them
Speaker 5: are kind of like press releases with a.
Speaker 2: Governmentber Well, exactly, what we do know is.
Speaker 5: That he is going to try to use all the
Speaker 5: levers of executive power to do mass deportation, to politicize
Speaker 5: the government, to do a whole bunch of other things
Speaker 5: that he tried has talked about very openly NonStop for
Speaker 5: months and months and months. Some of these are at
Speaker 5: the very beginning of the administration. In the answer to
Speaker 5: your question, presidents have a lot of power. Unfortunately, a
Speaker 5: lot of the existing laws give them even more power
Speaker 5: than they should have. But a lot of the things
Speaker 5: they say they want to do are illegal, and courts
Speaker 5: should step up. And it's going to be a real
Speaker 5: test for the courts and whether they.
Speaker 1: Step up, Yeah, especially because they're the only lever left.
Speaker 1: I do think that that's a really good point, and
Speaker 1: we saw this reporting from Politico about how he's already saying,
Speaker 1: like the mass deportation, he can't do it because he
Speaker 1: doesn't have the money. Right, Congress has to give the
Speaker 1: money in order to pay. I mean, mass deportation is
Speaker 1: wildly expensive, correct.
Speaker 5: Right, it's wildly expensive. There isn't actually a massive federal
Speaker 5: internal police force that can just instantaneously be mobilized to
Speaker 5: go seize people off the streets and things like that,
Speaker 5: as Politico and other outlets have reported, some of the
Speaker 5: steps that any president can take that's more kind of
Speaker 5: clearly within their own purview, or things like what they
Speaker 5: do at the border. Look, there are a lot of
Speaker 5: steps that Donald Trump has said he's going to take
Speaker 5: on mass deportation that we just have every reason to
Speaker 5: expect he'll do some version of some of them. He
Speaker 5: has said that he will take away the temporary protected status,
Speaker 5: say for Venezuela and Haitian immigrants, that enables these people
Speaker 5: to work legally in the United States while their immigration
Speaker 5: claims are being assessed. Taking that away would have a
Speaker 5: huge impact on a lot of people. He has said
Speaker 5: he will declare an emergency at the border to enable
Speaker 5: him to build his wall. And do other kinds of things.
Speaker 5: Presidents have a lot of power to declare emergencies. Now,
Speaker 5: in his first term, he tried to declare an emergency
Speaker 5: and use that fact to reallocate money from a different
Speaker 5: department to pay for building his wall, and that was
Speaker 5: actually unsuccessful. So, you know, even though there is a
Speaker 5: lot of power presidents have, there are still restricts in
Speaker 5: some cases. And those of us who who want to
Speaker 5: stand up for the rule of law, those of us
Speaker 5: who think the courts need to do their part, have
Speaker 5: a job to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah. One of the things I'm struck by is the
Speaker 2: Muslim ban, right.
Speaker 5: Right, Remember that was the very beginning. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 5: this is one of the things where they probably have
Speaker 5: learned their lessons maybe on some of what they did
Speaker 5: wrong the first time. So you know, you remember in
Speaker 5: twice sixteen he said we're going to ban all Muslims
Speaker 5: from coming into the United States till we find out
Speaker 5: what's going on. Very early on, a few days into
Speaker 5: his term, he issued a travel ban from a bunch
Speaker 5: of countries that were Muslim majority. Courts very quickly started
Speaker 5: blocking that from going into effect, if you remember, But
Speaker 5: like a lot of lawyers rushed to Kennedy Airport.
Speaker 2: I do remember to.
Speaker 5: Represent people who were in limbo. But what the courts
Speaker 5: then said, what John Roberts and his very conservative Supreme
Speaker 5: Court said then was well, you didn't cross the tea
Speaker 5: and dout the I right and didn't follow the procedures.
Speaker 5: You didn't follow the Administrative Act. But then they eventually
Speaker 5: let him do what he wanted to do in a
Speaker 5: case called Trump versus Hawaii. In other words, where the
Speaker 5: courts were willing to stand up to him the first
Speaker 5: time was to make them follow the procedures. It may
Speaker 5: be that this time they're going to be more fastidious
Speaker 5: about following the procedures. One of the things that we've
Speaker 5: looked at a lot. You know, presidents have a lot
Speaker 5: of power to do immigration policy, and that includes deportations.
Speaker 5: I mean Barack Obama, you know, deported a lot of
Speaker 5: people for example. It's part of the mix of immigration policies.
Speaker 5: What Trump has said he wants to do is use
Speaker 5: laws that are incredibly abusive of power and give him
Speaker 5: vast authority. And a lot of these laws that haven't
Speaker 5: been used very much he wants to use, He said,
Speaker 5: the Insurrection Act of eighteen oh four to enable him
Speaker 5: to use the military domestically to do some of this stuff.
Speaker 5: He wants to use the National Emergencies Act. He says
Speaker 5: he wants to use. He talked about this on the
Speaker 5: campaign trail. He wants to use the remaining part of
Speaker 5: the Alien and Sedition Act. Yes, which I know I
Speaker 5: know about you. I last thought about that in high
Speaker 5: school history.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: That is something we actually had someone from the Brennan
Speaker 1: Center on Because you have someone who has just focused
Speaker 1: on that now and writing about it, and she's right.
Speaker 5: We have a lawyer who was working away on this
Speaker 5: Alien Enemies Act who are like, really, like, isn't that
Speaker 5: rather obscure thing that'd be spent?
Speaker 1: No, but it's not. It's in Project twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: I mean, what's so interesting about this Trump two point zero,
Speaker 1: and I mean this in only the most pejorative sense,
Speaker 1: is that they have taken all of these like zombie
Speaker 1: laws like this and also comstock, and also that they've
Speaker 1: repurposed for modern use.
Speaker 2: So you know, you have to be at war. Right.
Speaker 1: The last time this happened was World War two with Japanese.
Speaker 1: Before that, World War One, Before that, the War of eighteen.
Speaker 5: Twelve, the British supporters were being interned. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Right, So this sort of legal framework for it seems
Speaker 1: very very shaky. I think we both think and we
Speaker 1: actually had a conversation about this, where we think he's
Speaker 1: going to try to declare war on the cartels.
Speaker 2: I don't see how you do that.
Speaker 5: So that's one where he's on very weak legal ground
Speaker 5: if he tries to use it. The Alien This Sedition Acts,
Speaker 5: for those who missed that day in high school history,
Speaker 5: were these laws that are considered some of the worst
Speaker 5: laws in American history. They were passed in the John
Speaker 5: Adams administration and they cracked down on free speech and dissent.
Speaker 5: Thomas Jefferson called them the result of the reign of witches,
Speaker 5: and they really discredited it. And the only one of
Speaker 5: those laws that's still in the books is this one.
Speaker 5: And you're right, it's only been used three times, and
Speaker 5: the last time it was used was during World War
Speaker 5: two to in turn Japanese nationals who had people who
Speaker 5: had not gotten their American citizenship yet. But it's pretty
Speaker 5: clear in the language that it has to be against
Speaker 5: a government we're at declared war with or the result
Speaker 5: of an invasion so you know that was the case
Speaker 5: when we were attacked at say, at Pearl Harbor. We
Speaker 5: had an actual declaration of war in World War Two.
Speaker 5: It was the last time we had one. But you know,
Speaker 5: we're not at war with Venezuela and the cartels are
Speaker 5: not a government. They may say, I suppose, oh, well,
Speaker 5: it's an invasion. You know, they have all these immigrants,
Speaker 5: but it's pretty illegal. The problem is this is where
Speaker 5: we need the courts to step up. In the past,
Speaker 5: courts have often said about this particular law, oh well,
Speaker 5: you know, this doesn't seem right, but this is a
Speaker 5: political question. That's actually up to the president to decide
Speaker 5: these things. Now, a lot of those rulings were a
Speaker 5: long time ago, before courts were in the business of
Speaker 5: enforcing civil liberties the way they do now. So you know,
Speaker 5: that one I think is really illegal, and honestly, I
Speaker 5: think that it would surprise me if they really went
Speaker 5: to that one, because because that one is on such
Speaker 5: shaky ground. A lot of these other things are things
Speaker 5: where presidents have considerable authority, and people don't realize. The
Speaker 5: National Guard is a military force controlled by states by
Speaker 5: the governor, but presidents can federalize the National Guard, and
Speaker 5: that has happened. You know, to put in nineteen ninety
Speaker 5: two to deal with violence and life Los Angeles example,
Speaker 5: it would be quite extraordinary to do that to deal
Speaker 5: with what is a lot of immigration, but it's basically
Speaker 5: an immigration issue.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think this is where we're going to be
Speaker 1: for the next four years. How many nights have you
Speaker 1: lost sleep thinking about Russ Fodd?
Speaker 5: So you know, first of all, Donald Trump said during
Speaker 5: the campaign that he'd never heard of Project twenty twenty five.
Speaker 5: He didn't know these people where you'd never heard of
Speaker 5: this heritage what do you call it? The Heritage Foundation?
Speaker 5: It was so transparently absurd. It was like that in
Speaker 5: the Marx Brothers movie. You know who you're going to
Speaker 5: believe me or your own eyes. First of all, I
Speaker 5: happened to go to Milwaukee of the weekend of the
Speaker 5: Republican Convention for a family wedding, not because of the convention.
Speaker 5: While Trump was saying, oh what, I never heard of
Speaker 5: any of these people. I never heard of Project twenty
Speaker 5: twenty five. When you got to the airport, it was
Speaker 5: a floor to ceiling display saying the Heritage Foundation welcomes
Speaker 5: you to the Republican National Commission. The corporate sponsor was
Speaker 5: Project twenty twenty five. Russ Vault was one of the
Speaker 5: minds behind one of the authors of Project twenty twenty five.
Speaker 5: He was a senior official in the Trump White House
Speaker 5: the first time. He is smart, he is adept at
Speaker 5: fiddling with the levers of government, and he is extraordinarily
Speaker 5: ideological and even extreme in what he wants. He wants
Speaker 5: a religious approach to government. He said, we I believe
Speaker 5: tell me if I'm mixing him up with one of
Speaker 5: the other boys, I believe he's the one who said
Speaker 5: we live in a post constitutional era.
Speaker 2: He is, he is, he is, that's him. Yeah.
Speaker 5: At the Brandon Center where I work, we actually have
Speaker 5: the Constitution on the wall. So I don't think most
Speaker 5: Americans think or want to believe that we're in a
Speaker 5: post constitutional era. But he is one of the people
Speaker 5: who has a very radical legal view of what government
Speaker 5: ought to be allowed to do. That is much more
Speaker 5: assertive than traditional conservatives, even sort of federalist society conservatives
Speaker 5: have had.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it is interesting to me to put so.
Speaker 1: He had been in omb before Office of Management and Budget,
Speaker 1: and he did in Trump one point zero do things
Speaker 1: like hold money that was supposed to go to federal agencies, right,
Speaker 1: and was supposed to go to Ukraine. That was the
Speaker 1: most famous of his alliances into this, but one you
Speaker 1: sort of dig into Project twenty twenty five, there's sort
Speaker 1: of a lot of like, this is how we can
Speaker 1: get people to do this, and it's by holding the money,
Speaker 1: which is really not what the president is supposed to
Speaker 1: be doing at all.
Speaker 5: Right, it violates when you say we're in a post
Speaker 5: constitutional era. One of the ways that would be post
Speaker 5: constitutional is the Constitution, you know, articularly it's checking cons
Speaker 5: You talked about the zombie laws. I think it's a
Speaker 5: really good point when you look at the Comstock actor.
Speaker 5: Some of these things, they're really talking about the social
Speaker 5: values of the eighteen hundreds. A lot of these other
Speaker 5: things are trying to undo the restraints on abuse of
Speaker 5: presidential power that were enacted over the last fifty sixty
Speaker 5: seventy years after Nixon. After Nixon, so one of the
Speaker 5: big issues at the time of Nixon's impeachment was what
Speaker 5: was called impoundment. He claimed then the right to not
Speaker 5: spend money that Congress had passed the law, saying he
Speaker 5: had to spend the president, the government had to spend,
Speaker 5: and it was considered, it was found on constitutional it
Speaker 5: was the basis for some of the charges of the
Speaker 5: abuse of power, and all kinds of budget rules were
Speaker 5: put in place to make sure that this couldn't happen.
Speaker 5: A lot of people, I guess on the right think
Speaker 5: this was all a grand mistake. You see this also
Speaker 5: with the immunity decision by the Supreme Court going back
Speaker 5: that really went back to again Nixon, when courts ruled
Speaker 5: in the cases about Nixon's tapes and other things that oh, no,
Speaker 5: there are restrictions. You know, the law does apply to presidents.
Speaker 5: Presidents are subject to criminal law. Certainly after they're in office,
Speaker 5: they're subjects to criminal law. And again there's a strain
Speaker 5: of thought on the right that's kind of a monarchical
Speaker 5: approach that thinks that it was a big mistake to
Speaker 5: have these kinds of things that embedded the presidency in
Speaker 5: the rule of law. And you know, they call it
Speaker 5: in some instances they call it the unitary executive theory,
Speaker 5: with basically say everybody in the whole executive branch works
Speaker 5: for the present personally. So Rustvot saying in effect, It
Speaker 5: doesn't matter what Congress does. We're just going to spend
Speaker 5: the money how we want to spend it. They're going
Speaker 5: to put this kind of like fancy legal jargon and
Speaker 5: justification for it. But it's just a power grab.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, exactly, it's just a power grab.
Speaker 1: It's extra constitutional or whatever they're calling it.
Speaker 5: It is definitely because.
Speaker 1: There's this larger idea that what trump Ism is trying
Speaker 1: to do is sort of repeal the entire century since Nixon,
Speaker 1: not century, but the fifty sixty years since nixton. That
Speaker 1: this is and even before that, that's sort of every
Speaker 1: the social safety net, everything since sort of nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: nine on. Is really the last hundred years that Trumpism
Speaker 1: wants to repeal the last hundred years. Do you see
Speaker 1: that legally? Do you see that as something that could
Speaker 1: be possible?
Speaker 5: You know, I figure right that that is that is
Speaker 5: something that you see across a lot of these areas.
Speaker 5: And there are ways in which this has already played out,
Speaker 5: not just with Trump's you know, personal idiosyncrasies, but a
Speaker 5: lot of the efforts by the conservative legal movement leading
Speaker 5: up to this, including at the US Supreme Court. So
Speaker 5: give you an example, for a lot of the country's
Speaker 5: history and mal you know, I wrote a book on
Speaker 5: the history of the Supreme Court that talks about this.
Speaker 5: From a lot of the country's history, the Supreme Court
Speaker 5: saw its role as being kind of to stop progress.
Speaker 5: It was often a very conservative force, and in the
Speaker 5: early twentieth century, what the justices of that time thought
Speaker 5: their job was was to stop government from acting, from
Speaker 5: regulating worker hours or public safety, you know, a lot
Speaker 5: of the things, to protect people. And they would over
Speaker 5: and over again make these constitutional rulings to stop government
Speaker 5: from acting. At the beginning of the twentieth century, this
Speaker 5: was the basis of a lot of fighting between Theodore
Speaker 5: Roosevelt and the Court, between the Progressives as they were known,
Speaker 5: and then and then ultimately Franklin Roosevelt. He fought when
Speaker 5: the Court was trying to strike down the New Deal,
Speaker 5: Roosevelt threatened to try to get them expanded, packing the court.
Speaker 5: And what happened was in nineteen thirty seven, in the
Speaker 5: middle of all is the Supreme Court back down and
Speaker 5: they said, you know what, government agencies, you can do
Speaker 5: your thing. You can regulate the economy, you can protect people.
Speaker 5: We're not going to pretend it's some constitutional issue. This
Speaker 5: is how we have a modern country. There are some
Speaker 5: people who think it was a grave mistake. They call
Speaker 5: it the Constitution in exile. They think it went into
Speaker 5: exile in nineteen thirty seven. One of the people who
Speaker 5: thinks that, there was a New York Times article about
Speaker 5: twenty years ago in a Times magazine that said, you know,
Speaker 5: here's this kind of kooky idea, and here are some
Speaker 5: of the people who believe it. Here's a young judge
Speaker 5: you've never heard of named John Roberts.
Speaker 2: Oh no, that's not good.
Speaker 5: Wonder well, we'll ever come of him. And so the
Speaker 5: Supreme Court, of several opinions of the last few years,
Speaker 5: has for the first time in at least half a century,
Speaker 5: made constitutional claims to basically limit the power of government
Speaker 5: agencies to do regulation on the environment and on other
Speaker 5: things like that. And that is not just Donald Trump.
Speaker 5: That's the kind of thing you see across the government.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now, thank you, Michael, really appreciate you. And this
Speaker 1: was really so Again, We're going to be using this
Speaker 1: word a lot for the next four years.
Speaker 2: Chilling.
Speaker 5: It's chilling. But remember this is a scary time. But
Speaker 5: the laws of political gravity have not been repealed. You know,
Speaker 5: Donald Trump is now going to have countries, not just
Speaker 5: going to be true thing about things. He's going to
Speaker 5: have control of the government, of the executive branch. There'll
Speaker 5: be consequences. And while it's hard, there are many ways
Speaker 5: that if there are biass of power, that we all
Speaker 5: have the ability to push back.
Speaker 2: Right, all right, true, thank you.
Speaker 5: Thank you, No moment, Jesse Cannon.
Speaker 3: So, Molly, you may remember the last secessionist movement, which
Speaker 3: was the Greater Idaho SECESSIONUS movement that didn't quite get
Speaker 3: off the ground because well, it was pretty stupid to
Speaker 3: bring California, Oregon, and Washington into Idaho, a state that
Speaker 3: isn't doing so hot. But now we have one that's
Speaker 3: even stupider, which is seceding from Illinois. What are you
Speaker 3: seeing here?
Speaker 2: Yes, cis from Illinois. Again.
Speaker 1: I just want to point this out for a second
Speaker 1: because I think this is worth mentioning for just a
Speaker 1: hot minute. As Trump tries to bully California and complains
Speaker 1: about how they want aid and that they're takers. California
Speaker 1: has pays a ton of federal taxes.
Speaker 2: Now they need us.
Speaker 1: If they seceed, We're all completely fucked. Okay, versus a place,
Speaker 1: versus the state of New Illinois.
Speaker 2: They're never going to be able to get this organized.
Speaker 1: But I just want to point out, and if anyone
Speaker 1: can handle something that's stupid, it is one of this
Speaker 1: program's favorite governors, Governor Pritzker. But I just want to
Speaker 1: point out, like no one, you know, the state of
Speaker 1: New Illinois, you know got you know, go with God team.
Speaker 1: If you want to join Indiana, they're happy to have you.
Speaker 1: Instead of succeeding, they should just join us, all right, sure,
Speaker 1: why not? Or we could just make a ton of
Speaker 1: news states. We're looking at DC and Puerto Rico as
Speaker 1: our as our addition. So that's it for this episode
Speaker 1: of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and
Speaker 1: Saturday to hear the best minds and politics make sense
Speaker 1: of all this chaos. If you enjoy this podcast, please
Speaker 1: send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.