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 Reuter's IPSOS poll showing Trump has
Speaker 1: hit a new low with an approval of thirty six percent.
Speaker 1: We have such a great show for you today. The
Speaker 1: Majority Reports own Sam Cedar stops by to talk the
Speaker 1: unprecedented corruption in the Trump administration. Then we'll talk to
Speaker 1: the levers David Sarota about his amazing new reporting on
Speaker 1: the unitary executive theory and it's threat to our democracy.
Speaker 1: But first the news.
Speaker 2: Mai.
Speaker 3: I'm going to read you a headline. I need you
Speaker 3: to tell me if it's good or bad. I just
Speaker 3: can't decide. I'm a fed center here today. The Treasury
Speaker 3: just declared the US and solve and the media mist
Speaker 3: it seems bad.
Speaker 1: Again. I am not an economist, but it seems not good.
Speaker 1: There is a conclusion drawn from the Treasury Department's own
Speaker 1: consolidated finance statements for the fiscal year of twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: They were released last week. Basically six h six trillion
Speaker 1: dollars in total assets against forty seven point seventy eight
Speaker 1: trillion in total liabilities. By the way, this forty seven trillion,
Speaker 1: really almost forty eight trillion doesn't include the unfunded obligations
Speaker 1: of Social Security insurance problems like Social Security and Medicare.
Speaker 1: They're in a different off balance sheet statement. So let's
Speaker 1: talk this through. I think this is one of these
Speaker 1: headlines that it's sort of for the algorithm. It's meant
Speaker 1: to catch your attention. But the larger point that America
Speaker 1: has too much debt is an important one. And you'll
Speaker 1: remember that Republicans they often run on making the debt smaller,
Speaker 1: They're going to get rid of the debt, and often
Speaker 1: they instead grow the debt. And so one of Donald
Speaker 1: Trump's things was that he was going to work on
Speaker 1: the deficit, lowering the deficit. Maybe he didn't, you know,
Speaker 1: he's sort of He said was that, you know, the
Speaker 1: Republicans tend to criticize Democrats for spending, but in fact,
Speaker 1: Donald Trump is in the middle of a warrant that
Speaker 1: nobody knows why we're doing it, and is costing a
Speaker 1: billion dollars a day, one billion dollars a day. That
Speaker 1: is quite a lot of money, and the reason that
Speaker 1: we're in this war nobody knows. So we are in
Speaker 1: a moment where we're really just spending money that has
Speaker 1: absolutely makes no sense, and it's just a completely insane
Speaker 1: way to run a country. And you know, it's only
Speaker 1: going to get worse because Trump is paying solar companies
Speaker 1: not to do projects, He's incentivizing oil companies. He's making
Speaker 1: all of the dumbest of dumb decisions.
Speaker 3: Yes, speaking of the GOP, senators are admitting that Trump
Speaker 3: blocked the deal to partially fund the DHS, even though
Speaker 3: he keeps saying it's the Democrat shutdown, it's the Trump shutdown.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this is amazing. John Kennedy, who is a
Speaker 1: member of Congress from Louisiana, writes books, appears often on
Speaker 1: Fox News, famous for getting Christy Nome fired basically by
Speaker 1: asking her where the two hundred and twenty million dollars.
Speaker 1: When he's talking to Will Caine, Fox News's own host,
Speaker 1: not yet a member of the Trump administration, but probably soon,
Speaker 1: and he says, quote, the Democrats have offered to open
Speaker 1: up everything, but Ice ted Cruz, and I said, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's accept their offer. At the same time, we would
Speaker 1: do a bill for reconciliation for the ICE money. That way,
Speaker 1: we're out of the shutdown and DHS is back open,
Speaker 1: and then we have airports at work again. And Senator
Speaker 1: Soon submitted that to President Trump, and he said, no,
Speaker 1: no deal with Democo. So instead he sent ICE to
Speaker 1: airports where they are arresting mothers and also just wandering
Speaker 1: around talking on their phones, right, I mean talking at
Speaker 1: their phones, looking at their phones, wearing bulletproof vests in
Speaker 1: a place that you can't have a gun, looking ridiculous
Speaker 1: where I mean, you know, but at least not wearing masks.
Speaker 3: I mean, our next sunline is literally that they're not
Speaker 3: doing anything but playing Candy Crush and they're getting nothing
Speaker 3: done here.
Speaker 1: Not that there's anything wrong with Candy Crush this podcast.
Speaker 1: We support Candy Crush. You should support us again. Candy
Speaker 1: crushing it.
Speaker 3: I heard you've been candy crushing it.
Speaker 1: Unless Candy Crush is paying me. I'm not candy crushing it.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, I didn't know.
Speaker 1: I'm not candy crushing for free baby.
Speaker 3: But the point being, we're now two days into this
Speaker 3: and we're seeing ICE doing nothing at these airports aside
Speaker 3: from standing around and not helping these wait times go down.
Speaker 1: Wrecked. Lots of good photos of them looking very bored. Also,
Speaker 1: the other thing that is that's actually pretty sticky for
Speaker 1: Trump is that you have these guys who we were
Speaker 1: told had to be in masks because of Docsing. Now
Speaker 1: they are out there and they're not wearing masks. Which
Speaker 1: is it, do we have to protect their identities or
Speaker 1: do we not have to protect their identities when they're
Speaker 1: in the airport because they might not be doing crimes.
Speaker 1: I think that's pretty interesting.
Speaker 2: Look.
Speaker 1: Donald Trump weighed in on his social media saying he's
Speaker 1: a all caps, big proponent of all caps ice wearing masks,
Speaker 1: but he'd greatly appreciate all caps, no masks when helping
Speaker 1: our country out of the democratic mess at the airports.
Speaker 1: Guess what branches Republicans control, Jesse all three?
Speaker 3: Supreme Court two. Yeah, And you do have Steve Batten
Speaker 3: saying that this is the trial run for the elections,
Speaker 3: and you know, so far, if this is the trial
Speaker 3: run for the elections, it seems like it's a lot
Speaker 3: of people just getting pictures of these people.
Speaker 1: So I'm excited. At least they're not wearing masks. And
Speaker 1: the way times, by the way, are real long. If
Speaker 1: you're going to an airport, get there seven thousand years early.
Speaker 3: In one of my group chats, people have spoken of
Speaker 3: getting there three and a half to four hours early
Speaker 3: and barely making their flights.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Good stuff. So as a reaction to this, we have
Speaker 3: Delta Airlines suspending airport perks for members of Congress until
Speaker 3: the shutdown is over.
Speaker 1: Honestly, good for them, Yeah, good for them. Here's the TSA.
Speaker 1: The newest recommendation from the TSA recommends getting to the
Speaker 1: airport four hours before your flight. Four hours. That's right,
Speaker 1: four hours. Many of these flights, most these flights, if
Speaker 1: you're flying in America, are under four hours, but you
Speaker 1: should still get to the airport four hours early. It
Speaker 1: is just incredible stuff. But good for Delta Airlines. You know,
Speaker 1: if the Congress is not going to fund the airports,
Speaker 1: then Delta should not be giving them any free orange juice. Correct,
Speaker 1: no orange juice for Congress people.
Speaker 3: How about wheelchair lifts to their gate through back doors?
Speaker 3: What about Nancy may shoul I need her handheld?
Speaker 1: Listen, man, I'm not getting involved in any of this.
Speaker 1: I am not getting involved in this is all I
Speaker 1: can say is, yeah, No, we have exciting news over
Speaker 1: at our YouTube channel. The third episode is out now.
Speaker 1: From our series Project twenty twenty nine are reimagining where
Speaker 1: we examine what went wrong with democrats approach to policy
Speaker 1: and how we can correct it and deliver changes for
Speaker 1: the American people. The first episodes dove into campaign finance, reform, antitrust,
Speaker 1: and regulation. Our newest episode is on how we solidify
Speaker 1: reproductive rights for women. We talk to the smartest names
Speaker 1: in the field, like Abortion every Day is Jessica Valenti,
Speaker 1: the Center for Reproductive Rights, Nancy Northok UCLA is oh
Speaker 1: and Mary Ziegler and the gout Macher Institute's Kelly Badden.
Speaker 1: Republicans were prepared for when they got the levers of power.
Speaker 1: Democrats need to be too. So please head over to
Speaker 1: YouTube and search Molly John Fast Project twenty twenty nine
Speaker 1: or go to the Fast Politics YouTube channel page and
Speaker 1: you'll find it there. Help us spread the word. Sam
Speaker 1: Cedar is the host of the Majority Report. Welcome, Welcome,
Speaker 1: Sam Theater.
Speaker 4: Always a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 3: Molly.
Speaker 1: I am happy to have you here because I feel
Speaker 1: like you are equally outraged. I mean, I know we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about the corruption, because you have to
Speaker 1: talk about the corruption because it's so glaring. It's the corruption,
Speaker 1: but it's also just the blatant stupidity of the thing.
Speaker 1: But we can start with Trump's SEC chair prevented the
Speaker 1: head of enforcement at the SEC from investigating Trump's circle
Speaker 1: for insider trading. Yeah, she's.
Speaker 4: Her name was Margaret Ryan. She's been on the job
Speaker 4: for only about six seven months or so, and usually
Speaker 4: it's a job like you stayed there for a long time.
Speaker 4: She was the chief enforcement officer of the SEC, and
Speaker 4: they were investigating the Trump business between the crypto and
Speaker 4: other things, and apparently you're not allowed to do that.
Speaker 1: It was the enforcement they had the problem with.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, you can show up to work, but you're
Speaker 4: just not supposed to do anything. It feels like every
Speaker 4: week there is at least one one example of enormous
Speaker 4: corruption that the Trump administration is doing that would take
Speaker 4: out any other administration. Yes, like we probably have had, honestly,
Speaker 4: like I don't know twenty five of these stories. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and it seems to be largely irrelevant because of the
Speaker 4: nature of this administration, which is incredibly authoritarian, and everybody
Speaker 4: who works there, I mean, Donald Trump did a very
Speaker 4: good job having four years off of making sure they
Speaker 4: surrounded himself with nobody who is going to challenge him. So,
Speaker 4: you know, it was surprising to me that NOME was
Speaker 4: booted because they don't really seem to feel political pressure
Speaker 4: in the same way that any other administration does, because
Speaker 4: everybody just closes ranks. And you know, that's why we're
Speaker 4: invading a country. Possibly we're certainly bombing a country involved
Speaker 4: in a huge war with forty percent of the country
Speaker 4: supports it tops and doesn't seem to be influencing Trump
Speaker 4: at all. And so but it's fascinating. The corruption is
Speaker 4: just I don't think that we can fully grasp the
Speaker 4: depth of the corruption. It's so transactional and naked.
Speaker 1: That is why with the oil futures situation, with the
Speaker 1: question of whether or not Trump world, you know, Trump
Speaker 1: says the war's over, the markets open, they rally, you know,
Speaker 1: the markets closed, Trump says we're going to bomb them.
Speaker 4: Well, but there's also some front running. I mean, so
Speaker 4: there's tudor codes going on here, right, Yeah, there's there's
Speaker 4: this sense of he's responding to the markets, although I
Speaker 4: think it's also possible. You know, we've got what thirty
Speaker 4: five hundred US Airborne.
Speaker 1: The Marines from I think it was a Marine.
Speaker 4: Expeditionary force, and the airborne is like, I don't know,
Speaker 4: four days out. It's possible he was just buying time.
Speaker 4: But it's also possible he was just reacting to the
Speaker 4: market and there isn't necessarily a plan. But then there's
Speaker 4: also like, uh, you've got people buying oil futures, you know,
Speaker 4: moments before he makes these announcements.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you.
Speaker 4: Know, we've seen this time and time again. We've seen it,
Speaker 4: you know on ploy Berker. That's just like insider trading,
Speaker 4: which I don't know, it's hard to assess which is worse.
Speaker 4: It's just it's quite obvious. There's a tremendous amount of
Speaker 4: corruption and they're just milking every single aspect of the
Speaker 4: job is being monetized. You know, today it was official
Speaker 4: that the Trump administration is paying a French company that
Speaker 4: had bought about a billion dollars worth of federal leases
Speaker 4: to build wind farms off the coast of New York
Speaker 4: State and North Carolina.
Speaker 1: Right wind farms that we need to make power that
Speaker 1: would be free once it got going.
Speaker 4: It's relatively, yeah, relatively, and he's making them whole as
Speaker 4: a way of like, you know, I guess buying them out.
Speaker 4: But part of the deal is we'll give you a
Speaker 4: billion dollars taxpayer money, right, You then have to invest
Speaker 4: in a new liquid natural gas refinery in Texas and
Speaker 4: some other oil deals down there. So essentially tax dollars
Speaker 4: to encourage to subsidize more or less more fossil fuel production.
Speaker 4: The company itself said, like, you know, we still believe
Speaker 4: that the wind power is is the thing, but it's
Speaker 4: just too expensive now to do it in America because
Speaker 4: of course it would take all sorts of legal hurdles.
Speaker 4: And then you know, just one other sort of side
Speaker 4: note to this. In December, Donald Trump's media company, which
Speaker 4: trades under DJT I think it is, did a six
Speaker 4: billion dollar all stock transaction no money involved in this,
Speaker 4: all stock transaction with a company that is in development
Speaker 4: of fusion. Now, we've been hearing about fusion power for
Speaker 4: a long time.
Speaker 1: It's always like twenty years.
Speaker 4: It always feels like it's a decade away. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 4: this is supposedly a decade away.
Speaker 1: But make energy with nothing, Well here, it might happen.
Speaker 4: It might happen, but at the very least we know
Speaker 4: that they have less competition because Donald trumpet is essentially
Speaker 4: destroying the solar market, both in terms of like the
Speaker 4: the centralized stuff with the solar panels, you know, you
Speaker 4: no longer subsidized to put those on your house, but
Speaker 4: also taking out these wind farms. So even as like
Speaker 4: a pump of dumb scheme, he's using taxpayer dollars to
Speaker 4: increase the value of his company's all stock investment in
Speaker 4: this fusion company. It's donning.
Speaker 1: So it's corruption and its grift, and it's sort of
Speaker 1: venn diagram of both. I want to go back to
Speaker 1: Christinome because I think that her being kids of the
Speaker 1: curb is an interesting phenomenon. And I want to talk
Speaker 1: about a press conference yesterday that Donald Trump did where
Speaker 1: so one of the things Trump does is he backs
Speaker 1: away from things when they start to seem like they
Speaker 1: might be And one of the things that happened with
Speaker 1: Christine Oome is it turns out she spent two hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty million dollars on horseback riding basically horseback riding
Speaker 1: movies and cowboy hats. And there's quite a lot of
Speaker 1: money even for this administration. You know, she's the tactical pants, right,
Speaker 1: the Scott Prouet with the tactical tactical pants of Trump
Speaker 1: one point zero. I was watching this press conference yesterday,
Speaker 1: and there was one today where he said a lot
Speaker 1: of crazy stuff. But yesterday he started I thought it.
Speaker 1: It seemed as if he was starting to make a
Speaker 1: case that Whiskey Pete might eventually go the way of
Speaker 1: Christy Nome.
Speaker 4: I don't know if we watched the same press conference,
Speaker 4: but he said at one point like Pete told me
Speaker 4: to do this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, That's what I'm talking about it.
Speaker 4: He's always looking for a fall guy. It occurred to
Speaker 4: me today on my show. It's like, maybe what we
Speaker 4: all need to do. It's not like Donald Trump watches
Speaker 4: my show, but we should all just pretend he's won,
Speaker 4: you know, just give him a little bit of grace,
Speaker 4: tell him that he's won, and hopefully back. I don't
Speaker 4: know that the plan could be also to you know,
Speaker 4: it's unclear. I don't think that, you know, we're in
Speaker 4: a position. The New York Times reported that MBS Crown Yes, yes,
Speaker 4: the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia is supposedly encouraging him
Speaker 4: to go further. The Saudi government denied it, but who
Speaker 4: knows it certainly wouldn't be on Israel, who definitely wants
Speaker 4: us to go further to say that it's the Saudist
Speaker 4: But Maddis mad Dog Maddis.
Speaker 1: Yes, who was too sane for this administration and is out.
Speaker 4: He yesterday reportedly said at some event that, like, if
Speaker 4: we leave now, Iran's going to charge a toll to
Speaker 4: get through this straight to hor Moves, which apparently oil
Speaker 4: companies don't like. I don't know this for a fact,
Speaker 4: I haven't done any research on this, but I'm willing
Speaker 4: to bet you that Maddis works for a defense contractor.
Speaker 4: Oh I since on a couple of boards, and.
Speaker 1: So yes, just put the toll up. I'm fine with
Speaker 1: that go.
Speaker 4: The thing is is that there's a lot of people
Speaker 4: who as much as this looks like a disaster to us, right,
Speaker 4: as much as like, you know, a three or four
Speaker 4: month oil shock and all of the sort of like
Speaker 4: other implications of the fertilizer shortage, you know, which I think.
Speaker 1: Won't really class in season, won't.
Speaker 4: Really crest until twenty twenty seven. I think the fertilizer
Speaker 4: is already in the system for this crop. But twenty
Speaker 4: twenty seven, you're going to see a lot of social believe.
Speaker 4: The last time we saw that, we got the Arab spring.
Speaker 4: But who knows where this will happen. There's a lot
Speaker 4: of people who can make a lot of money off
Speaker 4: of this. Yeah, you know, as to like why Donald
Speaker 4: Trump did this, which is clearly no political upside, right,
Speaker 4: Like if he wins, whatever that means, and we pull out, like,
Speaker 4: there's no he's not going to be in better shape
Speaker 4: than he was before we went in. So to me,
Speaker 4: it sounds like somebody he's got to be making some
Speaker 4: money some way, right, And he doesn't.
Speaker 1: Even said right. Remember he even first before he got elected,
Speaker 1: he told oil company billionaires, you know, you should get
Speaker 1: me money. You'll earn the money back. And then he
Speaker 1: recently he said, here's a truth, social post. The United
Speaker 1: States is the largest oil producer in the world by far,
Speaker 1: So when oil price is gone, we make a lot
Speaker 1: of money. We because they only privatize the games, they
Speaker 1: socialized losses, we don't make a lot of money now.
Speaker 4: We actually, if you want to look at sheer numbers,
Speaker 4: is actually the ones who are paying more money in
Speaker 4: gas prices and in inflation from everywhere else. We are
Speaker 4: the ones who are paying the oil companies who are
Speaker 4: making all the money.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: I want to go back to Joe Kent for a minute,
Speaker 1: because you got my head going on the people who
Speaker 1: leave the admitted. So this administration closes rank really well.
Speaker 1: And the difference between Trump one point zero and Trump
Speaker 1: two point zero is that nobody everybody stays in right,
Speaker 1: So if you get fired, you move to a different job,
Speaker 1: which prevents you from doing interviews and writing books. So
Speaker 1: Christy nom now runs the Shield of the Americas, which
Speaker 1: is not a real thing. But nope, but she's too
Speaker 1: stupid to know. Probably a good job. I mean, right,
Speaker 1: did she get to where the cowboy hat? But you know,
Speaker 1: let me just say she does not get her picture
Speaker 1: everywhere like she used to have her picture in airport.
Speaker 1: It's not anymore.
Speaker 4: And I would imagine her political career. I think it's over, yes,
Speaker 4: Like I mean, like what like if she had any
Speaker 4: desires of being like a VP for somebody or something
Speaker 4: like that, I find it that's done.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But everybody's political career, I mean, everyone who's gotten
Speaker 1: in any kind of contact with Trump world is not
Speaker 1: going to happen. I mean Jadie Vance is hiding from
Speaker 1: this war.
Speaker 4: Jd Vance has gone into uh Is Like it does
Speaker 4: seem like he's hiding in a bunker right now. And
Speaker 4: Marco Rubio remember him, he was a Secretary of State.
Speaker 4: I haven't seen him in like.
Speaker 1: Tweets you don't see. I mean the crazy part is
Speaker 1: Jade Vance, who had never who could not stop defending
Speaker 1: everything in the entire world, who was if there was
Speaker 1: a Nazi group chat, he was out there being like
Speaker 1: those kids they were just thirty two. That guy does
Speaker 1: not tweet anymore.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it's interesting, Like That's my point is
Speaker 4: like from a political standpoint, this is not a good
Speaker 4: thing for Trump to do. No, and so they could
Speaker 4: not make the argument that that was the case. Somebody
Speaker 4: told him it was it was going to be a
Speaker 4: slam dunk. But I also imagine he's got to be somebody.
Speaker 4: There has to be an entity that is putting money
Speaker 4: in his pocket in some fashion that is in favor
Speaker 4: of this. Maybe it is Saudi Arabia, maybe it's some
Speaker 4: other country, but somewhere he is making money from this.
Speaker 4: I mean, I listens to be has to be if
Speaker 4: oil gets more expensive, maybe he owns part of like
Speaker 4: the output of Venezuela and maybe he's getting I don't know,
Speaker 4: but there is no other logic to it.
Speaker 1: Well, you mentioned this before, but Reuter's reports this morning,
Speaker 1: and again it's just sort of we sort of knew
Speaker 1: this was true, but that Trump right gets off the
Speaker 1: phone with net Yahoo and orders the strike, right, and
Speaker 1: then we have this Times reporting later in the day
Speaker 1: at Saudie's. You know, wanted this involved in this, hoping
Speaker 1: for more from this. I always am curious about the
Speaker 1: timing of stories like this. Yeah, and we're both liberal Jews,
Speaker 1: so I get very worried about this for any number
Speaker 1: of reasons. But you know, a lot of people on
Speaker 1: the right are saying it's anti Semitic to say that
Speaker 1: Israel somehow was involved in this war, though clearly they
Speaker 1: were no. But you know, the Jonathan Greenblatz of the world.
Speaker 4: Jonathan lad is a is a grift. I honestly, if
Speaker 4: Jonathan green Blaze told me my house was burning down,
Speaker 4: I wouldn't believe. Both Marco Rubio and people somehow forget this.
Speaker 4: Mike Johnson almost at the exact same time that Marco
Speaker 4: Rubio said, yes, we attacked because Isla that they were
Speaker 4: going to attack, and we thought we would be attacked,
Speaker 4: and so we were preempting.
Speaker 1: That, by the way, an insane statement.
Speaker 4: Well, only if like they had agreed that was the
Speaker 4: best case scenario to sort of like say we had
Speaker 4: to do this, they could have stopped Israel in that right,
Speaker 4: They could have said, couldn't.
Speaker 1: We're not the superpower. We're in the superpower.
Speaker 4: Of course, yeah, it without a doubt. I don't I'm
Speaker 4: not even convinced it's in Israel's best interest, but certainly
Speaker 4: it was certainly on their on their bucket list. Yaho's
Speaker 4: been saying that, yes, And I mean, let's be honest, Like,
Speaker 4: you look at this country, ninety three percent of the
Speaker 4: polling is in favor of the multitude of wars that
Speaker 4: they're waging right now. When other countries look at this
Speaker 4: country and see Donald Trump as winning twice, even though
Speaker 4: one time he didn't win the popular vote, they would
Speaker 4: be nuts to assume that this country isn't at the
Speaker 4: very least forty eight percent on board with Donald Trump. Right.
Speaker 4: And I'm sorry when you look at that, Yaho's been
Speaker 4: in power for thirty years in that country. Off and
Speaker 4: on the fact of the matter is, there's no government
Speaker 4: that's going to be demonstrably bad than net Yahoo, particularly
Speaker 4: with the way that the system of their government is,
Speaker 4: and the polling shows ninety three percent they're excited about
Speaker 4: their war in Lebanon as they're trying to push up
Speaker 4: and essentially expansionist Israel. They're they're talking now about resetting
Speaker 4: a boundary permanently or at least semi permanently in Lebanon.
Speaker 4: They're basically waging pogroms in the West Bank. We've seen
Speaker 4: them destroy and flatten Gaza and still continue to create
Speaker 4: incredible deprivation and the miseration of Palestinians in Gaza. I mean,
Speaker 4: so it was certainly within Israel's interests why Donald Trump
Speaker 4: decides to form a US policy around Israel's interest That
Speaker 4: was the story they told us until they realized, like, hey,
Speaker 4: this doesn't necessarily jibe with America. First, I have no
Speaker 4: doubt that there was also some other interest that Donald
Speaker 4: Trump had. I'd like to say, I wouldn't be surprised
Speaker 4: to find out, like they're.
Speaker 1: All making money. There is a garent country.
Speaker 4: That somehow or yes, in some fashion. Yeah, But the
Speaker 4: fact of the matter is is that in the absence
Speaker 4: of Miriam Adelson's one hundred and fifty million dollars that
Speaker 4: we know of in this last rittle and the promises
Speaker 4: he made to her right and like maybe Netanyah who
Speaker 4: said like, we're gonna make this thing happen for you
Speaker 4: and Jared in in Gaza and you guys are gonna
Speaker 4: have your gold coast in Gaza. I mean, who knows
Speaker 4: what inspired but the idea that that, you know.
Speaker 1: And he's took this up on his own, seems it's absurd.
Speaker 4: It's it's absolutely absurd to suggest that. I mean, particularly
Speaker 4: when you see half his administration running the opposite way.
Speaker 4: I mean, you saw that press conference when there's a
Speaker 4: clip of Stephen Miller when Trump is talking about, you know,
Speaker 4: blowing up Iran. Even Stephen Miller is like, is it's
Speaker 4: interfering with his.
Speaker 1: Right you know, his mass deportation, this.
Speaker 4: Mass importation actually you know, a purification of America ran agenda.
Speaker 4: I mean, where is this coming from within the administration
Speaker 4: outside of Laura Lumer, who is like, you know, providing
Speaker 4: a full throated support for this. So I think it's
Speaker 4: it's naive and and just frankly, I find it offensive
Speaker 4: to say that it's anti semitic to you point out
Speaker 4: that Israel has its own agenda as a nation.
Speaker 3: I find it.
Speaker 1: Which is not ours, by the way, exactly.
Speaker 4: And I find it incredibly dangerous frankly for Jews who
Speaker 4: live in this country and other countries to say criticism
Speaker 4: of Israel is anti semitic, and that because it implies
Speaker 4: that Israelis and Jews are the same thing, and they
Speaker 4: have the same agenda and they don't. That conflation is
Speaker 4: dangerous to me and to my.
Speaker 1: Family, Yes, and bad for the Jews.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: And anti Semitatism that we're all afraid of will be forgotten,
Speaker 1: the confabulation of Jews and Israel.
Speaker 4: I think the fact of the matter is that, you know,
Speaker 4: one of the sort of rationales for Israel is because
Speaker 4: Jews need a place to be safe. And I think
Speaker 4: it is simply objectively the case that Israel is making
Speaker 4: Jews less safe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's right, Sam Cedar, I hope you'll.
Speaker 4: Come back, Mollie, I would love to.
Speaker 1: Dave Sarota is the founder of The Lever, whose news
Speaker 1: season of The master Plan podcast is out now. Welcome, Welcome,
Speaker 1: Dave Sarona.
Speaker 2: Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: So you're here to talk about a podcast that focuses
Speaker 1: on one of my favorite topics. And it's one of
Speaker 1: my favorite topics because we did a whole thing on
Speaker 1: Project twenty twenty five, which now is out of date
Speaker 1: because he did it all and in it is this idea,
Speaker 1: the nightmare fuel of the unitary executive theory. So first
Speaker 1: I want you to explain what the unitary executive theory is.
Speaker 2: The unitary executive theory is this idea that the president
Speaker 2: has a constitutional right to essentially do whatever he wants
Speaker 2: with the executive branch of the government, which of course
Speaker 2: is the federal government. Let's just be clear the federal government. Yes,
Speaker 2: it's the courts, Yes it's the legislature. But when you
Speaker 2: think of like the government, like the EPA or HHS
Speaker 2: or the FBI, that is the executive branch. And what
Speaker 2: the unitary executive theory says is that because of Article
Speaker 2: two of the Constitution, there's this one line in the
Speaker 2: Constitution that says, yeah, the executive authority is vested in
Speaker 2: a president. That that has been extrapolated by the conservatives
Speaker 2: to argue that the Congress has no right or power
Speaker 2: to limit what the president does with the executive branch.
Speaker 2: And this is obviously a fringe radical theory, especially when
Speaker 2: you consider that the Constitution is a I mean, the
Speaker 2: concert doesn't say everything about everything. It leaves a lot
Speaker 2: of gaps. But I think we can all agree that
Speaker 2: the Constitution was designed as an anti monarch document. Like
Speaker 2: the underlying theory is, you don't want all the power
Speaker 2: in one person's hand, so we have coequal branches of government,
Speaker 2: and the unitary executive theory flies in the face of
Speaker 2: that which their theory is. The president is not a
Speaker 2: coequal branch of government. It gets to run the executive
Speaker 2: branch essentially without regard for the laws that Congress is passing.
Speaker 1: So talk us through the history here, because this is
Speaker 1: a fever dream of Richard Nixon.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean the history here is that in Watergate,
Speaker 2: that was seen as a scandal that embodied an imperial presidency,
Speaker 2: the president was deploying all sorts of things against his
Speaker 2: political enemies. As we trace in our new series master Plan,
Speaker 2: he was asserting the right to decide to spend or
Speaker 2: not spend money that Congress had already budgeted, despite Congress's
Speaker 2: very clear power of the purse in Congress. The president
Speaker 2: back then, Richard Nixon campaigned promising to end the Vietnam War.
Speaker 2: Months after he gets into office, he is expanding the
Speaker 2: Vietnam War in secret without the authorization of Congress. Point being,
Speaker 2: Richard Nixon had constructed an imperial presidency. And I think
Speaker 2: what's important to understand is that after Watergate, the Congress
Speaker 2: grabbed back some of that power. Right the Congress passed
Speaker 2: the War Powers Act. The Congress passed the Budget Impoundment Act,
Speaker 2: which says, hey, the president cannot just decide not to
Speaker 2: spend money on stuff we've appropriated money for. The Congress
Speaker 2: did all those investigations into domestic surveillance and spy, the
Speaker 2: Church Commission, which created the Faiza Court system, which was
Speaker 2: supposed to require warrants for mass surveillance. So there was
Speaker 2: a moment where Congress pushed back against the imperial presidency.
Speaker 2: But from the backlash, a backlash that within ten years,
Speaker 2: the conservative movement was extremely upset about this congressional assertion
Speaker 2: of power, and inside of the Reagan administration came all
Speaker 2: sorts of attempts to grab back that power for the executive,
Speaker 2: including the creation as we find that we found the
Speaker 2: original document or set of documents inside the Reagan Justice
Speaker 2: Department articulating what would become known as the unitary executive theory.
Speaker 2: And remember, Ronald Reagan had been exploring this, or at
Speaker 2: least pieces of this in his first term. Right, the
Speaker 2: invasion of Lebanon, the invasion of Grenado without congressional authorization,
Speaker 2: assertions of executive privilege, Reagan firing the air traffic controllers
Speaker 2: without any authorization from Congress. Right, So, all of this
Speaker 2: culminates in the articulation of the unitary executive theory, which
Speaker 2: I think it's important to remember. It's one thing to
Speaker 2: say Congress says the executive can do this and can't
Speaker 2: do this, and the executive saying, well, we've view it
Speaker 2: this way. Inside of the statute, we have more power,
Speaker 2: you think we have less. What the unitary executive theory
Speaker 2: is actually saying is none of those laws apply, because
Speaker 2: we are making now a constitutional argument those laws that
Speaker 2: constrain executive authority are unconstitutional.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: It did culminate in the Reagan administration in the Iran
Speaker 2: Contra scandal. The Iran Contra scandal was fundamentally a scandal
Speaker 2: about whether or not the White House has to listen
Speaker 2: to laws that Congress passed saying you cannot fund covert wars,
Speaker 2: and the Reagan administration tried to ignore those laws. And
Speaker 2: I think the good news out of the Iran Contra
Speaker 2: scandal was, Okay, we decided as a country, that's a scandal.
Speaker 2: You have to listen to the laws. People were indicted.
Speaker 2: You can't just ignore congressional laws. And so for a time,
Speaker 2: the Reagan Revolution kind of hit a wall on what
Speaker 2: it could do on executive power. But of course you
Speaker 2: and I are old enough to remember what happened in
Speaker 2: the Bush years, where after nine to eleven the sort
Speaker 2: of push for unitary executive authority went on overdrive with
Speaker 2: very very little opposition.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I have a lot to talk about.
Speaker 1: You bring up Aaran contra, and I'm like, oh, I
Speaker 1: got to talk about a round country. But first I
Speaker 1: want to go back to the Reagan do oje because
Speaker 1: there are members of this Supreme Court. Yeah, I'm thinking
Speaker 1: of Gorsich who have roots in that world. And there
Speaker 1: are others too who have roots. You know, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of like you know, the Clerk to Justice pipeline
Speaker 1: and the Federalist I want to know what the document was,
Speaker 1: sort of who cooked it up, and a little bit
Speaker 1: about if this was directly to justify the wars in
Speaker 1: South America.
Speaker 2: So John Roberts and Samuel Alito were in the Edmese
Speaker 2: Justice Department. Edmese was Ronald Reagan's Attorney general, who, by
Speaker 2: the way, in Master Plan, we talked to Edmese. Edmes
Speaker 2: is still around, He's ninety five years old. He was
Speaker 2: gracious enough to talk to us about this.
Speaker 1: Does he feel vindicated or does he feel regret?
Speaker 2: I'll put it this way. Edmee's did not show any
Speaker 2: remorse or regret about specifically the unitary executive theory and
Speaker 2: how it's being used right now. But the scene to
Speaker 2: say is it's after Ronald Reagan's first term, and in
Speaker 2: Ronald Reagan's first term, people like John Roberts and Samuel
Speaker 2: Alito have been writing various memos asserting a broad view
Speaker 2: of executive authority under existing statutes, the president's right to
Speaker 2: hire and fire, the president's right to launch wars without
Speaker 2: congressional authority. They are articulating this and they are getting help,
Speaker 2: by the way, from people like Dick Cheney, who is
Speaker 2: a congressman from Wyoming who ultimately is on the Minority
Speaker 2: Committee or representing the minority on the Iran Contra Committee,
Speaker 2: where after Iran Contra happens, he issues a Minority report
Speaker 2: essentially saying the problem is Congress, the problem is not
Speaker 2: the president. Right, So he's arguing, you know, for more
Speaker 2: and more executive authority. And where the unitary executive theory
Speaker 2: gets articulated is Edmese becomes Attorney General and asks for
Speaker 2: a big, sort of stage setting report on separation of
Speaker 2: powers from a guy named Stephen Markman, who produces an
Speaker 2: eighty plus page report about how the administration can more
Speaker 2: aggressively assert executive authority in its second term, including starting
Speaker 2: to make constitutional arguments about the president's power. And this
Speaker 2: all culminates, by the way, in the question of independent councils,
Speaker 2: special prosecutors. This is the thing that really tunes up
Speaker 2: the Reagan administration. After Watergate, there was a bill that
Speaker 2: was passed called the Ethics and Government Act, which said, listen,
Speaker 2: when there's accusations of high crimes in the executive branch,
Speaker 2: the executive branch cannot investigate itself. Makes sense, right, Like
Speaker 2: the president's appointees cannot investigate the president, right, they got
Speaker 2: their job from him, they him their loyalty. So in
Speaker 2: special cases there needs to be able to be an
Speaker 2: independent investigation. And Ronald Reagan's administration ends up being investigated
Speaker 2: in a couple of ways, including Iran contract. And what
Speaker 2: happens is that the Reagan administration goes into court and
Speaker 2: argues that independent special prosecutors are unconstitutional because they represent
Speaker 2: a part of the executive branch that the executive the
Speaker 2: president cannot control, and the Constitution says that the executive
Speaker 2: that the president controls the executive branch. Now that case
Speaker 2: loses at the Supreme Court. The only dissenter is Antonin Scalia. Shocker,
Speaker 2: Scalia dissents. But it becomes kind of cannon for the
Speaker 2: conservative movement that we cannot allow anything independent, and that
Speaker 2: includes the FTC, the CFD, all the independent agencies that
Speaker 2: Donald Trump is now trying to pack with his own
Speaker 2: appointees and ignore the protections against that. But that's where
Speaker 2: all this culminates. Right. Ultimately, what you get to when
Speaker 2: I think you listen to our podcast, is you think
Speaker 2: Donald Trump created the sort of imperial monarchical presidency. No,
Speaker 2: he didn't he's using the powers that were created for him.
Speaker 2: Now he may be using them in a more aggressive
Speaker 2: way than we're used to, but those powers were created
Speaker 2: for him. And by the way, here's the crazy part.
Speaker 2: Here's like the mind boggling part for as we talk
Speaker 2: about it. Right now today, the Congress is right now
Speaker 2: considering reauthorizing the Executive Branch's mass surveillance system without warrants.
Speaker 2: And I want to underscore the without warrants part, right,
Speaker 2: warrantless spying means the FBI can sweep in all of
Speaker 2: your information and not have to go to another branch
Speaker 2: of the government, the judiciary, to just get like, hey,
Speaker 2: this is cool, right, Like we're just checking to make
Speaker 2: sure you're protecting everybody's civil liberties. And the Congress, including
Speaker 2: some Democrats, are considering renewing that power for the Trump administration.
Speaker 2: So when we talk about the Imperial presidency being really
Speaker 2: a bipartisan project, that's what we're talking about.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of stuff happening right now, and ICE
Speaker 1: has a ton of unfettered cash from the BBB. Homeland
Speaker 1: Security is in a shutdown despite the fac that ICE
Speaker 1: has billions of dollars, which it's mind blowing to me
Speaker 1: that no one has been like, just give the ICE
Speaker 1: money to Homeland Security. But I guess whatever, that would
Speaker 1: make too much sense. I want you to talk about
Speaker 1: the Pfizer reauthorization. Where is it, who is it going to,
Speaker 1: and where would it go through? And also the only
Speaker 1: thing this administration can do is pass in reconciliation largely,
Speaker 1: that's right. So where is this like in reconciliation is
Speaker 1: in the Senate? Where is it?
Speaker 2: So the PISA situation comes out of the post nine
Speaker 2: to eleven period. After nine to eleven, the Bush administration
Speaker 2: engages in warrantless wire vast amounts of data swept in
Speaker 2: no warrants. It's in a kind of legal gray area.
Speaker 2: And ultimately the compromise I put that in quotes because
Speaker 2: it wasn't really a compromise. At the very end of
Speaker 2: the Bush administration, Democrats and Republicans joined together in Congress
Speaker 2: with the Bush administration to enshrine warrantless wire tapping and
Speaker 2: surveillance in law, saying you don't have to go get
Speaker 2: a warrant any Arguably just as bad saying to the
Speaker 2: telecom companies, if you have given over people's private information,
Speaker 2: you cannot be sued, so retroactive legal immunity. This gets
Speaker 2: signed into law. Now this has come up for renewal
Speaker 2: every couple of years, this kind of genuinely unprecedented power,
Speaker 2: and we've heard about more and more abuses of this system.
Speaker 2: Surveillance being deployed against protesters, surveillance being deployed against the
Speaker 2: political opponents of Donald Trump, Surveillance being deployed against members
Speaker 2: of Congress. And now the renewal is up again, and
Speaker 2: you have a s situation where Trump, who had previously
Speaker 2: publicly been a critic of FIZA surveillance because he perceived
Speaker 2: it being aimed at him, all of a sudden, now
Speaker 2: he's the president, he wants it. And what you have
Speaker 2: are you have very conservative Republicans and the Progressive Caucus
Speaker 2: saying this is no longer accepted, this is not acceptable
Speaker 2: at all. We want to stop this. And you have
Speaker 2: this sort of mushy Uni party middle of both parties,
Speaker 2: many of them saying we want to give this power,
Speaker 2: we want to just simply renew this power. And what
Speaker 2: boggles the mind is Stephen Miller is the big advocate
Speaker 2: reportedly for renewing this because he wants this to be
Speaker 2: used with the FBI, with ice, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 2: And you have the Democrat, the senior Democrat, Jim Himes
Speaker 2: on the House Intelligence Committee, who is now urging Democrats
Speaker 2: to vote for it because he says he has seen
Speaker 2: no abuses of the system. Now here's what's crazy. Remember
Speaker 2: where would you find out about abuses of the system? Like,
Speaker 2: what data is Jim Himes citing from.
Speaker 1: The Trump administration the DOJ.
Speaker 2: Like the people who don't want you to see abuses
Speaker 2: are the ones who have the data to tell you
Speaker 2: that there aren't abuses, right, and we already know from
Speaker 2: news reports, et cetera, et cetera, that there have obviously
Speaker 2: been abuses. So it's it boggles the mind that any
Speaker 2: Democrat would think about giving Stephen Miller the power that
Speaker 2: he wants. I have sort of a like a like
Speaker 2: a basic shorthand rule, like a rule of thumb. Here,
Speaker 2: if Stephen Miller wants more power.
Speaker 1: It's probably bad.
Speaker 2: You should be the opposite side.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Jim Himes, what's going on? You think he just
Speaker 1: wants the stuff that is? I mean he is in
Speaker 1: the is he in the Gang of Eight?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 2: I guess the best like the most charitable interpretation is
Speaker 2: he simply believes this kind of surveillance is providing us
Speaker 2: a special special security or making the country safer. But
Speaker 2: I want to just really underscore this, We're not This
Speaker 2: is not a debate about whether this kind of surveillance
Speaker 2: can happen. This is a debate about whether you just
Speaker 2: got to go to the court, you know, And I
Speaker 2: know I know that, like some people will listen and
Speaker 2: be like they'll have in their minds like a scene
Speaker 2: from Homeland and like she's running to save the day
Speaker 2: and she can't stop to get the judges warrant. All
Speaker 2: of these reform bills to require warrants have special provisions
Speaker 2: in them that are like, listen, if there's a real emergency,
Speaker 2: like a genuine emergency, you can go you can go
Speaker 2: for the warrant after. So none of that crap applies.
Speaker 2: This is about whether you think the president should have
Speaker 2: all the power or not. And I think when you
Speaker 2: when you listen to a series like Master Plan, I
Speaker 2: think you come away from it, I hope being like, hey,
Speaker 2: maybe one guy shouldn't have all the power. Maybe maybe
Speaker 2: like the Founders way back a long time ago, like
Speaker 2: they had a point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I want you to talk about the AI
Speaker 1: regulation because that shit is wild.
Speaker 2: Yes, so this relates to it, and I.
Speaker 1: Think it's worth like putting a bow on this, which
Speaker 1: is Donald Trump is very in the tank for AI,
Speaker 1: even though he doesn't quite understand what it does, and
Speaker 1: so a lot of his legislation is to prevent legislation.
Speaker 2: That's right. So Donald Trump has just issued an executive
Speaker 2: order trying to prevent states from regulating AI in any way.
Speaker 1: He has no idea what it does, but he just
Speaker 1: knows there's money there.
Speaker 2: All right. He just knows his brologarchs want this. I
Speaker 2: do think there are parts of the government that we
Speaker 2: know want this too. So there has been this concurrent
Speaker 2: fight between Pete Hegseth's Pentagon and Anthropic that seems like
Speaker 2: a side issue but is actually, to my mind, like
Speaker 2: a central issue. The fight is about. Anthropic has said, look, Pentagon,
Speaker 2: we'll let you use our we'll contract with you, you
Speaker 2: can use our technology, but we have some basic internal
Speaker 2: controls that are designed to prevent our technology from being
Speaker 2: used to run let's say, autonomous weapons or to do
Speaker 2: mass surveillance. Okay, these are not things that the law
Speaker 2: requires us to do. But they're things that like, we
Speaker 2: have decided as a company, we don't want our technology
Speaker 2: to be used for heg Seth and the Pentagon are
Speaker 2: basically saying, no, we want you to give us a
Speaker 2: switch to turn off those guardrails when you contract with us.
Speaker 2: So what they're really saying is to my mind, what
Speaker 2: I hear them saying is we want to use AI
Speaker 2: for autonomous weapons and for mass surveillance. We want to
Speaker 2: use AI as an example to plug into all of
Speaker 2: that data that we are sweeping up now without a
Speaker 2: warrant thanks to the FISA law. Right, it's the convergence
Speaker 2: of the PISA law debate and renewal with the AI contract.
Speaker 2: They want to plug all of that warrantless data into
Speaker 2: the AI systems, and Anthropic has basically said, we're not
Speaker 2: really comfortable with that. Now. Here's where it escalates at
Speaker 2: the lever. We broke the story last week that Trump
Speaker 2: is now quietly proposing to put a line into all
Speaker 2: government procurement contracts okay, government wide, not just the Pentagon,
Speaker 2: saying that when any agency contracts with any AI company,
Speaker 2: the AI companies have to give Trump officials the power
Speaker 2: to override any of those AI systems privacy or safety guardrails.
Speaker 2: In other words, a line in the contract that says
Speaker 2: the Trump administration when it contracts with AI companies, they
Speaker 2: can do whatever they want with that technology, regardless of
Speaker 2: how that technology is engineered or designed to operate. To
Speaker 2: my mind, I mean that is genuinely terrifying. And I
Speaker 2: should add whether it's Trump or another president, it is
Speaker 2: genuinely terrifying. That level of power concentrated a powered in
Speaker 2: the hands of one small subset of people is insane.
Speaker 1: Dave, Dave, Dave, I hope you'll come back.
Speaker 2: I would love to come back. Thank you for discussing this, Molly.
Speaker 2: I'll just say, these are a set of issues that
Speaker 2: are like the kind of issues that are like under
Speaker 2: every other issue. Right, there's a couple of issues that
Speaker 2: connect to like every issue, right, and I think it's
Speaker 2: executive power. Concentrated power is one of them. Obviously, legalized corruption,
Speaker 2: money and politics is another. It's like they're like the
Speaker 2: Kevin Bacon of issues, right, Like there's six degrees of Kevin.
Speaker 2: They're like two degrees away from every single issue. So
Speaker 2: thank you for you know, helping us talk about this.
Speaker 2: And unpack it.
Speaker 5: There no moment, Jesse Kannon Molly, the Pentagon is directing
Speaker 5: companies to censor Iran war information.
Speaker 3: It is just unbelievable. They've now annexed the press to
Speaker 3: another room after the judge knock them down. This is
Speaker 3: just getting silly. What will snowflakes? The Department of War
Speaker 3: are truly fragile. Listen, Jesse, I'm all yours. Tell me,
Speaker 3: tell me.
Speaker 1: I have a theory that these people are not free
Speaker 1: speech absolutists. I have a new theaty thinking about.
Speaker 3: The evidence on your side, and I don't know what
Speaker 3: to do.
Speaker 1: I have this theory that these people are actually not
Speaker 1: free speech absolutists. Satellite companies are being told how to
Speaker 1: describe the images they capture. Look, here's an interesting thing
Speaker 1: about this moment. We have Roan does not have a
Speaker 1: free and fair media. It has censored media. Then we
Speaker 1: have Israel censoring its media. Then we have the United States,
Speaker 1: which theoretically the first Amendment, it's the first what not
Speaker 1: even the second Amendment, which Republicans love so much, the
Speaker 1: First Amendment, they don't like it anymore, the first Amendment.
Speaker 1: And we have all sorts of situations where we have
Speaker 1: stories where we can't figure out who to trust, Where
Speaker 1: Trump and the Iranian government they can't agree on what
Speaker 1: and you don't know who to trust because our government
Speaker 1: is filled with liars, and so is theirs, and so,
Speaker 1: ladies and gentlemen, we find ourselves in a moment that
Speaker 1: is a particularly dark moment in American life. That's it
Speaker 1: for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday,
Speaker 1: and Saturday to hear the best minds and politics make
Speaker 1: sense of all this chaos. If you enjoy this podcast,
Speaker 1: please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.