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.
Speaker 2: And Donald Trump told Vegas rally goers, I don't care
Speaker 2: about you. I just want your vote. We have such
Speaker 2: a great show for you today. Pro Public is Justin
Speaker 2: Elliot stops by to tell us about the absolutely shocking
Speaker 2: news that Donald Trump's campaign has bumped up the salaries
Speaker 2: for employees where witnesses in his trials.
Speaker 3: That we'll talk to.
Speaker 2: Jeff Goodell about his new book, The Heat Will Kill
Speaker 2: You First, Life and Death on a Scorched Planet. But
Speaker 2: first we have the host of the Enemy's List, the
Speaker 2: Lincoln Project's own Rick Wilson.
Speaker 1: But we're here now, that's right, Welcome back, Rick Wilson.
Speaker 4: Lully, John Fast delighted as always to join you.
Speaker 1: We check in every week so we can chart each
Speaker 1: other's dysfunction and also this political craziness. Sure, explain to
Speaker 1: me what you think happened this week? There was this
Speaker 1: guilty verdict. I actually think it's more meaningful than the
Speaker 1: polls show because there's so much pulling that shows people
Speaker 1: believe it to be just and true.
Speaker 3: It is a real thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, people should not be living in this fantasy world
Speaker 4: that this didn't happen. It happened, and it's actually meaningful.
Speaker 4: I can tell you we have come out of some
Speaker 4: focus groups this week that we're gonna release some data
Speaker 4: on shortly. I gotta tell you, I know why Trump
Speaker 4: is so it's banging off the walls. I know why
Speaker 4: Trump is bouncing off the damn the damn ceiling. His
Speaker 4: people are not stupid, and they recognize this is much
Speaker 4: worse than they think. The biggest group of people that
Speaker 4: needs to hear this are mainstream media folks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, who think, oh, it's all baked to a cake.
Speaker 3: Everybody knows that about Trump. Uh huh.
Speaker 4: This is much much, much, much much more consequential. People
Speaker 4: do not understand how bad.
Speaker 3: This is for him.
Speaker 1: So can you explain.
Speaker 4: Women, independents, they are coming out of these we're seeing
Speaker 4: it out of the numbers that they believe the case
Speaker 4: was justly decided. They don't believe any of the conspiracy garbage.
Speaker 1: Right, and now we see broadly in polls it's like abortion.
Speaker 1: People believe this case was rightly decided, that he definitely
Speaker 1: did something corrupt, and also that women should have rights
Speaker 1: of their own bodily autonomy.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And by the way, that continues to be an interesting buzz.
Speaker 4: Underneath all of the materials that we're seeing, there is
Speaker 4: a sense and a feeling that the noise he's tried
Speaker 4: to make around all this is actually making it a
Speaker 4: little bit worse, if that makes sense, that his method
Speaker 4: of defending himself has made it more credible that he
Speaker 4: did everything that the jury determined that he did. And
Speaker 4: two other points of this this popped up in some
Speaker 4: of the research. As I said, I didn't expect this,
Speaker 4: but these are two good points in both of which
Speaker 4: I found sort of interestingly optimistic. The way he behaved
Speaker 4: towards Stormy Daniels in the court actually penetrated with the
Speaker 4: lot of voters, which you would have never had me
Speaker 4: say that unless I've seen the data just now. But
Speaker 4: they reflected that. In how Trump treats women overall, Egene, Carol,
Speaker 4: Stormy grab them by the pussy. All these things are
Speaker 4: a consolidated view of Trump. They play into what people
Speaker 4: believe Donald Trump is and does, and so that piece
Speaker 4: of data. Also, I'm just going to declare this right
Speaker 4: here and now, the assertion that Donald Trump has flipped
Speaker 4: black voters completely is profoundly ft from what we've just
Speaker 4: seen in several swing states. It's not just wrong, it's
Speaker 4: not just academically wrong. It's profoundly wrong. Trump's going to
Speaker 4: get the same basic numbers that any Republican gets of
Speaker 4: black voters in the end of the day, seven to
Speaker 4: eight percent.
Speaker 3: That's it. Now, does that mean the Biden campaign shouldn't
Speaker 3: be out there? They can assauce, Yeah.
Speaker 4: They need to do it every day, but the panic
Speaker 4: attack needs to stop about that, and confidence in that
Speaker 4: would help a lot.
Speaker 1: One of the things that happened this week was that
Speaker 1: Byron Donald's.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, Jim Crow, Byron was not that bad.
Speaker 1: It kept American families together. I mean, that's like Hitler
Speaker 1: had some good ideas.
Speaker 4: That is exactly like Hitler had some good ideas. It
Speaker 4: is absolute fucking lunacy.
Speaker 1: It's so wrong. I was sort of shocked when I
Speaker 1: heard it.
Speaker 4: Listen a lot of people that have tried to make
Speaker 4: Byron Donalds the new Fetch and fetch happening for Byron Donalds.
Speaker 4: Fetch is not happening for Byron Donald's. This is a
Speaker 4: guy who went from a kind of a hot property
Speaker 4: to people thinking, is he high on his own supply?
Speaker 4: This was a bad day for them. I mean, they
Speaker 4: shouldn't pretend that Byron Donald's quote unquote owned the libs
Speaker 4: or won something on Fox News. This was a real
Speaker 4: screw up. This was ugly and stupid.
Speaker 1: Do you think that, when you were just talking before
Speaker 1: about this idea that Trump is actually hurting himself with
Speaker 1: this verdict and the way he's behaving after it. Do
Speaker 1: you think that some of that is this idea that
Speaker 1: when you do something bad and you're like own those
Speaker 1: libs are owned, that you're actually making it worse.
Speaker 4: I think a lot of the time, the idea of
Speaker 4: quote unquote owning the libs, the idea of being transgressive
Speaker 4: for the sake of transgression, is it gets tired in
Speaker 4: the end. It gets boring in the end, and a
Speaker 4: lot of people like the showmanship of the lib owning world.
Speaker 4: At some point it just loses its juice, It loses
Speaker 4: its desirability of the amount of emotional investment people want
Speaker 4: to put into it anymore.
Speaker 1: Trump did announce eight potential VP candidates. He put Ben
Speaker 1: Carson on there.
Speaker 4: I just want to say to all of your listeners,
Speaker 4: Molly all the folks out there that tune into us
Speaker 4: every week for our moment of glory. Yes, that list
Speaker 4: with some horseshit.
Speaker 1: Oh interesting, say more.
Speaker 4: That list is bullshit, writ large. He is playing the
Speaker 4: apprentice game right now, there's going to be a surprise
Speaker 4: contestant who might get the rows or whatever.
Speaker 3: The fuck?
Speaker 4: I maybe mixing my bullshit reality show metaphors, but that
Speaker 4: list was horseshit interesting. The idea that you're going to
Speaker 4: end up with some of the people on that list
Speaker 4: is beyond ridiculous, beyond absurd.
Speaker 1: Right, But you think he's got someone else that he
Speaker 1: just didn't put him live.
Speaker 4: I think he's got somebody else, or I think he
Speaker 4: looks at that list and says, fuck these idiots.
Speaker 1: See. I think this list is people that he wants
Speaker 1: to help him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sure, that's definitely part of it.
Speaker 1: Rubio is very helpful to him with Hispanic voters. JD.
Speaker 1: Vance is this sort of intellectual maga though that's oxymoron
Speaker 1: right right, But you know Tim Scott, he thinks maybe
Speaker 1: I get it helps him with five vote, Stephanic will
Speaker 1: do it, will die for him.
Speaker 4: Stephonic would literally if he said, Elise, I need you
Speaker 4: to take your Doug outside and show me your you're
Speaker 4: Christy Nome. I need you to take the dog out
Speaker 4: to the gravel pit and kill it. I need it now, Yeah,
Speaker 4: and she'd do it.
Speaker 1: And Tom Cotton. The one on this list that I
Speaker 1: think is a real possibility is Doug Burgham.
Speaker 4: I think Doug Burgham may well be a possibility. Look,
Speaker 4: I think the broad list is horseship. But Doug Burgham
Speaker 4: is saying things to Donald Trump in the order of
Speaker 4: whatever you need, I will do. And Doug Burgham doesn't
Speaker 4: feel too Trump as risky.
Speaker 1: Jadie Vance could a fallow him, right.
Speaker 4: Jd Vance could rat fuck him a hard and he
Speaker 4: knows that, by the.
Speaker 1: Way, and Rubio too. He wants somebody who is zero.
Speaker 3: Listen.
Speaker 4: I can tell you from direct knowledge, Marco Rubio the
Speaker 4: minute he got into that office would spend every second
Speaker 4: of every day finding a way to fuck Trump.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which would be awesome. That would be the one
Speaker 1: bright spot in the hole.
Speaker 3: It would be great.
Speaker 4: Yeah, But it would also he would he would never
Speaker 4: have absolutely never pick Rubio. Rubio has criticized him, and
Speaker 4: you can't do that in Trump world. That's not allowed.
Speaker 1: Well, also Rubio's from Florida, right, I mean he'd have
Speaker 1: to give up his sentence.
Speaker 4: You right, that somebody would have to move or whatever.
Speaker 4: It's Look, it's a bullshit thing. But I will say
Speaker 4: that Marco is such an absolute snake of all snakes
Speaker 4: that even Trump knows that Mark or Rubio. Think about this,
Speaker 4: Marco Rubio's political mentor. The man who made Marco Rubio's career,
Speaker 4: the guy who put Mark or Rubio in the House
Speaker 4: speakership in Florida, the guy who did everything for Marco
Speaker 4: Rubio that no other politician could do was Jeb Bush, right,
Speaker 4: And Mark or Rubio rat fucked Jeb Bush so hard.
Speaker 4: And Jeb's not a guy that goes out and seeks revenge, right,
Speaker 4: But he would fuck Trump. It's such a millisecond. He
Speaker 4: would be working the phone with the Washington Post and
Speaker 4: the New York Times every day. He'd be calling Maggie
Speaker 4: at two o'clock in the morning instead of Trump calling
Speaker 4: her at one, going hey, listen, I note, Well, he
Speaker 4: must have said something crazy.
Speaker 3: I you know, you should come to me first, right.
Speaker 4: I just know this fucking guy, and he will he
Speaker 4: will absolutely rat fuck them to death.
Speaker 1: Yes, that seems very likely. But you know what, Trump
Speaker 1: just because he's publishing this list doesn't mean that this
Speaker 1: is the list, which I think is really absolutely What
Speaker 1: I do think is interesting about Doug Bergham is that
Speaker 1: he actually is pretty smart and is sort of not
Speaker 1: like he appears as a zero to Trump, but in
Speaker 1: some ways, I mean, he's more of a sort of
Speaker 1: more educated Mike Pans but who knows.
Speaker 4: Yes, I think that's right. Look, yeah, I don't underestimate
Speaker 4: Burgham's intelligence. The guy actually did build a legitimately successful business.
Speaker 4: He's not stupid. He's not a traditional political thinker, right,
Speaker 4: which is not Look, I don't think that's the worst
Speaker 4: thing in the world, right, But I will say this,
Speaker 4: It also doesn't end up giving you a deeper understanding
Speaker 4: of Doug Bergham if you observe him in this in
Speaker 4: this campaign, you don't really know who the guy was
Speaker 4: except as a sort of cipher. I suspect he's actually
Speaker 4: been running for VP all along.
Speaker 1: Yes, for sure, I mean there's Roe Kaiser SoSE stuff
Speaker 1: here going on. Oh sure, stay tuned. So one of
Speaker 1: the stories this week that has gotten me absolutely so
Speaker 1: itchy is this story that San Francisco has now welcomed
Speaker 1: Donald Trump because David Sacks had an event. David Sachs
Speaker 1: is a venture capitalist and he's also sucks.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: His companies include Doucheco, flaming Ahole, dot net, and.
Speaker 1: Like all wealthy men, his dream is to be famous.
Speaker 1: So he has a podcast.
Speaker 4: Yes, he has a pod cast. And if you ever
Speaker 4: want to amuse yourself for hours on end, David Sachs
Speaker 4: at one point considered himself to be a world class
Speaker 4: poker player. If you ever want to have a great laugh,
Speaker 4: go watch David Sachs play poker against actual poker players
Speaker 4: on YouTube. Because you realize this is a guy who,
Speaker 4: as a tech bro type, like PayPal alumni, tech bro type,
Speaker 4: believes that his skills in some narrow sector of technology
Speaker 4: transfer to everything else. Yeah, and that's a very common
Speaker 4: thing in Silicon Valley. By the way, don't you.
Speaker 3: Don't mistake me.
Speaker 4: If you woke up Elon Musk out of a sound
Speaker 4: sleep and said, hey, what do you know about rat biology?
Speaker 4: He would pretend to be the greatest rat biologist in
Speaker 4: all history. But Sax is neo. He brokeer some of
Speaker 4: these people to come in and let let's not you know,
Speaker 4: for ourselves. San Francisco may be a liberal city governance wise,
Speaker 4: but there's a massive amount of tech bro douche nozzle
Speaker 4: types who really are in intrigued by things like authoritarianism,
Speaker 4: intrigued by things like I'm just going to say it,
Speaker 4: by the return of the monarchy. It's weird, but a
Speaker 4: lot of the alt right thinking kind of emerge from
Speaker 4: some of these Silicon Valley post libertarian weirdos.
Speaker 1: Right, they're pretty stupid. I mean, what is kind of
Speaker 1: amazing is like these are these people. I mean Elon
Speaker 1: Musk is a great example. Again, you can argue what
Speaker 1: stage he took over Tesla, you can argue whether or
Speaker 1: not he's a scientist, but he did in fact do
Speaker 1: some smart investing if nothing else. Sure, and he was
Speaker 1: able to parlay government subsidies into becoming the richest man
Speaker 1: in the world, which is not nothing. But he's really
Speaker 1: done terribly when it comes to squandering money on X
Speaker 1: sucking up to some of the scariest autocrats in the
Speaker 1: Republican Party. I have this theory that you need to
Speaker 1: have one person who tells you the truth. Sure, and
Speaker 1: if you're a billionaire like that, you don't have one
Speaker 1: person who tells you the truth.
Speaker 4: No, everyone who talks to Elon Musk in his circle
Speaker 4: every day tells him you are the smartest, richest, most
Speaker 4: handsome man in the world. Everyone else is stupid. You
Speaker 4: are magical and your twelve feet tall, and women desire you,
Speaker 4: men want to be and look. You and I both
Speaker 4: have known enough very wealthy people that that is a
Speaker 4: very addictive thing to have in front of them.
Speaker 3: That is a very powerful drug.
Speaker 1: Right, But in the end it leads to making terrible decisions.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm trying to remember who it was. One
Speaker 1: of those tech guys was saying that, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: Biden would lose the primary to Dean Phillips because Dean
Speaker 1: Phillips was a bold new voice.
Speaker 3: That was Bill Ackman.
Speaker 1: That's one of my favorite tweets. Thank you for reminding
Speaker 1: me about that.
Speaker 3: Happy to poke the button me.
Speaker 1: A moment of joy if nothing else.
Speaker 3: Yes, go on, And I say this a lot.
Speaker 4: People who are very good at something like to believe
Speaker 4: they're very good at everything.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: That's a sign of maturity when you know that you're
Speaker 4: good at one thing, but you're not good at even
Speaker 4: scaling up certain things right. But I'll give you an example, Molly.
Speaker 4: I am a fairly experienced pilot. I've flown a lot
Speaker 4: of hours. I've flowed a bunch of different airplanes. But
Speaker 4: me flying a beachcraft bearing around is one thing. But
Speaker 4: if you sat me in the seat of an F
Speaker 4: thirty five fighter plane, could I take off? Could I
Speaker 4: fly around? Probably? Am I going to drill into the
Speaker 4: ground like a fucking idiot? Almost certainly so these guys
Speaker 4: who say, well, I've managed a tech company, therefore I
Speaker 4: understand how to run the entire economy for Donald Trump? No,
Speaker 4: maybe that ain't it?
Speaker 1: That?
Speaker 3: Ain't it? Chief right?
Speaker 1: Exactly exactly, and it is a certain hubris. Yes, incredible.
Speaker 1: It does strike me that they really are not as
Speaker 1: good at this as they think they are.
Speaker 4: They're really not. And to be clear, an awful lot
Speaker 4: of these tech people, these are guys who, no matter
Speaker 4: how rich they get, they still come from this sort
Speaker 4: of background of difficult interpersonal skills because they were not
Speaker 4: raised to be people who were great at fraternity parties.
Speaker 4: You were good in the room of talking to girls.
Speaker 4: All of it, like their weirdness and their diffidence sometimes
Speaker 4: and arrogance others the in cell streak is strong with
Speaker 4: many of these people, it's very difficult for them to
Speaker 4: overcome that weird goofy college tech bro thing, and so
Speaker 4: I find that to be a real causal factor in.
Speaker 3: A lot of this.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Rick Wilson.
Speaker 4: I'm delighted as always, Molly.
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Speaker 2: Justin Elliott is a reporter at pro Public Company.
Speaker 3: Hey, good to be here.
Speaker 1: Tell me how you guys got going on this?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's interesting. You know.
Speaker 5: We were looking at some staffers of the Trump campaign,
Speaker 5: just kind of doing preliminary research, trying to understand who
Speaker 5: was running the campaign, and started to notice that a
Speaker 5: lot of people who work on the campaign are also
Speaker 5: people that have found themselves as witnesses in the various
Speaker 5: cases against Trump, the criminal cases, and so this struck
Speaker 5: us as potentially interesting, and then we sort of widen
Speaker 5: the scope of our research and started noticing that there
Speaker 5: were other people at for example, the Trump Organization is
Speaker 5: business and the company that runs social Trump Media, who
Speaker 5: were also witnesses. So turned out to be a fairly
Speaker 5: large set of people who actually had money in one
Speaker 5: form or another flowing to them who are witnesses and
Speaker 5: the Trump cases, and so that seemed interesting to us,
Speaker 5: so we started kind of understand.
Speaker 1: What going on and what did you find?
Speaker 5: What we found is that there's at least nine people
Speaker 5: who are witnesses in the Trump cases who have had
Speaker 5: financial benefits flow to them from Trump, in many cases
Speaker 5: sort of unusual or unexplained financial benefits. So to give
Speaker 5: a couple examples, there's a staff around the campaign named
Speaker 5: Boris Epstein who was also heavily involved in the events
Speaker 5: after the twenty twenty election, is a witness in the
Speaker 5: election interference cases against Trump, and we found that right
Speaker 5: after those indictments, he saw his pay from the campaign
Speaker 5: basically double from around twenty six thousand a month on
Speaker 5: average to over fifty thousand.
Speaker 3: Dollars a month on average.
Speaker 5: I think that's around seven hundred thousand dollars a year,
Speaker 5: so a salary that a lot of people would be
Speaker 5: pretty happy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you found these pay bombs, and they were
Speaker 1: sort of timed right after people didn't testify.
Speaker 5: Time that at a variety of sort of sensitive moments
Speaker 5: in these various investigations. Obviously there's a lot of acts here.
Speaker 5: But you know, in another case, and this is one
Speaker 5: that actually came up in the Hushmunny trial last month,
Speaker 5: the Trump organization gave what seems to be a pretty
Speaker 5: unusual severance package to Alan Weisselberg, longtime CFO, two million
Speaker 5: dollars in the heart of the investigations that Weisselberg was
Speaker 5: somebody that was clearly going to be a witness inner
Speaker 5: had knowledge of. And this wasn't two million dollars paid
Speaker 5: all at once. It was two million dollars paid in
Speaker 5: installments over two years, with a non disparagement clause attached
Speaker 5: to it.
Speaker 1: Alan Weisselberg is being paid to go to jail and
Speaker 1: also not testify. I know you're not on the opinion
Speaker 1: side that you're astral journalist, but one might extrapolate that
Speaker 1: he is being paid for something.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and this is something that Eric Trump actually was
Speaker 5: asked about this on the stand in the civil fraud
Speaker 5: trial last year and claimed that his dad had nothing
Speaker 5: to do with it. Maybe he didn't even know about it,
Speaker 5: but what the facts are is that, yeah, Alan Weisberg
Speaker 5: was given two million dollars paid in installments over the
Speaker 5: course of two years. I think it's actually still being
Speaker 5: paid at with this non asparishment club hot take.
Speaker 1: Would you go to jail for two million dollars?
Speaker 5: I would not go to rip peers for probably any
Speaker 5: amount of money, piste when I read about how that
Speaker 5: place is thro un.
Speaker 1: And you guys have done some really good reporting about
Speaker 1: wrikers too, And I don't want to laugh, because there
Speaker 1: are a lot of people who are being treated really
Speaker 1: poorly by this criminal justice completely, but none of them
Speaker 1: have the last name of Trump. So explain to us
Speaker 1: what this sort of looks like. So Epstein is actually
Speaker 1: still working for Trump World and is a pretty central figure, right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And he's a really interesting case because you know,
Speaker 5: as I mentioned, he was very deeply involved in the
Speaker 5: effort to assemble false electors after Toy twenty election, to
Speaker 5: the point where he actually was just indicted himself in
Speaker 5: the Arizona case, but in Trump's cases, he appeared before
Speaker 5: the Georgia Grand Jurity. He was interviewed by the FEDS
Speaker 5: on what became the Federal Special Council election interference case.
Speaker 5: And he, you know, as I mentioned, his pay went
Speaker 5: from twenty six thousand a month to fifty three thousand
Speaker 5: a month. The campaign says that sort of duties ramped up.
Speaker 5: It's not totally clear what he does every day. They
Speaker 5: describe it as ordinating the legal defense efforts, coordinating all lawyers.
Speaker 5: And Epstein is a lawyer, but as far as we
Speaker 5: could tell, he's never done any criminal defense work. I
Speaker 5: believe he did some kind of investment banking, financial transaction stuff.
Speaker 5: So not exactly a natural choice to coordinate an complex
Speaker 5: white collar defense case or set of cases.
Speaker 1: And he's not behind the desk anywhere. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: not like we're seeing him do this.
Speaker 5: I think he showed up to the hush money trial
Speaker 5: at least a couple of times in.
Speaker 1: The galley, not as behind the table advising him.
Speaker 5: No, he is not acting as an attorney for Trump.
Speaker 5: He's a campaign staffer who's what they say is coordinating
Speaker 5: the work of the lawyers. I mean, the other striking
Speaker 5: thing about this is that you think you would think
Speaker 5: that you know, your pay doubles to something like seven
Speaker 5: hundred thousand dollars a year, that that's your only job.
Speaker 5: But actually he's technically a contractor, and we found that
Speaker 5: a couple months after the pay increase, he took on
Speaker 5: an additional side job working for an unrelated financial services
Speaker 5: company with the title of managing director. He's also still
Speaker 5: working for some other campaigns unrelated to Trump, so he's
Speaker 5: not even devoting all his time to the Trump campaign
Speaker 5: despite getting the stricks.
Speaker 1: So he's making seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars for
Speaker 1: a part time job.
Speaker 5: He might contest that it's part time, but I guess
Speaker 5: what I would say strictly hwigs.
Speaker 3: What we know is he has other jobs.
Speaker 5: It's possibly he's working more than forty hours away.
Speaker 1: Oh well, that's something. Talk to me about some of
Speaker 1: the other characters in this story.
Speaker 4: Sure.
Speaker 5: So another interesting figure actually is one of the people
Speaker 5: that's running the campaign, a Florida political operative named Susie Wilds.
Speaker 5: She's usually described as the de facto campaign manager, and
Speaker 5: she ended up becoming a witness in the classified documents
Speaker 5: case because you know, according to the allegations, at least
Speaker 5: she was one of the people that Trump actually showed
Speaker 5: some of these classified documents too. She didn't have any
Speaker 5: security clearance, so that's actually part of the classified document case.
Speaker 3: She ended up becoming a.
Speaker 5: Witness in that, and we're able to see through the
Speaker 5: campaign and finance disclosure records that the same month that
Speaker 5: Trump was indicted in that case in which she's a witness,
Speaker 5: there's a balloon payment from the highest ever payment had
Speaker 5: gotten in a single month from the campaign, seventy five
Speaker 5: thousand dollars. The campaign told us that this was actually
Speaker 5: paying for several months of work, but there's no way
Speaker 5: to kind of confirm that independently. So she got a
Speaker 5: raise and there was this billian payment. And then also interesting,
Speaker 5: her adult daughter was hired by the campaign, Caroline Wilds,
Speaker 5: in a high paying position. I think she's the fourth
Speaker 5: highest paid person of the campaign right now. And this
Speaker 5: is somebody that has sort of been around Trump world,
Speaker 5: although she was most recently in the news what Trump
Speaker 5: was in the White House, because she actually had to
Speaker 5: leave one of her jobs, reportedly because she didn't pass
Speaker 5: a background check. She'd had some financial problems, and I
Speaker 5: think DUIs in her past. So the context here, by
Speaker 5: the way, is like actual witness tempering is a federal crime. Now,
Speaker 5: to be clear, what you need to prove that crime
Speaker 5: is first of all, that some benefit was given to
Speaker 5: a witness or there was some sort of penalty. But
Speaker 5: the difficult part to prove is the intent part. You know,
Speaker 5: prosters would have to prove that Trump was intending to
Speaker 5: influence their testimony. We talked to a bunch of white
Speaker 5: collar fencillers who said this is sometimes hard to prove.
Speaker 5: Although interestingly, both Roger Stone and Paul Manislor, both former
Speaker 5: Trump campaigns, were each separately convicted of federal winnesssemmery charges
Speaker 5: in their criminal cases a few years ago, so it's
Speaker 5: not impossible to yeah, as.
Speaker 1: A benefic share of nepotism. Myself, I hate to set
Speaker 1: all in the weeds about it, but it does strike
Speaker 1: me as you know, hiring the daughter when she couldn't
Speaker 1: pass the background check, making her the fourth highest paid
Speaker 1: person in the campaign. And there does seem to be
Speaker 1: a fair amount of squandering of donor dollars.
Speaker 5: Here, right, I mean, at the very least, even if
Speaker 5: there's no crime here and we're not reporting that there was,
Speaker 5: we're kind of laying out it seems like a pretty
Speaker 5: striking pattern. But this is the type of thing that
Speaker 5: if these cases actually do ever end up going to trial,
Speaker 5: the remaining cases, which are the federal and state election
Speaker 5: interference cases, the by documents case, these are facts that
Speaker 5: could become very relevant if these people end up on
Speaker 5: the stand when they're being cross examined or questioned by prosecutors,
Speaker 5: you know, because it can speak to their credibility. If
Speaker 5: you're getting a paycheck from the defendant in a case,
Speaker 5: that's something that's obviously relevant.
Speaker 3: I think it becomes more interesting.
Speaker 5: We were told by lawyers if if you got unexplained
Speaker 5: raises or special treatment in either direction of books.
Speaker 1: So people like Borisch, Epstein, Susie Wilds, who else is
Speaker 1: sort of benefiting from this well timed raise.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there's another campaign staffer named Margot Martin who was
Speaker 5: at the New York hush money case fairly frequently. Martin
Speaker 5: was another person who became a witness in the classified
Speaker 5: documents case because allegedly she was in the room when
Speaker 5: Trump showed off what he described I believe on tape
Speaker 5: as a secret military document.
Speaker 1: I remember, Wow, you said, I empty classified this anymore
Speaker 1: because I'm not president anymore. Right, There was something like that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And he also, I believe, described it as secret
Speaker 5: and highly confidential.
Speaker 1: Yes, I think that's right, and I gotta love it.
Speaker 5: And so she was called before the grand jury as
Speaker 5: a witness in that case. A few months before that
Speaker 5: she got it, was given a job on Trump campaign
Speaker 5: and was given a twenty percent pay raise from her
Speaker 5: previous job working for a kind of Trump affiliated political committee.
Speaker 5: So not as dramatic as the Epstein case, but still
Speaker 5: something that seems relevant. I mean, I think the maybe
Speaker 5: the most striking one in terms of the amount of
Speaker 5: money involves Dan Scavino.
Speaker 1: Oh, a character from Season one, Yeah, tell us Dancecavino.
Speaker 1: He started as a caddy, right.
Speaker 5: He's known Trump, I think since he was a teenager
Speaker 5: as a caddie. And the kind of funny Trump line
Speaker 5: that we quoted in our story is Trump once called
Speaker 5: Scavino the most powerful man in politics because he had
Speaker 5: the keys to Trump's social media accounts, he could posed
Speaker 5: for Trump.
Speaker 3: So he's obviously a.
Speaker 5: Long time paid and associate of Trump. He was with
Speaker 5: Trump in the final weeks of his presidency again the
Speaker 5: whole period of tried to overtry the election, and then
Speaker 5: January sixth, he was subpoenaed by the January sixth Committee,
Speaker 5: and for a while he was fighting that subpoena. He
Speaker 5: did ultimately appear, but in between the time when he
Speaker 5: was subpoena and he appeared, he was given a consulting
Speaker 5: deal by True Social, the company behind Truth's Social, that
Speaker 5: was worth two hundred and forty thousand dollars a year.
Speaker 5: He was also given board seat on the company, and then,
Speaker 5: most interestingly, although the timing on this is not really clear,
Speaker 5: he was given a four million dollar what they call
Speaker 5: promisory noe, which is something that ultimately became shares of
Speaker 5: the company, but four million dollars worth of shares of
Speaker 5: the company. And we asked Trump Media group what this
Speaker 5: was for, and they didn't engage with us. I think
Speaker 5: it's been reported he had some role in kind of
Speaker 5: coming up with the idea True Social. Details in that
Speaker 5: not totally clear to me, But he is a witness
Speaker 5: who was given four million dollars by Trump Media.
Speaker 1: That seems like a lot of money to me. It is,
Speaker 1: it feels like a lot. This isn't illegal per se,
Speaker 1: but it certainly looks pretty sketchy our law enforcement looking
Speaker 1: into this at all. I mean it difertly feels like
Speaker 1: a kind of mobby situation here, right, We.
Speaker 5: Don't know if law enforcements looking into it. I will
Speaker 5: say it actually could be illegal. I mean, if it
Speaker 5: turns out that Trump or somebody around him was doing
Speaker 5: this with a provable intention to influence testimony, so legal.
Speaker 5: For example, Roger Stone, who in an unrelated case several
Speaker 5: years ago, got actually convicted of witness tamperring. He was
Speaker 5: sending text to a witness making references to The Godfather
Speaker 5: Part two, telling him to do what a character in
Speaker 5: that movie did, who was who appears before Congress and
Speaker 5: lies about organized crime. If you're texting people making references
Speaker 5: to somebody that is known for lying as a witness,
Speaker 5: you know, you can be convicted of witness tampering. The
Speaker 5: Trump campaign did actually engage with us, said that it
Speaker 5: was false that they were doing anything you know, that
Speaker 5: could be regarded as tampering, although they also said something
Speaker 5: that I found interesting, which is that they say that
Speaker 5: Trump himself is really just not evolved in the decision
Speaker 5: making around promotions, salary increases, bonuses. They argued that Trump
Speaker 5: doesn't even know what people are being paid. We don't
Speaker 5: really have any way to back check that at this point.
Speaker 5: But if that is true, it's an incredible departure from
Speaker 5: how Trump ran his business for many years. He was
Speaker 5: well known for, you know, wanting to approve any expense
Speaker 5: over a thousand dollars or something like that. Like really
Speaker 5: the guy that was getting in the weeds of the finances.
Speaker 5: So the campaign's saying that when it comes to the campaign,
Speaker 5: Trump basically doesn't know anything about it, at least how
Speaker 5: staff are being paid. It doesn't have any role making
Speaker 5: those decisions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, people have used this defense for him before, right,
Speaker 1: because we saw this in the Stormy Daniel's trial.
Speaker 5: Yeah, although I will say, I mean one of their
Speaker 5: piece of context here is we sort of in the
Speaker 5: story go through the recent history of incidents where there
Speaker 5: were mist allegations that Trump or people around him were
Speaker 5: trying to influence witnesses. And I think one striking example
Speaker 5: was Trump himself on truth Social last year did a
Speaker 5: post in which he explicitly told a Georgia politician who
Speaker 5: had been called before the Georgia grand jury to not
Speaker 5: appear before the grand jury. This is not my interpretation,
Speaker 5: this is like explicitly the post says this politician has
Speaker 5: been called before the Grand Jury.
Speaker 3: He shouldn't appear.
Speaker 5: It's not a wild idea that Trump would get involved
Speaker 5: in trying to influence potential witnesses.
Speaker 3: Done it.
Speaker 1: This is what he does. Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: joining us. This was really really great.
Speaker 5: Thanks so much.
Speaker 2: Jeff Goodell is the author of The Heat Will Kill
Speaker 2: You First Life and Death on a Scorched Planet.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Fast Politics, Jeff.
Speaker 3: Padaw Thank you for having me. Happy to be here.
Speaker 1: So the book is called The Heat Will Kill You
Speaker 1: First Life and Death on a Scorch Planet. You had
Speaker 1: a brilliant op ed in the New York Times. Talk
Speaker 1: to me about your central thesis here.
Speaker 3: Well, my central thesis is that you know, extreme heat
Speaker 3: is like a bug zapper, that it can kill you
Speaker 3: very quickly, and most people don't understand that. And it's also,
Speaker 3: as I describe in the book, the sort of primary
Speaker 3: driver of kind of planetary chaos. When we think about
Speaker 3: climate change and we think about sea level rise and
Speaker 3: droughts and hurricanes and all that, all that stuff is
Speaker 3: sort of driven by rising heat levels. So the book
Speaker 3: tries to look at heat on two levels. One what
Speaker 3: it does to your body, What those risks are and
Speaker 3: how it kills you, and the other is how it
Speaker 3: is creating this sort of climate chaos that we're all
Speaker 3: living through right now.
Speaker 1: So you've written on climate for twenty plus years, right,
Speaker 1: I mean your first climate book was in two thousand, right, Acul, Like.
Speaker 3: I've been writing about climate as long as climate has existed.
Speaker 1: Talk to us about how thinking about climate has shifted
Speaker 1: over that period.
Speaker 3: Well, that's an interesting question. So in the very beginning,
Speaker 3: you know, twenty five years ago, that's not the very
Speaker 3: beginning of the climate story. So I just have been
Speaker 3: aware of the risks of climate change for a long time.
Speaker 3: The idea that burning fossil fuels creates CO two that
Speaker 3: will warm the planet, you know, has been known for
Speaker 3: more than one hundred years. None of this is new science.
Speaker 3: But you know, when I started writing about this, like
Speaker 3: more than twenty years ago, you know, it was basically
Speaker 3: this was in the kind of heyday of what was
Speaker 3: called the Greening Earth Society of the big oil companies
Speaker 3: telling you that, you know, more CO two was good
Speaker 3: for the planet. It would make trees grow and plants
Speaker 3: grow faster, so why worry? And then it moors into
Speaker 3: this economic debate where if you believe in human progress
Speaker 3: and you want the betterment of human welfare around the world,
Speaker 3: people need energy, and the cheapest way to create energy
Speaker 3: was by burning fossil fuels. So even if we had
Speaker 3: climate change, you know, what's really important is getting cheap
Speaker 3: at energy people. And that was part of the debate
Speaker 3: for a long time. And now, of course renewable energy,
Speaker 3: non fossil fuel energy is much cheaper than fossil fuel stuff,
Speaker 3: so that argument, the greening Earth society argument is out
Speaker 3: the window now. It become part of the kind of
Speaker 3: culture wars, right, It's become you know, if you're a
Speaker 3: real American, you burn fossil vuels. You know, it's become
Speaker 3: part of that conversation, and the science of it doesn't
Speaker 3: really matter anymore in the broader conversation.
Speaker 1: It's funny because when the pandemic came, husband lapsed, academic
Speaker 1: was like, this is going to be it. Americans are
Speaker 1: going to see that scientists are right and that all
Speaker 1: of these Republicans who you know, have these fabulous views
Speaker 1: on science are just lying to them. A million deaths
Speaker 1: later are probably more plus plus that group never saw
Speaker 1: the In fact, they are trying to prosecute doctor Anthony Fauci.
Speaker 3: Now, yeah, exactly, And I think that's a great analogy.
Speaker 3: And you know, when people ask me what do I
Speaker 3: worry about most when we think about kind of the
Speaker 3: superheated future that we're creating for ourselves, it's exactly that.
Speaker 3: It's the complete pigeonholing of science, the complete attack on
Speaker 3: the very kind of reality, shared reality that we have.
Speaker 3: And the pandemic was a great example of that. We're
Speaker 3: far less well prepared for the next one. We were
Speaker 3: for that one, very well prepared for that. Yeah, there's
Speaker 3: a similar client of dynamic when we talked about climate
Speaker 3: and energy.
Speaker 1: So one of the things I want to talk about
Speaker 1: is the thing that none of us probably could have
Speaker 1: seen in two thousand was that renewables would get so
Speaker 1: cheap they would actually maybe you could have seen it
Speaker 1: because you were totally read in on this, but I
Speaker 1: was twenty one. I want to brag about not being
Speaker 1: as old as my kids think I am. But renewables
Speaker 1: have become very, very cheap, And because they've become so cheap,
Speaker 1: this has made it harder and harder to message their destruction.
Speaker 1: Am I correct? And they've sort of found a way anyway.
Speaker 3: What do you mean message their destruction?
Speaker 1: So the right hates renewables and it's terrified, But oil
Speaker 1: and gas companies need to make a case that renewables
Speaker 1: aren't as good as oil and gas, and they're having
Speaker 1: a harder and harder time making it. And now they've
Speaker 1: know they have this new thing. It's not either or,
Speaker 1: it's and right because the thinking is, let's just keep
Speaker 1: oil and gas around as long as we can, because
Speaker 1: eventually renewables are going to be so cheap oil and
Speaker 1: gas isnt going to be able to thrive.
Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely, And you know I live in Austin, Texas.
Speaker 3: You know, it's the belly of the fossil fuel beast,
Speaker 3: and I spend a lot of time around oil and
Speaker 3: gas people that way, and into my own reporting, it's
Speaker 3: very clear that everybody who works in the oil and
Speaker 3: gas industry knows that they are the whale oil of
Speaker 3: our time. They know that their horizon is limited, that
Speaker 3: they are not going to be around in the same
Speaker 3: way that they have been to the last century in
Speaker 3: the next few decades. So now there's this sort of
Speaker 3: end game going on that is very powerful and very dangerous.
Speaker 3: It's really about squeezing the last profits out of their reserves,
Speaker 3: squeezing the last profits out of their investments, and dragging
Speaker 3: out this inevitable transition as long as possible. Which you
Speaker 3: might say, oh, well, what's the problem with that. So
Speaker 3: instead of getting off of fossil fuels in ten years,
Speaker 3: when we get off fossil fuels in thirty or forty years, Well,
Speaker 3: the problem with that is that's a differension between a
Speaker 3: kind of warming world that we can kind of manage,
Speaker 3: and that warming world that where we have all hell
Speaker 3: breaking loose, where we have inevitable collapses of ice sheets,
Speaker 3: where we have one hundred and thirty degree extreme heat waves,
Speaker 3: where we have mass deaths from these heat waves, where
Speaker 3: we have changing disease patterns of malaria and all these
Speaker 3: kinds of vector board diseases. I mean, there's a kind
Speaker 3: of level of climate chaos that is inevitable if we
Speaker 3: continue burning fossil fuels for several more decades. So this
Speaker 3: really is a question of purgency and speed. And that's
Speaker 3: why this conversation right now is it's so important when
Speaker 3: we take about, you know, the kind of world we want.
Speaker 1: To live in and I would add, we've already crossed
Speaker 1: the rubicon to things being pretty bad.
Speaker 3: We have, although I would argue that there's no real rubicon.
Speaker 1: Oh interesting, Yeah, those two degree projections or one degree
Speaker 1: or one and a half degree, even those projections are
Speaker 1: a radically different world.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, And one of the big truths is that you know,
Speaker 3: the world that you know, you and I grew up in,
Speaker 3: the climate that you and I grew up in, is gone,
Speaker 3: and we are not going back to that climate. The
Speaker 3: question is how bad is it going to get into
Speaker 3: how different is it going to be in the future.
Speaker 3: And I pushed back on the rubicon idea a little
Speaker 3: bit because this notion of a tipping point, it's like, oh,
Speaker 3: we're fine until we get to one point five C
Speaker 3: or through C or you know one translate that into
Speaker 3: fahrenheit three and a half de greece paraanhede of warming,
Speaker 3: and then all of a sudden, oh, the world collapses.
Speaker 3: You know, let's just go to the beach and party
Speaker 3: because we're all screwed. Right. There are certainly tipping point
Speaker 3: it's for particular ecosystems. There's a tipping point for the
Speaker 3: West end Arctic ice sheet. There's a tipping point for
Speaker 3: the Amazon rainforest. There's a tipping point for the insurance
Speaker 3: industry in Florida, you know, but.
Speaker 1: Yes, which has take exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So there's all these sort of baller tipping points.
Speaker 3: But the real truth is that you know, every ton
Speaker 3: of CO two that we keep out of the atmosphere,
Speaker 3: you know, reduces the warming a little bit, reduces the
Speaker 3: impacts a little bit. Everyone that we add makes it
Speaker 3: a little bit worse. There is no moment when we're
Speaker 3: just all fucked and we may as well just give up.
Speaker 1: Right, And I think that case against nihilism is really important.
Speaker 1: The right and the oil companies and the people who
Speaker 1: want to sell you this want you to feel that
Speaker 1: it's a situation that's unfixable, or that it's a situation
Speaker 1: that you have no control over, and that is not true.
Speaker 3: It's not And it's also just to continue this thought
Speaker 3: that it's also not true. What the oil companies the
Speaker 3: right are trying to sell right now is that yes,
Speaker 3: we even they would admit that, you know, renewable are
Speaker 3: you know, solar and wind and hydrogen and all these
Speaker 3: things are part of our future. But we can't go
Speaker 3: too fast because our economy is so fragile, and if
Speaker 3: we try to shift too soon, we're going to collapse
Speaker 3: our economy. Renewables aren't cheap enough yet, they're not ready enough.
Speaker 3: We can't do it. Well, that's all bullshit. I mean,
Speaker 3: we have all of the technology we need to make
Speaker 3: this transition very quickly. Nobody's arguing that we like shut
Speaker 3: off all fossil fuels tomorrow. But you know, we can
Speaker 3: make this transition much much faster. And the scare tastics
Speaker 3: that the right and big oil and things are using
Speaker 3: now are all about this sort of economic doom that
Speaker 3: if we do this too fast, we're going to fuck
Speaker 3: everything up.
Speaker 1: Right, And that's I mean, and you hear Trump they
Speaker 1: want to take away your cars, right right, that's an
Speaker 1: easy scare tactic. Can you explain to us where methane
Speaker 1: falls in this whole continuum of warming?
Speaker 3: Sure, methane is you know, basically essentially the same as
Speaker 3: natural gas or fossil gas. You know, you asked me
Speaker 3: about how the discussion about climate energy has changed over time,
Speaker 3: and twenty years ago, the big bad fossil fuel was
Speaker 3: coal because it's the most carbon intense and for all
Speaker 3: intensive purposes. You know, we're not building more coal plants
Speaker 3: in America. Coal uses down globally, and it's down very
Speaker 3: fast in the Ued States.
Speaker 1: Because it's so expensive.
Speaker 3: It's so expensive and it's so hard to do. It's
Speaker 3: i cost so much money to build a coal pland
Speaker 3: and you have trains and mines. It's just like it's
Speaker 3: just also the nineteenth century. You know, you're crushing rocks
Speaker 3: to burn them, you know what I mean. It's just
Speaker 3: like it's so primitive. But so for a long time,
Speaker 3: there was this idea that, oh, we're going to shift
Speaker 3: from coal to gas, and the gas is the phrase
Speaker 3: was bridged to the future. So there was this whole
Speaker 3: notion that, well, we'll replace these coal plants with gas
Speaker 3: and that'll be a big step forward, and then eventually
Speaker 3: we'll replace the gas plants with toler and wind and everything,
Speaker 3: and it'll the bias time for renewables to become cheap
Speaker 3: and enough and technologically sophisticated enough to run our world. Well,
Speaker 3: that is bullshit. Also, the problem with gas and methane
Speaker 3: right now is that a lot of First of all,
Speaker 3: a lot of new research has shown that in fact,
Speaker 3: gas is not more climate safe than coal because methane
Speaker 3: or gas if it leaks out of pipelines or out
Speaker 3: of power plants, are out of drol heads or well heads.
Speaker 3: It's a forty times more potent gas than CO two,
Speaker 3: so the warming potential is huge, and there's a lot
Speaker 3: of leaks. They've just launched a bunch of satellites to
Speaker 3: help detect these fleaks and they're enormous. So that's one thing.
Speaker 3: And the other thing is is infrastructure that's being built
Speaker 3: for these gas plants, which is something that Biden just
Speaker 3: recently alted the pause that permits for these liquified natural
Speaker 3: gas plants to ship this stuff overseas. They know that
Speaker 3: this step is going to be around for forty or
Speaker 3: fifty years, so it's like building in the next generation
Speaker 3: of fossil fuel infrastructure. And the argument is, well, are
Speaker 3: we doing that because we know we have renewables, we
Speaker 3: know they're cheaper, we know that you know they don't
Speaker 3: have any of the kind of impacts that the gas has,
Speaker 3: So why are we wasting our time and money with
Speaker 3: this building this whole new gas infrasture.
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Why, Well, because of political power. It's all apologic.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about something that my husband is obsessed
Speaker 1: with He told me about it, and now it is
Speaker 1: like my top ten anxiety scenarios. Wet bulb heat. Explain
Speaker 1: to us about wet bulb heat because this is really
Speaker 1: fucking scary.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, So wet bulb heat is essentially a measure
Speaker 3: of heat and humidity combined. It's not so different than
Speaker 3: than sort of heat index. There's another level of flexiting
Speaker 3: this called the global wet bulb temperature, which takes into
Speaker 3: account the amount of sunlight and wind speed and things
Speaker 3: like that. But the idea is when we talk about temperature,
Speaker 3: you know, that's just the sort of ambient temperature in
Speaker 3: the air. What really matters is what that temperature means
Speaker 3: to our bodies and how our bodies function in these
Speaker 3: kinds of rising temperatures. And wet bulb temperature is an
Speaker 3: idea that was actually sort of discovered or figured out
Speaker 3: in the early twentieth century by some research groups who
Speaker 3: are looking at why coal miners who were deep underground
Speaker 3: were suffering from heat exhaustion and heat strokes, and they
Speaker 3: came to understand that humidity as a big impact on
Speaker 3: how we register temperature, because you know, think about it,
Speaker 3: the only way that our bodies can release heat is
Speaker 3: by sweat. When it gets hot, we sweat, and that
Speaker 3: sweat takes the heat away from our bodies, dissipates it out,
Speaker 3: and that's how we cool off. It's we're kind of
Speaker 3: radiator system and that works at the air temperature is dry,
Speaker 3: and the more humid it gets, the more difficulty it
Speaker 3: is for that sweat to evaporate, and wet bulb temperature
Speaker 3: tries to give you a reading of that. So the
Speaker 3: higher the wet bulb temperature, the more humidity is in
Speaker 3: the air, the more difficulty you have evaporating the sweat.
Speaker 3: And that's why everyone knows who's been. If you've been
Speaker 3: to Arizona and it's hundred degrees, it's very different than
Speaker 3: being in Miami when it's d degrees. The Pope or
Speaker 3: something like that. And the reason it's scary and dangerous
Speaker 3: is because there are relatively low levels of If you
Speaker 3: have a high wet bult temperature, which means the air
Speaker 3: temperature might only be in the eighties or nineties, but
Speaker 3: you have a high high eye levels of humidity, those
Speaker 3: can be very very dangerous very quickly. And there's a
Speaker 3: threshold of around ninety five degrees wet bul temperature where
Speaker 3: even a healthy human outdoors, you know, for five or
Speaker 3: six hours will die. Our bodies will just overheat. It's
Speaker 3: like the turkey cooking levels for humans, you know. And
Speaker 3: parts of the world are approaching that now already, and
Speaker 3: you know, we're certainly heading in that direction. And in
Speaker 3: my book I talked about this idea of the Goldilog zone.
Speaker 3: But all living things on Earth evolved a function in
Speaker 3: this certain threshold of temperature. And when we get to
Speaker 3: these wet bolt temperatures in the nineties, we are getting
Speaker 3: out of the Goldilock zone. And that's when we either
Speaker 3: get somewhere cooler quickly or we die. It's very shutforward.
Speaker 1: See, Now, this is a really good thing to be
Speaker 1: anxious about.
Speaker 3: Yes, it is a good thing to be anxious.
Speaker 1: Not to pat myself on the back here, but this
Speaker 1: is actually a real fucking problem, and there are parts
Speaker 1: of this world where we're going to see this temperature soon.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm really glad you say that this is a
Speaker 3: real fucking problem, because it really is. Because there's a
Speaker 3: lot of people who say, well, why are you worried
Speaker 3: about this? You have air conditioning, you know, you'll be okay,
Speaker 3: just crank it up a little bit more and just
Speaker 3: don't go outside when it's really oh and okay, great,
Speaker 3: that's fine maybe for you and for me on a
Speaker 3: particular day. But the first of all, the op ed
Speaker 3: I wrote earlier this week in The Times talks about
Speaker 3: how places that are more dependent upon air conditioning, like Phoenix,
Speaker 3: where you have virtually one hundred percent air conditioning, are
Speaker 3: probably be vulnerable when you have a blackout, right, And
Speaker 3: you know, heat waves stress the grid because everybodystrom their
Speaker 3: air conditioning on and it makes the mechanics of the
Speaker 3: grid more fragile. Things like that. So blackouts are much
Speaker 3: more likely during heat waves. And if you have a
Speaker 3: big blackout during a heat wave in a highly air
Speaker 3: conditioned city, you have mass deaths suddenly. I mean, this
Speaker 3: study that that I cided show thirteen more than thirteen
Speaker 3: thousand people dying in Phoenix within forty eight hours with
Speaker 3: a blackout during a high heat wave event. And so
Speaker 3: this idea of a heat wave that air conditioning is
Speaker 3: going to save us, it's like this sort of damicles
Speaker 3: hanging over ahead.
Speaker 1: You know, you know, there are people day labors in
Speaker 1: Dubai who are going to die, maybe before the people
Speaker 1: in Phoenix, though not necessarily, right, but ultimately we're all
Speaker 1: going to die of this if it gets hot enough.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean there are se one hundred and fifty
Speaker 3: million people on the planet who don't have access to electricity,
Speaker 3: much less air conditioning. Right. And also, we're not going
Speaker 3: to air condition the oceans, so you know, as they
Speaker 3: heat up, are already dying off in there that you know,
Speaker 3: we've had the fourth mass coral bleaching event this year.
Speaker 3: We're not going to air condition the forests where you know,
Speaker 3: we have how their monkeys dropping out of trees, and
Speaker 3: then right now in Mexico because of extreme heat waves
Speaker 3: that are just dropping dead out of the forest. We're
Speaker 3: not going to air condition the fields where you know,
Speaker 3: their food crops grow, so we're gonna have crop failures,
Speaker 3: which is going to lead to political problems and all that.
Speaker 3: So this is a much bigger problem than just something
Speaker 3: like well, just get a better air conditioner everything, you'll
Speaker 3: be fine.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Jeff, just horrifying us.
Speaker 3: Well, thanks for indulging in that order. Molly, no moment fuck.
Speaker 1: I would like a moment of fuck.
Speaker 4: Right, Well, is gentleman, this Moment of Fuckery is brought
Speaker 4: to you by Harlan Crow Sugar down Each to the stars. Look,
Speaker 4: Clarence Thomas has now been revealed to have accepted four
Speaker 4: million dollars in gifts, in perks and trips and visits
Speaker 4: to the Bohemian Grove. Not on, I said, Alex Jones's
Speaker 4: brain on a fact, four million dollars. He's the only
Speaker 4: member of the Supreme Court where there are five zeros
Speaker 4: after the numbers of these gifts. He is corrupt. He
Speaker 4: has been corrupted. This is an obvious ethical violation. No
Speaker 4: other member of the Court is even in the ballpark
Speaker 4: of accepting this kind of billionaire largesse. And I'm sorry
Speaker 4: for people who are diehard Clearance Thomas stands. This guy
Speaker 4: is corrupt. And if this was again, if this was
Speaker 4: flip the script, if Katanji Brown Jackson was taking five
Speaker 4: hundred thousand dollars vacations with George Sorows, the Republicans would
Speaker 4: burn down Washington to the driver out of the court.
Speaker 4: This is my moment of fuckery.
Speaker 1: Amazing, Thank you, Rick Wilson.
Speaker 4: As always, the pleasure is mine.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
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