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 Judge Cannon has rejected Jack Smith's
Speaker 1: request for a gag order against Donald Trump in the
Speaker 1: classified documents case. We have such a great show for you.
Speaker 1: Former presidential candidate Tom Steyer stops by to talk about
Speaker 1: his new book, Cheaper, Faster, Better, how We'll win the
Speaker 1: climate wars. Then we'll talk to the New York Times
Speaker 1: is David Leonhard about neo populism. But first we have
Speaker 1: MSNBC columnist and contributor and friend of mine Charlie Sykes.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Fast Politics. Charlie Sykes.
Speaker 2: Well, things are going so well, aren't they.
Speaker 1: We were just before this. I was like, tell me, honestly,
Speaker 1: when does American democracy? And okay, but this is like
Speaker 1: democratic hand ringing. I want to point out something that
Speaker 1: I was writing a piece about polls, and so this
Speaker 1: fact came back into the vernacular and I want to
Speaker 1: talk to you about it. Donald Trump actually underperformed all
Speaker 1: of these primary contests, despite the fact that he was
Speaker 1: running again to no one.
Speaker 2: Well, that's right, and even though Nicky Haley was Nicky Haley,
Speaker 2: as we should have known she was going to be.
Speaker 2: That doesn't mean that she's going to change the dynamic
Speaker 2: of what you'sa on the primary is that there are
Speaker 2: a lot of Republicans that just are not at this
Speaker 2: point willing to vote for Donald Trump. Now, you know,
Speaker 2: I mean, the big question is do they all come home?
Speaker 2: Do they consolidate? Is there this process of normalization where
Speaker 2: Nicky says, well, of course I'll vote for Donald Trump,
Speaker 2: you know, And then you get the various CEOs who
Speaker 2: decide that tax policy involving passed through interest is way
Speaker 2: more important than any of these other issues, like to
Speaker 2: like democracy or whether or not people have just made
Speaker 2: the decision that Donald Trump is just too deplorable. This
Speaker 2: is the mind blowing thing. I don't know, if you
Speaker 2: read my piece in The Atlantic where I talked about airsickness,
Speaker 2: where it's disorienting, it's vertigenous to watch Donald Trump, to
Speaker 2: listen to Donald Trump, to see how he behaves, who
Speaker 2: this man is, and that not just millions of voters,
Speaker 2: because I mean, you know, I've decided that it's okay,
Speaker 2: but you know, people who know better in the Republican Party.
Speaker 2: So we're going to find out whether or not we
Speaker 2: have the replay of twenty sixteen where they all hold
Speaker 2: their nose and figure that, you know, tribalism is more
Speaker 2: important than democracy, or whether or not we're still going
Speaker 2: to have ten twenty percent of Republicans saying yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: screw that, I'm not when we're not getting on the
Speaker 2: Trump train. Who knows?
Speaker 1: Yeah, And nobody knows, and anyone who tells you they
Speaker 1: know doesn't know. And in fact, even you know, Nate
Speaker 1: Cohen from the New York Times, who's a polster, wrote
Speaker 1: a really good piece about just how difficult it is
Speaker 1: to measure a shifting electorate. Right, the electorate who voted
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen will make Trump president again. That is
Speaker 1: a very shaky electorate that hadn't voted in any other
Speaker 1: election ever, And so they may not come out in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four and.
Speaker 2: We won't know for money and moms, And this week
Speaker 2: is going to be rather significant, right, I mean, this
Speaker 2: is going to be a pivotal week. We're going to
Speaker 2: get the you know, as you and I are speaking,
Speaker 2: they're they're concluding the you know, the final arguments in
Speaker 2: the Trump hush money trial, and we're probably going to
Speaker 2: get a verdict one way or another. It's either going
Speaker 2: to be guilty, not guilty, or a hung jury. I
Speaker 2: think it's very unlikely it's going to be not guilty
Speaker 2: or split charges, and of course you know within that
Speaker 2: subset you have split charges. The big question of twenty
Speaker 2: twenty four, as it has been feels like for the
Speaker 2: last eight years, is does anything matter? Will anything make
Speaker 2: a difference. I'm in the camp that says that until
Speaker 2: proven otherwise, a felony conviction is not a plus. That
Speaker 2: doesn't mean it's going to be decisive, but it is
Speaker 2: not a plus. It makes it even more cringe worthy
Speaker 2: for all the Republicans to gather here in my hometown
Speaker 2: in Milwaukee and nominate a convicted felon. That seems problematic
Speaker 2: to me. But then I'm old school.
Speaker 1: I agree that a criminal conviction does not help Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: and I think that again, I feel like, what happens
Speaker 1: with punditry, and you tell me if I'm wrong, is
Speaker 1: there's so much thinking that people start to like game
Speaker 1: out different insane scenarios and all of a sudden, you're like,
Speaker 1: Trump didn't win the primaries because he got indicted. He
Speaker 1: won the primaries because nobody ran as anything else but
Speaker 1: mimeographs of him.
Speaker 2: You're right, there's so many aspects to all of this.
Speaker 2: It is still remarkable. It is still amazing that Donald
Speaker 2: Trump is is going to be the Republican nominee. But
Speaker 2: you're right about the pundit brain. I've actually been trying
Speaker 2: to step away from that because you know, you have
Speaker 2: your face pressed up against the screen, you know, pressed
Speaker 2: up against that, you know, fire hose of speculation, and
Speaker 2: the answer is, we don't know. So you know, what
Speaker 2: I'm trying to do is step back and say, you know,
Speaker 2: what's actually happening to the country, and what are the stakes?
Speaker 2: And I wish the media would focus less on the
Speaker 2: horse race than the stakes. But the problem is is
Speaker 2: that there are so many rabbit holes, and they're so
Speaker 2: tempting to go down, and with the best of intentions,
Speaker 2: every once in a while, I'll realize, how did I
Speaker 2: get here at the the rabbit hole? Why have I
Speaker 2: spent now hours speculating about something that a week from
Speaker 2: now we'll know the answer one way or another. I mean,
Speaker 2: we will know whether Trump is convicted or not. So
Speaker 2: we could spend hours talking about like what was the
Speaker 2: effect of Costello's cross examination or how did Michael Cohen do? Okay,
Speaker 2: you know we're going to find out pretty soon, you know,
Speaker 2: so maybe take a deep breath. Everybody needs, all of
Speaker 2: America needs to take a deep breath and decide where
Speaker 2: do we want to go as a country? Are you
Speaker 2: really going to do this again? And frankly, I'm not
Speaker 2: interested in having a debate about tax policy right now.
Speaker 2: It's like this, this is the reality facing us.
Speaker 1: I think that's a really good point, and I do
Speaker 1: think that one of the things that I'm struck by
Speaker 1: is if you don't follow politics at all, you like
Speaker 1: Donald Trump, but if you read newspapers you don't so like.
Speaker 1: Clearly there is an infration vacuum here that is I
Speaker 1: think created by technology companies, or at least exacerbated by
Speaker 1: technology companies, that is interesting, destructive, and quite scary.
Speaker 3: Can we talk about that.
Speaker 2: We can blame the media for this, but I also
Speaker 2: think that there's something that's happened in American culture that
Speaker 2: is perhaps underappreciative, or maybe maybe we're faced with it
Speaker 2: every single day that you know, there had been an
Speaker 2: assumption that we understood what the American character was what
Speaker 2: the American people wanted, how deep and broad our sense
Speaker 2: of a consensus about liberal constitutional democracy was. And maybe
Speaker 2: that's all wrong, you know. And as I said, pulling
Speaker 2: the lens back, I was reading something this morning. I
Speaker 2: think it was an old quote from Bill Clinton, of
Speaker 2: all people, who said, basically, in American politics, people want
Speaker 2: the strong person, and they don't want to vote for
Speaker 2: the weak person. And right now, Donald Trump, again, keep
Speaker 2: in mind, you and I we follow this. We know
Speaker 2: what Donald Trump tweeted, I mean, bleeded out on one more.
Speaker 2: We know what Donald Trump says. But let's pull back
Speaker 2: to people who are not that that engage. They see
Speaker 2: Donald Trump right now as a stronger and more dynamic figure,
Speaker 2: and they see Joe Biden as sort of weak and
Speaker 2: struggling to become more relevant, which is again kind of
Speaker 2: the mind blowing thing. The man's the president of the
Speaker 2: United States, and yet he is overshadowed by this clown
Speaker 2: figure who is facing felony charges in New York. And
Speaker 2: I think this is part of the problem that Joe
Speaker 2: Biden has. And I think the cliche, of course, is
Speaker 2: to focus on Biden's age. It's a fill in for
Speaker 2: this larger sense of like, what is he doing? What
Speaker 2: does he stand for? Is he up for it? Is
Speaker 2: he the strong leader who is going to solve all
Speaker 2: of these problems that we face here. And I think
Speaker 2: that that's something that I get the sense the White
Speaker 2: House understands that. I think you're seeing these attempts, but
Speaker 2: it is difficult. I think you know that Donald Trump
Speaker 2: is painting with these broad, crude, you know colors, you know,
Speaker 2: garish colors. You know that I am the leader, I
Speaker 2: am the change agent. And you get a much more mixed,
Speaker 2: more nuanced message from Joe Biden, which in our culture
Speaker 2: has a much harder time breaking through.
Speaker 4: It's so depressing.
Speaker 1: I mean, whatever, we shouldn't despair because we're just months
Speaker 1: and months away. But the thing about having the world's
Speaker 1: longest election is that Trump has been running for president
Speaker 1: now since a week after the midterms.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it feels like we have been in this campaign
Speaker 2: now for eight years. I mean, it feels as if
Speaker 2: and this is this is part of the disorientation, you
Speaker 2: know how I mean, I remember back in twenty fifteen
Speaker 2: and twenty sixteen thinking, you know, how disastrous it would
Speaker 2: be if Donald Trump was elected and yet we had
Speaker 2: no idea. We had no idea the effect that he
Speaker 2: would have. I think you could find things that we
Speaker 2: wrote that said we thought we did. But the degree
Speaker 2: in which he has changed the media environment, the cultural environment,
Speaker 2: the moral environment, what is considered ecceptible, what is considered disqualifying.
Speaker 1: And the Republican Party.
Speaker 2: Look, there's no question about it. There were people who
Speaker 2: thought the Republican Party would change Donald Trump.
Speaker 4: It did not.
Speaker 2: Donald Trump changed the Republican Party. And we see that
Speaker 2: on a daily basis.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean I was at this dinner in DC and
Speaker 1: a person who's a you know, very smart writer, editor genius,
Speaker 1: was saying the thing that just made me want to die.
Speaker 1: I was thinking about the day to day corruption that
Speaker 1: Trump normalized. You know, we were talking about Scott Pruitt.
Speaker 1: Remember Scott Prewit, Yes.
Speaker 4: I do.
Speaker 2: I actually see nobody else, Yeah, with.
Speaker 1: The tactical pants who went to Cafe Milano every night.
Speaker 1: I mean, there were so many, you know, sort of
Speaker 1: this low level corruption in government, which already Americans had
Speaker 1: anxiety about, got so exacerbated. It was just I don't know,
Speaker 1: just thinking about it makes me shudder.
Speaker 2: But here here's the bad News Molley, and we're going
Speaker 2: to look back nostalgically upon that era because a Trump
Speaker 2: two point zero presidency is not going to be peopled
Speaker 2: by even quasi normies. You look back on the Trump cabinet.
Speaker 2: Actually I did this the other day. Go back to
Speaker 2: look at the Trump cabinet in early twenty seventeen. Now,
Speaker 2: we were all hair on fire about what it represented,
Speaker 2: but that was a you know, by current standards, and this,
Speaker 2: by the way, shows how the window has moved. You
Speaker 2: look back and go, that was a pretty normal cabinet.
Speaker 2: You know, by and large, those were actual grown ups
Speaker 2: who had who had accomplished and said. But one of
Speaker 2: the things that Donald Trump has learned, he's the lesson
Speaker 2: he's learned is I don't want those grown up normies
Speaker 2: around me. I don't want anyone who's going to say,
Speaker 2: I don't want a vice president like Mike Pence, who
Speaker 2: may be you know, slavishly loyal, but but has you know,
Speaker 2: still a little bit of integrity and principle left. I
Speaker 2: have to make sure that all of that is gone.
Speaker 4: So yeah, yeah, we have.
Speaker 2: The low level sort of discrudity and the grifters, like
Speaker 2: like the Scott Prewitz of the world. What's coming, I
Speaker 2: think is going to be much much worse.
Speaker 1: But what is interesting when you look at these dat
Speaker 1: ballot right is Republicans have a very good Senate map
Speaker 1: for them, but they don't have great candidates.
Speaker 2: No, they have done this again and again over the years,
Speaker 2: nominated bizarre, unelectable candidates. And this goes back as long
Speaker 2: as I can remember him in the Sharon engeles and
Speaker 2: I mean, who can forget Christine O'Donnell i am not
Speaker 2: a witch or Todd Aiken talking about legitimate rate in
Speaker 2: the before times, those comments, you know, that kind of
Speaker 2: behavior was automatically disqualifying, And of course Donald Trump says
Speaker 2: or does something almost on a daily basis that would
Speaker 2: have been disqualifying for any other generation of candidates. So
Speaker 2: they're testing the proposition about whether or not those standards
Speaker 2: exist now down ballot as well, whether or not they're
Speaker 2: going to blow these races as they have in the past,
Speaker 2: or whether or not the moral window has shifted so
Speaker 2: radically that people will go, yeah, we just don't care
Speaker 2: about that crazy shit.
Speaker 1: It does seem to me, though, while the Republican Party
Speaker 1: has gone along with Trump, these Senate candidates. The thing
Speaker 1: that unites all of them is that they are most
Speaker 1: of them are self funders, right, because that money needs
Speaker 1: to go to Donald Trump's criminal cases, his criminal lawyers,
Speaker 1: so that money is not for candidates. But then also
Speaker 1: so they're largely self funders, and then they also tend
Speaker 1: to be carpetbaggers. So you got Dave McCormick flying from
Speaker 1: Greenwich to Pennsylvania. Right, You've got Eric Hovdy, he's got
Speaker 1: a weird mustache, he owns banks in California. You have
Speaker 1: flying to Wisconsin. I mean, that's clearly a thing they're doing, right.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 2: You know, McCormick is probably the closest to the normy
Speaker 2: candidate that Republicans would like. I just don't know whether
Speaker 2: or not carpetbagging carries the way that perhaps once would have.
Speaker 2: We have a long tradition of people, you know, moving around.
Speaker 2: You know, Eric Hovedy in Wisconsin is an interesting case
Speaker 2: because he has been almost completely absent from Wisconsin politics
Speaker 2: since his last Senate bid. I know the guy, I've
Speaker 2: had lunch with him, and let's just say that he
Speaker 2: does not lack for healthy self regard guard I mean,
Speaker 2: really healthy self regard. But having said that, I would
Speaker 2: love an explanation for why he's wearing the seventies porn stash.
Speaker 2: I just I don't quite get that he's one of
Speaker 2: those candidates that I don't think is going to wear well,
Speaker 2: even though he's been polling reasonably well. But those are
Speaker 2: the candidates that I think, at least on paper, they're
Speaker 2: not the Carrie Lake type candidate. And Carrie Lake is
Speaker 2: an interesting person because Arizona is very much a swing
Speaker 2: state that ought to have been top of the target.
Speaker 2: And here once again you see the Republicans who apparently
Speaker 2: are at least conceding that one seat. Whether that's going
Speaker 2: to make a difference, but I think that we need
Speaker 2: to go into this election with the assumption that there
Speaker 2: is going to be a Republican Senate just because of
Speaker 2: the map what's going on, you know, in West Virginia,
Speaker 2: because that's almost an automatic pickup for the Republicans. And
Speaker 2: so this is what also makes the prospect of a
Speaker 2: Trump presidency so dangerous, because I don't know whether Republicans
Speaker 2: are still telling themselves quietly, Okay, this is bad, but
Speaker 2: we have to go along with it, because at least
Speaker 2: he's not Joe Biden, and we will be able to
Speaker 2: control him. How bad could it be? Well, when's the
Speaker 2: last time that we actually saw the Republicans effectively act
Speaker 2: as a check on Donald Trump? And does anyone really
Speaker 2: believe that a Republican Senate would turn down the more
Speaker 2: egregious appointees. I just I'm again, the default setting has
Speaker 2: to be the Republican Party will always cave to Donald
Speaker 2: Trump when it comes to things like personnel and judges.
Speaker 1: Right, And I think that's a really good point. There's
Speaker 1: not going to be any checks and balances. That's what
Speaker 1: it is. And I think there weren't that many checks
Speaker 1: and balances the last time.
Speaker 2: Mitch McConnell would every once in a while toy with
Speaker 2: it and play with it, but then would cave in.
Speaker 2: But speaking of checks and balances, I just can we
Speaker 2: focus on one positive things? One positive thing? Over the
Speaker 2: weekend Trump's appearance at the Libertarian convention.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, And that didn't get that much news. And
Speaker 1: it was amazing.
Speaker 2: That's why I want to mention that it was amazing. Now,
Speaker 2: now the Libertarian Party as opposed to libertarianism, I I'm
Speaker 2: open to libertarianism. Libertarian party has been kind of taken
Speaker 2: over by crackpots a long time ago. I mean, this
Speaker 2: is an eccentric group. And so one of the questions
Speaker 2: was have they become so crackpotty that they would be
Speaker 2: open to an RFK that they would actually think that
Speaker 2: Donald Trump is a libertarian? And I don't know what
Speaker 2: they were thinking. I mean, this is a really interesting question.
Speaker 2: What were the Trump folks thinking. What did they think
Speaker 2: was going to happen when he showed up at this
Speaker 2: libertarian convention? Because they bowed the shit out of him.
Speaker 2: I mean they chump. I mean, it was it was
Speaker 2: a make Rick Wilson says, somebody's going to lose their
Speaker 2: job over this, and you think so, I mean, he's
Speaker 2: got to come off the stage and going did anybody
Speaker 2: know it was going to be this bad? Because people,
Speaker 2: everyone knew it was going to be this bad, and
Speaker 2: there it was, and they're like hippocrid, hippocrede, hippie grip.
Speaker 2: So it was one of those rare, rare moments where
Speaker 2: Donald Trump has stepped out of the bubble of his
Speaker 2: own rallies. He does travel in a bubble except when
Speaker 2: he has to course no face his felony charges. It
Speaker 2: was interesting to watch how he handled and of course
Speaker 2: he snapped them and said, well, you know what you
Speaker 2: want your three percent.
Speaker 1: Of the vote.
Speaker 2: You know you want to lose that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: You know how to win friends and influence people. So
Speaker 2: it was a reminder how Trump kind of melts down
Speaker 2: when he's confronted with people who are calling out his bullshit.
Speaker 2: And basically, you had an entire convention basically saying Trump bullshit.
Speaker 2: You've had your shot. You're not a libertarian, you don't
Speaker 2: represent liberty. And I think in the end he got
Speaker 2: out of eight hundred votes, I think he got six
Speaker 2: right ends, which is Chef's kiss. So much moved, but
Speaker 2: Molly was also interesting watching people like Mike Lee go
Speaker 2: on television the next day and implying that this was
Speaker 2: great or the usual turd polishers suggesting that maybe it
Speaker 2: wasn't so bad after all, And of course Donald Trump
Speaker 2: is pretending it's not so bad after so they have
Speaker 2: gotten so used to this gas lighting of like, don't
Speaker 2: you know, pay attention to what actually happened, what you
Speaker 2: saw with your own eyes. I'm going to tell a
Speaker 2: completely different story. They have become a addicted to gas lighting.
Speaker 2: But also it shows how much contempt they have for
Speaker 2: the voters that they honestly think that they can tell
Speaker 2: the voters, no, what you just saw happen did not happen.
Speaker 2: I am going to create my own completely bogus reality,
Speaker 2: and you are dumb enough or gullible enough to believe it.
Speaker 2: That contempt for the voters, I think, well, it certainly
Speaker 2: doesn't speak well of their respect for American democracy. And
Speaker 2: we'll see whether or not their lack of confidence is justified.
Speaker 1: Charlie Sikes, you are awesome. I appreciate you so much.
Speaker 2: And you are a great American. Milling good talking with you.
Speaker 1: Spring is here, and I bet you are trying to
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Speaker 1: Tom Steyer is a former twenty twenty presidential candidate and
Speaker 1: author of Cheaper, Faster, Better, How We'll Win the Climate War.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Fast Politics, Tom Steyer.
Speaker 4: Molly, good morning, So.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about this book. I know I feel like
Speaker 1: I know why you wrote it, but I want you
Speaker 1: to explain to us sort of why you decided to
Speaker 1: write this book your trajectory, since you've always been in
Speaker 1: the climate space, but explain to us why you decided
Speaker 1: to write this well.
Speaker 5: I wanted to write this book because I think the
Speaker 5: two prevailing theories about where we are in the energy
Speaker 5: transition are both wrong. The first one is that we
Speaker 5: rely on fossil fuels. We've always relied on fossil fuels,
Speaker 5: and we must always rely on fossil fuels, and that's
Speaker 5: not true. And the second one is that the climate
Speaker 5: is changing, it's changing fast, We've lost control, We're doomed,
Speaker 5: and that's not true. What I wanted to say was
Speaker 5: something diametrically opposed to both of those points, which which is, yes,
Speaker 5: the natural world is changing faster than most people understand,
Speaker 5: and not in a good way. But the technology and
Speaker 5: our ability to solve that problem and to basically create
Speaker 5: a better world is much greater than people understand. And
Speaker 5: so why don't we acknowledge that we have an issue
Speaker 5: and do what Americans do best, which is when there
Speaker 5: is something serious to be dealt with, we come together.
Speaker 5: And solve it together. And that's what I'm proposing, is
Speaker 5: why don't we just win? Why don't we go back
Speaker 5: to coming together and winning together instead of either one
Speaker 5: of the two memes that people seem to believe, neither
Speaker 5: of which is true.
Speaker 1: My long suffering spouse was an academic and is very
Speaker 1: very smart and wrong about a lot of stuff, but smart.
Speaker 1: But he's really right, or at least he has the
Speaker 1: same exact theory of the cases you do, which is
Speaker 1: we're blowing through that one and a half degree change, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, we're going to miss all our numbers when
Speaker 1: it comes to Paris climate. I mean, talk to us
Speaker 1: about sort of the state of where we are right now.
Speaker 5: Sure your description of it perfectly fits the United States
Speaker 5: of America, because what the people in running Paris, which
Speaker 5: was the UN group, said that we should not go
Speaker 5: through one and a half degrees see change celsius change.
Speaker 5: Of course, no one in America lives in celsius.
Speaker 2: No one knows what that means.
Speaker 5: That is absolute gobbledegook. Secondly, people are saying, you know,
Speaker 5: we are terribly scared about carbon dioxide. What you can't
Speaker 5: touch it, you can't smell it, you can't see it.
Speaker 5: No one knows what they're even talking about. And people
Speaker 5: are going like this is terrible. It's like what Yeah,
Speaker 5: So let me say this. What we've seen that scientists
Speaker 5: and people focused on this problem notice, is that we're
Speaker 5: getting warmer, faster than scientists had predicted. And what the
Speaker 5: people in Paris in twenty fifteen said is, don't go
Speaker 5: through one and a half degrees celsius, which is somewhere
Speaker 5: too between two and three degrees fahrenheit, which is where
Speaker 5: we all live, right And they said, if you go
Speaker 5: through that, you're going to start taking a lot of risk.
Speaker 5: And if you go through two degrees celsius, which is
Speaker 5: three point six degrees fahrenheit, you're going to get into
Speaker 5: a lot of trouble right now if you do the
Speaker 5: last twelve months, The last twelve months were one point
Speaker 5: six degrees celsius hotter than pre industrial So those are
Speaker 5: all just numbers that scientists care about. They are going
Speaker 5: faster than people expected, The impacts are greater than scientists predicted,
Speaker 5: and so yes, we have a real issue on our
Speaker 5: hands that is worse than the un expected or all
Speaker 5: these scientists expected. Having said that, yeah, that's why we have.
Speaker 5: If it weren't a real thing, I wouldn't be spending
Speaker 5: a ton of time trying to work on it and
Speaker 5: invest in solutions and come up with solutions. But the
Speaker 5: other thing that's true is I can look at those
Speaker 5: solutions day to day and say, Wow, that's great. We
Speaker 5: not only have the ability to win this, we are
Speaker 5: winning it. We're definitely going to win it. So why
Speaker 5: don't we do that together and do what Americans do,
Speaker 5: which is pull together in a crisis.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I'm struck by is it
Speaker 1: seems like people, for example, we just had someone on
Speaker 1: this podcast to talk about Florida. Florida is feeling the
Speaker 1: effects of the climate crisis on the regular Right, they
Speaker 1: have tornadoes in ways they've never had, but also their
Speaker 1: insurance has gone up percentages that are like a joke, right,
Speaker 1: the double tripled, quadrupled. So you know, it's unsustainable to
Speaker 1: have people paying hundreds of dollars of thousands of dollars
Speaker 1: of insurance every month. So I'm curious, like, why do
Speaker 1: you think it's so hard for people to put together
Speaker 1: massive flooding with climate change?
Speaker 5: Well, first, let's take a step back. MALLI, which is this.
Speaker 5: I mean, I know that everything in the country is
Speaker 5: being politicized, every issue, and this is one of them.
Speaker 5: But let's take a step back before we talk about that,
Speaker 5: and that's this. If you pull registered Republicans, they get it.
Speaker 5: If you ask them, should we have a stronger climate
Speaker 5: response from the federal government, they say yes. No, one
Speaker 5: is unsure about what's going on because everybody is seeing
Speaker 5: the impact. As you said, you know the most Republican,
Speaker 5: the reddest states are kind of in arms way more
Speaker 5: than anybody else. Or to Texas, Louisiana, you know that
Speaker 5: whole Gulf Coast. Yes, so people actually know it. But
Speaker 5: if you look at Republican voters, they will say, yes,
Speaker 5: we should have a stronger climate response. Yes, I know
Speaker 5: this is happening. Yes, I know it's human cause somewhere.
Speaker 5: But depending on how you ask the question, somewhere between
Speaker 5: fifty five and seventy five percent. The issue is they
Speaker 5: don't see it as a critical urgent issue from a
Speaker 5: voting standpoint, and therefore, you know, it doesn't really matter
Speaker 5: to the people they're voting for because it's not going
Speaker 5: to change their vote, and politicians care about things that
Speaker 5: change votes. But having said that. Yes, Really, what we're
Speaker 5: talking about in trying to solve this is to a
Speaker 5: avoid almost unimaginable human suffering, and we can definitely do it.
Speaker 5: And all of us want that, and all of us,
Speaker 5: you know, want our country to be strong and to
Speaker 5: do the right thing and for America to be the
Speaker 5: leader and the that we've always been. So when I
Speaker 5: look at this, I say, sure, why is insurance up
Speaker 5: in Florida. Well, if you build a house in a
Speaker 5: floodplane and you know that it's going to flood, insurance
Speaker 5: companies have to charge a lot of money or they're
Speaker 5: going to lose a lot. You know, Normally building a
Speaker 5: house in a floodplane is not advisable, and you can't
Speaker 5: ask an insurance company to take away the risk if
Speaker 5: the risk is really overwhelming. So we are in a
Speaker 5: situation where we need to adapt to what's changed and prevent,
Speaker 5: you know, really use the new technologies. That's why my
Speaker 5: book is called Cheaper, Faster, Better, Use stuff that is better.
Speaker 5: We're not asking people to buy stuff they don't want.
Speaker 5: We're saying, let's win in the marketplace. Let's create the products,
Speaker 5: Let's create the processes that actually give us a better
Speaker 5: life so that people choose them willingly. And that's where
Speaker 5: we are and that's what we're trying to do. And
Speaker 5: that works for Democrats, that works for Republicans, that works
Speaker 5: for America.
Speaker 1: So let's do a minute or two on why this
Speaker 1: is so much cheaper, because at this point you have
Speaker 1: a state like Texas. These are not left y ideologes, right,
Speaker 1: they are absolutely very The leadership in Texas very right wing.
Speaker 1: They are running largely on solar. I mean, the reason
Speaker 1: that their grid did not die this winter as it
Speaker 1: has in previous winters was because of solar. So though
Speaker 1: they're not running largely on it, there certainly are checks
Speaker 1: and balances courtesy of solar because solar is cheaper. So
Speaker 1: make it make sense, is well.
Speaker 5: First of all, Texas has a very special electric grid,
Speaker 5: and it's self contained and is designed to be as
Speaker 5: competitive and free market as possible, as you said, while
Speaker 5: the legislators in Texas have been saying how bad renewables
Speaker 5: are and how important it is to support the fossil
Speaker 5: fuel economy, the amount of solar in Texas is tripled
Speaker 5: twenty eighteen. It's scheduled to go up another thirty five
Speaker 5: percent this year. They have more solar than they have coal.
Speaker 5: They're by far the biggest wind producer in the United
Speaker 5: States of America because wind is solar cheaper, and they
Speaker 5: need that for that grid because they also have had
Speaker 5: some really cold storms and they have really really hot summers,
Speaker 5: and so to protect people from really to protect their
Speaker 5: health and the extremes of cold and heat, they need
Speaker 5: a grid that's resilient. And by the way, solar and
Speaker 5: wind are the cheapest sources of energy. So when we
Speaker 5: think about cheaper, faster, better, Texas is a perfect example
Speaker 5: because human beings are smart, and solar power used to
Speaker 5: be a heck of a lot more expensive than fossil
Speaker 5: fuel power, and so did with but you know what,
Speaker 5: people kept working on it and working on it and
Speaker 5: working on it and making it better and cheaper and
Speaker 5: better and cheaper, and now it's much cheaper. And you
Speaker 5: want to know something, it's going to get a lot
Speaker 5: cheaper from there. So when we look at this, what
Speaker 5: we're seeing is human ingenuity. American ingenuity is better than
Speaker 5: dead dinosaurs. It's better now, and it's going to only continue.
Speaker 5: That gap is only going to continue cheaper, faster, better.
Speaker 1: Can you talk for a minute about this sort of
Speaker 1: grid update.
Speaker 5: So, look, one of the things that has been true
Speaker 5: in the United States is we can see how all
Speaker 5: of these technologies work, but they have to be their
Speaker 5: physical things that have to be built in the real world,
Speaker 5: which means they have to be permitted in the real world,
Speaker 5: and then they have to be attached to the electric
Speaker 5: grids so that the energy can be delivered to consumers.
Speaker 5: And that is both of those things have proved because
Speaker 5: the approvals and the way that they pay for access
Speaker 5: to the grid are all really old fashioned and cumbersome
Speaker 5: and slow and cause incredible delays and cost Having said that,
Speaker 5: so one of the things is we need to simplify
Speaker 5: the approval mechanism for both permitting new renewable installations and
Speaker 5: also easing access to the grid, because they are both
Speaker 5: gigantic bottlenecks. Having said which, you know, you know, we
Speaker 5: see incredible technological work being done across the board, Molly,
Speaker 5: And there's a company that I highlight in my book
Speaker 5: called Veer Technology, which is basically created a technology that
Speaker 5: allows standard power lines to carry up to five times
Speaker 5: more energy so you don't have to rebuild the grid
Speaker 5: in order to do this. That in fact, there's a
Speaker 5: technology to use the existing grid, to use the existing
Speaker 5: footprint and carry five times as much electricity. And that's
Speaker 5: my point about human ingenuity and American ingenuity. You know
Speaker 5: the guy who started that, Tim Heidel. There are people
Speaker 5: out there looking at how to improve the world from
Speaker 5: a climate response standpoint in a thousand ways, and they
Speaker 5: are all over the place, and they're doing it from
Speaker 5: every angle and they're brilliant. And when you look at it,
Speaker 5: it's like I keep saying, let's come together and solve
Speaker 5: this together. Because we have some great young people around
Speaker 5: the country who are putting all of their energy and
Speaker 5: all of their brain power into figuring out how to
Speaker 5: make this work in the real world. And that's very
Speaker 5: exciting to see. And we have existing incredible technology that
Speaker 5: we can deploy, but also we have so many ideas
Speaker 5: that are so great and not all of them are work,
Speaker 5: but a whole bunch of them will.
Speaker 1: And then we have people like Elon Mosk. Yes, you
Speaker 1: use climate tax incentives to become a complete fascist. I
Speaker 1: mean it infuriates me to know.
Speaker 4: And that is all.
Speaker 5: Look in this people are going to do the right thing.
Speaker 5: From your standpoint, and my standpoint for a whole bunch
Speaker 5: of different reasons. And you know what, we're going to
Speaker 5: have to accept that Americans don't always agree on the
Speaker 5: reasons for doing things, but we need to agree on
Speaker 5: what we're going to accomplish. And if people want to
Speaker 5: do this just purely to make money, and they're gonna
Speaker 5: that's all they're interested in, and it's too fine, right,
Speaker 5: who cares incentive to do things that benefit us all
Speaker 5: and to build companies that help solve this this crisis
Speaker 5: and they do things that I say, fine, It's like,
Speaker 5: we don't need people to have the perfect incentive. We
Speaker 5: need people to work together to solve the problem. And
Speaker 5: if and they're definitely not going to agree on everything,
Speaker 5: and you know what, that's Americans never agree on everything, right,
Speaker 5: and come together in a crisis and put aside our
Speaker 5: differences and just work together. And you know what, if
Speaker 5: people do it for reasons that we don't agree with,
Speaker 5: if they're doing the work, I say, God bless them.
Speaker 1: I think that's a really good attitude, especially in a
Speaker 1: situation like this where really we're in such a dire state.
Speaker 1: Can you do two seconds on methane? In your take
Speaker 1: on methane.
Speaker 5: Sure, when we think about electricity, people tend to think
Speaker 5: about it in terms of cost per kilo odd hour,
Speaker 5: And if you look at it in terms of cost
Speaker 5: per kilo ood hour, by far the cheapest ways of
Speaker 5: producing energy are solar and wind are the renewables, and
Speaker 5: to be fair, in twenty twenty three last year, of
Speaker 5: the new electricity generation in the world, eighty six percent
Speaker 5: of it was renewable. But when you talk to people
Speaker 5: who are charged with making sure that we have electricity
Speaker 5: twenty four seven three sixty five, they distinguish between the
Speaker 5: energy that is so called intermittent. So solar is intermittent
Speaker 5: because the sun is not always shining, and wind is
Speaker 5: intermittent because the wind is not always blown. But fossil
Speaker 5: fuel energy is something where it's sitting somewhere waiting to
Speaker 5: be used. So therefore it can be considered quote unquote
Speaker 5: base load energy. And the argument that people are using
Speaker 5: now to create more methane capability or they use the
Speaker 5: words natural gas or liquefied natural gas capability around the
Speaker 5: world is for basically that base load, which they say
Speaker 5: is it's not enough to have cheap energy, you need
Speaker 5: to have cheap energy all the time. And so when
Speaker 5: you look at it, people have said that, Okay, methane
Speaker 5: is half as polluting as coal, So if we replace
Speaker 5: coal with methane, that is an improvement of fifty percent.
Speaker 5: That's a big step forward, that's the argument.
Speaker 4: But it makes the climate much hotter, much faster.
Speaker 5: Right. That be true in the lab, but it's not
Speaker 5: true in the real world. If methane escapes as you're
Speaker 5: trying to get deliver it to people's houses to heat
Speaker 5: or cool, that escape. It's an incredibly powerful greenhouse gas.
Speaker 5: And if more than a couple percent escapes, it's worse
Speaker 5: than coal actually in the short run. So the fact
Speaker 5: of the matter is, and we're not sure how much
Speaker 5: escapes because but from what we can tell, it's very
Speaker 5: likely that at least two percent escapes. So it's really
Speaker 5: not a clean solution. It is a solution that is baselok,
Speaker 5: but it's not a clean one. So if we build
Speaker 5: a lot more natural gas capability, which the United States,
Speaker 5: you know, there are a lot of people in the
Speaker 5: United States who want to do that. If we build
Speaker 5: that capability, it's a forty year capability, and that takes
Speaker 5: us that blows us out of the water from meeting
Speaker 5: any of our climacles. It's magical thinking that somehow you
Speaker 5: can keep polluting but pollution won't build up, because of
Speaker 5: course it will. So then the question is, okay, but
Speaker 5: people realistically need to provide energy electricity twenty four to
Speaker 5: seven three sixty five, And how is that possible when
Speaker 5: you have only intermittent stuff? And the answer is, there
Speaker 5: are a bunch of ways that can happen, but the
Speaker 5: biggest one is probably batteries, because what we've seen is
Speaker 5: the cost of batteries of storage. So yes, the sun
Speaker 5: only shines sometimes and the wind only blows sometimes, but
Speaker 5: if you then store it in a battery, you now
Speaker 5: have base load power if the battery lasts long enough,
Speaker 5: and together it's cheap enough, and the cost of battery
Speaker 5: is down eighty percent, and it'll go down a lot more.
Speaker 5: And we're in the process of a lot of people
Speaker 5: building new kinds of batteries and doing new technology and
Speaker 5: batteries to extend duration and to reduce cost. So when
Speaker 5: we look forward, it seems to me in technology there's
Speaker 5: no nothing for certain, but it seems extremely like that
Speaker 5: we will go through a couple of revolutions in battery technology,
Speaker 5: both in terms of cost, which it's already gone through,
Speaker 5: but also in terms of duration so that you can
Speaker 5: actually store the energy long enough so that you have
Speaker 5: a safe twenty four seven, three sixty five. That's the
Speaker 5: first thing I'd say. Second thing is there are a
Speaker 5: couple other things that may fit this bill. One is
Speaker 5: enhanced geothermal, basically tapping the earth for really hot water
Speaker 5: and steam. And the third is can we do safe,
Speaker 5: cheap nuclear. That's very unclear and people in the United
Speaker 5: States have been very scared about both parts of that.
Speaker 5: The safe art is there going to be an accident
Speaker 5: or are we going to create a nuclear waste for
Speaker 5: one hundred thousand years that's incredibly toxic and dangerous to people.
Speaker 5: So they are real issues with nuclear, but people are
Speaker 5: working hard to see if they can solve those. But
Speaker 5: to me, the big issues are going to be, Okay,
Speaker 5: when do the batteries reach a duration when people feel
Speaker 5: like okay, that turns intermittent solar and wind into baseload,
Speaker 5: And I think very simple. I'm a big believer in that,
Speaker 5: and I'm not a big believer in building forty year
Speaker 5: infrastructure for methane when in fact, we're going to solve
Speaker 5: the problem in this decade, that to me seems like
Speaker 5: building a problem that we can't get her out instead
Speaker 5: of trying to come up with a real solution to
Speaker 5: the problem.
Speaker 1: Tom Steyer, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 5: Totally right well.
Speaker 1: David Leonhardt is a senior writer at The New York
Speaker 1: Times and author of ours was The Shining Future, The
Speaker 1: Story of the American Dream. Welcome back to Fast Politics.
Speaker 4: Thanks Molly, it's great to be back.
Speaker 1: So happy to have you back. I actually was listening
Speaker 1: to a rival podcast and you were on there, and
Speaker 1: I was like, wait, I was.
Speaker 4: Like, that's a fair I will always come on your podcast.
Speaker 1: Very good because you know, one of the things about
Speaker 1: having a very entitled childhood was that I always feel
Speaker 1: entitled to get certain guests, and so I was like,
Speaker 1: this is not fair. But anyways, so the idea that
Speaker 1: there's something bipartisan in this incredibly contentious moment in American
Speaker 1: politics is a and so will you talk about that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was the idea of one of my editors,
Speaker 4: which is, look, we all talk about how polarized American
Speaker 4: society is, and it is polarized, but we talk about
Speaker 4: it often, sometimes we lapse into descriptions of it's so
Speaker 4: polarized that Washington can't get anything done in gridlock. And
Speaker 4: so let's keep that thought in our mind. Our country
Speaker 4: is polarized. It doesn't always feel like Washington can get
Speaker 4: things done. It doesn't feel like the parties can agree
Speaker 4: on anything. And now let's think about this list. In
Speaker 4: the last several years, the parties under Donald Trump agreed
Speaker 4: on major COVID relief. Under President Biden, there has been
Speaker 4: a bipartisan infrastructure bill that passed, a very big bill, roads, bridges, internet, infrastructure, water,
Speaker 4: you name it. There is a bipartisan bill in the
Speaker 4: semiconducductor industry that passed to try to build up our
Speaker 4: domestic semiconductor industry to make sure we're not relying on
Speaker 4: China or other countries that are unfriendly to the US.
Speaker 4: There's a list of like eight or nine other bipartisan
Speaker 4: bills that aren't as big on veterans' health and antiation,
Speaker 4: hate crimes and even gun violence, and the Electoral count Act.
Speaker 4: We've got Biden continuing many of Trump's trade policies and
Speaker 4: expanding some of them. We just had another major bipartisan
Speaker 4: legislation pass on TikTok and aide to Ukraine and other allies.
Speaker 4: And we just had Democrats in the House save the
Speaker 4: job of the House Republican speaker when far right Republicans
Speaker 4: rebelled against him because of that Ukraine bill, something that
Speaker 4: has basically, according to my colleagues who cover the Hill,
Speaker 4: has never happened. You've never had members of one party
Speaker 4: save another. And I'm not even giving you some of
Speaker 4: the fun performative examples of bipartisanship, like JD Vance saying
Speaker 4: positive things about Lena Khan, President Biden's trust busting head
Speaker 4: of the FTC. And so we look at all this
Speaker 4: and we just say, wait a second, how is this happening?
Speaker 1: I want more on Lena Khan and JD Vance for
Speaker 1: a minute, because this is something I'm particularly interested in,
Speaker 1: and I think Lena Khan is pretty interesting, unusual person.
Speaker 1: So can you just talk about that for a second.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, so, Lena Khan rocketed to wonky stardom. That's right.
Speaker 1: I'm like Lena Kahan. She's a real celebrity. Yeah.
Speaker 4: As a Yale law student, she wrote a law review
Speaker 4: article saying that the country needs to take much more
Speaker 4: seriously Amazon as a monopoly and do something about it.
Speaker 4: Got her a bunch of attentions. She became kind of
Speaker 4: an anti trust activist who got a bunch of attention
Speaker 4: along with Tim Wu and Zephyr teach Out and some
Speaker 4: other legal scholars. And Biden, despite her extremely young age,
Speaker 4: named her to run the Federal Trade Commission. So she's
Speaker 4: one of his, if not his number one, most important
Speaker 4: anti trust regulator. She is, by any measure, one of
Speaker 4: the most progressive members of the Biden administration. She really
Speaker 4: wants to take a new approach to anti trust. And yeah,
Speaker 4: when Jade Vance recently was talking about the Biden administration,
Speaker 4: he said that he thought she was the only member
Speaker 4: of it who was doing a pretty good job. Jd
Speaker 4: Vance is, I think fairly can considered a far right senator.
Speaker 4: So how is it that someone who is a far
Speaker 4: right senator would be praising someone who big business views
Speaker 4: as a far left regulator. And it's that fusion of
Speaker 4: right and left that I think unlocks some of the
Speaker 4: mystery of this bipartisan flur.
Speaker 1: So that's quite interesting. Okay, So there is a place
Speaker 1: where these two worlds meet.
Speaker 4: There is a place where they mean. And look, I
Speaker 4: don't want to exaggerate it. If someone's saying, but abortion,
Speaker 4: transgender rights, but Donald Trump's hostility democracy. Yes, there are
Speaker 4: huge partisan gaps on a lot of issues. Yes, Donald
Speaker 4: Trump threatens democracy in some basic ways. All those things
Speaker 4: are true. If we're trying to make sense of it,
Speaker 4: How is it that there's been bipartisan cooperation on these issues.
Speaker 4: I think there are two main explanations. One is foreign policy.
Speaker 4: We really are in a competition now with China and
Speaker 4: an emerging global alliance that President Biden I think accurately
Speaker 4: calls an alliance of autocracies. They don't work together and everything,
Speaker 4: but they increasingly work together. So that's China, it's Russia,
Speaker 4: it's occasionally North Korea, and it's Iran as well as
Speaker 4: the non state groups that are on backs like Hesba,
Speaker 4: Lahamas and the Huthis. And you really do see cooperation
Speaker 4: among all these countries and groups. They all are authoritarian groups.
Speaker 4: And I think American policy makers of both the Democratic
Speaker 4: and Republican Party, at least a significant number of them,
Speaker 4: have become really worried about this, and particularly about China.
Speaker 4: And in the same way that the Cold War in
Speaker 4: the forties, fifties and sixties sparked a whole bunch of
Speaker 4: bipartisan legislating, the Eisenhower Highway System, the post Sputnik emphasis
Speaker 4: on science education. We see some of that today. So
Speaker 4: that's the semiconductor bill, it's the TikTok bill, a bunch
Speaker 4: of these things, I think our responses to China. It's
Speaker 4: the trade policy. And then the second thing is the
Speaker 4: failure of neoliberalism. And Molly, you and I talked about
Speaker 4: this when I came on to talk about my book
Speaker 4: about the American Dream, and you look at what neoliberalism is,
Speaker 4: which it's these set of policies that reduce regulations and
Speaker 4: shrink labor unions and increase trade and increase immigration and
Speaker 4: basically shrink government and increase market forces. And they happened
Speaker 4: in the seventies and eighties and nineties and early aughts.
Speaker 4: And the promise was that this would deliver prosperity to
Speaker 4: Americans and it would deliver freedom to the world. And
Speaker 4: those promises just haven't been met. China isn't freer, working
Speaker 4: class Americans are not doing particularly well, and so the
Speaker 4: failures of neoliberalism have led to what I described as
Speaker 4: a rise of neo populism. I deliberately picked that term.
Speaker 4: I know some people are uncomfortable with the phrase populism.
Speaker 4: But this neopopulism includes trade restrictions, it includes more investment
Speaker 4: in things like infrastructure and businesses like semiconductors. It basically says, yes,
Speaker 4: we are a capitalist economy, but if the government just
Speaker 4: kind of lets everything go, it doesn't work out that well.
Speaker 4: It hasn't worked out that well for many Americans, and
Speaker 4: despite what the neoliberals told us, it has not remade
Speaker 4: the world in a democratic image.
Speaker 1: So interesting because as we're talking about this, I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: like the left and the right are pretty aligned. Again
Speaker 1: with their anti China sentiment, They're very aligned when it
Speaker 1: comes to the capitalism needs. I mean, how they want
Speaker 1: to do it is different, but you know varies by party,
Speaker 1: but both parties believe that unfettered capitalism hasn't delivered results.
Speaker 1: I mean that's what you're saying, right.
Speaker 4: Yes, I would say I think the Democratic Party is
Speaker 4: very comfortable with that, and I think the Republican Party
Speaker 4: is torn. You do have in the Republican Party figures
Speaker 4: who are comfortable with the idea that we need to
Speaker 4: move on from neoliberalism. That helps explain how some of
Speaker 4: these big pieces of legislation like infrastructure and semiconductor's got
Speaker 4: a meaningful number of Republican votes. It explains the JD.
Speaker 4: Anthley Nakom thing we were talking about. But there's also
Speaker 4: still a really strong part of the Republican Party that
Speaker 4: does believe basically in lasaf fair capitalism. I mean, the
Speaker 4: Supreme Court majority is basically a pro lasafe fair majority.
Speaker 4: Donald Trump doesn't seem to care that much about policy.
Speaker 4: When he campaigns, he campaigns as a populist. When he governs,
Speaker 4: he's a mix. His trade policies are populous, his tax
Speaker 4: cut for rich people is not populist, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, he mostly wants to just do whatever's good
Speaker 1: for him.
Speaker 4: Yes, he doesn't really care about policy details on most issues.
Speaker 4: But his rejection Trump's rejection of laisaif fair economics, the
Speaker 4: fact that he criticized trade, the fact that he stopped
Speaker 4: talking about cutting Medicare and social Security the way Paul
Speaker 4: Ryan was talking about it, did open up the republic
Speaker 4: Can Party to have more people reject the laissez fair
Speaker 4: economics of the eighties and nineties and we see more
Speaker 4: of that now.
Speaker 1: Such an interesting point as we look at this, one
Speaker 1: of the things that I'm struck by is it seems
Speaker 1: like we're tariffs are highly inflationary. Both parties, Biden and
Speaker 1: Trump have decided that tariffs are the way to go
Speaker 1: after China.
Speaker 3: It makes me a little uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: But tell us why they've decided it, and if you
Speaker 1: think they're right to so.
Speaker 4: Tariffs can be highly inflationary, and I think the kind
Speaker 4: of tariffs Trump is talking about probably would be highly
Speaker 4: inflationary because they would apply to everything in the economy.
Speaker 4: But it's also important to remember that tariffs have an
Speaker 4: incredibly successful track record of help to build up economies.
Speaker 4: I mean, the United States became an economic powerhouse in
Speaker 4: part through tariffs to protect our early industries. China has
Speaker 4: become economic powerhouse in part through its own protectionism, the
Speaker 4: fact that other countries can't go freely compete in China.
Speaker 4: And there is a very long successful history of countries
Speaker 4: saying we want to protect this domestic industry for one
Speaker 4: of a number of reasons. Maybe it's national security. You
Speaker 4: need to be making things that protect your national security.
Speaker 4: You can't rely on your global competitors to make those
Speaker 4: because if you go to war, you're going to lose.
Speaker 4: You also want to make sure if you identify an
Speaker 4: industry as being a growing industry important to the future,
Speaker 4: that you're going to have that kind of domestic industry.
Speaker 4: And so it's not clear to me that targeted tariffs,
Speaker 4: say on electric vehicles or semiconductors, are economically harmful. They
Speaker 4: might be, they might also be economically beneficial. And I
Speaker 4: just think it's really important that we get beyond the
Speaker 4: kind of instinct that many of us in kind of
Speaker 4: elite circles have to, oh, my goodness, trade restrictions have
Speaker 4: to be bad. Most Americans are very comfortable with trade restrictions.
Speaker 4: They favor them the same way most Americans favorite immigration restrictions.
Speaker 4: I know this is an overword used, but I think elites,
Speaker 4: by which I mean campaign downers and policy experts and
Speaker 4: journalists and party activists and others, I think they spent
Speaker 4: decades telling Americans, Hey, this kind of open trade, open immigration,
Speaker 4: neoliberal economy is going to be really great for you.
Speaker 4: And many Americans have looked at the evidence and they've said, no,
Speaker 4: it's not. And so the idea that we're actually looking
Speaker 4: at something like tariffs, to me is a sign of
Speaker 4: lower case de democratic health, in which our policy makers
Speaker 4: are saying, Hey, this policy we pursued that people were
Speaker 4: skeptical of didn't work out the way we promised, and
Speaker 4: now they're hostile to it, and maybe we should not
Speaker 4: keep doing the same old thing that hasn't been working.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 1: They're saying that tarifs is really interesting. But I'm hoping
Speaker 1: you could talk now, if we're going to go here
Speaker 1: about immigration, because while there is sort of mixed public
Speaker 1: sentiment on immigration, clearly one of the reasons why we
Speaker 1: as a country are having the best COVID recovery is
Speaker 1: because we have immigration. It's not the only reason, but
Speaker 1: it certainly helped us along. And right now our immigration
Speaker 1: system is in such disarray. I mean, can you just
Speaker 1: speak to sort of where we are with that and
Speaker 1: what that could look like.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, when you say we've had the best
Speaker 4: COVID response, I think it's important to say that's GDP right, right, Right?
Speaker 1: Economic GDP compared to other affluent countries.
Speaker 4: Right, you go ask most people and not just ask them,
Speaker 4: but you look at some of the data on wages.
Speaker 4: You know, the wage recovery and COVID's been fine, but
Speaker 4: it hasn't been great because inflation has been so high.
Speaker 4: So it's not like most Americans have gotten a big
Speaker 4: raise over the last few years. I mean, they haven't,
Speaker 4: and they hate inflation for good reason. It's like a
Speaker 4: tax or a pay cut. Now, immigration isn't the reason
Speaker 4: for that. But I think we should be clear that
Speaker 4: when Americans say that the economy has still been disappointing
Speaker 4: to them, whether that's over the last few years or
Speaker 4: certainly over the last few decades, their right to feel
Speaker 4: that way. I mean, the economic data is in line
Speaker 4: with the idea that the American economy has not been
Speaker 4: serving most people.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 4: I think the left has made a really big mistake
Speaker 4: on immigration, the modern left, and it's not a mistake
Speaker 4: that the left historically made about immigration. A lot of
Speaker 4: parts of the left basically try to pretend that it's
Speaker 4: a free lunch, that it has no downsides, that if
Speaker 4: we have very high levels of immigration it benefits everybody,
Speaker 4: that it benefits the immigrants who are coming, which I
Speaker 4: think it clearly does, and that it also benefits American workers,
Speaker 4: whether it's in the United States or Europe. Or Japan,
Speaker 4: or pretty much any country. Most people are deeply uncomfortable
Speaker 4: with very high levels of immigration, and we have had
Speaker 4: very high levels of immigration, and there are some economic
Speaker 4: costs to that. It expands the labor for and provides
Speaker 4: wage competition. Why do you think it is that doctors
Speaker 4: work really hard to prevent immigrants from immediately coming here
Speaker 4: and competing for jobs. As you probably know, Molly, if
Speaker 4: you're a doctor in another country and you move here,
Speaker 4: you can't just start practicing medicine. You have to have
Speaker 4: your medical training in this country in most instances, which
Speaker 4: means if you're forty or fifty years old, you just
Speaker 4: can't really come here and be a doctor. You'd have
Speaker 4: to spend years getting training to be certified. That's because
Speaker 4: doctors have political power, and they understand when you let
Speaker 4: in a whole bunch more people to compete with you
Speaker 4: in the labor market, it tends to hold your wages down, right.
Speaker 4: And the idea that the more elite parts of the
Speaker 4: left in our country have told workers, no, no, no,
Speaker 4: silly you, How could you ever think there are downsides
Speaker 4: of immigration. Workers have rebelled, And that's why immigration is
Speaker 4: such a vulnerability for Joe Biden. I think it's really
Speaker 4: important to say this isn't the history of the progressive
Speaker 4: left Historically, whether it's civil rights leader or labor union leaders,
Speaker 4: or Barack Obama or you name it, Democrats were very
Speaker 4: comfortable with the idea of we need to protect the
Speaker 4: rights of immigrants, and we honor this country's history as
Speaker 4: a beacon for immigrants. But that doesn't mean that we're
Speaker 4: constantly in favor of higher and higher immigration. It doesn't
Speaker 4: mean that we reduce border security. We are a country,
Speaker 4: as Barbara Jordan, the congresswoman and civil rights icon say,
Speaker 4: we are a country of laws, and if you don't
Speaker 4: have a border that keeps people out, you don't really
Speaker 4: have the most important kind of law there is. And
Speaker 4: I just think the left has lost that, And particularly
Speaker 4: when you consider how much of a threat Donald Trump
Speaker 4: is to so many democratic values. I'm genuinely confused about
Speaker 4: why the Biden administration has been so slow to shore
Speaker 4: up what is a massive vulnerability it has on this issue.
Speaker 3: But didn't the Biden administration how negotiate like the absolutely
Speaker 3: most funitive immigration bill that has been introduced since nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety one.
Speaker 4: It did, and Trump then killed it right, But.
Speaker 3: I mean that's not Biden's fault, is it.
Speaker 4: No, it's definitely not. It was incredibly cynical of Trump
Speaker 4: to kill that bill and for congressional Republicans to go
Speaker 4: along with it.
Speaker 1: And I mean that was a bill. I wouldn't have
Speaker 1: liked that bill as an elite liberal. I mean, but
Speaker 1: it was a bill that Biden was all in on.
Speaker 1: So and they bullied Chris Murphy into spending all Christmas
Speaker 1: negotiating it.
Speaker 4: I mean with James.
Speaker 1: Langford who asked him about his faith journey. So they
Speaker 1: really made as much of a good faith effort to
Speaker 1: do an immigration bill as anyone has ever seen. I mean,
Speaker 1: the fact that it did work.
Speaker 4: Yes, it is absolutely true. They tried really hard. They've
Speaker 4: tried really hard over the last six months to fix
Speaker 4: this problem. So maybe I should have said, I'm confused
Speaker 4: why I took them this long. But they also helped
Speaker 4: create this problem. I mean, Joe Biden ran for office
Speaker 4: very clearly saying we are going to welcome more people.
Speaker 4: Dexter Filkins did a very good piece for The New
Speaker 4: Yorker documenting this. People heard that message. He took office
Speaker 4: and immediately loosened immigration policy in a bunch of ways.
Speaker 4: Some of them were actual ways that changed the law,
Speaker 4: like expanding parole, which is supposed to be this gets
Speaker 4: really wonky, but it is supposed to be used on
Speaker 4: individual bases, and they basically expanded it to admit hundreds
Speaker 4: of thousands of more people. And they just sent a
Speaker 4: message that both would be migrants and the Mexican cartels
Speaker 4: that run the transportation networks very much heard, which is
Speaker 4: it's going to be easier to get into this country
Speaker 4: than it was, and huge numbers of people came again.
Speaker 4: I think for them it's a very rational decision. For
Speaker 4: immigrants who move here, they do very well. And so
Speaker 4: the Biden administration really does deserve significant responsibility for this
Speaker 4: huge surge in migration, and they spent a couple of
Speaker 4: years really not doing much to change that, and then yes,
Speaker 4: in twenty twenty three, they work very hard to try
Speaker 4: to solve this problem and Republicans cynically stopped it. But
Speaker 4: to me, that doesn't give them kind of a carte
Speaker 4: blanche on the issue.
Speaker 1: I have interviewed a lot of people for this podcast,
Speaker 1: including a doctor at Planned Parenthood in Arizona who told
Speaker 1: me the story of a woman who had walked here
Speaker 1: from South America and been gang raved multiple times and
Speaker 1: was able to get an abortion before the abortion ban came.
Speaker 1: So I would suggest that a lot of these people
Speaker 1: are not coming to do better, but just to do Look,
Speaker 1: there are certainly people who come to this country and
Speaker 1: have better experiences and make more money and do better.
Speaker 1: But a lot of these people come to this country
Speaker 1: are just desperate and are running for their lives. So
Speaker 1: in my mind, you know, I think it is important
Speaker 1: that this is not going on foot across the border.
Speaker 1: Is not an experience that I would ever want to
Speaker 1: have to try to do. So I do think there's
Speaker 1: a fair amount of these people who are really just
Speaker 1: out of options.
Speaker 4: There are a huge number of people who are out
Speaker 4: of options, and the United States can't admit everyone who's
Speaker 4: out of options. Around the world, we can't admit close
Speaker 4: to everyone. We should remain a beacon for people who
Speaker 4: are true political refugees. I think the thing to think
Speaker 4: about a little bit is by any measure of global
Speaker 4: poverty has plummeted over the last couple decades, and by
Speaker 4: any measure, the number of people who are killed in
Speaker 4: violent conflicts has declined. Over the last couple decades. So
Speaker 4: I don't think it can simply be the case that
Speaker 4: immigration of this country is surging because situation around the
Speaker 4: world has gotten worse by any objective measure. In poor countries,
Speaker 4: the situation has gotten better over the last few decades.
Speaker 4: And I think what many Americans look at these numbers
Speaker 4: and they say, how much of it is our responsibility
Speaker 4: to admit people around the world. And different people can
Speaker 4: come to different reasonable conclusions about that. But the Biden
Speaker 4: administration has been in a place that most Americans are
Speaker 4: not comfortable with, and it's part of why his reelection
Speaker 4: campaign is so difficult.
Speaker 1: I'm just glad that my great grandparents didn't have to
Speaker 1: worry about that. So anyway, David, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for joining us.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Molly, No moment full.
Speaker 1: Jesse Cannon my junk fest.
Speaker 4: You know, we used to ask what came first, the
Speaker 4: checker or the egg.
Speaker 5: Now everybody seems to be asking what came first?
Speaker 2: Trump having bad lawyers or him making those lawyers.
Speaker 5: Bet what are you seeing?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you will be listening to this podcast on Wednesday.
Speaker 1: Tuesday was the last day of closing arguments in the
Speaker 1: Trump New York criminal trial, which you may remember, Todd
Speaker 1: Blanche went sort of off the script and said some
Speaker 1: stuff that he maybe hoped would cause a mistrial. Judge Murshan,
Speaker 1: who is a very measured guy, told that. He said
Speaker 1: he doesn't think it's an accident when Blanche told the
Speaker 1: jury that the jury should think twice before sending a
Speaker 1: man to prison, which Trump would not go to prison
Speaker 1: for this, or if he did, it would take many,
Speaker 1: many appeals. Merchand to Blanche, your statement was outrageous and
Speaker 1: highly inappropriate. Merchant's tone was tempered, but you could tell
Speaker 1: how angry he was with Todd Blanche. Basically, Trump has
Speaker 1: terrible lawyers who are being terrible and honestly, I mean,
Speaker 1: couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. That's it for
Speaker 1: this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday
Speaker 1: and Friday to hear the best minds in politics makes
Speaker 1: sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard,
Speaker 1: please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
Speaker 1: And again, thanks for listening.