Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds, and President Biden has pledged one point
Speaker 1: seven billion dollars to end hunger across the United States.
Speaker 2: We have such an interesting show today.
Speaker 1: Former CNN analyst John Aflon tells us why he's leaving
Speaker 1: punditry to run for a Long Island congressional seat. Then
Speaker 1: we'll talk to San Francisco mayoral candidate Daniel Lurie about
Speaker 1: his run against a sitting incumbent. But first we have
Speaker 1: talking points memos.
Speaker 2: Josh Marshall. Welcome too, Fast Politics.
Speaker 3: Josh Marshall, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: We're excited to have you.
Speaker 1: I live in a household was not one, but two
Speaker 1: talking points memos.
Speaker 3: Subscriptions, Oh wow, that's good.
Speaker 4: You know you can always jump it up to three
Speaker 4: if you feel so strongly about it.
Speaker 1: We only have one Economist subscription because it's so expensive.
Speaker 1: I want to talk to you first about you broke
Speaker 1: a bunch of news this week, but my.
Speaker 2: Favorite is a weird little canard? Is that the really
Speaker 2: pretentious way to describe it?
Speaker 3: Which thing are we talking about?
Speaker 1: We're talking about the secret Ken shisbro but it should
Speaker 1: be cheesebrow Twitter account, right. We broke that story like
Speaker 1: a week and a half ago. We did a series
Speaker 1: about this kind of trolls of documents of his that
Speaker 1: shed a lot of new details about his role in
Speaker 1: not the storming of the Capitol on January sixth, but
Speaker 1: the idea that you're going to kind of throw a
Speaker 1: wrench into the works and then create this big crisis
Speaker 1: with you know, with the whole thing with Mike Pence
Speaker 1: not accepting the electoral votes and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: A lot of new details about that. We actually broke
Speaker 1: that story, like I said, in this series, about a
Speaker 1: week and a half ago, but we sort of pushed
Speaker 1: it out again yesterday because CNN came out with a
Speaker 1: purported exclusive which actually followed our piece, and they called
Speaker 1: it an exclusive, and so we kind of piped up
Speaker 1: again and said, oh, it's not an exclusive because you know,
Speaker 1: we did this ten days ago or two weeks ago,
Speaker 1: and you know, since we're cool, we don't kind of say,
Speaker 1: like you guys saw for not admitting that because there
Speaker 1: was there was like story, there was like one little
Speaker 1: aside that said, oh, you know, This was also mentioned
Speaker 1: by Talking Points memo you know whatever. But in any case,
Speaker 1: it's a way for us to kind of remind our
Speaker 1: readers of our subscribers how awesome we are and all
Speaker 1: that kind of suff and a kind of a download
Speaker 1: tweak of CNN.
Speaker 4: But yet it's a cool story. And we had this
Speaker 4: kind of a popet account where he was tweeting anonymously,
Speaker 4: which is cool, right, people can have anonymous Twitter accounts,
Speaker 4: But it was also a way to kind of communicate
Speaker 4: with other co conspirators. I mean, the whole thing is
Speaker 4: such a weird character in that whole story with you know,
Speaker 4: kind of a capital W.
Speaker 3: So it's a fun thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's interesting. And like the fact that
Speaker 2: these Trump legal.
Speaker 1: Trials continue on and there are many to get onto
Speaker 1: Trump legal trials. What are the Trump legal hazards that
Speaker 1: you are watching that are imminent?
Speaker 4: Well, you could take a course on you know, there's
Speaker 4: so many rights, right, most of us have been focused
Speaker 4: on these four criminal trials, you know, the sort of
Speaker 4: a purported four horsemen of Trump's apocalypse, the two Jack
Speaker 4: Smith trials, the one down in Georgia, the sort of
Speaker 4: the runt of the family, the one in you know,
Speaker 4: the Stormy Daniels one in New York, which is.
Speaker 3: Always kind of little respects. Right.
Speaker 4: The weird thing is is that the ones that have
Speaker 4: really gotten the most attention and in a way have
Speaker 4: sort of drawn the most blood are these ones that
Speaker 4: people work paying a lot of attention to.
Speaker 3: You know, this big.
Speaker 4: Civil suit by the State of New York, the one
Speaker 4: that General rated there's almost like five hundred million dollars
Speaker 4: fine and it's technically to call it a disgorgement. It's
Speaker 4: given money, you know, giving money back and everything was that.
Speaker 4: There's the ge Harrol cases, which we I mean, which
Speaker 4: she was stupid enough to make plural by going back
Speaker 4: to the well and defeating her again, which I know
Speaker 4: you had a close involvement with. It's weird because you know,
Speaker 4: they have this kind of ringer judge down in Florida,
Speaker 4: federal judge down in Florida, who really does seem.
Speaker 2: To judge a Leen Cannon, right.
Speaker 4: Who's essentially kind of killed that trial as something that
Speaker 4: will happen before the election. So that one is kind
Speaker 4: of we've treated that one as kind of out of
Speaker 4: contention for months.
Speaker 3: Just you know, again, if it's not going to happen.
Speaker 4: She is, she has successfully since she's basically part of
Speaker 4: Trump's legal team, has successfully taken that one out of contention.
Speaker 4: You've got this bizarre situation down in Georgia where a
Speaker 4: couple of Trump's co defendants have gotten somehow or another,
Speaker 4: managed to get that trial to a question of whether
Speaker 4: or not the prosecutor had sex with one of her
Speaker 4: co prosecutors before their quote unquote relationship began, which is
Speaker 4: Pli's belief that you got it to that point. So
Speaker 4: now we're kind of down to the you know, the
Speaker 4: coup trial Jack Smith, which is also being delayed, and
Speaker 4: then the Stormy Daniels case in New York, which, as
Speaker 4: you say, is coming up and will probably now be
Speaker 4: the first criminal trial. So Stormy Daniels ends up being
Speaker 4: the sort of the tortoise, right who wins the race
Speaker 4: in the final moment, even though I'm going to take
Speaker 4: that anywhere. That's kind of the tor arizon, yeah, of
Speaker 4: Trump legal cases.
Speaker 3: But there's you know, there's a lot.
Speaker 1: It's funny because it's like I always think of, you know,
Speaker 1: Trump sort of feels I think, or at least the
Speaker 1: sort of Trump hads felt.
Speaker 2: I think and the.
Speaker 1: Popular wisdom has been that these cases have helped Trump
Speaker 1: because he was able to raise money. You know, if
Speaker 1: you look at the chart of Trump raising money, it
Speaker 1: spikes right when he gets indicted.
Speaker 2: But I actually have this like.
Speaker 1: Counterintuitive theory that candidate Trump and defendant Trump actually run
Speaker 1: contrary to each other, and every time that a lot
Speaker 1: of times, candidate Trump will actually by being a candidate,
Speaker 1: screwover defendant Trump and vice versa. So, for example, the
Speaker 1: civil penalty would not have been as high had candidate
Speaker 1: Trump not gone out there and said, I have a
Speaker 1: billion trillion zillion dollars and you should be apologizing to me, versus,
Speaker 1: you know, showing a little contrition and being like, I'm
Speaker 1: really sorry.
Speaker 3: You know, that number.
Speaker 2: Probably would be half.
Speaker 4: It's been a little unclear to me in that case
Speaker 4: how much. I mean, he is probably right that if
Speaker 4: he had not been super high profile and these various
Speaker 4: stories had come out that have sort of put in
Speaker 4: the front pages his you know, over valueuation on his
Speaker 4: assets and all these kind of things, if he had
Speaker 4: not been such a ubiquitous media presence, he probably the
Speaker 4: case probably would have never have been brought. But that's
Speaker 4: not an excuse, right, I mean, that's kind of like.
Speaker 1: No, but I mean, I'm just saying that he would
Speaker 1: do better if he wouldn't use each trial as a
Speaker 1: campaign stop. And I wonder if his whole secret theory
Speaker 1: to use the trial, use these trials to campaign is
Speaker 1: actually going to backfire.
Speaker 4: I think it will, and I think what you're describing
Speaker 4: is really the reality distortion field that makes this evener question.
Speaker 4: He has this way of saying, you would think my
Speaker 4: being indicted for felony indictments four separate times and racking
Speaker 4: up fines of hundreds of millions of dollars would be
Speaker 4: bad for me, but in fact it is good for me.
Speaker 4: It only makes me stronger. And even us, people who
Speaker 4: many probably see at the you know, at the heart
Speaker 4: of the resistance or whatever they call it, it even
Speaker 4: affects us, right, And kind of maybe maybe it's true.
Speaker 4: It really, you know, the more you and diet him,
Speaker 4: the stronger he gets. But that's always been absurd. That's
Speaker 4: completely absurd.
Speaker 5: Of course, that's what I think.
Speaker 4: That he gets indicted, and even in the narrow sense
Speaker 4: that he fundraises often that that's not even that great,
Speaker 4: since as we've seen all that money goes cities lawyers.
Speaker 4: So I mean, it doesn't really help him in the
Speaker 4: sense that we normally think of fundraising.
Speaker 1: But it is an interesting theory of the case, right,
Speaker 1: like he has if you look at there's an article
Speaker 1: in the Financial Times, you know, he's lost about two
Speaker 1: hundred thousand of these donors. You know, his sort of
Speaker 1: his numbers are down, his enthusiasm. I mean, that's the
Speaker 1: thing I'm struck by. I don't know if you read that.
Speaker 1: There was a thing in the Times today about how
Speaker 1: he tends to be going in about ten points below
Speaker 1: the polls. Now, I have a friend who's straight news
Speaker 1: reporter who I fight with, you know who. I have
Speaker 1: my like a little bit contrary, perhaps a little bit
Speaker 1: liberal take, and then he has his straight down the
Speaker 1: middle take, and we fight about it. But I actually
Speaker 1: do think like it is interesting. Like the whole theory
Speaker 1: of the case that Biden should drop out is based
Speaker 1: solely on polls. So here is a pretty tangible evidence
Speaker 1: that Trump is pulling much better than he's actually performing.
Speaker 4: Its suggestive that it's hard. It's always hard to make
Speaker 4: any sort of straight line between the dynamics of a
Speaker 4: primary contest and a general election contest. But there are
Speaker 4: a lot of things about this primary contest, both in
Speaker 4: the polling, in the results, and in the difference between
Speaker 4: the polling and the results that are at least warning
Speaker 4: signs for Trump. I don't think, you know, they don't
Speaker 4: tell us that he's destined to lose or anything like that.
Speaker 4: It's relevant information and it points to some of the
Speaker 4: theories people have that he is not as strong as
Speaker 4: his current polling suggests. His actual results in each of
Speaker 4: these primary contests have been not hugely, but significantly under
Speaker 4: what the polls suggested. One of the reasons that may
Speaker 4: be the case is that Nikki Haley in South Carolina
Speaker 4: did much much better among more affluent and more educated Republicans.
Speaker 3: That's not a surprise.
Speaker 4: The more affluent and more educated people are, in general,
Speaker 4: the more likely they are to know. So that's one
Speaker 4: piece of the equation. The other is that when you
Speaker 4: look at the polls, often the actual percentage that the
Speaker 4: polls suggested that Trump would get is actually pretty on
Speaker 4: the mark. The key is is that in any poll
Speaker 4: you always have you see it all and it's sixteen thirty, Well,
Speaker 4: sixteen thirty doesn't add up to one hundred. So the
Speaker 4: question is always where do those extra people end up going?
Speaker 4: And to a significant degree, in each of these contests,
Speaker 4: they've broken in the other direction. They've broken to Haley.
Speaker 4: So you can never draw a straight line between the
Speaker 4: dynamics of a primary and general election. They're two different.
Speaker 4: But their hints that lend a bit of support to Again,
Speaker 4: the theories that say that that Trump's strength and a
Speaker 4: general is overstated, I certainly think they are. They're significant
Speaker 4: warning signs, and frankly, the biggest warning sign I think
Speaker 4: is that Trump is already the nominated. I mean, he
Speaker 4: was really already the nominee a year ago, but he's
Speaker 4: one hundred percent of the nominee now, and yet you're
Speaker 4: having big turnout primaries where forty percent of voters are
Speaker 4: saying no. And you know, Nikky Haley's great, but she's
Speaker 4: really a placeholder candidate. She's kind of basically up there
Speaker 4: with light with you know, kind of Dean Phillips, maybe
Speaker 4: Bean Phillips plus right. So the fact that you're that
Speaker 4: you're still having people willing to turn out and vote
Speaker 4: for someone else, that's not a good sign. And to
Speaker 4: know why it's not a good sign imagine that the
Speaker 4: same thing we're happening to by people would be losing
Speaker 4: their minds, right.
Speaker 1: Imagine if Dean Phillips we're pulling it more than you know,
Speaker 1: we're you know, we're getting more than about two percent
Speaker 1: of the vote.
Speaker 4: Yeah, an imbecile worm like Dean Phillips getting forty percent.
Speaker 4: Everybody who supports Biden would be losing their minds. You know,
Speaker 4: she's not quite an imbecile worm.
Speaker 3: Level, but you know she's not that much better.
Speaker 4: He's a placeholder cane, a little Pascal reference for those
Speaker 4: of you who are who are an.
Speaker 1: Engineered as we are, like looking at this kind of
Speaker 1: endless primary, one of the things I think is really interesting.
Speaker 2: And you tell me if I'm crazy about this.
Speaker 1: Like, I've noticed that when I sit down sometimes with
Speaker 1: I have some friends who are Republicans and who are
Speaker 1: fancy Republicans, and their favorite.
Speaker 2: Thing to say to me is when will Biden drop out?
Speaker 1: New theory of the case is that they actually want
Speaker 1: Trump to drop out, but they can't say it because
Speaker 1: it's just they know they can you know that they
Speaker 1: know he has such a handle on the base.
Speaker 2: And so the mainstream.
Speaker 1: Media has for the last couple of months just passionately
Speaker 1: written all these pieces about how Biden has to drop out.
Speaker 1: And I actually think that this is like some kind
Speaker 1: of counter transference transference Freudian Michigan.
Speaker 2: Am I crazy?
Speaker 4: Yes, I really tend to stick to the to the
Speaker 4: patient experience when it comes to psychoanalysis, So I can't.
Speaker 4: You know, it's a little hard for me to get
Speaker 4: on the other side of a couch on that. But
Speaker 4: it couldn't be that presidential nominees don't drop out. That's
Speaker 4: kind of a that's a that's a kind of a
Speaker 4: hard and fast thing. Well, presidents don't drop out. I mean,
Speaker 4: you know, he is the incumbent.
Speaker 1: You have these you know, while he's old, right, that's
Speaker 1: the theory of the case.
Speaker 2: He's old, and he doesn't pull well versus like I do.
Speaker 1: One. Criminal accounts, like the civil cases that you know
Speaker 1: in and out of courtrooms, can't raise money.
Speaker 2: It strikes me that, like, you know, if you had
Speaker 2: to pick.
Speaker 1: Your guy, you'd probably just want the guy who was
Speaker 1: the old.
Speaker 4: You know, you'd think these are to kind of grant
Speaker 4: the case. These are both fairly unprecedented. We've never had
Speaker 4: anyone Well, it's.
Speaker 1: An incumbent against an incumbent a certain way.
Speaker 3: That is yet another thing.
Speaker 4: We've never had anybody, you know, even close to as
Speaker 4: old as Biden, except for Biden right four years ago,
Speaker 4: who was only four years younger.
Speaker 3: That is true.
Speaker 4: If you were going to talk about by any kind
Speaker 4: of historical standards, even though there is no precedent being
Speaker 4: kind of bound over for trial in four different jurisdictions,
Speaker 4: that would be the kind of thing that you would
Speaker 4: say that even though nominees don't drop out, that would
Speaker 4: be the kind of thing that might.
Speaker 3: Get you to the first. But it doesn't.
Speaker 4: And you know you made this point before a out
Speaker 4: Biden's poll numbers. The race is basically tied, with a
Speaker 4: very slight advantage to Trump at the moment.
Speaker 3: These are early polls. He's one or two points back
Speaker 3: in averages, but certainly Democrats would prefer to be one
Speaker 3: or two points up or really five points up. These
Speaker 3: things are true.
Speaker 4: I mean, I think a huge amount of the age
Speaker 4: thing is people are terrified that Biden is not clearly winning,
Speaker 4: which he is not to the extent that the current
Speaker 4: polls tell us something. And you want to find a
Speaker 4: reason for that that it's not because Trump is actually
Speaker 4: popular and could win, and so everything has sort of
Speaker 4: focused on Biden's age. That's that's kind of that's the
Speaker 4: whole thing. Now, Having said that, Biden is not a
Speaker 4: vital looking guy, he's you know, he looks old.
Speaker 3: He does.
Speaker 4: There's there's no getting around that. He seems to have
Speaker 4: some sort of you know, arthritis stuff in his back.
Speaker 4: So it's gate climp stiff, he broke his foot early
Speaker 4: in his presence, and.
Speaker 3: Blah blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 4: But I mean, I guarantee you Biden is up five points,
Speaker 4: and you'd think a like Hull Hog Dark Brandon, right
Speaker 4: are kind of you know, some kind of like you know,
Speaker 4: mid late era Clint Eastwood, like old dude kicking everybody's
Speaker 4: ass memes. People would be a fine with it if
Speaker 4: they were confident he was going to win. But they're
Speaker 4: freaking out. And the freak out is understandable. It may
Speaker 4: not win, it's and that's terrifying it.
Speaker 1: But I mean, you know, this time in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: right we knew Hillary Clinton would win.
Speaker 4: Well, we absolutely did. And I'll end on this point.
Speaker 4: The single biggest determinant of whether you win a presidential
Speaker 4: election is whether you're the incumbent.
Speaker 5: It's a huge, huge factor.
Speaker 4: It always has been. Obviously, occasionally the incumbent doesn't win,
Speaker 4: but it's rare, and that's kind of one of the
Speaker 4: reasons why the idea that in this kind of election
Speaker 4: you'd say, well, let's get rid of the incumbent is
Speaker 4: in addition to it not it is not going to happen.
Speaker 4: It's just insane, even if you could make it happen.
Speaker 4: And again that's not even a matter of like being
Speaker 4: a Biden fan. That is one of the most reliable
Speaker 4: facts about presidential politics.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, and clearly incumbency is an enormous advantage.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Thank you.
Speaker 3: Josh, thank you.
Speaker 1: Did you know Rick Wilson and I are bringing together
Speaker 1: some friends for a general election kickoff party at City
Speaker 1: Winery in New York on March sixth. We're going to
Speaker 1: be chatting right after Super Tuesday about what's going on,
Speaker 1: and it is going to probably be the one fun night.
Speaker 2: For the next eighty days.
Speaker 1: If you're in the New York area, please come by
Speaker 1: and join us. You can go to City Winery's website
Speaker 1: and grab a ticket. John Avlon is a candidate for
Speaker 1: Congress in New York's first district.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 3: John Avlon, Hey, Mollie.
Speaker 2: We're really excited to have you.
Speaker 1: You were an editor, you were an anchor, and now.
Speaker 2: You are running for Congress.
Speaker 3: Explain that's the truth.
Speaker 5: I run it in New York's first district, which is eastern
Speaker 5: Long Island, where I'm talking to you from today.
Speaker 2: Of course, Wait, you actually live in the district.
Speaker 5: Yeah, what a novel you no, you know, actually the
Speaker 5: current Republican incumbent does not live in the district. He
Speaker 5: can't vote for himself. That's Nick Loloda, right, Nick Loloda,
Speaker 5: Trump hugging Nick Loda.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he sucks.
Speaker 5: This was a district in twenty twenty that Biden narrowly won,
Speaker 5: and he has like just been a Trump flucky from
Speaker 5: day one. He mocked Langford for the bipartisan border bill.
Speaker 1: Let us take a moment here to talk about James Langford,
Speaker 1: liberal communist cock, James Langford from the state of Oklahoma.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 5: Well, look, I mean it's very clear this has been
Speaker 5: going on for a while, but by partisanship is considered
Speaker 5: a firing offense inside Trump's Republican Party and I think
Speaker 5: that's just one of the many, many, many ways you
Speaker 5: see what contempt they have for functioning governance and a democracy.
Speaker 5: And I think the reason there was a lot of
Speaker 5: pick up with my announcement and I was frankly, happily
Speaker 5: surprised by it. I mean, our launch video got over
Speaker 5: two million views in the first few days. We've been
Speaker 5: strong audigate shocking number of articles. I think people are
Speaker 5: become used to members of Congress wanting to be on TV,
Speaker 5: wanting to be on cable news, and not frankly doing
Speaker 5: their jobs, which is solving problems for the American people.
Speaker 5: But people are a lot less used to someone leaving
Speaker 5: a chop in news and television news to go into
Speaker 5: public cherp. I just felt compelled to do it. I
Speaker 5: didn't want to tell my kids that I could have
Speaker 5: done more when it mattered most for our democracy. And
Speaker 5: that's how I really feel about this. I wrote a
Speaker 5: file column for CNN about how, you know, I really
Speaker 5: I'm very concerned that we're sort of sleep walking into
Speaker 5: this selection, sleepwalking into a dictatorship, as Liz Cheney said,
Speaker 5: And I felt that as much as I love c
Speaker 5: IT ed and the work I was doing, there that
Speaker 5: simply offering opinions on cable news wasn't enough. You know,
Speaker 5: democracy depends on people showing up, and that this is
Speaker 5: one of those times in our nation's history. And I'm
Speaker 5: a presidential historian as well in my book writing where
Speaker 5: say is it's got to step up and get off
Speaker 5: the sidelines and get in the areta. And if there's
Speaker 5: a chance to flip a seat, a swing seat in
Speaker 5: New York, yeah, where I live, then let's go. Let's
Speaker 5: do this. Let's do the hard thing because it's the
Speaker 5: right thing, and we'll look back on challenging times with
Speaker 5: pride if we all step up and build the broadest
Speaker 5: possible coalition to defend democracy, defeat Donald Trump, and win
Speaker 5: back Congress from his magaminions like Nickelodo who just aren't
Speaker 5: even trying to solve problems for the American people anymore.
Speaker 5: And so I think that's the opportunity the obligation of
Speaker 5: this moment.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about what your district looks like in
Speaker 1: New York one. I mean, I think one of the
Speaker 1: interesting things about these seats is they were really tight.
Speaker 1: It did feel like there was a certain amount of
Speaker 1: like sleepwalking, which is why Democrats lost all those seats.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, I think twenty twenty two in New
Speaker 5: York was a bit of an outlier because the former
Speaker 5: congress from this district, Lee Zelden, was running for governor,
Speaker 5: and so I think there was a decision to contest
Speaker 5: other seats more intensely. But look, candadate quality matters. You
Speaker 5: need candidates to conspire the base, but also went over
Speaker 5: independent voters, and I think this election, I think the
Speaker 5: stakes could not be clear for the country, but also
Speaker 5: this community. I mean for folks at home, and the
Speaker 5: lines in New York are being redrawn as we speak.
Speaker 5: This is all happening in very real time. But it's
Speaker 5: long island, so there's only so much you can do.
Speaker 5: It's an island. This is Montalk, the north and South
Speaker 5: Forks and then north of four ninety five to Huntington.
Speaker 5: So it's a really big district. It's a beautiful district.
Speaker 5: It's a district was represented by Democrat Tim Bishop for
Speaker 5: over a decade, then went to Lee Zelden. I was
Speaker 5: never a big Lee Szeldon fan. He was one of
Speaker 5: the one hundred and thirty seven hundred thirty nine Republicans
Speaker 5: who voted to overturn the election after the attack on
Speaker 5: our capital. But it goes back before that. When I
Speaker 5: after I'd written the book wing Nuts, which is how
Speaker 5: the lunatic for just hijacking America that unfortunately was the
Speaker 5: side of things to come, I got a mailer from
Speaker 5: him that said, it's not the first time he's served
Speaker 5: behind enemy lines, referring to his constituents. Does that to
Speaker 5: be here's a perfect example of everything that's wrong in
Speaker 5: our politics that I've been writing about in columns and
Speaker 5: the book WingNuts. This is before I became editor in chief,
Speaker 5: and you know that just symbolizes everything that's wrong with
Speaker 5: our politics. And so we got to break this fever
Speaker 5: and then try to find a way to, you know,
Speaker 5: reunite the nation and build a new kind of politics.
Speaker 5: But you got to stand up to bullies, and you
Speaker 5: got to stand up to Trump and remind people that
Speaker 5: there is nothing remotely normal or acceptable about a presidential
Speaker 5: candidate of a major party campaigning on the authoritarian platform
Speaker 5: and praising dictators every day. If that's not wrong, nothing,
Speaker 5: So this election offers us moral clarity and moral urgency,
Speaker 5: and that's why Sleepwalking it shouldn't be on the menu.
Speaker 5: We all got to straight in our civic backbones and
Speaker 5: get in this fight right now. And part of my
Speaker 5: message to Democrats here in the first district is is
Speaker 5: that Democrats can't afford to lose this fight. You need
Speaker 5: to put forward compelling candidate, but also it's going to
Speaker 5: be one and lost on not just you know, bigot
Speaker 5: picture issues like democracy in the trajectory of the twenty
Speaker 5: first century, but also making people feel that government can
Speaker 5: work again. And that's one of the insults of the
Speaker 5: truck blockage of the border security bill. But it's also
Speaker 5: making sure that you know you're dealing with, you know,
Speaker 5: kitchen table issues that ef like middle class families who've
Speaker 5: lost faith. It's not an accident to my mind that
Speaker 5: we've seen the hollowing out of the middle of our
Speaker 5: political center in America at the same time that middle
Speaker 5: class families have been getting squeezed for so long, and
Speaker 5: that's an opportunity for Democrats to deliver. I think Joe
Speaker 5: Biden's done a good job out of the gate things
Speaker 5: like infrastructure and the Chips hack, but there's more to come.
Speaker 3: I want to.
Speaker 1: Ask you as we're looking at this Laloda, the way
Speaker 1: that this Congress has worked is that Republicans have, as
Speaker 1: opposed to Nancy Pelosi, who was very focused on making
Speaker 1: sure that her people didn't have to vote for insane
Speaker 1: legislation that could be used against some when they were
Speaker 1: running for re election, because you know, in the House,
Speaker 1: you run every two years, and so you have to
Speaker 1: constantly be answering for your votes, which I think one
Speaker 1: of the things that I think this new sort of
Speaker 1: Maga House of Representatives doesn't do is they don't really
Speaker 1: do that. So Republicans have voted for things that are
Speaker 1: like pretty much beyond the Pale two impeachments.
Speaker 2: We're different crs.
Speaker 1: They may have a shutdown now coming up again, Well
Speaker 1: they shut down the government when they controlled all the
Speaker 1: branches last time. This will be a but you know,
Speaker 1: so there's a tiered CR. I mean, there's just a
Speaker 1: lot of things that really seem like errors. You're out
Speaker 1: on the ground talking to constituents. Do you feel like
Speaker 1: people understand that and do you feel like.
Speaker 2: Republicans are getting the blame for them.
Speaker 5: I think that's starting to resonate with folks. I think
Speaker 5: one of the points that Tom Swazi made in the
Speaker 5: special election in the adjoining district of New York three,
Speaker 5: which George Santos had represented before.
Speaker 2: He can't say George Santos cereal fabulous is his first name.
Speaker 5: I actually take issue with the word fabulous because it
Speaker 5: sounds fancy liar, I mean just liar, serial, reflective liar,
Speaker 5: George Santos, the personal Santos said, Look, Democrats need to
Speaker 5: lean into issues people are concerned about, play offense on
Speaker 5: messaging and policies on issues like crime and migrants, but
Speaker 5: more importantly, make the case that Republicans aren't actually interested
Speaker 5: in solving any of these problems. You know, the real
Speaker 5: disruption of DC is resolving to solve problems and not
Speaker 5: just demagogue them and fearmonger off them and fundraise off
Speaker 5: them without ever taking the steps necessary to solve the problem.
Speaker 5: And that's what Nickeloda is utterly complicit. He's part of
Speaker 5: the problem. I mean this Maga crew I call magaminions
Speaker 5: because they do whatever Trump says. It's sort of they've
Speaker 5: already shown they're unable and or unwilling to govern in
Speaker 5: the national and they're not interested in solving problems at all.
Speaker 5: And I think the border security bill is a really
Speaker 5: visceral example, for folks who are feeling concerned about immigration
Speaker 5: to the state of the border, they just told you
Speaker 5: they would rather have the issue and keep it a
Speaker 5: problem than have bipartisanship work and solve the problem because
Speaker 5: they would rather have the issue. How offensive is that?
Speaker 5: What a profile in cynicism and cowardice in real time
Speaker 5: that really resonates with folks. I just think that calling
Speaker 5: that out really clearly, it really starts to restate with folks.
Speaker 5: If they think bipartisanship is the problem, then they're part
Speaker 5: of the problem. And what Nancy Pelosi did, and this
Speaker 5: is one of my favorite Stacks stats about the first
Speaker 5: two years of the Biden administration, when Nancy Pelosi and
Speaker 5: Democrats had the narrowest margin imaginable in the Setate fifty
Speaker 5: to fifty and Nancy Pelosi had a similarly narrow margin
Speaker 5: in the House. That Republicans have been unable to govern
Speaker 5: with Democrats pass over three hundred bipartisan bills, three hundred
Speaker 5: bi partisan bills, including the infrastructure bill in the Chip Sack,
Speaker 5: which will do more to help rebuild in the middle
Speaker 5: class while competing with China than anything that's been done
Speaker 5: in a half century. And that's just an example of
Speaker 5: government works when democrats are doing it and making peel
Speaker 5: over the handful of reasonable Republicans who were left. And
Speaker 5: that's the only way you're going to avoid these sort
Speaker 5: of constantly playing chicken with government shutdowns to score political points.
Speaker 5: And the extremist agenda, particularly with regard to women reprick
Speaker 5: women's reproductive freedom that we see this Congress advancing tied
Speaker 5: up in knots over IVF and all sorts of other
Speaker 5: things that just are an insults of basic not just
Speaker 5: reproductive freedom, but individual freedom in a way that's supported
Speaker 5: to backlash even red states, as we've seen in all
Speaker 5: those specials. So I think they've woke into sleeping giant.
Speaker 5: But we need to lean into that and build this
Speaker 5: broadest possible coalition because democracy is on the line, not
Speaker 5: on our watch. We can't let this in our watch.
Speaker 1: You're not a democrat though, or become, but you weren't
Speaker 1: always a democrat.
Speaker 5: I was an independent, okay, like many journalists, you know.
Speaker 5: I mean some journalists don't, as you know, register to
Speaker 5: vote because they think that'll you know, give them a
Speaker 5: rooting interest. I think that's an abdication of our citizenship.
Speaker 2: But one of the.
Speaker 1: Things I think is pretty interesting is that what you're
Speaker 1: seeing here is that the Republican party that voted for
Speaker 1: There are a lot of Republicans voted for Biden. And
Speaker 1: it seems to me as if when we look at
Speaker 1: those South Carolina numbers, I mean, these are our South
Speaker 1: Carolina primary voters, right, so, pretty white, pretty religious, and
Speaker 1: one in five of them are never Trump. So it
Speaker 1: does seem to me like there's a pretty large swath
Speaker 1: of people who are right for the Biden picking.
Speaker 2: Can you talk about.
Speaker 5: That one hundred percent? That's the opportunity of the election.
Speaker 5: That's why I feel bullish about our chances come to
Speaker 5: fall once people sort of shake themselves out of they're stupid.
Speaker 5: The stakes are too high. I understand why people are
Speaker 5: feeling exhausted by politics in the news, but that's part
Speaker 5: of a cynical design. When Steve Bannon says that, you
Speaker 5: know it talks infamously about the strategy to sort of
Speaker 5: flood the zone with shit. What he's talking about is
Speaker 5: trying to overwhelm and exhaust normal people and making them
Speaker 5: think that politics and public service is fundamentally dirty and
Speaker 5: dishonorable and dishonest, and that therefore seedes the ground to
Speaker 5: those extremists and ideologues who don't mind waiting through shit
Speaker 5: every day to do what they want even if they
Speaker 5: can't cobble together a majority, which is why you see
Speaker 5: such contempt from majoritary and democracy being expressed from Mike
Speaker 5: Johnson on down. And I've written a lot of columns
Speaker 5: about this. That's the larger opportunity here when I talk
Speaker 5: about building the broadest possible coalition to defeat Donald Trump,
Speaker 5: defend democracy. That's the opportunity. And you need candidates who
Speaker 5: can connect with those of what's left of the reasonable
Speaker 5: edge of Republicans who I respect, who can connect with
Speaker 5: independent voters in a way that shows a real ability
Speaker 5: to understand their perspective. And that's one of the things
Speaker 5: that I can offer. This is not anything resembling a
Speaker 5: normal election. This is all hands on deck, not a drill,
Speaker 5: defend democracy. And I think we will be able to
Speaker 5: pull together a broad coalition not only here in Suffolk
Speaker 5: County but across the country because of exactly that dynamics.
Speaker 5: But you need people who can communicate a compelling message
Speaker 5: in a way that blows the doors off this what
Speaker 5: about ism and false moral equivalence that lulls people back
Speaker 5: to sleep, right exactly, And.
Speaker 1: It does seem to me like you're in this district
Speaker 1: that is is a very mixed district. Nasa County is
Speaker 1: known to be or not. You don't go all the
Speaker 1: way up to Nassa County, but all Suffolk, right, But
Speaker 1: Suffolk is known to be you know, parts are very
Speaker 1: red and maybe the liberals there are not quite as
Speaker 1: liberal as a sort of city liberals, so to speak.
Speaker 2: So can you talk about that?
Speaker 5: Well, look, I think that's part of the opportunity and
Speaker 5: that's what makes this race. One of the things that
Speaker 5: makes this race so exciting. Look, we need more swing districts.
Speaker 5: Swing districts are healthy. They are not enough of them
Speaker 5: because of the rig system of redistricting, and the most
Speaker 5: egregious examples are always predictably in the red states where
Speaker 5: they representative elections create representative results. And so I relish
Speaker 5: the chance to run at a district that's genuinely competitive
Speaker 5: and the current line and this is all happening in
Speaker 5: real time, as I said, in New York, but are
Speaker 5: slightly Republican. Even though Biden won the pre existing district
Speaker 5: in twenty twenty narrowly one of the narest margins in
Speaker 5: the country. That means you need to persuade people. That's
Speaker 5: what democracy is supposed to be about, reasoning together from
Speaker 5: a common set of facts and finding common ground and
Speaker 5: then building on it. You know, swing districts, competitive districts
Speaker 5: are healthy for democracy. The problem comes, as we see
Speaker 5: over and over again in covering politics and Congress, that
Speaker 5: you know, folks have lifetime employment unless they lose the
Speaker 5: close parts of the primary, so it forces them to
Speaker 5: the extremes, and fear and greed drives all their decisions,
Speaker 5: which is what Donald Trump drives a truck through. I
Speaker 5: think having a competitive general election is the most healthy
Speaker 5: expression of a vibrant democracy because then we need to
Speaker 5: reach out beyond the base and win over the reasonable
Speaker 5: edge of the opposition and win over independence. We need
Speaker 5: to engage in persuasion again, and that's the heart of
Speaker 5: democracy at the end of the day. And the problem,
Speaker 5: one of the many problems with our era with so
Speaker 5: much disinformation and misinformation, which I confronted on my reality
Speaker 5: check segments on CNN for a long time. Try to
Speaker 5: restore offense of common facts while fighting the good fight. Look,
Speaker 5: the mere fact that Donald Trump is perpetuating the adoption
Speaker 5: of an election lie as a litmus test for party
Speaker 5: loyalty shows how deep the rot has got. And competitive
Speaker 5: swing districts offered the best chance to focus people on
Speaker 5: common facts and reason together through persuasion. And that's why
Speaker 5: someone like you, who's far too far right for this district,
Speaker 5: like Nickeloda, is right for the picking with the right
Speaker 5: general election candidate. And I believe I can be that
Speaker 5: candidate if I win this promery.
Speaker 2: Now tell me about your primary.
Speaker 5: So look, I mean I left CNN is two three
Speaker 5: weeks ago. The leading candidate previously was the twenty twenty
Speaker 5: nominee n In Nancy Gore. A number of candidates I've
Speaker 5: dropped out or may drop out since I got in
Speaker 5: the race because I disrupted the calculus. And it's not
Speaker 5: an accident that the day I got in, the National
Speaker 5: Republican Congressional Committee immediately attacking they hadn't done that for
Speaker 5: any of the other candidates because they frankly thought they
Speaker 5: wouldn't have to contest this race. I have a lot
Speaker 5: of respect for anyone who get you know, gets in
Speaker 5: the arena, especially now, because it's fascinating to see politics
Speaker 5: from this perspective to great education, and I find it
Speaker 5: really invigorating because it's deeply purposeful. The tail of the
Speaker 5: tape is Nancy Goreoff was the nominee in twenty twenty.
Speaker 5: I turn out high intensity election year. She spent eight
Speaker 5: million dollars and she lost by double digits. That's difficult
Speaker 5: to make a case that we should rerun that play. Ultimately,
Speaker 5: it'll be up to Democratic voters. But I think most
Speaker 5: importantly Democrats want to win. They want to win here,
Speaker 5: they want to win across the country. There's good people
Speaker 5: in the race. There's a two term state senator named
Speaker 5: Jimmy Goren. You know, I think the mere fact this race,
Speaker 5: which is a swing district by any mathematical definition, was
Speaker 5: in danger of not being seriously contested, and of course
Speaker 5: that has a depressive effect on local enthusiasts. And the
Speaker 5: second I got in the race, you know, I got
Speaker 5: win that. You know, Republicans might be try to start
Speaker 5: a super pack against me, like they're talking about me.
Speaker 5: They're scared I'm in this race, which is a great sign.
Speaker 5: Folks in the primary will try to attack me from
Speaker 5: the left, and well, the right is attacking me, you know,
Speaker 5: is a radical liberal, which is remotely credible because I've
Speaker 5: devoted most of my career to warning about the dangers
Speaker 5: of hyperpartisanship and polarization and trying to advocate solutions that
Speaker 5: can reunite us as a nation. So I mean, bring
Speaker 5: it on, but I think the mere fact that they're
Speaker 5: afraid that I've gotten in the race is a sad
Speaker 5: of strength.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, John, really great, looking forward to
Speaker 1: seeing more of you.
Speaker 5: Thank you. You are awesome. I appreciate you and what
Speaker 5: you do.
Speaker 1: Daniel Lurie is a candidate for mayor in San Francisco.
Speaker 1: Welcome too Fast Politics, Daniel.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Molly. It's great to be here.
Speaker 1: So I wanted you to come on because of what
Speaker 1: you're doing, which I think is super interesting. So give
Speaker 1: us this sort of ten thousand foot view on what
Speaker 1: you're doing.
Speaker 3: I'm running for mayor of San Francisco because I love
Speaker 3: this town. I was born and raised here, my wife
Speaker 3: and I are raising two young children here, and I've
Speaker 3: always thought that San Francisco is the best city in
Speaker 3: the world. No offense to New York, but I have
Speaker 3: to be honest, the direction we're headed, I'm worried about
Speaker 3: my friend's children and all of our children not having
Speaker 3: that same sense of pride in San Francisco. You all
Speaker 3: hear the news in the direction we're he leaves me
Speaker 3: really concerned. And so I have a track record of
Speaker 3: getting big things done, bringing diverse groups of people together
Speaker 3: on behalf of San Franciscans and actually the whole Bay Area,
Speaker 3: and I know I have what it takes to lead
Speaker 3: this city.
Speaker 1: So explain to us a little bit about your Democrat
Speaker 1: and you are primary the sittying mayor, Explain to us.
Speaker 3: What you're thinking was, it's not a primary, it's like
Speaker 3: your election. It's ranked choice voting. It all happens in November,
Speaker 3: on the same day as the presidential something. Our election
Speaker 3: actually was moved it was supposed to be last year,
Speaker 3: and so we're going to have the greatest turnout in
Speaker 3: our cities history, probably form There's a lot of people
Speaker 3: running like real candidates. Right now. We have three real candidates,
Speaker 3: maybe one more jumping in, and everyone sees the writing
Speaker 3: on the wall that we have a mayor that has
Speaker 3: just not delivered, you know, no personal offense to her
Speaker 3: she is not worked for our city.
Speaker 1: One of the things I hear about San Francisco is
Speaker 1: the sort of Republicans have said the city is, you know,
Speaker 1: it's one of their favorite cities to pick on. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're New York, We're close behind. But one of the
Speaker 1: things that conservatives the Rupert Murdock industrial complex like to
Speaker 1: say about San Francisco is that it has you know,
Speaker 1: out of control drug use and crime. And I mean,
Speaker 1: is that true? And if it is true, why is that?
Speaker 1: And just sort of give us a few minutes on crime.
Speaker 1: We have problems in parts of our city.
Speaker 3: Our downtown core is being hollowed out if you walk
Speaker 3: through the Tenderloine or Soma. We have open air drug
Speaker 3: markets that are crazy. The media, though, doesn't want to
Speaker 3: show you some of our neighborhoo that are thriving. So
Speaker 3: we have a lot of good things happening, and it's
Speaker 3: easy to pick up on a number of the bad
Speaker 3: things that are happening. So, as with anything, the truth
Speaker 3: is somewhere in between. But we've been very lax on
Speaker 3: drug dealers for a ver long time. And I came
Speaker 3: out with a proposal after a first time arrest for
Speaker 3: a drug dealer selling fentanyl which killed over eight hundred
Speaker 3: people in our streets last year, Malik. Eight hundred people
Speaker 3: died of fentanyl overdoses last year in San Francisco, and
Speaker 3: we need to take it more seriously. We need the
Speaker 3: DA and the judges to hold people accountable in a
Speaker 3: more serious way. So let's put ankle monitors on first
Speaker 3: time drug dealers who are arrested. Let's make sure they
Speaker 3: have stay away orders and search conditions. I've put out
Speaker 3: the toughest tough on crime in terms of drug dealers
Speaker 3: proposal out of any candidate in this race. And we
Speaker 3: have to send a message to everyone in this country
Speaker 3: and around the world that you don't come to San
Speaker 3: Francisco to deal drugs, or to do drugs, or to
Speaker 3: sleep on our streets.
Speaker 1: One of the things that makes San Francisco a hard
Speaker 1: city to govern, just like Los Angeles, is that the
Speaker 1: city council has a lot of power, right I mean,
Speaker 1: is that do you have that similar dynamic.
Speaker 3: We have politicians here that love to make excuses, they
Speaker 3: love to fingerpoint. I'm running against a bunch of insiders
Speaker 3: that have built up a system where no one is
Speaker 3: held accountable here. It's a board of supervisors, it's city
Speaker 3: council bes where a city and a county. We have
Speaker 3: eleven supervisors. They run just in their districts and so
Speaker 3: they are not thinking city wide as you would hope
Speaker 3: that they would. But the mayor has a lot of power.
Speaker 3: You put a fourteen point six billion dollar budget on
Speaker 3: the table and the board of supervisors fights over point
Speaker 3: two percent. This mayor is two district attorneys, four supervisors,
Speaker 3: three Board of ad members, a city attorney, of public
Speaker 3: utilities head. No one can tell me that the mayor
Speaker 3: of San Francisco doesn't have a lot of power. Having
Speaker 3: said that, Molly need charter reform and we need commission reform.
Speaker 3: We have one hundred and thirty plus commissions, double with
Speaker 3: any other city in the state has, and it's insane.
Speaker 3: But that's how these elected officials want it. They want
Speaker 3: it so that they don't have to accept responsibility. I
Speaker 3: still have not heard the mayor or or a supervisor say,
Speaker 3: when something's gone wrong wrong in our city, oh, that's
Speaker 3: on me. It's always a fingerpointing game, Molly. You see
Speaker 3: this everywhere, but it's really really rotten here in San
Speaker 3: Francisco and That's why we need an outsider to come
Speaker 3: in and fix this broken system.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about, like the sort of successful example of
Speaker 1: this in New York might be again, someone where you
Speaker 1: sort of are able to address things. So I'm curious,
Speaker 1: like this is also partially a problem of what crimes
Speaker 1: are being prosecuted.
Speaker 3: It's a management problem, it really is.
Speaker 2: But can the mayor influence like under it.
Speaker 3: One hundred percent? And I you know, one of the
Speaker 3: role models I have is Mayor Bloomberg. You know, I'm
Speaker 3: talking to former members of his administration that helped him
Speaker 3: turn around New York, helped him get through the economic
Speaker 3: crisis of two thousand and eight. You can manage this
Speaker 3: city once again, I said it before, I'll say it again.
Speaker 3: You need commission reform and you need charter reform to
Speaker 3: make sure that these excuses are taken out. But you
Speaker 3: got to hold people accountable. You've got a whole department
Speaker 3: heads accountable. They currently are not being held accountable. They
Speaker 3: all run their own little fectoms. The mayor's not setting
Speaker 3: the tone from the top. You know, we go after
Speaker 3: nonprofits all the time because we have allied control spending
Speaker 3: on nonprofits who are not being held accountable. We're not
Speaker 3: measuring their results, which I did at tipping point. We
Speaker 3: held our groups accountable. Tipping point is the foundation I
Speaker 3: started in two thousand and five. We've raised over half
Speaker 3: a billion dollars to tackle issues of povery throughout the
Speaker 3: Bay Area. But the thing that made us different Moly.
Speaker 3: Much like the Robinhood Foundation in New York, if a
Speaker 3: group was not performing, we cut funding to them and
Speaker 3: redirected those resources. That's not happening at the city level.
Speaker 3: We all want to blame the nonprofits, but what about
Speaker 3: our departments that are funding these groups without holding them accountable.
Speaker 3: That starts at the top. That's what I will bring
Speaker 3: to bear on this executive branch. So I have two questions,
Speaker 3: which are one, can you win in the recent polls
Speaker 3: with the rank choice voting. I mean, I'm neck and
Speaker 3: neck in first place votes already, and I win if
Speaker 3: you go to the second round. I'm beating the sitting
Speaker 3: mayor and the mayor who had about five months on
Speaker 3: the job. I'm beating all the insiders. Not only are
Speaker 3: we in good position, We're going to win in November.
Speaker 1: Here's my other question. If you can win, can you
Speaker 1: really do this?
Speaker 3: Yeah, the winning, and then you got to actually do
Speaker 3: the job. I've worked with every mayor since Gavin Newsom.
Speaker 3: I brought Super Bowl fifty to the Bay Area. I
Speaker 3: had to bring the entire region together. The chair of
Speaker 3: that host committee, San Jose mayor, Oakland may or, San
Speaker 3: Francisco mayor, we all had to work together. I'm the
Speaker 3: only one in this race that actually got housing built
Speaker 3: in San Francisco. We got it done on time, under budget,
Speaker 3: using good paying union labor. I actually had a bet
Speaker 3: with the sitting mayor at that time who could get
Speaker 3: their project done. Mine was three years, three hundred and
Speaker 3: seventy seven thousand dollars in it. His took six years,
Speaker 3: six hundred thousand dollars in. I have the executive experience
Speaker 3: managing one of the largest anti poverty fighting organizations in
Speaker 3: the country, you know, bringing a global sporting event here
Speaker 3: and getting housing built. And I work very well across
Speaker 3: the business community, the nonprofit community, and of course the
Speaker 3: political arena.
Speaker 1: We want to be compassionate to unhouse people, but we
Speaker 1: also want to have our streets and cities to be
Speaker 1: livable and usable.
Speaker 3: And I mean big belonged to all of us. So
Speaker 3: what does that look like. I came out with a
Speaker 3: comprehensive plan yesterday. It's a six point plan, but it
Speaker 3: starts with making sure that we have enough treatment beds
Speaker 3: for people. And I believe it should not just be
Speaker 3: a belief being the front lines going out and dealing
Speaker 3: with somebody with a mental health crisis or you know,
Speaker 3: experience in a drug crisis, but you go out. We're
Speaker 3: going to have corresponder models under my administration, where you
Speaker 3: have a trained clinician out with a police officer. So
Speaker 3: the first play contact is that trained clinician, and then
Speaker 3: you need twenty four to seven crisis centers where you
Speaker 3: can take that person. They need to accept it. They
Speaker 3: got to accept treatment, or you need to arrest them.
Speaker 3: We need to have both the stick and the carrot.
Speaker 3: Currently all we have is a stick and or you
Speaker 3: take them to SF General and we have these high
Speaker 3: fires as we call them, and it costs US hundreds
Speaker 3: of thousands of dollars a year to deal with one person.
Speaker 2: This is the difference.
Speaker 1: It's sort of like, is there something between police officers
Speaker 1: and you know, is there some kind of like homeless
Speaker 1: social working organization.
Speaker 3: It's a great question. We have outreach teams right now,
Speaker 3: but they're not well coordinated. We've seen they have dubious efficacy,
Speaker 3: and so it falls to the police. And when you're
Speaker 3: talking about we're down out of two thousand, we should
Speaker 3: be around two thousand police officers, we're well below thirteen hundred.
Speaker 3: There's a morale issue for many reasons. But one reason
Speaker 3: is they're out doing you know, homeless services and drug
Speaker 3: The first one is responding when somebody is having a
Speaker 3: mental health episode. We can't have our police doing that work.
Speaker 3: We need them walking, to be out patrolling, responding to
Speaker 3: nine one one calls. We have the longest nine to
Speaker 3: one one call response time in the last twenty plus years.
Speaker 3: Right now, people don't feel safe. So yes, you can
Speaker 3: have train clinicians go out with police officers. That's the
Speaker 3: middle ground. That's what I propose actually yesterday. And then
Speaker 3: you need the bed smallly. We have a fourteen billion
Speaker 3: dollar budget. This is not a crisis of resources. This
Speaker 3: is a crisis of leadership, and we need to build
Speaker 3: the beds and this administration has failed to do that.
Speaker 1: But yeah, here's my question about the police. I mean
Speaker 1: problem with police being unhappy, but is there a problem
Speaker 1: with police accountability too, like our mayor is what came
Speaker 1: up through the police, and it certainly feels like there's
Speaker 1: not that people are not very focused on accountability when
Speaker 1: it comes to the police.
Speaker 3: I don't, we don't. I don't believe that that's a
Speaker 3: problem that we have currently. We've had much better training
Speaker 3: of our police force over the last number of years.
Speaker 3: We have a police Oversight Body, which we should have.
Speaker 3: Police should always be held accountable, but we also have
Speaker 3: a police Commission that has taken the reins and made
Speaker 3: sure to prevent police officers from going out and doing
Speaker 3: their work. And we've swung so far. And you asked
Speaker 3: this at the beginning, you know, if this was a
Speaker 3: response to maybe the Trump era here we were sort
Speaker 3: of pushing back against Trump and going so far one
Speaker 3: way that we've gone so far. I don't want to
Speaker 3: say left or right, but that police aren't doing their
Speaker 3: job because they feel like they're handcuffed. And yes, we
Speaker 3: should always have oversight, but we need to enforce the
Speaker 3: laws on our books, and we're not doing that right now.
Speaker 3: We have people walking in taking whatever they want as stores.
Speaker 3: We see those videos, but that's actually happening now.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you about those videos, because we have
Speaker 1: them in New York and they're not Actually a lot
Speaker 1: of the statistics here were sort of juiced up and
Speaker 1: weren't necessarily as they were sort of made to look
Speaker 1: worse than they were.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm not going to sit here and say
Speaker 3: that the media is like they have blown things out
Speaker 3: of proportion, for sure, and many of those things have happened.
Speaker 3: We've had many closures of Walgreens, so senior citizens now
Speaker 3: can't walk to their local Walgreens because Walgreens has said
Speaker 3: it's because of crime and public safety. Our Union Square
Speaker 3: was just announced this morning that Macy's is closing its
Speaker 3: flagship story here in San Francisco. It's like the best
Speaker 3: piece of real estate, state commercial real estate maybe on
Speaker 3: the planet is closing. And Whole Foods, right, and that
Speaker 3: Whole Food's on Market Street. You know, you could question
Speaker 3: whether or not that was the right location for it,
Speaker 3: but people were walking in there and taking things all
Speaker 3: day every day, and you don't have police walking the beat.
Speaker 3: Because how this all works is the perception that you
Speaker 3: are not going to get caught and the reality that
Speaker 3: you're not going to get caught. Fuels people wanting to steal.
Speaker 3: So we need to recruit aggressively, recruit police officers and
Speaker 3: retain those that were at risk of losing. You cannot
Speaker 3: have twelve hundred police officers in a major city like
Speaker 3: ours and keep the public trust always always. You got
Speaker 3: to have oversight and accountability for sure. But we also
Speaker 3: have to have police walking the beat and out on
Speaker 3: patrol in neighborhoods. People are flying through stop signs, they're
Speaker 3: running red lights because they know they're not going to
Speaker 3: get caught. So we need more visible police presence and
Speaker 3: community police. And two right, So.
Speaker 1: I have another question, which is about safe injection site.
Speaker 2: I mean, where are you on with that right now?
Speaker 3: With what we have on the streets. I'm not in
Speaker 3: favor of them here in San Francisco at this time.
Speaker 3: What you have in New York you have safe injection sites,
Speaker 3: and I've heard really good things and we're talking about
Speaker 3: heroin here, we're talking about fentanyl. Fentanyl, do it once
Speaker 3: you can die. So for me, we have to clean
Speaker 3: up the streets. We have to get mental health and
Speaker 3: drug treatment. That's first. Let's close these open air drug
Speaker 3: markets that are in real effect, especially at night here
Speaker 3: in the Tenderloin and in Soma. We have to send
Speaker 3: a message that this is no longer acceptable. I have friends,
Speaker 3: you know, in the public health sphere who you know,
Speaker 3: are pushing me on this safe injection site. They haven't
Speaker 3: been able to convince me that it's, you know, something
Speaker 3: that you can do safely with fentanyl. Once again, eight
Speaker 3: hundred and six people died of fentyl overdoses in our
Speaker 3: city last year. It's out of control, and so the
Speaker 3: idea of providing a safe place to do fentanyl is
Speaker 3: a bridge too far for me at this moment. I'm
Speaker 3: happy to continue the conversations, but we first need to
Speaker 3: clean up the streets and open air drug markets and
Speaker 3: get the people that are addicted into treatment. And we
Speaker 3: need treatment on demand, right.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm sober since as a teenager, so I
Speaker 1: really agree with that, and I certainly believe that if
Speaker 1: you're an addict, that's the game. So do you think
Speaker 1: it's doable?
Speaker 3: We're coming back, Mollie. This is the greatest city in
Speaker 3: the world. We have great bones. We have UCSF, uc
Speaker 3: Law School, we have cow we have Berkeley. We're the
Speaker 3: home of the AI boom. We're the home of clean
Speaker 3: tech and green tech. We have a great arts community here.
Speaker 3: We have a world class San Francisco Ballet, we have
Speaker 3: a world class opera, we have world class art museums
Speaker 3: and SF Mama and the de Young Mollie. We are
Speaker 3: coming back. We just we need to get back to basics.
Speaker 3: We need to allow small businesses and our big businesses
Speaker 3: to thrive. We need to simplify the tax code. We
Speaker 3: need labor and business to come together to simplify things
Speaker 3: and make sure there's certainty for our small businesses in
Speaker 3: our big business. And then we're coming roaring back and
Speaker 3: we're a boom and bus town. This is one of
Speaker 3: the worst bus we've been through, there's no doubt about it.
Speaker 3: But we're coming all the way back.
Speaker 2: Daniel, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 3: Mollie, thank you for having me. It's an honor to
Speaker 3: be on your show.
Speaker 2: No moment full, Jesse Cannon, Hi, John Faspia. This looming
Speaker 2: government shutdown and the Republicans are acting a little crazy.
Speaker 5: What are you seeing here?
Speaker 1: Speaker Mike Johnson, backbencher handpicked by Trump, turns out not
Speaker 1: to be good with math. He said he would not
Speaker 1: fund the government unless Democrats fixed the border.
Speaker 2: Democrats gave him.
Speaker 1: Quite a conservative border bill which did all sorts of
Speaker 1: things that progressive would not have liked.
Speaker 2: He rejected it without looking at it.
Speaker 1: And now on Friday, twenty percent of the federal government
Speaker 1: is going to shut down unless Maga Mike Johnson is
Speaker 1: able to figure out how to do a new CR.
Speaker 1: You know he said he said in a call on
Speaker 1: Friday that he wasn't going to do a CR.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: That sort of doesn't solve any problems for him and
Speaker 1: Mike Johnson and his ever shrinking to vote majority is.
Speaker 3: Our moment of gray.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
Speaker 1: every Monday, Wednesday and Friday to hear the best minds
Speaker 1: in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you
Speaker 1: enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend
Speaker 1: and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.