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 Speaker Johnson says there's no
Speaker 1: path for a third Trump term.
Speaker 2: Oh wow? Is he allowed to say that?
Speaker 1: We have such a great show for you today as
Speaker 1: the world churns.
Speaker 2: Andy Levy steps by to.
Speaker 1: Talk about Trump's plan to distract and also to destroy America.
Speaker 1: Then we'll talk to Senator Ed Markey about the government
Speaker 1: shutdown and its costs to the American people.
Speaker 2: But first we have the news.
Speaker 3: So, Molly, we've now reached the reports on private calls
Speaker 3: where there's unrest of the clockus because the Republicans are
Speaker 3: starting to feel the pain of the shutdown. Do you
Speaker 3: feel the pain?
Speaker 2: I didn't know they were allowed to disagree with Trump.
Speaker 3: Many people are saying the tide is turning.
Speaker 2: This is a new development.
Speaker 1: Republicans who theoretically serve the voters and not President Donald J.
Speaker 2: Trump, though they don't think that. They think they served
Speaker 2: rosement Donald J. Trump.
Speaker 1: So there was a GOP conference call this afternoon. They
Speaker 1: did this call because in case you're wondering, they are
Speaker 1: not in session. That's right, they are out of session,
Speaker 1: as they have been for almost a month. Of business
Speaker 1: day is not in session. The calendar is empty. So
Speaker 1: here we got Dan Crenshaw adding himself to a list
Speaker 1: of growing lawmakers questioning whether or not they should be
Speaker 1: home in their districts as opposed to at least pretending
Speaker 1: to want to solve the government shutdown. So this shutdown.
Speaker 1: Republicans control the House, the Senate, and the Congress. Now
Speaker 1: they shut down the government because Democrats would not sign
Speaker 1: off on what was happening with the Obamacare subsidies, which
Speaker 1: of course, obviously I think they were right to do,
Speaker 1: because the polling shows that people still blame the Republicans.
Speaker 1: Republicans are saying they won't come to the table. A
Speaker 1: lot of people are saying that the appropriators, the people
Speaker 1: like Don Bacon, the people who work in appropriations, are
Speaker 1: saying that Democrats shouldn't make a deal with Republicans because
Speaker 1: Donald Trump will just come in and run ropshaw over
Speaker 1: it anyway. And that is a real tension here because
Speaker 1: as we saw in this really good piece that you
Speaker 1: should definitely read by Annie Carney in The Times this weekend,
Speaker 1: donald Trump believes that he is the Speaker of the
Speaker 1: House because Mike Johnson is just a supplicant for him.
Speaker 1: So it doesn't matter if you make it unique. You
Speaker 1: can only make a deal with Trump. And here's the
Speaker 1: thing about Trump, he changes his mind all the time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, speaking of Trump changing his mind all the time.
Speaker 3: Senator John Kennedy, person we know for playing dumb often.
Speaker 2: Who has the best selling book right now? Did you
Speaker 2: know that I did not?
Speaker 3: But I will say that I keep my literature to
Speaker 3: thoughts a little more advanced to that. Anyway, he's calling
Speaker 3: just Dan's fance and saying to him that he would
Speaker 3: really really appreciate it if Trump stopped to talk about
Speaker 3: the filibuster and all these wacky things.
Speaker 1: So John Kennedy, by the way, who sounds stupid but
Speaker 1: is smart. He's like one of those he had been
Speaker 1: a Democrat, he went to Oxford. He pretends to be
Speaker 1: fog horn like Horn, but he actually is quite smart.
Speaker 3: Clay Higgins, that's where you get the real foghorn leg hordeshit,
Speaker 3: unadulterated pure Basically.
Speaker 1: Trump is repeatedly called on senators to end this tradition
Speaker 1: of allowing senators to block certain judicial nominations for the
Speaker 1: states by refusing to return their blue slips. This is
Speaker 1: like one of these Senate traditions. This is a way
Speaker 1: to block a nominee. Now here's the problem. Donald Trump
Speaker 1: doesn't like it. And since Donald Trump basically styles himself
Speaker 1: as a king, he doesn't like this stuff. So Kennedy
Speaker 1: had called Vance because he's furious about this fans, you know,
Speaker 1: who's got a very strong moral character. Equivocated, admitting the
Speaker 1: votes were probably not there to make the changes anyway,
Speaker 1: but express frustration with the Chambers dysfunction.
Speaker 2: Why is the Senate dysfunctional? But why?
Speaker 1: It's certainly not because the president is holding them all hostage.
Speaker 2: New it is not.
Speaker 3: It's not as if the president isn't shielded from the
Speaker 3: citizens yelling at him all day and the senators don't
Speaker 3: have to deal with it and have their staff get
Speaker 3: calls all day and here complaints about it.
Speaker 1: This is my favorite thing. He argued that Democrats should
Speaker 1: own the growing shutdown chaos, and that the momentum was
Speaker 1: with the GOP. First of all, by the way, Senator
Speaker 1: Kennedy's staff who leaked this Bravo Team vo. But more
Speaker 1: than that, he argued that Democrats should own the growing
Speaker 1: shutdown chaos. Okay, obviously you would like them to own it, right,
Speaker 1: but they don't because here's the thing.
Speaker 2: From a ten thousand foot view, all anyone sees is.
Speaker 1: A Republican House, or Republican Senate or Republican president strong agree.
Speaker 3: So may We've done a lot of interviews with people
Speaker 3: from the CFPB, and under previous rules, they stood up
Speaker 3: for consumers' rights. You'll be shocked to hear that in
Speaker 3: this administration, where it is the feature to fuck over consumers,
Speaker 3: that Trump's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is trying to stop
Speaker 3: states from like being medical debt from your credit report.
Speaker 3: This would be another thing that is detrimental to the economy,
Speaker 3: as people will not be able to get loans to
Speaker 3: open businesses, buy houses and all sorts of things. And
Speaker 3: feels another one of those well sometimes we say the
Speaker 3: Trump administrations shooting themselves in the foot. This feels like
Speaker 3: they're taking a M sixteen to their whole entire lower body.
Speaker 2: But it's also just.
Speaker 1: Like they obviously have some rich downer who's like, we
Speaker 1: love medical debt, don't let them erase it because we
Speaker 1: want the pores to drown in debt.
Speaker 2: So we can make our money.
Speaker 3: Well as well. They get higher interest rates when they
Speaker 3: have worse credit ratings.
Speaker 1: Right, but obviously that's the move here, Like what Trump World.
Speaker 1: One of the many things I love about this administration
Speaker 1: is they just don't give a fuck about anyone who's
Speaker 1: not them. So, like here, we're going to have these
Speaker 1: people drowning in debt. Those are voters, you assholes, like
Speaker 1: these are voters. I'm sorry, they're voters. They will issue
Speaker 1: guidance tomorrow prohibiting states from wiping medical debt from consumers
Speaker 1: credit rating. This is so fucked like this is. No
Speaker 1: one voted for more medical debt. No one voted for
Speaker 1: more medical debt. This is Donald Trump said he was
Speaker 1: going to make things cheaper, and here's what he's doing,
Speaker 1: making sure that you drown in medical debt.
Speaker 2: Good work.
Speaker 3: Nothing like having to pay off that medical debt instead
Speaker 3: of putting it into local businesses and the economy and
Speaker 3: bolster our economy. Great, great, great stuff.
Speaker 2: Good work everyone.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Okay, so here's an interesting one. It sounds like
Speaker 3: there's a little trouble in paradise, if we could call
Speaker 3: HHS paradise for some reason. Stephen Hatfill, who's a huge
Speaker 3: COVID vaccine critic has been ousted from the HHS.
Speaker 2: I'm shocked.
Speaker 3: I'm kind of actually shocked. This seems a little weird.
Speaker 3: What are you seeing?
Speaker 1: I mean, this is the thing like that I think
Speaker 1: everyone should remember, is like Trump has lots of people
Speaker 1: who should be fired. He just didn't want to fire
Speaker 1: them because he knew it would look bad.
Speaker 2: And like who should be fired?
Speaker 1: Heg SATs should be fired, Cash, I live in Las
Speaker 1: Vegas should be fired.
Speaker 2: All these people should be fired.
Speaker 1: You know, Christy, we spent one hundred and seventy five
Speaker 1: million dollars on private planes. Like, these people all should
Speaker 1: be fired. But Trump doesn't want to fire people because
Speaker 1: he knows firing people creates leaks, and firing people is
Speaker 1: how he got that big wall. Remember Rachel Maddow's wall
Speaker 1: of fired people in the first administration. Like Trump thinks
Speaker 1: that keeping everyone hired will somehow keep the ship running.
Speaker 1: But like it's so it's so incredibly clear that this
Speaker 1: whole organization is teetering on the brink of disaster. So
Speaker 1: here's the question with this story, is did Stephen J. Hatfeld,
Speaker 1: a biosecurity expert who was publicly backed Health Secretary of
Speaker 1: Robert F. Kennedy Junior. Do you think that he was
Speaker 1: fired over the weekend because he was too crazy or
Speaker 1: because the administration was too crazy? And think about that
Speaker 1: for a while, because it could be either one. That
Speaker 1: is an interesting quandary, right, and it's a little scary, right, Like,
Speaker 1: here's an example. He's a one time Army biodefense researcher.
Speaker 1: In a recent appearance on Steve Bannon's podcast, he asserted
Speaker 1: without evidence that mRNA COVID shots are more dangerous than
Speaker 1: it is to contract COVID nineteen. So that's not true
Speaker 1: and be hospitalized with it also not true. He said
Speaker 1: he was accumulating data justifying mister Kennedy's decision to cancel
Speaker 1: five hundred million dollars in contracts for RNA research. Now
Speaker 1: all of this is true, right, We just saw reporting
Speaker 1: that shows that mr and A Research is like this
Speaker 1: miraculous thing, that it will soon be solving cancer and
Speaker 1: this and that. But I bet you he didn't get
Speaker 1: fired because of that. I bet there's some other even stupid.
Speaker 1: Always Andy Levy is a host of as the world churns.
Speaker 2: Welcome to past politics.
Speaker 1: Andy, I'm welt let's talk about how great everything is going.
Speaker 1: Everything is going great, It's going great.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, I was. I was sitting here because
Speaker 4: it's been like a month or maybe more since I've potted,
Speaker 4: and I was like, all right, I gotta get my
Speaker 4: head back in the game. I wonder what we're going
Speaker 4: to talk about. And I was like, there's just like
Speaker 4: every ten minutes there's something new.
Speaker 1: So we're in this government shutdown. We're almost a month
Speaker 1: of like business days into the shutdown. Okay, Donald Trump
Speaker 1: is on his second trip. He's in Asia. The administration
Speaker 1: has decided they're not going to fund food stamps for children.
Speaker 1: It's like people are like, stop talking about the East wing.
Speaker 1: The east wing isn't where it is, no everything you have,
Speaker 1: It's like it's one of those things where you have
Speaker 1: to I feel like the situation is.
Speaker 2: You have to focus on all the things.
Speaker 4: Yeah, nothing is a distraction. Everything is happening. They are
Speaker 4: doing everything they're doing for a reason, and it's all
Speaker 4: the same reason. It's all in service of sort of
Speaker 4: getting us used to this authoritarian style of government. And
Speaker 4: you know, whether it's shutting the government down, you know,
Speaker 4: to I don't even know what they're latest whatever their
Speaker 4: latest accused is as an attack on trans people, which
Speaker 4: is what it seems to be half the time.
Speaker 1: Just speaking of attacks on trans people, we just saw
Speaker 1: a transwoman at Bennington, who at Middlebury, who killed herself.
Speaker 1: One of the is, lest you think that abandoning trans
Speaker 1: people is merely a question of like electoral politics, it's
Speaker 1: actually a moral impairtive.
Speaker 4: One hundred percent. And I was there to say I've
Speaker 4: been saying that for a while, but I have been
Speaker 4: saying that for a while. And you know, going back
Speaker 4: a few years in talking to people, I would occasionally
Speaker 4: have someone say, why why are you so hepped up
Speaker 4: on the issue of trans rights? And there's two reasons.
Speaker 4: One is, you know, it's a cliche, but when you
Speaker 4: say something like, you know, ex rights or human rights,
Speaker 4: whether it's trans, gay, black women, whatever it is, it's
Speaker 4: true because nothing ever stops at a certain line. And
Speaker 4: so even if in some kind of adult brain you're like,
Speaker 4: I don't care about trans people, or you know they
Speaker 4: they creep me out, or oh there's so few of them,
Speaker 4: what does it matter? It all matters. It should matter
Speaker 4: just because they're people, and you shouldn't be sitting there saying, oh,
Speaker 4: these people, you know, their rights don't matter. But even
Speaker 4: even if that's the way you see the world, then
Speaker 4: please realize that you're next and stop, you know, stop
Speaker 4: thinking you know you're safe, because you're not. And the
Speaker 4: other thing is, I think what's happening to trans folks
Speaker 4: is is in my mind, it's always been sort of
Speaker 4: the nearest parallel to the Jews in Germany. People will say, oh, well,
Speaker 4: we don't want to take away their rights to exist,
Speaker 4: they just shouldn't play sports. Yeah, because that's how it
Speaker 4: always always starts with one thing. You know, we're not
Speaker 4: saying we're gonna put Jews in camps. We just think
Speaker 4: they shouldn't do, you know whatever. And it always starts
Speaker 4: that way. And we're really seeing now it's so far
Speaker 4: beyond the sports thing. And you know, the sport thing
Speaker 4: was always a stalking horse for people on the right,
Speaker 4: even if there were a Centrists and you know, some liberals,
Speaker 4: you didn't get that.
Speaker 1: But I also think more than that, like trans right
Speaker 1: is like one of these issues that there has been
Speaker 1: polling that shows that some people are uncomfortable with it,
Speaker 1: not the majority, but a vocal minority, and so this
Speaker 1: is how we got here, right, and it is just
Speaker 1: so appalling. It's morally wrong, but I also think it's
Speaker 1: politically just disgusting. But I want you to talk about
Speaker 1: being a veteran for a minute, because you and Pete
Speaker 1: heg Seth. You'll remember Pete hegg Sath as being a
Speaker 1: very handsome guy who loves beer.
Speaker 2: He just likes beer, like Brett Kavanaugh.
Speaker 1: You may remember Brett Kavanaugh from the famous Kavanaugh Stops.
Speaker 1: Also a beer drinker, also a weekend Fox News host
Speaker 1: like you discuss.
Speaker 4: Okay, First of all, I was never a weekend Fox ghost.
Speaker 4: I'd like to get that straight. Second of all, it
Speaker 4: sounds like you're blaming beer for all of this, and
Speaker 4: I don't like that. I don't like that you're doing that.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of good beer out there, and you know,
Speaker 4: I don't think the bad beers. We shouldn't say that
Speaker 4: all beer is bad.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 4: Look, Pete Hegseth is he's a goober like I was.
Speaker 4: I saw the story earlier today where he talked about
Speaker 4: there was a story I think in The Independent that
Speaker 4: talked about him allegedly refusing to meet with bearded soldiers.
Speaker 1: Yes, he's very true. He's very looks conscious, my man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know it makes sense because looks are really
Speaker 1: where it's at for him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like if you had, if your.
Speaker 1: Looks were such an enormous part of your past, you know,
Speaker 1: if the package was ninety percent looks and five percent
Speaker 1: something else and five percent competency, you would care very
Speaker 1: much about looks.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 4: So I saw that story and I just like, he
Speaker 4: was refusing to meet with bearded true, and I just like,
Speaker 4: I don't know why. I don't can't remember the last
Speaker 4: time I used the word goober, but it just popped
Speaker 4: up too. I was like, what a goober? And my
Speaker 4: second thought was as someone who served, and who served
Speaker 4: overseas and at some point we had some high level
Speaker 4: official come visit, I think I was like Camp Casey
Speaker 4: in South Korea. It's a drag. Nobody wants those people there.
Speaker 4: It's a drag for the troops. It's like parades. We
Speaker 4: hated it. It's you had to be forced into doing parades,
Speaker 4: and you had to be basically ordered to go meet
Speaker 4: with these high level officials who come in and generally
Speaker 4: have no idea what your day to day situation is. Like,
Speaker 4: but are there to somehow impart their wisdom? But everything
Speaker 4: that he is doing, like it's it's amazing to me.
Speaker 4: I mean I but I say this every day, the
Speaker 4: fact that he still is Secretary of Defense and not
Speaker 4: Secretary of War. As again this independent piece that I
Speaker 4: saw the British newspaper kept referring to him as the
Speaker 4: secretary of war. You're not, he's not the secretary of war.
Speaker 4: Or why why are you saying that you got him?
Speaker 4: You got to tell how do you rank them? How
Speaker 4: do you rank them?
Speaker 2: How do you rank who is who is the least competent? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Okay, so I'm gonna go with I think he said
Speaker 1: is the least competent?
Speaker 2: I want And in fact, I'm going to.
Speaker 1: Ask you a question about this, because like, if you
Speaker 1: are a sergeant or whatever, the highest level is a
Speaker 1: lieutenant colonel, and you're in Japan, okay, with your staff
Speaker 1: of five ten people who are with you, you're doing
Speaker 1: some kind of high level, really important mission, top secret.
Speaker 1: Nobody knows. Maybe it's whatever. You're called back to d C. Virginia.
Speaker 1: You and all your people all go back, and you
Speaker 1: were called back to a speech about facial hair and
Speaker 1: then a campaign speech by Trump like are you then, like,
Speaker 1: these are the people I'm really glad I work for?
Speaker 2: Are you then?
Speaker 6: Like?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 2: I mean as someone I've never served, so tell us
Speaker 2: what the vibes there would be.
Speaker 4: Look, I was a lowly enlisted man, so it's hard.
Speaker 4: I can't really get in the head of a general
Speaker 4: or an admiral someone at that level who would have
Speaker 4: been summoned to Washington for that insane. I wouldn't even
Speaker 4: call it. It wasn't a meeting. I don't know what
Speaker 4: you would call it. It was like a It was
Speaker 4: like an Amway type thing, is what It struck me
Speaker 4: as like it.
Speaker 1: Was some kind of ironic because Amway, there are people
Speaker 1: involved in Amway, Like who are involved in this administration?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 4: Absolutely, it struck me as some kind of MLM type thing.
Speaker 4: But I'm sure they were pissed off. I'm sure they
Speaker 4: were just you know, on the plane rides home, sitting
Speaker 4: next to each other, going what the fuck was that? Like,
Speaker 4: I cannot imagine. And look, there are people who rise
Speaker 4: to various ranks in the military who shouldn't be there.
Speaker 4: So I'm not saying that aren't some generals or whoever
Speaker 4: who thought that this was like, you know, yeah, this
Speaker 4: is the gung ho shit we need, you know. But
Speaker 4: I have to imagine the vast majority of these guys,
Speaker 4: who have spent twenty thirty years in uniform, taking what
Speaker 4: they do seriously. I cannot imagine that they were in
Speaker 4: that meeting and thought, Okay, well, you know what. I
Speaker 4: was skeptical before I went, but hey, that was really good.
Speaker 4: I feel much better about my job now. I feel
Speaker 4: much better about our operational readiness. No, I mean that
Speaker 4: was that was absolutely it was a pathetic joke, is
Speaker 4: what it was.
Speaker 1: There's so many moments in this administration where they have
Speaker 1: sort of squandered goodwill. And if you think about like
Speaker 1: when Trump came in, he had sort of this bump
Speaker 1: right now, the kind of thing you didn't have the
Speaker 1: first time. He had this sort of bump where people
Speaker 1: are like, maybe this will work.
Speaker 2: I don't know what they were thinking.
Speaker 1: But now, after the trade war, the government shut down,
Speaker 1: snap benefits that all of the insanity. Now he's finally
Speaker 1: polling the lowest he's ever pulled, which is still somehow
Speaker 1: not zero.
Speaker 4: I know, I know, every time I see that, I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 4: that's low, but.
Speaker 2: Really did the other people not exist? Like what happened?
Speaker 4: I don't know. I don't know. That's one of the reasons,
Speaker 4: by the way, I don't think you say anything is
Speaker 4: a distraction, because the idea is they are trying to
Speaker 4: do as many things as they can while they can.
Speaker 4: And you know, I mean, look, we'll see what happens
Speaker 4: going forward with elections, but there have to be there
Speaker 4: has to be some sense, you know, among the smarter
Speaker 4: people around him. And you know that's on a sliding scale, obviously,
Speaker 4: g that this is not Mussolini, this is not Stalin,
Speaker 4: who's going to be in power for you know, decades
Speaker 4: or whatever.
Speaker 2: And it's saying.
Speaker 1: That the oldest person to ever become president is old
Speaker 1: or how dare you?
Speaker 4: All I know is he passed his dementia test or
Speaker 4: so he claims, like we don't even know whatshy.
Speaker 2: By the way, and he had it ever, right, let's
Speaker 2: talk about this. So my man is giving a speech
Speaker 2: and he's like.
Speaker 1: You know, I had an MEMRII and they didn't find
Speaker 1: anything there was in his second physical of the year.
Speaker 1: Do you remember his second one and the one that
Speaker 1: was four months later than his first yearly physical it
Speaker 1: said advanced imaging, and some people who we know were
Speaker 1: like that this is the advanced imaging.
Speaker 2: The White House was like nothing, like how dare you lib.
Speaker 1: Tard think that we you know, cock owned the real
Speaker 1: enemy is the left.
Speaker 2: And then he's like, oh, yeah, I got an MEMORI.
Speaker 4: Well look, the only thing I'll say, because we don't
Speaker 4: know what the MRI was.
Speaker 1: For, probably for nothing, as people get them all the time.
Speaker 1: I mean, I got one just an hour ago.
Speaker 4: But the thing is, if, as someone was a relative
Speaker 4: who's going through this, if you have a cognitive test,
Speaker 4: which is what he took, not an IQ test, it's
Speaker 4: the Montreal I forget the status that the complete name.
Speaker 4: If you have that test and an MRI close to
Speaker 4: each other, there's a good chance there's one thing that
Speaker 4: they're searching for, you know, that is dementia. You know again,
Speaker 4: I don't know. Maybe he had an MRI of his
Speaker 4: hand where he has that weird you know.
Speaker 2: Whatever for his ankles, the ankles.
Speaker 4: But I'm just saying, if you have an MRI, an
Speaker 4: undisclosed MRI, and by the way, if you have it
Speaker 4: on a joint or whatever, you usually say, yeah, I
Speaker 4: had a shoulder, Amri, I had a risk, Memori. The
Speaker 4: only time you say I had an MRI in that
Speaker 4: position and you don't say what it's for to me
Speaker 4: is it's probably your brain.
Speaker 1: I think what's most important now about this like Trump discourse,
Speaker 1: is that, in fact he is not doing like even
Speaker 1: any autocrat like Vladimir Putin. These guys like they give
Speaker 1: a carrot and a stick, so they give a carrot.
Speaker 1: We have yet to get a fucking carrot. Where is
Speaker 1: the goddamn carrot. Well, see he has discovered something. He
Speaker 1: has discovered that if he gets the carrot, there's a
Speaker 1: group of people who are like, right on, right, we're
Speaker 1: getting the carrot.
Speaker 2: Right, that is true.
Speaker 1: Like the Katari plane, it was like own de libtards, Right,
Speaker 1: we got this free play and.
Speaker 2: That's costing the taxpayers a billion dollars.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we're converting the East winging into a ballroom. And
Speaker 4: apparently there are people out there who go, he's doing
Speaker 4: this for us, This is for me. He is helping
Speaker 4: me by building this ballroom, by getting this plane, by
Speaker 4: you know, pardoning the or commuting the sentence of the
Speaker 4: Binance guy.
Speaker 1: Because that finance guy, he's a man of the people
Speaker 1: of China, but.
Speaker 4: There are there's like a solid I would say, I
Speaker 4: don't know fifth of the country that just believes that somehow.
Speaker 4: That's a not a bad base to start from, where
Speaker 4: you know, there's anything, you can do anything, and you
Speaker 4: can say this is to make America great again, and
Speaker 4: they're gonna go, you know, America, Fuck yeah, he is.
Speaker 4: We are so much stronger now because we have We're
Speaker 4: going to have a ballroom in the East Wing. So
Speaker 4: I think that's what he's figured out, is that the
Speaker 4: carrot can just be for him and his people. And
Speaker 4: you know, his people are the ones that own Twitter.
Speaker 4: His people are the ones that own the Washington Post, Yeah,
Speaker 4: and the list goes. His people are the ones who
Speaker 4: now own Paramount and CBS and maybe soon we'll own
Speaker 4: Warner Brothers and CNN. And so as long as he
Speaker 4: helps those people and gives them the carrot, like he
Speaker 4: has sort of figured out that there's that may be
Speaker 4: all he has to do. Hopefully he's wrong about that,
Speaker 4: but I think that in his mind, you know, that's
Speaker 4: where the carrot is. It's not for us, Molly.
Speaker 1: So the question is on Sunday, Zoran was in forest
Speaker 1: Hills at lot at this like lovely stadium.
Speaker 2: I'm sure you've been there. It's a beautiful Forest Hills stadium.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Molly, I saw the band Asia there.
Speaker 2: Okay, what it's that?
Speaker 4: That was a huge band heat of the moment back
Speaker 4: in the day.
Speaker 1: Come on, I don't know anything, but it was like
Speaker 1: thirteen thousand people New York Mayor's race.
Speaker 2: No one has ever.
Speaker 1: Given a fuck about the New York Mayor's race. It's
Speaker 1: likely no one ever will. Again, they were chanting tax
Speaker 1: the rich. Now we have the richest cabinet ever in history,
Speaker 1: Donald Trump's cabinet. Literally everyone there's like one person who's
Speaker 1: one hundred millionaire.
Speaker 2: That's the poorest person in the right, right.
Speaker 1: You see any connection between these two things are now, well.
Speaker 4: I don't know, Molly, what do you think? Yeah, of
Speaker 4: course there's a connection.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm just saying I'm not seeing a lot
Speaker 1: of people putting it together.
Speaker 2: Sod no.
Speaker 4: But look, and I'm you know, spitballing on the number here.
Speaker 4: But if you figure there is like there seems to
Speaker 4: be a solid twenty percent of the people who no
Speaker 4: matter what Trump does, they love him and they think
Speaker 4: he's doing it for them. There is the flip side
Speaker 4: of that, which are the people. You know, first of all,
Speaker 4: there were the people who have always said was it
Speaker 4: tax the rich or fuck the rich or eat the
Speaker 4: wrench or eat the rich. Well, there's a solid percentage
Speaker 4: that have always said that. But I do think that's
Speaker 4: spreading to more. I guess, for lack of a better word, normis,
Speaker 4: you know, not not the people like us who force
Speaker 4: feed this information into our brains every day to our
Speaker 4: great detriment. But the people who actually have lives is
Speaker 4: who I'm talking about here.
Speaker 2: You have to.
Speaker 1: Wonder if the largest transfer of wealth from the poor
Speaker 1: to the rich, from the middle class to the rich,
Speaker 1: this skinny Obamacare repeal and these cuts to Social Security,
Speaker 1: medic Caid and also to various other things might have
Speaker 1: something to do with this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, absolutely, Look, it's just too bad that Democrats
Speaker 4: didn't have a candidate in twenty sixteen and you know
Speaker 4: twenty twenty who was sort of saying things like these.
Speaker 4: But enough about Bernie.
Speaker 2: Well, let's talk about this.
Speaker 1: Populism is clearly popular and Americans are clearly very mad,
Speaker 1: So one would think that Democrats might want to hear
Speaker 1: the message of Zorin instead of fear the message of Zorin.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I just think most Democrats are not temperamentally suited
Speaker 4: to that. And I think you know, You're You're Hakeem
Speaker 4: Jeffrey is, your Chuck Schumer's is, and all those folks are.
Speaker 4: They are as terrified of left wing populism as they
Speaker 4: are of right wing populism, if not more so. Sometimes
Speaker 4: it really does feel like it's more so. And you
Speaker 4: see it when they occasionally try when Chuck Schumer posts
Speaker 4: something on social media that's vaguely populist, it just reeks
Speaker 4: of you know, Candra, Yeah, And it's just that's not
Speaker 4: who he is, That's not who most of them are.
Speaker 4: And I think that's unfortunate, and I think that's not
Speaker 4: serving the Democrats very well in this age that we're in,
Speaker 4: where as you said, there is so much anger. And
Speaker 4: you know, the thing is, it's always the question of
Speaker 4: who are you angry at. Are you angry at the
Speaker 4: rich people who are paying no taxes and who are
Speaker 4: paying really low salaries to the rest of the people,
Speaker 4: if not eliminating their jobs completely, or are you mad
Speaker 4: at the people who don't look like you? That's the
Speaker 4: fundamental difference between left and right wing populism. I'm obviously
Speaker 4: I'm simplifying things here, but you know, the right wing
Speaker 4: populace are the ones who want all the immigrants gone
Speaker 4: because they believe falsely that the immigrants are taking their jobs.
Speaker 4: It is the fault of immigrants that their life hasn't
Speaker 4: turned out the way they wanted to do. They never
Speaker 4: sort of make that connection that, No, it's the fault
Speaker 4: of the people in charge of the of the you know,
Speaker 4: whether we want to call it an oligarchy or whatever,
Speaker 4: but to me, that is the fundamental difference. And it
Speaker 4: feels like there are times when the Democrats are more
Speaker 4: comfortable with pandering to that group of people, whether it's
Speaker 4: on the trans issues like we discussed, whether it's on immigration,
Speaker 4: where the Democrats have always been at best republican light.
Speaker 4: Kamala did not run an open borders campaign. Now she
Speaker 4: ran up basically, let's do everything that you know we've
Speaker 4: been doing, but maybe be a little a little nicer
Speaker 4: about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a little nicer. Andy Levy, will you come back.
Speaker 4: Yes, okay, yes, I had I had to hear from
Speaker 4: my people.
Speaker 1: Ed Markey is the junior senator from the state of Massachusetts.
Speaker 2: Senator Marking, welcome.
Speaker 5: O great, agree with you.
Speaker 2: So the government of shutdown.
Speaker 1: When people hear this, it'll be day twenty eight.
Speaker 2: Talk us through.
Speaker 1: This shutdown looks a little different than other shutdowns because
Speaker 1: of the administration's refusal to fund snap benefits.
Speaker 2: Talk us through what you're seeing in the Senate.
Speaker 5: Well, again, the.
Speaker 6: Senate now operates under the rules of Godfather the Poplin.
Speaker 6: They've all been given an offer they can't refuse by
Speaker 6: President Trump, and they've all been told not to do
Speaker 6: anything without his express permission or Steven Millers, so their
Speaker 6: perallel and by the way, they've all internalized the lesson
Speaker 6: of Tom Tillis back when we were debating earlier this year,
Speaker 6: when he said he would be concerned if the healthcare
Speaker 6: cuts would harm rural hospitals in North Carolina, and twenty
Speaker 6: four hours later he was told by Donald Trump he
Speaker 6: could not run for reelection in twenty twenty six. So
Speaker 6: the other Republicans have internalized this, and as a result,
Speaker 6: there's no movement. Let's be honest. The House of Representatives,
Speaker 6: led by Speaker Johnson, they've been out for five weeks.
Speaker 6: They're in a national political Witness Protection Program. They're out
Speaker 6: there somewhere. Well, they haven't come to the negotiating table,
Speaker 6: and as a result, we can't talk about SNAP.
Speaker 5: We can't talk about premium.
Speaker 6: Tax cuts, benefits for healthcare policies in our country, Medicaid cuts,
Speaker 6: we can't talk about anything because they're not here.
Speaker 1: So we have the SNAP benefits issue. You guys are
Speaker 1: still doing votes even though the House is out, So
Speaker 1: what are you guys doing in the Senate.
Speaker 6: We're using the platform that we have here to talk
Speaker 6: about the fact. So, for example, a message use it's
Speaker 6: one million people are going to lose their staff benefits
Speaker 6: on November first. So in Massachusetts, for those one million people,
Speaker 6: which is essentially about one sixth to one seventh of
Speaker 6: our population, it's about one third or young, one third
Speaker 6: or old, and one third of the same are going
Speaker 6: to lose their supplemental nutrition benefit, which they need just
Speaker 6: to not be hungry to stay alive. So that's one state, Massachusetts,
Speaker 6: and the story is going to be true across the
Speaker 6: rest of this country, and I think it's going to
Speaker 6: ultimately wind up boomeranging on the Republicans. One that they
Speaker 6: will legislate on this, but two that the President will
Speaker 6: not use the five billion dollar fund that exists at
Speaker 6: the Department of Agriculture to pay for staff benefits on
Speaker 6: this Saturday and every Saturday after that in order to
Speaker 6: make sure that people have the food which they need.
Speaker 6: Trump will not use his power to use that five
Speaker 6: billion dollar reserve fund. So we have a very very
Speaker 6: real problem, and we are taking votes here as Democrats.
Speaker 6: We're talking to the people across our states and across
Speaker 6: the country about what the Republicans are doing. And as
Speaker 6: each day goes by, I think it's a bigger political
Speaker 6: catastrophe for the Republicans than they have experienced in years,
Speaker 6: and it's only going to grow in its intensity.
Speaker 1: What are you hearing on the ground, Like, when you
Speaker 1: talk to people, what are they saying? It seems as
Speaker 1: if voters are furious, But I've seen that some places
Speaker 1: and not other places.
Speaker 2: I mean, what are you seeing? What are you hearing?
Speaker 5: Well?
Speaker 6: In Massachusetts, we just had one hundred thousand people at
Speaker 6: a No King's rally on Boston Common, and Elizabeth Lawre
Speaker 6: and I we stood next to each other and we
Speaker 6: talked to those people on the Boston Common and they
Speaker 6: are furious. They're up in arms. The American Revolution started
Speaker 6: right there two hundred and fifty years ago, and these
Speaker 6: are ladder day revolutionaries, following upon the actions of those
Speaker 6: minute men and minute women and on the world to
Speaker 6: the abolitionists of the suffragette movement, the civil rights movement,
Speaker 6: the same sex marriage movement, the universal healthcare movement, all
Speaker 6: of which began in Massachusetts. So we're up, and people
Speaker 6: are angry, they're mobilized. There were another thirty or so
Speaker 6: rallies across the strait, across the state on that day.
Speaker 6: I spoke to three thousand people on the election in
Speaker 6: Green where the American Revolution began, with a shot grind
Speaker 6: round the world was fired, And that's what happened in Massachusetts.
Speaker 6: There was a shot that was fired in order to
Speaker 6: raise people's voices to protect democracy and to protect all
Speaker 6: the programs that have been passed in a democratic fashion,
Speaker 6: to protect all American families.
Speaker 5: So we're up.
Speaker 6: We think that with the example for the rest of
Speaker 6: the country. And I also think it's a preview of
Speaker 6: coming attractions for the Republicans next year at the ballot
Speaker 6: box across our nation.
Speaker 1: So I want you to talk about this movie that
Speaker 1: is called The House of Dynamite. It's written by Noah Oppenheimer,
Speaker 1: who comes from News World, and it's about the nuclear codes.
Speaker 2: And you wrote about it in an op ed.
Speaker 1: And I want you to explained to us why this
Speaker 1: situation of having just one person who can destroy many
Speaker 1: lives with the nuclear weapon, why this is something that
Speaker 1: needs to be addressed well.
Speaker 6: Congressman and Ted lu and I, we have legislation that
Speaker 6: says that no president, no one person should have the
Speaker 6: right to determine when the United States launches nuclear weapons
Speaker 6: if we have not been attacked by nuclear weapons. And
Speaker 6: it's a very important principle that we have to establish
Speaker 6: in our country. Secondly, Congressman Lu and I, we were
Speaker 6: actually successful last year in having our legislation adopted in
Speaker 6: the Biden Defense Build which will prohibit the use of
Speaker 6: AI to launch nuclear weapons. We have to continue to
Speaker 6: move forward on those issues. But this movie also demonstrates
Speaker 6: that the defense technologies which people think will work to
Speaker 6: shoot down incoming nuclear weapons, they can destroy American cities.
Speaker 6: There's no guarantee that it will work, and the movie
Speaker 6: itself now makes that very very clear. As Donald Trump
Speaker 6: is promising to build a golden dome over our country
Speaker 6: to protect us against incoming nuclear weapons. But we know
Speaker 6: that what will happen is the Chinese and the Russians
Speaker 6: and others will just build more nuclear weapons to overcome
Speaker 6: that golden shield that he wants to build, and the
Speaker 6: world will only become more dangerous. So this movie by
Speaker 6: Catherine Bigelow is really like a Cassandra like warning that
Speaker 6: the only way to protect against a nuclear war is
Speaker 6: through negotiations. It's through arms control, it's by countries working
Speaker 6: together not to increase their arsenals, but to reduce their arsenals,
Speaker 6: because otherwise we're just heading towards a catastrophic conclusion. And
Speaker 6: the least that we should be able to say is
Speaker 6: that we try, We really try to avoid a catastrophic
Speaker 6: nuclear war on apples in it. And I just can't
Speaker 6: tell you how great this movie is. And I can't
Speaker 6: congratulate the writers, the producers and out for the work
Speaker 6: which they did.
Speaker 1: I want you to explain to us about the tariffs.
Speaker 1: You guys signed this. It was like a legal brief
Speaker 1: that's gone to the Supreme Court. All the Democratic senators
Speaker 1: signed it. Trump probably does not have these emergency powers
Speaker 1: he needs in order to get a sort of legal
Speaker 1: approval for the tariffs. It probably doesn't matter because the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court is in the tank for him. But talk
Speaker 1: us through what you guys did as Democrats to try
Speaker 1: to help Way in there.
Speaker 6: Trump is relying upon a nineteen seventies piece of legislation
Speaker 6: that gives the president powers and emergencies to be able
Speaker 6: to act. But that law never talked about tariffs, and
Speaker 6: it never for sure intended for our president to substitute
Speaker 6: for the congressional responsibility of voting on tarrors. It's reckless,
Speaker 6: it's illegal. And what I've done a couple of times
Speaker 6: on the set of floor so far is I've called
Speaker 6: up my bill to exempt all small businesses in America
Speaker 6: from his tariffs. He's turning Main Street into pain Street
Speaker 6: for thirty three million small businesses in our country, and
Speaker 6: the Republicans continue to get up and to object. And
Speaker 6: what's happening is that these small businesses are the ones
Speaker 6: who cannot just ride out a tariff wark Big companies
Speaker 6: they can do it. Small companies cannot. So what's happening
Speaker 6: with these tariffs is that the Quanians, the Rotarians, the
Speaker 6: main street businesses in every red state Republican district. They're
Speaker 6: the ones feeling the pain and the increased costs for
Speaker 6: their business offer their customers from these tariffs. So the
Speaker 6: Supreme Court will be, you know, hearing the case. But ultimately,
Speaker 6: as you said, it appears that the Supreme Court is
Speaker 6: just in the tank to the President, even when he's
Speaker 6: acting in an unconstitutional way, usurping powers which the Congress
Speaker 6: has never given to him. So I think it's a
Speaker 6: dangerous path that the President's going down politically. The Republicans
Speaker 6: are following him. Electricity rates are skyrocketing, healthcare costs are skyrocketing,
Speaker 6: costs for food, cost for clothing, the cost for just
Speaker 6: the the ability to do business in small, small town
Speaker 6: America all skyrocketing. And I just think they're creating the
Speaker 6: conditions for a political revolution out there to dump the
Speaker 6: Republicans next year.
Speaker 2: So it certainly seems like it.
Speaker 1: And when you watch Man Dami on Sunday, it's hard
Speaker 1: to see a lane for Democrats who are not real populous.
Speaker 1: So you are running for reelection, you blew the other
Speaker 1: candidate out of the water last time, What is your
Speaker 1: plan this time?
Speaker 6: I continue to run as a progressive champion. It's not
Speaker 6: your age, it's the age of your ideas to actually
Speaker 6: determine where voters go and is energized as I've ever been.
Speaker 6: I wake up every morning ready to fight whatever the
Speaker 6: craziest idea Trump has come up with that morning, and
Speaker 6: it's in response to that that keeps me going.
Speaker 5: My father drove a truck with the Hood Milk Company.
Speaker 6: Delivering milk, do it adu and the United States Senator
Speaker 6: and growing up in Malda, Massachusetts, I could see the
Speaker 6: opportunities have opened up caught me. I still live in
Speaker 6: malde Massachusetts. It's still a blue collar a town, but
Speaker 6: now it's a quarter Black, a quarter Wide, a quarter Asian,
Speaker 6: a quarter Latino. And what Trump does is he brings
Speaker 6: out the mald It in me every day to fight
Speaker 6: for those families, to fight for those kids. They have
Speaker 6: the same opportunities which I was given, educational from a
Speaker 6: healthcare perspective, breaking down discriminatory barriers. So that's who I've
Speaker 6: always been and that's who I'm going to be throughout
Speaker 6: this race and for as long as I'm given the honor.
Speaker 5: Of representing Massachusetts in the United States Senate.
Speaker 1: You are running against someone Seth Maulton, who is not
Speaker 1: as lefty as you, but who has returned a PAC.
Speaker 2: Motiney.
Speaker 1: A PAC has become a huge divide in the Democratic
Speaker 1: Party for any number of reasons.
Speaker 2: Talk us through where you are with this.
Speaker 6: Well, I don't take APEC money, but I also don't
Speaker 6: take corporate donations. I'm also a big supporter of repealing
Speaker 6: Citizens United and getting dark money out of our Baltics.
Speaker 6: That's how I ran in twenty twenty. That's how I'm
Speaker 6: going to run this time. Okay, I'm going to run
Speaker 6: just saying that we need a better political system in
Speaker 6: our country in terms of it financing.
Speaker 1: How do you think that is transmitted to the rest
Speaker 1: of the party, Because like, there clearly is a divide
Speaker 1: between Democrats who are comfortable with certain things. And again
Speaker 1: it's like I'm very conflicted because it's a difference between
Speaker 1: you know, you're not going to necessarily have candidates who
Speaker 1: check all your boxes and you need to win. But
Speaker 1: the electorate seems furious and they are as opposed to
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen. They seem furious with everyone. They're more furious
Speaker 1: with Trump, but not by that much.
Speaker 5: I think they should be curious.
Speaker 6: They should be outraged at the conditions in our country
Speaker 6: right now, and that's what I have been channeling. That's
Speaker 6: where I was in my twenty twenty race as well.
Speaker 6: Trump right now is dismantling all of the programs that
Speaker 6: we were successful in putting on the books to fight
Speaker 6: climate change. And that's just a Green New Deal that
Speaker 6: Alexandro Ocassio, Cotez and I introduced in February of twenty nineteen.
Speaker 6: That just changed the game, and it came from young people.
Speaker 6: It came from activists just demanding that the Democratic Party respawn.
Speaker 6: And that's the way politics really works. In twenty sixteen,
Speaker 6: not one reporter asked Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump a
Speaker 6: question about climate change. We introduced the Green New Deal
Speaker 6: will solved that problem so that we would have a
Speaker 6: real debate about climate change in our country. And that's
Speaker 6: what we're doing right now again with regard to all
Speaker 6: of these issues. It's coming from young people, it's coming
Speaker 6: from activists. It's coming from people who are angry and
Speaker 6: who are marching, they're chanting, they're raising their voices, and
Speaker 6: they want a Democratic Party who will stand up and fight.
Speaker 5: And we have to.
Speaker 6: Make sure that we rally around this healthcare issue, and
Speaker 6: we have to guarantee that this is a fight about them,
Speaker 6: for them, about their families, and about the futures that
Speaker 6: they hope that their children will be able to enjoy.
Speaker 2: How are you guys going to protect the midterms?
Speaker 1: Like Trump is already talking about election monitors? Are their
Speaker 1: plans on the Democratic side of the state legislature to
Speaker 1: send in because you are entitled to election monitors as
Speaker 1: well right the state.
Speaker 6: Well, we have every right to be concerned when Trump
Speaker 6: brings in five hundred generals and admirals and says to
Speaker 6: them that he wants them to practice in American cities
Speaker 6: for what they'll be doing overseas. My fear, and I
Speaker 6: think Americans fear that what he wants them to do
Speaker 6: is practice for what he'll call upon them to do
Speaker 6: on election day next year in American cities, in minority
Speaker 6: communities across our country, in the deployment of troops.
Speaker 5: So we have to.
Speaker 6: Begin earl to ensure that we raise our voices to
Speaker 6: protect against him illegally using military troops to suppress the
Speaker 6: vote in our country. And we also have to make
Speaker 6: sure that we have thousands of lawyers who are ready
Speaker 6: to go into every single city where they are working
Speaker 6: to impose their authoritarian regime policies on election day next year.
Speaker 6: And it's going to be a challenge for us because
Speaker 6: Trump is talking about a third term, which is illegal
Speaker 6: and unconstitutional, but it's who he is. And we have
Speaker 6: to also understand that once he loses the House and
Speaker 6: set it that there's going to be a flood of
Speaker 6: subpoenis going to every agency and every person who's done
Speaker 6: business with the trouble administration in their first two years.
Speaker 6: And Trump really will do anything to preclude the House
Speaker 6: and Centive from having that kind of power. So you're right,
Speaker 6: we're going to need the monitors, We're going to need
Speaker 6: the personnel.
Speaker 5: We're going to need to work very very hard. Otherwise,
Speaker 5: what we saw with him in the Jimmy Kimmel case
Speaker 5: turning the FCC into the Federal Censorship Commission, he's going
Speaker 5: to try to do the same thing to our democracy
Speaker 5: in general.
Speaker 1: Why you think people don't assume that he'll do what
Speaker 1: he's always done, Like, why do you think people are
Speaker 1: always sort of optimistic that he won't do stuff like
Speaker 1: that this time?
Speaker 6: Well, again, I think his MAGA supporters do believe that
Speaker 6: he will do it, and they're going to give him
Speaker 6: a permission slip to do it. What we have to
Speaker 6: do on the Democratic side is just to continue to
Speaker 6: work harder and get everybody up with an energy level
Speaker 6: that increases our turnout.
Speaker 5: This is a turnout battle.
Speaker 6: Next year, we have to have the highest off year
Speaker 6: turnin out that we've ever had in American history. We
Speaker 6: have to raise these issues, make it clear that democracy, healthcare, education, climate,
Speaker 6: civil rights are all on the books. We can't agonize.
Speaker 6: We have to organize. That's what this has to be about.
Speaker 6: And it's on Democrats to do that organization to have
Speaker 6: the highest turnout in history next year. We're not going
Speaker 6: to win by just being a middle fiddles here. We're
Speaker 6: going to win by being in the mushing middle and
Speaker 6: trying to convince people that we're well like them. It's
Speaker 6: going to be an increasing the trade out and if
Speaker 6: we do that, then we're going to have a historic picture.
Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you, thank you for joining us.
Speaker 5: Oh glad to be with you, Thank you, Thanks for
Speaker 5: having me on.
Speaker 3: No moment pfectly Jesse Cannon, one of your favorite characters
Speaker 3: is in our Moment of Factory. It's one Ken Paxton, Oh.
Speaker 2: The best I think you mean, Senator Ken Paxton.
Speaker 3: Well maybe, I mean, you know, let's see if you
Speaker 3: could get that primary over the finish line. So Texas
Speaker 3: is suing Tailanol's makers claiming they hid the autism risks.
Speaker 1: Right. Meanwhile, let me just say that Thailand all should
Speaker 1: be suing Texas for slander because none of that is right.
Speaker 2: None of it is true, and they know it's not true.
Speaker 1: It's just up bullshit because they wanted to find a
Speaker 1: cause for autism, and so they decided talent all was it.
Speaker 3: I seem to recall tail and all pretty big owners,
Speaker 3: pretty big Trump owners. If I don't recall, yes.
Speaker 2: They are so who knows how mad they probably are. No,
Speaker 2: the whole thing is fucked.
Speaker 3: Sorry, y'all you decide to go to the leopard eating
Speaker 3: party and guess what.
Speaker 2: Congratulations.
Speaker 1: All that's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune
Speaker 1: in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear the
Speaker 1: best minds and politics make sense of all this chaos.
Speaker 1: If you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a
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