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 the American Bar Association is asking
Speaker 1: lawyers to adhere to the rule of law.
Speaker 2: We have such a great show for you today.
Speaker 1: Substacks own the Jim Acosta Shows. Jim Acosta joins us
Speaker 1: to talk about Trump's strategy to poke holes in the
Speaker 1: weak points of the government. Then we'll talk to Wired's
Speaker 1: David Gilbert about the threats Elon Musk's DOGE and the
Speaker 1: teenagers who work for it pose to US national security.
Speaker 2: But first the news.
Speaker 3: My we are no fans of Harrick Adams at this podcasts.
Speaker 3: The news is very bad. So I think what was
Speaker 3: an interesting thing though, was actually to do a timeline
Speaker 3: of this before we get there, which was that yesterday morning,
Speaker 3: I woke to a tweet that I immediately sent to
Speaker 3: you and many people, which was Mayor Adams gathered as
Speaker 3: top commissioners early Monday to give marching orders under the
Speaker 3: new administration. Don't criticize President Trump, don't interfere with immigration enforcement,
Speaker 3: and trust the mayor, sources told the city, and I thought, hmmm,
Speaker 3: why would he do that.
Speaker 1: And then so I would like to take a moment
Speaker 1: here to step back for a second and embrace.
Speaker 2: What you and I both know to be the mayoral curse.
Speaker 3: Yes, I think you and I discussed this off air
Speaker 3: every week for years.
Speaker 2: We discussed this often and always.
Speaker 1: The greatest city in the world has a mayor problem
Speaker 1: and it rhymes with Adams. No, we have the worst
Speaker 1: mayors in the world were cursed basically Rudy, I actually
Speaker 1: like Bloomberg, but you don't. And then the groundhog killer Bill.
Speaker 2: De Blasio, build Abudle, build Bungler.
Speaker 1: And then now we have our mayor, a simple dyslexic man,
Speaker 1: just like everyone else. Now I'm dyslexic, so no shade
Speaker 1: on dyslexia. It's my favorite learning disability. But he's very
Speaker 1: corrumpt Let's be honest here, being mayor is about more
Speaker 1: than just hanging out at zero bond. And this is true.
Speaker 1: So basically what this all looks like to me. So
Speaker 1: the mayor got indicted a bunch of indictments. There was.
Speaker 1: First of all, there was a while when everyone knew
Speaker 1: he was going to get indicted, and everyone in his
Speaker 1: inner circle kept resigning or marrying each other. Then eventually
Speaker 1: he got indicted, and there were supposedly more indictments coming.
Speaker 1: He got indicted for his sketchy relationship with Turkey, but
Speaker 1: there's definitely also other stuff going on. Then he went
Speaker 1: and sucked up to Trump, and now he has had
Speaker 1: his indictments dismissed but without prejudice, which means that if
Speaker 1: he stops behaving and letting Trump's deportation squads in, if
Speaker 1: he stops doing that, then Trump can refile the charges.
Speaker 1: By the way, there's a lot of insane details about this.
Speaker 2: You should definitely read.
Speaker 1: There's articles in the Times and The City Is this
Speaker 1: really great news source that covers a lot of this.
Speaker 3: Helgate also did a phenomenal one right Hellgate.
Speaker 1: There's all sorts of insane details here, but the net
Speaker 1: net of the story is that basically.
Speaker 2: Our mayor is now free to.
Speaker 1: Act as Trump's lackey until Trump decides that he doesn't
Speaker 1: need him anymore. And that is not super surprising because
Speaker 1: we saw him sucking up to Trump to try to
Speaker 1: get a pardon. But it's yet another dark day for
Speaker 1: American democracy.
Speaker 3: But what I really appreciated is, in typical Maga fashion,
Speaker 3: they had to make sure that everyone could understand the message.
Speaker 3: So what they did right after that was the next headline.
Speaker 3: Trump has part in former Illinois Governor Rod Blogoyevitch, who
Speaker 3: did some of the most brazen bribery you've ever seen.
Speaker 3: And he would that's okay because Rod Bolgoyevitch has been
Speaker 3: kissing my ass for quite a while, and I want
Speaker 3: to show this is all you got to do.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes, Rod Blogoyevitch.
Speaker 1: So you'll remember he tried to sell the US Senate
Speaker 1: seat vacated by former President Barack Obama. He served as
Speaker 1: the governor for six years. It's funny because remember on
Speaker 1: this podcast, we interviewed the great Governor Pritzker, and I said,
Speaker 1: what are you doing next? And he said, if I
Speaker 1: can serve out my second term, I will be a
Speaker 1: history maker.
Speaker 3: Which was left us both lefting, so we probably had
Speaker 3: to cut it.
Speaker 1: He's like our hero after saying that, But federal prosecutors,
Speaker 1: I mean, look, he turned the government into a money
Speaker 1: making operation for himself, or tried to and shaking down
Speaker 1: at children's hospital and racetrack owners who among us, and
Speaker 1: he went to do out. Look, the larger issue here
Speaker 1: is that Donald Trump doesn't want bribery to be illegal
Speaker 1: and let us continue here. Because Trump pauses enforcement of
Speaker 1: law banning foreign bribery, you would think that this is
Speaker 1: a law that you can't pause. First of all, when
Speaker 1: is foreign bribery good? Like I would like my government
Speaker 1: officials to be able to feel comfortable taking bribes from
Speaker 1: foreign governments.
Speaker 3: Kind of feels to me, not like training the swamp,
Speaker 3: but importing the alligators into the swamp.
Speaker 1: The Foreign Corruption Practices Act. What I love about this
Speaker 1: administration is that we are learning all of these laws
Speaker 1: that you and I never thought, Like, who would have
Speaker 1: even thought? The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act makes it illegal
Speaker 1: for companies to operate in the United States to pay
Speaker 1: foreign government officials to secure or keep business deals, you know,
Speaker 1: like kickbacks.
Speaker 2: Well, Donald Trump said no.
Speaker 1: Kickbacks, okay, ordered to pause in the enforcement of a
Speaker 1: federal law aimed at curbing corruption in most multinational companies.
Speaker 1: Curbing corruption, you say, no one wants that. That sounds terrible,
Speaker 1: says it creates an uneven playing field for people who
Speaker 1: want to be corrupt.
Speaker 2: Can't curb it, gotta do it.
Speaker 1: The law makes it illegal for companies that operate in
Speaker 1: the United States to pay foreign government officials to secure
Speaker 1: business deals. This is like quid pro quo is known.
Speaker 1: It's one of his favorite things. The law was enacted
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy seven. By the way, I just want
Speaker 1: to pause for a second. This another post Watergate seventies
Speaker 1: anti corruption law that Donald Trump is taking a pickaxe to.
Speaker 1: Worth thinking about that for a minute. Mister Trump has
Speaker 1: objected to the law. I love mister Trump. Mister Trump
Speaker 1: has objected to the law which had led to charges
Speaker 1: in huge minds against some of the world's largest companies.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is the thing, right, God forbid? So
Speaker 1: anyway that is now not being in forced because what
Speaker 1: are laws anyway?
Speaker 3: It's really funny. The only time you'd have to learn
Speaker 3: about these laws is when we'd meet shady characters like
Speaker 3: Paul Manifort and Eric Adams. Trump sick offense which now
Speaker 3: has led us to a logical conclusion in the reality
Speaker 3: based world aka not ours, which is that the US
Speaker 3: has slipped to a do low with the interraditional corruption Index.
Speaker 1: Yes, shocking, I know you'll be shocked here.
Speaker 3: It's almost like causes, right.
Speaker 2: I man, incredible stuff.
Speaker 1: Here we go lowest ever the US received its lowest
Speaker 1: ever Corruption Perceptions Index score since the Transparency International's current
Speaker 1: scale was established in twenty twelve. According to the group's
Speaker 1: annual ranking of public sector corruption across one hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty countries, the US is one of the forty seven
Speaker 1: country is to receive its lowest score yet effectively at
Speaker 1: its most corrupt point.
Speaker 2: You don't have to tell me that.
Speaker 1: I think we all agree that anyone who has read
Speaker 1: a newspaper in the United States of America knows there
Speaker 1: something sketchy going on in our government. We should not
Speaker 1: be surprised at all a four point drop since twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three. I wonder what changed in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: The cleanest country is Denmark. Finland and Singapore are the
Speaker 1: three cleanest countries, which is a bit strange. Seventh year
Speaker 1: in a row that Denmark has led the pack. Venezuela, Somalia,
Speaker 1: and South Sudan.
Speaker 2: Make up the bottom three. We're coming for you.
Speaker 3: Baby, America, America, America.
Speaker 2: America, American.
Speaker 3: So let's do one last piece of light news before
Speaker 3: we end.
Speaker 1: No, this is my favorite story of the week. This
Speaker 1: is everyone's favorite story of the week.
Speaker 3: I would even instruct the listeners. You just go seek
Speaker 3: out this clip and get a nice smile for yourself.
Speaker 3: Donald Trump declines to endorse JD. Vance as twenty twenty
Speaker 3: eight Republican successor.
Speaker 1: This is the one bright spot of the corruption, the stupidity,
Speaker 1: the anti science. There's so much bad stuff that comes
Speaker 1: out of the ADMIN, and yet they are occasionally a
Speaker 1: moment of just incredible hilarity.
Speaker 2: This is like my favorite moment. Donald Trump declines to
Speaker 2: endorse JD.
Speaker 1: Vance's twenty twenty eight Republican successor. President Donald Trump said
Speaker 1: in a preview of his Super Bowl interview on Monday
Speaker 1: that it's too early to endorse Vice President Jady Vans.
Speaker 1: Brett Baher said, do you think of Vance as your successor?
Speaker 1: And Trump said no, he is said no, and these said, budd,
Speaker 1: He's very capable. I think you have a lot of
Speaker 1: very capable people. So I don't know if anyone remembers
Speaker 1: from the first season of this disaster, but Mike Pence,
Speaker 1: Mighty Mike Pence, would like a word. Jim Acosta is
Speaker 1: the author of The Substack of The Jim Acosta Show
Speaker 1: and the author of the New York Times bestseller The
Speaker 1: Enemy of the People. A dangerous time to tell the
Speaker 1: truth in America. Welcome to Fast Politics, Jim Acosta.
Speaker 4: Molly, how are you. It's been too long.
Speaker 1: It's been too long and things are going great. What
Speaker 1: are we like in the first month of the Trump
Speaker 1: administration and we're already we have to cover of the
Speaker 1: New York Times. Is it a constitutional crisis?
Speaker 4: Yeah? I do think it is a constitutional crisis. I mean,
Speaker 4: you have the American Bar Association putting out a statement
Speaker 4: saying that the administration cannot just violate the law, cannot
Speaker 4: just violate orders from a judge. You know, the American
Speaker 4: Bar Association doesn't just do that willy nilly. My sense
Speaker 4: of it is is that, you know, having covered Trump
Speaker 4: the first time around, it is the shock and ag campaign,
Speaker 4: and he is trying to poke and prod different pressure
Speaker 4: points and see, you know, where the vulnerabilities are. And
Speaker 4: you know, he wasn't able to pull this off on
Speaker 4: January sixth of twenty twenty one, and so he's trying
Speaker 4: to figure out and his team is trying to figure out,
Speaker 4: how do we go about putting together this maximalist view
Speaker 4: of the executive branch? And you know, I do think
Speaker 4: people should be alarmed. I don't think that that's overstating things.
Speaker 1: There's been a lot of talk about how these people
Speaker 1: want to grow presidential power, shrink the checks and balances,
Speaker 1: sort of disassemble some of the founding principles of how
Speaker 1: American democracy works. I'm surprised at how much Doge has
Speaker 1: played a part in that. Are you and discussed?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, Molly, you and I were watching this
Speaker 4: during the campaign, Elon Musk was talking about Doge. Trump was,
Speaker 4: you know, putting Elon Musk on stage with his dark
Speaker 4: mega hat and all of that. It just seemed like
Speaker 4: a joke. It seemed like a lark. And I mean
Speaker 4: they were deadly serious during the campaign. And what we're
Speaker 4: now finding out is that, you know, basically Elon Musk
Speaker 4: is operating like a co president. And you know, one
Speaker 4: of the things that you know, people need to be
Speaker 4: alarmed by is I think we're seeing a level of
Speaker 4: corruption already inside the government that we have not seen
Speaker 4: since the Watergate days when you have I mean, there's
Speaker 4: there's a guy named Big Balls or something, what is
Speaker 4: his name. He's nineteen years old, and he's been he's
Speaker 4: been put in place over at State and DHS and
Speaker 4: you know, who are these people who appointed them. I
Speaker 4: find this to be highly alarming. We have not seen
Speaker 4: anything like this before. And you know, I was down
Speaker 4: at the Treasury Department. I wanted to go check out
Speaker 4: the protest that they had the other day outside the
Speaker 4: Treasury Department. It seemed like, you know, people are just
Speaker 4: starting to wake up to what is taking place. I mean,
Speaker 4: I think that this is, without question and infiltration by
Speaker 4: an oligarch who is not only looking to feather his nest,
Speaker 4: but again realize some vision of a maximalist, autocratic, authoritarian
Speaker 4: style view of how the government should work in this country.
Speaker 4: And it's just it's just completely anesthetical to the experience
Speaker 4: you and I and others have had our entire life,
Speaker 4: and so there should be pushback.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's true. And I also think there
Speaker 1: is starting to be real pushback, which I guess is
Speaker 1: good and also is strange. And the funny thing to
Speaker 1: me is like they are trying to take away things
Speaker 1: from people.
Speaker 5: I mean, like healthcare CFPB, right exactly, CFPB, A lot
Speaker 5: of stuff that are the kind of things that people
Speaker 5: have gotten used to, and I'm not sure they understand
Speaker 5: that they can be taken away exactly.
Speaker 4: I mean, I think that we've sort of been operating
Speaker 4: under the premise over the last you know, fifty years
Speaker 4: or so that you know, the government does some things. Yeah,
Speaker 4: every once in a while, there's some waste, fraud and
Speaker 4: abuse that needs to be rooted out, but by and large,
Speaker 4: we've been plugging along as a country with a social
Speaker 4: safety net, Medicare, Medicaid, social security, government funded science, scientific
Speaker 4: research of the work, the important work that they do
Speaker 4: at the nih usaid that this notion that in addition
Speaker 4: to having the Pentagon with the strongest military in the world,
Speaker 4: you're also going to have soft power. I mean, all
Speaker 4: of these sort of basics that people like John McCain
Speaker 4: and John Kerry and Hillary Clinton and you name it,
Speaker 4: Mitt Romney all sort of agree on this is what
Speaker 4: government does. All of that. The rug has been pulled
Speaker 4: out from under all of that, and I think we're
Speaker 4: right now living through all of this collectively in real
Speaker 4: time and upending of the American way of life that
Speaker 4: you and I have been accustomed to for the last
Speaker 4: fifty years now. I mean, I was talking to James
Speaker 4: Carvel about this yesterday on my substack. He is of
Speaker 4: the mindset that progressive Democrats that left so on, people
Speaker 4: in the center center right, you care about all this,
Speaker 4: should just sit back, let Trump fall in his face.
Speaker 4: He's going to do it in time and so on.
Speaker 4: I do worry a little bit that that is perhaps
Speaker 4: letting the barbarians to the gate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think that's a mistake for any number
Speaker 1: of reasons.
Speaker 4: I do too, And I love James. I heard him
Speaker 4: say it. I was like, you know, some people are
Speaker 4: just frigging traumatized by what is going on in this
Speaker 4: country right now.
Speaker 1: I think also games is you know, certainly there will
Speaker 1: be unforced errors, which are probably the only way that
Speaker 1: democracy makes it through this thing. I don't think that
Speaker 1: people should And in fact, the truth is, pushback works
Speaker 1: with this crew, and we've seen that again and again
Speaker 1: and certainly when it comes to things like ice going
Speaker 1: into schools and ice going into searches and sending people
Speaker 1: to GIMO. These are real shock and all paradigm shifts,
Speaker 1: things that we don't do in this country using the
Speaker 1: American military on civilians. These are things we don't and
Speaker 1: there has to be pushback or else they won't stop.
Speaker 4: That's absolutely right. My experience has been with Trump that
Speaker 4: the only language that he understands is pushback. The only
Speaker 4: language she understands is sort of going nose to nose
Speaker 4: in a way that says no this far and no farther.
Speaker 4: One of the problems that we are experiencing right now
Speaker 4: is there is almost no pushback inside the Republican Party anymore.
Speaker 4: The enablers are in charge, and you know when they
Speaker 4: are putting somebody through like Tulsea Gabbert for Director of
Speaker 4: National Intelligence. You talk to diplomats around Washington. They are
Speaker 4: terrified of that prospect that somebody as gullible as she
Speaker 4: is when it comes to eating hook line and sinker,
Speaker 4: swallowing hook line and sinker, talking points from the Kremlin
Speaker 4: and Basha al Asada and that sort of thing. To
Speaker 4: think that she's going to be in charge of the
Speaker 4: intelligence community is astounding. When you have somebody like cash
Speaker 4: ptel Over at the FBI. There were times, and it
Speaker 4: wasn't that long ago, Moley, and again this is what
Speaker 4: I'm talking about, the rug pulled out from under all
Speaker 4: of us. There was a time, I don't know ten
Speaker 4: years ago when you would have had ten fifteen Republican
Speaker 4: senators saying, oh, hell no, we're not doing Tulsa Gabert.
Speaker 4: We are not doing cash Betel and all of that
Speaker 4: is out the window, right.
Speaker 1: No, No, we are definitely in a different world than
Speaker 1: we were in twenty seventeen. Oh those halcyon days of
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, which we're not so great either. What I
Speaker 1: think is useful when we look at this admin is
Speaker 1: that there have been many dark times in American democracy
Speaker 1: before this, and I always feel like it's important to
Speaker 1: think of like post reconstruction, like you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: some of it is that affluent white people have not
Speaker 1: necessarily gone through this kind of civil rights war the
Speaker 1: way that people of color have right, especially in the
Speaker 1: you know, we've seen that in the South and the North.
Speaker 1: Jim Crow is a really good example of that. But
Speaker 1: there have certainly been other times when the government has
Speaker 1: decided that they that they want to root out people
Speaker 1: who don't agree with them. I think that's a helpful framing.
Speaker 1: What do you think about that?
Speaker 4: I think so too. I mean, George Clooney is bringing
Speaker 4: back good night and good luck to Broadway here, and
Speaker 4: it is a perfect time to relearn the lessons of
Speaker 4: the Red scare. I think it is a perfect time
Speaker 4: to relearn the lessons of the civil rights movement of
Speaker 4: the nineteen sixties, when people were you know, it sounds
Speaker 4: sort of I guess corny or Quaine or cliche. This
Speaker 4: to some I suppose not to be, but that folks
Speaker 4: would rise up and want to march on Washington because
Speaker 4: they're outraged over what is taking place. That is as
Speaker 4: american as baseball. I mean, that is as american as
Speaker 4: the George Washington portrait that is over my shoulder right now.
Speaker 4: That is as American as a statue of liberty. To
Speaker 4: scoff at that, I mean, it's almost as though the
Speaker 4: language we are using, the discourse we are having, has
Speaker 4: been so warped and manipulated, in large part by people
Speaker 4: in the right who have cowed much of the country
Speaker 4: into this position that, oh yeah, that their point of
Speaker 4: view is completely within the realm of normal political dialogue.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 4: Donald Trump has but become a very effective vehicle for
Speaker 4: folks on the far right to push everybody to the
Speaker 4: edge of the cliff. And at some point you have
Speaker 4: to stop retreating. At some point you do have to
Speaker 4: dig in your heels and you have to stand your ground.
Speaker 4: And you know the other day, when you know, Trump's
Speaker 4: on air Force one coming back from the Super Bowl
Speaker 4: or whatever, and he's talking about the January sixth defendants
Speaker 4: were the ones who were assaulted. He was making that
Speaker 4: claim to reporters. I mean, we are in a place
Speaker 4: right now where the truth is just completely out the
Speaker 4: window for almost half of the country, and so there
Speaker 4: just has to be a muscular, determined, relentless pushback from
Speaker 4: people who want to protect the American way of life.
Speaker 4: And I just think that that is completely within the
Speaker 4: bounds of like normalcy. I mean, I just, you know,
Speaker 4: why the hell is that not happening. You know, it
Speaker 4: should be happening.
Speaker 1: I'm so struck by the way that ever you want,
Speaker 1: or at least a lot of these people in Trump
Speaker 1: world don't really believe in any of this. So right,
Speaker 1: like Trump is the convert. Jade Vance was never Trump
Speaker 1: until a couple of years ago. Like all these people
Speaker 1: don't really believe in any of this. I mean, even
Speaker 1: Elon was Democrat, was donating to Democrats too. I mean,
Speaker 1: I just, you know, it doesn't seem like anyone feels
Speaker 1: any of this real deeply. Talk to me about that yeah.
Speaker 4: I think that's an excellent point, Molly. I mean, you know,
Speaker 4: when jd. Vance of Yale Law School is saying that,
Speaker 4: you know, judges can't overrule legitimate actions from the executive
Speaker 4: or whatever it was that he posted the other day,
Speaker 4: just basshit crazy stuff for a guy who appears to
Speaker 4: be reasonably intelligent. I think what they have found, Molly,
Speaker 4: is they found a trick that works. And I was
Speaker 4: talking about this with Timothy Snyder and Applebaum in the
Speaker 4: week before the election, and you know, one of the
Speaker 4: scary things, and it is a sorry state of affairs
Speaker 4: about authoritarianism, about autocracy, about fascism, is that it works
Speaker 4: with a sizeable percentage of a civilized society. I hate
Speaker 4: to put it out there like that, but it absolutely
Speaker 4: is the case. And so what does that mean for
Speaker 4: the rest of us. For the rest of us, it
Speaker 4: means it doesn't matter if they feel a deeply down
Speaker 4: in their bone marrow or if they know that this
Speaker 4: is all crap and they're peddling it anyway, the rest
Speaker 4: of us have to say, no, you know, you take
Speaker 4: that somewhere else. That's just not going to work here.
Speaker 4: This idea that you don't have smart senators on the
Speaker 4: Republican side of the aisle up on Capitol Hill saying,
Speaker 4: what in the hell are you talking about taking over
Speaker 4: the Panama Canal? What in the hell are you talking
Speaker 4: about taking over Canada and Greenland?
Speaker 1: Stop?
Speaker 4: It's nonsense. It's crazy talk. But it gets people on
Speaker 4: the right riled up. And I think it is very
Speaker 4: much in line with this autocratic, authoritarian view that they
Speaker 4: are trying to inject into the bloodstream of this country.
Speaker 4: And it just, you know, it's like a snake bite.
Speaker 4: We got to suck it out and spit it out.
Speaker 1: And what i'ms for by is that it's just it's
Speaker 1: not a huge percent into the American people who believe this.
Speaker 1: It's probably less than fifty percent. Talk to me about that.
Speaker 4: That's an excellent point, because you're absolutely correct. I mean,
Speaker 4: I think, you know, maybe what ten to fifteen percent
Speaker 4: believe this stuff. How does a vocal minority get across
Speaker 4: stuff that is completely unpopular with the vast majority of Americans.
Speaker 4: They do it through force. They do it through intimidation,
Speaker 4: they do it through threats. They do it through cleaning
Speaker 4: out the federal government and replacing officials in important places
Speaker 4: with coronis and hacks, and I think that is what
Speaker 4: we're in the middle of right now. It is the
Speaker 4: reason why they're cleaning out the federal government. This notion that, oh,
Speaker 4: we're trying to root out waste, fraud, and abuse, bullony.
Speaker 4: What you're trying to do is you're trying to clean
Speaker 4: out ten, fifteen, twenty percent of the federal employees in
Speaker 4: the government, replace them with hacks and cronies and morons
Speaker 4: and ass wipes right out of college so you can
Speaker 4: bully and intimidate the rest of the federal government to
Speaker 4: get these very unpopular policies across. In what world do
Speaker 4: we want to have the Trump administration doing away with
Speaker 4: the Department of Education? Who the hell voted for that?
Speaker 4: During the campaign?
Speaker 1: Nobody voted for Nobody voted for that. I'm curious when
Speaker 1: we watch this unfold in real time. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of things that make sense or you see where they're
Speaker 1: going with it, But some things like their war on
Speaker 1: the FBI, right, I mean, those guys are Trumpers, Like,
Speaker 1: how do you think that plays?
Speaker 4: I think that if the rule of law doesn't mean something,
Speaker 4: then where the hell are we? And I was going
Speaker 4: to talk about this on my substack later today. The
Speaker 4: reason why we don't go one hundred miles an hour
Speaker 4: down the interstate and rob banks and stick up seven
Speaker 4: eleven's and so on, all of us. The reason why
Speaker 4: we abide by the law is because we know there
Speaker 4: are consequences to it. If we're going to upend that,
Speaker 4: we're going to upend the notion of the rule of
Speaker 4: law and everybody's faith and adherence to the idea that
Speaker 4: there's nobody is above the law. If we're just going
Speaker 4: to abandon all of that, then you're going to end
Speaker 4: up just total bedlam. I mean, how is it that
Speaker 4: we have a Justice Department a couple of months ago
Speaker 4: that says we have a great case against Mayor Eric
Speaker 4: Adams in New York, and then out of nowhere, the
Speaker 4: Trump administration walks in and they want to dismiss the case.
Speaker 4: The same Department of Justice, and I mean obviously not
Speaker 4: the same anymore. It's led by Trump's cronies. But that
Speaker 4: should be highly concerning when you have somebody like cash
Speaker 4: Betel my god, that is an enemy's list that he
Speaker 4: has put out there. How in the world are you
Speaker 4: putting somebody in charge of the FBI who has an
Speaker 4: enemy's list. It's insane. We're on the dark side of
Speaker 4: the moon, which is an overused expression of mining, but
Speaker 4: it is truly the case. And Democrats are in a
Speaker 4: position where they can't really do much of anything. They
Speaker 4: can take stuff to court, that's you know. Governors and
Speaker 4: attorney's general can do that sort of thing. They just
Speaker 4: do not have the numbers and the Congress to stop
Speaker 4: these dominees, especially when you have a Republican party that
Speaker 4: is just going to enable Trump at every turn.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean they do have things they can do that.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you think about if Newt Gingrid right,
Speaker 1: there are things Democrats can do, just like there are
Speaker 1: things new Gingridge did. Jim Acosta, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for joining us.
Speaker 4: It goes too fast. Molly, great to talk to you again.
Speaker 4: We're reunited.
Speaker 1: We're reunited. It's all happening, just as it should be.
Speaker 1: David Gilbert is a senior reporter at Wired magazine. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Fast Politics, Dave, thanks for having me. Wired has
Speaker 1: been doing some of the best reporting on the dog drama.
Speaker 1: What are they doing with the computers over there?
Speaker 6: It's a really, really good question, and for all the
Speaker 6: talk of transparency that Elon Musk and Donald Trump are
Speaker 6: talking about bring transparency to government. We really have, at
Speaker 6: the granular level no idea what these guys are doing
Speaker 6: with the data with the computers over there. What we
Speaker 6: do know is that a lot of them, at least
Speaker 6: are very young engineers, them straight out of at least
Speaker 6: one of them straight out of high school. Some of
Speaker 6: them are a lot of them straight out of college.
Speaker 6: Some of them have done internships with musques Ai companies
Speaker 6: or with his SpaceX or Neuralink or Twitter. He has
Speaker 6: recruited these young, ideologically aligned people to come in and
Speaker 6: effectivating do whatever he tells them to do. But what
Speaker 6: they're actually doing with the data, we still don't really
Speaker 6: have that insight at the moment.
Speaker 1: I don't know, because I'm not in anyone's head, but
Speaker 1: it strikes me that the original justification was sort of
Speaker 1: to update the software. I mean, is that what it is,
Speaker 1: or I mean, what was the original justification there?
Speaker 6: I think the overarching thing is that they want to
Speaker 6: treat government as a startup, and they want to get
Speaker 6: these young and most of them are based on their
Speaker 6: academic career, extremely bright kids and young adults, and he
Speaker 6: wanted to bring them in, treat the government as a
Speaker 6: startup and cost our make efficiencies based in the same
Speaker 6: way that people would go into tech companies and make efficiencies.
Speaker 6: And they do that by using a lot of these
Speaker 6: guys are proficient in machine learning and artificial intelligence, and
Speaker 6: that seems to be where their expertise lies. And the
Speaker 6: understanding or the belief is that they are using some
Speaker 6: sort of AI. One of my colleagues reported that the
Speaker 6: GSA is already developing its own custom chatbot and AI
Speaker 6: system and that they are using their feeding federal government data,
Speaker 6: the data of every single person in the US, into
Speaker 6: these systems in order to identify where cuts should be made.
Speaker 6: But what we don't know is what those systems are. Like,
Speaker 6: we know it's AI, but what does that mean. Are
Speaker 6: they using off the shelf systems or are they creating
Speaker 6: their own systems? Is this just Mosque's own grock chatbot
Speaker 6: that we see on Twitter? Is that just you know,
Speaker 6: as he just brought that into make savings within the
Speaker 6: US government, Which is a statement that if you said
Speaker 6: it's six months ago, sounds ridiculous, but today it sounds
Speaker 6: actually plausible because what's happening there is just so mind
Speaker 6: blowing that it could potentially be happening.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting because it's like, there's no one in
Speaker 1: the world who doesn't want to cut government boast, right,
Speaker 1: there's no one in the world who doesn't want these
Speaker 1: really archaic systems run more like a startup. Right. These
Speaker 1: ideas in principle are quite good. The problem is when
Speaker 1: you get into the details.
Speaker 6: Right, Yeah, and when you try to do everything all
Speaker 6: at once, and you do it without consulting elected officials
Speaker 6: because none of these people are elected. It's being done
Speaker 6: in the background, in secret by these young engineers and
Speaker 6: by some older engineers at least. We reckon about thirty
Speaker 6: people working for those at the moment in the various
Speaker 6: different agencies across government, and they're being overseen by Steve Davis,
Speaker 6: who is a longtime Musk ally and also Musque, and
Speaker 6: then he is reporting back to the White House about
Speaker 6: what's happening. And so that's all happening without any real
Speaker 6: oversight from Congress, from elected officials, and we just don't
Speaker 6: know what's happening in there.
Speaker 1: And it's not entirely clear that Trump understands what Musk
Speaker 1: is doing either.
Speaker 6: Absolutely, I doubt he does at all. To be honest,
Speaker 6: I'm not sure Musk exactly knows what's happening in a
Speaker 6: lot of cases.
Speaker 1: Say more about that.
Speaker 6: If you look at the background of where the people
Speaker 6: who we know are working for those have come from.
Speaker 6: They were recruited in chat rooms and discord channels of
Speaker 6: you know, people who are very young and have a
Speaker 6: lot of maturing yet to do and aren't fully developed
Speaker 6: in terms of their view of the world. But most
Speaker 6: of them are, if not all of them, have this
Speaker 6: kind of they're very very pro elon Musk, and they
Speaker 6: see him as this ideal bigger of someone who has
Speaker 6: made this in terms of you know, startups and technology
Speaker 6: and building a huge fortune, and they seem to be
Speaker 6: willing to do whatever he says. And the problem, I
Speaker 6: think is that the guys who are in there have
Speaker 6: come from worlds where they speak in chat rooms in
Speaker 6: this way where people are just as guess, they're talking
Speaker 6: in a certain way that is not how you'd expect
Speaker 6: people to talk working inside government, and they have brought
Speaker 6: that kind of energy and that's chaos into government where
Speaker 6: there are people who have worked for decades in those
Speaker 6: positions and they are being undermined by these nineteen twenty
Speaker 6: twenty one, twenty two year old people who have no
Speaker 6: life experience.
Speaker 1: Yes, I mean they're certainly the ideological problem, but the
Speaker 1: fundamental question I have is what are they doing in there? Right? Like,
Speaker 1: I mean, make government more efficient? But why do they
Speaker 1: need all this information? I mean, for example, we saw
Speaker 1: Elon said that he had discovered that there people have
Speaker 1: multiple Social Security numbers or that again I don't know
Speaker 1: how that would happen, but or that there's some kind
Speaker 1: of extra money going around social Security. How would they
Speaker 1: find that? And can you sort of talk us through
Speaker 1: that a little bit?
Speaker 6: They can find it because if they're been given access
Speaker 6: to these classified and sensitive data within government, and they
Speaker 6: are able then to see the raw data. And I
Speaker 6: suppose a lot of the claims that Mosque is making
Speaker 6: is not appears to be based on the actual data
Speaker 6: itself or him getting access to the data. It's based
Speaker 6: on claims that are being made by other people on
Speaker 6: X who are doing some you know, of their own
Speaker 6: research quote unquote, yeah, not necessarily based on anathink that
Speaker 6: can be verified or that had you know, the people
Speaker 6: who are doing it don't have the inside knowledge of
Speaker 6: exactly how these systems and these processes work because they're
Speaker 6: extremely complex, they've been built up over decades. I think
Speaker 6: one insight that we have been given is that there
Speaker 6: was one member of Thuge who was fired last week
Speaker 6: because of some racist tweets.
Speaker 1: When do they stop doing this? What's sort of the
Speaker 1: endgame here are? Well?
Speaker 6: I guess where we are at the moment is there's
Speaker 6: a standoff where the courts are pushing back on this
Speaker 6: and saying that they have to stop doing a lot
Speaker 6: of what they're doing.
Speaker 1: But they haven't stopped, right, They're still doing it.
Speaker 6: To an extent. They have said that they have stopped
Speaker 6: doing some things. But the sense is that, you know,
Speaker 6: if you look at what Elon Musk is tweeting about,
Speaker 6: you know that it's a judicial coup instead of the
Speaker 6: coup that he is actually carried out. He's calling this
Speaker 6: a judicial coup because he is saying the courts are
Speaker 6: stopping them doing whatever they want to do. And we
Speaker 6: saw in one court fighting this week where the fired
Speaker 6: Dolge engineer from last week, they initially said he didn't
Speaker 6: have right access to the data, which means that he can.
Speaker 1: Look, let's read it right, yeah, he said they said.
Speaker 6: Initially he don't really don't read on the access, but
Speaker 6: in a new court they update and said, oh, we
Speaker 6: were given wrong information. He did actually have right access
Speaker 6: and he was able to play with that data in
Speaker 6: a sandbox as they call it.
Speaker 1: And that's the guy big balls.
Speaker 4: Right, No, that's a different guy.
Speaker 6: That's this is the guy who was fired, but who
Speaker 6: now they've said they're going to rehire, even though it
Speaker 6: was exposed that he had posted a lot of racist tweets.
Speaker 1: Okay, so there's one guy who was fired because he
Speaker 1: had leaked information about the company it worked at.
Speaker 6: Right, So there's two guys. One guy is Marco Eles.
Speaker 6: He was the guy who was fired. He was the
Speaker 6: guy who had access to the Treasury data right access,
Speaker 6: even though they said initially he was right. He is
Speaker 6: apparently going to be rehired because moscous said he's going
Speaker 6: to be hired, and Trump and Vance have wading and
Speaker 6: saying he should be rehired as well. Edward Paris team
Speaker 6: that is big Balls. He is the nineteen year old guy.
Speaker 6: He is the guy who was fired from his previous
Speaker 6: job for leaking information to an competitor. He also ran
Speaker 6: a huge number of web domains, including one that was
Speaker 6: registered to of them actually that were registered in Russia,
Speaker 6: and one of them that was China facing looking for
Speaker 6: clients in China. So, and he's got a pretty sketchy
Speaker 6: background in terms of the kind of people who he
Speaker 6: interacted with online. He was kind of in the world
Speaker 6: of the Calm, which is this really scary online network
Speaker 6: of people who do a mixture of cyber criminality and
Speaker 6: sex extortion and swatting and stuff like that. So he
Speaker 6: was mixing in those circles. And he is still there.
Speaker 6: He hasn't been fired. He's been given access to these
Speaker 6: this data, and he has been given an official email address,
Speaker 6: and he is doing interviews with people who have worked
Speaker 6: in government for a long time. And he is nineteen
Speaker 6: years of age.
Speaker 4: And he used to.
Speaker 6: Go by the handle of big Balls on his LinkedIn
Speaker 6: profile up until a couple of weeks.
Speaker 1: No, so that guy is still working in our computers.
Speaker 1: He's still there.
Speaker 6: He has still got the same access despite all the
Speaker 6: reporting a number maybe because of it Elon Musk when
Speaker 6: we reported on him, Elon Musk replied, you know, multiple
Speaker 6: times and on Twitter kind of saying it was a
Speaker 6: joke that we should be complaining that this guy shouldn't
Speaker 6: be working within, you know, at the most sensitive levels
Speaker 6: of the US government. He thinks that it was a joke,
Speaker 6: and that he you know, he continues to work in
Speaker 6: there to this day.
Speaker 1: It's hard to imagine this ending well.
Speaker 6: It is because when you listen to some of the
Speaker 6: officials that we speak to that have been there for
Speaker 6: a long time, and they talk about the systems that
Speaker 6: have been put in place and how sensitive and how
Speaker 6: complex they are, that if people go in and start
Speaker 6: tinkering with those systems to kind of slash and burn effectively,
Speaker 6: which is what el Musk seems to be trying to do,
Speaker 6: then it's going to cause absolute chaos and potentially irreverbrical
Speaker 6: damage because it's not something that you can change overnight.
Speaker 6: These systems have been built over a long period of
Speaker 6: time and contain millions and millions of lines of code.
Speaker 6: These aren't iPhone apps or Android apps that you can
Speaker 6: go in and tinker with and change a bit, and
Speaker 6: you know, it's not going to have much of a difference.
Speaker 6: These systems are what people's you know, people depend on
Speaker 6: these for their livelihoods. They depend on them for Social
Speaker 6: Security payments, They dependent on them for a vast number
Speaker 6: of services that the US government provides, and by these
Speaker 6: guys going in and tinkering with them, it's extremely dangerous.
Speaker 6: And one of the engineers that we identified, there was
Speaker 6: an anecdote about him when he was in college that
Speaker 6: he accidentally deleted his entire code base and just kind
Speaker 6: of shrugged and went and rewrote it over the next
Speaker 6: forty eight hours. And that was seen in their world
Speaker 6: as something that was great because it just showed that
Speaker 6: he just, you know, was able to rewrite it instantly.
Speaker 6: But if he does that within US government, that could
Speaker 6: cause untold chaos.
Speaker 1: It just seems like playing with disaster, right. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is all of everyone's information in America.
Speaker 6: It absolutely is, and sort of the most sensitive information,
Speaker 6: you know, because people there's talk of them getting access
Speaker 6: to background checks on people, so you know, in terms
Speaker 6: of people's sexuality and their credit score and all of
Speaker 6: that kind of really really sensitive data that people obviously
Speaker 6: don't want a nineteen year old called big Balls having
Speaker 6: access to that just seems to be on the cards
Speaker 6: now because there doesn't seem to be any limits to
Speaker 6: what these guys are willing to do or where they
Speaker 6: want to go in terms of getting access to this
Speaker 6: type of information.
Speaker 1: Is there anything that American citizens can do at this moment?
Speaker 6: Ray, I'm genuinely not sure, because they can hope that
Speaker 6: the courts will hold the line. But even if they
Speaker 6: are holding the line, but as you say, it seems
Speaker 6: like they're just not going to abide by their rulings.
Speaker 6: They're going to just continue to do what they're doing.
Speaker 6: You know, we've seen some Democratic lawmakers have tried to
Speaker 6: get access to some of the buildings to see what's
Speaker 6: going on, but they've been blocked by private security. It
Speaker 6: just seems incredibly worrying at the moment that if your
Speaker 6: information is stored somewhere in the US government, that you know,
Speaker 6: the group of a couple of dozen engineers and managers
Speaker 6: can suddenly have access to it and do it, seems
Speaker 6: whatever they want with it.
Speaker 1: I mean, what is the sort of best case scenario here,
Speaker 1: because I'd love to see a best case scenario.
Speaker 6: I think the best case scenario is that there are
Speaker 6: still people in these agencies who and because they are
Speaker 6: contacting US and other publications in huge numbers to speak
Speaker 6: out about what's happening, and I think their best hope
Speaker 6: at the moment because they have been there, or a
Speaker 6: lot of them have been there for a long time.
Speaker 6: This is their life's work in a lot of cases,
Speaker 6: and they don't want to see it just torn down.
Speaker 6: They don't want to see it burned to the ground.
Speaker 6: And so I believe that if they can somehow influence
Speaker 6: what these guys are doing or help prevent them from
Speaker 6: making the worst possible scenario, I think that's the best
Speaker 6: hope for.
Speaker 4: A more positive outcome at the moment.
Speaker 1: Dave Gilbert, this is really some chilling stuff. Thank you.
Speaker 1: I hope you'll come back.
Speaker 4: Absolutely. I'm sure there's going to be a lot more
Speaker 4: to this. Unfortunately in the coming weeks.
Speaker 2: No moment, Jesse Cannon.
Speaker 3: SMI you down fast. Got to say you know this.
Speaker 3: Every time I see the words Trump and Gaza, I
Speaker 3: just think, oh, no, no more, please, no more, mercy, mercy, mercy,
Speaker 3: because it just keeps getting stupider. And I feel like
Speaker 3: today it got a lot stupider.
Speaker 1: We spend a lot of time not wanting to chastise
Speaker 1: the Muslim voters in dear Born who voted for Trump
Speaker 1: or who just didn't vote for Harris, and certainly I don't.
Speaker 2: Know that that's a way to win voters.
Speaker 1: But that said, oh my god, guys, these guys do
Speaker 1: not want anything good for Gaza. So Tuesday, Trump met
Speaker 1: with King Abdollah from Jordan and continued to muse about
Speaker 1: his grand plan to turn the Gaza Strip into luxury
Speaker 1: waterfront housing. I laugh to keep from crying again because
Speaker 1: this is really really bleak stuff. He made no attempt
Speaker 1: on Tuesday to soften his proposal. By the way, this
Speaker 1: is a proposal that Jordanians don't want this. None of
Speaker 1: the Middle East is into this, with the exception of
Speaker 1: Donald Trump. So he had made no effort to soften
Speaker 1: his proposal to relocate all of the Palestinadians in Gaza
Speaker 1: and redevelop their land into Trump Tower Gaza. King Abdullah
Speaker 1: suggested the Arab world was opposed, but you know what,
Speaker 1: Donald Trump doesn't care. He repeated his views that Palestinians
Speaker 1: should be moved out of the devastated strip to parcels
Speaker 1: in third countries, including Jordan.
Speaker 2: I'm sure he must have.
Speaker 1: King Abdullah must have loved that, despite the fact that
Speaker 1: no one wants him to do that. I think it's
Speaker 1: worth musing for a minute. This is the guy who
Speaker 1: he wants to annex Canada and he wants I mean,
Speaker 1: this is mister, are like, no open borders except when
Speaker 1: it comes to your countries. The President brushed aside questions
Speaker 1: about what authority the US might wield to take control
Speaker 1: of the Palestinian enclave, a good point like how is
Speaker 1: America allowed to do this to someone else's country, And
Speaker 1: he said, in the typical Trumpian fashion, it's not a
Speaker 1: complex thing to do. And with the United States being
Speaker 1: in control of that piece of land, which we're not
Speaker 1: a fairly large piece of land, you're going to have
Speaker 1: stability in the Middle East for the first time.
Speaker 2: Trump said, all right, well, there we go. I open
Speaker 2: and shut. I'm convinced.
Speaker 1: Trump's in the oval office of Dellah seated next to him,
Speaker 1: then made a face.
Speaker 2: No, he didn't make a face.
Speaker 1: But he did say that if he could have, would
Speaker 1: have rolled his eyes.
Speaker 3: I think the most telling quote here was this one
Speaker 3: from Trump that said, the US will take over the
Speaker 3: Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it too.
Speaker 2: Sounds rights, He's going to go wild on it.
Speaker 3: That's what American posts.
Speaker 1: That's right, We're going to go wild on the Gaza
Speaker 1: Strip just as soon as we get over our most
Speaker 1: recent measles outbreak.
Speaker 3: In a county that voted ninety percent Trump.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
Speaker 1: every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday to hear the best
Speaker 1: minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If
Speaker 1: you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend
Speaker 1: and keep the conversation going. Thanks for listening.