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 President Trump's approval rating among gen
Speaker 1: Z voters has fallen to a new low of twenty
Speaker 1: five percent, with sixty seven percent disapproving, according to the
Speaker 1: Latest Economist. Yougo falling, congratulations, Donald, We have such a
Speaker 1: great show for you today. The Jim Acostas Show's own
Speaker 1: Jim Acosta stops by to talk Pam Bondy taking the
Speaker 1: stand to defend her indefensible handling of the Epstein files.
Speaker 1: Ben we'll talk to Princeton Samwang about his run for
Speaker 1: Congress in New Jersey's twelfth district. But first we have.
Speaker 2: The news Somalia Gallup will no longer measure presidential approval
Speaker 2: after eighty eight years. What do you think could have
Speaker 2: spurred this decision?
Speaker 1: Is Trump sending Gallup to Gitmo? We need to know more.
Speaker 1: Probably not. The Gallup approval rating has for decades been
Speaker 1: among the top barometers cited by media outlets measuring public
Speaker 1: opinion of the president's performance. Trump has seen his ratings
Speaker 1: slip from the agency, peaking at forty seven percent last February,
Speaker 1: dipping to lower than thirty seven percent in December those
Speaker 1: watching at home, that is ten percentage points. The change
Speaker 1: is part of a broader, ongoing effort to align all
Speaker 1: of Gallup's public work with its mission, which is who Knows.
Speaker 1: Asked by The Hill if Gallup had received any feedback
Speaker 1: from Donald Trump's White House and if they were in
Speaker 1: fact being held hostage right now, the Gallop bravely said,
Speaker 1: this is a strategic, solid shift based solely on we
Speaker 1: are not being held hostage right now by the Trump administration,
Speaker 1: So believe them, don't believe them? Who knows? Former President
Speaker 1: John F. Kennedy experienced some of the highest average ratings
Speaker 1: that Gallup had seventy one percent in January nineteen sixty one.
Speaker 1: Eisenhower too super popular, more popular than Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: Yeah, fun stuff. Really great week or so for journalism
Speaker 2: in the last week. So in other news of where optimism,
Speaker 2: where our justice keeps holding up is in these grand
Speaker 2: jury indictments and a grand jury declined to indict Democratic
Speaker 2: lawmakers who urged service members to disobey legal Trump orders.
Speaker 2: This included a bunch of senators, including Mark Kelly, who,
Speaker 2: Pete Higsetth, decided to punish.
Speaker 1: So a bunch of former service members who were in
Speaker 1: Congress and in the Senate made an advertisement together and
Speaker 1: in the video with a ninety second video clip, they said,
Speaker 1: if you are ordered to do something illegal, you don't
Speaker 1: have to do it. This would seem, in a sane world,
Speaker 1: to be not only not illegal, but just normal common sense. Right,
Speaker 1: somebody tells you to do something illegal, don't do it.
Speaker 1: As someone who thinks that that's pretty good advice, military
Speaker 1: or not military, the whole idea that this would be
Speaker 1: illegal is insane. Here's what happened. Trump got really mad.
Speaker 1: The fact that Trump identifies this stuff as a being
Speaker 1: about him is almost a bigger tell. Like during the
Speaker 1: super Bowl, Trump was offended because Bad Bonnie talked about
Speaker 1: how hate was bad, and Trump was like, hey, hey hate,
Speaker 1: that's me. And with this, it's like illegal orders, but
Speaker 1: I might want to do something illegal. So I think
Speaker 1: it's really important just to pull back and see that tel.
Speaker 1: But it's also important to remember that traditionally, grand juries
Speaker 1: have been so famous for their interest in indicting that
Speaker 1: there is that saying that you could find a grand
Speaker 1: jury that would indict a ham sandwich clearly, not because
Speaker 1: Senator Slockin, Senator Kelly and a bunch of members of
Speaker 1: Congress were not indicted in the district of Columbia, but
Speaker 1: also because the first Amendment. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: know about this, it's not the one the Republicans love.
Speaker 1: That's the second one, that's the guns. The first one
Speaker 1: actually says that you can do videos like this because
Speaker 1: they are protected under the free speech clause of the Constitution.
Speaker 2: I thought it was pretty interesting the analysis that senior
Speaker 2: officials would not take this up, but you know who
Speaker 2: would take it up. Judge Box of Wine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Judge Box of Wine. And one of the things
Speaker 1: I enjoy about her is that she is just about
Speaker 1: as bad a prosecutor as you would think. It turns
Speaker 1: out that being good on Fox News does not actually
Speaker 1: make you good at the law.
Speaker 2: So Molly, you know, it is a basically like a
Speaker 2: red moon. It's so rare that I praise the strategy
Speaker 2: democratic leadership. I think this is quite smart that the
Speaker 2: House Democrats are going to do a ton of anti
Speaker 2: teriff votes to make it so that this albatross is
Speaker 2: tied to the House members of the Republican sides neck.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so Democrats in Congress, and I really believe this.
Speaker 1: I think they're doing good stuff in there, even though
Speaker 1: they don't have the majority, though they only have a
Speaker 1: one seat minority. So here's what happened. The White House
Speaker 1: had wanted a rule put in with the rules that
Speaker 1: would say that like they couldn't do more questions or
Speaker 1: votes on tariffs. Remember, the White House is on the
Speaker 1: back foot on tariffs. And here's why the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: is looking at this big tariff case that might take
Speaker 1: away Trump's emergency powers. Tariffs are not popular. We just
Speaker 1: saw this week some news that tariffs cost approximately one
Speaker 1: thousand dollars of family, that they're making things more expensive,
Speaker 1: they're inflationary, which we've talked about endlessly. So this administration
Speaker 1: is on the back foot on the tariffs. Republicans are
Speaker 1: nine months from a midterm. They have a very unpopular president,
Speaker 1: and this is an opportunity for them. And one of
Speaker 1: the things that I want you to think about is
Speaker 1: like you will see Republicans behaving bravely at this moment.
Speaker 1: That is not because they are brave. Do you know
Speaker 1: why that is? It is because they can read polls
Speaker 1: and they want to keep their jobs. So you're going
Speaker 1: to see votes on tariffs. You're going to see them
Speaker 1: break with Trump. You're going to see this stuff, and
Speaker 1: you're going to see it because these Republicans want to
Speaker 1: keep their jobs and they're worried about losing their jobs.
Speaker 1: And there's no reason to believe that these people have
Speaker 1: had a change of heart, and there's every reason to
Speaker 1: believe that this is just craven opportunism. So what's going
Speaker 1: to happen now is we're going to have votes and
Speaker 1: members of Congress are going to stand up to this,
Speaker 1: and Trump may lose on some of these votes, though
Speaker 1: I think ultimately the Supreme Court will have the power
Speaker 1: they want to block the tariffs.
Speaker 2: So a judge has dismissed for the third time this year,
Speaker 2: the DOJ's lawsuit seeking Michigan's voter role data. I wonder
Speaker 2: why the dog keeps going after this voter world data.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because Donald Trump wants to fix the midterms and
Speaker 1: this is the only way he thinks he could do it.
Speaker 1: Thank god that he doesn't have the votes and the
Speaker 1: Save Act also we're seeing he doesn't have the votes
Speaker 1: when it comes to Save Act, which is good. He
Speaker 1: knows he's unpopular. He knows it's nine months to the midterms,
Speaker 1: he knows he's going to get impeaged, and he wants
Speaker 1: to do anything he can to prevent it. So we're
Speaker 1: going to see a lot more of this kind of
Speaker 1: fuckorate when it comes to elections and what Democrats need
Speaker 1: to do, if they need to stand up for our
Speaker 1: elections and for the rule of flow. Jim Acosta is
Speaker 1: the author of The Substack, The Jim Acosta Show, and
Speaker 1: the author of the New York Times' bestseller Enemy of
Speaker 1: the People, A Dangerous Time to Tell the Truth in America. Welcome, Welcome,
Speaker 1: Jim Acosta.
Speaker 3: Hi, Mollie, Hi, I'm at the airport.
Speaker 1: Coming to me from la where he is the consummate professional.
Speaker 3: The seventh level of Dante's Inferno, recording to you live.
Speaker 1: That's right. I don't know if you saw that. Pam
Speaker 1: Bondy is Oh.
Speaker 3: My god, she is not happy. What the hell?
Speaker 1: How dare you? How dare you watch this hearing and
Speaker 1: criticize President Trump discuss.
Speaker 3: I know, the greatest president of all time. I don't
Speaker 3: know that this may be too low browber of a
Speaker 3: reference for you, but she reminds me of Ricky Bobby's
Speaker 3: wife from Talladega Knights. You know when she says, I'm
Speaker 3: a racer's wife, I don't work, you know, that's what
Speaker 3: she reminds me of. I apologize for the lowbrow reference,
Speaker 3: but that is what I hear every time she opens
Speaker 3: her mouth. What a shameful performance just to get serious
Speaker 3: for a moment, like the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein's stand up.
Speaker 1: She won't look at them.
Speaker 3: She won't look at them. They won't meet with them.
Speaker 3: The Justice Department has not met with these survivors and
Speaker 3: victims and their families. It's appalling.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about this. Representative Ji Paul. You know,
Speaker 1: congressional hearings are so interesting because a lot of times
Speaker 1: there's just a lot of grandstanding, but occasionally there's really
Speaker 1: effective questioning. So Representative Jipaul to the survivors in the room,
Speaker 1: if you're willing, please stand, and if you're willing, please
Speaker 1: raise your hand. If you have not been able to
Speaker 1: meet with the DOJ. Please note for the record that
Speaker 1: every single survivor has raised their hands. So what do
Speaker 1: you think about that?
Speaker 3: How much worse is this going to get? How many
Speaker 3: more indignities are they going to have to suffer through
Speaker 3: these survivors and these victims. I know we've said this,
Speaker 3: we've stipulated this, that shamelessness is their superpower, but my god,
Speaker 3: this is like next level Jedi master shamelessness. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's just unreal to me. The only way to do
Speaker 3: this is to keep the pressure on. When Rocanna went
Speaker 3: to the floor of the house and read those names
Speaker 3: out loud, that felt like, for a moment, the beginning
Speaker 3: of some sort of light at the end of the tunnel,
Speaker 3: some ray of hope that came into all of this,
Speaker 3: and I just think that, you know, they're just going
Speaker 3: to have to keep charging forward. My sense of it
Speaker 3: is is that at some point something the damn is
Speaker 3: going to break. And when I saw you know, the
Speaker 3: FA restrictions going up Overell Passo this morning, I was like,
Speaker 3: are we going to def con you know one when
Speaker 3: it comes to Trump and the Epstein files. Is that
Speaker 3: what's happening here? The final chapters of this have not
Speaker 3: been written, And it just seems to me like when
Speaker 3: Howard Lutnik is like, oh, yeah, I brought my family.
Speaker 3: I brought my four kids and the nannies to Epstein Island,
Speaker 3: How has he not been fired? How is he still there?
Speaker 1: Howard Lutnik has a really interesting dejectory. We see him
Speaker 1: on a podcast say that he went to Epstein's house
Speaker 1: in two thousand and four, thought Epstein was a creep,
Speaker 1: didn't want anything to do with him. Then we hear
Speaker 1: that's actually a lie. He's in the files endlessly. He
Speaker 1: did an LLC with Ebstein. He's got these emails from
Speaker 1: his wife to Epstein's assistant saying, we're gonna come. Here
Speaker 1: are the kids. We have four kids, lists their ages,
Speaker 1: which if I were taking my kids to the home
Speaker 1: of a sex predator and my friend's kids, I would
Speaker 1: probably not list their I mean, I think listing their
Speaker 1: ages is the least of it. But yeah, okay, And
Speaker 1: then there's this weird email about the nanny. So the
Speaker 1: Latnick nanny is going to meet with Jeffrey Epstein. Now
Speaker 1: there is some other nanny talk in other pieces of
Speaker 1: the file, emails and such about men getting nanny's from
Speaker 1: Epstein and they're not nanny's for the kids.
Speaker 3: Right now, this is like, could it get any worse? Honestly,
Speaker 3: and to me, you know, Howard Lutnik, I was looking
Speaker 3: to see is he worth like threety billion dollars or
Speaker 3: something like that.
Speaker 1: All these people right now are worth ten brillion dollars
Speaker 1: because they're totally grubbed.
Speaker 3: And how many people in Donald Trump's orbit? I mean,
Speaker 3: first of all, he's in there tens of thousands of times.
Speaker 1: Grump is in there more than a million times.
Speaker 3: I heard Scott Galloway say that that Trump is in
Speaker 3: the Epstein files more than Jesus is in the Bible.
Speaker 3: I think, is that is that maybe him come up with.
Speaker 1: Where Harry Poliner is in the Harry Potter books.
Speaker 3: I mean, at some point, so we need to start
Speaker 3: asking the question, Donald Trump, how is it that you
Speaker 3: are in the Epstein files so many times? What the
Speaker 3: hell is going on? When are you going to finally
Speaker 3: offer a full explanation for all of this? And one
Speaker 3: of my friends in the press is going to grill
Speaker 3: his ass on this, I'm sorry, Molly. In any other administration,
Speaker 3: and any other administration, I mean, any other timeline, any
Speaker 3: other on Earth one, two, three, and four, he would
Speaker 3: have been crucified over this ship. A president would have
Speaker 3: been crucified over this shit.
Speaker 1: Aren't they scared of losing press room access?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 3: But who gives a fuck at this point, Go for
Speaker 3: the gold. It's the goddamn Olympics. Go for the fucking
Speaker 3: White House for Responsor Association gold. And Grill has ass
Speaker 3: on this. When he starts to insult, keep going, and
Speaker 3: the other recorders of the room keep going. How is
Speaker 3: it Howard Lutnik, the Secretary of the Navy, Elon Musk,
Speaker 3: Steve Bannon over and over again.
Speaker 1: Kimball, Musk got girls from Epstein, Grill his ass.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, I just don't get it.
Speaker 1: If you're a Tesla stockholder, your board has Elon and Kimball,
Speaker 1: both of whom have been I mean, like, the thing is,
Speaker 1: don't we want in the rest of the world where
Speaker 1: people are normal. They are firing people in the Epstein files.
Speaker 1: They are right leaving from government. They are talking about
Speaker 1: removing the Prime Minister of Britain, not because he was
Speaker 1: in the Epstein files, merely because he hired someone in
Speaker 1: the Epstein files. You know who is in the Epstein files, Donald.
Speaker 3: The President, I know, And I just think that maybe
Speaker 3: this is just going to come down to a voter
Speaker 3: revolt in the fall, and that'll be where the accountability starts.
Speaker 3: But it just seems to me that I mean, Pam
Speaker 3: Bonnie the performance that she does anybody buy this? Does
Speaker 3: anybody see this as credible? When she gets up there
Speaker 3: and that this Kobookie Theater with Jim Jordan and the
Speaker 3: other Republicans on the can, it's just like that, no
Speaker 3: one's buying this, it's all worship. They're covering this up
Speaker 3: and they're covering his ass.
Speaker 1: But Pam Bondi only is performing for one person, and
Speaker 1: she is. It's funny because when I was watching her,
Speaker 1: I was thinking about Justice bred Kavanaugh. And you'll remember
Speaker 1: that when Justice Fred Kavanaugh got up there, the first day,
Speaker 1: he was normal and Trump hated it, and the second
Speaker 1: day he was insane and Trump loved it. And that's
Speaker 1: what we're seeing with Bondi is her whole thing is
Speaker 1: that she wants me Trump happy.
Speaker 3: Well, and that's that's all well and good, and they
Speaker 3: can hit option to the faux outrage button and put
Speaker 3: on that performance for the audience of one. But I
Speaker 3: still think that these hearings are productive in that we
Speaker 3: are memorializing for all time the lunacy of what they
Speaker 3: are putting this country through. And it just seems to
Speaker 3: me this is creeping up further and further. And I
Speaker 3: know we've all banned. You know, we can't say the
Speaker 3: expression the walls are closing in or you know, this
Speaker 3: is it.
Speaker 1: Because we did a year four years of it.
Speaker 3: And you should be publicly flogged for saying so. But
Speaker 3: there is a there there with the Epstein files in
Speaker 3: Donald Trump, and until the public scratches that itch and
Speaker 3: gets to the bottom of this, his ass is still
Speaker 3: in hot water, it seems to me.
Speaker 1: But I also think a really important point of this
Speaker 1: story is that, like, you never know what's going to
Speaker 1: come from hearings, and I'm thinking about Cash fatal during
Speaker 1: those hearings when he said Jeffrey Epstein never traffied anyone,
Speaker 1: unbelievable And I saw that and I thought, how what?
Speaker 1: But it was really important because it showed that Cash
Speaker 1: Patau was lying to protect someone, because the head of
Speaker 1: the FBI getting up there and saying that, you don't
Speaker 1: say that unless you're trying to protect someone, and so
Speaker 1: it really does you know it's on the record.
Speaker 3: Well, and Molly. The other thing too, is this is
Speaker 3: why Donald Trump surrounds himself with the kinds of people
Speaker 3: who really can't get these kinds of gigs anywhere else.
Speaker 3: He puts people in these jobs who know they depend
Speaker 3: on him for five star treatments. They get the private
Speaker 3: cars and the you know, the primetime appearances on Fox
Speaker 3: and Handity and so on. They don't get this without
Speaker 3: cowtowing to Donald Trump. And that is why he gets
Speaker 3: away with this, because he surrounded in himself with I mean,
Speaker 3: the twenty fifth and that is just completely useless at
Speaker 3: this point, because he has surrounded himself with the kind
Speaker 3: of people who will never invoke the twenty fifth Amendment
Speaker 3: or exercise the twenty fifth Amendment. Their livelihoods, everything that
Speaker 3: they hold dear is because of Donald Trump, and so
Speaker 3: we can't expect them to behave in any sort of
Speaker 3: fashion that you know, we would find normal in any
Speaker 3: other administration. And you know, to me, like Cash Bettel
Speaker 3: saying that that's going to have to go down, that's
Speaker 3: one of the worst lies ever in the presidency of
Speaker 3: Donald Trump first or second administration.
Speaker 1: It is just shameful, and it is worse just pulling
Speaker 1: back and looking at how unusual all of this is.
Speaker 1: This is not how any of it's supposed to work.
Speaker 1: And I think this is particularly important is that the
Speaker 1: Epstein files have a number of places where other people
Speaker 1: have been redacted. And one of the things that we've
Speaker 1: heard members of Congress talk about is that there are
Speaker 1: two sets of production. So there are the redactions, the
Speaker 1: dj already got files that were already redacted, and those
Speaker 1: redactants have not been taken away, and those were the
Speaker 1: Trump Protection redactions. So what we're seeing now are some
Speaker 1: other files that they felt were safe enough to release.
Speaker 1: So I wonder, like when we see stories like yesterday
Speaker 1: there was a story about how Trump warned the chief
Speaker 1: of police yeah in Palm Beach, that Jeffrey Epstein was bad.
Speaker 3: And that Gallainne Maxwell was evil, you know all of that.
Speaker 1: I'm very suspicious of that story. When I saw that story,
Speaker 1: I thought, that's the only story about coming out about
Speaker 1: Donald Trump. What do you think? I mean?
Speaker 3: Yes, and Julie Brown has done some amazing reports.
Speaker 1: Amazing Yeah, but it's the one file that was released
Speaker 1: that was easy to track down, that wasn't heavily redacted.
Speaker 3: But there were there were members of Congress coming out
Speaker 3: of viewing these unredacted files who were, you know, singing
Speaker 3: like a canary, And there were some Republicans who were
Speaker 3: coming out of the look at those viewing sessions, absolutely
Speaker 3: shell shocked. And there was the congresswoman from Vermont. It
Speaker 3: was Blint if I've seen the name Becker ballanced balanced,
Speaker 3: excuse me, and she's, you know, she's being asked by
Speaker 3: reporters about this, and she says that, well, the whole
Speaker 3: lie that Trump told about kicking Jeffrey Epstein out of
Speaker 3: the club is a lie. It's a lie, and so
Speaker 3: he's been lying repeatedly about this over the years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm really curious to know what she saw. The
Speaker 1: other one, you'll remember, Cynthia Loomis Senator from Wyoming not
Speaker 1: running for reelection, which I think is important to mention,
Speaker 1: says that she now understands after seeing the unredacted files,
Speaker 1: what a big deal this all is, which begs the question,
Speaker 1: what did she see? What did any of those people say?
Speaker 3: I know? And why is it that they've released some
Speaker 3: of the files but not all of the files, and
Speaker 3: that some of the files are unredacted for the numbers
Speaker 3: of Congress And I have to say, like, why aren't
Speaker 3: there like career prosecutors going through this stuff and sharpening
Speaker 3: their knives and figuring out that they have some cases
Speaker 3: that can be brought against some real sick people who
Speaker 3: need to be put behind bars. I mean, this is
Speaker 3: not how our Justice department. I mean, you could talk
Speaker 3: to all of the wonderful experts that you and I
Speaker 3: talk to Molly all the time on this subject. This
Speaker 3: should be a prosecutorial shopping spree here. You know, like
Speaker 3: you know, you get a conviction, you get a conviction
Speaker 3: that you know, and it's unreal and it's not happening.
Speaker 1: Well, if the Trump administration wanted to solve these crimes,
Speaker 1: or even anyone else, not even the Trump administration, just
Speaker 1: like members of Congress, wouldn't one of the first people
Speaker 1: you would call to testify be Mornen Kombe, who was
Speaker 1: working on this case. I mean, there are so many
Speaker 1: points in which you see that these victims have really
Speaker 1: nobody cares about the victims.
Speaker 3: It's all a shamp bringing in the Clintons, and the
Speaker 3: Clintons like, well, we'll testify in front of the cameras.
Speaker 3: Oh no, no, no, we don't want that. But they don't
Speaker 3: want Donald Trump to be the ghost.
Speaker 1: I understand Bill, he's in the photos, he's in the files. Great,
Speaker 1: have Bill testify have him testify, have Trump testify, have
Speaker 1: all these men testified. But Hillary never was on the plane.
Speaker 1: She was never. I mean, I understand they're obsessed with her,
Speaker 1: but like it's a pretty good case of like where
Speaker 1: you say, this is just partisan hacker, Like get Bill,
Speaker 1: get Doug banned, Bill's body man, who got a feleip attack.
Speaker 3: Watch right, right, right right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you get that guy, But like, get people where
Speaker 1: they actually are in the files. Don't get people where
Speaker 1: you are going to be able to you know, just grandstand.
Speaker 3: And you and I have talked about this, and it
Speaker 3: should be said again, you and I, people on the
Speaker 3: center left, the sanity based world, we don't give a
Speaker 3: fuck if something bad happens to Bill Clinton and all
Speaker 3: of this. At the end of the day, we don't care.
Speaker 3: And so the same standard what's good for the goose
Speaker 3: is good for the gander. And it seems to be
Speaker 3: it's a shrinking universe of people who are saying I
Speaker 3: stand with Donald Trump and why he's behaving when it
Speaker 3: comes to the Epstein files, the ice is cracking, their
Speaker 3: fissures forming I just think, faster your seatbelt. It just
Speaker 3: seems to me, and again we're not allowed to say
Speaker 3: the walls are closing in and so on.
Speaker 1: They seem like they're on the back foot here.
Speaker 3: It is not going in the right direction for the
Speaker 3: forty seventh president. Of you that experience, I'll just say that, yeah, and.
Speaker 1: Quite frankly, it shouldn't be, because a lot of this
Speaker 1: stuff he's trying to get away with here is really unprecedented.
Speaker 3: And maybe we start to use the word evil. I mean,
Speaker 3: I mean, some of this is just it's just evil.
Speaker 3: It just is.
Speaker 1: And it's also just not okay. You are definitely seeing Republicans,
Speaker 1: some Republicans break with Trump on this. Do you think
Speaker 1: this is opportunism?
Speaker 3: I think folks are starting to put their finger in
Speaker 3: the wind. And I talked to a long time Republican
Speaker 3: fundraiser just the other day who was telling me this
Speaker 3: is something I've known for years. In Washington, they're predicting
Speaker 3: a wipeout. They are feeling at this point that they're
Speaker 3: just going to get wiped out, and that not just
Speaker 3: the House isn't obviously in jeopardy, that the Senate is
Speaker 3: in jeopardy, and that they could lose in places like
Speaker 3: Iowa and alaskap this is the doomsday scenario that people
Speaker 3: like you and I have been warning about for some time,
Speaker 3: that the chickens will eventually come home to roost. He
Speaker 3: doesn't get away scott free. That's not how this ends.
Speaker 3: I don't cook that that's going to be the case.
Speaker 3: I think that they see what's coming, and you know,
Speaker 3: nature finds a way as a wiseman once set in
Speaker 3: Jurassic Park. And the Republicans are starting to figure this out.
Speaker 3: I don't know how they don't go Thelman Louise off
Speaker 3: the cliff with him at this point, kwant honestly, I
Speaker 3: don't see how do you make that pivot? I mean,
Speaker 3: just can somebody draw me that picture between now and November.
Speaker 3: They don't, They're right or die, so they go over
Speaker 3: the cliff.
Speaker 1: Jim Acosta, don't miss your flight.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Thank you so much. Owe you on.
Speaker 1: Sam Wang is a neuroscientist and a professor at Princeton
Speaker 1: University and a candidate for the Democratic nomination for New
Speaker 1: Jersey's twelfth congressional district. Welcome too Fast Politics, Sam.
Speaker 3: Oh, Mollie, good to see you.
Speaker 1: So you come in to talk to us a lot
Speaker 1: about this jerrymandering, but today you are talking about something else,
Speaker 1: So talk us through it today.
Speaker 3: I have something new.
Speaker 4: So as you know, I've been looking for gosh twenty
Speaker 4: years on helping people be more powerful, fighting gerrymandering, you know,
Speaker 4: different ways to put my science to work. Today I
Speaker 4: am entering politics myself. I'm standing for office for Congress
Speaker 4: here in the twelfth District of New Jersey. So I'm
Speaker 4: throwing my hat in the ring. I'm trying to get
Speaker 4: the Democratic nomination.
Speaker 1: Talk us through what the twelfth district in New Jersey
Speaker 1: looks like.
Speaker 4: It looks like a lot of things. The twelfth District
Speaker 4: is one of the most diverse districts in the country.
Speaker 4: Princeton where I teaches, in the middle of it, but
Speaker 4: it stretches from Trenton and Ewing, which is in the
Speaker 4: southwest black and Hispanic populations, to Plainfield in the northeast,
Speaker 4: again black and Hispanic, and in the middle of highly
Speaker 4: educated Princetonian's Asian East and South Asian communities of Montgomery
Speaker 4: and West Windsor and so Plainsboro and South Brunswick. As
Speaker 4: you can tell from the way I'm sounding, Usually we
Speaker 4: talk about gerrymandering like at a national level we talk
Speaker 4: about reform and the damage to our democracy. This is new.
Speaker 4: This is me getting into the specifics of a district.
Speaker 4: There's an open seat, and I think Congress someone who
Speaker 4: understands the science of what's gone wrong, and so I
Speaker 4: want to get in there and try to fix the
Speaker 4: damage and help make sure it never happens again.
Speaker 1: So the history of this seat is it was a
Speaker 1: Republican seat, and then it was a Democrat seat. Right,
Speaker 1: it's been mixed.
Speaker 4: Years ago, it was I think at one point a
Speaker 4: Republican seat, but let's say about as recently as fifteen
Speaker 4: years ago, it was represented by a plasma physicist, Rush
Speaker 4: Holt oh Cool Russia is a physicist, five time Jeopardy winner,
Speaker 4: and so he won a very very close race against
Speaker 4: a Republican. And then for the last twelve years it's
Speaker 4: been represented by Bonnie Watson Coleman.
Speaker 3: Congresswoman.
Speaker 4: Coleman's turning eighty one this year pretty soon, and so
Speaker 4: she's stepping down to a well earned retirement. And it's
Speaker 4: an open seat, and because of some regressive ballot laws
Speaker 4: that I play a small role in overturning, it's a
Speaker 4: free for all. Anybody can run and there's eighteen candidates it's.
Speaker 3: A wild ride.
Speaker 1: I want you to talk about the regressive ballot laws
Speaker 1: in New Jersey because a lot of states have this
Speaker 1: sort of weird low stuff. New Jersey had one that
Speaker 1: we discovered. I'd let me talk about it.
Speaker 4: As an neuroscientist, I think of it as a cognitive trick.
Speaker 4: Most ballots you just have the office and then a
Speaker 4: list of candidates. But the ballot in New Jersey has
Speaker 4: this thing where candidates are listed in different places than
Speaker 4: the ballot, and there's this one column of names, and
Speaker 4: then one column of names is the party's preferred candidate
Speaker 4: for Congress, for president, for Senate, for local council. And
Speaker 4: this is a thing called the county line. And so
Speaker 4: this funny arrangement has a lot of blank spaces on it,
Speaker 4: and it fools the eye, and it gives as much
Speaker 4: as a thirty eight point bonus to whoever the party elders,
Speaker 4: you know, who their preferred candidate is. So that was
Speaker 4: the law until a couple of years ago. There was
Speaker 4: a lawsuit in which a number of US brought evidence
Speaker 4: into federal court and we said, look, this is a
Speaker 4: trick that it gets played on voters. It's against free
Speaker 4: and fair elections, and this judge overturned it. So at
Speaker 4: this point, the power of the party machine has gotten broken.
Speaker 4: Last week in the district north of US in the
Speaker 4: eleventh district, actually that district turned out very different. The
Speaker 4: party endorsed candidates in that district came in third and fourth.
Speaker 4: The next congresswoman from that district is probably going to
Speaker 4: be Ana Lilia Mahia, and she came out of seemingly
Speaker 4: nowhere and ran a populist campaign and was not endorsed,
Speaker 4: and so you know, it feels like a new day
Speaker 4: in New Jersey for more equitable elections.
Speaker 1: So that was a special election to fill the Mikey
Speaker 1: share All seat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a primary, right.
Speaker 1: Special primary. Your primary is not going to be until June.
Speaker 4: That's right, it's June.
Speaker 2: Second.
Speaker 1: It sounds like it's a pretty reliably blue seat, especially
Speaker 1: in the coming cycle where Donald Trump has ice agents
Speaker 1: occupying various American cities. So it is going to be
Speaker 1: really an election that takes place in the primary. Oh yes,
Speaker 1: so talk us through you know, these kind of primaries
Speaker 1: is kind of very crowded. Primaries make very interesting contests.
Speaker 1: So how are you campaigning in that primary? And you know,
Speaker 1: they're ultimately usually kind of a math, right, these primaries.
Speaker 4: With eighteen candidates, I mean, is technically possible to win
Speaker 4: with ten percent of the vote. Realistically probably takes more
Speaker 4: like twenty twenty five percent of the vote. So the
Speaker 4: way to campaign, it's crazy because there's so many candidates,
Speaker 4: and the question is how to rise up out of
Speaker 4: the noise. A lot of the candidates in our district
Speaker 4: are you know, the kind of people you might expect, Like,
Speaker 4: you know, people have done local service, a local assembly woman,
Speaker 4: several local mayors, people who are known to the small
Speaker 4: sectors of the district. So we have one outsider who
Speaker 4: lives outside the district who lost in the seventh district
Speaker 4: two years ago to Tom Kain Junior, and so she's
Speaker 4: moving closer to the district and so she's hoping to run.
Speaker 4: It'll be her first time running for office. About half
Speaker 4: the people running our first time candidates who have never
Speaker 4: run for office before.
Speaker 2: And I'm one of those people.
Speaker 4: And yeah, how to stick out? I mean, I've made
Speaker 4: a career out of both neuroscience and also working on
Speaker 4: democracy reform, trying to empower people as an outsider, and
Speaker 4: I'm the only one in the race has done that.
Speaker 1: Talk us through the ways in which you have tried
Speaker 1: to reform jerrymandering to make elections more fair and free.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know.
Speaker 4: I use my science to try to find ways to
Speaker 4: equalize voter power. And I years ago started analyzing the
Speaker 4: electoral college to understand how voters are more powerful in
Speaker 4: some states than others. And I tried to use that
Speaker 4: to encourage people to go campaign and get out the
Speaker 4: vote and so on in places where they could make
Speaker 4: the most difference with their federal citizens. As you and
Speaker 4: I have talked about before, I work on jerrymandering at Princeton.
Speaker 4: I've started the Princeton Jerrymandering Project where we've come up
Speaker 4: with a report card to grade offenses, and it's a
Speaker 4: non partisan report card that calls out offenses on both sides.
Speaker 4: And using that report card, we've discovered offenses all over
Speaker 4: the country. And that report card has demonstrated that there
Speaker 4: is a national law that if we enacted, it could
Speaker 4: stop this gerrymandering war that we see independent citizen commissions.
Speaker 4: And so our math and analytics show that independent citizen
Speaker 4: commissions are the very best way to end jerrymandering. So
Speaker 4: that's the thing that I would like to do in Congress.
Speaker 4: And now I actually these days off campus, I have
Speaker 4: a nonprofit organization, the Electoral Innovation Lab, and the Electoral
Speaker 4: Innovation Lab again is trying to take all these ideas
Speaker 4: out of the academic halls and put them into practice,
Speaker 4: so help people bring about ranked choice voting, help people
Speaker 4: defend elections where they're under attack. We've been doing analytics
Speaker 4: to show where attacks on elections might lead to the
Speaker 4: most damage, like in Minnesota, in North Carolina.
Speaker 2: In Texas.
Speaker 4: So again it's all my basic game has been trying
Speaker 4: to understand the whole system, find the weak points, stop
Speaker 4: damage this year, and build a better system so we
Speaker 4: never see this again.
Speaker 1: Talk to me about ranked choice voting because I have questioned.
Speaker 4: Yeah, ranked choice voting is when you have a lot
Speaker 4: of choices. So in a plurality election where whoever gets
Speaker 4: the most where everyone picks one candidate and then whichever
Speaker 4: candidate gets the most vote wins, that's called plurality voting.
Speaker 4: That tends to build two political parties. And one big
Speaker 4: driver of why we have two parties that are so
Speaker 4: far apart is choice voting and a really determined faction
Speaker 4: can take over one party and drive it over the
Speaker 4: edge and make them crazy, and you know we're living
Speaker 4: through that. So ranked choice voting is a way to
Speaker 4: let you mark your first choice and your second choice
Speaker 4: in your third choice, and it's a way of counting
Speaker 4: those votes to find out who the consensus choice is,
Speaker 4: and it prevents the possibility of a really small faction
Speaker 4: taking over the whole system. So today, you know, Republicans
Speaker 4: and Democrats are each one third of the voters, About
Speaker 4: one third can take over one of those parties, and
Speaker 4: so one ninth of the voters can like completely up
Speaker 4: end the system. And ranked choice voting is a way
Speaker 4: of preventing that.
Speaker 1: I would love you to talk about your district and
Speaker 1: how you're going to win this primary.
Speaker 4: So it has been interesting to me to take, you know,
Speaker 4: my broad knowledge as an outsider, as an analyst and say, okay,
Speaker 4: you know what, let's apply it to one district. So
Speaker 4: this district, which is in Central Jersey, is pretty diverse.
Speaker 4: It's fifty nine percent non white. The largest non white
Speaker 4: group is Asian American Pacific Islanders. And you may have
Speaker 4: noticed that I'm Asian, and so that's a community in
Speaker 4: which they automatically noticed me. So my theory of winning
Speaker 4: is that Asian American voters are about twenty five percent
Speaker 4: of the voting age population of the district.
Speaker 3: That's a lot.
Speaker 4: And so these towns that I was reeling off before,
Speaker 4: Montgomery West windsor Plainsboro, South Brunswick, these places are close
Speaker 4: to fifty percent Asian East Asians and South Asians. And
Speaker 4: so you know, I had this idea of like going
Speaker 4: and visiting these places because I've lived here twenty six years,
Speaker 4: and I thought, why don't I go to all these
Speaker 4: great restaurants and places in these towns, And I want
Speaker 4: to like basically go and like shoot like little TikTok
Speaker 4: videos of these cool places that have like Moroccan food
Speaker 4: and Chinese food and Korean food and Soul food and
Speaker 4: Mexican food, and just like say, look, guys, this is
Speaker 4: a fantastic diverse district. We all need protection, we all
Speaker 4: need to thrive, and look, hey, here's some Moroccan food.
Speaker 4: So I thought maybe something like that.
Speaker 1: You also are part of Princeton, which is a huge,
Speaker 1: incredible university in New Jersey that is involved in civic life,
Speaker 1: and your work for Princeton has been largely about improving
Speaker 1: civic life, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And you know, Princeton's been a really wonderful home
Speaker 4: to me. They recruited me to do my neuroscience. It's
Speaker 4: led me to make discoveries and autism. They encourage civic engagement.
Speaker 4: I mean, I speak for myself and not for the university.
Speaker 4: I'm always my own person, and they encourage that. But
Speaker 4: they also they want me to be that I don't
Speaker 4: speak for the school. I speak for myself.
Speaker 1: At a moment, though, when this administration is at war
Speaker 1: with universities, oh yes, and with funding for research, I
Speaker 1: wonder if you could speak to we've seen like war
Speaker 1: with scientific research, war with science just more generally, I'd
Speaker 1: love you to talk about what you have seen over
Speaker 1: the last year and what you think.
Speaker 3: Here at Princeton.
Speaker 4: Our president, Crisis Scruper, has fought back and stood up
Speaker 4: for academic freedom and for science. I think we've held
Speaker 4: up better than a lot of places. But look, everybody's
Speaker 4: under attack. And so first there was an attack to
Speaker 4: cut drastically overhead costs that we can't even keep the
Speaker 4: lights on.
Speaker 1: Right. That was Elon Musk deciding that NIH grants should
Speaker 1: only be fifteen percent.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 3: And then the next attack.
Speaker 4: One of the attacks is happening now is forcing NIH grants,
Speaker 4: which are the lifeblood of American biomedical research, to force
Speaker 4: these multi year grants to be paid out all in
Speaker 4: the current fiscal years. So if I get a grant
Speaker 4: from NIH and I get NH money, if I get
Speaker 4: an NIH grant for multiple years, all the money has
Speaker 4: to come out this year. And what that does is
Speaker 4: it spends down all the money this year, and it
Speaker 4: starves other laboratories.
Speaker 1: Why are they doing it, well, lord.
Speaker 3: I do not know why they're doing.
Speaker 4: The charitable interpretation is not thinking about the impacts on
Speaker 4: American science. And the more sinister interpretation is to weaken
Speaker 4: American science because American science in some ways is considered
Speaker 4: a threat to building more equal society, and so because
Speaker 4: damaging science hurts that goal, therefore it's good to weaken science,
Speaker 4: you know, and also has the secondary consequence of hurting universities.
Speaker 4: I mean, I do research here, I teach my students.
Speaker 4: If I can't do my research, then I can no
Speaker 4: longer be a leading researcher. I can no longer teach
Speaker 4: my students about what's happening. It makes for a worse environment.
Speaker 4: And this is you know, this is true at private
Speaker 4: universities like Princeton, public universities like Rutgers and University of California.
Speaker 4: But you know the deep why, I mean, why are
Speaker 4: all our systems under attack by a runaway executive branch?
Speaker 1: So why we certainly see that, I mean not a lot,
Speaker 1: but some of this research is being picked up by
Speaker 1: other countries. Have you seen that in the field? And
Speaker 1: what does that look like?
Speaker 4: Usually science is a team sport and it's international, and
Speaker 4: generation after generation people have come from other countries to
Speaker 4: study in the United States and sometimes they stay. I mean,
Speaker 4: I can't count the number of star graduate students and
Speaker 4: postdocs who have come to my lab, and then many
Speaker 4: of them I'm stayed in the United States. And that
Speaker 4: is a pipeline. I mean, look look at the CEOs
Speaker 4: of all these tech companies, like most of them actually
Speaker 4: came from other countries. In the last year, it's become
Speaker 4: much harder to persuade scholars from other countries to study
Speaker 4: in the United States. I've had even people from countries
Speaker 4: that are not in the crosshairs, like the Netherlands or Spain,
Speaker 4: express reluctance about coming to the US to study. So
Speaker 4: it's hard on those grounds. I know people who are
Speaker 4: talking about leaving the United States. Only a few have
Speaker 4: done so. But people in the United States are looking
Speaker 4: for ways to build their research careers. And you know,
Speaker 4: someplace like Europe is a more nurturing place for researchers
Speaker 4: now and China right, and China, yeah, and morale is down.
Speaker 4: I mean, I got to say, we've had town halls
Speaker 4: here where graduate students and post docs want to know, like,
Speaker 4: what's going to become of us? Is anyone going to
Speaker 4: protect us? And so yeah, it's actually a really tough
Speaker 4: time for scientists, and scientists who are usually not very
Speaker 4: political are starting to notice the problem.
Speaker 1: I want you to say more about China because that
Speaker 1: blows my mind. I mean, how worried are you about
Speaker 1: a world where China is a better home descientist in America?
Speaker 1: And is it still not?
Speaker 3: Really?
Speaker 4: China science has gotten better and better. You know, it
Speaker 4: used to be not so many years ago that a
Speaker 4: lot of the work was not so high grade. But
Speaker 4: I've had friends who have visited China and seen great
Speaker 4: research institutions being built up there. There are some problems
Speaker 4: with Chinese research journals, some of them are kind of sketchy,
Speaker 4: but the best research coming out of China is absolutely
Speaker 4: world class. And yeah, if we think of China as
Speaker 4: an adversary for the United States, then guess what that
Speaker 4: adversary is becoming pretty good at technology, pretty good at science,
Speaker 4: and you know, and here we are not cooperating.
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, we are making them when if
Speaker 1: we're an adversary of China, which I don't necessarily think
Speaker 1: we are, but if we are, there are scientists who
Speaker 1: are going over there because it's better.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
Speaker 4: Like I had one colleague who's driven out of his position,
Speaker 4: a leading research in New York City, and he immigrated
Speaker 4: to the United States decades ago from China, and then
Speaker 4: he got caught up in the what I think he
Speaker 4: was part of the China initiative, this thing to crack
Speaker 4: down on bad interactions, and he got investigated and he
Speaker 4: now is running a thriving lab in China, you know,
Speaker 4: and he's doing great work there. But it was hard
Speaker 4: on him and bad for us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's sort of self inflicted anti science wound.
Speaker 4: I mean, yeah, like my parents immigrated to the US
Speaker 4: in the nineteen sixties, and when I was born. In
Speaker 4: my baby book, my father said I want him to
Speaker 4: get his PhD in science by the age twenty five.
Speaker 2: And I saw that.
Speaker 4: I'm like, okay, Dad, But you know, he came wanting
Speaker 4: me to do this. And so immigrants make it possible
Speaker 4: for science to grow, including from China. Yeah, Like normally
Speaker 4: you talk about Jerry Mannering here, I was talking about
Speaker 4: my parents, and so there's there's sort of a candidate
Speaker 4: thing where people have to talk about themselves more and
Speaker 4: I'm kind of getting used to that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a differend to be to go from being
Speaker 1: a republic intellectual to a candidate.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, I'm used to talking about ideas about
Speaker 4: how we can make democracy work better. And I'm just
Speaker 4: realizing that people are so oriented towards personality and individuals
Speaker 4: that I think that it's I can make more progress
Speaker 4: by getting out there into the fray and being the
Speaker 4: person talking about it. And so for me, this is
Speaker 4: not just representing my district, which is essential, but also
Speaker 4: hopefully I don't know, there's people who are big thinkers
Speaker 4: like Jamie Raskin or Don Byer, and I'm hoping to
Speaker 4: be a junior partner to them and be right there
Speaker 4: to help out.
Speaker 1: I love that so much. Talk about the gerrymandering wars,
Speaker 1: well just.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's just continuing, right. It's weirdly that it's
Speaker 4: come to a bit of a stalemate, and it started
Speaker 4: in Texas, spread to California. Thankfully, a few states held back,
Speaker 4: like Indiana, and so you know, we did analytics showing
Speaker 4: that something like one out of three people in Indiana
Speaker 4: would be moved to a new district, and so a
Speaker 4: few states have hung back, Indiana and Kansas. That's good.
Speaker 4: Looks like Maryland's trying, but I think the Democrats there
Speaker 4: might step back from the brank, so that's good. But
Speaker 4: now you know, looks like Virginia might move forward, and
Speaker 4: that's going to be a multi seat jerrymander for Democrats.
Speaker 4: Probably in the next few months. It's going to be Florida.
Speaker 4: So I would say right now Democrats are actually a
Speaker 4: head by a few seats. Once Florida jumps in the mix,
Speaker 4: it'll probably be even again. But in the end we're
Speaker 4: going to talk about it'll be like eight states.
Speaker 1: But what about the Voting Rights Act? Isn't the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court won't they roll on the voting right to act?
Speaker 4: Yes, the Calais case or however you sent, that case
Speaker 4: is going to possibly open the gates for racial gerrymandering.
Speaker 4: And so that case might make it much harder for
Speaker 4: communities of color to be represented in Congress, in legislatures,
Speaker 4: and like you know, in county government, like up and
Speaker 4: down the ticket, up and down all levels of government.
Speaker 4: That case could be a pretty big deal for minority representation.
Speaker 1: And would that happen this year? Would it be for
Speaker 1: these midterms or for next?
Speaker 4: I think a lot of that would be for next
Speaker 4: And so there's a few things that have already happened.
Speaker 4: Depending on how that goes, it's going to foreclose lawsuits
Speaker 4: in Texas, Louisiana, and upcoming Florida. But that's those maps
Speaker 4: either have been already enacted or will be enacted soon.
Speaker 4: There's a handful of seats that could affect in Alabama, Mississippi,
Speaker 4: some other places. I think, honestly, at some level, as
Speaker 4: bad as that case is in the long term this year,
Speaker 4: it's already been priced in because many of those laws
Speaker 4: have already been enacted or there's not enough time. That's
Speaker 4: a long term problem, and so there might be time six, Yeah,
Speaker 4: could be fixed. We need a Voting Rights Act every
Speaker 4: twenty years or so. We need to renew that act.
Speaker 4: And so we need to put in racial protections. You know,
Speaker 4: section two and section five. One of John Roberts's bits
Speaker 4: of logic is it only applies to states with a
Speaker 4: track record of racial discrimination, so therefore it doesn't treat
Speaker 4: all states equally. And of course this makes my head explode.
Speaker 4: But the way to fix that is, Okay, let us
Speaker 4: apply section two and section five to every state. Done,
Speaker 4: and then we will have that. And so, yeah, new
Speaker 4: Voting Rights Act, if we can make it through this
Speaker 4: November's election, I think the New Voting Rights Act should
Speaker 4: be very top of agenda and hopefully can undo some
Speaker 4: of the damage that we've seen to voting rights from
Speaker 4: the Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: Sam, thank you, thank you, thank you. I hope you'll
Speaker 1: come back.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Molly.
Speaker 4: I have delighted to come back anytime next time, maybe
Speaker 4: as a nominee.
Speaker 1: No normal, Jesse Cannon bid fast.
Speaker 2: So Republicans, there's this whole brand for as long as
Speaker 2: you and I have been alive, that debt we have,
Speaker 2: Oh my god, it's the ruin of our country. This debt.
Speaker 2: We can't be standing for this. Yeah, I'm going to
Speaker 2: shock you. Under the physical responsibility of mister Deal's president,
Speaker 2: The federal debt has hit record levels and the Budget
Speaker 2: Office has sent to a stirred warding to mister Trump.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're going to be shocked to hear this. But
Speaker 1: Donald Trump, the man who is famous for having bankrupt
Speaker 1: numerous businesses, is not so interested in the debt. And
Speaker 1: I think there's a pretty good reason for that. Basically,
Speaker 1: Trump has tried to reshape the economy, but when it
Speaker 1: comes to budget, it's been a wash, and the country
Speaker 1: is still basically on track to borrow what economists consider
Speaker 1: an alarming amount of money in the coming years. Now,
Speaker 1: there's a big problem here, which is the dollar. As
Speaker 1: the dollar gets less valuable, it gets more expensive to
Speaker 1: borrow money, and debt gets more expensive to service. And
Speaker 1: that is a big problem, and we are on track
Speaker 1: for that. Also, I want to point out Donald Trump
Speaker 1: spends like a drunken saler. The funding for ICE is like,
Speaker 1: you know what, four times most armies. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: some eighty seven billion dollars, some crazy number. Buying of
Speaker 1: ware hases, I mean, the idea that Ice is not
Speaker 1: doing some sketchy stuff with all that money is I
Speaker 1: would be shocked if people were not profiting off that money.
Speaker 1: You know. Luckily you have Corey Lubandowski who's known to
Speaker 1: be very honest and a straight shooter and someone who's
Speaker 1: never ever, ever gotten in any kind of legal trouble
Speaker 1: in any which way. So he's clearly operating on the level.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that sounds exactly right to me.
Speaker 1: That's really to be a good actor. They actually don't
Speaker 1: even say sober as a judge. They say sober as
Speaker 1: a Lubandowski.
Speaker 2: You know. They call him much how we've rebranded wife
Speaker 2: beaters two partner respectors. That's what they call him too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's a big partner respector. And his boss, the
Speaker 1: very smart and intelligent Christy Nome, has this under control.
Speaker 1: So my guess is that they are not doing sketchy
Speaker 1: stuff with all that money, no doubt. That's it for
Speaker 1: this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday,
Speaker 1: Thursday and Saturday to hear the best minds and politics
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