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.
Speaker 2: And AOC said, stop playing nice.
Speaker 1: There has to be a political price to pay for
Speaker 1: Elon Musk's takeover of the government. We have such a
Speaker 1: great show for you today. Historian Thomas Zimmer stops by
Speaker 1: to parse the inner workings of Trump and his Project
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five agenda. Then we'll talk to Harvard's Theta
Speaker 1: Scotch Pole about the history of the right and how
Speaker 1: we got here.
Speaker 2: But first the news.
Speaker 3: Somali so much, so much going on. Trump instituted these
Speaker 3: tariffs on Mexico and Canada, and then some quote unquote
Speaker 3: concessions were made that kind of aren't really concessions. What
Speaker 3: are you seeing here?
Speaker 1: So Trump was sort of almost about to get into
Speaker 1: a trade war with Mexico and Canada. He put he
Speaker 1: said it was going to tear off goods from them,
Speaker 1: five percent tariff on all goods from Mexico and Canada.
Speaker 1: Big excitement, would mean totally dismantling the North American Free
Speaker 1: Trade Agreement, which again he had sort of redone in
Speaker 1: his last administration. But Mexico and Canada called him on
Speaker 1: the phone and asked him not to and then promise
Speaker 1: they'd do things that they were already doing, like spending
Speaker 1: more money on the border, which they were already doing,
Speaker 1: and stopping the flow of fen at all, which they
Speaker 1: were already doing. And Donald Trump decided not to teariff them,
Speaker 1: though he is still doing a ten percent tariff on
Speaker 1: goods from China, and that I think is still going,
Speaker 1: which will actually make things more expensive as well. I
Speaker 1: think that Trump knew, you know, on Monday, when he
Speaker 1: said he was going to do the tariffs, the doubt
Speaker 1: just sort of toppled and was down a lot. It
Speaker 1: was down in pre trading, and he realized that tariffs
Speaker 1: were going to really hurt the markets. And you'll remember
Speaker 1: that Donald Trump still does love the equity markets.
Speaker 2: He wants the dow to go up.
Speaker 1: That's basically the one thing that is sort of the
Speaker 1: check on this presidency. So once he made this deal,
Speaker 1: but you know, it is the same deal the New Republic. Noted,
Speaker 1: Mexico sent fifteen thousand troops the border in twenty nineteen
Speaker 1: and sent ten thousand again in twenty twenty one. So
Speaker 1: shine Baum basically agreed to do what she's just been doing.
Speaker 1: But Trump is going to sell that as a victory
Speaker 1: to his people, and as long as he feels he
Speaker 1: can sell it to a victory, then he's happy with it.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think it is a funny way to deal with
Speaker 3: the toddlers, just say oh, yeah, sure, I'll do this
Speaker 3: thing that I've already been doing already.
Speaker 1: Well, that's what everybody's doing, and again, like that's what
Speaker 1: the people, the CEO of Facebook is doing, That's what
Speaker 1: all of these companies are doing. But it is also
Speaker 1: partially they are obeying, right, I mean they're obeying or
Speaker 1: they're making it look like they're obeying.
Speaker 2: So what is like playing.
Speaker 1: Along with him and what is enabled autocracy? I think
Speaker 1: it's going to be a delicate dance there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So, speaking of obeying, the FBI has turned over
Speaker 3: details of five thousand employees who worked on the January
Speaker 3: sixth case to Trump's Justice Department, and that's scary.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Look, Trump wants to purge the FBI of everyone who's
Speaker 1: worked on a January sixth case.
Speaker 2: That's like a lot of the FBI.
Speaker 1: And I think that it's worth I think we talked
Speaker 1: about this last time. But like, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of people in the FBI who are white Republican men
Speaker 1: who may have worked on a January sixth case.
Speaker 4: But being nice, right all.
Speaker 1: And you know it's a it's an agency head by Republicans,
Speaker 1: staffed by Republicans, and now Trump is going to take
Speaker 1: some of them out because they wandered into his case.
Speaker 1: So the Deputy Attorney General Emil Bouvet in a Friday
Speaker 1: memo he with a subject that said terminations. He's given
Speaker 1: FBI officials to a noon deadline to submit the details
Speaker 1: of who has worked on the January sixth investigations. It's
Speaker 1: worth pointing out here that almost immediately the FBI filed
Speaker 1: a lawsuit to prevent this, and so you know there's
Speaker 1: a lot by the way, there's so much legal action
Speaker 1: happening here, Like FBI is suing, a lot of these
Speaker 1: federal employees are suing. There's just going to be a
Speaker 1: ton of legal action. And rightly, so, look, Trump is
Speaker 1: trying to break the law. The question is will he
Speaker 1: listen to what the courts tell him.
Speaker 3: All you law students graduate were worried about your jobs,
Speaker 3: just head to DC right now. I promise. The foods
Speaker 3: as bad as everyone told you, but you got a
Speaker 3: job at least, so after I'm done making light of things.
Speaker 3: One of the things the rich span on Earth likes
Speaker 3: to do is late night agreeing with really, really questionably
Speaker 3: bad tweets. And we have one here.
Speaker 1: So Elon is up at night posting about white South Africans.
Speaker 1: And I don't even think we need to go into
Speaker 1: detail here except to point out that this guy white
Speaker 1: South Africans. He's retweeting something white South Africans persecuted for
Speaker 1: their race in their home country. You know, with Elon,
Speaker 1: it's never about what's really happening. It's about lots of
Speaker 1: other crazy stuff. And clearly he is not happy about
Speaker 1: South Africa. I mean, I would unpack this, but it's
Speaker 1: so unseemly I don't even want to. I think you
Speaker 1: guys get the idea. He's late, late at night, he's tweeting,
Speaker 1: and it does seem like he is perhaps not the
Speaker 1: hero that we need right now. That's the understandment of
Speaker 1: the year. Actually, that's the worst thing I've ever said.
Speaker 1: Let's just say he's engaging in some late night racist tweets.
Speaker 3: We use the term fever dreams sometimes for when people
Speaker 3: are saying something crazy, I'm thinking ketamine dreams here, ketamine dreams.
Speaker 1: The point is, none of this is like sober, grown
Speaker 1: up behavior. And he's running the federal government now, so
Speaker 1: it's pretty bad.
Speaker 2: Ye, not great.
Speaker 3: He says he's shutting down USAID, and the Lever News
Speaker 3: has an interesting story on why he might want to
Speaker 3: do that.
Speaker 1: Musk is targeting this agency that is inspecting his company's
Speaker 1: Starlink equipment, right, and I want to point out that
Speaker 1: in September, the agency's inspector general and worth remembering that
Speaker 1: Trump has fired all the inspector generals. Remember that, so
Speaker 1: you can see why Trump is not a fan of
Speaker 1: inspector generals. Right, They're meant to root out corruption. He
Speaker 1: told Congress that USAID's oversight of the Starlink satellite terminals
Speaker 1: proved the Ukrainian government that USAID's efforts to protect against
Speaker 1: sexual exploitation and abuse in Ukraine, and so USAID web
Speaker 1: pages mentioning SpaceX and Starlink seemed to have disappeared from
Speaker 1: the agency's website. I mean, USAID is this like large
Speaker 1: government aid organization that goes into a lot of countries
Speaker 1: that need help and sort of exercises this American soft power,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's perhaps possible that Elon has run
Speaker 1: a foul with them. Remember there was all sorts of
Speaker 1: stuff with Starlink where he you know, he was accused
Speaker 1: of turning it off at times when he wasn't supposed to.
Speaker 1: And again we don't know if those accusations lead to anything.
Speaker 2: But not great.
Speaker 1: And then so this is a pretty interesting thing. I
Speaker 1: would also add that there's just a little bit more here.
Speaker 1: The other thing about USAID that I think is funny
Speaker 1: is that and I saw this on Twitter, and I
Speaker 1: thought it was really funny. Was you know, I come
Speaker 1: from a lefty family, so I just always assumed and
Speaker 1: I bet you thought this too, Jesse, that Usaid was
Speaker 1: just like where the did stuff.
Speaker 3: I knew that there was a little more time, but.
Speaker 2: I thought, ever for Cia.
Speaker 3: I figured this was like some real like Gladio coup
Speaker 3: d'etas stuff that we like, just fun and stuff, or
Speaker 3: we shut people up with some aid that we don't
Speaker 3: want to rebel exactly.
Speaker 2: It's so funny.
Speaker 1: It's like we're in yet another moment where we just
Speaker 1: the Republicans making us like things that we always thought
Speaker 1: were a little bit sketch. Thomas Zimmer is a historian
Speaker 1: at George Washington University and the author of the substack
Speaker 1: Democracy Americana, Welcome Back, Too Fast Politics, George Shown Professor,
Speaker 1: friend of the pod, very smart academic, Thomas Zimmer, thank.
Speaker 4: You so much for having me. I honestly hope that
Speaker 4: one of these days we will get to talk about
Speaker 4: some pleasant things rather than a rapidly escalating constitutional crisis.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, well let's talk about that. What's going on?
Speaker 4: I mean, that's a good question, is it. I mean, look,
Speaker 4: we are in the midst of a completely unconstitutional takeover
Speaker 4: of central government institutions, resources functions. It's unfolding at at
Speaker 4: dramatic pace. It's all based entirely on the regime's assertion
Speaker 4: of absolute power and impunity. It's pretty I mean, even
Speaker 4: for people who were probably expecting this to be very
Speaker 4: different from twenty seventeen, more comprehensive, more aggressive. I believe
Speaker 4: both you and me were in that camp, right, We
Speaker 4: were both expecting this is not going to be like
Speaker 4: twenty seventeen. It's not just going to be a rerun.
Speaker 4: This is going to be worse but to me, the
Speaker 4: speed and the aggressiveness with which this is unfolding is
Speaker 4: still absolutely remarkable, and so yeah, to me, the best
Speaker 4: way of thinking about this is, honestly, we're not looking
Speaker 4: at maybe this is going to lead to a constitutional crisis.
Speaker 4: We are in the midst of this. This is a
Speaker 4: full on assault on constitutional government. This is in many ways,
Speaker 4: this is a coup. I mean, we have right now
Speaker 4: we have a private citizen who has absolutely zero constitutional
Speaker 4: authority is occupying government agencies and departments and it's installing
Speaker 4: his I don't even know what to call these people,
Speaker 4: tech engineer goons who apparently are like young men in
Speaker 4: their late teens or early twenties with zero relevant experience
Speaker 4: installing these people across the government. This is outrageous. It's
Speaker 4: absolutely outrageous, and it is very dangerous.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I think has made everything
Speaker 1: move a lot faster is Doge because remember when we
Speaker 1: started talking about Project twenty twenty five, Doge didn't exist
Speaker 1: and Elon Musk was not on the scene. So they
Speaker 1: had a plan to dismantle the federal government down to
Speaker 1: the studs, which is happening right now.
Speaker 2: But the Doge part of it, the.
Speaker 1: Elon on going in there and sort of dismantling things
Speaker 1: have hazardly like getting into the payment system.
Speaker 2: That stuff is pretty new, right.
Speaker 4: Yes, And I will also say this isn't just an
Speaker 4: extension of Project twenty twenty five, right, So I think
Speaker 4: it's really important to see a big part of what
Speaker 4: is happening, and a big part of what makes this
Speaker 4: different than twenty seventeen is Project twenty twenty five. All
Speaker 4: the planning that went into this, all the executive orders
Speaker 4: that were drafted and ready this time and we're not
Speaker 4: in twenty seventeen. That's a big part of it, right.
Speaker 4: So I'm not saying this isn't they're not enacting Project
Speaker 4: twenty twenty five. But I think there's also on top
Speaker 4: of that this sort of the tech right, the Silicon
Speaker 4: Valley tech barons, kind of embodied by your musk, they're
Speaker 4: also seizing on this, and they are also doing kind
Speaker 4: of their own thing, and to some extent this alliance
Speaker 4: with the vision of Project twenty twenty five. You said,
Speaker 4: you know, Project twenty twenty fift is about dismantling certain
Speaker 4: parts of the government, we should say, right, not all
Speaker 4: of it, because they also want to use other parts
Speaker 4: of the government, weaponize it, mobilize it to sort of
Speaker 4: impose a certain vision of society onto America. And so
Speaker 4: mask is basically I think the assault on the constitutional
Speaker 4: order is coming from different angles all at the same time.
Speaker 4: If you think about, like, what are the different factions
Speaker 4: that make up the Trump is right, there's different factions, right,
Speaker 4: they're not all the same. There is the Project twenty
Speaker 4: twenty five crew that's basically Heritage Foundation, reactionary leads, Christian
Speaker 4: Nationalists does sort of camp. There is also sort of
Speaker 4: the the Maga America first nativist scene that's like think
Speaker 4: Stephen Miller, right, these kinds of people. There's a lot
Speaker 4: of overlap between those two, but they're not the same, right,
Speaker 4: It's different factions. Then there is also sort of the
Speaker 4: feudal tech lords like Elon Musk, Right, that's a different faction. Again,
Speaker 4: they are aligning in a lot of ways, but they're
Speaker 4: not all the same. And then there's like the Trump factor,
Speaker 4: if you will, And I think what's happening right now.
Speaker 4: A big question going into the Trump administration this time
Speaker 4: was how are these different factions and they're not always
Speaker 4: eye to eye. We saw this just a few weeks
Speaker 4: ago when remember when Musk and Bannon had like a
Speaker 4: shouting match and it was all about work visas, yes
Speaker 4: or no? Right, is that a good thing or a
Speaker 4: bad thing? And like the MAGA nativists were like, we
Speaker 4: want to get rid of these work visas. We don't
Speaker 4: want to bring these these brown people in. And then
Speaker 4: like the masks of tech right, They're like, no, we
Speaker 4: need those because we want the cheap labor to come in, right.
Speaker 4: And so there is friction between these different factions. So
Speaker 4: big question was how would they interact and like who
Speaker 4: would get to do what they want to do and
Speaker 4: who would have to take a step back. And I
Speaker 4: think what we're seeing right now is no one is
Speaker 4: taking a step back, and they're all just going all in.
Speaker 4: This is a feeding frenzy. Like all of these different
Speaker 4: MAGA factions have just been given the green light to
Speaker 4: go ham on the constitutional order and they're all going
Speaker 4: all in all at the same time. And I think
Speaker 4: that is a lot of the dynamic that you're seeing
Speaker 4: and of this complete escalation is because this is not
Speaker 4: just Project twenty twenty five. It is also the feudal
Speaker 4: tech lords and the mogernativists. They're all going all in
Speaker 4: all at the same time, and it's basically because they've
Speaker 4: been given the green light to just just go do
Speaker 4: whatever you want. I don't think this is a sustainable
Speaker 4: model of governance. At some point they will have to
Speaker 4: sort of deal with the wreckage that they're creating here,
Speaker 4: But for now, it is creating an enormous of destructive energy,
Speaker 4: and I think that is what we're kind of seeing here.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: There's going to be enormous unintended consequences and some intended consequences.
Speaker 1: But you can say what you will about all of
Speaker 1: these conservative think tanks, the Heritage Foundation, these people, they
Speaker 1: all have different peccadillos, different wants, different goals, but these
Speaker 1: are goals that they've had for a long time, right.
Speaker 1: I Mean, what I think is the most interesting when
Speaker 1: you read through Project twenty twenty five is it's like
Speaker 1: a wish list of things they've been trying to do forever, right,
Speaker 1: Like taking back the Patama Canal that was a conservative
Speaker 1: talking point from post Carter, right, like that none of
Speaker 1: this stuff is new, and a lot of it has
Speaker 1: been so they've been trying to do forever whereas Elon
Speaker 1: was a Democrat, right, So what he is trying to.
Speaker 2: Do is sort of a new idea.
Speaker 1: Now that said tech bros have wanted to end mainstream
Speaker 1: media since they came on the scene, So that okay,
Speaker 1: I mean in some ways it is like we're seeing
Speaker 1: like the sort of typical Silicon Valley tropes intersecting with
Speaker 1: the typical far right tropes.
Speaker 4: Right, yeah, I think so. And I think the perception
Speaker 4: of someone like Elo Musk and this whole st of
Speaker 4: VC Silicon Valley tech class as kind of liberal ish
Speaker 4: or libertarian ish that was always I think a misunderstanding.
Speaker 4: I think it was a kind of mistaking technical progress
Speaker 4: for progressive right. And it's kind of mistaking the fact
Speaker 4: that these people are not Someone like Musk is not
Speaker 4: socially conservative. He's not a religious conservative, right, and he
Speaker 4: liked being close to power, and that included in like
Speaker 4: say the nineties and early two thousands and Obama era,
Speaker 4: that includes some democratic power. But you know, the second,
Speaker 4: the second the government and whoever is in charge of
Speaker 4: the government was sort of slightly more serious about actually
Speaker 4: imposing any kind of regulation on these people. They're like, no,
Speaker 4: wait a minute, that's actually not what we signed up for, right,
Speaker 4: Because I think someone like Musk has always been entirely convinced, right,
Speaker 4: entirely convinced that any kind of restriction for him is illegitimate,
Speaker 4: because he truly believes, I mean, the guy is completely delusional.
Speaker 4: He truly believes that the very interest of humanity itself
Speaker 4: aligns entirely with his personal ambition. Right, That's how these
Speaker 4: guys look at the world. Hey, we are the sort
Speaker 4: of creative, disruptive geniuses who will take humanity into the
Speaker 4: better future. How dare you come up with, Like, I
Speaker 4: don't know, any kind of regulation, any kind of HR requirements,
Speaker 4: any kind of like. And I think that's also why
Speaker 4: they're so angry at their own HR departments, Right, That's
Speaker 4: what's going on here, Like they're looking at their own
Speaker 4: HR departments. And as someone says, hey, Musk, listen, here's
Speaker 4: the thing, Right, we cannot hire entirely like white boys
Speaker 4: age nineteen to twenty three who all look the same.
Speaker 4: We're going to have to do something about this, right,
Speaker 4: And he thinks that's outrageous. He thinks that's absolutely outrageous.
Speaker 4: This is sort of the grievance underlying all of this,
Speaker 4: they really think, and this is why you have this
Speaker 4: kind of pipeline from tech libertarian ish to far right
Speaker 4: fascist right. There's kind of this. This is sort of
Speaker 4: the peed Teal trajectory, this Elon Musk trajectory. So I
Speaker 4: think it's a misunderstanding to ever think there was these
Speaker 4: guys were liberals or they were sort of on board
Speaker 4: with a liberal democratic order. They were not. They were
Speaker 4: fine with sort of hanging out with Obama as long
Speaker 4: as Obama was sort of inviting him to the White House.
Speaker 2: That's soundst deferential.
Speaker 4: Yes, that's exactly right, that's exactly right. But they are
Speaker 4: completely convinced all the regulations need to go.
Speaker 2: Right, which will be not great.
Speaker 1: A lot of what's happening here is that people are
Speaker 1: telling Elon that there are things that are bad, and
Speaker 1: then he's attacking them. So USA it is a really
Speaker 1: good example, right, This is huge federal agency that does
Speaker 1: aid for countries that we have destroyed in earlier wars.
Speaker 2: I mean, really like.
Speaker 1: Not to put too fine a point on it, but
Speaker 1: like they're in Vietnam, they're in you know, they're in Africa.
Speaker 1: There are places that have been decimated by America in
Speaker 1: previous wars, not just those countries, but there's certainly a
Speaker 1: fair amount of that. And they do things like, you know,
Speaker 1: help democracy, which again is like a bad word in
Speaker 1: trump Land, but for obvious reasons, right, because it runs
Speaker 1: contrary to what they want to do. But being rich
Speaker 1: does not give you the constitutional authority to take away
Speaker 1: federal agencies in the name of tax cuts.
Speaker 2: So explain to me what you think is going on here.
Speaker 4: I think they've just announced that they will shut down
Speaker 4: quick which shut down USAID, which I mean, this is
Speaker 4: a federal agency that was created in the early nineteen
Speaker 4: sixties by an Act of Congress. Neither Musk nor Trump
Speaker 4: himself has the authority to just abolish this or shut
Speaker 4: this down. This is not how it's supposed to work. Again,
Speaker 4: this is utterly and entirely unconstitutional. Right, there's no absolutely
Speaker 4: no constitutional for it. Again, not just Musk. Also, Trump
Speaker 4: cannot do this. This was established by an Act of
Speaker 4: Congress I think in nineteen sixty one. And yes, I mean,
Speaker 4: you're absolutely right. This is kind of a on the right,
Speaker 4: there's this idea that USAAD specifically is kind of a
Speaker 4: hotbed of like far leftist extremism, that this is a
Speaker 4: way for leftists who remember, they truly believe are kind
Speaker 4: of in charge of all these government institutions, agencies, that
Speaker 4: this is sort of the way the left the conquerte left.
Speaker 4: And it has nothing to do with a real existing left,
Speaker 4: but the left.
Speaker 2: Right, it's antifa, it's a van to say.
Speaker 4: Sometimes they call it socialism, communism, Marxism is all the same.
Speaker 4: They truly believe there is this vast conspiracy across the
Speaker 4: American government and that these conspiratorial, radical leftist forces have
Speaker 4: taken over all these institutions and now they're using them
Speaker 4: to spread their dangerous ideas, and in the case of USAD,
Speaker 4: they're spreading them across the world. Right, So this is Bunkers, right,
Speaker 4: But they truly believe USAD is spreading like dangerous Marxist
Speaker 4: transgenderism whatever across the planet. And I mean, it's completely bonkers.
Speaker 4: And so now again this is why I'm saying we
Speaker 4: are in the midst of a constitutional crisis because this
Speaker 4: is so fundamentally unconstitutional.
Speaker 1: But what we're careening towards is that just like with
Speaker 1: the spending free is the OMB memo that was last
Speaker 1: week's drama, right, was the OMB memo where they froze
Speaker 1: all federal spending, something that again the Empowerment Act prevents.
Speaker 1: The post Nixonian Anti Corruption Empowerment Act of nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: four is meant to prevent. There was a stay on that,
Speaker 1: so they're not allowed to do it, though who knows
Speaker 1: if they're doing it. Now we have another situation where
Speaker 1: undoubtedly a court is going to come in and tell
Speaker 1: them they can't do it. See, I feel like we're
Speaker 1: hurtling towards a constitutional crisis. But what happens when a
Speaker 1: court says no, you can't do that, and they say
Speaker 1: fuck you, which is where this is going.
Speaker 4: So first of all, yes, that's absolutely where it's going.
Speaker 4: I think when they announced they would end Berfright citizenship
Speaker 4: also via executive order, also once again completely unconstitutional. The
Speaker 4: president cannot just rewrite the Constitution via an executive order.
Speaker 4: I think the playbook there was clearly more in line
Speaker 4: with what they did with. If people remember the travel
Speaker 4: ban or so called Muslim ban of twenty seventeen that
Speaker 4: was also first stopped by the courts, given back to
Speaker 4: the administration, they kind of changed around the wording whatever
Speaker 4: it went back to the courts, courts stopped at a
Speaker 4: second time, went back to Trump or you know, the
Speaker 4: Trump administration, they changed it around again, and the third
Speaker 4: time around the courts let it pass. Right. So, within
Speaker 4: like six months or so this going back and forth
Speaker 4: a little bit, they had theirs of travel ban, and
Speaker 4: I was thinking, this is probably what they're going for.
Speaker 4: They're going with sort of a maximalist kind of initial
Speaker 4: he is our executive order. Court's going to stop it.
Speaker 4: We're going back back and forth a little bit. Will
Speaker 4: not get everything we want, but we'll get a version
Speaker 4: of this. Right. This is I think with many of
Speaker 4: the executive orders, how it's going to go. Now, where
Speaker 4: I'm not entirely sure what's going to happen is what
Speaker 4: are we doing about the fact that I mean, Musk
Speaker 4: is literally occupying these federal agencies and departments. I mean
Speaker 4: he's literally installed these people in the Treasury and there.
Speaker 4: I'm not entirely sure. This is not like an executive
Speaker 4: order where a court can say, hey, we're going to
Speaker 4: stop this, right, here's your injunction stop it. Something else
Speaker 4: will have to happen, something physical will have to happen.
Speaker 4: Right with the fact that Elon Musk is now in
Speaker 4: charge of the federal government's centralized financial and information system,
Speaker 4: because that is a fact. I see this as different
Speaker 4: than the O and b A memo where they said, hey,
Speaker 4: funding freeze, and then you know, but that's in and
Speaker 4: of itself not a fact. Yet, that's sort of an
Speaker 4: order right to the federal government. And then the courts
Speaker 4: come in and say this order isn't valid. But there's
Speaker 4: now a physical reality in which Elon Musk and his
Speaker 4: goons have occupied these nerve centers of the federal government,
Speaker 4: and something physical will have to happen there like they have,
Speaker 4: they will have to be removed. Right. I think it's
Speaker 4: an immensely dangerous situation because it's unprecedented, completely unprecedented. And
Speaker 4: I also think it'd be great if we had an
Speaker 4: opposition party that would know how to handle this in
Speaker 4: some productive way rather than just say, Congress will have
Speaker 4: to investigate. What do you mean investigate? There is evidently,
Speaker 4: very clearly in front of our eyes some very clearly
Speaker 4: unconstitutional legal stuff happening. Right. You can't just say Congress
Speaker 4: will have to investigate, you have something more will have
Speaker 4: to happen here well.
Speaker 2: And then the other thing is if we want to
Speaker 2: talk about.
Speaker 1: This is like FBI, right, so Trump is a war
Speaker 1: with the FBI. But a lot of these FBI agents
Speaker 1: are trumpy people, right, Oh yeah, yeah, like white Republican.
Speaker 1: It's been now led by Republicans forever and ever and ever.
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, And.
Speaker 1: A lot of these FBI agents were actually slow walking
Speaker 1: their investigations of January six because they felt perhaps politically,
Speaker 1: they had political feelings that, you know, they didn't think
Speaker 1: it was so bad to support their guy. Those guys
Speaker 1: are now going to at least theoretically possibly be fired.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, that's what they're trying to do, right,
Speaker 4: They're attempting this was all I mean, by the way,
Speaker 4: this is all the past seventy two hours, so this
Speaker 4: was all coming down Friday. You know, they're attempting to
Speaker 4: purge the FBI by basically trying to fire or forts
Speaker 4: to resign everyone even remotely involved in January sixth prosecutions,
Speaker 4: which I mean that was one of the biggest things
Speaker 4: the FBI ever had to do. So this is potentially
Speaker 4: thousands of agents and higher officials. I've seen numbers fig
Speaker 4: The New York Times had numbers going all the way
Speaker 4: up to like six thousand agents. That would be like
Speaker 4: forty percent of the FBI personnel. It's crazy, and you're
Speaker 4: absolutely right. I mean, this is if you fire six
Speaker 4: thousand FBI agents, you probably have fired at least four
Speaker 4: and a half thousand Trump voters. It's completely unclear where
Speaker 4: this is supposed to go. I mean it's also I
Speaker 4: think very clearly if you think about this stuff in
Speaker 4: terms of state capacity and government capacity to actually do
Speaker 4: its job right, because I mean the federal government. And
Speaker 4: this is a lot of people are saying, oh, like,
Speaker 4: this is like what Musk did with Twitter. Okay, fair enough,
Speaker 4: but if Twitter breaks down, we don't have twitlter anymore.
Speaker 4: But if the federal government breaks down, I mean, this
Speaker 4: is something completely different. Right, There's millions of people who
Speaker 4: depend in this country every day who depend on the
Speaker 4: federal government doing its job right. Like I no funding
Speaker 4: and whatever it may be, all these different functions. I
Speaker 4: just don't know where any of this is going. You're
Speaker 4: definitely right. We don't know yet. Nothing has reached the
Speaker 4: Supreme Court yet, right, so this is going to be
Speaker 4: a big, big thing. A lot of this stuff, like
Speaker 4: right now, federal judges on the district level on the
Speaker 4: circuit level, they are saying, look, no, you can't do this,
Speaker 4: We're going to stop this. But that just means this
Speaker 4: stuff will make its way up to the Supreme Court,
Speaker 4: and then what happens.
Speaker 1: Right, No, well, I mean I actually don't and I
Speaker 1: think that's a real question. I'm not sure the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court gives him the blind check he wants.
Speaker 4: My expectation would be that John Roberts does not like this. Well, look,
Speaker 4: he's on board with the general vision right of sort
Speaker 4: of entrenching white Christian patriarchal dominance, but he doesn't want
Speaker 4: to look bad doing it right. In his mind, he
Speaker 4: wants to at least be able to uphold this idea
Speaker 4: of being an institutionalist and all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 4: So my working assumption is also that the Supreme Court
Speaker 4: will stop the most outrageous kind of stuff, like, for instance,
Speaker 4: as of right now, I don't think they would green
Speaker 4: light them ending but afraid citizenship, they would probably say
Speaker 4: you can't do this, but then also probably let through
Speaker 4: and kind of you know, support a lot of the
Speaker 4: other stuff they're doing. Right, so they might stop I
Speaker 4: don't know, ten percent, twenty percent and let eighty percent through.
Speaker 4: But I think overall that that still puts us squarely
Speaker 4: in the territory of regime change. This is not like
Speaker 4: what they're trying to do here is not an acting
Speaker 4: different policy. They are an acting regime change. They are
Speaker 4: completely fundamentally changing the rules of how power is being
Speaker 4: wielded in this system, who gets the wield power, who
Speaker 4: gets the control power. That is fundamentally changing as we speak.
Speaker 4: And I think that will have lasting, lasting effects. Well
Speaker 4: that's the goal, right, absolutely, Yes, regime change, that's the goal.
Speaker 2: Yes, Thank you, Thomas Zimmer, Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Theda scotch Pole is a professor of government and sociology
Speaker 1: at Harvard University and the author of russ Belt Union Blues.
Speaker 1: While working class voters are turning away from the Democratic Party,
Speaker 1: welcome back to fast politics, Theda.
Speaker 5: Nice to be here, Amalie. If I can call you.
Speaker 2: That, yes, please do. I'm so glad you're hearing you know.
Speaker 1: I am not the only person who thinks of you
Speaker 1: as this, but you're just an incredibly brilliant academic who
Speaker 1: this is your area in a lot of ways. The
Speaker 1: last I interviewed you was this summer. We talked about
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five and the sort of roots of it.
Speaker 1: Now we are in the second Trump presidency, so give
Speaker 1: me as much as you can sort of how we
Speaker 1: got here.
Speaker 5: We got here because of Trump, but we also got
Speaker 5: here because the Republican Party has been radicalizing from a
Speaker 5: buff and below for about twenty years. I don't think forever.
Speaker 5: I'm not one of these people who thinks this is forever.
Speaker 5: You know. Trump kind of synthesizes the desire of the
Speaker 5: super rich to destroy government's ability to tax them, regulate them,
Speaker 5: and open up opportunity and security for most Americans. And
Speaker 5: at the same time, there's been a kind of movement
Speaker 5: in and around the Republican Party from below that's angry
Speaker 5: about immigration above all, but also the changes in gender
Speaker 5: and race relations. And Trump put all that together into
Speaker 5: one big ball of resentment and catering to the super rich.
Speaker 5: And what's new now is that for round two there
Speaker 5: are very carefully laid plans by a whole series of
Speaker 5: elite groups around Donald Trump. He hasn't really changed. He
Speaker 5: wants to watch TV, he wants Axians, and he wants
Speaker 5: money for his family and friends. But the rest of
Speaker 5: them are much more prepared to sort of destroy the
Speaker 5: federal government. And of course it's all a link to
Speaker 5: a minority, but an intensely feeling minority of Republicans and
Speaker 5: maybe a majority of his supporters who want to bash immigrants.
Speaker 5: And so we're getting that on TV. But meanwhile we're
Speaker 5: getting an attempt to destroy the federal government's capacities.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there are really separate things here, right There is
Speaker 1: a group of very rich people who want to unravel
Speaker 1: the federal government, and that comes from a sort of
Speaker 1: Koch Brothers ethos, a libertarian sort of rage at the
Speaker 1: federal government.
Speaker 2: It's the war on FDR and the Social Safety Net.
Speaker 1: Talk to us more about sort of how this group
Speaker 1: Discovery sort of came together with the racist group, even
Speaker 1: though you know what I mean, the sort of the
Speaker 1: very you know I call.
Speaker 5: The methno nationalists, the grassroots yeap. It's not been a
Speaker 5: single organization or a single conspiracy. I mean, I think
Speaker 5: for many years leading into Trump one, the Coke network
Speaker 5: where they organize multi billionaires around Charles and David was alive.
Speaker 5: Then their project to sort of gut the federal government,
Speaker 5: destroy unions. But we've now got another iteration of that
Speaker 5: because once Trump got into power, you know, every rich
Speaker 5: person on the right and now increasingly across the board
Speaker 5: wants access to them because they want to be able
Speaker 5: to pay them off in return for regulatory breaks and
Speaker 5: tax cuts. They want access. And the latest round of this,
Speaker 5: of course, is Elon Musk and the other tech bros.
Speaker 5: And they're kind of an iteration beyond the Coke network
Speaker 5: because they're the ultimate narcissistic business people who believe they
Speaker 5: should rule the world and who have the communication means
Speaker 5: to reach a lot of the alienated ethno nationalists who
Speaker 5: are just angry. They think America has changed in ways
Speaker 5: they can't control. They're fed a constant diet of lies.
Speaker 5: I don't see why as an academic I should not
Speaker 5: use the word that's correct.
Speaker 1: I want to talk to you about another thing, because
Speaker 1: when there was this murderer of this healthcare ceo, you know,
Speaker 1: when Luigi Mangione murdered this healthcare executive, I would say
Speaker 1: people did not want to condemn it. There was a
Speaker 1: lot of people on the populist left and the populist
Speaker 1: right who did not want to condemn it.
Speaker 2: This in my mind, and again I'm no.
Speaker 1: Academic, struck me as a very bad sign, right, because
Speaker 1: murdering people is bad. Much of our social contract is
Speaker 1: predicated on the idea that murder is bad. Here is
Speaker 1: the celebration of a murder of someone who is a
Speaker 1: very rich person. Now on the other side, we have
Speaker 1: tech broke billionaires becoming celebrities trying to sell the American
Speaker 1: people on cutting what little assistance they get from the
Speaker 1: federal government. Does this make you think we're about to
Speaker 1: hit a perfect storm, because that's what it makes me think.
Speaker 5: Well, not sure what you mean by a perfect storm.
Speaker 5: I think we're in a very big crisis, and part
Speaker 5: of it is the breakdown of any kind of political
Speaker 5: capacity to build faith in and use effectively government. And
Speaker 5: you know that there have been problems with that, because
Speaker 5: when you're dealing with a niilist right that wants to destroy,
Speaker 5: it's easier to destroy than it is to sustain and use.
Speaker 5: But I also think we have to recognize the big
Speaker 5: changes in culture communications. The way Americans think about themselves
Speaker 5: is a real unleashing of narcissistic anger and of demands
Speaker 5: that's facilitated by social media, facilitated by a communications system
Speaker 5: that rewards yelling and screaming and hatred. Really, it's all tilted, right,
Speaker 5: But there are people across the spectrum and engage in it.
Speaker 5: And I think a lot of the resentment of the
Speaker 5: United Healthcare CEOs. You know that people are saying they
Speaker 5: resent assurance companies. Okay, well that's fine. You can't deal
Speaker 5: with that problem at all by killing an individual, right.
Speaker 1: They have resentment towards the wealth amassed by a few.
Speaker 1: So here are these wealthy people trying to get more
Speaker 1: money from the federal government to pay for tax cuts, right,
Speaker 1: I mean that's what this is.
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, sure, no, they want to basically want to
Speaker 5: raid the federal government. They do want people in the
Speaker 5: liberal states that tend to be net contributors of taxes.
Speaker 5: Where I come from in Massachusetts, we send a lot
Speaker 5: of money to the federal government and they want to
Speaker 5: keep that, but they want to hand it out to
Speaker 5: their friends, not to poor people in Mississippi or the Midwest. Now,
Speaker 5: I would not attribute to most Americans resentment of great wealth.
Speaker 5: I would call it ambivalence about great wealth. This is
Speaker 5: a country where people want to get rich. We haven't changed.
Speaker 5: And so part of Trump's formula has always been to
Speaker 5: say I'm so rich. I can stand with you. I mean,
Speaker 5: that's the formula for plutocratic populism anyway, but it has
Speaker 5: a real side to it. And I think this must thing,
Speaker 5: I think this must thing is going to cost him.
Speaker 5: I don't. I think people are increasingly and by people,
Speaker 5: I don't mean the hardcore maga, I mean the majority
Speaker 5: that would determine things are increasingly seeing through this. But
Speaker 5: it's still ambivalence.
Speaker 1: You know, Musk's polling keeps going down for obvious reasons.
Speaker 1: I mean, one of the reasons why Trump has been
Speaker 1: so allergic to cutting government spending is because it's not
Speaker 1: very popular.
Speaker 5: Can you talk about that, well, it definitely isn't. I
Speaker 5: mean that Americans don't want things from government. I mean,
Speaker 5: my first book about the nineteenth century was about that,
Speaker 5: about how civil war pensions were the most generous disability
Speaker 5: and old age pensions in the world at the time,
Speaker 5: at the same time that we were talking about ourselves
Speaker 5: as rugged individualists that don't need anything from government. I mean,
Speaker 5: Trump has definitely understood that. Basically his core constituencies, at
Speaker 5: least the geographic areas they come from. Our net takers
Speaker 5: of all kinds. We're talking about social security, we're talking
Speaker 5: about Medicare, we're talking about veterans benefits, we're talking about
Speaker 5: disability payments, really disability payments, you name it. And that's
Speaker 5: why this episode last week, this last week has been
Speaker 5: so interesting. They put out a metalw no doubt Trump
Speaker 5: and I Musk inspired that we're just going to freeze everything,
Speaker 5: and then they suddenly begin to realize, well, wait a minute,
Speaker 5: that means our people. So yeah, that's a big contradiction.
Speaker 5: I interpret what's going on right now as the Republican
Speaker 5: Party is trying to avoid having to vote on any
Speaker 5: of these things, and Trump doesn't want them to either.
Speaker 5: He just wants to do things by fat and then
Speaker 5: he will, like a beneficent king, he will reintroduce the
Speaker 5: things that his people want. That's what he thinks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know this as known nationalist crew.
Speaker 1: Pretty well, are these the same people as the Tea
Speaker 1: Party movement?
Speaker 5: Well, the Tea Party was the start of it in
Speaker 5: Many well or the accelerator of it, and any living
Speaker 5: Tea partiers now are over the top. MAGA. But there
Speaker 5: are more more. Young men have been recruited, of course,
Speaker 5: some women. It's never perfectly one way or another. The
Speaker 5: Christian Conservatives, many of them remain very loyal to Trump
Speaker 5: on no matter what, are willing to offer moral justifications
Speaker 5: for the most heinous things. So he's got a pretty
Speaker 5: durable core. But you know, it's not a majority. That's
Speaker 5: why I think people need to calm down a little
Speaker 5: bit and recognize that the task of people who are
Speaker 5: horrified by this betrayal of what America stands for, because
Speaker 5: that's what it is, is really not popular with anything
Speaker 5: like a majority of citizens. And so the thing is
Speaker 5: to engage the disengaged and to give pope at heart
Speaker 5: and tactics to those who want to slow this juggernaut
Speaker 5: and begin to defeat it. In twenty twenty six, that's
Speaker 5: the next opportunity. It may be the only opportunity.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is a really important point here, because we
Speaker 1: know that midterms are state elections, and once we get
Speaker 1: into federal elections, it's going to be a little bit different.
Speaker 5: He stacked the DOJ with people who, unlike last time,
Speaker 5: will overturn elections, and now I don't think Trump's going
Speaker 5: to be running again. I think that's a red herring.
Speaker 5: You know, these Republicans who will have to vote for
Speaker 5: some things. They're trying to avoid it, but they're going
Speaker 5: to have to because the dead limit is coming out.
Speaker 5: They are on the ballot, a lot of them, and
Speaker 5: so we should be holding their names, their feet to
Speaker 5: the fire and spending a little less time chasing every
Speaker 5: Trump rabbit down every rabbit hole.
Speaker 2: I think that's a really important point.
Speaker 1: What are the things that you feel like are the
Speaker 1: most important In my mind? I keep saying to myself,
Speaker 1: like protecting norms and institutions, like the sort of fundamentals
Speaker 1: of democracy, the free press. I mean, that's a teetering
Speaker 1: on the brink. But what are the in your mind,
Speaker 1: what are the sort of tent poles to keep us
Speaker 1: in the free and fair elections world.
Speaker 5: Well, those things are important, but you can't talk to
Speaker 5: the majority of voters, including the more disengaged in those
Speaker 5: who are not college credentialed, about that stuff. That is
Speaker 5: not going to work. What you have to do instead
Speaker 5: is say, hey, wait a minute, he promised the lower prices.
Speaker 5: Are you paying less? What does it mean if our school,
Speaker 5: including in many rural communities, has to fire a lot
Speaker 5: of teachers because we aren't getting grants anymore. What does
Speaker 5: it mean if the local hospital, and I would name
Speaker 5: it is going to have to close a wing, or
Speaker 5: is going to have to close down or is going
Speaker 5: to have to close drug rehab. These are things that
Speaker 5: are not just in urban America, but an exurban America
Speaker 5: where the Trump crowd are powerful because the aim is
Speaker 5: to pin the blame on a Congressman X who's voting
Speaker 5: for that stuff or who isn't standing up against it.
Speaker 5: And boy, there's plenty to work with. There really is.
Speaker 5: And that's how the first resistance in twenty seventeen actually
Speaker 5: made headway. They talked about the Affordable Care Act and
Speaker 5: they saved it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that's the thing.
Speaker 1: It's like people are right now being like Democrats have
Speaker 1: no plan, and the reality is they couldn't have a
Speaker 1: plan until Trump started doing this stuff because there was
Speaker 1: a moment between the election and the inauguration where and
Speaker 1: this was his problem in the campaign. You couldn't make
Speaker 1: people understand that Trump was going to do this stuff
Speaker 1: because he hadn't the last time.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we have to look back over America and in
Speaker 5: world history and realize that in the wake of major pandemics,
Speaker 5: there's a powerful desire to forget to just block that
Speaker 5: time out. This is not a partisan thing if you
Speaker 5: go back and look at the flu up in them
Speaker 5: at the end of World War One. It was written
Speaker 5: out of American politics and culture because people yearned to
Speaker 5: forget that which they were powerless to deal with. And
Speaker 5: terrible disease is one of those things. So are terrible fires.
Speaker 5: And so Trump benefited from that because he was able
Speaker 5: to say, oh, it was better before, and a lot
Speaker 5: of people thought it was better before. And they also
Speaker 5: thought he didn't do the things that everybody said he
Speaker 5: was going to do. And you know, I think it's
Speaker 5: too much to ask people to understand write down to
Speaker 5: the details. Who he's got around them. Now they have
Speaker 5: to see it. Unfortunately, I hope the scene isn't too late,
Speaker 5: because we have seen this in other countries where it
Speaker 5: starts out with an election and it ends up with
Speaker 5: no ability of the opposition to contest anymore.
Speaker 1: That's really scary and also really true. I'm thinking about
Speaker 1: the De Cameron and like this plague literature stuff.
Speaker 2: Was that true with the bubonic plague?
Speaker 5: Well, you know, at the beginning of the pandemic, and
Speaker 5: we had a faculty that met by zoom and read
Speaker 5: back all the way to the Babanic Pike. The scapegoating
Speaker 5: of ethnic groups, the desire to just forget it and resume.
Speaker 5: This is very strong in these kinds of terrible global disasters.
Speaker 1: Oh interesting, So what was the ethnic group that was
Speaker 1: scapegoated after the Black Plague?
Speaker 5: Just Jews of course, right.
Speaker 1: And in nineteen eighteen it was like immigrants and Italians
Speaker 1: and Gypsies.
Speaker 5: I'm not so sure, but Germans certainly. It happened during
Speaker 5: a war. There was a strong sense even during it.
Speaker 5: I mean President Wilson didn't even do anything. He kept
Speaker 5: holding parades, but spread it. Remember this was one that
Speaker 5: hit young adults, that killed zillions of young adults. There
Speaker 5: was no vaccine, so, I mean, you would think we
Speaker 5: would be so much better off. But this desire when
Speaker 5: it's over for the survivors to say, we that's over,
Speaker 5: We'll just go back to normal, and then to forget
Speaker 5: who might be responsible for whatever happened during that's very strong.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's so interesting.
Speaker 1: What sort of shook Americans out of that nineteen eighteen
Speaker 1: kind of.
Speaker 5: Great depression and the New Deal? I mean, hopefully we
Speaker 5: don't have to wait. I mean, look, I don't think
Speaker 5: that's the core. That's an ingredient, and how Trump was
Speaker 5: able to sell himself to the less attentive as better
Speaker 5: than Biden. But those people will wake up soon. I
Speaker 5: think they're already beginning to wake up. I think they're
Speaker 5: spreading disillusionment about the ties to Mosque and any kinds
Speaker 5: of cuts which they have to cut a lot of
Speaker 5: things that communities and people depend upon to pay the
Speaker 5: bill for what they want to hand to the trillionaire class.
Speaker 5: They just do. And so they will be doing these things.
Speaker 1: And this is what you see in the Mosque versus
Speaker 1: Bannon fight, right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, to some degree, Bannon is of course back on
Speaker 5: board because he thinks it's all working. But yeah, they
Speaker 5: disagree about immigration. But look, we haven't talked about that.
Speaker 5: I think immigration is theater. Notice that they aren't going
Speaker 5: into the states with the most undocumented immigrants, or where
Speaker 5: undocumented immigrants are crucial to the economy. They are construction
Speaker 5: workers in Texas and Florida, they are agricultural workers in
Speaker 5: many Trump areas. They're going into cities, and they're bringing
Speaker 5: along the cameras. This is meant to divide, which it does,
Speaker 5: and to embarrass Democrats and Trump is watching it and
Speaker 5: they'll keep doing it, and it's incredibly cruel, but it
Speaker 5: is not really going to happen at anything like the
Speaker 5: scale they're talking about.
Speaker 1: So so so interesting. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1: I hope you will come back.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, keep at it.
Speaker 5: We all have to.
Speaker 1: They're no moment perfectly Jesse Cannon Molly.
Speaker 3: One of the things I've always been told is Marco
Speaker 3: Rubio is a normal Republican. Oh no, little Marco, He's
Speaker 3: going to save us all with his sanity. Turns out
Speaker 3: one second as a Trump official and we have absolutely psychotic.
Speaker 1: Behavior, absolutely psychotic behavior.
Speaker 2: Rubio floats dark.
Speaker 1: Plan to deport US citizens to third country. Okay, it's
Speaker 1: hard to parse who's the worst here. It seems to
Speaker 1: me like it's sort of disappointing that that Rubio has
Speaker 1: turned out. I mean, we always knew who was like this,
Speaker 1: but there's Rubio. Then there's all this craziness with RFK
Speaker 1: just came out of committee and he's probably going to
Speaker 1: get voted in TALSI. It's just a cavalcade of crazy.
Speaker 1: I talked to a reporter friend of mine who said,
Speaker 1: might as well have them get in the people he
Speaker 1: would pick the other people would pick would also be
Speaker 1: crazy too. I don't know if that's true. We're seeing
Speaker 1: a lot of Republicans just debase themselves for Trump, which
Speaker 1: I guess is then why should today be any different
Speaker 1: than any other day? Right? So, congratulations Republicans, you really
Speaker 1: you know what, if we ever get out of this
Speaker 1: Trump president, say, there will be no one left in
Speaker 1: the Republican Party who has not just completely debased and
Speaker 1: destroyed themselves for Trump. Yep, 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.