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 Trump says he was too busy
Speaker 1: averting a holocaust to commit fraud. We have a great
Speaker 1: show today. The Guardian's Hugo lol joins us to talk
Speaker 1: about Trump's many legal woes. Then we'll talk to Rhode
Speaker 1: Islands Lieutenant governor so being a Matos about her run
Speaker 1: to fill one of Rhode Island's two congressional seats. But
Speaker 1: first we have the Bulwarks Jonathan Last. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: Fast Politics. Jonathan Last.
Speaker 2: Molly, it's good to be with you.
Speaker 1: I love you because you are like one of the
Speaker 1: greatest editors I've ever had, so I am always such
Speaker 1: a huge fan. Though I just googled you and found
Speaker 1: out that you're not that much older than I am,
Speaker 1: which is very annoying, but still a little bit not.
Speaker 2: That much old her, right, I thought we were exactly
Speaker 2: the same age? Are we not the same age?
Speaker 1: Forty nine? Man, I'm only forty five and I just
Speaker 1: turned forty five, so I think I'm really forty four.
Speaker 1: For another six months, I.
Speaker 2: Feel like I'm a really young forty nine.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about my text exchange with Tim Miller,
Speaker 1: a friend and mine. So watch the debates. Of course
Speaker 1: got drawn into the vacmentum. Just kidding. But one of
Speaker 1: the sad things that made me think of both you
Speaker 1: and Tim and made me text him endlessly was that
Speaker 1: there was one person on that stage, and it might
Speaker 1: have only been one, maybe two. Maybe Mike Pence can
Speaker 1: be in the category two though Kenny really who was
Speaker 1: occupying Earth one? And I don't like any of what
Speaker 1: she has to say, or I don't like her views particularly,
Speaker 1: but she did seem very much like on this planet,
Speaker 1: which for this Republican party, I was a little shocked.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she was good, She was basically fine. She understood
Speaker 2: that the spending problems are not like just Democrats, even
Speaker 2: Republicans have been spending a lot of money since Ronald Reagan,
Speaker 2: and which is fine, by the way. I mean, there
Speaker 2: are lots of good reasons to spend money on the
Speaker 2: part of the government. And Mike Pence was was good too,
Speaker 2: And I mean, I don't know about you. I came
Speaker 2: away from that debate and I was depressed, precisely because
Speaker 2: I thought to myself, if Nicky Haley or Mike Pence
Speaker 2: or Chris Christy or even Tim Scott. I guess their
Speaker 2: politics are not my politics, and I can quibble with
Speaker 2: you or Anasa, I should say ASA as well. I
Speaker 2: can tell you five brother reasons why they haven't gone
Speaker 2: far enough and why I wish they would have gone.
Speaker 2: But if any of them were the Republican presidential nominee,
Speaker 2: then I would be totally fine about the future of
Speaker 2: American democracy. Yeah, you know, I'd be like, great, I
Speaker 2: think Joe Biden's done a good job for president. Happy
Speaker 2: to go vote for him. This is awesome, And if
Speaker 2: he loses, we can all wake up the next morning
Speaker 2: and just go to work and not not be But
Speaker 2: and the fact that those people combine for like eleven percent,
Speaker 2: it isn't terrifying. Like, it's not the case that the
Speaker 2: problem is that the party's just not giving the Republican
Speaker 2: voters any good options. Right No, no, no, no, no, that's
Speaker 2: not the problem. There are plenty of good options, right,
Speaker 2: They come in lots of different flavors, and the voters
Speaker 2: do not want any of them.
Speaker 1: Right. No, I agree, I mean that is an incredible
Speaker 1: bit of sorcery, just finding us sort of in this
Speaker 1: situation where there are actually some reasonable choices. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, it's funny because Chris Christy gets so much
Speaker 1: credit for being a bomb thrower, and I don't think
Speaker 1: of Chris Christy as deserving of much credit, I have
Speaker 1: to tell you, especially because it seems to me like
Speaker 1: he's quite interested in self promotion. But Asa Hutchinson really
Speaker 1: has sort of come into the fold as just trying
Speaker 1: very much to sort of protect what little is left
Speaker 1: of the sort of sane caucus of the Republican Party.
Speaker 2: And Mike Pence too. Honestly, I thought Mike Pence was
Speaker 2: a little more hardcore than Chris Christy even but Christy
Speaker 2: did the you know, look, Christy did a thing which
Speaker 2: I've been all. I've been writing about this for two years.
Speaker 2: God helped me. I'm the one who I don't have
Speaker 2: you noticed this, but when The Atlantic, the Atlantic Monthly,
Speaker 2: one of our great magazines, when they need somebody to
Speaker 2: just praise Mike Pence, they call me, and I can't
Speaker 2: believe that this is my lot in life, Like this
Speaker 2: is where I've come to Mike Pence. You know, again,
Speaker 2: not going to romanticize, granted, all the failures and faults
Speaker 2: and the enablement and all that he stood up and
Speaker 2: saved America when like his life was on the line,
Speaker 2: and his family's lives and his career.
Speaker 1: Because dan Quail told him too. But yes, yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 2: Again, grant all of it right. It shouldn't have been
Speaker 2: hard for him. And I myself did not rob a
Speaker 2: bank this morning, So do I get a cookie? I
Speaker 2: get it, I got it. I was not born yesterday.
Speaker 2: But Chris Christy said, you know, look, hey, people, we
Speaker 2: shouldn't be giving Mike our grudging support, like America owes
Speaker 2: him a debt. I was like, yes, Chris, read my article.
Speaker 2: That's right. But the fact is that the people don't
Speaker 2: want it right that this is one of Desanta's's problem,
Speaker 2: is right, is that he's caught in that. You know,
Speaker 2: his donors really don't want him being pro insurrection, and
Speaker 2: so he tries to have it both ways. And that's
Speaker 2: one of the things, one of the reasons the Republican
Speaker 2: voters don't trust him.
Speaker 1: I have to say to Santis has really shown us
Speaker 1: that having no charisma, no personality to speak, that just
Speaker 1: being a fascist is not enough. So let's talk about
Speaker 1: this partisanship. We've developed a political culture in which one
Speaker 1: party has affirmative policy goals and the second party is
Speaker 1: committed mostly making the first party angry. Talk to me
Speaker 1: about this idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I was thinking back to the I
Speaker 2: was thinking back to the twenty twenty Democratic debates, and
Speaker 2: I don't know if you remember them, but it was
Speaker 2: like the first hour of every single debate was fifteen
Speaker 2: people on the stage litigating the finest discrepancies between a
Speaker 2: bunch of healthcare plans which were all.
Speaker 1: Basically the same, right, right, right, you want glasses, no glasses?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you're well. You know, Pete Boodah Judge's plan
Speaker 2: would would leave two point three million people uninsured. And
Speaker 2: what we're going to do is we're going to have
Speaker 2: we're going to abolish the state market places and replace portability.
Speaker 2: And you know, it's all like, wow, these guys care
Speaker 2: a lot about healthcare. No, nobody, none of them are
Speaker 2: going to if they win, do anything about healthcare really
Speaker 2: because we've just done that, and you know, they're all
Speaker 2: about adventures. The point is, like Democrats have a bunch
Speaker 2: of actual issues that they want to use government to
Speaker 2: enact policies and Republicans don't. And this has been going
Speaker 2: on since basically, I mean at least twenty sixteen, but
Speaker 2: maybe twenty twelve. I remember when Gingrich got really real
Speaker 2: famous just by like yelling at moderators and he shot
Speaker 2: to the top of the bowling. They just want to
Speaker 2: trigger the Libs. That's the highest, the highest goal of
Speaker 2: the Republican electorate right now. And you see it with
Speaker 2: the you know, they don't have policy proposals. There are
Speaker 2: their policy proposals is well, I will put sharks with
Speaker 2: frickin lasers on their heads in the Rio Grande to
Speaker 2: murder migrants. That's as close as they get to a policy.
Speaker 2: And it's a weird, weird thing because when I was
Speaker 2: I don't know, when I was a kid, like the
Speaker 2: Republican Party was the party of ideas. They were like,
Speaker 2: we're gonna have enterprise zones, and you know, like they
Speaker 2: became incomprehensible because there were so many ideas like you
Speaker 2: know what the flat tax people versus the fair tax people.
Speaker 2: But there was a lot of like and that's all gone.
Speaker 2: All it is is like nativism and we hate the
Speaker 2: Libs and we want to hurt people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now, I'm depressed again.
Speaker 2: That's what I do. That's my move. Don't think O, look,
Speaker 2: you don't invite me on this show because you want
Speaker 2: to be happy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think that's a really good point.
Speaker 1: And that was a sort of refreshing moment. Again. I
Speaker 1: don't want to say anything nice about Nikki Alee, but
Speaker 1: when Nikki ali said, you guys don't have the votes
Speaker 1: for a federal abortion ban, it was like the first
Speaker 1: time anyone had said, like, this is how you do
Speaker 1: stuff here, like you you don't have those senators. I
Speaker 1: always think about this idea, and I actually wrote about
Speaker 1: this this week, which was that like Trump has tipped
Speaker 1: his base into on reality and so they're so used
Speaker 1: to being promised things. I mean, I always think about
Speaker 1: like Trump will say, like we're going to build the
Speaker 1: biggest wall, and also it's already built. We're going to
Speaker 1: give you the best healthcare, but also it's already happening. Again,
Speaker 1: people are going to get mad at me for saying this,
Speaker 1: but I think it was a radical departure from earlier
Speaker 1: political lying. It's one thing to say, you know, we're
Speaker 1: going to cut your taxes and then not cut your
Speaker 1: taxes or where the other side wants to raise your
Speaker 1: taxes when they don't really want to raise your taxes,
Speaker 1: so they only want to raise it on the very rich.
Speaker 1: But this is like a whole other level, Like this
Speaker 1: is the kind of lying that is easily provable, which
Speaker 1: we saw with Vivag and I feel like with Vivig
Speaker 1: lauding Trump, and then we see in his book that
Speaker 1: he's written all these critical things of Trump, like you know,
Speaker 1: denying what he said to the Atlantic, and then the
Speaker 1: Atlantic journalist has tape that kind of like brazen untruthfulness
Speaker 1: I think has really tipped the base into a new place.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would totally agree with that. And this is,
Speaker 2: as you say, all politicians from the dawn of time lie,
Speaker 2: you know, the Saint Joe Biden has lied like this
Speaker 2: is you know, this is what they do. But it
Speaker 2: is different. And the difference really is I think a
Speaker 2: feature of demagoguery and populism, right, I mean, that's what's
Speaker 2: different in character about it. It's like where do you
Speaker 2: find that line between a normal politician and a demagogue?
Speaker 2: And it's like porn, like you know when you see it,
Speaker 2: you know, and that's what Trump does. That's what Vivike does.
Speaker 2: That's one of the things that Desantas has at a hard
Speaker 2: time with. Being a demagogue is a skill. But you
Speaker 2: don't just choose, like, oh, I'm going to be a
Speaker 2: demagogue in the same way you don't choose to be
Speaker 2: an NBA player.
Speaker 1: You do.
Speaker 2: It helps to be six foot nine, right, And Trump
Speaker 2: is really good at it, and Viveke is really good
Speaker 2: at it, and Desantas isn't because part of it is
Speaker 2: you got to be able to lie to people and
Speaker 2: get people to be in on the line and committed
Speaker 2: to it. And you know, one of the scariest numbers
Speaker 2: that I've seen recently is in the seller poll from Iowa,
Speaker 2: the gold Standard Pole out of Iowa, which showed that
Speaker 2: Trump was only at I think forty two percent or
Speaker 2: forty eight percent in Iowa. You can check me on that.
Speaker 2: But when you went into the cross tabs, what you
Speaker 2: saw was that a very small minority I think twenty
Speaker 2: nine percent of respondents said that getting somebody who can
Speaker 2: win was the most important thing for them. I think
Speaker 2: that again, I'm going for memory next to a couple
Speaker 2: weeks ago, but I think it was seventy two percent
Speaker 2: of Republican respondents to the poll said it was much
Speaker 2: more important that the nominee be somebody who they agree with,
Speaker 2: which means that they're in on the line and they
Speaker 2: just you know, I think, if we want to get
Speaker 2: really deep on this, this is all decadence, right. It's
Speaker 2: when your life is so good and your Ford F
Speaker 2: one fifty raptor which you paid seventy thousand dollars for,
Speaker 2: is you know, and interest rates are basically still you know,
Speaker 2: still quite low, and the economy's good, and everybody wants
Speaker 2: a job has one, then you can afford to live
Speaker 2: in this decadent fantasy world where you are committed to
Speaker 2: a guy like Trump and you don't care about whether
Speaker 2: or not to enact any real policies.
Speaker 1: We got to talk about Joe the Plumber. You're Joe
Speaker 1: the Plumber piece, and then I want to talk to
Speaker 1: you about something which the timing on which is so perfect.
Speaker 1: First talk to us about Joe the Plumber.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I wrote a piece about Joe the Plumber
Speaker 2: yesterday which wasn't really about Joe the Plumber, but about
Speaker 2: all of us. Joe the Plumber, I assume most of
Speaker 2: your listeners have heard he passed away over the weekend
Speaker 2: from pancreatic cancer. The guy was only forty nine. I
Speaker 2: don't want to speak for you, but my initial, like
Speaker 2: first two second reaction was like, well, f that guy.
Speaker 2: The obits on him from like NPR and the New
Speaker 2: York Times were very soft focus and just made him
Speaker 2: sound like kind of a gad fly. And he was
Speaker 2: a little bit worse than that. I mean, he wrote
Speaker 2: something horrible after a mass shooting, like an open letter
Speaker 2: to parents where he said something like I'm sorry, but
Speaker 2: your dead kids don't trump my right to own guns
Speaker 2: or something something absolutely horrible. But I called myself to
Speaker 2: my credit, like after like one second, I was like, no,
Speaker 2: this guy just died a horrible death, Like you can't.
Speaker 2: What do you mean f this guy? Like, you know,
Speaker 2: he's got family, he's got people who loved him. This
Speaker 2: is a tragedy. This is horrible. And there was just
Speaker 2: a there's a nerdy political journal called Political Psychology which
Speaker 2: just came out with a long study about partisan schadenfreud
Speaker 2: and people really just getting off on seeing not not
Speaker 2: things they like happen, but things that are bad happening
Speaker 2: to people they don't like. And this is a danger
Speaker 2: for everybody. Yes, like we can all swamp into it.
Speaker 2: And you know, a lot of people did not like it.
Speaker 2: I had a lot of comments and people was saying like, no,
Speaker 2: well the Republicans are much worse about this than Democrats are,
Speaker 2: and I was like, Okay, well maybe they are. But
Speaker 2: the point is it's not like one side has all
Speaker 2: of it and the other side has zero. We all
Speaker 2: have to resist that. I.
Speaker 1: As someone who's sober since I was nineteen, resentment is
Speaker 1: really the worst thing you can marinate in. I love
Speaker 1: Michelle Obama. She has a gazillion dollars. Now, when they
Speaker 1: go low, we go high. I don't necessarily think that
Speaker 1: is what Democrats should be doing. But I also think
Speaker 1: like no one should celebrate anyone dying, especially or four days,
Speaker 1: especially a cancer that we are in a time right
Speaker 1: now where cancers for younger people are going up, you know,
Speaker 1: fifteen sixteen percent. I read statistics that you know, certain
Speaker 1: cancers are up a lot, and that I think is
Speaker 1: quite scary and not should not be celebrated. No matter
Speaker 1: who gets it.
Speaker 2: We should all love each other. I mean, this is
Speaker 2: what it really gets down to. I mean, it makes
Speaker 2: me sound like the hippie dippy that I well, I am.
Speaker 2: I went to Quaker school. So here, let me give
Speaker 2: you the punch. I so, you know, so I write
Speaker 2: this piece and it's very emo, and it's like the
Speaker 2: only way out of this problem is Americans, we all
Speaker 2: got to hug it out and you know, be our
Speaker 2: best selves. And I fell all the time, but I
Speaker 2: picked myself up and I try to do better. Blah
Speaker 2: blah uh. Two hours later, the fucking Rudy Giuliani thing
Speaker 2: comes out, and this is God testing me. God God
Speaker 2: is like, oh you, you're so high and mighty about
Speaker 2: not doing shot and for I look what just happened
Speaker 2: to this one.
Speaker 1: Okay, So I just don't want to pause with Rudy Giuliani.
Speaker 1: He destroyed the lives of Shay Moss.
Speaker 2: And her and he did not die of pancreatic cancer.
Speaker 2: This is much more like actual justice being served to
Speaker 2: help the victims of a bad person's actions.
Speaker 1: She was passing a ginger mint to her daughter working
Speaker 1: as a poll worker, which is like one of the
Speaker 1: greatest civic duties that you, as an American citizen can do,
Speaker 1: and she was rewarded. I mean, you listen to her
Speaker 1: in the January sixth hearing that is a person who
Speaker 1: has post traumatic stress, Like you can't fucking believe she can't.
Speaker 1: Anytime anyone says her name, she gets terrified. Yeah, what's
Speaker 1: the number that makes that? Okay? A million dollars too?
Speaker 1: I mean, what's the number that gives you your name back?
Speaker 1: I mean I interviewed Lisa Page. It was the first
Speaker 1: person to interview her. I'm friendly with Pete Struck. I mean,
Speaker 1: those guys don't have their names back.
Speaker 2: Yeah, half is my answer? Did she get half? I
Speaker 2: think when we see something like that, it probably would
Speaker 2: be best not to like do the snoopy happy dance.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: You can say, oh, this is good that this happened,
Speaker 2: because this woman deserves to be compensated and we need
Speaker 2: to terns for future bad actors, which I do think
Speaker 2: is so, so we should try and happy does. But I
Speaker 2: gotta tell you, like, I'm sorry, I did like a
Speaker 2: little happy dance, and I'm not proud, right, maybe a
Speaker 2: little proud.
Speaker 1: I hope they get the money, is all I can say.
Speaker 1: One of the real worries here is that people aren't
Speaker 1: going to want to work in the polls. So I
Speaker 1: hope potential poll workers will see this and say, you know, okay,
Speaker 1: this is not a bad thing to be doing. Okay,
Speaker 1: I have come to another amazing bit of sorcery that
Speaker 1: I'm going to actually read to you again. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I'm in a reading mood today, but I actually read
Speaker 1: it to Jesse too, because I was so floored by
Speaker 1: it and I feel like it's just very perfect. I'm
Speaker 1: going to read it to you and then you're going
Speaker 1: to have to guess who said it. Okay, Okay, I
Speaker 1: would like to remind these people that backwards ness is useless.
Speaker 1: This is a person who just lamented the backwards ness
Speaker 1: of some American conservatives, who, he said, insisted on a narrow, outdated,
Speaker 1: and unchanging vision. They refuse, he said, to accept the
Speaker 1: full breath of the Church's mission and the need for
Speaker 1: changes in the doctrine over time. The Pope, Oh, the Pope,
Speaker 1: the Pope.
Speaker 2: Okay, I think my answer is better. Okay, it may
Speaker 2: not be right, but I think it's better.
Speaker 1: Is that believable?
Speaker 2: Sounds about right, my man? The Pope, Pope tambourines.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's like seven years older than Biden. Also eight
Speaker 1: years older than Biden. More importantly. But yeah, the pope,
Speaker 1: my people, my people doing this, you lose the true
Speaker 1: tradition and you turn to ideologies to have support. In
Speaker 1: other words, the ideologies replace faith.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that is very close to my own
Speaker 2: experience with American Catholicism over the last seven or eight years,
Speaker 2: in which magat priests are basically everywhere. I'm Catholic, you know,
Speaker 2: I live in a little Catholic ghetto and my kids
Speaker 2: going Catholic school. I'm like one of these weirdos who
Speaker 2: has a lot of actual like personal friends or priests.
Speaker 2: And a priest buddy of mine said to me, it's
Speaker 2: like a year ago, two years ago, we were talking
Speaker 2: about precisely this, and so my buddy, this buddy is
Speaker 2: very orthodox, and ten years ago you would have thought
Speaker 2: of him as like, oh, he's a conservative priest, but
Speaker 2: he rejected the MAGA stuff. And so even though he
Speaker 2: is still like the exact same guy and has like,
Speaker 2: he's now viewed with a little bit of suspicion, like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: maybe he's not really a conservative ran. The way he
Speaker 2: put it to me was that he had a moment
Speaker 2: in his priestly vocation in which he realized that he
Speaker 2: was prioritizing truth over love. What the Catholic Church really
Speaker 2: calls you to do is to never let there be
Speaker 2: any daylight between truth and love, and to the you know,
Speaker 2: the extent that one outstrips the other, then that's where
Speaker 2: all the problems come from. And I think that's what
Speaker 2: Pope Francis is talking about here.
Speaker 1: He's urged priests to welcome and minister of people who
Speaker 1: are gay, divorced, and remarried. He's called on the whole
Speaker 1: world to tackle climate change, calling it a moral issue.
Speaker 1: What happened to us, Like the country is, you know,
Speaker 1: we got this guy in Rome. It feels like such
Speaker 1: a failure on the part of the American people.
Speaker 2: Yes, the American people are the worst.
Speaker 1: I mean I say this as a Jew raised by
Speaker 1: atheist communists. I still feel like we created a country
Speaker 1: where our religious right went crazy.
Speaker 2: They did. And you know, like the Catholics used to
Speaker 2: I'll just let you in a little secret, even the
Speaker 2: conservative Catholics used to look down on the Evangelicals and
Speaker 2: be like, yeah, you know, at least we're not a
Speaker 2: bunch of mouth breathing idiots like those guys. And now
Speaker 2: here we are and a lot of America's Catholic intellectuals
Speaker 2: over the last seven years have turned into mouth breathing idiots.
Speaker 2: And it's precisely because of this stuff. I mean, you
Speaker 2: look at First Things, the magazine First Things has you know,
Speaker 2: gone insane, and the Catholic intellectual tradition has been like
Speaker 2: deeply corrupted. And you know, another priest buddy who's in
Speaker 2: Canada's Canadian and so he has an interesting, an interesting
Speaker 2: view of this, and he says, this is this is
Speaker 2: everything about Americanism, and that Americanism is such a civic
Speaker 2: religion that it eventually corrupts everything. And so like American
Speaker 2: Catholicism has become like American first and Catholicism second. And
Speaker 2: I think there's there's probably something to that.
Speaker 1: So interesting. I really appreciate having you here. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much. John. I hope you'll come.
Speaker 2: Back anytime, Molly bye.
Speaker 1: Hugo Law is a political investigations reporter at The Guardian.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Fast Politics, Hugo loll. Hell, let's talk
Speaker 1: about Trump's legal problems. He is fine, right, He's going
Speaker 1: to be fine.
Speaker 3: I mean, choosual problem and then make that capturization.
Speaker 1: So you've been in Georgia, you've been in DC. I
Speaker 1: would love you to give us like a thirty thousand
Speaker 1: feet We know he has for really five sets of indictment,
Speaker 1: state federal superseding. We know he has ninety one counts, right,
Speaker 1: and then he has these civil charges, but just give
Speaker 1: us sort of that what's kind of happening right now?
Speaker 3: And Trump legal in terms of the thirty thousand foot view,
Speaker 3: I mean, I like to think of it as in
Speaker 3: what is going to cause him the most kind of
Speaker 3: legal jeopardy? Right? So I think the biggest issue for him, well,
Speaker 3: the biggest issues for him, Number one is a classified
Speaker 3: documents case because the kind of alleged in that is getting.
Speaker 3: You know, if if you look at the superseding indictment,
Speaker 3: it only bolsters the original indictment. You basically have Trump
Speaker 3: retaining these national security documents and at least one of
Speaker 3: those documents he admits holding on to on tape. And
Speaker 3: we didn't have the original Iran document in the first indictment,
Speaker 3: but in the superseding indictment they charged the Iran document
Speaker 3: as account. So clearly the Special Council went and found
Speaker 3: it and identified it and had you know, Grand jury
Speaker 3: witnesses identifying that document. And also we now have this
Speaker 3: bolstered element of obstruction, which is really bad for him
Speaker 3: because you know, he goes and gets his employees to
Speaker 3: try and delete surveillance footage, but because they're so busy
Speaker 3: stumping around the bushes with flash lights, they would call
Speaker 3: themselves trying to figure out which cameras to delete.
Speaker 1: In your legal opinion, is that bad?
Speaker 3: In my legal opinion, I'd say that's that's a real problem.
Speaker 1: I feel like that was a sort of unforced error.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, and the whole thing is kind of
Speaker 3: comical because his employees are also not very good at
Speaker 3: carrying out his wishes. Right, this is less water game.
Speaker 4: More.
Speaker 3: Let's hop in a clown car and you know, put
Speaker 3: the sirens on and say that we're coming down to
Speaker 3: mar Lago. You know, let's send shushing emojis to people
Speaker 3: and then like you know, pull.
Speaker 1: People off to the side.
Speaker 3: Oh, I really got to do this in one case.
Speaker 3: So it's not great. But that's really the class white
Speaker 3: document's case. So let's let's now get to the Federal
Speaker 3: of January sixth case.
Speaker 1: The classified documents case is easily the most open and
Speaker 1: shot though I don't know.
Speaker 3: I mean, look, I don't think any of these cases
Speaker 3: are necessarily open and shut. I think when things go
Speaker 3: to trial, when you see kind of the arguments and
Speaker 3: how the jury compositions, and you know, in the class
Speaker 3: by documents case, you also have the wild card of
Speaker 3: Judge Cannon, who has hidden very deferential to Trump's side.
Speaker 3: I mean even in the preacher motion so far, I
Speaker 3: mean she is delayed holding a Garcia hearing, which is
Speaker 3: a hearing to form both defendants and witnesses that their
Speaker 3: shared representation, their shared lawyer could cause them not to
Speaker 3: have effective accounts at trial. That has not happened yet.
Speaker 3: And these are all delays that are going to factor
Speaker 3: into the case. And I think, you know, even the
Speaker 3: May trial date that I've been scheduled is now looking
Speaker 3: likely to be pushed back further. And so I think
Speaker 3: the classied Documents case has its own unique right.
Speaker 1: And that has ended up with Judge Cannon, right.
Speaker 3: And you know, Judge Cannon is, of course, as the
Speaker 3: same judge who presided over the Special Mass litigation last
Speaker 3: year and you know, proceeded to give Trump a whole
Speaker 3: bunch jobs.
Speaker 1: Right, She's a mega judge well.
Speaker 3: I don't know if it's fair to say she's a
Speaker 3: mega judge, but she has shown preference and deference to
Speaker 3: Trump's legal team, probably for the last year or so.
Speaker 1: She was appointed by Trump.
Speaker 3: Yes, she was the Trump appointing. In fact, she was
Speaker 3: one of the last judges appointed by Trump. I think
Speaker 3: her Senate confirmation came basically December twenty twenty or November
Speaker 3: twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: Why were you in DC on Monday?
Speaker 3: So that was the federal January sixth case. So now
Speaker 3: we're getting onto indictment two or four, and so Judge Chuckan,
Speaker 3: who is overseeing that case, was a setting a trial date.
Speaker 1: That's the federal and also the superseding. No, this is
Speaker 1: the federal.
Speaker 3: The only case that we have a superseding and diamond
Speaker 3: is the class Fight doc.
Speaker 1: Okay, so that's the judge Canon case.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So on Monday, Judge Chuppan presiding judge in DC, set
Speaker 3: a March trial date for the federal and January sixth case.
Speaker 3: And again, this is a case that presents Trump with
Speaker 3: a very big problem because one of the statutes that
Speaker 3: has been charged obstruction of an official proceeding is a
Speaker 3: statute that has been used against hundreds of January sixth
Speaker 3: right defendants, and the core element in that statute is
Speaker 3: did the defendant act corruptly that for the operative language
Speaker 3: to start, basically the certification on January sixth, And there
Speaker 3: is currently a case pending before the DC what Appeals
Speaker 3: the DC Circuit courts, where they are trying to come
Speaker 3: up with an interpretation or definition of the work corruptly.
Speaker 3: But we can look at how the statute has been
Speaker 3: a play to the hundreds of other January sixth defendants,
Speaker 3: and in almost all cases it has been interpreted as
Speaker 3: kind of unlawful benefit or sort of corrupt benefit. And
Speaker 3: it is quite clear that Trump was seeking to obtain
Speaker 3: a corrupt benefit on January sixth, by pressuring members of Congress,
Speaker 3: by pressuring senators, by pressuring Pence, by encouraging the crowd
Speaker 3: to not go home. He was effectively trying to extract
Speaker 3: a corrupt benefit from himself through the certification not being completed.
Speaker 3: And I think that's a real area of jeopardy.
Speaker 1: So there's so much traffic on Trump's legal calendar, how
Speaker 1: will we know who goes first and who will sort
Speaker 1: of win that?
Speaker 3: I mean, we don't know I mean, right now, as
Speaker 3: things have been scheduled, it seems like the federal January
Speaker 3: sixth case will go first. You know, we're set for
Speaker 3: March four. Whether or not we stick to that, you know,
Speaker 3: remains an issue. Also in March we have the Manhattan
Speaker 3: A g A hush money case. I think that's March
Speaker 3: twenty fifth off the top of my head. You know,
Speaker 3: the issue with all of these child dates is that
Speaker 3: they do tend to slip right. You know, there's delays
Speaker 3: in discovery production, there's pre trial motions and pretrial motions.
Speaker 3: You know, we call it, as we say, motion practice.
Speaker 3: And you know Trump Trump's the whole thing is to
Speaker 3: delay it as much as he can. That's his strategy.
Speaker 3: If he can push as many of these things pass
Speaker 3: the election as he can, and if he wins, the
Speaker 3: whole idea is to either self pardon himself if he's
Speaker 3: already been convicted, or if there is a case on appeal,
Speaker 3: for instance, then he you know, the ideas he would
Speaker 3: appoint a sympathetic attorney general and have DOJ just drop
Speaker 3: the charters.
Speaker 1: Joyce Fans yesterday was on Nicole Wallace and she was
Speaker 1: saying that Donald Trump is not going to be running
Speaker 1: for president from jail. The way that the timing on
Speaker 1: this works, that is not going to happen. Can you
Speaker 1: just say a little more about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And it's fundamentally because even if he's convicted in
Speaker 3: let's say, all of these cases, the appeals won't be
Speaker 3: resolved by the time the elections. Even if we stick
Speaker 3: let's say, you know the current schedule in the federal
Speaker 3: January sixth case, I mean, if there's several weeks to trial,
Speaker 3: we will get through, you know, marsh will be at
Speaker 3: the start of April. The idea that this will go
Speaker 3: to the quart of Appeals and it will be all
Speaker 3: resolved by November twenty twenty four is just not realistic.
Speaker 3: And if that doesn't happen, he might be convicted, but
Speaker 3: he will be out on appeal, just like Steve Bannon
Speaker 3: is currently out on appeal even though he was convicted
Speaker 3: in his conduct of Congress case. And so I think
Speaker 3: in the same vein that I don't think there is
Speaker 3: any expectation that Trump will be incarcerated and will be
Speaker 3: heaving a campaign from in Jailstone.
Speaker 1: One of the things that is really interesting about these
Speaker 1: cases is that they are both. There are sort of
Speaker 1: intersection of politics and the league system in a way
Speaker 1: there is no historical precedent for so every judge, from
Speaker 1: Judge Cannon to Judge check In, they are in this
Speaker 1: sort of brave new world of legal cases against someone
Speaker 1: who is the front runner for the Republican nomination. Talk
Speaker 1: to me about what the tension there is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think, you know, in many ways it matters,
Speaker 3: and in many ways it also doesn't matter. You know,
Speaker 3: I think because of the way these cases are coming down.
Speaker 3: Basically in an election cycle, necessarily there will be politics involved.
Speaker 3: Trump's whole campaign for president was announced early because he
Speaker 3: thought it would insulate him or protect him from DOJ
Speaker 3: seeking indictments against It ironically kind of backfired because had
Speaker 3: it not been for his campaign launch, Merrick Garland would
Speaker 3: not have appointed as Special Council and they were not
Speaker 3: a been an officer of the Special Council with you know,
Speaker 3: sixty a round sixty prosecutors detailed to that office or
Speaker 3: investigating him onto kind of parallel cases. It would have
Speaker 3: been you know, a handful maybe or a dozen or
Speaker 3: so line attorneys in the National Scurity Division, and and
Speaker 3: you know, in the criminalsion, and so he's kind of
Speaker 3: brought this on himself in some ways. And the response
Speaker 3: has been particularly trumpient in that it's impossible to determine
Speaker 3: where the presidential campaign ends and where the legal team starts.
Speaker 3: It is all the same thing. In fact, I think
Speaker 3: it's better to think of it as a presidential campaign
Speaker 3: first and a legal defense team second. The constant we
Speaker 3: heard as reporters through the document's investigation, well that the
Speaker 3: lawyers are finding it difficult to work around the campaign.
Speaker 3: Always the messaging that came first. It was always the oh,
Speaker 3: but you know, we need to do this politically, or
Speaker 3: you know, this doesn't look great optics. Why it's rather
Speaker 3: than that's treat this as a really serious kind of
Speaker 3: criminal investigation that could land Trump on the hot water
Speaker 3: and having to deal with the new reality that he
Speaker 3: is now a criminal defendant in four cases, and you know,
Speaker 3: in Judge Ricken's words, you will have to yield to
Speaker 3: the criminal process. I think that's really tough for them,
Speaker 3: because neither Trump nor anyone around him, or anyone else frankly,
Speaker 3: has ever had to deal with this. But I think
Speaker 3: the one point that is that has become a feature
Speaker 3: in all of these cases. Is he is now subject
Speaker 3: to the judicial process, and he might not like the
Speaker 3: fact that his federal January sixth case has been scheduled
Speaker 3: the day before Super Tuesday, but that's out of his control.
Speaker 3: Become a criminal defendant, you're a subject to the wide
Speaker 3: discretions that federal judges have, and federal judges if an
Speaker 3: Article three judgements to schedule a trial in a particular day,
Speaker 3: they will do that. And you have very very little recalls.
Speaker 3: I mean, Trump's talking about he can appeal the chrial date.
Speaker 3: That's just really not feasible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it is this conflict of here we
Speaker 1: have someone who is running for president while also a
Speaker 1: defendant and numerous federal, state, and civil cases.
Speaker 3: But when you talk to Trump's advisors, they are very
Speaker 3: colonist and all the fact that Trump is now running
Speaker 3: for president in order to keep himself out of jail,
Speaker 3: and I think they feel that very keenly, and Trump
Speaker 3: feels that very keeen You know, back in November and
Speaker 3: December when he was just launching his campaign, a lot
Speaker 3: of the accusations and kind of dismissive comments are like, oh,
Speaker 3: you know, he's low energy, he doesn't really care. I
Speaker 3: mean that might have been true to some degree, but
Speaker 3: it's not true now. And it's not true now because
Speaker 3: he knows if he doesn't win, he will not have
Speaker 3: the powder self pardon himself if he's convicted, and he
Speaker 3: will not have the patent to have an attorney general
Speaker 3: does not these cases, and so he really needs to win.
Speaker 3: And I think maybe people underestimating a little bit the
Speaker 3: lengths that Trump might go to ensure that he does
Speaker 3: win because the stakes are now so high.
Speaker 1: Yes, And I think that is a really good point.
Speaker 1: And you'll remember he did announce very very early because
Speaker 1: he wanted to get ahead of these indictments.
Speaker 3: Right and can as you were saying, in trying to
Speaker 3: get ahead of the indictments, he probably actually spent them
Speaker 3: up because you know, a special counsel was appointed. You know,
Speaker 3: an office will stood up. You know, people were detailed
Speaker 3: from Main Justice in the US Attorney's office, and you
Speaker 3: know in the Public Integrity Section, the National Security Division,
Speaker 3: all these lawyers came in. You know, if you have
Speaker 3: about you know, sixty lawyers investigating, you chan saw they're
Speaker 3: probably going to find something. And so you know, I
Speaker 3: don't know if that was in hindsight the best strategic
Speaker 3: move for him if he did want to string this
Speaker 3: this war out.
Speaker 1: Can you do two seconds on Peter Navarro?
Speaker 3: Yeah, we are going to trial next week.
Speaker 1: I'm watching the video of him trying to grab the
Speaker 1: Trump lost and you know it signed from a protester
Speaker 1: at his news conference, right.
Speaker 3: And he try to grab any missed Catch us up
Speaker 3: on Peter Navarro. Yeah, we are going to trial in
Speaker 3: US vers Peter Navarro. It is the contempt of Congress
Speaker 3: case after Navara basically blew off the January sixth Committee subpoena.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's a little bit crazy that we are
Speaker 3: going to try on twenty twenty three for subpoena that
Speaker 3: was issued, you know, in late twenty twenty one. But
Speaker 3: here we are. You know, we have jury selection on
Speaker 3: September fifth. The presiding judge in this case is Ammet Meta.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 3: Judge Meta said, you know, he expects jury section to
Speaker 3: maybe take only one or two days and so it
Speaker 3: could be very very quick. So we may go to
Speaker 3: trial on September seven, as kind of scheduled. And Peter
Speaker 3: Navarro has a big problem because his central defense and
Speaker 3: what his lawys have been saying, was Peter Navarro genuinely
Speaker 3: believed that he had an executive privileged waiver from Trump
Speaker 3: that allowed him to refuse to comply with the January
Speaker 3: sixth Committee subpoena. The problem was it was never formally
Speaker 3: written down anywhere, and he never got a written notification
Speaker 3: from Trump to that effect. So what Navarro's team tried
Speaker 3: to do instead was to use a letter that Trump
Speaker 3: had given him with respect to the Coronavirus Subcommittee that said,
Speaker 3: you know, Pier Navarro, you must protect executive privilege to say, oh,
Speaker 3: this was you know, this applied to all of the
Speaker 3: subpoenas he got. But the judge did not buy that. Ultimately,
Speaker 3: it hasputed as a defense, and so I think this
Speaker 3: is going to be a very short trial, and his
Speaker 3: lawyers are really prepping, like in Bannon, for a fight
Speaker 3: at the appeals core. DOJ stumbled a number of times
Speaker 3: in the pre chrial period, but I think for trial
Speaker 3: or in a pretty good position.
Speaker 1: I just want one last question, because it's breaking news
Speaker 1: that Donald Trump has just fled not guilty in Georgia.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's look, it's very procedural. We knew
Speaker 3: he was going to plead not guilty. The question was
Speaker 3: would he appear in person on a September six and
Speaker 3: kind of you know, say not guilty in person or
Speaker 3: would he would he fight a waiver and just do
Speaker 3: it on the barket, and you know, he's chosen the latter.
Speaker 3: It saves him from having to go back to Forum
Speaker 3: County Superior Court. It kind of save saves him in
Speaker 3: his campaign at of hassle on.
Speaker 6: So I think this was.
Speaker 3: Always the expected move, although I will say that, you know,
Speaker 3: and this is kind of indicative of what we've been
Speaker 3: talking about, how the political and the legal will kind
Speaker 3: of get him meshed in the same thing. His political
Speaker 3: team were considering having him actually go in person if
Speaker 3: they could figure out a way to hold some sort
Speaker 3: of event after, whether it was like a press conference
Speaker 3: or a rally or a gag. You know, they were
Speaker 3: keen to turn into a media event if they could,
Speaker 3: even if it was hear hearted. The fact that this
Speaker 3: was being considered, I think is indicative of how much
Speaker 3: still the political campaign has an equity and everything Trump does.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Hugo. I hope you'll come back.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Sabina Meados is the Lieutenant governor of Rhode Island and
Speaker 1: a candidate in their first congressional district primary. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Fast Politics, Sabina.
Speaker 6: Thank you, Mollie, thank you so much for having me here.
Speaker 1: First, you need to tell us you are the Lieutenant
Speaker 1: governor of the state of Rhode Island. You are running
Speaker 1: for one of Rhode Island's two congressional seats. Explain to
Speaker 1: us what this special election is, when it's happening, Why
Speaker 1: it's happening.
Speaker 6: Yes, so I I'm the current Lieutenant governor, just ran
Speaker 6: last year and one four years as lieutenant governor. Then
Speaker 6: our congressmnding is Sicelini resigned this year for good reasons.
Speaker 6: He became the president of the Rhode Island Foundation. And
Speaker 6: this has an opportunity now for an open seat in
Speaker 6: Rhode Island, which you don't seem too often.
Speaker 1: All right, since only two ceraily.
Speaker 6: Two right, we had one last year and now a
Speaker 6: second one this year. This is a special election in
Speaker 6: it's going to be on Tuesday, September fifth. I'm running
Speaker 6: for this seed. Yes, very soon. We are less than
Speaker 6: a week away from election.
Speaker 1: Day, Okay, And so you're running for this open seat.
Speaker 1: Explain to us who are you running against What does
Speaker 1: your race look like?
Speaker 6: Yes, because it's an open seed. Actually, if we have
Speaker 6: a large bill.
Speaker 1: Oh interesting, if I don't know.
Speaker 6: We started with about thirty four candidates Jesus, but we're
Speaker 6: down to we're down to twelve, actually eleven Democrats. Right
Speaker 6: now the primary is less than a week await, and
Speaker 6: right now the race is coming down mostly to me
Speaker 6: and my opponent who is more to the left of
Speaker 6: me in this politics.
Speaker 1: So explain to us why you accurately reperen and why
Speaker 1: your views more represent this district in Rhode Island.
Speaker 6: Yeah, the state of Rhode Island, we're always labeled as
Speaker 6: a blue state, right in CD one actually is the
Speaker 6: most liberal of the two district that we have.
Speaker 1: This district.
Speaker 6: Actually, the state of Rhode Island, we have never sent
Speaker 6: a Democratic woman to Congress.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 6: Yeah, we had only one woman.
Speaker 1: Say it again, man, I mean wow, Yes, that.
Speaker 6: One woman in the eighties. She was Republican. And people
Speaker 6: think of Rhode Island as is so blue. But we
Speaker 6: have never sent a Democratic woman to Congress, and we
Speaker 6: are more than half of the population. I think this
Speaker 6: is a great opportunity for us to send the woman's
Speaker 6: voice to Congress. Out of our four members of the
Speaker 6: federal delegation, the two senators are the two state reps.
Speaker 6: We never had a Democratic woman's in Congress from Rhode Island.
Speaker 6: The state of Rhode Island also has a diversity than
Speaker 6: we are about twenty five five percent diverse. We have
Speaker 6: a sixteen percent Latino, eight point nine percent Black, you
Speaker 6: have the Asian and Leaks race. When you add that together,
Speaker 6: we're over twenty five percent of people of color. We
Speaker 6: have never sent a person of color to Congress in
Speaker 6: the from Rhde Island.
Speaker 1: Wow, so you're twenty five percent people of color and
Speaker 1: you've never sent a person of color to Congress.
Speaker 6: That is correct. So this year we have this opportunity
Speaker 6: to elect the first Democratic woman to Congress and also
Speaker 6: the first person of color, a Manfro Latina was born
Speaker 6: in the Dominican Republic and have been here for the
Speaker 6: last almost thirty years. I've been in the United States.
Speaker 6: Came here, didn't speak the language when I arrived, and
Speaker 6: I've been able to learn English, go get an education
Speaker 6: in Rhode Island College, serve my community, first in the
Speaker 6: Providence City Council, now as Lieutenant Governor and now running
Speaker 6: for Congress thanks to the amazing thing that we have
Speaker 6: in this country that is called democracy.
Speaker 1: So tell us a little bit about your views. You
Speaker 1: have this experience of being self taught, self made, How
Speaker 1: has that affected your views and what will you do
Speaker 1: when you're in Congress.
Speaker 6: The experience that I have of being in the local
Speaker 6: government helped me a lot to understand when needs to
Speaker 6: happen in Congress. I have been working a lot in
Speaker 6: the housing space. Being in the local government, I get
Speaker 6: to see firsthands whenever there is a fire and a
Speaker 6: family get displaced, or when the city condemns a property
Speaker 6: and there's a family that doesn't have a place to go.
Speaker 6: Most of the time they get one or two days
Speaker 6: in a by the Red Cross, putin in a hotel.
Speaker 6: What I have found out, which is so shocking, is
Speaker 6: that a family in that situation is not a priority
Speaker 6: based on the federal definition of homelessness. The family because
Speaker 6: they have a place to state that night they staying
Speaker 6: in a hotel, they don't meet it the priority to
Speaker 6: leaves in order to help them find a place to leave.
Speaker 6: We have to make sure that we change that. Because
Speaker 6: I remember one pas in which I was helping a
Speaker 6: family and grandmother that her home was condemned. She had
Speaker 6: the custody of her two granddaughters. And every time I
Speaker 6: was trying to call the agencies that all worked with
Speaker 6: the homelessness, I was raised with the same problem. She's
Speaker 6: not a priority. She wouldn't become a priority unless they
Speaker 6: were on the street or into a shelter. Yeah, and
Speaker 6: a family like that, if the grandmother goes to the
Speaker 6: street or into the shelter, she lose the custody of
Speaker 6: the granddaughters. So that makes sense. We have to do
Speaker 6: things in a different way. So that's the experience that
Speaker 6: I bring to Congress. The other thing is my fight
Speaker 6: for a woman's right and for the right for abortion.
Speaker 6: We have to make sure that we protect the right
Speaker 6: at the federal level because right now, people like myself,
Speaker 6: black and Latino women tend to be at a higher
Speaker 6: disadvantage whenever our law is passed that prohibit abortion in
Speaker 6: their state.
Speaker 1: Exactly true.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and Rodorina, we're fortunate that we could afide abortion
Speaker 6: into law near but there are other states that don't
Speaker 6: have that, and a woman that can now afford to
Speaker 6: take time out of work to travel or don't have
Speaker 6: real resources to travel, some have access to abortion, and
Speaker 6: then now the latest court ruling that is also coming
Speaker 6: and gainst the access to abortion through the male when
Speaker 6: more than fifteen percent of the abortions are done through meditation.
Speaker 6: That's also something that worries us and that we need
Speaker 6: to make sure we send someone that's going to fight
Speaker 6: for women's right.
Speaker 1: I want to come back to abortion, but I first
Speaker 1: want to go back to housing for a minute. One
Speaker 1: of the big problems states like yours have, and states
Speaker 1: like New York where I live have, and really a
Speaker 1: problem in the Northeast but also in California, is that
Speaker 1: housing is just very expensive. It's prohibitively expensive for working families.
Speaker 1: We've had real trouble with legislating for that. Do you
Speaker 1: have ideas do you feel like being in Congress you
Speaker 1: might be able to help with that.
Speaker 6: Yes, we have to make sure that we send more
Speaker 6: resources to the states and the local municipalities to build
Speaker 6: more housing. Here in the state of Rhode Island. One
Speaker 6: of the biggest challenges that we had is all we
Speaker 6: have right now, is that we have not been building
Speaker 6: housing at the pace that we needed to keep up
Speaker 6: with the popuation growth. That's one of the number one
Speaker 6: problems that we have. For the first time last year
Speaker 6: we were able to allocate out of the area funding
Speaker 6: two hundred and fifty million dollars for housing. That's a
Speaker 6: big investment for rheinan that we have never seen before.
Speaker 6: But the problem has grown to be so big that
Speaker 6: that just makes a little bit of tend and to
Speaker 6: the housing challenges that we have. We have to make
Speaker 6: sure that the third level once we send more resources
Speaker 6: for the states and for the local government to be
Speaker 6: able to build more affordable housing and to build housing
Speaker 6: at all income levels, because we hear we have such
Speaker 6: a big problem that we need housing at all income
Speaker 6: levels we have not been built in. But also sending
Speaker 6: resources to how families that are about to become homeless
Speaker 6: or that suffare and emergency and become homeless. We need
Speaker 6: to make sure that we send more resources to the
Speaker 6: local level.
Speaker 1: So I want to ask you about abortion and the
Speaker 1: medication abortion. One of the things that I have for
Speaker 1: a long time been really keenly aware of is just
Speaker 1: how much the people who suffer when you make abortion
Speaker 1: illegal are women, women of color, women who are working
Speaker 1: multiple jobs. Children are And I say this as a
Speaker 1: mother of three wildly expensive. I mean just in calculator,
Speaker 1: like the largest indicator of bankruptcy is children. So people
Speaker 1: who are barely scraping by making a possible for them
Speaker 1: to be able to manage their own fertility. Talk to
Speaker 1: me about ways in which you feel that when you're
Speaker 1: in Congress you could protect these women.
Speaker 6: Yeah, we have to make sure that we protect abortion
Speaker 6: access at the federal level the same way how we
Speaker 6: were able to do it here in Rwanda. We have
Speaker 6: to make sure that it's done at the federal level
Speaker 6: and now leave the till issue state to make it
Speaker 6: on the individual decision, because that is what is putting
Speaker 6: our risks right now, abortion access for so many womens
Speaker 6: that cannot afford it. They cannot afford to travel out
Speaker 6: of this state to get an abortion, they cannot afford
Speaker 6: to take time out of work to go and get
Speaker 6: an abortion. And right now there are some states are
Speaker 6: passing legislation that they can even hard for a doctor
Speaker 6: to make the right decision right their doctor right now
Speaker 6: that may have to be thinking of checking with their
Speaker 6: lawyers before they make a medical decision. And that's what
Speaker 6: is a risk. And if you're not concerned about the
Speaker 6: woman and the woman's think about if your child is
Speaker 6: a suffician, is a doctor and have to be put
Speaker 6: in that position that a medical decision that they may
Speaker 6: may being used to either take their license away after
Speaker 6: years of work or either may in that in jail.
Speaker 6: This is the reality that some states are doing and
Speaker 6: this is what could happen if we don't do more
Speaker 6: to protect abortions. Right at the feederal level.
Speaker 1: It recently became Rhode Island lieutenant governor. What have you
Speaker 1: learned from your time in that position?
Speaker 6: Yes, I became a lieutenant governor. When Gina Ramande was
Speaker 6: appointed a Secretary of Commerce, our lieutenant became governor.
Speaker 1: So you recently got re elected to that position.
Speaker 6: Yes, I got re elected last year. In the twenty
Speaker 6: a half years in the role as lieutenant governor, one
Speaker 6: of the things that I have learned is that going
Speaker 6: back to the housing need. At the beginning, I used
Speaker 6: to be a consult number of Providence, which is in
Speaker 6: the metro area of Rhode Island. Right is a community
Speaker 6: with a lot of needs, and I thought that the
Speaker 6: housing problem was just unique to the metro area community.
Speaker 6: The more I traveled through the state of Rhde Island.
Speaker 6: I realized that the housing was a big problem in
Speaker 6: every community. I remember going to Block Island early on
Speaker 6: as Peutenant governor and learning about the challenges that Block
Speaker 6: Island is having with housing. And most of the time
Speaker 6: we don't think about that when we think about Block
Speaker 6: Island or Newport, but they're having such a big challenge
Speaker 6: with housing that they're not able to attract not even
Speaker 6: municipal employees, because they're not able to pay enough for
Speaker 6: them to be able to afford housing in the island,
Speaker 6: or they real so much on seasonal workers, and a
Speaker 6: problem that they're having is that they're not housing a
Speaker 6: foodaball housing available for the workers to leave when they're there.
Speaker 6: So it was very surprised to see how the housing
Speaker 6: is such a big problem even in communities when you
Speaker 6: didn't think it was going to be a problem.
Speaker 1: Yeah, really interesting. I mean, housing, I feel like is
Speaker 1: one of the sort of most important things we're still
Speaker 1: struggling with for sure, and it feels like there's no
Speaker 1: way to get on it. One of the things that
Speaker 1: Rhode Island has been really famous for because it's such
Speaker 1: a tiny state and you're so affected by climate change
Speaker 1: and rising tides is legislating for climate. You have one
Speaker 1: of the absolute all stars, the ogs of climate legislation,
Speaker 1: my man Sheldon white House, a frequent flyer. Frequent flyer
Speaker 1: on this podcast. But I'm just curious, you know, as
Speaker 1: a lieutenant governor, what kind of stuff have you guys
Speaker 1: done with climate and what does that look like for
Speaker 1: you guys.
Speaker 6: Yeah, the State of Verrela has been a leader when
Speaker 6: it comes to the climate space, thanks in big part
Speaker 6: to senatorshelle On white House was so fortunate to have
Speaker 6: in here. But we are doing things that we have
Speaker 6: been at the forefront of the all short wind with
Speaker 6: the wind Meals of Blog Island. We had been right
Speaker 6: now in the process of the constructions the beginning of
Speaker 6: the Revolution Winds which is going to add about four
Speaker 6: hundred megawads of power to Rhode Island and also told
Speaker 6: three hundred mayor was to Connectico. We had been working
Speaker 6: also to incentivize to add electric buses and electric bags.
Speaker 6: We have been providing incentive for dusta wants to switch
Speaker 6: from the vehicle from gas vehicle to electric vehicle. And
Speaker 6: we are making sure that we are providing also free
Speaker 6: buses which are electric buses. A new line for transportation.
Speaker 6: So this is some of the things that we have
Speaker 6: been doing here at the State of Rhode Island. The
Speaker 6: governor signed the ad on Climate which is going to
Speaker 6: have a big impact. We want to be the leaders
Speaker 6: and when it comes to renewables and switching from pussil
Speaker 6: field to renewable energy. So I'm France feel very proud
Speaker 6: of the work that Ranana has been doing in this space.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. So tell us again what day
Speaker 1: your election is.
Speaker 6: The election is going to be on September fifth, so
Speaker 6: it's the date after just a day after Labor Day. Wow,
Speaker 6: so really close.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. I hope you'll come back.
Speaker 6: Thank you so much, Thank you for this opportunity. Molly,
Speaker 6: and I'll be back good.
Speaker 1: Thanks No, no mom second, Jesse Cannon.
Speaker 5: Molly Jong Fast. Oh. Clarence Thomas, I feel like this
Speaker 5: was kind of like a funny thing he did today.
Speaker 5: What'd you see here?
Speaker 1: I thought that was amazing.
Speaker 5: It's really something.
Speaker 1: So Clarence Thomas decided finally to disclose all the stuff
Speaker 1: that pro Publica reported months ago. Look, man, I think
Speaker 1: his thing was. I don't even know what his thinking was.
Speaker 1: It was just kind of magic and for that him
Speaker 1: and his better late than never disclosure is our moment
Speaker 1: of Fuckeray, okay, wait, stop the press.
Speaker 5: As MOLLI every year I buy you a cameo for
Speaker 5: your birthday, and this year, when it dropped on Ari
Speaker 5: Milburgh's show that Roger Stone said all that stuff about
Speaker 5: planning January sixth, I knew who I had to choose
Speaker 5: right then there, and I requested it. Then it took
Speaker 5: him a little while after your birthday. The posilla been busy,
Speaker 5: but live on air. This just happened while we were
Speaker 5: taping the Moment of Fuckery. It came in, so let's
Speaker 5: listen to what he said.
Speaker 4: This is Roger Stone with a belated birthday greeting for Molly. Molly,
Speaker 4: I'm sorry I had missed your birthday on the nineteenth.
Speaker 4: I understand you went to see the movie Oppenheimer, Complete Propaganda.
Speaker 4: Oppenheimer was in fact a Russian spy and a Communist.
Speaker 4: I understand you have a beautiful you love politics. I'd
Speaker 4: love to invite you to one of my wild parties,
Speaker 4: but well those are long in the past. Today I'm
Speaker 4: a dedicated family man, no longer wild, but still loving life.
Speaker 4: God bless you. Godspeed, and a belated happy birthday.
Speaker 1: Whoa, whoa.
Speaker 5: And the best is he was so late that they
Speaker 5: actually reflected to me, we got that for free.
Speaker 1: Oh so bad. Oh my god.
Speaker 5: We have so much fun.
Speaker 1: That is incredible. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics.
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Speaker 1: for listening.