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. According to a new poll from Somos Bontantes,
Speaker 1: a quarter of Latinos who backed Trump last November were
Speaker 1: either disappointed in his performance or regretted voting for him.
Speaker 1: I'm shocked. We have such a great show for you today.
Speaker 1: Two of The Contrary's own, Charlie Sykes, stops by to
Speaker 1: talk about Trump's fast paced authoritarianism. Then we'll talk to
Speaker 1: The New York Times own Jonathan Mahler about his amazing
Speaker 1: story on the Trump administration cutting cancer research.
Speaker 2: But first the news, Molly, I just shocked here the
Speaker 2: uh it turns out that the reason the Epstein files
Speaker 2: weren't coming out as well lots of Trump's friends are
Speaker 2: in the files.
Speaker 1: Yeah, lots of So we got two different kinds of
Speaker 1: Epstein stuff coming out. We have House Oversight, which is
Speaker 1: releasing these tranches of documents, and then we have Jason
Speaker 1: Leopold at Bloomberg who's also got into Epstein's Yahoo account.
Speaker 2: Such a security email.
Speaker 3: DA that's right.
Speaker 1: And by the way, can I just say that this
Speaker 1: Yahoo stuff is so amazing because it's.
Speaker 2: Like, do we think the past word was pete obosk one, two, three.
Speaker 1: Oh god, but they are completely crazy. There are three
Speaker 1: of them. The one from yesterday though he had a
Speaker 1: whole crisis comms team, he was proving different statements. Anyway,
Speaker 1: this batch today from House oversight from the Democrats, never
Speaker 1: going to see the Republicans do it. By the way,
Speaker 1: you know who's running House oversight for the Democrats, So
Speaker 1: let's for Robert Garcia, who continues to deliver the goods.
Speaker 1: So in this phone message, logs from two thousand and
Speaker 1: two to two thousand and five might be of some interest.
Speaker 1: I wonder who he was talking to them. Copies of
Speaker 1: flow logs and flight manifestos for aircraft including helicopters that
Speaker 1: mister Epstein owned, rented, least operated, or used from nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety to twenty nineteen, so there's probably a fair number
Speaker 1: of politicians and that Copies of ledgers reflecting transactions recorded
Speaker 1: as cash transactions for mister Epstein and business entities. These
Speaker 1: documents were previously shown to the committee and then Epstein's
Speaker 1: daily schedule between twenty ten and twenty nineteen. That means
Speaker 1: if you had brunch with Jeff Epp. If you're listening
Speaker 1: a podcasts and you had brunch with Jeff Epp between
Speaker 1: twenty ten and twenty nineteen, you might want to call
Speaker 1: your lawyer. What I think is very interesting about this
Speaker 1: is there's evidence that Peter Til you may remember Peter
Speaker 1: Tile as the person who's funded this entire dystopia. Steve Bannon,
Speaker 1: you may remember Steve Bannon as the person who is
Speaker 1: narrating this entire dystopia, had scheduled meetings with Epstein. Cheryl
Speaker 1: was nothing. Why would it be Prince an Andrew is
Speaker 1: You may remember Prince Andrew as being a Prince of
Speaker 1: British Prince. He's listed as a passenger on Epstein's aircraft.
Speaker 1: There's possible with financial disclosures proving possible evidence of payment
Speaker 1: from Epstein to missus on behalf of an individual identified
Speaker 1: as You're never going to believe this. Andrew very discreet,
Speaker 1: extensive reactions to protect victims, which is what we all want.
Speaker 1: I want to point out that Donald Trump is obsessed
Speaker 1: with people not getting this information. That doesn't mean you're guilty.
Speaker 2: It doesn't What did Jeffrey Epstein is saying on tape
Speaker 2: saying I was Donald Trump's best friend for over a decade.
Speaker 1: You gotta wonder he likes beautiful women as much as
Speaker 1: I do. Many of them on the younger side. We're
Speaker 1: not making light of sex trafficking children. We think it's bad,
Speaker 1: but we are wondering why this has to take so
Speaker 1: long and why Donald Trump is fighting these disclosures so hard. Also,
Speaker 1: another person who was friends with jeff epp and flew
Speaker 1: around on the plane brainworm himself.
Speaker 2: Do you remember when he was I believe it was
Speaker 2: Hannity and he tried to list all the times he
Speaker 2: got with Jeffrey Epstein. But the funniest thing is he
Speaker 2: didn't list all of them, even though we were like, damn,
Speaker 2: that's a lot of times.
Speaker 1: Well the best ones, like Kennedy was like, please let
Speaker 1: me help you not destroy your life, and r kids
Speaker 1: like and then there was that time we went to
Speaker 1: the Caribbean and I was like, I don't know how.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess that everything has gotten so stupid
Speaker 1: that if you're famous then it doesn't matter if you
Speaker 1: do all of this self incrimination.
Speaker 2: But when you're famous, they let you do anything. Grab them.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, yeah, Oh that's not good. Anyway, we're not
Speaker 1: making light of any of this stuff, but we are.
Speaker 1: We got to get to rfkgnor my I think when.
Speaker 2: He was doing that interview with Hannity, you know they
Speaker 2: sometimes say, what Jesus take the wheel? I think the
Speaker 2: worm took the wheel and just did what it had
Speaker 2: to do.
Speaker 1: I just want to point out the worm is supposedly dead.
Speaker 2: I mean, he gets a lot of facts wrong. The
Speaker 2: worm might be might be alive and well, and it
Speaker 2: seems like he's running things, which is what is scary
Speaker 2: a lot of us. With this new report.
Speaker 1: We've got to get a worm that doesn't take tilent
Speaker 1: all continue. So all comes back to talent.
Speaker 2: The tilet all jokes at every group chat I've in
Speaker 2: in these days.
Speaker 1: It's like in any group chats anyway, that's what you
Speaker 1: put me in your group chat.
Speaker 2: Okay. So anytime we hear that HHS Secretary RFK Junior
Speaker 2: is studying something, we know it's going to go to
Speaker 2: a very stupid place. Now we've seen lots of evidence
Speaker 2: of this. At his new subject, he's studying abortion pills.
Speaker 1: You want my hottest take on what it means for
Speaker 1: him to study things.
Speaker 2: I'm putting on my flameproof suit so I can get
Speaker 2: your hottest take.
Speaker 1: I think what happens is he goes on Facebook groups
Speaker 1: and he LARPs as someone his own age because he's
Speaker 1: in his seven and he gets in there and he
Speaker 1: just asks other boomers what their take is on things.
Speaker 2: The policies feel that way.
Speaker 1: Not that there's anything wrong with being a boomer, but
Speaker 1: there is something wrong with being a boomer on Facebook.
Speaker 2: Yeah. This is causing a lot of alarm since the
Speaker 2: conclusions that the quacks he hangs out with seem to
Speaker 2: get to are not just contrarian, they're very wrong and
Speaker 2: not not based in science.
Speaker 1: Yes, they're not not based in science. Many people are
Speaker 1: saying they are not based in science, but they could
Speaker 1: also be not not the good science. In case you're
Speaker 1: wondering things are going great, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Here's another way things are going great. The Guardian has
Speaker 2: this amazing report that immigrants with no criminal record now
Speaker 2: are the largest group in nice attention. Seem to remember
Speaker 2: that the campaign was all about how they going to
Speaker 2: just get the criminals out of here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, as someone who just did an event
Speaker 1: with Scott Jennings from CNN at Penn State University.
Speaker 2: I really hope you're treating yourself to some self care
Speaker 2: this weekend.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Sure. What I think is really interesting about this
Speaker 1: moment in American life is you had polling the show
Speaker 1: that immigration was a winner for trumpet. That's why they
Speaker 1: had the mass deportation. Now signs everything that Trump does, well,
Speaker 1: it's craven. It's often because he thinks it'll make him
Speaker 1: win with the base. So here's the news. This policy
Speaker 1: of the massed people picking up the women, the little
Speaker 1: old ladies, the children. I don't know if you saw
Speaker 1: that that an autistic kid was held outside so that
Speaker 1: the father would come out so he could get arrested.
Speaker 1: Legal immigration has never been more popular. I wonder if
Speaker 1: we could go back in time and look at what
Speaker 1: the United States government did to Mexicans during the very
Speaker 1: dark period that was. You'll remember where they deported all
Speaker 1: of these Mexican people and also a lot of citizens
Speaker 1: because they were way profiling. And it turns out, I
Speaker 1: don't tell the Supreme Court this, but when you racially profile,
Speaker 1: you just get people of that race. Worth wondering, like,
Speaker 1: if we ever get out of this thing, how this
Speaker 1: changes people's views. I think a lot about Arizona, because
Speaker 1: Arizona had this sheriff or Pio, who became a Trump
Speaker 1: World fixture because why wouldn't he be, But he radicalized
Speaker 1: a lot of the young people in Arizona because of
Speaker 1: his incredibly insane you know, the insane stuff they were
Speaker 1: doing where they were trying to strip, you know, right
Speaker 1: from immigrants.
Speaker 3: So I think it'll be really.
Speaker 1: Curious to see, if we ever get out of this,
Speaker 1: how people's views towards immigrants change. I think that we
Speaker 1: will see a real backlash to this. I'm just guessing
Speaker 1: that these videos of these massed agents carrying around women,
Speaker 1: hitting them, arresting them. I just think it's going to
Speaker 1: be hard to sell this the American people.
Speaker 2: I agree with you, and especially when you're seeing footage
Speaker 2: of just small women getting the living shit kicked out
Speaker 2: of him. You know, as somebody whose wife had an
Speaker 2: encounter with ice that was very very well oppressed to.
Speaker 2: We have prid of the show Kataboo Zagala getting thrown
Speaker 2: to the point that she was injured pretty badly. It's
Speaker 2: just real disgusting stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, we are in this backlash cycle and
Speaker 1: it's hard for me to imagine this won't continue on.
Speaker 1: Charlie Sikes is the author of the newsletter to the
Speaker 1: Contrary and the book How the Right Lost Its Mind.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Fast Politic, Charlie Sikes.
Speaker 3: Wow, what do we have to talk about today?
Speaker 2: Really?
Speaker 3: What's going on?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Remember when Donald Trump said that he was going to
Speaker 1: seek retribution against his enemies, and many different interviewers were like,
Speaker 1: but you don't really mean that, and he was like, no, no, I.
Speaker 3: Do, Yeah, no, no, I do. You know the funny
Speaker 3: us you should put it that way because I was.
Speaker 3: I'm writing about that this morning. And on one level,
Speaker 3: a lot of what's going on is like completely predictable, right.
Speaker 3: I mean, he's been saying it for years. You know,
Speaker 3: I am your retribution. I am going to go after
Speaker 3: you know, he called for the death penalty for General Millie.
Speaker 3: You know, he's been saying these things. And yet I
Speaker 3: think there's been that kind of denialism across the board
Speaker 3: that the people on the you know, in the Republican
Speaker 3: Party go, well, okay, let's don't you know, don't take
Speaker 3: him serious. He's taking seriously but not literally, he's not
Speaker 3: actually going to do that. I think there have been
Speaker 3: people in the center in the left who thought, okay,
Speaker 3: well yeah, but there are all these guard rails, there's
Speaker 3: all these limits. He's not going to find lawyers who
Speaker 3: are going to do this. And then we wake up today,
Speaker 3: Molly and find out that, damn it, he is doing
Speaker 3: everything he said and he's making no secret of it.
Speaker 3: And this is the thing. It's kind of like a
Speaker 3: mob boss thing. You get in that hole. You know,
Speaker 3: I want a head of James. But normally, and Jimmy
Speaker 3: Kimmel did a great joke about this the other day,
Speaker 3: you know, when he's talking about Brendan Carr making his
Speaker 3: mob boss, you know, a nice network he got there,
Speaker 3: comments that normally, if you're going to get that kind
Speaker 3: of a threat from a mob boss, you have to
Speaker 3: plant a microphone in a deli and then sit outside
Speaker 3: in the van for an hour or so. You have
Speaker 3: these guys saying it every day on Blast. It's like
Speaker 3: Watergate on the biggliest loudspeakers in the world. And you know,
Speaker 3: and so people are saying, well, I'm shocked. Well, on
Speaker 3: one level, why you shocked? He told us he was
Speaker 3: to do it. On the other hand, I don't know
Speaker 3: about you. We are in uncharted territory. I mean, if
Speaker 3: this feels different, it is different. I mean people do
Speaker 3: need to understand that even a few months ago, if
Speaker 3: you would have said that he would order the Department
Speaker 3: of Justice to indicite a specific person, and even when
Speaker 3: the lawyers came back and said there's no case, he
Speaker 3: would then fire those lawyers and he would find some
Speaker 3: tody and he would from the Oval office ordering the
Speaker 3: criminal indictment of a Politically, even a few months ago,
Speaker 3: people would have said, yeah, I don't he's gonna go
Speaker 3: that far right, Well, here we are.
Speaker 1: So we've seen other countries slip into autocracy, like real autocracy,
Speaker 1: not this sort of squishy middle that we're in right now.
Speaker 1: But it's tended to be that it's happened because in
Speaker 1: a way the leaders have done things like they've been
Speaker 1: a little sneakier about it right erduwan. They've tried not
Speaker 1: to scare people I was thinking of orbon you know,
Speaker 1: they've said, even putin right, there was some you know,
Speaker 1: we don't want just some couching of it. That's not
Speaker 1: what's happening here. What's happening here is like he's doing it,
Speaker 1: saying he's doing it being like I'm doing it and
Speaker 1: everyone else is also saying like trying to you know,
Speaker 1: there's some kind of incentive structure where you know, they're
Speaker 1: all trying to take credit for it so that Trump
Speaker 1: will path them on the head. Does that help or
Speaker 1: does that hurt our autocratic slot?
Speaker 3: Well, our articatct slide has become a landslide, hasn't it.
Speaker 3: I mean, your point is exactly right. I think I
Speaker 3: heard an Apple bombs say a couple of weeks ago
Speaker 3: that it took Victor Orbon fifteen years to accomplish what
Speaker 3: Donald Trump is doing in the first eight months. And
Speaker 3: part of the reason this goes back to the cliche
Speaker 3: about the boiling frog. You know, you boil the frog
Speaker 3: slowly so the frog doesn't notice, and then by the
Speaker 3: time it notices it's too late, it's already boiled. Whereas
Speaker 3: if you just threw the floor a frog into really
Speaker 3: scalding water, it would jump out. I mean that's the theory, right. Well,
Speaker 3: here's the deal. We're the frog. He's scalding us, and
Speaker 3: I'm not sure that the American frog has figured how
Speaker 3: to respond to this. I've already strained that analogy way
Speaker 3: too far, it's good.
Speaker 1: I like it, American Frog.
Speaker 3: The thing is that and I have talked to you know,
Speaker 3: the people who have watched what's happened in Turkey, watch
Speaker 3: what's happened in Russia, watch what's happened in other countries,
Speaker 3: including Hungary, and they all make the same point. Is
Speaker 3: the pattern is exactly the same. Go after the civil institutions,
Speaker 3: go after you know, go after the dissident billionaires, go
Speaker 3: after the independent media, go after the universities. Create an
Speaker 3: enemy that you use to establish state spot power. And
Speaker 3: again there's no gradualism. Donald Trump is accurately he's a
Speaker 3: man on the.
Speaker 1: Clock, right, No, he clearly is. And in fact, when
Speaker 1: you saw those Truths Truths quote unquote, he'd say things like,
Speaker 1: you know, we got to get this going, and we
Speaker 1: can't waste any time. We saw this week, Kimmel is
Speaker 1: not off the air. And in fact, he was the
Speaker 1: Tom Hanks of COVID, right where Tom Hanks got COVID
Speaker 1: and people were like, oh shit, this is real. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Kimmel six million people on network, another thirty million on YouTube.
Speaker 1: Even if thirty million people did not sit down and
Speaker 1: watch the entire episode, it means that it has broken through.
Speaker 1: It has broken through to a big percentage of the population,
Speaker 1: and now igur ma ay force next are to air him.
Speaker 1: Kimmel can be an inflection point. Either can be a
Speaker 1: hero because this is the first time we've seen this.
Speaker 3: It feels like the first time we've seen this, and
Speaker 3: I'm sure there are other episodes, but but not at
Speaker 3: the scale of what Jimmy Kimmel is doing right now,
Speaker 3: you know, And hey, look, kim let's see there's so
Speaker 3: much awful going on. I think we ought to like
Speaker 3: spend a moment wallowing in the in the sort of
Speaker 3: awesomeness of the You and I failed attempt comedy.
Speaker 1: Real cock eyed optimists. It's like you're you're a Midwesterner
Speaker 1: and I'm just well medicated.
Speaker 3: But I try to stay away from the hopium. But
Speaker 3: I will say that this, you know, watching What's happened
Speaker 3: with Jimmy Kimmel, the point was to cancel him. Right
Speaker 3: He's bigger than ever right now. The last two nights
Speaker 3: he's come out and he's been on his game, going
Speaker 3: after Donald Trump very very specifically, as you know, being
Speaker 3: a bully and the kinds of things that that he
Speaker 3: is doing, talking about what's going on with the you know,
Speaker 3: people like Sinclair and Nextstar. The audience is huge, it
Speaker 3: is pointed. It's also in a sweet spot for the
Speaker 3: critics of Donald Trump because free speech, you know, it's
Speaker 3: been battered and hollowed out, but it is a fundamental
Speaker 3: It is the fundamental American value. It is in our DNA,
Speaker 3: the right to speak, the right to make fun of
Speaker 3: people in power, and people get it now. Again, things
Speaker 3: may have gotten squishy and soft and people came up
Speaker 3: with all kinds of others, but it feels like there's
Speaker 3: real opportunity here to sort of go back and go, Okay,
Speaker 3: what is America all about? Why do we value free speech?
Speaker 3: What is the point of free speech? And what is
Speaker 3: Donald Trump doing? Is Donald Trump really thinking that he
Speaker 3: makes America great by censoring and canceling people who make
Speaker 3: fun of him. On one level, the hypocrisy of Donald
Speaker 3: Trump claiming he was the free president candidate is sort
Speaker 3: of obvious. That's kind of the old story. I kind
Speaker 3: of feel that there's a possibility of a moment of
Speaker 3: revival of American values here, I mean, and also so
Speaker 3: that there's that hope. Second, I think people ought to
Speaker 3: realize that, Yeah, you can make a difference. Some things
Speaker 3: do make a difference. You know, Bob Iger did not
Speaker 3: wake up heroic. He woke up with lots of numbers
Speaker 3: about cancelations and long lists of celebrities and entertainers who
Speaker 3: might not work with Disney in the past. So now
Speaker 3: he had his nuts and a squeeze. Then that doesn't
Speaker 3: mean that at some point he didn't think, all right,
Speaker 3: who do I want to be in this movie? Who
Speaker 3: do I want to be? Do I want to be
Speaker 3: you know, the craven quizzling who cowers? Or do I
Speaker 3: want to be the guy that stands up for these principles?
Speaker 3: And then coincidentally, maybe you know, stops the bleeding on
Speaker 3: people who are canceling their Hulu and their Disney Plus accounts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's a really good point. It's a question.
Speaker 1: It's like the difference between Bob and Cherry Redstone. Cherry
Speaker 1: Redstone does everything Trump asked her to do so she
Speaker 1: can sell to paramount because she says, no big deal.
Speaker 1: She even defends it later she says, no, it was
Speaker 1: a distraction. Obviously, it wasn't a distraction. It was trying
Speaker 1: to change the partisan lean of an entire network because
Speaker 1: Donald Trump is an autocrat. Canceling Colbert was not about
Speaker 1: anything but making Donald Trump happy so you could get
Speaker 1: the regulatory approval.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, but weirdly enough, the way they went about
Speaker 3: it by giving him months in which he can point
Speaker 3: out to skewer that to secure them. I mean, you know,
Speaker 3: Colbert is there's nothing more dangerous than a comedian who's
Speaker 3: got nothing left to lose, right, he says a lot
Speaker 3: of fucks to get like I and Colbert goes out
Speaker 3: there every single night, and Jimmy Fallon kind of feels
Speaker 3: that way. Jimmy Fallon feels like like he has been Jimmy.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I was thinking of Fallon because
Speaker 3: Fallon was next on the list, right right, I mean.
Speaker 1: They're all on the list. We're all on the list.
Speaker 3: And the thing about Trump again is how he can't
Speaker 3: his his defenders will say, well, no, he had nothing
Speaker 3: to do with, you know, the cancelation of Jimmy Kendle,
Speaker 3: And so he just comes out and says no, I
Speaker 3: was told he was candled.
Speaker 1: I wanted the White House was tall, that we were
Speaker 1: the White House was tald, So maybe not even so
Speaker 1: somebody called somebody, maybe Brenda Carr, maybe this one.
Speaker 3: Maybe I mean craziness, Yeah, craziness. And then he said
Speaker 3: and Seth Myers and Jimmy fallon our next. So again
Speaker 3: he sort of laid it out the same thing with
Speaker 3: Jimmy Jim Cally. Okay, So he could have just let
Speaker 3: the indictment speak for itself, right as opposed to he
Speaker 3: had to on Friday morning basically come out and spike
Speaker 3: the football on this right to say, you know, yeah, go,
Speaker 3: he's a crooked cop. In case there was any doubt,
Speaker 3: any possible shred that you know, some hack like Scott
Speaker 3: Jennings could hang on and say Trump had nothing to
Speaker 3: do with the indictment of Jim Comy. How dare you
Speaker 3: suggest that the president of the United States. I'm sure
Speaker 3: that Pam Bondi and all the other great Google minds
Speaker 3: thought of this themselves, right, So you know, Scott Jennings
Speaker 3: is going to go out there and say, no, this
Speaker 3: is not a case of the President in the Oval
Speaker 3: office ordering the indictment of Jim coming. And what Donald
Speaker 3: Trump says says, hey, fuck you, Scott Jennings. Yes it
Speaker 3: was I did it.
Speaker 1: Yes, No, I think that's a really good point. He
Speaker 1: cannot give his defenders anything to hang their hats on. No,
Speaker 1: at least to try to pretend to be normal, which
Speaker 1: is probably good news if you're trying to avoid an
Speaker 1: authoritarian slide, if you're trying to avoid the appearance that
Speaker 1: all is normal when things are really being undermined.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well again, I don't think we're an authoritarian is sliding. Well,
Speaker 3: I think it's an authoritarian crack up. I mean when
Speaker 3: you're seeing these when you're seeing them and the speed
Speaker 3: with which it is happening, and just just to throw
Speaker 3: things up to keep an eye on over the next
Speaker 3: couple of days, keeping on this meeting with Pete haggs
Speaker 3: Ath and all the admirals and the generals.
Speaker 1: What's your sense on that?
Speaker 3: Well, you want my dark sense on that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want anything.
Speaker 3: People need to understand that this is we use the
Speaker 3: word unprecedented too much. This never happens. But you don't
Speaker 3: invite all of the eight hundred top admirals in generals
Speaker 3: all over the world to come to a meeting and
Speaker 3: not tell them what it's all about. You can do
Speaker 3: this on zoom. You can do this on secure networks.
Speaker 3: He's basically taking them from their posts, making them fly,
Speaker 3: come back, sit in front of him. No one knows
Speaker 3: what it's about. My dark concern is that he's going
Speaker 3: to stand up and say, we want to know who
Speaker 3: you're loyal to. How many people in this room will
Speaker 3: follow every order that Donald Trump gives you, and if
Speaker 3: you don't raise your hand, submit your resignation. Now, in
Speaker 3: our system of government, the military takes an oath to
Speaker 3: the Constitution, not to one man, not to Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: If hegzeth demands some sort of life loyalty of some
Speaker 3: sort to the administration, it will be one of those
Speaker 3: again watershed moments. What does it feel like, you know,
Speaker 3: will the military stand up? Will we see mass firings?
Speaker 3: What is he going to demand of them? I don't know,
Speaker 3: But again I'm speculating, But I was freaked out late
Speaker 3: last night when I saw this tweet from General Michael Hayden,
Speaker 3: retired for star general, used to be the head of
Speaker 3: the CIA, Director of National Intelligence, who reacted to somebody
Speaker 3: who proposed that scenario saying, I'm afraid that's what's going
Speaker 3: to happen. This is the fear in the military right
Speaker 3: now that they're going to demand some sort of loyalty.
Speaker 3: You know, we're going into some deep shit people. We
Speaker 3: want to know who's with us and who's against us.
Speaker 3: Who is unconditionally going to follow an order from Donald
Speaker 3: Trump no matter what as by the way, Donald Trump
Speaker 3: expects now from the Department of Justice, right, the Department
Speaker 3: of Homeland Security, the FBI. We've seen that throughout the government.
Speaker 3: In Donald Trump's mind, why shouldn't that be the case
Speaker 3: in the military. It's his generals, his military, his people.
Speaker 1: Right. Everything we worried about happened.
Speaker 3: And more because we thought, we knew that he would
Speaker 3: do these things. We thought that people would stand up
Speaker 3: against it more effectively, didn't we. Yeah, I mean I
Speaker 3: thought the courts would stand up. I thought the universities,
Speaker 3: the law firms, the media would all stand at the
Speaker 3: civil society, that Americans would go this is horrible. No,
Speaker 3: this is not what we are.
Speaker 1: There is a case against being a captured institution, and
Speaker 1: I'd love to talk about them for a minute. So
Speaker 1: we have Bob Iger on the side of standing up
Speaker 1: for things. Then we have Sharon Redstone right for the moment.
Speaker 1: That's right, let's not get you know what, that's good
Speaker 1: Check on my optimism. But then we have Sherry Redstone,
Speaker 1: we have there, you know, a lot of different college presidents.
Speaker 1: We have law firms, we have these people who have
Speaker 1: said no, no, all the billionaires, all the tech billionaires,
Speaker 1: Bezos is basically Donald Trump's show for now. These people
Speaker 1: are captured institutions. They have no legal anything because they've
Speaker 1: made illegal deals with Trump. So Trump has no incentive
Speaker 1: to say like, this is enough, I've had enough of
Speaker 1: my pound of flash, and so talk us through what
Speaker 1: that looks like as a captured institution.
Speaker 3: Well, I think that this is what should be the
Speaker 3: lesson they I thought that they would have understood that,
Speaker 3: if you know, pay off the schoolyard bully, he's going
Speaker 3: to demand more. I think ABC is learning that lesson.
Speaker 3: They pay him off sixteen million dollars for that completely
Speaker 3: bogus lawsuit against them. They threw George Stephanopolis under the bus.
Speaker 3: But what they're learning now is that, you know, paying
Speaker 3: off Donald Trump does not buy you safety. Capitulating does
Speaker 3: not buy you safety. The law firms are finding out
Speaker 3: the same sort of thing. They're finding out that Donald
Speaker 3: Trump has a way of renigging on deals or expanding
Speaker 3: deals in ways that they should have anticipated, but what
Speaker 3: they didn't. I think there's a lot of regret among
Speaker 3: the universities. Plus, you know, the wheel of fortune turns,
Speaker 3: and when you go all in on this particular project,
Speaker 3: what do you think happens if things turn around? Now,
Speaker 3: perhaps both MAGA and these companies that have taken Anita
Speaker 3: MAGA think that the wheel will never come around. Maybe
Speaker 3: they think that MAGA will never lose power, that there
Speaker 3: will never be a time of reckoning. That seems somewhat
Speaker 3: naive because normally these smart people will hedge their bets
Speaker 3: and they're all in.
Speaker 1: I think that's such an important point. I think also
Speaker 1: it's important to talk about the polling. Right, the polling
Speaker 1: shows none as is popular that Trump is underwater on everything.
Speaker 1: He's underwater in Texas. And he knows this polling to
Speaker 1: be true, because otherwise he would not ask states to
Speaker 1: be redistricting. Right. He knows he's going to get slacked
Speaker 1: in the midterms if they're a fair midterm. Right. I mean,
Speaker 1: don't you think why else ask for redistricting?
Speaker 3: Oh? Yeah, But I actually don't think he cares about
Speaker 3: the general population poll. I think what Donald Trump comes
Speaker 3: in every morning looks as is the base still with me?
Speaker 3: Is If the base is still with me, if nobody
Speaker 3: in Congress is going to buck me, then I can
Speaker 3: still have absolute power. And in a thoroughly Jerry mannered country,
Speaker 3: he doesn't need to have a majority of Americans behind him.
Speaker 3: All he needs to do is keep the loyalists in line,
Speaker 3: and he's testing it, he's figuring, you know, and by
Speaker 3: forcing them to take more and more outrageous positions, I
Speaker 3: think he solidifies their support. And of course he's managed.
Speaker 3: He's very working, very hard to weaponize the victim status
Speaker 3: post the murder of Charlie Kirk. So I don't think
Speaker 3: he's freaked out about the fifty six percent disapproval ratings.
Speaker 1: But and this goes to the base question. He does
Speaker 1: want a farmer's bailout, which is very interesting because we
Speaker 1: had so Democrats hurdling towards the shutdown. Mike Johnson sent
Speaker 1: Congress home. All of a sudden, Donald Trump wants a
Speaker 1: bailout for farmers. He's going to need Democrats for that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, good luck with that. No, I think this is interesting.
Speaker 3: I mean, the shutdown is going to happen, and I
Speaker 3: think it's going to be this massive game of political chicken,
Speaker 3: and we'll see that. But remember that he had to
Speaker 3: bail out This is the irrationality of his teriff regime.
Speaker 3: He did this, This is the first time bad and
Speaker 3: you know, he slapped the tariffs on in the first
Speaker 3: term and then he had to bail out the farmers,
Speaker 3: so you know, and he's we're going to go through
Speaker 3: the exact same scenario. And by the way, while we're
Speaker 3: bailing out the farmers, we're also bailing out Argentina because
Speaker 3: America first, Molly, why are.
Speaker 1: We bailing out Argentina? I mean, by the way, as
Speaker 1: you know, as we're clearly heading towards the recession.
Speaker 3: Our numbers are so bad.
Speaker 1: You know, the Bureau of Labor Statistics like they've all
Speaker 1: gone home, right, they fired the top boss. Now they've
Speaker 1: held the numbers because clearly they're so bad. Why we're
Speaker 1: bailing out Argentina.
Speaker 3: Think about this for you, Of all the countries in
Speaker 3: the world, if you had to make a list of like,
Speaker 3: name me a country that has a long track record
Speaker 3: of fiscal insanity, I'm guessing that your list in the
Speaker 3: top five is going to be like, yeah, you don't
Speaker 3: want to be like Argentina. Argentina has this new libertarian
Speaker 3: slash right wing president who has been kissing up to
Speaker 3: Donald Trump and Elon Musk. We like him. So we're
Speaker 3: whacking Brazil because Donald Trump doesn't like the president. We
Speaker 3: are having the taxpayers potentially on the hook to bail
Speaker 3: out Argentina because he's a buddy. If you try to
Speaker 3: come up with any coherent theory for Trump's foreign policy
Speaker 3: where his his policies, forget it. It's all that. What
Speaker 3: is Jonathan rob I call it, you know, the you know,
Speaker 3: the but the personalization, it is just it is just
Speaker 3: it is just what benefits Donald Trump. Who Donald Trump
Speaker 3: likes moment to moment, which is also why, by the way,
Speaker 3: potentially one of the biggest stories of the week was
Speaker 3: his one eighty flip flop on Ukraine.
Speaker 1: Believe you, Molly, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well yes, literally unbelievable because you don't know where he's
Speaker 3: going to be forty eight hours from now until he
Speaker 3: backs it up with actual hardware. It means nothing, and
Speaker 3: you know, the Vlad's gonna call him up and say done,
Speaker 3: We'll be you know, come on, you know you didn't
Speaker 3: mean that. You didn't mean it, right, you know, and
Speaker 3: and they'll get back together again. So this is a
Speaker 3: man who you know, with a moment to moment to moment,
Speaker 3: he's got the principles of a goldfish. Yeah, and not
Speaker 3: insult goldfishes, just that they have ten second memories.
Speaker 1: Mean to goldfish, Charlie Sykes, don't be mean to goldfish.
Speaker 3: You know that the bad analogy, because his principles may
Speaker 3: be goldfish like, but his memory is at least when
Speaker 3: it comes to grievances is infinite, infinite. He will he
Speaker 3: will hang upon any slight that is ever.
Speaker 1: For sure, trow that is for sure, trow forever and ever. Oh,
Speaker 1: thank you so much, Charlie.
Speaker 3: Thank you anytime.
Speaker 1: Jonathan Mahler is a reporter for The New York Times
Speaker 1: and the author of the Gods of New York. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Fast Politics, John.
Speaker 4: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2: Mollie.
Speaker 1: It's so exciting. It's funny because it's like, this is
Speaker 1: such a clear thing that we knew they were going
Speaker 1: to be doing, as the cutting the nah Grant said,
Speaker 1: we knew this was coming, but for some reason, I
Speaker 1: think people had a hard time threading the needles. So
Speaker 1: can you sort of talk us through what is happening here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, as you say that, it's both kind
Speaker 4: of not surprising and also shocking. I think primarily because
Speaker 4: biomedical research and cancer research in particular has always been
Speaker 4: just a bipartisan issue, a totally uncontroversial bipartisan issue, going
Speaker 4: all the way back to nineteen seventy one, and President Nixon,
Speaker 4: who was the one who actually signed the National Cancer Act,
Speaker 4: who launched the War on cancer. The idea that and
Speaker 4: a new administration might decide that some reform is in order,
Speaker 4: that some changes are in order. Okay, that's one thing.
Speaker 4: But what we have seen really since since the earliest
Speaker 4: days of this administration is really the systematic dismantling of
Speaker 4: infrastructure that took more than fifty years to build and
Speaker 4: that has been extraordinarily successful at extending lives and saving lives.
Speaker 4: And I'm talking about cancer patients, but even beyond cancer.
Speaker 4: This research system, it's what enabled scientists to understand the
Speaker 4: COVID virus and develop a vaccine for COVID. The basic
Speaker 4: biological research that was funded and enabled by this system
Speaker 4: has has really transformed our kind of ability to treat people.
Speaker 4: So it's been on that level, it's been really shocking.
Speaker 4: So I'd love you to just talk us through. Now
Speaker 4: we got.
Speaker 1: To this moment with the Trump administration dismantling this kind
Speaker 1: of research.
Speaker 4: Yeah, sure, So within days of the administration taking office,
Speaker 4: they issued a gag order basically that prevented everyone at
Speaker 4: the NIH and the National Cancer Institute from really talking
Speaker 4: to scientists, from publishing research, from having any kind of
Speaker 4: meetings to consider grant proposals, and so you know, that
Speaker 4: really really kind of froze the system in place. And
Speaker 4: then they started actually canceling existing grants, which just you know,
Speaker 4: totally unprecedented. I mean that that like truly has never
Speaker 4: happened before. You know, they were canceling, in the end, hundreds.
Speaker 1: Of grants in the name of doge right.
Speaker 4: Both in the name of kind of DEI claiming that
Speaker 4: any grant that had the word, say, you know, diversity title.
Speaker 1: But even like diversity of cells cells would get canceled.
Speaker 4: Yes, as soon as they started doing that, they started
Speaker 4: basically free using payments to universities that on this grant
Speaker 4: money to pay their professors, to pay their researchers, and
Speaker 4: to keep their labs open and running. So that was
Speaker 4: all kind of happening on the ground. At the same time,
Speaker 4: the administration, you know, Trump put forward his new budget
Speaker 4: which calls for a nearly forty percent cut in cancer research.
Speaker 4: So we're talking about, you know, three billion dollars, a
Speaker 4: three billion dollar cut in our investment in research to
Speaker 4: treat cancer. So that's still kind of looming, and meanwhile
Speaker 4: the system is like already in utter chaos.
Speaker 1: So I feel like there were sort of two groups
Speaker 1: cutting everything in a super disorganized way. One was the
Speaker 1: Elon Musk NIH grants and he was really offended by
Speaker 1: this idea that the universities would take a certain percentage
Speaker 1: of the grant for themselves. I would love you to
Speaker 1: talk about that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So there's another element to this which gets a
Speaker 4: little a little deeper into the weeds, but is like
Speaker 4: also incredibly important that you're alluding to, which is the
Speaker 4: individual researchers apply for grants, They get grants to do projects,
Speaker 4: to do research. In addition to that, universities are reimbursed
Speaker 4: for overhead expenses associated with that work. And that is
Speaker 4: something that yes, drove Elon and drove other kind of
Speaker 4: Trump Republicans kind of crazy that the government was reimbursing
Speaker 4: universities you know, for things like you know, running labs
Speaker 4: for electricity for you know, things like that that are
Speaker 4: you know, just basic overhead expenses that are necessary part
Speaker 4: of running a laboratory. That is something else that the
Speaker 4: administration cut. It actually got blocked by the court, so
Speaker 4: it's still it's still like up in the ear, what's
Speaker 4: going to happen. Each university has its own kind of
Speaker 4: rate of reimbursement, and the administration cut them across the
Speaker 4: board to fifteen percent, which is very very low number,
Speaker 4: and then doge itself. What they did basically was was
Speaker 4: just kind of take control of the payment system at NIH.
Speaker 4: And you know, keep in mind that the NIH was
Speaker 4: like designed to be an a political organizational political institution
Speaker 4: was meant to be insulated from politics. There were two
Speaker 4: political appointees in all of the NIH. One was the
Speaker 4: director of the NIH and one was the director of
Speaker 4: the National Cancer Institute. Dosee went in and basically took
Speaker 4: control of the payment system so that they could just
Speaker 4: stop paying universities.
Speaker 1: Right, And what happened next with the not paying university,
Speaker 1: I mean some things were on prosen, some things were
Speaker 1: not right or was nothing unprosen.
Speaker 4: I mean it was like totally chaotic. So you had
Speaker 4: this handful of universities, a dozen or so that were
Speaker 4: targeted for specific political reasons. We've kind of read about
Speaker 4: some of those. Obviously, Harvard is the you know, they've
Speaker 4: gotten the most attention, but they're hardly the only one.
Speaker 4: Columbia earned Northwestern penn. A lot of others also got
Speaker 4: hundreds of millions of dollars in grant money frozen for
Speaker 4: political reasons. And then there were just some schools, including
Speaker 4: one that I wrote about in detail in this piece
Speaker 4: of University of Massachusetts, which was not any sort of
Speaker 4: political list at all. It's a state university in Massachusetts.
Speaker 4: But Doose nevertheless kind of took control role of this
Speaker 4: payment system and just just stop paying their grants.
Speaker 1: Why.
Speaker 4: They never gave a good reason. They would claim that
Speaker 4: they were, you know, reordering the process, reconsidering how the
Speaker 4: government does things. They never really explained, you know, in
Speaker 4: any kind of official capacity, what they were doing. All
Speaker 4: that the administrators at U Masked were able to learn
Speaker 4: was that this was some sort of change that was
Speaker 4: going on. It was it was it was like really
Speaker 4: not clear.
Speaker 1: And that Chan School of Medicine U mass they focus.
Speaker 4: On what they do all sorts of biomedical research. I
Speaker 4: was sort of specifically interested because this piece was really
Speaker 4: about cancer research. They do a good deal. They do
Speaker 4: I think about forty five million dollars a year in
Speaker 4: cancer research. They do quite a bit of cancer research.
Speaker 4: But they do everything. And you know, they had a
Speaker 4: Nobel Prize winning molecular biol I think it was a
Speaker 4: molecular biologist last year. You know, it's not Harvard, it's
Speaker 4: a pretty powerful research institute itself. And you know, when
Speaker 4: they when that money stopped appearing, the chancel of the
Speaker 4: school had to lay off two hundred people and he
Speaker 4: had to rescind offers to the entire you know, accepted
Speaker 4: an incoming class.
Speaker 1: Of PhD grad students.
Speaker 4: Right, It's like it's crazy.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I Mean one of the things I've been strupped by
Speaker 1: always is just how passive a lot of people have been.
Speaker 1: But is there pushback, and if so, is there any
Speaker 1: kind of effort on the private side to take over
Speaker 1: some of those.
Speaker 4: There's been some. I think part of the problem is that,
Speaker 4: you know, first of all, these people are like, for
Speaker 4: the most part, academics. We're not talking about political activists here,
Speaker 4: and we're also talking about people who are very accustomed
Speaker 4: to the system operating a certain way. They spend an
Speaker 4: enormous amount of time in the lab, and they spend
Speaker 4: an enormous amount of time publishing their research and writing
Speaker 4: grant proposals. What they don't do is, you know, lobby
Speaker 4: or organize. You know, I don't think we've seen a
Speaker 4: lot of it. I think, you know, I think we've
Speaker 4: seen a lot of just kind of shock. And I certainly,
Speaker 4: you know, people were eager to talk to me and
Speaker 4: hoping that I would help get the word out that
Speaker 4: this piece would you know, kind of amplified their concerns,
Speaker 4: you know, but we haven't seen a lot of it.
Speaker 4: And also it's the only body that can make a
Speaker 4: difference at this point is Congress, and even that is
Speaker 4: you know, we'll see. But you know, for the most part,
Speaker 4: these scientists and I think they could be out in
Speaker 4: the streets, but they're pretty powerless. You know, they're not
Speaker 4: making these decisions. Congress, on the other hand, you know, yeah,
Speaker 4: they could be holding the President's feet to the fire.
Speaker 4: I mean, this is money we're talking about, like billions
Speaker 4: of dollars in money Congress has allocated for research that
Speaker 4: that the president has unilaterally decided he's not going to
Speaker 4: give to researchers. It's totally madness.
Speaker 1: Part of the reason why we did things like this
Speaker 1: was because it was good for all of us, but
Speaker 1: also because it was popular. Do you think the lack
Speaker 1: of news is why people don't know this is happening
Speaker 1: and why Trump world doesn't care. Try to make this
Speaker 1: make sense to me. If you can, like how we
Speaker 1: got here, I.
Speaker 4: Would love to. It's very hard to make sense. I
Speaker 4: think that part of it is COVID backlash. I think
Speaker 4: that there's a sort of a mistrust now of the
Speaker 4: scientific establishment. You know, the Maha movement is like at
Speaker 4: the center of it, and I think it's kind of
Speaker 4: a powerful political force in this country. So I think
Speaker 4: that that has provided kind of cover for a lot
Speaker 4: of this. I mean, if there's an explanation, like, I
Speaker 4: don't think that before the pandemic this would have been possible.
Speaker 4: I think everyone on the left and right would have
Speaker 4: had their hair on fire about this, and now there's
Speaker 4: a sense of well, these sign I mean, what are
Speaker 4: these scientists you know cooking up labs anyway?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, it's just such a departure from everything we
Speaker 1: know about how America operates. That the only way in
Speaker 1: my mind that it makes sense is if there's some
Speaker 1: kind of larger post pandemic lunacy happening, which that sounds
Speaker 1: like it makes the most sense. There's like a new
Speaker 1: head of Anih. Not the woman who got fired, but
Speaker 1: Jay Banishariya. He's a really complicated and fascinating and I
Speaker 1: love it if you could talk through him because he
Speaker 1: comes from anti VACS world, or he was an icon
Speaker 1: of anti vacts, but he's not really anti vax, So
Speaker 1: talk us through this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, No, I think it's it's going to be really
Speaker 4: interesting to see kind of what happens with him. I mean, yes,
Speaker 4: I mean he sort of he made his name. I
Speaker 4: mean he was just a research scientist at Stanford, but
Speaker 4: he joined with a few other scientists during COVID and
Speaker 4: kind of wrote this this, you know, the Great Barrington Declaration.
Speaker 4: It was called. It was a critique of the COVID
Speaker 4: policies and and kind of encouraging her immunity. And so,
Speaker 4: you know, not quite right to say that he's a
Speaker 4: vaccine skeptic, but he's a big critic of the NIH
Speaker 4: or he was a big critic of the NIH and
Speaker 4: now he's running the NA. So I think another thing
Speaker 4: that's important to note about him is that he's from Stanford.
Speaker 4: He's from like Silicon Valley. He's sort of been kind
Speaker 4: of part of the you know, this is a bit
Speaker 4: of a bit of a generalization, but he's kind of
Speaker 4: part of the tech right in a way. He's like
Speaker 4: of the kind of just ouption is good and government
Speaker 4: is bad kind of mindset. Having all that, you know,
Speaker 4: he's a legitimate scientist.
Speaker 1: As opposed to RFK Junior, who is not a real scientist.
Speaker 4: That's right, And he has been NIH funded himself. He's
Speaker 4: one grants himself, and so I can't believe that he
Speaker 4: likes what he's seeing. I don't know a whether he
Speaker 4: is going to have the power to, I guess would
Speaker 4: say whether he's going to have the will to try
Speaker 4: to stop any or be whether he power to. I mean,
Speaker 4: I have a pretty strong sense that HHS is really
Speaker 4: kind of controlling healthcare policy, that RFK has really kind
Speaker 4: of consolidated power. So it'll be interesting to see whether
Speaker 4: he feels like he needs to basically like champion the
Speaker 4: interests of the research community that he comes from, or
Speaker 4: whether he's just going to fold himself into the sort
Speaker 4: of Maga Maha movement.
Speaker 1: His problem is with the way that these grants work,
Speaker 1: or the way they're written, the way the grant world,
Speaker 1: the way that you get money, the way that you
Speaker 1: you know that they're big on kind of theory and
Speaker 1: not as and not as involved in practice.
Speaker 4: Right, he did a long interview with you know, like
Speaker 4: three hour long interview with the r Huberman, I think maybe
Speaker 4: right when he was appointed.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: And the thing that his critiques of the system, they're
Speaker 4: pretty like widely held, I mean on the left end,
Speaker 4: right and popular. One is that scientists have become too
Speaker 4: risk averse. There are so many scientists competing for a
Speaker 4: limited number of grants, and that a lot of the
Speaker 4: scientists are now much older. Everyone is kind of inclined
Speaker 4: toward more incremental, safer projects rather than kind of riskier
Speaker 4: moonshot type ideas. And of course it's also a Silicon
Speaker 4: Valley mindset too, right, So I think that you know,
Speaker 4: there is from what I gather, and you know, I
Speaker 4: talked to a lot of people for this story, there
Speaker 4: is definitely some truth to that critique. I mean, the
Speaker 4: problem is what we're seeing is the fact that it's
Speaker 4: going to be even harder to get grant improove now
Speaker 4: is going to have the opposite effect. It's going to
Speaker 4: make people even more risk averse, and it's going to
Speaker 4: drive even more young scientists with you know, who understand
Speaker 4: new technology and have have exciting new ideas. It's going
Speaker 4: to drive them out of the field altogether.
Speaker 1: Aren't we basically giving it all away to China here?
Speaker 4: Yeah? I mean that's the reality is that you know,
Speaker 4: people are just not going to want to do science
Speaker 4: in this country anymore. I mean, not only is the
Speaker 4: money not there, but like our government no longer respects
Speaker 4: these people. And it's made clear if you're a promising
Speaker 4: young scientist. And I mean, you know, they're the European countries,
Speaker 4: they are recruiting our scientists, but they don't have anywhere
Speaker 4: near the resources of China. I mean, why would you
Speaker 4: not go to China? They will build you if you're
Speaker 4: you know, build you a labor of staff that with
Speaker 4: researchers and people who would be willing to work around
Speaker 4: the clock, and you know you're good to go.
Speaker 1: It is the end of American exceptionalism. At least in science.
Speaker 4: It really feels that way. I mean, I think that
Speaker 4: it's not going to happen overnight. But you know, one
Speaker 4: of the guys I interviewed for this story is this guy,
Speaker 4: Harold Varmus, who's a former Nobel Prize winning cancer researcher
Speaker 4: himself and from the NIH And you know, he made
Speaker 4: the point to me that this is not like a
Speaker 4: clothing store where it's like, you know, yeah, you have
Speaker 4: a couple bad years and then you bounce back. This
Speaker 4: is an elaborate system that has been built that took
Speaker 4: decades to build. You start to pull it apart and
Speaker 4: it's gone. To rebuild it would require so many years
Speaker 4: and so much political will and so much money that
Speaker 4: it's just hard to imagine that that could happen. So yeah,
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, I don't want to be too hyperbolic,
Speaker 4: but it does feel like we are at risk of
Speaker 4: sacrificing kind of one of the yeah, one of the
Speaker 4: greatest things this country's ever done.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't think there's a way back now. So
Speaker 1: and that goodness, thank you for joining. I hope you'll
Speaker 1: come back.
Speaker 4: My pleasure. I would love to.
Speaker 2: A moment.
Speaker 1: Jesse cannon my junk.
Speaker 2: Fast Congressman Mikey Cheryl is running for governor in the
Speaker 2: great state of New Jersey. And I think you and
Speaker 2: I discussed like this. This is like one of our
Speaker 2: fears is the Trump administration would weaponize government against candidates
Speaker 2: and races. And it looks like that's probably what happens.
Speaker 3: Yeah, here we are.
Speaker 1: Yes, So this is exactly what Trump was saying that
Speaker 1: Democrats did, but he actually is doing it. So this
Speaker 1: is her home address. It was all given to her
Speaker 1: Republican challenger. Again, I don't I mean, who knows. Maybe
Speaker 1: this works for them, but I mean this is just
Speaker 1: so dirty and so wrong headed and so just appalling.
Speaker 1: And you know, they got this information because she's a veteran,
Speaker 1: and when you're a veteran, you have your information, you know,
Speaker 1: in these archives. So maybe it does help, but it's
Speaker 1: hard for me to imagine this helps the Republican And
Speaker 1: it's also such just like with the call me stuff,
Speaker 1: such an incredible dereliction of their duty. So it's just appalling.
Speaker 1: And I hope that they just said to press charges
Speaker 1: on this. I hope she does agreed. That's it for
Speaker 1: this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday,
Speaker 1: Thursday and Saturday to hear the best minds and politics
Speaker 1: make sense of.
Speaker 3: All this chaos.
Speaker 1: If you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a
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