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 Trump has frozen one billion dollars
Speaker 1: in food aid given to local schools and food banks
Speaker 1: to help low income families. We have such a great
Speaker 1: show for you today. On the tapes, Dan Nathan stops
Speaker 1: by to talk to us about the stock markets very
Speaker 1: very very bad reaction to Donald Trump's policies.
Speaker 2: Oh, Molly, we also have an extra special bonus from
Speaker 2: our YouTube channel where we talk to Harvard professor Lawrence
Speaker 2: Lessig about his thoughts on how the Democrats can make
Speaker 2: a doge that actually works well in the future. Then
Speaker 2: we'll talk to the New York Times David Enrich about
Speaker 2: his new book, The Murder of Truth, Fear the First
Speaker 2: Amendment in a secret campaign to protect the powerful.
Speaker 3: But first the news.
Speaker 2: So, Molly, Elon Musk has officially become part of Maggo
Speaker 2: because he's always saying the quiet part out loud, and
Speaker 2: he has done just that about social security. Let's listen
Speaker 2: to him say the truth about how it feels about it.
Speaker 4: So, I mean the Waste report in entitlement spending, which
Speaker 4: is all of the most of the federal spendings entitlements.
Speaker 4: So that's that's like the big one to eliminate is
Speaker 4: that's the sort of half trillion, maybe six seven hundred
Speaker 4: billion a year.
Speaker 1: Waste fraud and abuse. But it's not actually waste, fraud
Speaker 1: and abuse. It's just things Elon doesn't like. So here's
Speaker 1: the thing I want to talk about when it comes
Speaker 1: to what Elon is doing. We saw this Republican House
Speaker 1: pass a reconciliation bill which had an eight hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty billion dollar cut to medicaid over ten years. We
Speaker 1: don't need to hear Elon say it. The Congress has
Speaker 1: said it. They are going after Medicaid and Medicare, and
Speaker 1: just because they know it's unpopular and they don't want
Speaker 1: to say it out loud. One of the very few
Speaker 1: good things to come from Elon Musk's stint in the
Speaker 1: ruling us like a god king has been that he
Speaker 1: doesn't have the energy to lie, so he just I mean,
Speaker 1: he still lies, but he is slightly addicted to telling
Speaker 1: us what he's what he's actually going to do, and
Speaker 1: in this case, he's actually going to try They're going
Speaker 1: to try to cut medicaid and we saw this coming.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're cutting the Oceanic, the national They're doing
Speaker 1: everything they said they were going to do in Project
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five. And you're going to be shocked to
Speaker 1: hear that even though Trump said he wasn't going to
Speaker 1: do it, He's actually going to do it. It's shocking.
Speaker 1: And Musk has got a lot of lies going. You know,
Speaker 1: why are there twenty million people who are definitely dead
Speaker 1: marked as alive in the Social Security database? This has
Speaker 1: been debunked a bunch of times. The way the code
Speaker 1: is written, it makes people seem older than they are
Speaker 1: because of the way of the old fashioned code which adds,
Speaker 1: you know whatever.
Speaker 3: Forty years or fifty years to your birthday.
Speaker 1: So it's actually people over eighty seven or ninety seven
Speaker 1: or one hundred and seven, but not over two hundred,
Speaker 1: you know, over one hundred and forty.
Speaker 3: So the numbers actually.
Speaker 1: This is just a continued debunk lie, just like when
Speaker 1: we interview David Fahrenhold and he talks about how DOGE
Speaker 1: is using a lot of debunked lies to make what
Speaker 1: they're doing seem more legitimate.
Speaker 2: Weight. You can watch on our YouTube on Wednesday afternoon.
Speaker 1: Yes, fast Politics. Go into YouTube search fast Politics with
Speaker 1: Molly John Fast. You won't regret it, or maybe you will,
Speaker 1: but it will be too late.
Speaker 2: So when Elon Musk is an erasing the government buying
Speaker 2: Tesla's from and all his bs, Elon is losing lots
Speaker 2: of money in the stock market, and Trump is now
Speaker 2: crying tears for him.
Speaker 1: So it turns out that one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: I see don't go into the federal government and cut
Speaker 1: things when they're not elected is because it makes.
Speaker 3: People not want to buy their products.
Speaker 1: Right, Elon has espoused all these very very very right wing,
Speaker 1: very very very controversial views on Twitter. He has sort
Speaker 1: of gone to war with diversity, equity and inclusion. He
Speaker 1: has done a lot of very controversial things, and perhaps
Speaker 1: he should not be surprised.
Speaker 3: That now people don't want to buy his cars.
Speaker 1: Look, capitalism is about a free market, and this happened
Speaker 1: in Donald Trump one point zero two, where he would
Speaker 1: get really mad if people wouldn't buy things that were
Speaker 1: right wing.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: So remember when he had those goiabans that he had,
Speaker 1: they were he was celebrating goiabins because they were Trump donors,
Speaker 1: or they were they supported.
Speaker 3: Some aspect of trump Ism.
Speaker 1: You know, Trump gets very mad about protests, and he
Speaker 1: gets very mad about boys. But the thing is, like
Speaker 1: capitalism is based on the idea that you is a
Speaker 1: free market, so you can buy what you want to buy.
Speaker 3: Now, Donald Trump considers himself to be a king.
Speaker 1: So this is very problematic for him, right because he
Speaker 1: doesn't totally understand it. So as the Tesla stock falls,
Speaker 1: Donald Trump realizes that the biggest donor to Donald Trump's
Speaker 1: re election campaign ended up being Elon mush so he
Speaker 1: really needs that Tesla stock to stay up there, and
Speaker 1: it's lost quite a lot of value. Remember when Trump
Speaker 1: got into office, Elon stock went up by a huge
Speaker 1: magnitude on the thinking that Elon would be able to
Speaker 1: practice prony capitalism, which Donald Trump also hoped. But Elon
Speaker 1: has just been so incredibly strident and loud about his
Speaker 1: views he has alienated potential buyers. And remember, Tesla's are
Speaker 1: electric cars, so the people who tend to buy electric
Speaker 1: cars are people who believe in climate change, and the
Speaker 1: people who believe in climate change tend to not want
Speaker 1: to support someone who espouses far right wing views and
Speaker 1: does things like these straight arms salute you will remember.
Speaker 1: This has gotten Trump very upset. He truthed on truth
Speaker 1: social we're using truth with scare quotes that radical left lunatics,
Speaker 1: as they often do, are trying to illegally and collusively
Speaker 1: boycott Tesla, one of the world's great automakers and Elon's baby,
Speaker 1: in order to By the way, not buying things is
Speaker 1: not illegal, at least not yet.
Speaker 2: I don't know he wants to make not advertising on
Speaker 2: Twitter illegal.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I'm going to buy a brand new Tesla
Speaker 1: tomorrow morning as a show of confidence and support for
Speaker 1: Elon Musk, a truly great American President, Trump said, why
Speaker 1: should he be punished for putting his tremendous skills in
Speaker 1: order to help make America great again?
Speaker 5: Why?
Speaker 1: Indeed, Trump and must have taken the unprecedented control of
Speaker 1: the federal government's tripping Congress.
Speaker 3: Of almost all of its power.
Speaker 1: But you know it's all our fault for not buying
Speaker 1: Tesla's The power couple has tried to support their actions
Speaker 1: by pushing a steady stream of misinformation about waste and fraud.
Speaker 1: We now know that fraud is anything Elon doesn't like,
Speaker 1: and waste is anything that doesn't go to him. There is,
Speaker 1: of course no evidence that liberal agitators have anything to
Speaker 1: do with Tesla's punging share price. It is, of course
Speaker 1: a consumer based business. I don't think it's illegal to
Speaker 1: boycott that.
Speaker 2: So another bad news for you. On A US judge
Speaker 2: says his doge must release records on operations run in secrecy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, we are fifty one days into the
Speaker 1: Trump presidency. So when you listen to this, god willing
Speaker 1: will be fifty two days into the Trump presidency. We
Speaker 1: still don't know what Elon is doing in Doge besides
Speaker 1: having fun and wandering around with his kids. So a
Speaker 1: federal judge on Monday ordered the government downsizing team, created
Speaker 1: by Donald Trump and spearheaded by the richest man in
Speaker 1: the world, to make public records concerning its operations. Because technically,
Speaker 1: when you work for the government, you're supposed to be transparent. Now,
Speaker 1: when you're running transparency and efficiency, Andre Elin Musk, you
Speaker 1: do everything in secret because of transparency Ergo Maga. US
Speaker 1: District Judge Christopher Cooper and Washington sided with the government
Speaker 1: watchshop groups Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and
Speaker 1: finding that the Department of Government Efficiency was likely an
Speaker 1: agency subject to the Freedom of Information Act. For this ruling,
Speaker 1: the first of a kind, marks an early victory for
Speaker 1: advocates seeking to have some accountability for the fucking government. Look,
Speaker 1: this is how government works in this country. We are
Speaker 1: not a Banana republic. We should have accountability.
Speaker 3: Look. I don't know what happens. I don't know, you know,
Speaker 3: if Elon.
Speaker 1: Declares whatever, But what he's doing right now is legal.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: He is not a cabinet appointee. He is not cleared
Speaker 1: to cut things in the federal government. You know, it
Speaker 1: would be like if Biden brought in George Soros to
Speaker 1: run his government. It's the same thing, right, Like, this
Speaker 1: is not how any of this works.
Speaker 2: So, speaking of notn how any of this works, Trump
Speaker 2: is trying to see how hard he can push his deportations.
Speaker 2: With the deportation of an activist named Mahmood Khalil. That
Speaker 2: seems pretty unlawful. And I know this is a hotbed
Speaker 2: subject because some people don't like what he was a
Speaker 2: part of. But the rule of law is the rule
Speaker 2: of law, Am I right, Molly or yeah?
Speaker 1: Look, a lot of us didn't like the protests, even
Speaker 1: though we protect your right to protest.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: This is the fundamental rule of American democracy, right, the
Speaker 1: First Amendment. We may not agree with them, but you
Speaker 1: have the right to protest. Here is a man who,
Speaker 1: first of all, is in the country legally, is married
Speaker 1: to an American citizen who is eight and a half
Speaker 1: months pregnant. He had a green card. He was the
Speaker 1: negotiator for the students who are protesting with the faculty.
Speaker 1: The faculty, that was how the Trump administration knew about him.
Speaker 1: He is now he has been sent to a jail
Speaker 1: in Louisiana because the Trump administration thinks that this Louisiana
Speaker 1: jail will be more favorable to whatever they want to
Speaker 1: do to this person. This is the opening of the
Speaker 1: door of something real bad. Okay, you don't have to
Speaker 1: like these protests, you don't have to like Palestinian activists,
Speaker 1: you don't even have to like anything. But you have
Speaker 1: to know that when the government starts deporting people who
Speaker 1: are in this country legally because they don't like what
Speaker 1: they're saying, this is the beginning of a real bad stuff.
Speaker 1: And you know, I had this grandfather, Howard Fast. I've
Speaker 1: talked about him at nauseum. Right, he was jailed by
Speaker 1: the House of an American Activities for his refusal to
Speaker 1: name names in the Communist Party, which he was a member.
Speaker 3: He went to jail. He would then was denied a passport.
Speaker 3: This is that, right.
Speaker 1: This is the idea that you can target people for
Speaker 1: their beliefs, that you can if you don't like what
Speaker 1: someone believes, if you don't like their ideology, you can
Speaker 1: kick them out of the country. This is not how
Speaker 1: any of this works. And you are opening the door
Speaker 1: here we are fifty two days into Donald Trump's presidency.
Speaker 1: You start opening the door to deporting people because you
Speaker 1: don't like their views. This is going to be very, very,
Speaker 1: very problematic four years and hopefully I mean and this
Speaker 1: is just AOC is completely right, tyrannical and on American.
Speaker 1: This is if you look in the dictionary, this is
Speaker 1: the definition of un American. You cannot depour people because
Speaker 1: you don't.
Speaker 3: Like what they believe.
Speaker 1: Dan Nathan is the host of the On the Tape
Speaker 1: podcast and as c NBC Fast Money contributor.
Speaker 3: Welcome, Hello, Dan Nathan.
Speaker 5: Hey Molly, how are you great to be back on
Speaker 5: Fast at Politics.
Speaker 3: I am delighted to have you. And what a moment,
Speaker 3: what a moment.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, politics has moved its way into the economy,
Speaker 5: into the markets, and in a very quick way. When
Speaker 5: you think about one of the reasons why, you know,
Speaker 5: Donald Trump was elected a second time, it was about
Speaker 5: his acumen as it relates to economic sort of issues.
Speaker 5: He was going to bring inflation down, he was going
Speaker 5: to bring a pro growth agenda.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 5: Back to America, nine.
Speaker 1: Out of ten voters said they were voting for Donald
Speaker 1: Trump on the economy.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Well, here, here's one thing that I've been talking about
Speaker 5: this a little bit on CNBC. They did this kind
Speaker 5: of ass backwards if you go back to Trump one
Speaker 5: dot oh, you know, Gary Cohene went in there. They
Speaker 5: really wanted to get these tax cuts down. What did
Speaker 5: they want to do. They wanted to get corporate tax
Speaker 5: down and then for very wealthy sort of folks, and
Speaker 5: they went after it and they got it. They got
Speaker 5: one and a half trillion dollars of tax cuts, which
Speaker 5: juiced the economy, it juiced the stock market. And then
Speaker 5: in twenty and eighteen, then they went after trade and
Speaker 5: tariffs and the like here and so they had a
Speaker 5: bit of a buffer. So now they come in and
Speaker 5: rather than focusing on the sorts of things that you
Speaker 5: would think would help bring down prices to bring down inflation,
Speaker 5: which is the promises made, supposedly promises kept, they actually
Speaker 5: did it the other way around. And so now you know,
Speaker 5: you have a market that is reacting to the potential
Speaker 5: of a recession that was not really priced in if
Speaker 5: you think about it three to six months ago. And
Speaker 5: so that's one of the reasons why we've just basically
Speaker 5: had this downward volatility in the markets. And you know,
Speaker 5: when you have markets heading lower, that actually weighs on
Speaker 5: consumer confidence, right, and so consumer confidence if it starts
Speaker 5: to get worse, then consumers start pulling back from making purchases.
Speaker 5: And though that's one of the things that I think
Speaker 5: is happening right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I want to pause, because the reason that
Speaker 1: this downturn was not priced in was because this downturn
Speaker 1: did not need to happen, right. This downturn is a
Speaker 1: direct result of trade wars being good and easy to win.
Speaker 3: But they're actually not good and easy to win, are they.
Speaker 5: Well. I think part of it is is that you know,
Speaker 5: you go back to the playbook from the first administration, right,
Speaker 5: and we saw how he kept on going back and forth,
Speaker 5: back and forth.
Speaker 1: So what I think about when I think about these
Speaker 1: trade wars was the last time he did tariffs, it
Speaker 1: actually worked out. And a lot of those tariffs not
Speaker 1: a lot of them, but some of them were kept
Speaker 1: on by Biden, Right, like the China tariffs.
Speaker 3: Certain parts of the tariffs were smart.
Speaker 1: The sense I'm getting now from what I read and
Speaker 1: what I understand in Trump world is that Trump things
Speaker 1: he can use tariffs the way that Biden world used
Speaker 1: chips right to boost the manufacturing sector. But I'm not
Speaker 1: convinced that you'll get there if you're going to kick
Speaker 1: the American economy into a recession before you even.
Speaker 6: Get there, right.
Speaker 5: And again, so I think your point is a great
Speaker 5: one about the Chinese tariffs going back to twenty and eighteen, right,
Speaker 5: and so we had a lot of reasons why those
Speaker 5: made a lot of sense. And you just mentioned what
Speaker 5: Biden did with chips. Okay, so this is really an
Speaker 5: export band to China, so they don't have access to
Speaker 5: our best technology. Okay. Taking another step here in twenty
Speaker 5: and twenty twenty five, rather than starting with China, they
Speaker 5: went after our biggest trading partners, which is the EU,
Speaker 5: it's Mexico and it's Canada, and so not only are
Speaker 5: their biggest trading partners, there are also three of our
Speaker 5: best allies if you're thinking of the EU as a
Speaker 5: block here. So there's another issue of just going asked
Speaker 5: backwards about this rather than focusing on China. And really,
Speaker 5: you know, again, from a technology standpoint, this has been
Speaker 5: going on for you know, decades. Actually, this kind of
Speaker 5: forced technology transfer that the Chinese were doing on US
Speaker 5: companies who wanted access to it, But to kind of
Speaker 5: pick fights with our biggest trading partners who are also
Speaker 5: our allies, doesn't make a lot of sense. The other
Speaker 5: thing I'll just say is they're becoming more emboldened. And
Speaker 5: it's not just from an economic standpoint. If you think
Speaker 5: about just kind of some of the threats about annexing
Speaker 5: Canada and you know, the stuff about Mexico, and then
Speaker 5: the EU just kind of not kind of leaning into
Speaker 5: the responsibilities that we have relating to NATO and kind
Speaker 5: of pulling back from Ukraine and the like. So if
Speaker 5: the our allies are starting to see US as a
Speaker 5: less reliable partner on multiple facets, then they have to
Speaker 5: get emboldened and they have to figure out how to
Speaker 5: do some of this alone. And when you think about
Speaker 5: the Canadian elections, you know, the new prime minister is
Speaker 5: a former central banker, you know. So if there's anyone
Speaker 5: you know, really set up to kind of deal with
Speaker 5: this sort of trade war with a partner like the UA, yes,
Speaker 5: I think it's there. So again, I think you're going
Speaker 5: to continue to see if you know, our allies in Bolden,
Speaker 5: I think they also have a playbook from the first time.
Speaker 5: They also know that if the markets keep going lower,
Speaker 5: then Trump's going to have to pivot a bit on this,
Speaker 5: and then it just gives less teeth to the threats
Speaker 5: of tariffs.
Speaker 1: But I would also add, like the whole point of tariffs,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure Trump totally understands the whole point of tariffs,
Speaker 1: but the whole point of tariffs are to either punish right,
Speaker 1: to punish China, or to create a world where American
Speaker 1: goods are cheaper, which means raising the price of Chinese
Speaker 1: goods with tariffs. It makes a lot of sense, right,
Speaker 1: China is really as close as America has to an
Speaker 1: adversary at this moment. Right, they have not respected a
Speaker 1: lot of the patent stuff they have our country completely hooked.
Speaker 3: On to talk.
Speaker 1: You know, there is quite a reason if you were
Speaker 1: going to go and teariff them, it makes sense Canada
Speaker 1: and Mexico do not have that, right. This is mostly
Speaker 1: Trump's own anxieties about Canada and Mexico and his own
Speaker 1: obsession with the border, right, I.
Speaker 3: Mean the fentanyl.
Speaker 1: You know, you had Kevin Hassett saying that Canadians were
Speaker 1: sneaking Fenton. You know, the fentanyl largely is coming from
Speaker 1: China more than it is from our two biggest allies
Speaker 1: in North America.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and it's interesting someone mentioned to me the other
Speaker 5: night on Fox News. I certainly don't watch it that.
Speaker 5: You know, they're they're calling this a drug war, not
Speaker 5: a trade war. Right, So they're kind of squarely focused
Speaker 5: on fentanyl. And to your point, most of it does
Speaker 5: come from China, but we hear more about it on
Speaker 5: our borders. You know. The other thing I think is
Speaker 5: kind of interesting. I heard this. You know, they're saying
Speaker 5: that like terrafs are interesting to a guy like Trump
Speaker 5: because he operates like a mob boss. Right, And if
Speaker 5: you think about how you know, all of these companies
Speaker 5: or these industries are going to come to him and
Speaker 5: they're going to grovel for some sort of carve out
Speaker 5: of their products. And he really likes that, right, So
Speaker 5: he loves to be able to say, Okay, Tim Cook
Speaker 5: came to me and they want exclusion of iPhones you know,
Speaker 5: coming into the US, that sort of thing, and.
Speaker 3: So which happened at one point, Oh.
Speaker 5: And it did, right. And so when you think about it,
Speaker 5: and this goes back to and I don't think you
Speaker 5: and I have talked about this at least on a podcast,
Speaker 5: is that when you think about how all of these
Speaker 5: major tech CEOs gave to the inauguration, they were all
Speaker 5: there on the dais at the inauguration, right, and all
Speaker 5: these folks are just jockeying for access to his ear.
Speaker 5: A lot of it I think has to do with
Speaker 5: trepidation about how close Elon Musk is to the president.
Speaker 5: But they are thinking about their own prospects. They're thinking
Speaker 5: about their own products and their own services and how
Speaker 5: you know, essentially what's the sort of leeway they're going
Speaker 5: to have. But to be very frank, most of those
Speaker 5: companies don't do business in China. If you think about it,
Speaker 5: our digital companies, right, they're not going to be doing
Speaker 5: business in China, and the one that actually has most
Speaker 5: at stake is actually Elon Musk with Tesla. Right, So,
Speaker 5: China remains like a huge issue for us because obviously
Speaker 5: our digital companies are not there for the most part.
Speaker 5: Are hardware companies are there, and a lot of the
Speaker 5: manufacturing goes on there, which actually creates lots of conflict
Speaker 5: of interest. And I know you've spent a lot of
Speaker 5: time talking about that as relates to Elon Musk.
Speaker 1: I would love you to explain to us what's happening
Speaker 1: right now with the Tesla stock because obviously the market
Speaker 1: is very validile there's a lot of losses, especially in tech.
Speaker 1: But just sort of talk us through what's happening there.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So, you know, Tesla for the last few years,
Speaker 5: going back to twenty twenty two, has been in a
Speaker 5: price war with basically Detroit, which you know, GM and
Speaker 5: Ford we're moving into evs for instance. They were losing
Speaker 5: a lot of money on it, but like that was
Speaker 5: putting pressure to some degree on Tesla and their margins.
Speaker 5: But Tesla also you know, makes about half of their
Speaker 5: cars in Shanghai. The cars that they don't sell in China,
Speaker 5: they go to the EU. Well, the EU has had
Speaker 5: big tariffs on Chinese ev So if you are a
Speaker 5: US auto manufacturer and you are making the cars in
Speaker 5: China but selling them to the U, you're going to
Speaker 5: be subject to those tariffs. So they've been in a
Speaker 5: price war. The stock had been going down since the
Speaker 5: highs in two thouy and twenty one to the lows.
Speaker 5: Just last year it was down nearly forty some percent. Now,
Speaker 5: after the election, because of Musk helping the president get
Speaker 5: electioned his proximity to the president, the stock doubled. It
Speaker 5: literally went from three quarters of a trillion dollars in
Speaker 5: market capitalization to one and a half trillion. But since
Speaker 5: late December the stock has given all of that back.
Speaker 5: As you and I are talking right now, the stock
Speaker 5: is trading at two hundred and twenty six dollars. It
Speaker 5: was trading as high as four hundred and ninety dollars
Speaker 5: a month and a half ago. So what's going on there? Well,
Speaker 5: the fundamentals of this company are total crap. So the
Speaker 5: competition that they have in China is really bad. The
Speaker 5: price war that they have here in the US, they
Speaker 5: just keep going lower and lower. You obviously have the
Speaker 5: pushback of a lot of consumers here in the US,
Speaker 5: but also nationalistic tendencies in China, nationalistic tendencies in the EU,
Speaker 5: in France and Germany. The our sales last month were
Speaker 5: down fifty percent. Just think of that, right, And here's
Speaker 5: the other point here in the US. I think this
Speaker 5: is almost a hilarious headline that Donald Trump said when
Speaker 5: he's out of office, he's going to buy a Tesla
Speaker 5: to support Elon Musk. Let me tell you another thing
Speaker 5: about MAGA voters. They don't believe in climate change. They're
Speaker 5: less inclined to buy electric vehicles. And I think all
Speaker 5: of this is kind of weighing on the brand of
Speaker 5: Elon Musk, the brand of Tesla, and basically the fundamentals
Speaker 5: the company are really shit.
Speaker 1: Right now, you know, he would have been better off
Speaker 1: going with Harris because those voters believe in climate change.
Speaker 5: But you know what, though, this is an own goal.
Speaker 3: I mean, obviously Harris would never have gone along with this.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but this is an own goal. Going back to
Speaker 5: early in the Biden administration, remember they held this kind
Speaker 5: of ev confab at the White House, and GM was there,
Speaker 5: Ford was there. There's a couple others there, Tesla was
Speaker 5: not invited. This is kind of ground zero for Elon Musk,
Speaker 5: kind of being red pilled. Throw in a bunch of
Speaker 5: the stuff from the pandemic, throw in the woke mind
Speaker 5: virus that he can't stand and everything like that. And
Speaker 5: you can see the through line to this and it
Speaker 5: really did start there. And you know, we think about
Speaker 5: this sort of stuff all the time. I mean, like,
Speaker 5: how do we be inclusive in an economy like this?
Speaker 5: How do we take a guy who's obviously a very
Speaker 5: excellent entrepreneur and make him feel welcome and bring him
Speaker 5: into the fold because he's always been treated like an
Speaker 5: outsider and now he's kind of flexing a little bit.
Speaker 5: Now your question about Tesla. Here's a guy who is
Speaker 5: not particularly liquid. He has a big steak in SpaceX
Speaker 5: that is a private company. He has a big steak
Speaker 5: in x Twitter and XAI. It's not particularly liquid, right,
Speaker 5: So the more that Tesla goes lower the potential that
Speaker 5: he has to actually have to sell stock. Because he
Speaker 5: lends the stock out to banks like Goldman Sachs and
Speaker 5: Morgan Stanley as collateral for capital that they give him.
Speaker 5: Right so, at some point if the stock continues to
Speaker 5: go lower, he will have margin calls and the banks
Speaker 5: will have to sell his stock. So again, who knows
Speaker 5: if we're close to that, But at the end of
Speaker 5: the day, he's going to have a fallout sooner or later.
Speaker 5: With Trump. Trump wants to kill EV tax credits. The
Speaker 5: most profitable business that Elon Musk has at Tesla is
Speaker 5: selling tax credits to his competitors, right, and that's pure margin, right,
Speaker 5: So if you get rid of the EV tax credits,
Speaker 5: that's a huge problem for him. And there's a whole
Speaker 5: host of other things that like basically the government wants
Speaker 5: to do. They want to kill these charging stations. That
Speaker 5: would be very bad. If you're a new buyer, one
Speaker 5: of the issues that you have is charging anxiety. You
Speaker 5: have to figure out how to kind of go and
Speaker 5: just adopt this new behavior with an EV after you know, decades,
Speaker 5: if you're someone like me of using a car that
Speaker 5: you fill up with gas. So there's a whole host
Speaker 5: of issues that are really massive headwinds to his business.
Speaker 3: Right now, would it ultimately be a short squeeze.
Speaker 5: Then well, it actually could be the other way around
Speaker 5: rather than a short squeeze. So if he has to
Speaker 5: basically put up more collateral with the stock, and the
Speaker 5: stock continues to go down based on fundamentals, based on
Speaker 5: his political activities. I mean, they could be a self
Speaker 5: fulfilling prophecy, right, And so who are the net buyers
Speaker 5: of the stock? If you think about all the bros
Speaker 5: that bought the stock, you know, starting the day after
Speaker 5: the election, you know, somewhere around two hundred and fifty dollars,
Speaker 5: and they were buying it all the way up to
Speaker 5: basically four hundred and ninety dollars. With the stock down
Speaker 5: here at two twenty seven, every single person who has
Speaker 5: bought this stock since the election has lost money. And
Speaker 5: the same goes for all the grift that went on
Speaker 5: with the Trump coins and all that sort of stuff.
Speaker 3: Then would trump coin well, I.
Speaker 5: Mean they basically were the same sort of trade in
Speaker 5: a way, like you were basically buying into something that
Speaker 5: you thought had proximity to, you know, the administration that
Speaker 5: would be as far as the crypto is concerned, and
Speaker 5: the ones that were specifically kind of tied to the
Speaker 5: Trump family. I mean, the idea was that you were
Speaker 5: going to have the benefit of these things being attached
Speaker 5: to the folks Ultimately, when it comes to money, when
Speaker 5: it comes to investing, you know, gravity wins out. It's
Speaker 5: just that simple. If you can't demonstrate the utility or
Speaker 5: the value for an asset, it could be a stock,
Speaker 5: it could be a crypto currency or something like that,
Speaker 5: ultimately it will fail. And all you have to do
Speaker 5: is look at the DJT. They're losing tens of millions
Speaker 5: of dollars on a few million dollars in revenue, and
Speaker 5: there's no reason for that thing to go up. It
Speaker 5: is not a going concern as a business.
Speaker 1: But crypto itself is down since Trump took office, even
Speaker 1: though he was meant to be the crypto president.
Speaker 3: Explain that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so all of these sorts of trades, like bitcoin,
Speaker 5: they were called the Trump trades, right. The US dollar
Speaker 5: rallied a lot after the election. Banks, you know, the
Speaker 5: idea that you would get deregulation after four years, you
Speaker 5: know what I mean, even like the big tech stocks
Speaker 5: which have been investigated by the DOJ and the FTC
Speaker 5: you know for years now under the Bide administration, all
Speaker 5: of these things rallied a great deal. So Bitcoin in particular,
Speaker 5: the whole idea that the un and this is what
Speaker 5: was floated was going to set up a strategic reserve
Speaker 5: to buy bitcoin and hold it, and a lot of
Speaker 5: folks thought that would be very good for the price. Ultimately,
Speaker 5: because there is a finite amount of bitcoin, Well, basically
Speaker 5: they're not going to do that, all right, and then
Speaker 5: regulation is going to continue to be a bit opaque.
Speaker 5: So investors are folks that bought it because of all
Speaker 5: that have been selling out. So essentially you've seen a
Speaker 5: round trip of a lot of these trades that were
Speaker 5: meant to be pro growth because of this administration, or
Speaker 5: it was going to be pro regulation where there was
Speaker 5: going to be better to find regulation and these risk
Speaker 5: assets should go higher. So a lot of those things
Speaker 5: have come unwound over the last month or two.
Speaker 3: So my last question for you is this.
Speaker 1: It seems like the markets were very excited about Trump,
Speaker 1: but ultimately it feels like, and I say this because
Speaker 1: the market's lost two percent this week and five percent total,
Speaker 1: it seems like the markets are very disappointed with Trump.
Speaker 5: So why Yeah, So it goes back to a trade war.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 5: So, if you are a company, if you are a CEO,
Speaker 5: and part of your business or part of your agenda
Speaker 5: is to grow your business right is to find new markets.
Speaker 5: Has come up with that our products and services. To
Speaker 5: do that, you need to invest in the company, You
Speaker 5: need to hire, You need to spend on capital expenditures.
Speaker 5: You need to spend on R and D. So if
Speaker 5: you are a company that is going to face headwinds
Speaker 5: from a trade war, right, increase input prices, whether you're
Speaker 5: a manufacturer, a whole host of different things, then you
Speaker 5: all of a sudden now have to take a step back, right,
Speaker 5: You have to kind of weigh what's going to happen
Speaker 5: to the economy. Just this week, we have seen Delta
Speaker 5: and American Airlines cut their earnings forecasts dramatically. We've seen
Speaker 5: this by a bunch of retailers over the last couple weeks, Walmart, costc.
Speaker 5: These are companies that are supposed to do well in
Speaker 5: high inflationary periods because you have consumers trading down to
Speaker 5: the lowest priced Retailers are not doing nearly as well
Speaker 5: as they were a year ago. So we're starting to
Speaker 5: see some pressure waning on consumers. So again, if if
Speaker 5: you were a company and you are not spending right
Speaker 5: to grow your business, then ultimately that is going to
Speaker 5: put downward pressure on the economy. The stock market is
Speaker 5: meant to sniff that out ahead of time, right, It's
Speaker 5: meant to take all the available data that we have,
Speaker 5: whether it be economic data, whether it be messaging from companies'
Speaker 5: earnings and the like here, and it's basically meant to
Speaker 5: process that, right and so right now, I guess the
Speaker 5: takeaway is that the uncertainty caused by a trade war
Speaker 5: is likely to weigh on the US economy. And the
Speaker 5: last thing I'll just say about this is that you know,
Speaker 5: the Trump administration, by doing things asked backwards relative to
Speaker 5: the way they did it in seventeen and eighteen, they're
Speaker 5: really playing chicken with the US economy and then ultimately
Speaker 5: the global economy. And oftentimes when you see this sort
Speaker 5: of behavior when it relates to a massive economy like this,
Speaker 5: that is literally the tail wagging the dog. In one way,
Speaker 5: shape or form, is that you can't change things on
Speaker 5: a dime. If companies start to slow down spending, if
Speaker 5: countries stop trading with each other because of these sorts
Speaker 5: of impediments, to turn that back on is really hard,
Speaker 5: So you could face the potential of a recession. And
Speaker 5: what happens during recession, people get fired. People stop buying things, right,
Speaker 5: They stop investing in the stock market, they're not buying
Speaker 5: new homes, they're not actually upgrading, you know, like making
Speaker 5: additions to their home and that sort of thing, and
Speaker 5: all of this activity slows down. And then you have
Speaker 5: a situation where what does the government do to restimulate demand.
Speaker 5: They have the lower interest rates, they have to do
Speaker 5: more fiscal spending. And that's the very stuff over the
Speaker 5: last few years that caused inflation. So one of the
Speaker 5: issues right now is that you have slower growth, but
Speaker 5: you have inflation that sticks around, and that's something they
Speaker 5: call stagflation. You and I have talked about that before.
Speaker 5: And in that environment, prices of risk assets and homes
Speaker 5: will not do particularly well. Hiring will not do particularly
Speaker 5: well either.
Speaker 1: Yes, stagulation is the night Meer scenario. Thank you, Thank you,
Speaker 1: Dan Nathan.
Speaker 5: Thanks Molli. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: David is an investigative reporter at The New York Times
Speaker 2: and the author of Murder the Truth Fear, the first
Speaker 2: of it, an s secret campaign to protect the powerful.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Fast Politics, David.
Speaker 7: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: I'm excited to have you.
Speaker 1: I think We've had you on for every book you've
Speaker 1: done because we did the Deutsche Bank too, or every
Speaker 1: book you've done since we've existed, But this book murdered
Speaker 1: the truth.
Speaker 3: Tell us how did you get to this book?
Speaker 7: I managed a small team of investigative reporters at The
Speaker 7: New York Times and is it back in maybe twenty
Speaker 7: twenty two. I got the feeling that every time we
Speaker 7: were writing a piece or investigating a piece about a
Speaker 7: powerful person or a rich person, we were getting inundated
Speaker 7: with threatening letters from lawyers and odd curious Not a
Speaker 7: great feeling, but you know, The Times has, for all
Speaker 7: its flaws, which they're plenty, one of the many amazing
Speaker 7: things here is that we have a great team of
Speaker 7: in house lawyers. We're really experienced dealing with these things
Speaker 7: and it's okay, we deal with it. It got me
Speaker 7: thinking that what this would be like to be on
Speaker 7: the receiving end of letters like this and trits like
Speaker 7: this if I worked at a smaller news outlet, or
Speaker 7: if I was an independent publisher.
Speaker 3: Let me rephrase it anywhere else?
Speaker 7: Yeah, truly, I mean there's a small handful of places
Speaker 7: that I think are pretty well equipped to deal all
Speaker 7: this kind of stuff, but it's a very small handful.
Speaker 3: It's two or maybe three.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean, I don't know how you're quite kind
Speaker 7: of it, but in any case, it's a very very small, select,
Speaker 7: kind of privileged group. So I sort of fanning out
Speaker 7: to just journalists all over the country at anything from
Speaker 7: like community newspapers or local newspapers, to independent bloggers or
Speaker 7: people with a substack, or podcast hosts and things like that,
Speaker 7: and I just started hearing these horror stories about how
Speaker 7: and it ranged from people who were writing pieces about
Speaker 7: Russian oligarchs and trying to expose their secrets to much
Speaker 7: kind of more prosaic things like writing a piece about
Speaker 7: a local real estate developer who is doing something kind
Speaker 7: of sketchy, or even like a local politician or a
Speaker 7: local business owner. And the threats sometimes we're just letters,
Speaker 7: other times they were actually litigation. In some cases people
Speaker 7: were encountered physical threats, and the situation really it became
Speaker 7: really clear to me that this was casting a pall
Speaker 7: over the entire journalism industry in the US in ways
Speaker 7: that was leading many many journalists to either censor themselves
Speaker 7: and avoid kind of sensitive controversial topics or writing about
Speaker 7: religious people, or they were not censoring themselves and were
Speaker 7: with some frequency encountering ruinous litigation and really serious threats
Speaker 7: that were taking a severe business toll or psychological toll.
Speaker 7: And I also realized that some of the same people
Speaker 7: who were making these threats and filing these lawsuits, the
Speaker 7: lawyers behind this, were some of the same lawyers who
Speaker 7: on a national level were becoming increasingly outspoken advocating to
Speaker 7: overturn decades of Supreme Court president that basically protected journalists
Speaker 7: and others from this type of weaponized lawsuit. And that's Soliman, Yeah,
Speaker 7: that's New York Times versus Sullivan. One of the things
Speaker 7: that I found really interesting in reporting this book, by
Speaker 7: the way, is that like New York Times versus Sullivan
Speaker 7: in I guess maybe constitutional law, NERD Circles is like
Speaker 7: really famous, but virtually no one else knows about it.
Speaker 7: It's not like one of those decisions like Roe v.
Speaker 7: Wade or something browny Board that is famous. So the
Speaker 7: short version of this is that in nineteen sixty supporters
Speaker 7: of Martin Luther King ran a full page ad in
Speaker 7: the New York Times. The ad list it kind of
Speaker 7: rattled off a whole list of nasty things that Southern
Speaker 7: officials were doing to preserve white supremacy, and there were
Speaker 7: a couple of facts frown. The gist was completely right,
Speaker 7: but some of the facts were they're wrong or exaggerated.
Speaker 7: And the guy who was in charge of the Montgomery,
Speaker 7: Alabama Police Department sued The New York Times for defamation,
Speaker 7: even though he wasn't even named in the ad, the
Speaker 7: ad did say some things about the Montgomery police force.
Speaker 7: He won his lawsuit. It was tried in a courtroom
Speaker 7: by another white supremacist, a judge who happened to be
Speaker 7: a pedophile. The Times appealed. They lost their appeal to
Speaker 7: state Supreme Court, and so their final effort was to
Speaker 7: appear to the US Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court
Speaker 7: in nineteen sixty four heard the case, and their decision
Speaker 7: became really important because what they ruled was that the
Speaker 7: way Alabama's court system had interpreted the First Amendment as
Speaker 7: allowing libel lawsits like this to go forward was it
Speaker 7: basically meant that news outlets were not going to be
Speaker 7: able to cover the civil rights movement, which by the way,
Speaker 7: was by design. That was the entire purpose of this lawsuit,
Speaker 7: the Supreme Court established a standard that's become known as
Speaker 7: the actual Male standard, but said that if you're a
Speaker 7: journalist or a member of the public writing about a
Speaker 7: public official or a public figure and you get a
Speaker 7: fact wrong, as long as you aren't lying, like deliberately
Speaker 7: gaining the fact wrong, or as long as you are
Speaker 7: not acting with reckless disregard for the accuracy of the statement,
Speaker 7: you cannot be successfully sued for damages. And so the
Speaker 7: idea was basically that journalists and others need breathing room
Speaker 7: to be able to kind of have Vetero's discourse about
Speaker 7: people that wield a lot of power in society. And
Speaker 7: if there's ruinous litigation hanging over your head every time
Speaker 7: you do that, you're going to self sense. And so
Speaker 7: the standard that is created basically ushered in a golden
Speaker 7: era of journalism.
Speaker 1: So the difference between say, tweeting that someone is a
Speaker 1: pedophile and making a mistake in an article so like
Speaker 1: it gives you a little room for a mistake versus maligning.
Speaker 7: Yeah, And with the pedophile thing, I mean, it depends
Speaker 7: if the person is a pedophile or not. If the
Speaker 7: person is a pedophile, that's fine. If you have reason
Speaker 7: to believe the person is a pedophile, that's fine, but
Speaker 7: it's really I mean, the way that this has become
Speaker 7: i think essential to modern day journalism and modern day
Speaker 7: just public advocacy in public speaking is that if you
Speaker 7: have reason to believe something, and you've done a little
Speaker 7: bit of due diligence and you believe that what you're
Speaker 7: writing is okay, and this is a public figure or
Speaker 7: a public official that you're writing about, you cannot be
Speaker 7: sued for defamation. And this is a standard that it
Speaker 7: protects people across the political spectrum and has four decades
Speaker 7: and until really quite recently, there's a very broad bipartisan
Speaker 7: consensus that these were important safeguards the protected free speech
Speaker 7: and the freedom of the press.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 3: So what happened Trump.
Speaker 7: Is so explained in twenty sixteen, Trump, when as his
Speaker 7: candidacy was gaining momentum, obviously kind of the parts of
Speaker 7: his platform was bashing the media in really incendiary, ambitious
Speaker 7: personal terms. And one of the things he started talking
Speaker 7: about was opening up the libel laws. And that was
Speaker 7: kind of nonsense. It was pretty easy to dismiss because
Speaker 7: it's not up to a president or even Congress to
Speaker 7: open up the libel laws a question of the Supreme
Speaker 7: Court's interpretation of the First Amendment. But he kept going
Speaker 7: on and on and on about this, and it really
Speaker 7: took hold, and I think it inspired a lot of
Speaker 7: right wing activists and lawyers and judges to take it
Speaker 7: kind of a closer look at the ways that Sullivan
Speaker 7: and some subsequent cases were allowing the modern day media
Speaker 7: to vigorously report about him. And his rhetoric also kind
Speaker 7: of inspired legions of copycats all over the country who
Speaker 7: were filing lawsuits or threatening to file lawsuits against media
Speaker 7: outlets and journalists large and small. And that, by the way,
Speaker 7: is the trend that I was picking up on several
Speaker 7: years later when I started working on this book. And
Speaker 7: Trump's rhetoric and his allies rhetoric coincided with a couple
Speaker 7: of very successful lawsuits against major media outlets, most notably
Speaker 7: the one against Gawker. It was financed by Peter Teel
Speaker 7: that literally destroyed Gawker. And so that the accommindation of
Speaker 7: a lawsuit that took down a media outlet, plus Trump
Speaker 7: on the campaign trail kind of successfully bashing the media
Speaker 7: and arguing that the media was so reckless and so
Speaker 7: irresponsible that we need to be able to sue them
Speaker 7: more easily. That it really created a movement in essence,
Speaker 7: and all of a sudden you had some very prominent lawyers, activists,
Speaker 7: and judges leaping on this Trump bandwagon with the very
Speaker 7: clear stated goal that they want to make it easier
Speaker 7: to sue the media because they view the media as
Speaker 7: biased against Republicans and conservatives, and therefore the solution to
Speaker 7: that is to subject them to waves of litigation that
Speaker 7: will either make them no longer exist or it'll make
Speaker 7: them think twice before deeply investigating or criticizing powerful people.
Speaker 1: I see this as something that we see a lot
Speaker 1: in Trump world, where Trump cooks up an idea and
Speaker 1: it sort of keeps going, Like we've seen him sort
Speaker 1: of shop stuff like this before and then create cottage industries.
Speaker 1: He doesn't create the cottage industries. The cottage industries sort
Speaker 1: of rise up around him. Can you think of other
Speaker 1: situations where he's sort of floated an idea and the
Speaker 1: kind of brain trust has continued.
Speaker 2: On with it.
Speaker 7: Yeah, Well, I mean this is just a classic example
Speaker 7: of that, right, because he says something on the campaign
Speaker 7: drill that just doesn't make sense and it's not logical.
Speaker 7: It's not up to the president to make the decision
Speaker 7: to open up the libel laws. But then a bunch
Speaker 7: of people who are very smart and savvy and importantly
Speaker 7: have a lot of money behind them kind of I
Speaker 7: guess like professionalize that idea essentially and turn it into
Speaker 7: something that, while you might disagree with it strongly, is
Speaker 7: not insane and has a plausible kind of path to
Speaker 7: being realized. So in this case, that took a few
Speaker 7: different forms, and this coincided with the rise of this
Speaker 7: cottage industry of small law firms, small but well financed
Speaker 7: law firms that whose entire business revolved around suing media
Speaker 7: companies and threatening media companies and journalists. And a couple
Speaker 7: of those lawyers, as they were successful in a small
Speaker 7: number of these cases, developed a national profile. I mean
Speaker 7: that the most obvious one to me is a lawyer
Speaker 7: named Libby Locke. What a great name, and she became
Speaker 7: a favorite of Tucker Carlson and Fox News. And so
Speaker 7: basically every time the media was accused of doing something
Speaker 7: wrong that's a slight excentation. Often when the media did
Speaker 7: something wrong, she was called on to Tucker Carlson, and
Speaker 7: she would use that platform to advocate for not just
Speaker 7: the media behaving better or being held accountable, but for
Speaker 7: basically loosing, well not loose. Every time she was on TV,
Speaker 7: she would say things like we need to overturn new
Speaker 7: conference Slivan and that sort of kept to God. And
Speaker 7: the more she said that, and the more other people
Speaker 7: like her said that, activists at groups like the Heritage
Speaker 7: Foundation and the Claremont Institute and the Federalist Society started
Speaker 7: organizing conferences around this idea, and so they kind of
Speaker 7: got the bringing juices of the conservative legal movement flowing.
Speaker 7: And by twenty nineteen, Clarence Thomas had jumped on this
Speaker 7: bandwagon in an opinion where he called for overturning Sullivan,
Speaker 7: and that in some way was kind of the most
Speaker 7: important moment.
Speaker 3: And you knew they had the vote, or at least
Speaker 3: some of the votes.
Speaker 7: Right, well, they had one vote, right, but having Thomas,
Speaker 7: who is in conservative legal circles, one of the if
Speaker 7: not the most influential thinker, and he's a folk hero
Speaker 7: on the right, so a having him kind of take
Speaker 7: up this mantle was a huge breakthrough, and it immediately
Speaker 7: inspired other federal judges to take up this mantle and
Speaker 7: take up this argument. And one of Thomas his closest
Speaker 7: friends and longest allies, was a federal judge on the
Speaker 7: DC Appeals Court, which is kind of the second most
Speaker 7: powerful court in the country. And this is a guy
Speaker 7: who had known Thomas, had been friends with Thomas back
Speaker 7: dating back to before he was a judge, back when
Speaker 7: he was at the EEOC in Washington. And his name
Speaker 7: is Larry Silverman, and he issued a year after Thomas
Speaker 7: initially made this argument, he issued a scathing opinion that
Speaker 7: said Sullivan should be overturned. And the entirety of his
Speaker 7: argument was that it should be overturned because the media
Speaker 7: is supposedly liberal and therefore should be punished. It was
Speaker 7: really an extraordinary argument. It was. Look, obviously, that is
Speaker 7: a large part of what the First Amendment is meant
Speaker 7: to protect, not having judges or other government officials discriminating
Speaker 7: against people's ability to speak based on their viewpoints. But
Speaker 7: really that was the moment that it has really started
Speaker 7: getting tremendous momentum, and it has not stopped since then.
Speaker 1: Is there sort of a historical precedent for a member
Speaker 1: of the Supreme Court being involved in an idea that
Speaker 1: then goes to the Supreme Court.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's a good question. I'm not sure I know
Speaker 7: the answer to that. That's very much what happened here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that seems kind of shocking to me.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously Thomas is so in it that it's
Speaker 1: not surprising, but it is a little bit shocking, isn't it.
Speaker 7: Yeah, well it is. And one of the things that
Speaker 7: I really enjoyed doing in this book was kind of
Speaker 7: tracing the evolution of Thomas's thinking on this and trying
Speaker 7: to understand the reasons. And he's back in nineteen ninety
Speaker 7: one during his confirmation hearings. You know, most of his
Speaker 7: confirmation hearings were spent with him doing what most judicial
Speaker 7: nominees do, which is basically doing the best not to
Speaker 7: answer clearly senator's questions about what they think about particular cases.
Speaker 7: And on the fifth and final day, Thomas was asked
Speaker 7: about the Sullivan decision and actually gave what was probably
Speaker 7: the most direct answer he'd given during the entirety of
Speaker 7: its hearings, and he was very supportive of Sulivan and
Speaker 7: he said that even though it's uncomfortable for public officials
Speaker 7: like him to be in the media spotlight. It's really
Speaker 7: important that we have those rates, and it's important for
Speaker 7: democracy and it's important for accountability. And that was the
Speaker 7: day before the Anita Hill allegations surface, where Thomas was
Speaker 7: obviously and rightfully dragged through this uncomfortable spotlight, and his
Speaker 7: views on the media at that point really started to
Speaker 7: shift radically. I narrated this in the book, but he
Speaker 7: basically had complete mental health breakdown at that time and
Speaker 7: was really incapacitated for a while because he was so
Speaker 7: upset about this, and I think he came to view
Speaker 7: the media as the cause of his suffering, not his
Speaker 7: own actions. That began this period where over the next
Speaker 7: twenty or thirty years where Thomas clearly stopped thinking about
Speaker 7: First amend of Protections for Journalists being important to democracy
Speaker 7: and started feeling that First Ament of Protections for journalists
Speaker 7: were basically enabling the media fair to him, right, yeah,
Speaker 7: unfair to him and to like pursue of INNDBTA against him.
Speaker 7: You can kind of understand that, right for someone like him,
Speaker 7: And certainly by the time twenty nineteen rolls around and
Speaker 7: Trump is in the office, his hatred towards the media
Speaker 7: was really it was kind of overflowing, and he has
Speaker 7: had some allies not just activists and politicians, but judges
Speaker 7: as well who were It was like this has been
Speaker 7: kind of festering for a long time and finally.
Speaker 3: Exploded, I mean completely insane.
Speaker 1: Talk me through where we are now with this, because
Speaker 1: this will go to the core.
Speaker 7: Well, we'll see there are at least two justices who
Speaker 7: have signaled their willingness to overturn self and Thomas and
Speaker 7: Justice Gorsic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's always the two you most expect, though I
Speaker 1: actually would have thought Alito would be.
Speaker 7: Alita is interesting on this, and I don't quite know
Speaker 7: where he stands. I mean, he actually historically had been
Speaker 7: pretty good on First Amendment. It is he also obviously
Speaker 7: has like a real issue with the media right now
Speaker 7: and has shown a willingness to really seemingly happily align
Speaker 7: himself with people like Thomas and Trump part warming. Yeah,
Speaker 7: so I heave a bit of a wild card to me,
Speaker 7: But it's unclear to me whether there are enough votes
Speaker 7: on the super Court to outright overturned Sullivan. I think
Speaker 7: what's probably more likely to happen, and I Shad caveat
Speaker 7: this by saying, I have a terrible track record making right.
Speaker 3: No, I thought Aris would win.
Speaker 7: Well, my track record of bad predictions goes back way
Speaker 7: further than that. So at the risk of like making
Speaker 7: a fool of myself, I mean, I think what is
Speaker 7: more likely than Sullivan being overturned out rays there are
Speaker 7: a bunch of kind of subsequent cases that basically prevented
Speaker 7: lower rungs of public figures from suing the media, So
Speaker 7: like you're like run of the mill billionaire, for example,
Speaker 7: And I think it's more likely that the Supreme Court
Speaker 7: would kind of ship away or maybe reverse some of
Speaker 7: those subsequent precedents, which, by the way, would have a
Speaker 7: huge impact, and it would mean that it was all
Speaker 7: of a sudden, like a real risk to write critical
Speaker 7: things or investigate like the richest person in your town
Speaker 7: or your city, or someone like Elon Musk potentially before
Speaker 7: he was in the government.
Speaker 1: Though is he in the government? We're not sure, right,
Speaker 1: he might he might not be.
Speaker 7: Well, I've seen he has a government email address. Yes, yes,
Speaker 7: but he is maybe not even they will be he is,
Speaker 7: So I mean, he's the richest person in the world.
Speaker 7: He obviously is playing a very influential role in the
Speaker 7: White Ash. But there are thousands and thousands of people
Speaker 7: in the US and all over the world who are
Speaker 7: not nearly as rich or powerful Asim, but are still
Speaker 7: really rich and powerful. And the means to pursue basically
Speaker 7: infinite means for all intents and purposes to litigate against
Speaker 7: the media and threaten the media. And by the way,
Speaker 7: if not just the mainstream media, or this is something
Speaker 7: that's already happening even with Sullivan still in place. It's
Speaker 7: having across the country and creating hazardous conditions for anyone,
Speaker 7: whether it is someone with a subsec newsletter or someone
Speaker 7: who wants to leave a nasty restaurant review online or
Speaker 7: start a petition about something in their community. All of
Speaker 7: that type of activity is protected by SELIV and these
Speaker 7: subsequent decisions and all of those things are already those
Speaker 7: types of actions can face and do face litigation and
Speaker 7: legal threats that are deliberately designed to get people to
Speaker 7: shut up. And I think, obviously, if these Supreme Court
Speaker 7: presidents that we can, we're going to see a whole
Speaker 7: lot more of that.
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ, Thank you, David, thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3: I was much are present enough, so this is perfect.
Speaker 5: Well, you're welcome.
Speaker 2: Lawrence Lussig is a Harvard professor and a former presidential candidate.
Speaker 6: Welcome Lawrence him Molly, great to see you.
Speaker 1: Great to see you. I was so so you have
Speaker 1: a really interesting piece that you wrote a medium that
Speaker 1: I want to talk about. But first I want to
Speaker 1: start by talking about how because I think it's important
Speaker 1: that this is couched in all the work you've done
Speaker 1: in the legal world, in the academic world about regulation,
Speaker 1: your legal scholar.
Speaker 3: Very brilliant future Princeton.
Speaker 1: You've done lots of models for what the future should
Speaker 1: look like with some regulation.
Speaker 3: Is that fair?
Speaker 6: Everything except the Princeton part. I wish I had t I.
Speaker 1: Mean Harvard, Sorry, Harvard at Harvard, Princeton's on my brain,
Speaker 1: but anyway, but yes, Harvard. But you've spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time thinking about what regulation could look like in
Speaker 1: this sort of ideal world where we have capitalism, but
Speaker 1: we have a kind of capitalism that has some constraints.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 7: Is that fair?
Speaker 6: That's totally fair? Right? And that's what we should be
Speaker 6: thinking about. How to build a capitalism that's regulated in
Speaker 6: a way that makes it so the capitalism doesn't control regulation.
Speaker 6: This is the like. On the right, they call this
Speaker 6: crony capitalism. On the left, I think we just call
Speaker 6: this corruption. But the most striking feature of the world
Speaker 6: we've found ourselves in right now is that it's an
Speaker 6: overwhelmingly corrupt system of government. And it's kind of astonishing.
Speaker 6: We got here, but we've got to find a way out.
Speaker 3: Yes, now we got here.
Speaker 1: What I think is so interesting about your writing it,
Speaker 1: and I think it's correct, and I think that on
Speaker 1: the liberal side we're not attuned enough to this. The
Speaker 1: reason why Trump was able to successfully and I might
Speaker 1: add bafflingly running for president and win twice, was populism.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and I think that we mistake what populism is.
Speaker 6: People think about populism as either on the right of
Speaker 6: the left. It's actually the inside versus the outside. And
Speaker 6: what he could do for weird, bizarre reasons, but he
Speaker 6: could convince people that he was on the outside ends,
Speaker 6: that he was taking on this deeply corrupted, broken government,
Speaker 6: he was going to shake it up and make it
Speaker 6: work for ordinary people. And so at the surface level,
Speaker 6: what he says is quite attractive. If you're like an
Speaker 6: average American recognizing just how screwed you are. You know,
Speaker 6: we've been now celebrating fifty years where the average income
Speaker 6: for ordinary workers has not gone up at all, literally
Speaker 6: not at all, and so you can imagine in that
Speaker 6: world the frustration that leads people to say, just break
Speaker 6: it down and let's start all over again. And he
Speaker 6: appear to that. Now, you know, the reality is it's
Speaker 6: just a con game and its actual strategy is to
Speaker 6: empower entrench the wealthiest, and that's in fact what he's
Speaker 6: executing on right now. And so the only question is
Speaker 6: whether that eventually breaks through people realize the populism that
Speaker 6: they are celebrating that I celebrate. I totally idea. I
Speaker 6: totally identify with the populist message here, but it's got
Speaker 6: to be a populist message. It's actually helping ordinary people
Speaker 6: as opposed to just more help for the billionaires.
Speaker 1: Right, And this is why what you wrote about Doge
Speaker 1: is so important. So Doge what it really is, we're
Speaker 1: not even going to talk about right now. But the
Speaker 1: idea of it was to sort of embra to give
Speaker 1: a sort of populist vein to government.
Speaker 3: Correct.
Speaker 6: Yes, absolutely, and it's it's a great idea Let's make
Speaker 6: government efficient. Let's make it deliver its services at the
Speaker 6: same or better services at the same or lower cost.
Speaker 6: That's what efficiency is, and who could be against it?
Speaker 6: And that should be its measure. You know, I think
Speaker 6: that Reagan like famously said in nineteen eighty four, not
Speaker 6: that you would remember, Molly, but in nineteen eighty four
Speaker 6: Reagan said, are you better off today? I mean nineteen
Speaker 6: eighties that are you better off than you were four
Speaker 6: years ago? I think we should start saying is your
Speaker 6: government working better today than it was four years ago?
Speaker 6: Because what's absolutely clear is that this Doge strategy of
Speaker 6: taking a chainsaw to everything is going to break government.
Speaker 6: Government is not going to be able to function. So
Speaker 6: the clearest thing that's going to come out of all
Speaker 6: of this is like, no real savings and just make
Speaker 6: the government so it doesn't work anymore. And like nobody
Speaker 6: can celebrate that. Nobody should celebrate that except the crazy
Speaker 6: libertarian Peter Thiel types who just want to get rid
Speaker 6: of government and just live in their little I rand
Speaker 6: island somewhere and do whatever else they do.
Speaker 1: During the summer, spent all all this time interviewing really
Speaker 1: smart academics talking about what Project twenty twenty five would
Speaker 1: look like, wildly unpopular. Donald Trump disavowed it, so mainstream
Speaker 1: media was like, well, obviously he's not going to do
Speaker 1: it because he said he wasn't going to do it,
Speaker 1: which of course obviously he was totally going to do it.
Speaker 1: And the ethos of it is the sort of dream
Speaker 1: of all Republican donors, right strip the government to the
Speaker 1: studs and all the FDR stuff and all the Carter
Speaker 1: stuff go in there and just you know, have taxes
Speaker 1: and that's pretty much it, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: like ultimately, and so as we watch that happen, there
Speaker 1: are definitely a percentage of Trump's people who are just
Speaker 1: delighted to see the organization fail.
Speaker 6: Yes, they want to see government fail because it just
Speaker 6: doubles down their argument that we can't rely on government
Speaker 6: to do anything. So let's just dismantle more and more
Speaker 6: of it, Like why are you paying taxes to a
Speaker 6: system that doesn't work? The game is like just a
Speaker 6: numbers game here though, because yes, there's a certain number
Speaker 6: of Trump's supporters who are wealthy enough to live with
Speaker 6: out the support of the state. But the rest of us,
Speaker 6: you know, we depend upon like services, security, infrastructure, all
Speaker 6: the things that makes it possible to function. So the
Speaker 6: point is like to the extent those people's lives become
Speaker 6: worse because of this chaos, they'll begin to wake up
Speaker 6: to it. And I think that's the question. That's the opportunity. Well,
Speaker 6: I mean, that's the chat, that's the that's the opportunity
Speaker 6: that we've got to find a way to act on.
Speaker 6: We've got to find a way to channel people's attention
Speaker 6: to not this perpetual anti Trump rheteric, right, but the
Speaker 6: but the rhetoric around populism, like let's celebrate the idea
Speaker 6: of a government that actually is efficient and working for
Speaker 6: people and delivering you know, and that terrible ad that
Speaker 6: they did where they're trashing the trans support that Harris
Speaker 6: did and that ends with she's for they them, he's
Speaker 6: for you. Well, okay, who is who's the you in
Speaker 6: that statement? Like it turns out it's just the super
Speaker 6: wealthy and it's again any he plays this game and
Speaker 6: again and again it gets away with it. We finally
Speaker 6: got away got to get away to like focus people
Speaker 6: enough so that they can see it, because they're gonna
Speaker 6: feel I mean, unlike the first Trump administration, Like you know,
Speaker 6: he came in and he promised the same tax cut,
Speaker 6: saying like middle class task cut. And of course by
Speaker 6: the time the dealing was done, all the middle class
Speaker 6: stuff was taken out. It was only a tax cut
Speaker 6: for the super wealthy and corporations. The same thing's gonna
Speaker 6: happen this time, but that wasn't as noticeable to ordinary
Speaker 6: people as this breaking government will be. Like when the
Speaker 6: government's just broken, people are gonna be like, what shiites
Speaker 6: this ridiculous. I don't get my chat, my my social
Speaker 6: Security check or Medicare is being cut or whatever.
Speaker 1: You keep our social Security for your social Security number
Speaker 1: for your baby in mace right the right, like the root. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was reporting I saw today. I mean again, maybe it's.
Speaker 2: To hear the rest of the interview. Head over to
Speaker 2: YouTube and search from Fast Politics with Molly Jung Fast.
Speaker 3: No Full Jesse Cannon mollye.
Speaker 2: So you know what I think of who I want
Speaker 2: in a senior advisor to the State Department nineteen years old,
Speaker 2: maybe a nickname like big Balls and somebody who previously
Speaker 2: leaked confidential information to a competitor. That sounds like a
Speaker 2: great resume to me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Big Balls.
Speaker 1: You'll remember Big Balls as a guy you want as
Speaker 1: a senior advisor in the State Department. Again, these are
Speaker 1: yet another member of Elon Mush's cabinet of deplorables. They
Speaker 1: are young, they are intach and they are running your
Speaker 1: federal government right now. He is a minion.
Speaker 3: He has the broccoli haircut. He is in it al
Speaker 3: paca bro.
Speaker 2: That the preferred term, Molly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and a paca bro. Big Ball's significant role in
Speaker 1: the State Department. It makes sense because he's really smart.
Speaker 1: He's a senior advisor in the Bureau of Diplomatic Technology.
Speaker 1: The Washington Reports is a data hub that serves in
Speaker 1: an IT. I mean, you know this guy, We're so fucked.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is my moment of fuckery and Jesus,
Speaker 1: it's bad.
Speaker 3: That's it for.
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Speaker 3: Thanks for listening.