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 soon to be retired Senator Joe
Speaker 1: Manchin says Trump will destroy America if he wins. Really
Speaker 1: you don't say, perhaps he'll reconsider learning for president with
Speaker 1: no labels. We have such a great show today. Congressman
Speaker 1: Wiley Nicholl joins us to talk about the oh so
Speaker 1: important jerry mandering happening in North Carolina. Then we'll talk
Speaker 1: to Talking Fed's host Harry Littman about Trump's latest legal fuckery,
Speaker 1: and of course my mother.
Speaker 2: But first we have the host of the.
Speaker 1: Lawrence O'Donnell Show, MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell. Welcome back to Fast Politics.
Speaker 2: Lawrence.
Speaker 3: Always great to be here.
Speaker 1: We had to have you on for a number of
Speaker 1: reasons because when things get chaotick.
Speaker 4: One, okay, it's early, just pick one.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I've shood by is you
Speaker 1: have such experienced working in the Senate and we had
Speaker 1: this wild, kind of insane congressional week. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: just curious your take as someone who has actually worked
Speaker 1: in the institution, I mean, with the cr and now
Speaker 1: it's they're going to do this, They're going to kick
Speaker 1: the can until twenty four.
Speaker 2: I'm just curious what your take on that.
Speaker 4: It's a good thing that it's been a gradual decline,
Speaker 4: and so so I've processed a bunch of these moments
Speaker 4: that bring us ultimately to the thing where Bernie Sanders
Speaker 4: becomes a wrestling referee. I mean, that thing was the
Speaker 4: ugliest thing that I've ever seen publicly in the Senate.
Speaker 4: I saw a couple of ugly, private, very private moments
Speaker 4: in the Senate, but I don't know, it's probably been
Speaker 4: like a fifteen year decline into that.
Speaker 1: I want to pause and just talk about what you
Speaker 1: were talking about. This was a hearing where Bernie Sanders
Speaker 1: had to interrupt a senator from Oklahoma who was threatening
Speaker 1: the life of the president of the Teamsters Union or
Speaker 1: he was challenging him to an MMA fight.
Speaker 4: Yeah, everybody's seen this crazy video of this guy, who,
Speaker 4: by the way, the clue to the madness that was
Speaker 4: going to come is this is the senator who's decided
Speaker 4: to bring the Jim Jordan dress code to the United
Speaker 4: States Senate and you know, sit there without the suit code,
Speaker 4: but It's the kind of thing where you know, when
Speaker 4: you see your former workplace degraded into something ridiculous from
Speaker 4: something by the way that you fully respected, you know.
Speaker 4: I mean when I worked there, I fully respected it.
Speaker 4: And I also thought when I worked there in the
Speaker 4: nineteen nineties that this was the low point of the
Speaker 4: United States Senator because it had become by the definition
Speaker 4: of say the sixties, seventies, and eighties, by the mid nineties,
Speaker 4: it had become dysfunctional. And now you look back at that, go,
Speaker 4: oh no, no, that was great compared to where we
Speaker 4: are now. And everybody adhered to a code of at
Speaker 4: least public behavior. And the big thing is they just
Speaker 4: were not as stupid. You know, the American voter in
Speaker 4: Republican States was not in the business of finding the
Speaker 4: stupidest person, which they've now succeeded at. And here's the decline.
Speaker 4: You can measure the decline this way. Okay, here's this
Speaker 4: Oklahoma senator who is, you know, challenging somebody to a
Speaker 4: fistfight in a hearing. When I was there, the Oklahoma
Speaker 4: senator was a Yale man who was of course secretly gay,
Speaker 4: and had this entourage of very very attractive young male
Speaker 4: staffers around him, and a Democrat by the way, So
Speaker 4: all of those things, right, you had a gay Yale
Speaker 4: Democrat senator from Oklahoma when I was there, And now
Speaker 4: that you have this, and you just couldn't ask for
Speaker 4: a more dramatic illustration just in that way of what
Speaker 4: it's become. And it's ridiculous, you know, and it's pathetic,
Speaker 4: and it's and right by the way, right across the street.
Speaker 4: You have every right to the same feelings if you
Speaker 4: ever worked in the Supreme Court of the United States,
Speaker 4: you know, if you were a Supreme Court clerk in
Speaker 4: the nineteen nineties and really you know, up into the
Speaker 4: beginning of the twenty first century, you had a right
Speaker 4: to an air of pride, you know about what you'd done.
Speaker 4: And I have to say, you know, of all the
Speaker 4: intro items someone can have, I remember meeting a guy
Speaker 4: at a New York party a minute after someone whispered
Speaker 4: to me he was a Supreme Court clerk, and instantaneously
Speaker 4: changed like, oh my god, I just immediately changed me completely,
Speaker 4: and I like, oh my god, there's someone really smart here.
Speaker 4: Oh wow, you know, and I was like I was
Speaker 4: kind of intimidated like, Okay, I have to be really
Speaker 4: careful now when I talk to him. You know, that
Speaker 4: currency has been completely destroyed, and so you know, by
Speaker 4: the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court and the John Roberts Supreme Court,
Speaker 4: I think it's kind of hopeless. I don't expect those
Speaker 4: institutions to probably ever recover because Republicanism is just on
Speaker 4: a one way street to stupidity. They've arrived there and
Speaker 4: there's no way out. Once you're living in stupidity, there
Speaker 4: is no way out.
Speaker 2: So let's talk about that Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: This week, the Supreme Court decided that they were going
Speaker 1: to create an ethics code that was.
Speaker 2: With no enforcement. I mean, what's your hot take on that.
Speaker 4: My take on that is it's a good thing, and
Speaker 4: so it's not everything, and it's not the best thing,
Speaker 4: but you went from nothing to something. And that's my
Speaker 4: experience in government is that you take those wins, you know,
Speaker 4: we call them wins, but you have to think of it,
Speaker 4: you know, as a eighteen inning baseball game, you know,
Speaker 4: and if something good happens in the third inning, good,
Speaker 4: you know, you know it's not over. You know, there's
Speaker 4: more to do. I recognize how the coverage has come
Speaker 4: to the point where the very first thing said about
Speaker 4: it was there's no enforcements. And that's a fair point,
Speaker 4: you know, And unfortunately, the only enforcement on Supreme Court
Speaker 4: justices has always been impeachment. That's the only enforcement, and
Speaker 4: it's an extremely heavy mechanism to try to use, and
Speaker 4: you need the two thirds vote, and so, you know,
Speaker 4: it's never happened. But by the way, it has happened
Speaker 4: multiple times for federal judges. Routinely, the United States Senate
Speaker 4: impeaches and removes from office federal judges, and it happens
Speaker 4: with remarkably low visibility.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 4: I remember in the nineties we had this you know,
Speaker 4: judicial impeachment trial going on in the Senate, and we
Speaker 4: would do it for like, you know, an hour a day,
Speaker 4: you know, for over over, like it took about a
Speaker 4: couple of weeks, and you'd forget about it, you know,
Speaker 4: but you'd realize, oh, no, we don't have the floor
Speaker 4: for the tax bill from ten to eleven am because
Speaker 4: they're impeaching a federal judge.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, yeah, I.
Speaker 3: Remember, not, you know, And so, which is, by the way,
Speaker 3: is the way it should be.
Speaker 4: I wish those things were taken as a more routine
Speaker 4: and likely outcome to human behavior is that, of course
Speaker 4: you're going to have to impeach some So that's the problem,
Speaker 4: is the enforcement part of it.
Speaker 3: But look, it is absolutely.
Speaker 4: Going to change Clarence of Thomas's behavior somewhat. But the
Speaker 4: trouble and the problem there is, of course he's already
Speaker 4: fully corrupted, so it doesn't matter like if he does
Speaker 4: everything right from this day forward. He's fully corrupted. He's
Speaker 4: taken hundreds of thousands of dollars directly in effect in cash,
Speaker 4: you know, in this loan to purchase this thing, this
Speaker 4: you know, rolling home of his and then you don't
Speaker 4: have to pay back the loan. That's not a loan.
Speaker 4: You know that somebody just gave you cash and you
Speaker 4: took it, and it gave you cash only because you're
Speaker 4: a Supreme Court justice. That person only met you because
Speaker 4: you're a Supreme Court justice. It's something. Though I liked
Speaker 4: a bunch of things about those rules. I also was
Speaker 4: highly amused at the section that the Chief Justice wrote
Speaker 4: specifically to allow his wife to make nine million dollars
Speaker 4: a year from law firms. It appear before the Supreme Court,
Speaker 4: and let's just remember, these are all challenges that have
Speaker 4: occurred because of progress. When the Founders were creating the
Speaker 4: Supreme Court, there wasn't a wife in Washington who had
Speaker 4: a job, and every Supreme Court justice was supposed to
Speaker 4: be a man forever, and none of their wives were
Speaker 4: ever supposed to work. So there was never supposed to
Speaker 4: be a Jinny Thomas problem or the Chief Justice's wife problem.
Speaker 4: None of those problems were supposed to exist, and so
Speaker 4: we have a governmental structure that doesn't know how to
Speaker 4: deal with those problems.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting because this Supreme Court is quite obsessed
Speaker 1: with this originalism, this idea that you can't make gun laws.
Speaker 1: There's you know, brewin last semester, and now we have Rhini,
Speaker 1: which is the idea that there was this sort of
Speaker 1: textualism that if domestic violence didn't exist when the Founders
Speaker 1: are at the Constitution, because it didn't, maybe you should
Speaker 1: be able to have a gun, and even if you
Speaker 1: are in trouble for dovests.
Speaker 2: So this idea is kind of dovetails, right.
Speaker 4: The more I reflect on the Founders and what they did,
Speaker 4: the more I see it as not terribly visionary, but
Speaker 4: in fact terribly imprisoned in its moment, And I have
Speaker 4: to say, I think they'd all be shocked if they
Speaker 4: came back and they said, you're kidding me. You're paying
Speaker 4: attention to us two hundred years later. That's crazy. We
Speaker 4: didn't know about airplanes or you know, nuclear weapons, or
Speaker 4: anti trust, like no one had ever even thought of
Speaker 4: anti trust then, you know, so I think they'd quite
Speaker 4: reasonably be shocked that anyone was paying attention to it
Speaker 4: and treating.
Speaker 3: It like it's some divine work.
Speaker 2: Bible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's the Ten Commandments, you know.
Speaker 4: And in fact, the proper way to approach justice is justice,
Speaker 4: you know, the principle guiding my Supreme Court opinion is justice.
Speaker 4: I think it is just that the following things happen,
Speaker 4: the idea that like no, no, no, I've got to
Speaker 4: find I've got to f and somebody way back there,
Speaker 4: preferably in English common law in sixteen twelve, you know,
Speaker 4: And if I'm lucky, I can cite a legal source
Speaker 4: from England in sixteen twelve who was not a witch prosecutor,
Speaker 4: which is of course what they did cite in the
Speaker 4: crazy abortion decision. They cited two guys from England who
Speaker 4: were prosecutors of witches who strongly believed in and got
Speaker 4: the death penalty for witches. They cited them as legal authorities.
Speaker 4: Now that's madness, you know, that's Alito clerks being utterly
Speaker 4: insane and uneducated, like shockingly uneducated. And so it's a
Speaker 4: ludicrous pursuit that they're in when the guiding principle of
Speaker 4: every Supreme Court opinion should simply be justice.
Speaker 1: It's funny because one of the things I think about
Speaker 1: is this lie that this was about states, right said
Speaker 1: overturning Row was really bringing abortion back to the States.
Speaker 1: You're seeing these arguments with the metha pristone with the
Speaker 1: abortion pills that by allowing it to stay on the market.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about the Comstock Act because that,
Speaker 1: I think is the next Republican play when it comes
Speaker 1: to abortion, despite the fact that they cannot stop losing
Speaker 1: on this topic, which is so amazing to me, but
Speaker 1: they seem not to care. So I'm curious in your mind,
Speaker 1: like this disconnect between having wildly unpopular ideas and just
Speaker 1: keeping going with them. I mean, is that because Republican
Speaker 1: Party is hostage to its base or am I missing something?
Speaker 4: It's because you have Republicans in office now whose entire
Speaker 4: lives were consumed with the abortion debate. You know, these
Speaker 4: forty year old, forty something Republican office holders and state legislatures.
Speaker 4: They were born into a Republicanism that was publicly opposed
Speaker 4: to roe versus Way. The Republicans who started that crusade
Speaker 4: started it based on this little slice of pulling that
Speaker 4: they found owned. You know, in Ronald Reagan's early polling
Speaker 4: that indicated there was a band the time that looked
Speaker 4: like it might be as much as three or four
Speaker 4: percent who were single issue voters who would vote for
Speaker 4: anyone who said I want to get rid of roe
Speaker 4: versus Wade. That's the reason it entered the Republican platform.
Speaker 4: They wasn't in it before they found it in polling.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 4: The older people who did this didn't believe it. They
Speaker 4: did it in a completely cynical way, and they were
Speaker 4: very happy with it because they believed that roe versus
Speaker 4: Wade was the law of the land. It was going
Speaker 4: to stay that way forever. Therefore, we can fundraise on
Speaker 4: this forever, and we can command the loyalty of this
Speaker 4: voting block, the anti abortion voting block, forever, and will
Speaker 4: never have to deliver on it because the Supreme Court
Speaker 4: has taken care of it. And by the way it
Speaker 4: worked in a similar way on the Democratic side, the
Speaker 4: Democratic Party didn't start as the pro Row versus Wade party.
Speaker 4: They were positioned into that because of the what the
Speaker 4: Republican Party choice was, which was to be anti Roe
Speaker 4: versus Way. And so the Democratic Party was fundraising on
Speaker 4: it and asking for your vote on it, and they
Speaker 4: believe they were going to be able to do this
Speaker 4: forever because Roe versus Way was going to last forever.
Speaker 4: Don't be surprised if you are, you know, baptizing children
Speaker 4: into this belief that when they're forty years old and
Speaker 4: they're working in state legislatures in Oklahoma and Indiana, don't
Speaker 4: be surprised if they actually believe the thing you were
Speaker 4: selling to them. That's part of your problem is that
Speaker 4: there's a bunch of these Texas legislators and Oklahoma legislators
Speaker 4: and Indiana legislators who believe this stuff and are now
Speaker 4: stuck with it, and they live in this isolated way
Speaker 4: in their districts, in their legislative districts where they're fully protected.
Speaker 4: You know, they're not going to lose their jobs because
Speaker 4: they're trying to ban abortion. None of them are, and
Speaker 4: so that thing is just going to keep happening in
Speaker 4: the most right wing states. The tricky part is going
Speaker 4: to be for governors of the states that aren't so
Speaker 4: right wing on issues like this. If you look at
Speaker 4: say Florida, where they're not so right wing on issues
Speaker 4: like abortion, if you're running statewide there, you have to
Speaker 4: be much more careful as a Republican on that issue.
Speaker 1: I want to ask you about Florida because I feel
Speaker 1: like what we're doing here is I have all these
Speaker 1: theories and I just want you to tell me if
Speaker 1: they make sense to you and if they're smart or
Speaker 1: if I'm insane.
Speaker 4: This is, of course, because I'm a well known expert
Speaker 4: on Florida.
Speaker 1: So Desander's running for president, decided that he was going
Speaker 1: to make Florida a kind of lab of authoritarianism. Do
Speaker 1: all the stuff that they had talked about in Republican primaries,
Speaker 1: right book banning, where woke goes to die, you know,
Speaker 1: all of those kind of sound bites turned into legislation
Speaker 1: because he had a very right wing legislative body state legislature,
Speaker 1: so he could really go crazy. Do you think that
Speaker 1: this has actually scared voters and other states? I mean,
Speaker 1: do you think it's had an effect or do you
Speaker 1: think it exists in a vacuum.
Speaker 4: I think it didn't work, as the one thing I'm
Speaker 4: sure of, because he wasn't doing it. He didn't care
Speaker 4: about Florida.
Speaker 3: He was doing it.
Speaker 4: For Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. He was doing
Speaker 4: it for Republican primary voters who he had a right
Speaker 4: to believe were crazy, and he wanted to sound as
Speaker 4: crazy as they are. And it just hasn't worked. And
Speaker 4: what's really funny about how much it hasn't worked is
Speaker 4: the latest polling that I just happened to see this
Speaker 4: morning on the state of Florida shows Donald Trump at
Speaker 4: sixty percent and Dessantus going down. He's gone down below
Speaker 4: where he was before, so he's down around twenty or
Speaker 4: so right, So he's in a Florida primary. He will
Speaker 4: get absolutely destroyed if he's still a candidate. And the
Speaker 4: mission of kind of presidential candidates on their way to
Speaker 4: losing primaries always been make sure you get out before
Speaker 4: your state you know, which you know to Scott for example,
Speaker 4: has done, but make sure you get out before your state,
Speaker 4: because what you don't want to do is have someone
Speaker 4: come into your state and beat you in the presidential
Speaker 4: primary in your state. And we could all just hope
Speaker 4: that Ron de Santis hasn't heard that rule so that
Speaker 4: he actually does stay in there for this incredible rebuke
Speaker 4: that he would get right now, right now today, that
Speaker 4: he would get from Florida voters. So it didn't work
Speaker 4: with national Republican primary voters, and it didn't work in Florida.
Speaker 4: Donald Trump, who never tried to ban any books, is
Speaker 4: crushing him in Florida.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's some real incredible sorcery there. Do you think
Speaker 1: that Republicans have so overstepped on these cultural war issues
Speaker 1: that they.
Speaker 2: Will give it up? Or do you think, like abortion,
Speaker 2: they're just addicted to bad ideas.
Speaker 4: No, I think with abortion, you know, Trump's not going
Speaker 4: to play it and hasn't played it at all, you know,
Speaker 4: the way these other people play it.
Speaker 3: He's just going to do this. He's gonna he takes.
Speaker 4: It to a different level of stupidity, which is to say,
Speaker 4: you know, just to elect me president and I will
Speaker 4: figure out the best formula for you know, who should
Speaker 4: get an abortion and Republican voters apparently are stupid enough
Speaker 4: to go with that. But he's playing it much softer than,
Speaker 4: you know, than any of the others who always believed,
Speaker 4: you know, you had to play it really hardcore, including
Speaker 4: George W. Bush, you know, George W.
Speaker 3: Bush.
Speaker 4: When John McCain was running against him, John McCain was
Speaker 4: asked on the bus, you know, well, what if your
Speaker 4: daughter was pregnant, and McCain gave a human answer, he said, well,
Speaker 4: you know, we would have a family discussion about that.
Speaker 4: You know, well that obviously includes the possibility of an
Speaker 4: abortion right. So that answer lasted about, you know, twenty
Speaker 4: four hours because the Bush people just beat him to
Speaker 4: death on it, and he had to then McCain had
Speaker 4: to come out and say no.
Speaker 3: Of course, of course there'd be absolutely no abortion.
Speaker 4: You know, he had to be beaten back, you know,
Speaker 4: into that corner because Bush was so hardcore on abortion,
Speaker 4: and so Trump is actually, you know, the softest one
Speaker 4: they've had on abortion, and it turns out the most effective,
Speaker 4: you know, because he's the guy who delivered to you
Speaker 4: the Supreme Court that could do this.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. This is so good, It really
Speaker 1: I appreciate you.
Speaker 4: I only wish the listeners could see your background. It's
Speaker 4: so hard to concentrate because I'm just sitting here reading
Speaker 4: book titles.
Speaker 3: You know, That's all I'm doing.
Speaker 2: Your vision is so good.
Speaker 1: Congressman Wilie Nickel represents North Carolina's third district. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Fast Politics.
Speaker 2: Representative nicol Thanks, I'm so glad to be with you.
Speaker 1: So first we're going to talk about jerry mandering. You
Speaker 1: are a member of Congress from the great state of
Speaker 1: North Carolina. February twenty twenty two, North Carolina Supreme Court
Speaker 1: blocked the Republican led state North Carolina State Legislature's unconstitutional
Speaker 1: partisan gerrymander of North Carolina maps, putting in place interim
Speaker 1: maps for the twenty twenty two election cycle in a
Speaker 1: fifty to fifty purple state. There was a huge win
Speaker 1: for voters in North Carolina. Now fast forward and tell
Speaker 1: us where we are now.
Speaker 6: Like you said, our Supreme Court last year drew fair
Speaker 6: you know maps for we're a fifty to fifty state.
Speaker 3: They drew a map that would elect.
Speaker 6: Seven Republicans, six Democrats, and one seat that could have
Speaker 6: gone either way. A true fifty to fifty seat that
Speaker 6: was the seat that I won in the last election.
Speaker 6: We were one of just six Republican seats that we
Speaker 6: flipped in the last cycle. Now, obviously, you know, the
Speaker 6: state wide results weren't as good as we needed them
Speaker 6: to be. We lost two Supreme Court seats and now
Speaker 6: it's a five to two Republican court. And the Republican
Speaker 6: on our court are just total partisan hacks, so we
Speaker 6: expect no relief from them on what is a totally
Speaker 6: egregious and horrible Republican gerrymander that now we'll elect ten Republicans,
Speaker 6: three Democrats, and one seat that's pretty pink but could
Speaker 6: stay in our column. This is not fair. I mean,
Speaker 6: the voters get totally screwed when you have this kind
Speaker 6: of extreme parties and jerrymandering.
Speaker 2: How can you push back on this? What can you do?
Speaker 2: Where are we here?
Speaker 6: There will be lawsuits. We've been successful around the South
Speaker 6: with these racial gerrymandering cases. There certainly was extreme racial
Speaker 6: gerrymandering going on with these these Republican maps, so you
Speaker 6: know there will be litigation.
Speaker 3: We're hopeful that it's successful and.
Speaker 6: We keep our current seven to seven map in place,
Speaker 6: but you know, it's an uphill battle and the lawyers
Speaker 6: have it. Now, my takeaway from all of this as
Speaker 6: I'm here in Congress is you have so few seats
Speaker 6: where voters have a real choice in November for Congress,
Speaker 6: and you know, it's really it's probably down to just
Speaker 6: thirty out of four hundred and thirty five seats that
Speaker 6: could that could go either way.
Speaker 3: The rest are just a total foregone conclusion.
Speaker 6: And that's why we have such a just dumpster fire
Speaker 6: of chaos and confusion here in Congress because you know,
Speaker 6: the Republicans could just care less. They are governing for
Speaker 6: their Republican primary in their base and we're not getting
Speaker 6: anything done.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's talk for a minute about this, because the
Speaker 1: partisan jerrymander is really destructive in ways that I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people don't necessarily understand. For example, we
Speaker 1: see it right now. I mean with this Republican Party.
Speaker 1: I don't think this is as true for Democrats. But
Speaker 1: then again, I.
Speaker 2: Am an opinion columnist and that is my opinion.
Speaker 1: But the Republican Party is really you know, Chip Roy
Speaker 1: and Matt Gates are pretty much calling the shots over there.
Speaker 6: A one thousand percent. It's the tail wagging the dog
Speaker 6: they're just really stupid with their approach to this. I mean,
Speaker 6: if you game it out, you can get together, you
Speaker 6: settle your differences privately. That's how I understood that Nancy
Speaker 6: Pelosi ran things in the last Congress. We've moved tons
Speaker 6: of bills, we moved legislation. We didn't have all this,
Speaker 6: you know, chaos and confusion and constant literally fighting. I mean,
Speaker 6: that's what we saw this week was literally fighting between
Speaker 6: Republicans spilling out into public view. But if their publems
Speaker 6: were smart, they would work together and you know, move
Speaker 6: a bill through the House and negotiate with the Senate
Speaker 6: and take half a loaf. But they're not even doing that.
Speaker 6: They can't even pass their own stupid messaging bills for
Speaker 6: the budget, which we continue to see these bills that
Speaker 6: they just can't get a majority of Republicans. It's either
Speaker 6: too far to the left or too far to the
Speaker 6: right in terms of Republican stuff, and we just we're
Speaker 6: just not getting done. And that's a direct result of
Speaker 6: extreme parties and jerrymandering.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's such an interesting problem for Republicans. We keep
Speaker 1: seeing Johnson bring bills the floor and not have the votes.
Speaker 1: Nancy Pelosi never had that problem.
Speaker 6: Mike Johnson and Kevin McCarthy, they're horrible vote counters.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's my lesson.
Speaker 6: Don't bring the bills to the floor unless you've got
Speaker 6: the votes.
Speaker 2: They passed this CR. It's a clean CR.
Speaker 1: But it doesn't it gets It's this tiered thing which
Speaker 1: is basically really nothing right. It's some expire a month
Speaker 1: before the other ones. I mean, it's just it's sort
Speaker 1: of some way to distract the far right and get
Speaker 1: him to not have lost his job yet Mike Johnson.
Speaker 1: But ultimately even I mean, you saw, you know, this pass,
Speaker 1: but like once they start having to really negotiate, they're
Speaker 1: not going to be able to do it. And you know,
Speaker 1: Republicans who are supposedly such great friends to Israel, they
Speaker 1: did not prove any aid to Israel. They did not
Speaker 1: prove any aid to Ukraine. So none of that stuff
Speaker 1: happened at all.
Speaker 6: People should be pissed off. I had my staff compile
Speaker 6: the bills that have been signed into law. We're up
Speaker 6: to twenty one. There is nothing that really helps people.
Speaker 6: We raise the dead ceiling. We've done two crs and
Speaker 6: the rest. You know, you're talking about renaming a VA
Speaker 6: clinic or a great Marine.
Speaker 2: Coin or a post office.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you know, but the least productive Congress now since
Speaker 6: the Great Depression at this stage. But you know, fixing
Speaker 6: jerry mandering is would make this place work a lot better.
Speaker 6: And as you know, people look at maps that for
Speaker 6: North Carolina, you know, will will guarantee three maybe four
Speaker 6: seats that clip from one part to the other just
Speaker 6: with with the drawing of a few lines. You know,
Speaker 6: it's something that we got to fix, and we can
Speaker 6: do it. And I think when I talk about all
Speaker 6: the stuff that's happening is Washington, it's it's hard to
Speaker 6: find a lot of hope in things. But the place
Speaker 6: I find hope is in the House and the people
Speaker 6: I serve with. And you know, I think people listening
Speaker 6: should know that Keem Jeffries is going to be the
Speaker 6: next Speaker of the House. We are going to take
Speaker 6: back the House in the next Congress because of all
Speaker 6: the crazy stuff that the Republicans are doing where.
Speaker 3: They just show their audit to govern.
Speaker 6: But we want to fix maps, we take back the House,
Speaker 6: we pass non parts and independent redistricting on a nationwide level.
Speaker 6: We can do that in Congress and in the Senate,
Speaker 6: we just got a nuke the filibuster and get fifty
Speaker 6: votes on a bill that that does just that. That's
Speaker 6: that's the best way we'll be able to do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Mike Johnson, he looks more like Paul Ryan, but
Speaker 1: his heart seems very much like Sidney Powell. How do
Speaker 1: you have that person as a Speaker of the House.
Speaker 6: I think it was just sort of a situation where
Speaker 6: they just needed someone who could get you know, two
Speaker 6: hundred and eighteen votes from the Republican conference and they
Speaker 6: were just tired after three weeks.
Speaker 3: I think he's in charge, you know.
Speaker 6: I think it's maybe more, maybe more of a collaborative
Speaker 6: effort among other Republican leaders. So I'm not sure, you know,
Speaker 6: how much a leeway he has to really do his
Speaker 6: own thing. So I think that's kind of my question.
Speaker 6: I don't know the answer. But the thing that makes
Speaker 6: sense is he is working with Democrats in the Senate
Speaker 6: and in the House and Republicans in the Senate who
Speaker 6: want to do the things that the American people think
Speaker 6: we ought to be doing. Supporting Israel, supporting Ukraine, you know,
Speaker 6: secure in the border, those are things that we're talking about.
Speaker 1: So Republicans had to get Democratic votes to pass a CR.
Speaker 1: In fact, they got more Democratic votes and Republican votes.
Speaker 1: That does not bode well for the future for this
Speaker 1: party if they can't whip their own votes right.
Speaker 6: And this isn't something that should be controversial. It's literally
Speaker 6: just keeping the lights on with the federal government. So no,
Speaker 6: I mean, the question I have I think anybody watching
Speaker 6: Congress is what's going to give? You know, something's got
Speaker 6: to give because the met gates and you know, Freedom Caucus,
Speaker 6: you know, far right crazies aren't going to stop and
Speaker 6: they're not going to work with with the majority of Republicans.
Speaker 6: So the only alternative is working with Democrats on things
Speaker 6: that a majority of the Republican conference supports. And that's
Speaker 6: very controversial. You know, it's crazy that that's the case,
Speaker 6: but you know, that's what we're talking about is probably
Speaker 6: just having bills that are on suspension so this bench
Speaker 6: county reads two thirds two hundred ninety votes. They don't
Speaker 6: have to pass a rule. They can just bring anything
Speaker 6: to the floor to get two ninety and that's what
Speaker 6: we did for the CR and I'm expecting that that's
Speaker 6: probably what we're going to do with so much of
Speaker 6: this stuff. It's they're going to have maybe a bare
Speaker 6: majority of Republicans and all the Democrats to get basic
Speaker 6: things done.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is just so crazy.
Speaker 1: I was listening to I'm not going to plug another podcast,
Speaker 1: but it was actually quite interesting, and they were talking
Speaker 1: about how Mike Johnson has this Christian nationalist flag, this
Speaker 1: flag that is associated a lot with Christian nationalism. It's
Speaker 1: a white flag with a tree on it. And I'm wondering,
Speaker 1: you have to serve in Congress with these people. Mike
Speaker 1: Johnson is much more genteel than a Marjorie Taylor Green
Speaker 1: or Lauren Boeper or a mad I mean, Matt Gates
Speaker 1: is a little bit genteel too, But these people, you know,
Speaker 1: they want to destroy the government, and they have some
Speaker 1: very out of line beliefs that are, you know, not
Speaker 1: shared by most of the country.
Speaker 2: I mean, is it hard to just go to work
Speaker 2: with these people.
Speaker 6: It's a pretty goofy group. It's the same clown car
Speaker 6: as before, just a different driver. I think the people
Speaker 6: who send us here expect us to get things done
Speaker 6: and build those relationships, and you know, I work really
Speaker 6: hard to build personal relationships with the Republicans who are
Speaker 6: willing to work across the island. There certainly are some there.
Speaker 6: I'm part of the problem Solver's Caucus Democrats and Republicans.
Speaker 6: You know, we meet usually once a week to talk
Speaker 6: about biparties and legislation hasn't been a lot of it.
Speaker 6: But I see it as my job to try to
Speaker 6: build those relationships so that when we have to do
Speaker 6: things like passing a cr or passing a budget or
Speaker 6: do an aid for Israel, there's some level of trust.
Speaker 6: But it's really tough, especially when you look at their
Speaker 6: Twitter feeds and you look at the stuff that they
Speaker 6: say when they're out out of Congress, because it's really
Speaker 6: dangerous and really out of the mainstream. But you know,
Speaker 6: I think what we're seeing is people are standing up
Speaker 6: to this across the country. You know, we saw in Ohio,
Speaker 6: you know, huge numbers of people coming out for women's riots.
Speaker 6: We're going to continue to see that play out, and
Speaker 6: we're just on the right side of these issues and
Speaker 6: that's ultimately going to get through to the voters.
Speaker 2: Why do you.
Speaker 1: Think that North Carolina has been such a tough nut
Speaker 1: for Democrats to crack? We saw Georgia flip blue before
Speaker 1: North Carolina.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's wild.
Speaker 6: North Carolina is the only state I think people should
Speaker 6: be talking about this next election. It's the state that
Speaker 6: Trump won by the smallest amount, and it's trending our way,
Speaker 6: you know, it's it is moving every election cycle, you know,
Speaker 6: is getting better and better for Democrats state. Why then
Speaker 6: they can jerrymander districts and they can do it in
Speaker 6: a brutally affective way, but they can't jerry manager the state.
Speaker 6: We're going to have the most competitive governors race in
Speaker 6: the country. Are great Attorney General Josh Stein running against
Speaker 6: someone that makes Mega Mike and the Republicans look tame
Speaker 6: in comparison. Are Tenega owner Mark Robinson. He's just nuts.
Speaker 6: And it's the state that Biden's got to win. And
Speaker 6: from all that, you know, every every indication we have,
Speaker 6: I've talked about it with with Biden myself. You know,
Speaker 6: they're going to be all in on North Carolina because
Speaker 6: they've got to win the state if he's going to
Speaker 6: go back to Washington. So you know, we will see
Speaker 6: a ton of spending. I think that matters. I think
Speaker 6: you know, you're talking about other you know, elections in
Speaker 6: the past. Obama won at the first time, didn't make
Speaker 6: the big investments in North Carolina. The second time around
Speaker 6: became really close. You know, that's one I think you
Speaker 6: talked to the people who are part of that campaign.
Speaker 6: I was, you know, a staffer, and you know they'll
Speaker 6: tell you, yeah, if we if we'd done more in
Speaker 6: North Carolina, we probably could have gotten there. And you know,
Speaker 6: Hillary was close, Biden was very close. And you know,
Speaker 6: I think on the state level, this stuff like jerrymandering.
Speaker 6: You know, we have a Republican super majority in the
Speaker 6: legislature that's taken away women's rights, defunding public education, and
Speaker 6: those things will matter. Bathroom bill, yeah, absolutely, and I
Speaker 6: mean they continue to attack the LGBTQ community in just
Speaker 6: horrible ways that all will matter in North Carolina. You know,
Speaker 6: in addition to the national issue of literally protecting democracy.
Speaker 6: I mean that's the choice, you know, democracy or not.
Speaker 6: With Trump and Biden.
Speaker 1: The thing I'm so struck by, and Dave Weigall from
Speaker 1: Semaphore wrote a really smart piece about this. The Republicans
Speaker 1: really went crazy on social issues in a way that
Speaker 1: Americans don't want. And we saw that in Kentucky, like
Speaker 1: people don't want the government tracking women's periods.
Speaker 6: My approach is people just want people solving problems. That
Speaker 6: they're tired of the demonizing groups attacking the LGBT community.
Speaker 6: And that was my takeaway too with the Kentucky race.
Speaker 6: You know, they're just they're tired of it. They want
Speaker 6: both people focused on protecting rights, not taking them away.
Speaker 6: And you know that's I think a winning message.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so tell me what it looks like for you
Speaker 1: now in North Carolina, this jerry mander will go up
Speaker 1: the courts. I was pleasantly surprised that this very conservative
Speaker 1: Supreme Court did manage to slap back at Alabama. So
Speaker 1: it does seem like they are interested in I mean, shockingly,
Speaker 1: they don't seem like they are letting these right wing
Speaker 1: legislators have their way, or at least to a certain extent.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the courts.
Speaker 6: We're waiting on the courts to wane before we make
Speaker 6: any choices. The district with my number on it went
Speaker 6: from an R plus two to an R plus eighteen.
Speaker 6: So that's just totally unwinnable for a Democrat. It's off
Speaker 6: the chart in terms of Democrats. Who ever came close
Speaker 6: to winning a seat like that, so it's an unwinnable seat.
Speaker 3: But you know, I think there's good legal arguments.
Speaker 6: And I just have this hope as I kind of
Speaker 6: sit back here in Congress and watch the dumpster fire
Speaker 6: that is the Republican Conference, and I just have to
Speaker 6: think that John Roberts is sitting across the street at
Speaker 6: the Supreme Court watching it, and if he gets a
Speaker 6: map in front of him that's North Carolina, that's a
Speaker 6: really horrible jerrymander for Republicans, and then New York that
Speaker 6: could be a really horrible jerrymander for Democrats that's you know,
Speaker 6: in control, and he takes them together and maybe we
Speaker 6: finally get a standard for how bad you can screw
Speaker 6: democracy with these maps. That's that's my own hope. I
Speaker 6: think it makes sense in a lot of ways. But
Speaker 6: the lawyers, you know, are much more focused on, you know,
Speaker 6: very specific stuff with with racial gerrymandering, and we've had
Speaker 6: some success.
Speaker 2: There, so interesting.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate getting to talk to you about this.
Speaker 1: It's such an important issue, and I hope that the
Speaker 1: courts break your way.
Speaker 3: Thanks anytime. I'm glad to talk, excited to get to
Speaker 3: talk with you here.
Speaker 6: Love love following you on Twitter as well, so you
Speaker 6: usually once a month did you tweet something? And it's
Speaker 6: like it's like that just made my day? So thank
Speaker 6: you for that.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you.
Speaker 1: Harry Littman is a former US attorney and host of
Speaker 1: the podcast Talking Feds. Hi, Harry Man, Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 5: I'm Alli don Fast. Welcome to Talking Feds and another
Speaker 5: politics long mashup. I'm looking forward to being educated on
Speaker 5: some important political questions that kind of escape me.
Speaker 1: I am looking forward to asking you the question you
Speaker 1: never get asked, will Donald Trump go to jail?
Speaker 5: I never get asked.
Speaker 1: That, never, ever, ever, certainly not every day, multiple times
Speaker 1: a day.
Speaker 5: All Right, here's a scoop. Here's a scoop on Fast
Speaker 5: Time with Mully Young Fast. You know I think he will.
Speaker 5: It's funny because you know, you and I lived through Watergate.
Speaker 5: You can imagine some grand resolution of this national nightmare
Speaker 5: like them that would just get him the hell off
Speaker 5: the stage and keep him out of jail. But because
Speaker 5: of the real obsession with treating everyone alike, I think
Speaker 5: the chance for that has passed the chance for someone
Speaker 5: like who would it be Biden or possibly Garland to
Speaker 5: make that kind of and resolution as Ford did, or
Speaker 5: arguably as they did with Agnew He's now specifically in
Speaker 5: the stocks for in Georgia, where he can't pardon himself
Speaker 5: in New York and not to mention the federal system.
Speaker 5: And I'm going to turn this on you pretty soon.
Speaker 5: But you know, assuming he doesn't get elected. So I
Speaker 5: actually think the possibility that would have been concrete for him,
Speaker 5: you know, notwithstanding the bloodlust that many people feel for
Speaker 5: him staying out of jail, because of the insistence that
Speaker 5: it be this sort of regular, routine process. I think
Speaker 5: that a train has started that can't stop. It might
Speaker 5: be paused for he to win the presidency. I think
Speaker 5: he could make the federal cases stand down, and probably
Speaker 5: the Supreme Court would put a pause on the state cases,
Speaker 5: but just a pause now, you know. So it might
Speaker 5: depend on his longevity. But yeah, I actually think he's
Speaker 5: going to jail, you know, bad hair and lack of
Speaker 5: privacy and all I do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think clearly the goal here is
Speaker 1: to beat back these indictments, right, to try to run
Speaker 1: out the clock, win reelection and parton himself or you know,
Speaker 1: do whatever he can.
Speaker 5: Well, okay, although I don't think he can parton it,
Speaker 5: but it doesn't matter because the federal ones will still
Speaker 5: be going on. He can make him stop. He can
Speaker 5: just announce to DOJ stop this. It's still on appeal,
Speaker 5: but he'll have trouble on the state side. And of
Speaker 5: course that's the big if, you know, were he to win.
Speaker 5: It's been a time for people who are concerned about
Speaker 5: his getting the reins again when he's he's promised basically
Speaker 5: to impose fascist rule and shred the constitution. You know,
Speaker 5: where there are all kinds of nervousness at the among
Speaker 5: Biden's supporters. Do you credit the polls that have it
Speaker 5: as a toss up at best? And are you I'm
Speaker 5: going to ask your personal view, but your political analysis
Speaker 5: of you know, there are a lot of pretty senior
Speaker 5: voices actually telling Biden this is the time to step aside,
Speaker 5: let someone else lead the ticket. How do you sort
Speaker 5: of handicap the chances of Trump's winning, assuming Biden and
Speaker 5: he are the matchup.
Speaker 2: So I'm going to push back on that and.
Speaker 5: Say I'm no fair. Okay, go ahead.
Speaker 1: And say, actually, there are not that many voices. Okay,
Speaker 1: there's a feeling. I think in the mainstream media people
Speaker 1: would like to see a primary, but you never have
Speaker 1: a primary for an incumbent president.
Speaker 2: That's not how we do it. So the idea that
Speaker 2: we're going to have.
Speaker 1: A primary because the guy is old is crazy. Okay,
Speaker 1: like you're going to give up incumbency because some people
Speaker 1: think he's old. It's just nods. I would push back
Speaker 1: on that, and then I would say the fact that
Speaker 1: there has not been a serious primary, that the only
Speaker 1: person that could be found to run against him is
Speaker 1: Dean whatever his name is from Poxatawny, Pennsylvania. No, actually
Speaker 1: he's from Minnesota. But you know, he's a rich guy,
Speaker 1: rich mediocre white guy who used to work in gelato.
Speaker 2: I mean, look, I love gelato.
Speaker 5: Don't get me wrong, you gelato fans don't write in Okay,
Speaker 5: this is.
Speaker 1: In no way an indictment on gelato. I mean it's
Speaker 1: like what I eat every day. Eighty percent of my
Speaker 1: diet is gelato. But I'm here to tell you that
Speaker 1: that guy is not a real serious political player, and
Speaker 1: he's been on this age thing forever. He tried to
Speaker 1: take down Nancy Pelosi. Ask him how well that went?
Speaker 2: Not that well?
Speaker 5: I'm so glad to hear that. And I'll just add,
Speaker 5: you know, there's objective in disha of how well hit,
Speaker 5: you know, how strong this record is. Our current podcast
Speaker 5: is with Paul Krugman, Stephanie Rule, Dean Baker. You know,
Speaker 5: the economic benchmarks are off the chart. And also there's
Speaker 5: a history of incumbents in the year before looking kind
Speaker 5: of vulnerable.
Speaker 1: Obama Reagan. They told Reagan he was too old to run.
Speaker 2: W yeah, W you know so.
Speaker 1: And I would say that, you know, I don't think
Speaker 1: that this is a statement on Biden. The other thing is,
Speaker 1: you know, Biden is in China. This is I would say, like,
Speaker 1: this is one of the worst times geopolitically in my lifetime. Right.
Speaker 1: We have just horrible, horrible stuff going on in much
Speaker 1: of the world, and Biden is like this very normal
Speaker 1: white guy, he's old.
Speaker 2: He's the generic D.
Speaker 1: And so when you look at this polling, the people
Speaker 1: who do the best in all of these polls is
Speaker 1: the generic D. If you were to think about like
Speaker 1: people rallied behind him in the Democratic Party because he
Speaker 1: was the generic D, you know, you didn't look at
Speaker 1: him and think like this is you know, the most
Speaker 1: liberal or even the most sort of cerebral you know,
Speaker 1: he harkened back to another time when politicians kind of
Speaker 1: disappeared behind the job, and you know, part of what
Speaker 1: he ran on was this aggressive, boringness, and I think
Speaker 1: it served him well and I think it will serve
Speaker 1: him well again in twenty four.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: You look at his bio. I mean, I think him
Speaker 5: very much as a kitchen table democrat with certain progressive strains.
Speaker 5: But you look at his bio and it feels like
Speaker 5: he came of age, you know, fifteen minutes before the sixties,
Speaker 5: and he's really the last of a previous generation of
Speaker 5: basically fifties gray suit figures. There's a lot have to
Speaker 5: be said for that, especially in the foreign policy world.
Speaker 5: But I'm very very very very relieved to hear your
Speaker 5: general analysis so I don't have to, you know, plan
Speaker 5: on my move to New zeal.
Speaker 2: Trump could still win. Anything could happen. But I just
Speaker 2: feel like there's two parts. Right.
Speaker 1: There's a mainstream media that wants to have a traditional
Speaker 1: run up to a presidential.
Speaker 5: Care what's a horse race, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I think some of that is because it's very
Speaker 1: boring to have the same two people running against each
Speaker 1: other again. Then I think part of it is that
Speaker 1: Trump juiced our numbers, all of us. Trump was the
Speaker 1: big media juicer, and he happened to destroy democracy, try
Speaker 1: very hard to destroy democracy while it was doing it.
Speaker 1: There's both anxiety and some wish fulfillment when it comes
Speaker 1: to Trump. You know, people on the media side like
Speaker 1: the numbers. Do they like the fascism?
Speaker 2: I certainly hope not, but I think the numbers get
Speaker 2: a little addictive.
Speaker 1: All right, I want the TLDR on Georgia right now.
Speaker 1: Fanny Willis is sort of wrapping everybody up right.
Speaker 2: How high does this go?
Speaker 1: Do you think this goes to Rudy? Do you think
Speaker 1: this goes to Trump? Explain?
Speaker 5: I see this as basically a six person in case
Speaker 5: right now, the six would be and sort of four
Speaker 5: level Trump, Meadows and Juliani, probably Eastman and Clark, and
Speaker 5: then David Schaeffer, who's the most guilty of the Georgia elector.
Speaker 5: So let me tell you what I mean. She's given
Speaker 5: out these you know, flurry of clead deals, real sweetheart deals,
Speaker 5: non custodial time deals. They're the flurry of others to
Speaker 5: go because the general calculation given how she charged it is.
Speaker 5: It's a very very expensive defense to make over half
Speaker 5: a million maybe more, and the you know, they're looking
Speaker 5: at really serious charges. So obviously Trump is the jewel
Speaker 5: in the crown for her, and you don't offer a
Speaker 5: deal to him, Juliani. I don't think you offer a
Speaker 5: deal a because he's very culpable, and especially in Georgia,
Speaker 5: he goes down and tells all kinds of horseshit about
Speaker 5: Georgia to Ruby Moss and Chay Freeman. Plus he's a
Speaker 5: disaster witness. You couldn't use him for anything anyway. And
Speaker 5: then Mark Meadows at this point I think, has nowhere
Speaker 5: to go with her. So I think those three are
Speaker 5: really in the hot scene and when it comes to it,
Speaker 5: very very expensive defense. I think Julianni's only sort of
Speaker 5: play is to try to get Trump to fund it
Speaker 5: as much as he can. Trump's going to give him,
Speaker 5: you know, a fundraiser and Christmas I don't see much more.
Speaker 5: But it's just a matter of time I think for
Speaker 5: those three, and that push'll come to shove when a
Speaker 5: new trial date is set, which could happen as soon
Speaker 5: as December. First, the judge has is having a new gearing.
Speaker 5: I got to say, I was perplexed that after being
Speaker 5: ready to go in a week in one trial for everybody,
Speaker 5: that Fannie Willis said two days ago it's going to
Speaker 5: take till twenty twenty five, among other things. That takes
Speaker 5: the immediate pressure off. If that's the stance she holds to,
Speaker 5: others think that that's possible, but it hasn't been her
Speaker 5: so far anyway. To me, the important triggering event will
Speaker 5: be setting of a trial, same as it was for
Speaker 5: Chesbro and Powle that got those others started. David Schaefer,
Speaker 5: I think is toast also, but in a Georgia way.
Speaker 5: Remember she's a Georgia elected DA and so Meadows and
Speaker 5: Juliani and you know, I think you can say, Jeff Clark,
Speaker 5: who what did he want to do? He wanted to
Speaker 5: get the DOJ to lie and tell Georgia there was
Speaker 5: fraud in the Georgia vote. She's, you know, going to
Speaker 5: really exact a penalty for that. So I think you'll
Speaker 5: see the electors plead out. You'll have that kind of package,
Speaker 5: and the evidence is pretty strong, you know. I think, however,
Speaker 5: once you get above, once you get to the Meadows
Speaker 5: Giuliani Trump level. We already know. They haven't been offered
Speaker 5: pleased so far, and they've been overtures to others. I
Speaker 5: don't think they're gonna be so, whether it's you know,
Speaker 5: by summer or by as she says twenty twenty five,
Speaker 5: I think those three, at a minimum, probably with Schaeffer,
Speaker 5: are sitting for trial. My best guess is Eastman and
Speaker 5: Clark too, and my best guess they're going down.
Speaker 2: But Trump No?
Speaker 5: Trump?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 2: Why Trump? Y ass?
Speaker 5: Because he's guilty, because the evident against against him is
Speaker 5: very strong. Because the people who are going to cooperate,
Speaker 5: the most valuable thing they can do is evidence against Trump,
Speaker 5: like Jenna Ellis. You know, we know she's going to
Speaker 5: provide that from a week ago. Now, why no, because
Speaker 5: they're you know, it's Georgia, the purple list of states,
Speaker 5: and the hope will be for some jury nullification person,
Speaker 5: you know, pro Trump person, to have a hung jury.
Speaker 5: I think an acquittals out of the question, and she'd
Speaker 5: probably retry it. So with the caveat the asterisk that
Speaker 5: if he becomes president, he's going to start an investigation
Speaker 5: against her, there are ways that you know, Betts could
Speaker 5: be off, But yeah, I think I they killed. He
Speaker 5: will go down Molly before, you know, more assuredly than
Speaker 5: the others, because he is the number one target here.
Speaker 5: You can imagine a state of affairs where Meadows pleads
Speaker 5: and testifies against Trump. You cannot imagine the reverse.
Speaker 2: Right, that makes sense.
Speaker 1: Meadows has been sort of walking this line where he's
Speaker 1: kind of gives just enough but not enough to be
Speaker 1: helpful everywhere except in Georgia.
Speaker 2: Can you explain that.
Speaker 5: He's got the best lawyers in the whole game here,
Speaker 5: both is regular and his He's got us the guy
Speaker 5: who does the writing, and it's just taught, and they've
Speaker 5: been pretty adroid so far. You know, got him out
Speaker 5: of the hot water with Congress, that was quite a feat.
Speaker 5: Got him out of the hot water with Smith in
Speaker 5: the January sixth case. He's not even a co conspirator,
Speaker 5: he's not one of the six. He testifies, but not
Speaker 5: with any kind of deal. That was quite a feat,
Speaker 5: I thought also. And then he plays a big gambit
Speaker 5: of trying to get removal in Full County. Here's where
Speaker 5: I think he's going to hit the brick wall. And
Speaker 5: at that point, you know he's I think he cannot
Speaker 5: in this slam. Of course he's running make this last gate,
Speaker 5: and he's going to sprawl badly. But I think I
Speaker 5: think Fulton County is where he comes to and end.
Speaker 5: And again he at that point, you know, might well
Speaker 5: want to plead, But I don't think they're given for
Speaker 5: a guy off his culpability. They're going to be giving out,
Speaker 5: you know, these sort of non custodial sentences as they've
Speaker 5: given to the crackpot lawyers. As Mike Pensmith put it
Speaker 5: fifty years ago last month, your mother, Erica John is
Speaker 5: not a joke. I mean, this is a really serious
Speaker 5: question to you, Mollis, as a person to publish Fear
Speaker 5: of Flying, How has that novel and that and you know,
Speaker 5: and her kind of incandace and success at least then
Speaker 5: with it shaped your life?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean that is, you know, again an unknowable question,
Speaker 1: but certainly had a lot of advantages because my other success,
Speaker 1: I mean the book it was published in nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 5: Years ago right here that row.
Speaker 1: Was passed and I was not born until nineteen seventy eight,
Speaker 1: so I was negative five. But I do think it
Speaker 1: changes the calculus of your life in innumerable ways. I
Speaker 1: had tons of advantages that it would not have had.
Speaker 5: But there's a downside. No, my mom was modestly famous.
Speaker 5: She was a lawyer, a successful one, and a pioneer,
Speaker 5: and you know, among other things, it made the question
Speaker 5: of my becoming a lawyer both on everyone's lips and
Speaker 5: also made it feel like I wouldn't really match that success.
Speaker 5: And you know, I mean it's a complicated psychological situation
Speaker 5: having such a successful mom.
Speaker 1: No, I mean, it's still better than living in war
Speaker 1: zone and there's a lot of real adversity in this world.
Speaker 1: But yes, I mean, for sure it created complicated dynamics
Speaker 1: in my life. But I don't think of myself as
Speaker 1: you know, I really was so lucky.
Speaker 5: Was it fun?
Speaker 1: It wasn't that fun because you know, my mom was
Speaker 1: an alcoholic. Our lives were very fraud But it was
Speaker 1: fun in the fact that, like I got to go
Speaker 1: to a lot of places and see a lot of things.
Speaker 1: But it was very lonely and sad childhood. I mean,
Speaker 1: I was an only child, and my mom was terrified
Speaker 1: of being a mother because she felt that it had
Speaker 1: destroyed her mother's life. So there were all sorts of
Speaker 1: weird things that caused her a lot of suffering. She
Speaker 1: also was a deeply tormented person who was wildly unhappy.
Speaker 1: You know, it's funny because it's like so.
Speaker 5: Funny so many artists and writers. It's a shame. It's
Speaker 5: it's what I It's what I almost it was my
Speaker 5: childhood ambition. In reality, man, it's a tough world for artists. Yeah,
Speaker 5: I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I mean, is it a tough world. I think we're
Speaker 2: very fucking life.
Speaker 5: I think genuine artists and writers have it tough, is
Speaker 5: what I'm saying. They're often unhappy. Yes, thanks for that.
Speaker 5: I'm sure your fans would thank you. You've written a
Speaker 5: lot about the GOP. You know, many dwarves phenomenon. Why
Speaker 5: are they all trying to ride the Trumpism wave? What's wrong?
Speaker 5: And I mean, seriously, what's wrong with the Republican Party
Speaker 5: in that sense? And is it clear to you that nobody,
Speaker 5: but nobody, but nobody, Nicki Haley, but nobody has any
Speaker 5: shot at the nomination other than Donald Trump, come hill
Speaker 5: or high water.
Speaker 1: I was talking to Morning Joe this morning. I was
Speaker 1: talking to Joe and Miko about this. If Republicans wanted
Speaker 1: to Nikki Haley. And again this is in no way
Speaker 1: an endorsement of Nikki Haley. I don't agree with her.
Speaker 5: You're an analyst.
Speaker 1: All this pulling, which you know is so fraught, like
Speaker 1: people like her. She seems electable. There's a case to
Speaker 1: be made for her electability. And yet this Republican Party cannot,
Speaker 1: for the life of themselves shake themselves from Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: And they know that Trump has an ear retracted people
Speaker 1: hold on the base, and so they can't do anything.
Speaker 1: So if tomorrow every Republican donor, the sort of very
Speaker 1: big donors and all the you know, Jeff Rows, all
Speaker 1: those people went and said we are going to support
Speaker 1: Nicki Haley, this is it.
Speaker 2: If the sort of top down and the rn C chair,
Speaker 2: all the people who have.
Speaker 1: Never been brave ever and who have continually you know,
Speaker 1: supported and enabled Trump and Trump is if those people
Speaker 1: all said tomorrow we are getting behind Nikki Haley. I
Speaker 1: still don't think that the BASS would go along with it,
Speaker 1: and I still think they would have no chance and
Speaker 1: they would just I mean, their whole anxiety here with
Speaker 1: these Republican you know, the sort of Republican elites, is
Speaker 1: that they cannot get the base away from Donald Trump, which, okay,
Speaker 1: my question is in four years or even in two years, do.
Speaker 2: You guys think Donald Trump is going away? Because I
Speaker 2: do not. I don't think if he loses.
Speaker 1: He says, Okay, obviously, I've had a few shots at this.
Speaker 1: I'm done. I think this guy drags the whole party
Speaker 1: to zero. I just don't see a world in which
Speaker 1: these people keep sort of thinking that Trump is going
Speaker 1: to magically go away, and I just don't. I don't
Speaker 1: see that happening.
Speaker 5: It feels so true just as my lay person of
Speaker 5: view from you know, starting an access Hollywood, well that's it,
Speaker 5: and definitely at January sixth, that's it. And shit, here
Speaker 5: we are, Hey, can we do this next month? This fun?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 2: Yes, thank you? No mo Jesse.
Speaker 7: Cannon, Molly jong Fest that document. We've all been waiting
Speaker 7: for the George Santos ethics report drop today, and my
Speaker 7: bet is he's doomed since the only reason he didn't
Speaker 7: get it expelled last time was that this hadn't dropped yet.
Speaker 1: Who's Janet? Janet Yellen is proposing taxing people like me
Speaker 1: to death. I'm reading a text from the Santos texts
Speaker 1: Janney Yellen, who is proposing taxing people like me to death.
Speaker 1: I can't move, would wake up? Who is Janet? And
Speaker 1: then the other person texting him makes a sad face.
Speaker 1: She's the Secretary of Treasury. Congratulations, ladies and gentlemen. Not
Speaker 1: only is George Santos a complete, an utter fraudster, he
Speaker 1: also had no idea who Janny Yellen was.
Speaker 2: That's kind of a big Manza ball right there.
Speaker 1: Also, I would like to add, at no point does
Speaker 1: Representative Santos appear to have owned a Maserati, despite telling
Speaker 1: campaign staff otherwise. Also, I would like to add he
Speaker 1: spent four thousand, five hundred dollars at Ermes.
Speaker 2: That was a.
Speaker 1: Campaign money, and for that he is our moment of
Speaker 1: fuck ray. That's it for this episode of Fast Poloty.
Speaker 1: Tune in every Monday, Wednesday and Friday to hear the
Speaker 1: best minds in politics makes sense of all this chaos.
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Speaker 1: for listening.