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 Minority Leader Jeffries and Senator
Speaker 1: Booker have begun a sit in protest on the capital steps.
Speaker 1: We have such a great show for you today to
Speaker 1: the Contrary Newsletter author Charlie Seike stops by to talk
Speaker 1: about Trump's first one hundred days changing America. Then we'll
Speaker 1: talk to the Up and Up founder Rachel Jafonza about
Speaker 1: the divide in gen Z voting and the complicated landscape
Speaker 1: of their support and criticism of Trump. But first the news.
Speaker 2: My mister Trump makes big claims about deals. He loves deals,
Speaker 2: and he claims he's made two hundred deals on tariffs,
Speaker 2: but his cabinet members can't name a single one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yet another moment of scott Essen embarrassing himself for Trump.
Speaker 1: Both scott Essen and Agriculture Secretary of Brook Rollins were
Speaker 1: asked what these trade agreements were, What these trade deals were.
Speaker 1: You'll remember that Peter Navarro said during this ninety day
Speaker 1: pause he would make ninety trade deals. Guess how many
Speaker 1: trade deals he's made? Not ninety? In fact, they announced
Speaker 1: they were doing one with Japan, and then Japan said no,
Speaker 1: they weren't. They announced they were doing one with India.
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe not, we don't know. But you know, we
Speaker 1: don't have ninety of them. We don't even have twenty
Speaker 1: of them, and we certainly don't have two hundred of them.
Speaker 1: So watching yet another member of Trump's administration try to
Speaker 1: defend what is clearly a mistruth, an alternative fact.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, fake news. So DOGE is claiming it saved
Speaker 2: one hundred and sixty billion dollars in the wall receipts.
Speaker 2: But those cuts of cost taxpayers one hundred and thirty
Speaker 2: five billion, one analysis says.
Speaker 1: So they're tallying the costs for federal employees placed on leave, rehired,
Speaker 1: mistakenly fired federal employees, and lost productivity. So you'll remember
Speaker 1: that Doage went in and it fired many people, including
Speaker 1: like people like the remember when they fired all the
Speaker 1: air traffic controllers. They sent that email, the form email
Speaker 1: that was like what do you even do here? And
Speaker 1: then they had to rehire a lot of people. My favorite, though,
Speaker 1: is still his say five things you did this week? Email?
Speaker 1: Remember that? And then some people were told they couldn't
Speaker 1: respond because you know, if you're in the State Department
Speaker 1: slash CIA, you're really not supposed to send an email
Speaker 1: saying the five things you did.
Speaker 2: Me say these five classified fact Well, espionage cross borders
Speaker 2: things like that.
Speaker 1: Even if you're like working on a sort of prosecutorial
Speaker 1: thing and you you know, you're talking about cases or
Speaker 1: things that are sensitive or that you know, and you're
Speaker 1: putting that in a mass email to a guy called
Speaker 1: big Balls, who's going to maybe read it. They said, well,
Speaker 1: it's going to get read by AI. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: a lot to support that this is all completely insane.
Speaker 1: So Doe turns out the savings is greatly reduced by
Speaker 1: the fact that it's so expensive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm so shocked to hear that this incompetent loser
Speaker 2: messed something up. Anyway, I got a question from a
Speaker 2: friend this week. He said, who is the person who's
Speaker 2: the most crazed and Trump's administration? I said, are we
Speaker 2: just qualifying Trump? And I how is forced to stay
Speaker 2: Stephen Miller And this quote right here, it kind of
Speaker 2: is evidence of my theory.
Speaker 1: Stephen Miller unveils bizarre new attack on birthright citizenship. They
Speaker 1: really hate birth right citizenship. They really want to get
Speaker 1: rid of it. It's going to the Supreme Court. This
Speaker 1: is not the brain child of Steven Miller. This is
Speaker 1: like one of these conservative cooked up in a sea
Speaker 1: pack like thought community experiment. So here's the quote, though,
Speaker 1: the biggest financial ripoff of Americans in history, not to
Speaker 1: mention the fact that it is one magnet for I
Speaker 1: legal immigration and invasion. So his idea is that people
Speaker 1: come to this country have children so that they can
Speaker 1: get whatever the little bit of money you get for
Speaker 1: having children who are citizens. I mean, the whole idea
Speaker 1: here is like I mean, I just want to pull
Speaker 1: back for a second and talk about immigration, because part
Speaker 1: of what we've benefited from so much in the last
Speaker 1: couple of years, and the underlying efficiency of our market,
Speaker 1: has been that we have had a lot of immigrants
Speaker 1: because they have provided labor and a tight labor market.
Speaker 1: We are getting many fewer immigrants now because people don't
Speaker 1: want to come here. There are these horror stories of
Speaker 1: the French scientists where the ice agents read her phone
Speaker 1: and they detain her, you know, all sorts of stories
Speaker 1: like that, you know, And then we also have this
Speaker 1: weird power struggle with Canada, where there's a lot of
Speaker 1: people are not coming here, they don't want to move here,
Speaker 1: they don't even necessarily want to visit he or in fact,
Speaker 1: are the numbers on our tourism are way way way down.
Speaker 2: I was talking to restaurant employees this week at places
Speaker 2: that like a lot of tourists travel to, and they're like,
Speaker 2: we are dying.
Speaker 1: Yes, So tourism, immigration, all this stuff helps the economy.
Speaker 1: I think it's pretty interesting Steven Miller is still attacking immigrants. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: there was an article in the New York Times this
Speaker 1: weekend about how the Trump administration is trying to get
Speaker 1: people have babies, but they don't want to have babies
Speaker 1: because you know, and this has been something that's been
Speaker 1: going on for decades. In a decades, more people realize
Speaker 1: how expensive it is to have children, and because housing
Speaker 1: is so unaffordable and lifestyle is so unaffordable, they don't
Speaker 1: want to have more kids, or any kids. The way
Speaker 1: to fix this is to build out headstart right, spend
Speaker 1: more money on public education, public health, more like a
Speaker 1: public option for healthcare. So these are all things that
Speaker 1: run completely contrary to what Republicans want to do, so
Speaker 1: they're saying, like, how about we pay you five thousand
Speaker 1: dollars of a baby. So that's where we are right now.
Speaker 2: Speaking of where we are right now, if we head
Speaker 2: down to Florida, which I'm glad we're not in right now,
Speaker 2: we have some serious political chaos going on as Ron
Speaker 2: and Casey Disantis seem to have really dropped the ball
Speaker 2: on their political future.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really sad.
Speaker 2: I would like to point out, I'm crying.
Speaker 1: The political future was largely speculative. Casey DeSantis, There's long
Speaker 1: been talk that she would run for governor. I think
Speaker 1: a lot of that talk was maybe spun by her.
Speaker 2: I think that's what many people say right that.
Speaker 1: She was some kind of powerhouse. The Democratic Party in Florida,
Speaker 1: as we have heard many times on this podcast from
Speaker 1: Rick Wilson, has really imploded, and so Republicans have had
Speaker 1: a real opening here and a lot of Republicans have
Speaker 1: moved to Florida for the lower tax base and because
Speaker 1: it's got a very maga like a static right now.
Speaker 1: But this scandal, again, if they were Trumpers, I don't
Speaker 1: know that this scandal would weigh them down the same way.
Speaker 1: But it's a funding scandal involving her signature initiative a
Speaker 1: state assistant program known as Hope Florida, which you'll be
Speaker 1: shocked to know that ten million dollars from a state
Speaker 1: Medicare sentiment settlement was routed to a charity connected with
Speaker 1: Hope Florida. Now everyone knows, you're only allowed to do
Speaker 1: Medicare fraud if you're running for Senate in Florida.
Speaker 2: I was going to say say, if your name is
Speaker 2: Rick Scott, if.
Speaker 1: You're running for Senate, that's fine, But if you're running
Speaker 1: for governor, not allowed to do.
Speaker 2: Medica fron Technically he was governor after that.
Speaker 1: Right, It's true he was governor, but then he was
Speaker 1: running for Salon and that was open. But the couple
Speaker 1: have stood by their work fiercely and denied any wrongdoing
Speaker 1: as long as they denied it obviously and lobbyist because
Speaker 1: why wouldn't they. So we'll see if they get through this. Look,
Speaker 1: Ron DeSantis did run against Trump, and you know, maybe
Speaker 1: this is it. Maybe this is the blow we'll say.
Speaker 1: Charlie Sykes is the author of the To the Contrary
Speaker 1: newsletter and the book How the Right Lost His Mind
Speaker 1: Welcome Back Too Fast? Politics, Charlie Sykes.
Speaker 3: Are we in one hundred days yet? Are we there yet?
Speaker 1: We're at a himer Is countings. Yeah, yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: one hundred years in dog years.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: I was looking at that, you know Aled Lennon quote,
Speaker 3: you know, sometimes decades happened in weeks, that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: Apparently it's one of those apocryphal quotes. But we know
Speaker 3: what he means, right, And we're coming to the end
Speaker 3: of this period. And I think some people are going
Speaker 3: to have a hard time hearing that Donald Trump is
Speaker 3: the most consequential president of the last century. It's not
Speaker 3: a positive thing to say, but it's true. I mean,
Speaker 3: this has been You do feel that the tectonic plates
Speaker 3: of democracy are shifting. The country's tested and will be
Speaker 3: changed one way or another by what Trump is doing
Speaker 3: and how we respond to it.
Speaker 1: So my friend, who's an academic, was saying, it's the
Speaker 1: end of the American century.
Speaker 3: Well, it may be, it may be. However, what's being
Speaker 3: tested is the resilience of the American idea. And I
Speaker 3: think for a few months people's heads have been down.
Speaker 3: There's been a sense that Okay, that's it.
Speaker 1: It was a good run.
Speaker 3: What was your best memory of the rule of law.
Speaker 3: That may be somewhat premature. One hundred days is a
Speaker 3: long time. Lots happened, But if you take a longer view,
Speaker 3: one hundred days is just one hundred days. And so
Speaker 3: some of these polls that are out, which I'm guessing
Speaker 3: Molly you've seen, would suggest that everything that Trump is
Speaker 3: selling is not necessarily being bought by the American people.
Speaker 1: Yes, but it's like in July. I'm going to bring
Speaker 1: you back to July, which is a million years ago.
Speaker 1: For that it is keeping drag at home. We said, well,
Speaker 1: Donald Trump is going to do Project twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: and everyone said no, no, no, he says he's not.
Speaker 1: But when we talked about Project twenty twenty five, when
Speaker 1: people looked at it, it was wildly unpopular, right because
Speaker 1: nobody wanted that. So now Trump is doing it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's doing it with a considerable amount of zeal
Speaker 3: and yes, people are finding out that maybe this is
Speaker 3: not that popular. Look, what's happened is that we sometimes
Speaker 3: confuse the Trump base with the electorate as a whole,
Speaker 3: and there's a maga base that frankly does not care
Speaker 3: what he does. He could aboord babies in the Oval
Speaker 3: office and they would not care. There's nothing he will do.
Speaker 3: But that is not the whole electorate. It's not even
Speaker 3: the whole Republican electorate. Who knows, you know how many
Speaker 3: people voted for Trump simply because they thought that they
Speaker 3: would be good for their four oh one k or
Speaker 3: that he would be the most pro business president ever,
Speaker 3: or because they were just sick of Democrats. And then
Speaker 3: suddenly they're confronted with the mad King who is intent
Speaker 3: on retribution, you know, defying courts, raising tariffs, trashing the economy,
Speaker 3: and yeah, maybe this is not what they signed up for.
Speaker 3: But again, we're going to have to see how that
Speaker 3: plays out. Because I look, as bad as the polls are,
Speaker 3: Republicans are still lined up behind him, and there's no
Speaker 3: indication that Republicans in Congress have any inclination to be
Speaker 3: anything more than pottered plants.
Speaker 5: Right, So you've.
Speaker 1: Opened the door to something I actually really wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about, think about, meditate on. So there is a
Speaker 1: number that Donald Trump gets to where he's as unpopular
Speaker 1: as he's you know, he's still got the magabase, But
Speaker 1: there is eventually a number if he gets to it
Speaker 1: Republicans who are up for reelection in a year and
Speaker 1: change are like, like, let's talk about Elon Musk. Well,
Speaker 1: let's go for Elon Musk for a minute. So Elon
Speaker 1: Musk came in. Everyone was excited. He got a special
Speaker 1: make America great hat. It turns out now he has,
Speaker 1: according to the Wall Street Journal, more than forty children,
Speaker 1: perhaps or a number closer to forty. He DMS women
Speaker 1: to send them sperm, and he is now, you know,
Speaker 1: and he spent thirty million dollars in judicial race in
Speaker 1: your state, lost, unpopular, wildly and popular now at least
Speaker 1: saying again, I don't know that you can trust what
Speaker 1: he's saying here, but saying that he's going to step.
Speaker 3: Back, well he can put more time to being father
Speaker 3: of his country, right I mean, or at least sperm
Speaker 3: donor to his country. Actually, I was thinking about that
Speaker 3: today as I was a drive around the east side
Speaker 3: of Milwaukee behind to Tesla, thinking about the change in
Speaker 3: fortune of Tesla ownership, but also the pivot point of
Speaker 3: the Wisconsin Supreme Court race. You know, if you really
Speaker 3: sort of trace it back, his complete face plant here
Speaker 3: in Wisconsin was really the beginning of his decline and
Speaker 3: his politically irrelevance. But again, Elon Musk is not Donald Trump,
Speaker 3: and so I don't know whether there's a number that
Speaker 3: Republicans in Congress will ever get to. However, I do
Speaker 3: think that it's now it's now easier to resist and
Speaker 3: push back against trump Ism when clearly he has not
Speaker 3: found some magic formula of power, this magic formula that
Speaker 3: the public has decided that it's fallen in love with everything,
Speaker 3: And can I make it? Can I confess something, Molly
Speaker 3: that I'm probably going to regret. I am really really
Speaker 3: bored of talking about when are Republicans going to do X?
Speaker 3: And I'm really bored talking about Democrats. I'm actually talking,
Speaker 3: really bored talking about both of them, because I think
Speaker 3: what's actually more important is what the rest of us do,
Speaker 3: the rest of civil society, you know, all the other institutions,
Speaker 3: and say it's the Look, it is not up to
Speaker 3: Chuck Schumer to save America. You know, it's upbout quite
Speaker 3: And I'm serious about this. It's you're talking about the
Speaker 3: private sector of the universities, the churches, the law firms,
Speaker 3: the courts, everyone else has to decide what it means
Speaker 3: to be an America. And it's something that I think
Speaker 3: because the challenge is so great, it actually transcends electoral politics.
Speaker 3: And so if anybody expects that congressional Republicans are going
Speaker 3: to figure out I mean, congressional Democrats are going to
Speaker 3: figure out some magic form, I may need to be
Speaker 3: much more aggressive. Don't get me wrong. I want to
Speaker 3: think more about what Americans out there in the actual
Speaker 3: real world who have to live in this society think
Speaker 3: about all this. What what do average Americans? What do judges?
Speaker 3: What do police officers think about? The mass deportations, the
Speaker 3: the you know, scoffing at court orders. Because I think
Speaker 3: that's the challenges. Well, and if Americans say, you know what,
Speaker 3: this is not what we want from America, I think
Speaker 3: the electoral politics flows from that. And so I don't
Speaker 3: think the answer is going to come from Washington. I'm
Speaker 3: not saying that there's not a lot of responsibility. I'm
Speaker 3: just you know, we keep saying, well, win, are Democrats
Speaker 3: going to do this?
Speaker 4: Win?
Speaker 3: Are Democrats going to do that? I'm want to win.
Speaker 3: Are the American people going to do something?
Speaker 1: Yeah? It's really relevant, certainly, but it is easier to
Speaker 1: push back against things I mean, if you look back
Speaker 1: at Trump one point, how the thing that prevented a
Speaker 1: lot of this stuff from happening was corporations people. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, there was a certain sort of combination of
Speaker 1: factors that what we see in this time is a
Speaker 1: lot of corporations are all over, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: because they thought it was better for business or whatever.
Speaker 1: But what they've seen is that none of this is popular.
Speaker 1: Like it wasn't popular the first time, it's not popular
Speaker 1: the second time, which there's a reason that very famous
Speaker 1: people try to stay out of politics. And it is
Speaker 1: like what happened to Elon Mosk right right.
Speaker 3: Quite frankly, yes, you're right, it's not popular. But I
Speaker 3: don't care whether it's popular or not. I mean, this
Speaker 3: country was actually founded on the principle that there are
Speaker 3: certain fundamentally inalienable rights, and whether it's popular to illegally
Speaker 3: rendition someone to All Salvadory or not is really kind
Speaker 3: of a secondary point. But I think that what's happening
Speaker 3: is is that that's settling in. I'm hoping that we
Speaker 3: can sort of get back to first principles here is
Speaker 3: that people look around and go, Okay, this actually is
Speaker 3: dangerous this offense are innate sense of fairness and that
Speaker 3: he's violating all of that. So I think also there
Speaker 3: was and I'm glad you brought up the project twenty
Speaker 3: twenty five because no one should really have been that
Speaker 3: surprised by what Trump was going to do. Trump's campaign
Speaker 3: was Trump in full. He made it very very clear
Speaker 3: who he was, what he was, what he was going
Speaker 3: to do. And you and I and others spent months
Speaker 3: hair on fire saying, do you know how bad this
Speaker 3: is going to be? You know what he's going to do.
Speaker 3: It's not going to be like Trump point zero. And
Speaker 3: we were accused of being hysterical, we were accused of
Speaker 3: having Trump derangement syndrome. And then he comes in and
Speaker 3: does exactly what he said he was going to do.
Speaker 3: They wrote it in a book, and so a part
Speaker 3: of me is like, how could you possibly be surprised
Speaker 3: by this? But it's right there, it's in front of you. Now,
Speaker 3: what is America going to do? How are they going
Speaker 3: to respond to all of it? Now, I'm gonna contradict
Speaker 3: myself having said that it's not important whether it's popular,
Speaker 3: It certainly should change the sort of the Eori ish,
Speaker 3: Oh my god, everything has gone to see that huge
Speaker 3: majorities of the public are seeing this, are watching this
Speaker 3: and going, no, we weren't reject I mean, I think
Speaker 3: part of the problem is that we watched this. Wee
Speaker 3: go how come American people are not seeing what we're saying?
Speaker 3: And what's wrong with them if they don't see it?
Speaker 3: Now at least there's an alignment where you have huge
Speaker 3: majorities that go, yeah, you know, tariffs actually are big taxes,
Speaker 3: they are inflationary, They're not good. Maybe ignoring the Supreme
Speaker 3: Court is a bad thing for the Louisville.
Speaker 1: So there was this Siena College poll from April twenty fourth,
Speaker 1: and percentage of voters who said the following words described
Speaker 1: Trump's second term in office, well, sixty six percent said chaotic,
Speaker 1: fifty nine percent said scary it's hard to imagine chaotic.
Speaker 3: But forty two percent said exciting.
Speaker 1: Yes they did, they did. So.
Speaker 3: Do understand that there's a large portion in the American
Speaker 3: public that's kind of kind of getting too messent over this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but his approval rating is negative twelve. I mean,
Speaker 1: everything is down right, I mean, even on the economy,
Speaker 1: which was like the reason that theoretically, at least some
Speaker 1: of the people voted for him. They're not happy with him.
Speaker 3: He's not ten feet tall. He is not unstoppable. I
Speaker 3: think a lot of his power in that first hundred
Speaker 3: days was this belief that resistance is futile and that
Speaker 3: everybody had to capitulate in advance. When you look at
Speaker 3: a first his margin in the Senate is very very small,
Speaker 3: his margin in the House is infinitesimal. And he's Donald
Speaker 3: fucking Trump who won by a sliver and who is
Speaker 3: now engaging in the classic political hubris of overreading his
Speaker 3: victory and his mandate. And so but you think about
Speaker 3: all of the his initiatives and all of the surrenders,
Speaker 3: and all of the surrenders, I think we're done. Because
Speaker 3: people thought he was unstoppable and that there were no guardrails. Well, okay,
Speaker 3: we're coming up to one hundred day point. He's not unstoppable,
Speaker 3: resistance is possible, and there are still some guard rails.
Speaker 3: I mean, we can take this back and forth.
Speaker 5: How about that.
Speaker 1: You have to agree that behind the scenes there's Roberts
Speaker 1: trying to get the numbers. There's just no way otherwise.
Speaker 3: Well, and Trump is you know, This is one of
Speaker 3: those those things where I know there's an entire cottage
Speaker 3: industry of people who assure us that he's playing four
Speaker 3: dimensional chess, but his lack of respect and his defiance
Speaker 3: the judiciary is Backfron. You're seeing more and more conservative lawyers,
Speaker 3: conservative judges pushing back hard his decision to arrest a
Speaker 3: Milwaukee judge at the Coarehouse and the FBI am Trust me,
Speaker 3: I don't think you have to be a a woke
Speaker 3: progressive judge to be appalled by that. So I'm saying
Speaker 3: he's alienating the judiciary at a moment when they actually
Speaker 3: do pose a significant threat to his authoritarian agenda.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I also think that the thing that is kind
Speaker 1: of amazing is that you know, you have all of
Speaker 1: these people like Ken Griffin, largest Republican donor to this cycle,
Speaker 1: though not a Trump donor, but to every other Republican
Speaker 1: running for office in the world. I mean, he is
Speaker 1: like one of the very few people who's saying that
Speaker 1: Trump is ruining the American brand.
Speaker 3: Well, there's been a lot of delusion about Trump on
Speaker 3: the part of these guys that they have you told
Speaker 3: themselves a story that he was going to be their
Speaker 3: champion that he was going to deregulate and cut their
Speaker 3: taxes and don't worry, he was bluffing about everything else,
Speaker 3: and we can control him. And now they're finding out no,
Speaker 3: he's not, and he's making decisions that have injected a
Speaker 3: massive amount of uncertainty into their decision making, into the economy,
Speaker 3: and investors hate uncertainty, they really do. Now, on the
Speaker 3: other hand, there's going to be this group of people
Speaker 3: who are think, hey, you know what, as long as
Speaker 3: we stay close to the throne, we can benefit from
Speaker 3: the corruption, we can benefit from the insider trading, we
Speaker 3: can benefit from the fear and favor. But yeah, I
Speaker 3: think that you've had a lot of illusion shattered, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you look at the people around Trump,
Speaker 1: it's not like I mean, Elon obviously is a specialized case,
Speaker 1: but there are certainly people on Trump's inner circle who
Speaker 1: are getting read to on lobbying or whatever. But if
Speaker 1: you're just you know, a bill men or someone who
Speaker 1: relies on the markets, the tariffs are.
Speaker 3: Rushing, well they are. And it's also again the relationships
Speaker 3: that have been destroyed, the fact that you don't know
Speaker 3: what he's going to do from day to day, and
Speaker 3: it's hard to make investment decisions. So there's a sense
Speaker 3: of does this guy actually know what he's doing, is
Speaker 3: he irrational? Is he dangerous? And that's where that number
Speaker 3: in that New York Times Senapol you said it is
Speaker 3: so important that you have more than the sixty What
Speaker 3: was the number four chaos?
Speaker 1: Sixty six percent?
Speaker 3: Okay, so sixty six I mean, can we just sit
Speaker 3: on that for a moment. You have two thirds of
Speaker 3: Americans that are looking at the President of the United
Speaker 3: States and seeing him as an agent of chaos. Now
Speaker 3: there are there's going to be a segment of the
Speaker 3: electorate that likes that, that loves chaos. Not in the
Speaker 3: business community though, but also the other thing is that
Speaker 3: like this is the second Trump administration, this is the
Speaker 3: one that's better organized, Like and sixty.
Speaker 1: Center saying chaos, I mean, we don't know what's going
Speaker 1: to happen, but we are open to so many possible
Speaker 1: catastrophic events because of the combination of the deregulation and
Speaker 1: the stripping the federal government that like between the measles
Speaker 1: pandemic that is sort of or pandemic is the wrong word,
Speaker 1: I think, but it certainly the measles outbreaks at this
Speaker 1: moment in different parts of the country among unvaccinated children.
Speaker 1: That's going and that, I mean, They're just a number
Speaker 1: of things that are bubbling under the surface that could
Speaker 1: derail us even further.
Speaker 3: I'm really glad you brought that up, because the return
Speaker 3: of measles and other diseases that have been eradicated by
Speaker 3: vaccines would be one of the great tragedies of history
Speaker 3: and completely preventable and avoidable and completely man made. And
Speaker 3: this administration could actually usher that. I mean, this is
Speaker 3: a real danger. And I think a lot of things
Speaker 3: are still like clouds on the horizons, so we don't
Speaker 3: know all the dangers out there. I mean, America first
Speaker 3: turned out to be America alone, but also the rollback
Speaker 3: of public health. No, you're you're right, and I think
Speaker 3: that these are all danger signs for Trump going forward.
Speaker 3: We haven't seen the full impact on the economy. You've
Speaker 3: probably seen these stories about the empty cargo ships coming
Speaker 3: from China. We haven't even seen all of this. We
Speaker 3: don't know, I mean, and by the way, measles pandemic,
Speaker 3: measles epidemic would and I don't want to just see
Speaker 3: this in political terms, but it would be a catastrophe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the trade war is a really good example of
Speaker 1: how none of this was three dimensional chests, Like, if
Speaker 1: you were going to go to war with China, you
Speaker 1: would make sure that Mexico and Canada had your back,
Speaker 1: right if you were going to go to trade war
Speaker 1: with them in Europe. And instead what he did was
Speaker 1: he made everybody really mad and then made China really mad.
Speaker 1: So I do think it's worth remembering that none of
Speaker 1: this Again, as you said earlier, you know, we.
Speaker 3: Go through these poll numbers which are really historically unprecedented.
Speaker 3: I mean, no president has ever been this low this
Speaker 3: early in his term. The fall has happened very very quickly.
Speaker 3: And it's not just on never Trump type or democratic
Speaker 3: or progressive issues. It's on immigration. Immigration was his thing,
Speaker 3: This was his signature issue. He's underwater on this. He's
Speaker 3: underwater on the Abrago Garcia case. I think he's minus
Speaker 3: twenty one on that case. He's tied for its least popular.
Speaker 3: Remember all the smart kids who were telling us that
Speaker 3: you know, well, you guys should stop talking about that,
Speaker 3: because that's what Trump wants you to talk about. This
Speaker 3: is a winning issue for Donald Trump. Donald Trump wants
Speaker 3: to focus on this because the American people like the
Speaker 3: brutality and the cruelty and the lawlessness of his immigration policies. Well, Molly,
Speaker 3: it turns out and in fact, if you do talk
Speaker 3: about it and people do think about it, that they
Speaker 3: don't approve of it. So this is again one of
Speaker 3: those There are all of those voices and including Gavin
Speaker 3: Newsom out there saying no, no, that's a distraction. We should
Speaker 3: be talking about table issues. Fun Let's talk about the
Speaker 3: kitchen table issues. But also it's not necessarily a loser
Speaker 3: to be talking about the rule of law issues, or
Speaker 3: the humanitarian issues, or.
Speaker 1: The deported children with cancer, the United States Citizens Supported
Speaker 1: with Cancer. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3: Charlie Sikes anytime. By the way, cannot wait for your book,
Speaker 3: Molly cannot wait.
Speaker 1: Rachel Trafonza is the founder of the Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 5: Rachel, thank you so much for having me. Mollie.
Speaker 1: All right, so let's talk about what is happening with
Speaker 1: gen Z, because you wrote this very interesting piece about
Speaker 1: how gen Z is split, and I'd love for you
Speaker 1: to explain to us how gen Z is split, Why
Speaker 1: gen Z is split, and what's it look like totally.
Speaker 4: So I have been holding listening sessions, which really are
Speaker 4: just informal conversations with young people across the country for
Speaker 4: the past really like two and a half years, and
Speaker 4: since after the twenty twenty two midterms, I started seeing
Speaker 4: a major split in how the youngest members of gen
Speaker 4: Z who were eligible to vote and the older members
Speaker 4: of gen Z who were eligible to vote vote not
Speaker 4: just politics but life in general. And I started to
Speaker 4: develop this theory that I called the two gen zs,
Speaker 4: where there's gen Z one point zero and gen Z
Speaker 4: two point zero, and gen Z one point zero includes
Speaker 4: anyone who graduated high school before the start of the
Speaker 4: COVID nineteen pandemic, and gen Z two point zero accounts
Speaker 4: for anyone who graduated high school during or after.
Speaker 5: The start of the pandemic. And the reason why I
Speaker 5: think that the pandemic was such a formative split between
Speaker 5: these two subgenerations of gen Z is that it really
Speaker 5: changed how members of this generation were growing up. And
Speaker 5: when you think about the fifteen year span of time
Speaker 5: that accounts for gen Z when they were born, there
Speaker 5: really were very different lived adolescent experiences depending on if
Speaker 5: you had grown up before or after the start of COVID.
Speaker 1: Right, COVID is the break. If you grew up before COVID,
Speaker 1: you have more normal liberal policies right for your age. Explain.
Speaker 4: This is still very much unfolding, but the more data
Speaker 4: points we get, the more clear this picture seems to
Speaker 4: become where the gen Z one point zero had more
Speaker 4: idealistic liberal tendencies. For example, I'm in gen Z one
Speaker 4: point zero. I was born in nineteen ninety seven, and
Speaker 4: when I was in college, my four years of college
Speaker 4: were the four years of President Donald Trump's first term
Speaker 4: in office, and there was a lot of resistance to
Speaker 4: that time period, and there was this sort of liberal
Speaker 4: ideology that by demonstrating by protesting, perhaps you know, people's
Speaker 4: message would be heard, and politically, this cohort was considered
Speaker 4: at the time very left leaning and perhaps you know,
Speaker 4: there was some language around gen Z could save us
Speaker 4: all things like that.
Speaker 5: What we're seeing.
Speaker 4: Now is that gen Z on the whole is shifting right,
Speaker 4: in large part being driven by these younger gen Zers
Speaker 4: who grew up amid COVID lockdowns and restrictive policies and
Speaker 4: really grew to resent authority and the time frame in
Speaker 4: which they were growing up. When they were, you know,
Speaker 4: in late high school or maybe starting college, after the
Speaker 4: start of the pandemic. During the pandemic, or even after
Speaker 4: the pandemic, Biden was in office, and they were looking
Speaker 4: for someone to blame during this time period when it
Speaker 4: felt like life wasn't normal, life wasn't getting back to normal,
Speaker 4: And the people who were in charge and who were
Speaker 4: associated with the more social distancing policies or masking policies
Speaker 4: things like that were Democrats, and so I think that
Speaker 4: contributed to some of this shift as well. But then
Speaker 4: the the key piece, and this is related but not
Speaker 4: exactly the same, is that we really saw the evolution
Speaker 4: of TikTok during and after COVID, and there's been a
Speaker 4: just change in how younger gen Zers consume media and
Speaker 4: how all of us consume media. But this is how
Speaker 4: these younger gen Zers grew up. This is all that
Speaker 4: they knew. They never had the previous forms of social media.
Speaker 4: They only know a world where TikTok is the place
Speaker 4: for public discourse. And there's been some data coming out
Speaker 4: that starts to show that TikTok has more republican content
Speaker 4: on it, or more conservative content on it, and perhaps
Speaker 4: that's part of this puzzle as well, But I think
Speaker 4: it's just important to point out that we don't exactly
Speaker 4: know the causality. What we do know is that this
Speaker 4: generation is split into two and that the younger gen
Speaker 4: zers account for more of that conservative viewpoint. And there
Speaker 4: was a new pool that came out last week from
Speaker 4: the Yale Youth Goal that showed this.
Speaker 5: Divide pretty starkly.
Speaker 4: So it showed that they asked respondents who they would
Speaker 4: in a generic ballot who they would vote for in
Speaker 4: twenty twenty six midterms, and for ages eighteen to twenty
Speaker 4: one the generic ballot Republicans we were plus twelve and
Speaker 4: for ages twenty two to twenty nine, Democrats were plus six.
Speaker 4: So you do see that split playing out, even thinking
Speaker 4: towards twenty twenty six as well.
Speaker 1: So let's do two seconds on what this split means.
Speaker 1: For example, does this mean that TikTok is making young
Speaker 1: people more conservative?
Speaker 4: I don't know if we can say it as clear
Speaker 4: cut as that, but I think what it means is
Speaker 4: that older gen Zers and younger gen Zers are just
Speaker 4: consuming content, news and information totally differently, and that is
Speaker 4: changing their politics, and I think that it also one
Speaker 4: of the things that is both related to some of
Speaker 4: this anti authority sentiment that came out of the pandemic
Speaker 4: and also might be related to the type of content
Speaker 4: that's consumed on TikTok.
Speaker 5: The type of content that does well on TikTok is
Speaker 5: very off the cuff, very pithy, not highly filtered or
Speaker 5: edited content, but it feels more raw and perhaps more organic.
Speaker 5: And that is sort of similar to the way in
Speaker 5: which President Trump talks right like, he speaks in sound
Speaker 5: bites most of the time. He is very punchy.
Speaker 4: He is perceived as being unfiltered, and so there's sort
Speaker 4: of a correlation there in the type of content that
Speaker 4: does well on TikTok and the way that Trump and
Speaker 4: members of the MAGA movement communicate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So one of the things I think when I
Speaker 1: think about this election is Trump right before the election,
Speaker 1: he did all of these podcasts, He did Joe Rogan,
Speaker 1: he did theovonn did all of this new media, and
Speaker 1: he also introduced a lot of ideas that he probably
Speaker 1: wasn't going to actually put into play, things like you know,
Speaker 1: he was going to make bitcoin great again, he was
Speaker 1: going to sell sneakers he was going to. He sort
Speaker 1: of obfuscated a lot of stuff. Did that work? Is
Speaker 1: that what you're saying that it worked? And did it
Speaker 1: work with younger people and not older people? Did COVID
Speaker 1: set this up? Like, tell me kind of where we
Speaker 1: go with this information?
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So one of the things that I think Republicans did
Speaker 4: really well in the lead up to the twenty twenty
Speaker 4: four election, and Trump in particular did well, was that
Speaker 4: he politically coded culture, whereas Democrats were culturally coding politics.
Speaker 5: So what I mean by that is that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you got to say it two more times too.
Speaker 4: So Trump and Republicans in the lead up to the
Speaker 4: twenty twenty four election politically coded culture, while Democrats and
Speaker 4: Vice President Kamala Harris culturally coded politics.
Speaker 1: Okay, politics is downstream of culture, right.
Speaker 4: Yes, So what I mean by this political coding of
Speaker 4: culture is that Trump and his allies would go into
Speaker 4: cultural places, whether that meant going to UFC fights or
Speaker 4: showing on these podcasts in this menosphere as it's been dubbed.
Speaker 4: When he would go to these locations, he wasn't off
Speaker 4: the bat talking about politics. He was just showing up
Speaker 4: as himself as Trump, the former president who was running
Speaker 4: for reelection, and he would have conversations, especially on these podcasts,
Speaker 4: that had nothing to do with politics. He would talk
Speaker 4: about his children, he would talk about his experience as
Speaker 4: a businessman, he would talk about sports. Sometimes he would
Speaker 4: just talk about things that were organic to whatever the
Speaker 4: podcast conversation would typically be about. And same thing when
Speaker 4: he would go to a UFC fight, he would go
Speaker 4: there as Donald Trump, but he wouldn't make a campaign
Speaker 4: rally out of it necessarily, whereas on the flip side,
Speaker 4: you look at something like the rally that former Vice
Speaker 4: President Kamala Harris held in Texas with Beyonce, and Beyonce
Speaker 4: was there. Beyonce was talking about being a mother, and
Speaker 4: the theme of the rally was about abortion access, but
Speaker 4: Beyonce didn't singing. Beyonce didn't you know? It wasn't it
Speaker 4: was a political event, and that I think was similar
Speaker 4: to how Democrats would show up on some of these
Speaker 4: podcasts as well. For example, when Kamala Harris went on
Speaker 4: Alex Cooper's Call Her Daddy, the conversation was very political, right.
Speaker 1: And it should have been just her schmoozing and talking
Speaker 1: about cooking exactly.
Speaker 4: So you know, we're starting to see some examples of
Speaker 4: Democrats changing their strategy with this. I think a great
Speaker 4: example is today this episode with peepoota judge on the
Speaker 4: Flagrant podcast came out and that's a podcast that Trump
Speaker 4: actually went on before the twenty twenty four election, and
Speaker 4: I just started watching the episode. It literally just came out,
Speaker 4: and at the start of the episode, boota judge is
Speaker 4: talking about the White Lotus and how he thinks that
Speaker 4: Lachlan should have died on the White Lotus, and so
Speaker 4: it's a very relatable conversation that has nothing to do
Speaker 4: with politics, and then they get into some of the
Speaker 4: more political conversation about tariffs and taxes and immigration and
Speaker 4: things like that. So you can see that Democrats are
Speaker 4: starting to take note of this. But I think that
Speaker 4: when you're looking at how young people are consuming content,
Speaker 4: the strategy that Trump deployed ahead of the election was
Speaker 4: super successful because it felt relatable to young people. And
Speaker 4: one of the biggest things I hear from young people
Speaker 4: is that they want a politician who they feel like
Speaker 4: is just normal, who looks like, sounds like, talks like them.
Speaker 4: And while you know there are definitely things that Trump
Speaker 4: does not have in common with young people. He was
Speaker 4: able to show up in the places that they're authentically
Speaker 4: consuming in the podcast and reach them that way.
Speaker 1: I want to go back to the Flagrant podcast from
Speaker 1: it because Jesse just sent me a producer's note the
Speaker 1: host of the Flagrant Podcast. I think we're getting at
Speaker 1: something really important here. Andrew Schultz. He said that youth
Speaker 1: voted for Trump cause he has three baby mothers. I'm
Speaker 1: cleaning this up and gets a lot of action, so
Speaker 1: romantic action. I can't believe I've become this person who
Speaker 1: is saying romantic action instead of what is actually a
Speaker 1: lot of cleaning. But I actually think what you're saying
Speaker 1: is more correct, which is actually correct, which is Donald
Speaker 1: Trump sold them a person, and Democrats tried to sell
Speaker 1: them policy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And to be fair, like, I do think young
Speaker 4: voters and I actually I know that young voters care
Speaker 4: about issues that affect their daily lives. For sure, they
Speaker 4: care way more about issues than they do about partisan politics.
Speaker 4: They're prioritizing issues over party. But they wanted a candidate
Speaker 4: who felt authentic, who felt like they were unscripted and
Speaker 4: were saying what they meant and I think a lot
Speaker 4: of this, and I write about this in that Washington
Speaker 4: Post op ed as well, is that this is for
Speaker 4: GenZ two point I'm in particular, they grew up at
Speaker 4: the peak of cancel culture, where they had to be
Speaker 4: very careful about what they said. And I've had a
Speaker 4: lot of young people tell me it felt like they
Speaker 4: were walking on eggshells, and they didn't want to walk
Speaker 4: on eggshells anymore. And so what they appreciate about Trump
Speaker 4: is that he doesn't walk on eggshells. He says what
Speaker 4: he wants. He is able to get away with whatever
Speaker 4: and say whatever, and it really flies in the face
Speaker 4: of that pervasive cancel culture or political correctness that this
Speaker 4: generation grew up with and is resentful of. And they
Speaker 4: felt that Democrats were the party that was policing that language,
Speaker 4: and that was largely responsible for that cancel culture. And
Speaker 4: so you know, when you looked at Trump and this
Speaker 4: quote from the podcast, I think the through line is
Speaker 4: just that whether or not they agree with every single
Speaker 4: one of his policy is views or every single thing
Speaker 4: that he says, they do like the fact that he
Speaker 4: does say what he means and is able to get
Speaker 4: away with sometimes being controversial, oftentimes being controversial.
Speaker 1: Some of this is COVID, some of this is canceled culture.
Speaker 1: Some of this is just a rebellion to cancel culture
Speaker 1: and COVID.
Speaker 4: Yes, And I think that the cancel culture and COVID
Speaker 4: peace are related because I think that while we started
Speaker 4: to see cancel culture before COVID, it really took a
Speaker 4: turn during COVID because we were all living our lives
Speaker 4: online and so sort of and then there were these
Speaker 4: restrictions that were in place where that were meant to
Speaker 4: stop the spread of the virus and keep people safe,
Speaker 4: and so if you went against that or refuse the
Speaker 4: vaccine or things like that, there was this moral high
Speaker 4: ground kind of associated with that, and so there was
Speaker 4: a lot of judgment in shade being thrown at people.
Speaker 4: And I think that when students started to go back
Speaker 4: to school, they saw this plan out in their classrooms,
Speaker 4: on their campuses. I'm the oldest of four, and I've
Speaker 4: seen this with my younger siblings where they'll tell me
Speaker 4: about certain situations where people are called out on social
Speaker 4: media because they either did or did not post about
Speaker 4: some sort of social issue or in the day, in
Speaker 4: the earliest days when kids were going back to school,
Speaker 4: if someone wasn't wearing their masks correctly, or if you know,
Speaker 4: if they broke some sort of rule at school, there
Speaker 4: was judgment and there was and everyone kind of got involved.
Speaker 4: And so I think the cancel culture that sort of
Speaker 4: started as this online conversation started to seep into the
Speaker 4: real world lives of young people and it just is
Speaker 4: exhausting for them, and it and you know, then I
Speaker 4: think this is also a part of the right word shift,
Speaker 4: is that they think about their life before COVID and
Speaker 4: if they were eighteen in the twenty twenty for election,
Speaker 4: you know, they were really really young when Trump was
Speaker 4: in office the first time, and so they don't really
Speaker 4: remember that time period. They might not know about the
Speaker 4: politics of it, but they you know, if they were
Speaker 4: let's say they're in fourth grade at the time, like
Speaker 4: life was probably pretty good.
Speaker 5: And so they think back to, oh, when Trump.
Speaker 4: Was in office and they were in elementary school and
Speaker 4: like had no worry in the world, and so why
Speaker 4: not want Trump to be back in office again?
Speaker 5: If that's the association, right.
Speaker 1: And I think that is insane, but it's certainly something
Speaker 1: we've seen the tracks and historically this is what happened
Speaker 1: after the nineteen eighteen flu pandemic too, This idea that
Speaker 1: the real world is too painful and so we'll go
Speaker 1: back to a time when things don't seem as scary,
Speaker 1: totally don't seem as well.
Speaker 4: And Trump taps into that too, of course, because his
Speaker 4: whole message is about making America great again, and so
Speaker 4: it taps into that nostalgia that is really present within
Speaker 4: gen Z. And I've written about this where I've said
Speaker 4: that the nostalgia's for a time period that they never experienced.
Speaker 4: A lot of the never existed, right exactly, but it
Speaker 4: is something that they've grown up a mid constant crisis,
Speaker 4: and so it's kind of like a reprieve from reality.
Speaker 5: To envision that type of a world.
Speaker 1: I would like a reprieve from reality.
Speaker 5: Thank you, Rachel, Thank you so much, Molly. I loved
Speaker 5: our conversation.
Speaker 6: No mofectly Jesse Cannon so bally, We've well known that
Speaker 6: the elites have these private clubs, but usually the price
Speaker 6: tag to get into the like you know, a soho
Speaker 6: houses a measly few thousand dollars in an application, but
Speaker 6: a half a million dollars to get into a private
Speaker 6: club with exclusive access to Trump's cabinet.
Speaker 2: Now that's something.
Speaker 1: Sure, there are private clubs that are that expensive, but
Speaker 1: you have to be willing to pay it to hang
Speaker 1: out with Don Junior. I mean, all of this seems
Speaker 1: ridiculous to me. Launch of the executive branch comes as
Speaker 1: Trump World looks to remake Washington. Good luck, guys, a
Speaker 1: new club. So this is Donald Trump's mega donor. I'm
Speaker 1: sure that a lot of people this club will have tattoos.
Speaker 1: It's involved with Trump's seventeen eighty nine conservative venture funder.
Speaker 1: I guess it's a hedge fund. Seventeen eighty nine capital
Speaker 1: referral requirements are that you paint yourself orange and married
Speaker 1: to someone with very white blonde hair, and have had
Speaker 1: multiple rounds of plastic surgery so that these c suite
Speaker 1: crowd can mingle with Trump advisors and cabinet members without
Speaker 1: the prying eyes of the press, and want to be insiders.
Speaker 1: This is what happens when you don't have any writers
Speaker 1: in your inner circle want to be insiders. The price
Speaker 1: tag won't be a problem for Trump's cabinet, given it
Speaker 1: is by far the wealthiest in history, and the club
Speaker 1: already has a waitlist. Oh well, another heartbreak. But if
Speaker 1: you do get into this club, you can hang out
Speaker 1: with David Socks, I mean Sacks and Donald Trump Junior.
Speaker 1: And it's such a good club that they had their
Speaker 1: party at the Willard Hotel, which is not the club.
Speaker 1: So we'll see how this goes, and good luck to
Speaker 1: all we celebrate. I'm sure this is going to be great.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I can't wait.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
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