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 House Democrats have added twelve safe
Speaker 1: for publican seats to their red to Blue list. We
Speaker 1: have such a great show for you today. The Lincoln
Speaker 1: Project's own Rick Wilson joins us to talk about how
Speaker 1: Trump still controls elected officials despite the fact that he
Speaker 1: cannot control Republican primaries. Then we'll talk to Democratic Congressman
Speaker 1: Daniel Biss about being an anti apac jew.
Speaker 2: But first the.
Speaker 3: News soval the Senate passed a stopgap to avert the
Speaker 3: shutdown of the government that would have happened before the election.
Speaker 3: But Trump, I think he soiled as diaper because the
Speaker 3: Save Act didn't get passed.
Speaker 1: The top line here is the Senate has gone back
Speaker 1: on vacation because it's August, and why should they be
Speaker 1: at work. They've gone, They're done, They're out. They will
Speaker 1: not be back until September, and until then there will
Speaker 1: be no Save Act, which means Donald Trump will not
Speaker 1: get the Save Act passed. Here's what was never going
Speaker 1: to happen. Donald Trump was going to pass the Save Act.
Speaker 1: Here's why it was a math problem, right, you needed
Speaker 1: sixty votes to pass the Save Act. He couldn't get
Speaker 1: sixty votes, so he would have had to have killed
Speaker 1: the filibuster for an act that was By the way,
Speaker 1: if you're going to kill the filibuster, which eventually someone
Speaker 1: will kill the filibuster, you're not going to kill it
Speaker 1: for a piece of legislation that's poorly written that's ultimately
Speaker 1: probably not going to get enacted. I mean, the whole
Speaker 1: situation is just a complete shit show for Trump anyway.
Speaker 1: And by the way, had they even passed the Save Act,
Speaker 1: there's a question of whether or not it was even legal, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's basically federalizing elections. So it's taking state
Speaker 1: elections and making the federal government charge of them, which
Speaker 1: technically I mean, I know Republicans hate the Constitution, but
Speaker 1: if they liked it, they would see that the technically
Speaker 1: you can't do that. They're separated. And by the way,
Speaker 1: they're separated for good reason, because they're safer when the
Speaker 1: states run them and they're decentralized and they're less likely
Speaker 1: to be interfered with. So here we are bipartisan vote
Speaker 1: to push government funding past election day deadline. I love
Speaker 1: that they can get a ninety to six vote, but
Speaker 1: only when it's for punting. Another great part of this
Speaker 1: number of people did not vote, including you'll remember Mitch McConnell,
Speaker 1: though I do think at some point Mitch McConnell was
Speaker 1: having his votes put in for him.
Speaker 2: Right by Roger Wicker.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 1: Certainly a sign that everything is going great, in case
Speaker 1: you're wondering. Supposedly, though Mitch McConnell did check out of rehab.
Speaker 1: Maybe who knows, because there are no pictures and no
Speaker 1: real reporting, So we just have to take Mitch McConnell
Speaker 1: at his word, which why wouldn't you right?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 3: Of course?
Speaker 5: What it on?
Speaker 3: A zombie man? I mean, man, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: Mitch McConnell at his word. I'm sure he's completely healthy
Speaker 1: and totally fine. What's happening here? They confirmed Todd Blanche,
Speaker 1: they failed a voter id measure, and now they will.
Speaker 2: Go and have a recess.
Speaker 1: Well, Republicans will try to keep the House and Democrats
Speaker 1: will try to flip.
Speaker 3: So let's talk about the Republicans trying to keep the House,
Speaker 3: because we have learned that they're going to have a
Speaker 3: little convention that's going to be a little film festival. Now,
Speaker 3: I allow me to loog a prediction here. I think
Speaker 3: we're going to see Ai trans tall Rico. I think
Speaker 3: we're going to probably see some of the most islamicophobic
Speaker 3: things about doctor Abduel said we've ever seen, and probably
Speaker 3: a lot of other things. My imagination is not stupid
Speaker 3: enough to conceive.
Speaker 2: Here's what's happening.
Speaker 1: Dop decided that we have a midterm convention, which I
Speaker 1: actually don't think is a terrible idea. If you had
Speaker 1: a policy to sell people, that could be very helpful,
Speaker 1: but you don't. Right, what's the policy the Republican What
Speaker 1: is the Republican policy? What is the Republican Party is leaning?
Speaker 1: Do they want healthcare for all? Do they want do
Speaker 1: they want to what do they want?
Speaker 2: They want Trump?
Speaker 1: Right? I mean Trump? The party is the party of Trump?
Speaker 1: And do they support what Trump likes? And so they
Speaker 1: support seizing the means of production by taking stakes in
Speaker 1: public companies they largely via blackmail? I mean, what do
Speaker 1: they support? So they support getting mad at people for
Speaker 1: making jokes about Charlie Kirk that I don't know that
Speaker 1: you can run on that stuff. I don't know that
Speaker 1: somebody who can't afford to fill their car up with
Speaker 1: gas is going to really care about culture war issues,
Speaker 1: and that will be the big question. So this first
Speaker 1: ever midterm convention in September will feature a lot of
Speaker 1: clips of leftists saying crazy stuff.
Speaker 2: What will that look like? I don't know.
Speaker 1: You know, it might include some Hassan Piker because publicans
Speaker 1: are very obsessed with On Piker because he seems very
Speaker 1: scary to them. I think it will include a lot
Speaker 1: of people mad about Charlie Kirk's death. I think it
Speaker 1: will have It looks like it will have speeches from
Speaker 1: the very charismatic Jada Vance, known for his charisma Ohio charisma.
Speaker 2: I learned the term as The thing about.
Speaker 1: Jada Vance is like he makes when you realize that
Speaker 1: Peter Tiel had to like spend millions of dollars more
Speaker 1: to get him elected in a ruby red state of
Speaker 1: Ohio and then you listen to him speak at all,
Speaker 1: sort of comes together.
Speaker 3: But does I makeup look so good?
Speaker 1: Right? And Treasury Secretary Scott Besant, known for telling Americans
Speaker 1: this week that the K shaped ecotomy is no longer
Speaker 1: k shaped. That guy excited to hear what. He's a
Speaker 1: real populist. Always love to hear him talk about populism.
Speaker 1: I think there'll be a lot of talking got Health
Speaker 1: Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Junior. They're going to focus on
Speaker 1: the Maha movement, you'll remember them, mom movement, supposedly Trump
Speaker 1: and again, you know, a lot of reporting about Trump
Speaker 1: himself ends up with the reporter with egg on their
Speaker 1: face because he changes his mind sometimes. But supposedly there
Speaker 1: are going to be more executive orders focused.
Speaker 2: On anti vacs.
Speaker 1: So that is unpopular with polls, but popular with Maha.
Speaker 1: And you know, remember the explosive diarrhea. This stuff is
Speaker 1: still going. You know, I was talking to someone and
Speaker 1: they were I said, oh, here it has moved to
Speaker 1: fruit and they said, actually that's salmonella. So there seems
Speaker 1: to be some also, again this is just anecdotal, so
Speaker 1: don't take me as bible here, but like there definitely is.
Speaker 1: They are not doing the food surveillance they're supposed to
Speaker 1: be doing, thank you doge.
Speaker 3: So Donald Trump's other obsession that is not decorating, has
Speaker 3: consistently been enacting Stephen Miller's racist policies. And they're going
Speaker 3: to keep fighting to try to get rid of birthrights,
Speaker 3: thisenship in this country.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so the birthright citizenship stuff. It's so bizarre because
Speaker 1: like this Supreme Court will do almost anything for Trump,
Speaker 1: but in the words of meat Loaf, they won't do that.
Speaker 1: So Trump is going to try some other way to
Speaker 1: do it. This is never going to work for him.
Speaker 1: It's the fourteenth Amendment. Trump does a lot of crazy stuff,
Speaker 1: but I think this is for the really racist part
Speaker 1: of the base, right, the part that is not just
Speaker 1: satisfied by ice arresting people, putting them in camps like
Speaker 1: Delaney where they die. This is a different section of
Speaker 1: the base that will not ever be satisfied. And Trump
Speaker 1: is trying to tell them that there's still more racism
Speaker 1: to do. And I think he is doing this because
Speaker 1: he doesn't want to lose them. And I think that
Speaker 1: there's sort of you know, his coalition is fracturing. There
Speaker 1: are maga people who are I mean, we see this
Speaker 1: in the polls, right, and we see this in the voting.
Speaker 1: We see this in primary voting. We see this with
Speaker 1: like Megan Kelly. Remember Megan Kelly and Tucker Carlson are
Speaker 1: more connected to the real world than Donald Trump. They
Speaker 1: get comments on their YouTube, they see their YouTube numbers.
Speaker 1: They are more reactive than a Donald Trump because they
Speaker 1: have to be right for their numbers. So those people
Speaker 1: have criticized Trump, and why have they criticized Trump Because
Speaker 1: they see that their viewers want them to right. They're
Speaker 1: incentivized by their viewership in a way that mainstream media
Speaker 1: has not been right. They're more sensitive, they can move quicker,
Speaker 1: and they are reactive in a way. So I do
Speaker 1: think that that crew sees that MAGA is fracturing. And
Speaker 1: remember we've talked about this before, but I think it's
Speaker 1: worth just remembering that MEGA is fracturing over what they're
Speaker 1: fracturing over these seven wars right the places where Donald
Speaker 1: Trump has brought them to war. And now you know
Speaker 1: the results of that, which are higher gas prices, higher,
Speaker 1: food prices higher. And again a lot of these people
Speaker 1: are in rural areas, so that means higher farming stuff.
Speaker 1: You know, higher prices of fertilizer are more expensive that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: So this is pretty interesting. I would have bet that
Speaker 3: Max Miller would have dropped up before this deadline since
Speaker 3: he's pulling extremely bad. So this looks like another pickup
Speaker 3: for the Democrats because Max Miller missed the deadline to
Speaker 3: drop out and get off the ballot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, my favorite part of the Maximiller and
Speaker 1: again favorite is this is not my favorite part. But
Speaker 1: the thing that I think is worth worth sort of
Speaker 1: highlighting when we talk about Max Miller is and when
Speaker 1: Donald Trump called him, at least according to the reporting,
Speaker 1: he said that the polls look bad. Like not, you know,
Speaker 1: there are allegations you did unspeakable things to your two
Speaker 1: year old daughter.
Speaker 2: Not that, but instead the polls look bad.
Speaker 1: I do want to just have a minute here to
Speaker 1: talk about domestic violence and the allegations of it. Stephanie Grisham,
Speaker 1: the Press secretary of Milania and Trump one point zero,
Speaker 1: she had accused Max Miller of very similar things, and
Speaker 1: you know, she was not believed, and so here we are.
Speaker 1: So I just think that it is worth realizing that, like,
Speaker 1: if you believe one woman, you might be able to
Speaker 1: save another woman from something terrible or allegations of something terrible.
Speaker 1: So it looks like it's a real pickup opportunity for Democrats.
Speaker 1: He is not getting out of the race, and it's
Speaker 1: too late anyway, and he's probably going to do more
Speaker 1: crazy interviews. I mean, Miller is really good example of
Speaker 1: why you don't want to support candidates who do terrible things.
Speaker 1: And like, again this is not quite the same, but like,
Speaker 1: once you get behind a candidate who is like this,
Speaker 1: like mentally ill, and I mean, I don't know if
Speaker 1: he's mentally ill, but he certainly behaves in a way
Speaker 1: that's erratic and unpleasant and disturbing, you are in bed
Speaker 1: with them. Ever, Miller previously sued ex girlfriend Stephanie Grisham
Speaker 1: after she accused him of abuse also and then they
Speaker 1: had a settlement. She sued him last month for allegedly
Speaker 1: violating the terms of that settlement's non disparagement terms. Another
Speaker 1: thing that I want to point out with this story
Speaker 1: is that yeah, he's still an active candidate, so he
Speaker 1: has not dropped out. And it's just a terrible story
Speaker 1: all around. This just makes Ohio Republicans look terrible. And
Speaker 1: I think, like when Max Miller tweeted these pictures of
Speaker 1: this text about the blue bunny, his daughter's blue bunny,
Speaker 1: his daughter left the blue bunny and couldn't sleep without
Speaker 1: her bunny. This is a two year old child, so
Speaker 1: it was like highly traumatized by this experience, by the divorce,
Speaker 1: by the you know, it's just a.
Speaker 2: Horrible experience all around.
Speaker 1: And he tweeted out these pictures of the pickup that
Speaker 1: were supposed to show that he had not held the
Speaker 1: blue Bunny as hostage, but in fact showed that he
Speaker 1: had held the blue Bunny as hostage because he he
Speaker 1: didn't like the person who was going to pick up
Speaker 1: the bunny. And those whole story is insane, and it's
Speaker 1: one of those stories where the more the person talks,
Speaker 1: the more it sounds worse for them. Rick Wilson is
Speaker 1: the founder of the Lincoln Project and the host of
Speaker 1: the Lincoln Project podcast Welcome, Welcome, Rick Wilson.
Speaker 4: Hey, Molly john Fast, how are you on this fine day.
Speaker 2: I'm good.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about this.
Speaker 2: The only people who are scared of Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: The only people who actually, let's even broaden it, the
Speaker 1: only people who listened to Donald Trump anymore because voter
Speaker 1: Shore don't. And I'm talking about Andy Oboles with his
Speaker 1: Nope Trumpy nominated.
Speaker 4: Tondy ogles that he had the kiss of life but
Speaker 4: had the kiss of death instead.
Speaker 1: The golden Donald Trump endorsement in the Republican primary in Tennessee.
Speaker 5: Didn't work, did not work.
Speaker 4: And this is a guy who has never spent a
Speaker 4: day where he wasn't finding a way to suck Donald
Speaker 4: Trump's ass in American politics, and who Trump loved him
Speaker 4: and thought he was great and said all the he's
Speaker 4: my he's my guide, this and that, and yet didn't work.
Speaker 1: Andy Ohs was going to rewrite the Constitution for Trump.
Speaker 4: That is correct. He wanted to rewrite the constitution. Uh,
Speaker 4: he is a complete election denier. Trump's word is law
Speaker 4: with Andy Ogles defends everything. All of the bullshit that
Speaker 4: was definitional to a modern Republican candidate was it was
Speaker 4: present there with Andy Ogles, every single bit of it.
Speaker 4: And and and the truth of the matter is it
Speaker 4: didn't work, didn't help, didn't save him, didn't make it better.
Speaker 4: It turned out that nothing was going to fix it
Speaker 4: because Trump's endorsement now what you used to be something,
Speaker 4: and it's not nothing, but it's just not this. It
Speaker 4: doesn't work like it worked before. And in fact, there
Speaker 4: are some Republicans that I know for a fact, a
Speaker 4: couple of Republican congressional candidates have been like, well, I
Speaker 4: didn't ask for the endorsement, but he gave it to me, right,
Speaker 4: Oh okay, yeah, that's gonna make people feel you're not
Speaker 4: a complete Trump suck up after all. Pretty fascinating to me.
Speaker 1: My favorite punchline to this story is Andy Ogles brought
Speaker 1: down by clean energy.
Speaker 4: Of all things, this guy loses where that's one of
Speaker 4: the issues that ends up unasking him in this whole race.
Speaker 4: It's kind of amazing.
Speaker 1: And a super pack from the Solar crew is the
Speaker 1: big supports his primary challenger, which I think is like
Speaker 1: a very look.
Speaker 2: I mean right, I think we Obviously.
Speaker 1: Big money in politics is a real problem, but here
Speaker 1: it's a delicious problem.
Speaker 4: I will swallow this bit of citizens united bypass or
Speaker 4: bycatch as long as it's taken down seriously. One of
Speaker 4: the most egregious and tenditious and dumb supporters of MAGA
Speaker 4: MAGA voters have been peeling away from Trump this year,
Speaker 4: and even Trump himself said, oh, they're mad at Republicans,
Speaker 4: not at me.
Speaker 2: That was amazing.
Speaker 4: They've been peeling away from Trump, but they've also been
Speaker 4: peeling away from Trump's candidates. Now they're not looking at
Speaker 4: and Andy Ogles or whomever and saying Yeah, that's the
Speaker 4: guy I need to send to the Senate or the House,
Speaker 4: or to the State House or the governor's office. And
Speaker 4: that's the guy that's going to carry out the Trump agenda.
Speaker 4: So that agenda is unpopular. He is unpopular, and therefore
Speaker 4: and they're getting the radiation off of it at long last.
Speaker 1: So let's talk this through for a minute, because despite
Speaker 1: all of this, there is a guy in the Republican
Speaker 1: Party in the Senate who who could have completely railed
Speaker 1: the confirmation of Todd Blanche and refused to do it.
Speaker 1: So what do you think happened here with Bill Cassaday.
Speaker 4: I think he is an honorless shill who has no
Speaker 4: personal integrity, no sense of honor whatsoever, a guy who
Speaker 4: for whatever reasons, even after all the abuse and the
Speaker 4: hideous behavior, and we're using his seat and his colleagues. Yeah,
Speaker 4: he's losing his seat because of Trump. And yet he
Speaker 4: doesn't want to be murdered by the mob. He doesn't
Speaker 4: want to be attacked by Fox. He doesn't want to be,
Speaker 4: you know, turned into the latest punching bag for Trump's craziness.
Speaker 4: What he doesn't understand is that he now has a
Speaker 4: permanent mark against him. This is a guy who forever
Speaker 4: will be seen as the guy who voted to make
Speaker 4: sure that the Jeffrey Epstein FILESI remain covered up. That
Speaker 4: he voted for the guy who will pardon Jelaane Maxwell
Speaker 4: set up that pardon for Trump to sign. He voted
Speaker 4: for a guy who Trump describes himself Trump's personal lawyer.
Speaker 4: He voted for a guy who will lie to the Senate,
Speaker 4: who will abuse power, who will set up the Trump
Speaker 4: slush fund. Again, watch watch what happens. By I'm putting
Speaker 4: one thousand dollars down on this bet Trump will restore
Speaker 4: the January sixth slush fund. Now that branch has been
Speaker 4: voted on. They will. They will come back and put
Speaker 4: it back in right before then, all these guys will go.
Speaker 4: We could have never seen this coming. Oh my god. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: anybody could see this coming.
Speaker 1: So you have a lot of experience in Republican world
Speaker 1: and Republican politics.
Speaker 2: And here's a question I have for you.
Speaker 1: Are you ready when someone like Bill Cassidy does something
Speaker 1: like this, what is the calculus for later?
Speaker 2: Like because clearly he's doing.
Speaker 1: This, like when we saw Joe Manchin do this, or
Speaker 1: Kristen Cinema like with an eye towards his future employment.
Speaker 2: So so what is he trying to help himself with here?
Speaker 4: I would argue that somebody has called him and said, hey, listen, buddy,
Speaker 4: you've got to place it at any number of any
Speaker 4: number of lobbying firms, Ballard Partners, Barbara Griffith, Rogers, whoever.
Speaker 4: And if you if you just vote on this thing,
Speaker 4: you're going to get a million and a half dollars
Speaker 4: a year for the next ten years. You don't have
Speaker 4: to do a goddamn thing, show up to one meeting
Speaker 4: a year. It is sometimes that transparent and that simple.
Speaker 4: They they may have had, you know, they may have
Speaker 4: had a long heartfelt conversation with about that, and that
Speaker 4: may have changed his deep sense of personal integrity because
Speaker 4: Washington runs on money, right, and these people are have
Speaker 4: control over tremendous, tremendous sums of money.
Speaker 1: Because that's what it certainly seemed like was happening with
Speaker 1: Cinema and Mansion when they voted.
Speaker 2: Against all of that Biden administration legislation.
Speaker 4: And those two are those two Cinema and Mansion were
Speaker 4: much more transparently corrupt, right, They were very much, much
Speaker 4: more cash and carry. I mean, her whole thing as
Speaker 4: the lead Democrat fighting for the hedge fund you know,
Speaker 4: business sector America's mom and pop hedge funds industry. Her
Speaker 4: whole time in the body was striking, and Mansion of
Speaker 4: course was always cash and carry. Yeah, but I think
Speaker 4: what you're seeing here in a lot of ways is
Speaker 4: Cassidy looked less corrupt on paper, but something is either
Speaker 4: so broken in his brain, or he's so afraid of
Speaker 4: being killed by crazy people, or he just took a bribe.
Speaker 4: And I mean Oukham's razor is the bribe.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean one of my I don't want to
Speaker 1: say favorite because it was horrible and depressing, but one
Speaker 1: of the moments that will stick with me forever was
Speaker 1: seeing Kristen Cinema immediately doing lobbying for data centers.
Speaker 4: Least surprising thing in a way, but you're also like,
Speaker 4: come on, really, that that that that obvious? Is that
Speaker 4: is it that freaking obvious? And look, Silicon Valley has
Speaker 4: made a really compelling decision in the last couple of
Speaker 4: years or discovery in the last couple of years. They
Speaker 4: figured out that a lot of money in Washington and
Speaker 4: a lot of money for a former senator, former congressman
Speaker 4: is a couple of million bucks.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's not.
Speaker 4: I have a couple of million bucks in their couch cushions.
Speaker 4: They're they're they're spending a couple of million bucks every
Speaker 4: few days and starbucks on on their political and their
Speaker 4: persuasion and lobbying operations. Buying an next member of the Senator,
Speaker 4: Buying an next member of the House is cheap at
Speaker 4: you know, it's it's bargain basement stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so again with Cassidy, With Senator Cassidy, it could
Speaker 1: be because he's a coward.
Speaker 2: It could be because he accepted a bribe.
Speaker 1: We won't know for another couple of months, but we
Speaker 1: will eventually know.
Speaker 2: But what it does strike me is that.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, voters are are not coming along, not going
Speaker 1: along to get along with Donald Trump. And I would
Speaker 1: love to sort of pull back from this and keep
Speaker 1: going with it because I think voters are much angrier
Speaker 1: than we in.
Speaker 2: The elite were in elite world. Can really quantify discuss.
Speaker 4: They are so angry, Molly, it is beyond the level
Speaker 4: of understanding of these members of Congress and these members
Speaker 4: in the Senate, their consultants understand the level of anger
Speaker 4: out there. Yeah, and in a world where, well, let's
Speaker 4: put this way, if we didn't have the jerrymandering now
Speaker 4: that we had back if in twenty ten when Republicans
Speaker 4: blew out the House representatives, there's a lot of anger
Speaker 4: in the country.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's your top twenty eighteen.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of anger in the country, right, But
Speaker 4: I'm also talking about twenty eighteen, when Trump had really
Speaker 4: screwed up already on the economy, people were angry. If
Speaker 4: the jerrymandering wasn't as crazy as it is right now,
Speaker 4: the Democrats will win sixty five seats as it is,
Speaker 4: They're going to be in the high twenties somewhere as
Speaker 4: of today, all caveats apply, blah blah blah. But the
Speaker 4: anger they're feeling, even the people who are saying, oh,
Speaker 4: I'm still voting Republican, seventy one percent of Republicans say
Speaker 4: the economy is on the wrong track.
Speaker 2: Is Republican believable. Yeah, that's unusual.
Speaker 4: It is. It is an insane number. And overall the
Speaker 4: country believes, like, by like eighty seven percent, we're on
Speaker 4: the wrong economic track. This is poisoned politically, and and
Speaker 4: look what is Trump doing to make it better? Nothing.
Speaker 4: He's not even really helping the Republicans he's supposed to
Speaker 4: be helping because he bragged this week goes when he
Speaker 4: was interviewed by.
Speaker 2: Jake Jack Truman, Yeah from punch Bowl.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he said, oh uh, you know, it's eight hundred
Speaker 4: million dollars and I control it.
Speaker 2: Right about the MAGA super passed.
Speaker 4: Eighty seven days to go. If you think Donald Trump
Speaker 4: is going to give up almost a billion dollars to
Speaker 4: candidates who he thinks aren't going to win, I have
Speaker 4: a bridge to sell you it's mad. Is he's going
Speaker 4: to keep the fucking money he can. He's allowed to
Speaker 4: keep it.
Speaker 2: Well, but it's also elite.
Speaker 1: He's not supposed to say he controls it because aren't
Speaker 1: super I mean, I guess this new Supreme Court ruling
Speaker 1: means that now super PACs can be controlled by politics.
Speaker 4: So the new ruling about coordination has made it a lot.
Speaker 4: They've given him a lot more lead. Of all, they've
Speaker 4: given every five twenty seven committee, which is a super
Speaker 4: pac or a C four committee a lot more latitude
Speaker 4: to coordinate with and talk to campaigns. In the past,
Speaker 4: we had to keep a very careful delineation between what
Speaker 4: the super Pac new and the campaign new, and what
Speaker 4: the super Pac new and the C four new. Now,
Speaker 4: that's all kind of a muddle. But him coming out
Speaker 4: and saying I run it, it's my money, wow, is
Speaker 4: astounding to me. Yeah. And you know, I think people
Speaker 4: forget where that money came from. It's crypto, yeah, it's
Speaker 4: Wall Street, specifically private equity, part of the private equity
Speaker 4: chunk of Wall Street. It's oil and gas.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And it's an ideological cluster of the you know, uh
Speaker 4: Aightolson money, you line money, all the money, what's that?
Speaker 2: And AI?
Speaker 4: Yeah? And right and then right and finally from the
Speaker 4: tech bro sector. A ginormous wave of money from both
Speaker 4: the AI part of it and the data center construction
Speaker 4: part of it. All of that has flooded the zone
Speaker 4: for Trump. That's why he has It's not actually eight
Speaker 4: hundred million dolls, it's a little less than that, but
Speaker 4: he's got an awful lot of money sitting on a pile.
Speaker 4: And Trump is like Smog the dragon in the in
Speaker 4: Tolkien's Hobbit, right, He's going to lay on top of
Speaker 4: that pile. He doesn't want anybody to get a single
Speaker 4: coin out of that. He's going to keep that frickin money.
Speaker 4: You know, we'll show we tried to help, but we're
Speaker 4: doing what it told them, and so so I had
Speaker 4: to keep them for NAT for something for my plane.
Speaker 1: But what I do think is relevant here is that
Speaker 1: Donald Trump also said another thing during that interview which
Speaker 1: I think is really important. He said, they're mad at Republicans,
Speaker 1: but not me.
Speaker 4: Right, they're mad at him too. He just doesn't think
Speaker 4: so he's wrong.
Speaker 1: They're madder at him than they are at Republicans. I mean,
Speaker 1: he's the one who did the teriffs.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they are mad at him. Is he is mistook.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about something that I want to throw
Speaker 1: the needle here, and I think.
Speaker 2: That you may disagree with me, so let's go.
Speaker 1: I think that this anti incumbent hostility, that this fury
Speaker 1: towards elected is not as ideological as a lot of
Speaker 1: people in news world are saying.
Speaker 4: Like, oh, Molly, I agree with you one hundred percent.
Speaker 4: This is it's not far woey normal.
Speaker 2: It's or versus normal.
Speaker 4: Right. It is reflective of an economy that is an
Speaker 4: equal opportunity destructive force for voters no matter what your
Speaker 4: ideology is and a lot of these Republican voters who
Speaker 4: are saying they're unhappy with their member. Part of that,
Speaker 4: in my view, is that they come from a universe
Speaker 4: where for years they've been conditioned to never ever criticize Trump,
Speaker 4: never be angry at Trump, always say Trump is right
Speaker 4: about everything, and it must be other people. It's the
Speaker 4: old Russian theory like, oh, the czar is good, but
Speaker 4: his boy ares his advisors are terrible. No, No, it's him.
Speaker 4: So Democrats hate him. Republicans have peeled off from him
Speaker 4: in some meaningful numbers, and Republicans hate the Republicans in
Speaker 4: a way that almost starts to rival the way Democrats
Speaker 4: hate other Democrats.
Speaker 1: And I think that's where you get to Michigan. So
Speaker 1: let's have two secs on Michigan. I think the candidate again,
Speaker 1: I think candidate quality plays a.
Speaker 2: Bigger role in that race than you think. Then people are.
Speaker 4: Talking hugely, So why Mike Rogers. Mike Rogers first off,
Speaker 4: so everyone's clear, he does not live in Michigan. He
Speaker 4: lives in Naples, Florida, in a multimillion dollar house in Naples, Florida.
Speaker 2: But they he recorded his.
Speaker 4: Last campaign video from a house in Naples, Florida.
Speaker 2: They keep letting him watching paint Drop. He's run for
Speaker 2: like Michigan.
Speaker 4: He runs. Tommy Tarberville is in Florida too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, go on.
Speaker 4: But Mike Rodgers is dull as dirt and he even
Speaker 4: he doesn't have that like weird ideological heat that some
Speaker 4: of the more talented MAGA candidates can bring. Okay, it's
Speaker 4: going to be real hard for Mike Rodgers to sustain
Speaker 4: calling Al Sayet a commie Muslim terrorist over and over again,
Speaker 4: whether you thought say Ed was a was too liberal
Speaker 4: or to DSA or whatever. He has the talent, he
Speaker 4: has the gift. He's a good communicator, he's a fast thinker,
Speaker 4: he's good on his feet, he's funny, he's self deprecating,
Speaker 4: he connects with people. None of that is present in
Speaker 4: Mike Rogers. And I got to tell you, I think
Speaker 4: the the incumbency factor. You know, oh we know Mike Rogers.
Speaker 4: He's been around, he's been a member of this and
Speaker 4: that I think that's much worth much less than it
Speaker 4: would have been five years ago, and certainly ten years.
Speaker 1: And I'm certainly doing an anti incumbent wave.
Speaker 4: That's exactly where I said him. I thank you, because
Speaker 4: that's exactly what I was about to saying. Is And
Speaker 4: in a year where people are sick of the of
Speaker 4: the old guard and the establishment in both parties, you
Speaker 4: got a guy who can communicate, who can walk, talk,
Speaker 4: and and spit fire. That's a superpower in this environment.
Speaker 1: I also think Mike Rogers keeps running for things and losing,
Speaker 1: and so.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he is a multi time, three time loser. Now
Speaker 4: that's the question. You go back to that question about
Speaker 4: Trumps superpack, which has got the biggest load of all
Speaker 4: Republican money right now, Are they going to go to
Speaker 4: Michigan and spend fifty million dollars on a so so candidate.
Speaker 4: It's the reason they haven't helped Paxton in Texas so far,
Speaker 4: because Paxton turns out to be a shit candidate, unbelieved,
Speaker 4: but he's got a real opponent. Yeah, I mean they
Speaker 4: they haven't spent a dollar on Ken Paxton. They won't
Speaker 4: spend the money there Ken that and I think you're
Speaker 4: going to find that with Rogers too. They're going to say, Eh,
Speaker 4: this guy's not great, he's dull, he doesn't have any
Speaker 4: any real fire, he's not connecting with people. If they
Speaker 4: were going to be spending that eight hundred million dollars,
Speaker 4: they would be doing it already. Early money means more
Speaker 4: than late money in our political world.
Speaker 1: So I also think like Paston has fought so hard
Speaker 1: for this nomination, and now that he's gone it, he
Speaker 1: just wants to go to Europe with his girlfriend.
Speaker 4: Hey, you know what, or to manage his portfolio of
Speaker 4: multimillion dollar homes that he somehow was able to afford
Speaker 4: on a government salary. It's a mystery to me. I mean,
Speaker 4: who among us doesn't have fifteen homes in places like
Speaker 4: Aspen and Hawaii on a government salary.
Speaker 1: Rick Wilson, Molly Jong Fast, will you come back?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 4: Consider it.
Speaker 1: Daniel Biss is the Democratic nominee for Illinois's ninth district
Speaker 1: and the former mayor of Evanston. Welcome, Welcome, Daniel Biss.
Speaker 1: So I'm just going to set this up for a minute,
Speaker 1: because you won your primary in Illinois.
Speaker 2: Is what district is it?
Speaker 5: Ninth district?
Speaker 1: Ninth district?
Speaker 5: The fact everyone cares about a lot district number people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you don't want to get that district number wrong.
Speaker 1: Ninth district. Your primary was in March. So that's ten
Speaker 1: thousand years ago, and you are now going to run
Speaker 1: in a it's a D plus.
Speaker 5: What it's like twenty five? Okay, considered a safe district
Speaker 5: I take nothing for granted, but considered to be a.
Speaker 1: Safe But the reason why I wanted to have you
Speaker 1: on is not because you need to raise money or sorry,
Speaker 1: or because you have this type Republican challenger who is
Speaker 1: fort by scandal, but because you and I are both Jewish,
Speaker 1: and you and I are both both struggle with how
Speaker 1: to relate to Israel at this moment, and you have
Speaker 1: really brilliantly talked about your relationship as both a liberal Jew,
Speaker 1: as a liberal Jew, to Israel as it is at
Speaker 1: this moment. And I would love you first to talk
Speaker 1: about your familial history with Israel, because I think it's
Speaker 1: really important and it speaks to a lot of our
Speaker 1: familial histories with Israel, and then to talk about where
Speaker 1: you are in your journey of sort of trying to
Speaker 1: make sense of your relationship with the Jewish date.
Speaker 5: Yeah, thank you. My tendency is going to be to
Speaker 5: talk for ten million years now, so you just come
Speaker 5: me off and redirect when it's time. But as you said,
Speaker 5: I'm Jewish. My grandparents on my mom's side survived the Holocaust.
Speaker 5: My grandmother survived Auschwitz. They came back to the Transylvanian
Speaker 5: town where they were both born. After liberation. My mom's
Speaker 5: born in forty six and forty eight, the three of
Speaker 5: them go to Israel, and by the end of the fifties,
Speaker 5: my whole extended family on that side is in Israel.
Speaker 5: My mom then comes to America in the sixties, studies,
Speaker 5: falls in love, gets married, stays here. But basically my
Speaker 5: whole extended family on my mother's side is there. My
Speaker 5: mother's still a dual citizen. I grew up going there
Speaker 5: every summer. My first cousin, while pregnant, went back into
Speaker 5: reserve duty after October seventh. It gets the connection there
Speaker 5: is very is, very deep. But you know, the conduct
Speaker 5: of this Israeli government, not just in the last couple
Speaker 5: of years Vasa though that's particularly disgusting, but for decades
Speaker 5: it's been completely offensive to any progressive person values. It's
Speaker 5: been anguishing to watch, it's horrifying. And you know, for
Speaker 5: a very long time in American politics, there was like
Speaker 5: a party line, a super narrow party line that was basically,
Speaker 5: you know, you can sort of criticize them, you know
Speaker 5: a name, let's say, but you can't actually support any
Speaker 5: policies that will do anything about it. Right, Like the
Speaker 5: US policy was like, hey, we might be mad at you, Nata, Yahoo,
Speaker 5: but we're not going to actually change our military funding
Speaker 5: or other aspects of our foreign policy in response to
Speaker 5: our our anger. And I just I launched a campaign
Speaker 5: for Congress last May, so I guess a year and
Speaker 5: a quarter ago now, and I just couldn't do it.
Speaker 5: I was not gonna say I'm front restricted military aid
Speaker 5: to continue to drop in bombs on children in Gaza
Speaker 5: to support a military effort that was using starvation as
Speaker 5: a weapon of war, and that because I wasn't willing
Speaker 5: to do that, because I took a position against transferring
Speaker 5: up pensive weapons for recognizing the Palestinian state, which nowadays
Speaker 5: recording this in August of twenty twenty six, that sounds
Speaker 5: incredibly timid, But in August of twenty twenty five, that
Speaker 5: was like some kind of piratical position that basically focused
Speaker 5: the campaign on its issue. And APAC got in the
Speaker 5: race and spent millions and millions and so forth, and
Speaker 5: it became the focal point.
Speaker 1: You went to a pac and you said, look, tell
Speaker 1: us sort of what your back and forth with Apak was,
Speaker 1: because they got very involved in this race.
Speaker 5: Explained, Yeah, so the first thing to understand is this
Speaker 5: was like a juicy target for them, because this is
Speaker 5: there's a twenty eight year incumbent who they didn't love, right,
Speaker 5: who had been pretty critical. Her name is jan chakaws Keep.
Speaker 5: She's a progressive. She had been critical of Israel and
Speaker 5: supportive of changing US as a relationship, and so they
Speaker 5: didn't love her.
Speaker 2: And this is seed that Chicago, basically the North.
Speaker 5: Side of Chicago and a bunch of suburbs. It was
Speaker 5: like half and half Chicago and suburb and it's a
Speaker 5: it's a heavily Jewish district, and really the Jewish community
Speaker 5: itself was super diverse. There's Orthodox Jews, there's you know,
Speaker 5: reform Jews, reconstructions, progressive all over the map. And I
Speaker 5: think they felt like this was like basically a pick
Speaker 5: up opportunity the same way that Democrats might want to
Speaker 5: be a Republican. They wanted to beat someone who was
Speaker 5: willing to, you know, to stand up to Nao. You know,
Speaker 5: the conventional wisdom back then was basically like, listen, if
Speaker 5: they come for you, it's going to be millions of dollars,
Speaker 5: They're going to crush you.
Speaker 4: It's over.
Speaker 5: And so my first line of approach was listen, guys,
Speaker 5: just stay out. Here's you know, we're talking about on everything.
Speaker 5: But we can have open conversations. This is not a
Speaker 5: good idea, it's not good for the world, not good
Speaker 5: for the Jews, you know, for you guys to be
Speaker 5: in this. And we had back and forth in a
Speaker 5: series of conversations and fundamentally became clear that the red
Speaker 5: line for them was unrestricted military aid. That if I
Speaker 5: was willing to say no strings attached military aid, they
Speaker 5: would back off. And the simple thing is I couldn't.
Speaker 5: I just was not going to be that guy.
Speaker 1: And I want to point out here what I think
Speaker 1: is so important, which is you come from a family
Speaker 1: of Holocaust survivors who were given the purpose of Israel, right, Like,
Speaker 1: the purpose of Israel was to be a safe place
Speaker 1: after a genocide, and your family used it for that.
Speaker 1: And like, if there ever were a person who understands
Speaker 1: the importance of a Jewish state who came to Israel
Speaker 1: after the Holocaust, who had a mother, you know, like
Speaker 1: there are a few examples better of like you know,
Speaker 1: someone who understands the point the purpose of Israel than you.
Speaker 1: So I just want to point that out before. Is
Speaker 1: that fair?
Speaker 5: Can I just? I think I obviously agree and like
Speaker 5: I feel it very much in my bones. And I
Speaker 5: think that's exactly why they saw me as dangerous, right,
Speaker 5: because their move is if you criticize the Israeli government,
Speaker 5: if you try to do something about the Israeli government's conduct,
Speaker 5: they want to caricterature you, and they want to make you,
Speaker 5: you know, opposed to the entire concept of Israel, and
Speaker 5: if at all possible, they'll call your antimony right. And
Speaker 5: they just couldn't do that with me. You know, they
Speaker 5: can disagree with me on policy, but it's very very
Speaker 5: obvious that the positions I'm taking come from a position
Speaker 5: of understanding the importance and value of the Jewish democratic
Speaker 5: state and wanting it to not only succeed and thrive
Speaker 5: and be secure, but do it NOI that's consistent with
Speaker 5: Jewish values, Yeah, right, Like I don't view the project
Speaker 5: of oh, we have to have a Jewish democratic state,
Speaker 5: that's the safe havor for the Jewish people, and oh,
Speaker 5: it's got to conduct itself with humanity and dignity, and
Speaker 5: there needs to be equal self determination and justice for
Speaker 5: the Palestinian people. As conflicting projects, they're the same project,
Speaker 5: and they're the project that I think reflects the Jewish
Speaker 5: values that I actually find most compelling and beautiful.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I grew up as a Unitarian, but I raised my
Speaker 1: kids as reform Jews, and like, there is no part
Speaker 1: of reform Judaism that has like a cutout for genocide,
Speaker 1: you know, or it has no cutout for bombing children,
Speaker 1: Like that's not how it goes.
Speaker 5: Or oppression, right, is this this oppression, the removal of rites,
Speaker 5: the ethnical whatever you whatever aspect of it most personally
Speaker 5: offends you. It's all just completely counter the values that
Speaker 5: I was taught as a Jewish kid in Syenegogue.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you really are someone who has the best interest
Speaker 1: of the State of Israel at heart, right, because you
Speaker 1: understand it's important and you have family there and you
Speaker 1: really get why it needs to exist. So you say
Speaker 1: this to them and they basically say why.
Speaker 5: Basically they say, you haven't given us the assurances that
Speaker 5: we need to hear. And you know, I mean, these
Speaker 5: conversations are all a little bit kabooky ask and you
Speaker 5: know it's but basically they are. They make clear in
Speaker 5: a variety of ways that if you can't tell us
Speaker 5: no strengths attached military aid, we will destroy you. And
Speaker 5: at that point I published it's almost exactly a year ago,
Speaker 5: was August of last year. I published a little thing
Speaker 5: on my sub sect that basically explained some of my positions,
Speaker 5: including ending transfer of offensive weapons and recognizing the Palestinian state,
Speaker 5: which again it sounds so tame nowadays, but that was
Speaker 5: enough to that was like the sort of we're cutting
Speaker 5: the cord. We're not going to try to figure out
Speaker 5: if there's a way to keep them out. We're just
Speaker 5: gonna I'm just gonna be as direct as possible with
Speaker 5: the public so that nobody could possibly accuse me of
Speaker 5: saying different things to different constituencies. And I'd rather not
Speaker 5: go to Congress as me than yes, go to Congress
Speaker 5: as somebody else. And the thought was at the time,
Speaker 5: this means that they're going to spend millions and millions
Speaker 5: and millions, which they did, and that probably kind of
Speaker 5: ends it, which fortunately didn't.
Speaker 1: So tell us about your race because the ultimately it
Speaker 1: really backfired in a sort of spectacular way.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it was wild. I mean, first of all, our
Speaker 5: race was a whole thing fifteen candidates, so we had
Speaker 5: one of everybody, but the candidate who they supported wound
Speaker 5: up coming in a relatively distant third. And what we
Speaker 5: did was we just made a pack the issue. Right, So,
Speaker 5: the way I thought about this was life, Listen, they're
Speaker 5: going to be spending millions of dollars. There's going to
Speaker 5: be a trillion TV ads running about this candidate's great
Speaker 5: and Daniel sucks, and there were, And so people who
Speaker 5: are just kind of like channel surfing and getting their
Speaker 5: information in that way are just not going to be
Speaker 5: for me. So we have to focus the conversation and
Speaker 5: explain what's really going on. And so we we made
Speaker 5: a a pack the issue. We ran TV it's about it,
Speaker 5: We sent mailers about it. I talked about it constantly,
Speaker 5: We sent I think in February we sent over twenty
Speaker 5: press releases about a pack, like almost as many days
Speaker 5: as there are. The goal is to say, listen, right now,
Speaker 5: you're probably seeing a blitz of advertising coming at you
Speaker 5: about how great this one person is and how much
Speaker 5: I stink, Well, you have to understand if it's coming
Speaker 5: because APAC and Trump donors are paying for it, that
Speaker 5: they're doing that because they want somebody in Congress who's
Speaker 5: going to support no strings attached military aid to Israel.
Speaker 5: And by the way, they're so embarrassed about all this
Speaker 5: that they're aligning to you about it. Yeah, they're trying
Speaker 5: to hide it. They created these shell organizations with these
Speaker 5: nine names to try to basically lie to the public
Speaker 5: about who was paying for the messages they were getting.
Speaker 5: And you know, we were successful enough in elevating that story,
Speaker 5: so eventually, I think the money started to backfire because
Speaker 5: every ad is reminding people who was from Right.
Speaker 1: After the Trump election, you had this special, this judicial
Speaker 1: election in Wisconsin where Elon musk came in, wore a
Speaker 1: cheese hat, spent million and I think you spend one
Speaker 1: hundred million. It's some crazy number.
Speaker 5: I think you say the thing about Elon Musklin the
Speaker 5: chiefs that long more time. I just really like listening
Speaker 5: to that.
Speaker 1: It was like, but it was a great example of
Speaker 1: how if voters know that they're being manipulated, that their
Speaker 1: money is trying to make something that isn't real.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, there's here's also the way that I
Speaker 5: think about this, you know, I mean, and often people
Speaker 5: will ask, like, why is somebody why are the presidential
Speaker 5: candidates running all these TV ads? What voter needs to
Speaker 5: see that to choose between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.
Speaker 5: And most people don't need that right for a presidential race.
Speaker 5: They just they know they've made up their mind. It's
Speaker 5: obvious they've got way more information than they need. But
Speaker 5: if you put yourself on the shoes, I mean, where
Speaker 5: I live in Illinois, we vote for like a billion
Speaker 5: different judges. We vote for the water commissioner and the
Speaker 5: community college board. And I'll be honest, I'm a professional politician,
Speaker 5: but sometimes I go vote and I'm like, oh shit, Like,
Speaker 5: who am I supposed to vote for this judicial vacancy?
Speaker 5: I can't remember. I've met them both. They seem nice.
Speaker 5: I don't know. And so almost every voter, including the
Speaker 5: most knowledgeable ones, will get to a point on the
Speaker 5: ballot where they're just like, I don't really exactly know
Speaker 5: the difference. And in that situation where you become a
Speaker 5: low information voter, as all of us are, sometimes this
Speaker 5: ad or that mailer can make the determination and the
Speaker 5: magic trick that you can do that Elon Musk and
Speaker 5: his cheese hat did, and that frankly we were able
Speaker 5: to do by making this race about Apex is to
Speaker 5: take a race that might be sort of low information,
Speaker 5: a race where the candidates might all sort of feel
Speaker 5: roughly the same to a lot of voters, and like
Speaker 5: snap it into a position where wait a second, this
Speaker 5: connects to something I care about, This matters, and all
Speaker 5: of a sudden, I'm an immovable voter and you could
Speaker 5: spend fifty trillion dollars and it still wouldn't change my
Speaker 5: opinion because I know who I'm voting for, just like
Speaker 5: Mollie john Fast is not going to vote for Donald
Speaker 5: Trump no matter how many ads she sees.
Speaker 1: No. It's I think that's a really good point. But
Speaker 1: it does come back to I just want to talk
Speaker 1: about because one of the things that we're about to
Speaker 1: go into an election cite go where Elon Musk is
Speaker 1: is going to donate at least one hundred million dollars
Speaker 1: for people like Susan Collins and Ken Paxton and Dan Sullivan,
Speaker 1: and you know, there are all these really mediocre Republicans
Speaker 1: and candidates who are about to get an infusion of cash.
Speaker 1: I want you to say a little more about sort
Speaker 1: of how you think you guys did it in that way.
Speaker 5: I think the fundamental thing we did was we told
Speaker 5: a story that people cared about, right the story. And
Speaker 5: I'm not saying that our story would work in every electorate,
Speaker 5: every district, but in our district, the idea of Apack
Speaker 5: and Donald Trump. Donors are trying to buy this to
Speaker 5: make sure that who represents you in Congress is going
Speaker 5: to send no strings attached money to bbings out but
Speaker 5: bomb as many kids as he wants to bomb. And
Speaker 5: by the way they're lying to about it, they're trying
Speaker 5: to trick you. That got people. And I think the
Speaker 5: fundamental question, particularly in modern politics where we're in this
Speaker 5: crazy attentional environment, is yes, the money matters, Yes, the
Speaker 5: repetition matters. I don't pretend for a second that all
Speaker 5: that stuff is irrelevant, But you've got to use the
Speaker 5: money to tell a story that really gets in people's
Speaker 5: heads and sticks with them because it connects to something
Speaker 5: they vicessarily feel and care about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's really true, and I also think
Speaker 1: it's funny because democratic voters have shifted so much on Israel.
Speaker 1: And again, it's not Israel, right, It's this state of
Speaker 1: giving unconditional money.
Speaker 5: For a war.
Speaker 1: It's also just this kind of you know, if you're
Speaker 1: going to run on America first and then you're going
Speaker 1: to get involved in foreign wars, you know, with the
Speaker 1: president who was trying to stay out of jail. I'm
Speaker 1: talking about nan Yavu Nikhi and not Trump.
Speaker 5: Sometimes it's hard to know the difference, honic, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's really what it is, is we're signing
Speaker 1: a blind check for someone who does not represent our
Speaker 1: values in any which way, for sure.
Speaker 5: And I also think, you know, it's interesting some of
Speaker 5: the more right wing defenders of Israel are always like,
Speaker 5: is there so much attention? Why are we so worked up?
Speaker 5: Why are people spending so much time talking about just
Speaker 5: this one country? And there is some legitimacy to that
Speaker 5: point in some context, but also our relationship with them,
Speaker 5: the American relationship with Israel's unlike any other relationship. Right.
Speaker 5: They're a wealthy country with the developed economy where we're
Speaker 5: sending billions of dollars a year of direct financial military aid.
Speaker 5: That's not normal, right, And so it freaks people out.
Speaker 5: The other thing I would say about this is because
Speaker 5: the conversation was so neuro so kind of cookie cutter.
Speaker 5: Every American politicians says the exact same thing on this
Speaker 5: for years and years and years, right, And now that
Speaker 5: that's been kind of blown up, we're kind of in
Speaker 5: this all bets are off situation, and I think that's
Speaker 5: it's much more politically interesting. People are trying to figure out,
Speaker 5: Wait a second, what is the right position on Israel?
Speaker 5: Is it is it a kind of a different vision
Speaker 5: of Israel as a Jewish democratic, but human and justus state.
Speaker 5: Is it one state solution where everybody in the region
Speaker 5: is part of a single lowercase D democratic place and
Speaker 5: they all have rights confermed in a different manner. These
Speaker 5: are these are live questions that the American political system
Speaker 5: is wrestling with, and when that happens, it becomes interesting
Speaker 5: for the kind of people who care about the issue.
Speaker 1: It's funny because it's like we are in this insane
Speaker 1: moment in American politics. And as a liberal Jew, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, the most fraught part for me has been
Speaker 1: that my kids and again I mean I try to
Speaker 1: advert to talk about them, but like they have felt
Speaker 1: very uncomfortable in reformed Judaism because there is this very
Speaker 1: right wing political issue that has been put in to
Speaker 1: religion in a way that has like it's harmed both Jews, Judaism,
Speaker 1: and the state of Israel.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, I've seen some more progressive and reform
Speaker 5: synagogues here in my community struggle with this in really
Speaker 5: beautiful ways and build build solidarity and bridges around basic
Speaker 5: principles and Jewish values and then not jump to and
Speaker 5: here's our exact policy prescription. But it's tough, and you know,
Speaker 5: I think there's this giant and I mean, we can
Speaker 5: get I don't know how much of your audience is
Speaker 5: super interested in the internal, you know, politics of the
Speaker 5: Jewish community. But look the so called organized Jewish community,
Speaker 5: the acronym alphabet soup of organizations that largely purport to
Speaker 5: speak for the Jewish people. They speak for a slice,
Speaker 5: and that is a more right wing slice than where
Speaker 5: I sit, where most of my Jewish friends sit, where
Speaker 5: most young Jews sit. And if we can't have a
Speaker 5: world where the policy is that your kids, hey for
Speaker 5: justin humanitarian reasons, are welcomed in the Jewish community, then like,
Speaker 5: what are we doing? What are we doing?
Speaker 1: Daniel, Thank you so much for joining us, Thanks.
Speaker 5: So much for having me. I love the conversation.
Speaker 2: No moment, Jesse Cannon.
Speaker 3: So when we thought about pollution, you know, we were
Speaker 3: thinking like, oh, we'll get rid of Cole and you know,
Speaker 3: maybe things will start to trend the right way. And
Speaker 3: then we met data centers and then I read this headline,
Speaker 3: Amazon is creating the biggest pollution source in the entire country.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so here it is.
Speaker 1: Amazon is quietly trying to not just mister wonderful, that
Speaker 1: should be the headline. You know, mister wonderful is trying
Speaker 1: to build a huge Canadian Dubai. You know, the Canadian
Speaker 1: who lives in Dubai, mister wonderful, and I think live
Speaker 1: should be in quote. That guy is trying to build
Speaker 1: a data center in Utah and accusing anyone who's trying
Speaker 1: to stop him of being a Chinese. Well, Amazon is
Speaker 1: quietly trying to build a site in Texas where plans
Speaker 1: to build a data center campus. Okay, so this is Texas.
Speaker 1: It's going to have a gas powered plant that will
Speaker 1: be completely separate from Texas is already failing power grid
Speaker 1: though Texas is power grid, a lot of it is
Speaker 1: on solar, so some of it doesn't fail. The site,
Speaker 1: known as GW Ranch, there's nothing ranchy about it, will
Speaker 1: be allowed to produce power to admit thirty three million
Speaker 1: tons of carbon dioxide, which would make it the biggest
Speaker 1: polluting site in the US, emitting more than the country's
Speaker 1: biggest coal power plant. This will be a sharp contrast
Speaker 1: to Amazon's commitment to reach net zero emissions.
Speaker 2: By twenty forty.
Speaker 1: It feels like they're not going along with their part
Speaker 1: on the Climate Pledge. Yes, who could have seen that
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos would to be such a disappointment Probably anyone
Speaker 1: who was paying attention.
Speaker 2: That's it for.
Speaker 1: This episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday,
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