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 Glenn Youngkin won't be able to
Speaker 1: turn Virginia into Florida. We have such an interesting show
Speaker 1: for you today, the Atlantics.
Speaker 2: Ron Brownstein stops.
Speaker 1: By for a late night post election analysis to talk
Speaker 1: DEM's big wins. Then we'll talk to Bloomberg Opinions Tim
Speaker 1: O'Brien about Trump's inability to behave himself in the courtroom.
Speaker 1: But first we have Washington Post columnist George Conway. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to Fast Politics.
Speaker 3: Gimme a pee, gimme a gi, me a one.
Speaker 1: Three early morning for George Conway and I and poor Jesse.
Speaker 1: So yesterday, Donald Trump, or as I like to think
Speaker 1: of him, the former guy.
Speaker 3: I CALLO one one three, five, eight h nine.
Speaker 2: He was in core. He was on the stand.
Speaker 1: If that were your client, how would you feel to die?
Speaker 3: I would feel relieved that he didn't, you know, commit
Speaker 3: Harry carry on the stand?
Speaker 2: He kind of did that.
Speaker 3: Sounded like he was very very well behaved for Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: He only screamed a few times at the judge and
Speaker 3: ranted and raved only for a few hours, so you know,
Speaker 3: I think he was relatively well behaved because we're gonna
Speaker 3: see a lot worse for him. Explain, Well, he's got
Speaker 3: ninety one counts to deal with and we have a campaign,
Speaker 3: and he cannot take criticism at all, and he certainly
Speaker 3: can't take criticism that deep down he knows to be true.
Speaker 3: He is not as smart, not as rich, now you're
Speaker 3: as truthful, not as anything as he purports to be,
Speaker 3: and that is causes him deep psychological distress in a
Speaker 3: way that you know, all of us are sensitive to
Speaker 3: certain things and we get touchy about certain things, but
Speaker 3: a narcissist, the particular, an extreme related narcissist, really has
Speaker 3: no ability to shake any of that off. And the
Speaker 3: way they do it is by fighting back. That's why
Speaker 3: you hear you see these news stories about him. He
Speaker 3: wants to seek revenge and he's going to use the
Speaker 3: arms of the government to do that. And those are
Speaker 3: the two reasons why, I mean, the reason why he's
Speaker 3: running fundamentally for president is he wants to stay out
Speaker 3: of jail. But part of the big struggle when you
Speaker 3: are this kind of character, this kind of evil character,
Speaker 3: like a Putin or a Hitler or you know, is
Speaker 3: that you believe that you must destroy or be destroyed.
Speaker 4: That is his aim.
Speaker 3: His aim is to avoid destruction and then reak destruction
Speaker 3: on everyone else. And that is why he is among others.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's really the principal reason why he's so dangerous,
Speaker 3: because he really could. You know, I don't think he
Speaker 3: would succeed in throwing Bill Barr. I mean, if you
Speaker 3: saw the Washington Post yes article yesterday where it said
Speaker 3: that he was seeking he was telling his cohorts down
Speaker 3: in Laura Alago that he wants to investigate Bill Barr,
Speaker 3: investigate his ex lawyer, Ty Cobb. And I'm sure I'm
Speaker 3: on the this somewhere, but I didn't get mentioned because
Speaker 3: it's going to be a very very long list.
Speaker 2: We're going to be in Getmo together, right.
Speaker 3: No, I've been making Getmo jokes for all evil. That's
Speaker 3: what he wants to do, because that's just his nature.
Speaker 3: I don't think he would succeed in throwing all those
Speaker 3: people in.
Speaker 1: Jail, I hope, which is a great comfort to me.
Speaker 1: Let me, just as the people who would be thrown,
Speaker 1: we're happy, right.
Speaker 3: I do think he why and I think it would
Speaker 3: be like these protests in Israel, butor and prior to
Speaker 3: the Hamas, the protests about net and Yahoo's judicial reform.
Speaker 3: I think we would see a great deal of civil
Speaker 3: unrest at some of the things he would try. I
Speaker 3: think the country would become essentially in government. I believe
Speaker 3: that if he were reelected, had been re elected in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty, I thought, and I said at the time,
Speaker 3: that the country would become ungovernable. And I think it's
Speaker 3: doubly so now because I think he is in a
Speaker 3: much worse psychological state. And also he understands there are
Speaker 3: a few guardrails left by twenty twenty, by the end
Speaker 3: of twenty twenty on him, but they were still and
Speaker 3: all these guys at the Justice departman who basically threatened
Speaker 3: to resign on loss. There was a White House counsel.
Speaker 3: There were a lot of people around him who said no, no,
Speaker 3: you know, who are trying to act as a break
Speaker 3: or restraint on him. They kept him from going to Capitol.
Speaker 3: He'll even the Secret Service. I do not think those
Speaker 3: people will be around next time. So he is, you know,
Speaker 3: he's a great danger to the republic, even though he
Speaker 3: has only I think, notwithstanding these polls, I think he's
Speaker 3: only got a ten or twenty percent chance of winning.
Speaker 3: It's like a ten and twenty chance of bringing polonium
Speaker 3: tea for rest.
Speaker 1: So right, right, a lot at stake. It's not a
Speaker 1: normal election. It's not a choice between you know, you
Speaker 1: may not love Nikki Haley, but you at least know
Speaker 1: that she is not going to destroy the country. So
Speaker 1: let's talk about this civil trial though for a minute,
Speaker 1: because it's an interesting trial in the fact that it's
Speaker 1: kind of this we're really in the penalty phase here,
Speaker 1: Like the judge already ruled.
Speaker 3: Yes and no. I mean, there are counts that he
Speaker 3: granted summary judgment on and the issue there will be
Speaker 3: the relief, but there are a bunch of other counts
Speaker 3: that they have to find intention some kind of intentional fraud.
Speaker 3: If he were to win on everything, he'd still be
Speaker 3: out of business based upon the court's ruling thus far.
Speaker 3: But there are still these other counts like conspiracy to
Speaker 3: conspiracy to issue a false financial statement, issuing a false
Speaker 3: financial statement, conspiracy to I forget what they are, and
Speaker 3: those require additional factual showings. The biggest piece of those
Speaker 3: claims are that the financial statements were false, and that
Speaker 3: the judge has already ruled at the end of the day,
Speaker 3: because the burden of proof is not the criminal beyond
Speaker 3: the reasonable doubt Perry Mason level of proof, the preponderance
Speaker 3: of the events regular civil case, which means.
Speaker 2: That right, it's a lower level of proof.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: All you have to do is find it just ever
Speaker 3: so slightly more likely than not defendant did something bad
Speaker 3: or did whatever it is, or the plane if is
Speaker 3: trying to prove so it's fifty point zero zero zero
Speaker 3: zero one percent. If you find that likelihood based upon
Speaker 3: the facts, even based on that substantial uncertainty, you can
Speaker 3: you can hold him liable. This judge is going to
Speaker 3: find that, and I think there's going to be based
Speaker 3: upon what we're seeing in the press sports I haven't
Speaker 3: read the transfer, there is just more than sufficient basis
Speaker 3: for him to find these people were lying their asses
Speaker 3: off about what they intended. And in fact, there are
Speaker 3: a number of concessions apparently in the record, including by
Speaker 3: Trump yesterday, and there's no way he can really deny it.
Speaker 3: It's the question is did you intend for the banks
Speaker 3: to rely on your financial statements? And every time you
Speaker 3: sign one of these, you sign these loan papers and
Speaker 3: the low paper say I understand that the banks are
Speaker 3: relying on this. They pointed that out to him and
Speaker 3: he conceded it. You know, he still has these bullshit
Speaker 3: arguments about how every financial statement was was slapped with
Speaker 3: a disclaimer saying don't believe this, or you're a.
Speaker 2: Fool, session don't believe what we tell you.
Speaker 3: I joked yesterday on Twitter that again I'd like to
Speaker 3: prepare a disclaimer that he could wear around his neck.
Speaker 4: I am a liar.
Speaker 3: That's not going to help him. Is a legal that.
Speaker 3: I mean, this judge is going to write an opinion
Speaker 3: that is going to I mean, that's the big problem too,
Speaker 3: is he he doesn't have a jury there. I guess
Speaker 3: for some reason, Alina Habba did not ask for a jury.
Speaker 2: It's a bizarre right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's the finder of fact. And when you have
Speaker 3: a pellet review of findings a fact, whether they be
Speaker 3: by a jury or a judge, those are entitled to deference.
Speaker 3: And if there is basically any evidence in the record
Speaker 3: from which a reasonable try or of fact be that
Speaker 3: the jury or the judge can could have made the
Speaker 3: finding the finding stands, and the Pellet Division, the Pellet
Speaker 3: Court cannot overturn that. And what's worse for Trump is,
Speaker 3: unlike a jury, the judge gets to write his own grief. Here,
Speaker 3: he's going to write an opinion and he's going to
Speaker 3: cite all this evidence, and there is no way that
Speaker 3: they are these factual findings are going to kill and
Speaker 3: there's no going to be no way that they'll be
Speaker 3: able to overturn them. That's the reason they're engaging in
Speaker 3: this program to bait the judge, either to bait him
Speaker 3: into doing something so extreme that he could get reversed,
Speaker 3: or just that leads to tartish proceedings in in the
Speaker 3: public route. But the fact is, you know, clurishing the
Speaker 3: proceedings in the public realm might help him politically, but
Speaker 3: it's not going to help him legally. I mean, he
Speaker 3: really this goes to the reason why he's showing up
Speaker 3: every day, is that this goes to his essence of
Speaker 3: being a billionaire and businessman. He's out of business at
Speaker 3: some point after this judgment can sfirmed. Now that may
Speaker 3: take it here or too. He seems he's toast. You know,
Speaker 3: he won't need do is anymore because he'll be getting free.
Speaker 3: Ward Cursey of the United States Bureau of Prisons, do
Speaker 3: you really.
Speaker 2: Believe in your heart of hearts that Donald Trump will
Speaker 2: end up in jail?
Speaker 4: Yes, I have believed five years.
Speaker 3: I told people, you know, in twenty eighteen and twenty nineteen.
Speaker 3: I won't say who, but I told people like, this
Speaker 3: man up in jail, Okay.
Speaker 1: I mean, I just feel like it seems so unlikely
Speaker 1: that they would put him with Secret Service guys in jail.
Speaker 2: But why do you think that that will be inevitable?
Speaker 3: Because he's guilty, and he's guilty six ways of Sunday,
Speaker 3: and I think after he goes through these trials, I
Speaker 3: just don't see anyway you can let him off. I
Speaker 3: just don't see that's happening. And I think the fact
Speaker 3: that he is Secret Service protection, I think that can
Speaker 3: be managed. I think they can manage that in a
Speaker 3: good prison system, like the federal system has a lot
Speaker 3: of facilities that it can use, and the Secret Service
Speaker 3: will have less to do in to protect him because
Speaker 3: it's going to be traveling around all over the place.
Speaker 4: It'll be cheaper for the tax bank.
Speaker 2: Right, Well, that is an argument I haven't heard before.
Speaker 3: I do think it's true, Like, okay, you're guarding you know,
Speaker 3: even a minimum security prison. You already got the place guarded.
Speaker 3: It's like being in a secure facility to start with.
Speaker 3: You know, you'd only have to protect them from the
Speaker 3: people who are in the air.
Speaker 1: Aren't you worried about the larger political reverberations of putting
Speaker 1: someone like Donald Trump, who is a leader of a movement.
Speaker 3: I'm worried about the larger political reverberations of not doing
Speaker 3: That's the big danger, that's the big public dis basically
Speaker 3: say that you can. You can be president, and you
Speaker 3: could try to disregard the Constitution and try to stay
Speaker 3: on after your term and try to basically say a
Speaker 3: guy who says he wants to suspend the Constitution and
Speaker 3: actually did try to do it in January of twenty
Speaker 3: twenty one, to say that that man walks free, that's
Speaker 3: to me, that's the death knill of.
Speaker 2: Our republic, right right, No, for sure, either.
Speaker 3: Way, it's you know, you have to take your medicine.
Speaker 3: But the medicine I'd rather take is the one that
Speaker 3: promotes the rule of law and that protects the rule
Speaker 3: of law. If he gets away with the things he's
Speaker 3: gotten away with. How can you put anybody in jail
Speaker 3: for stealing, classify doctors for this or that.
Speaker 2: If you can't, it set such a terrible example.
Speaker 1: I mean, what is interesting is the way we got
Speaker 1: here was by Trump getting away with things again and
Speaker 1: again and again.
Speaker 3: His life has been He's managed to get away with things.
Speaker 3: And there's a lot of reasons why he was able
Speaker 3: to do that. The fact that he has married Trump
Speaker 3: really well described. If he's basically've been coddled and protected
Speaker 3: by a sphere of people of enablers his entire light
Speaker 3: and buy his money and buy his wealth, and by
Speaker 3: the fact that he believes people and makes it not
Speaker 3: worth them tangling with him. He's gotten away with that
Speaker 3: his entire life. And and that's you know, soonil later,
Speaker 3: that comes to an end. And I believe in karma,
Speaker 3: and I think that's going to come to an end,
Speaker 3: and I think he's going to end up dying in prison.
Speaker 3: Set back, and I will again, it.
Speaker 1: Does feel like he's really had his way with the
Speaker 1: American legal system in a way I think a lot
Speaker 1: of us did not see coming.
Speaker 3: I don't agree with that, I just I don't agree
Speaker 3: with that, because I don't think when you get right
Speaker 3: down to legal proceedings.
Speaker 2: Right, they've just taken a long time.
Speaker 3: They just take a long time. It takes a long
Speaker 3: time publicated, he loses all the time. I can't think
Speaker 3: the cases that he actually wins. Basically, the only thing
Speaker 3: I can think about the top of the head is
Speaker 3: he got some lawsuit with the Stormy Daniels he wore.
Speaker 3: You know, he lost the sixty three odd cases for
Speaker 3: the election cases. He lost two big cases of the
Speaker 3: Supreme Court when he was trying to stop the congressional
Speaker 3: investigation of his taxes, and when he was trying to
Speaker 3: stop the Manhattan DA investigation the Grand Jurian suboenas. He
Speaker 3: lost that he lost in the Supreme Court in January
Speaker 3: twenty twenty one or December twenty twenty, whenever that was.
Speaker 3: And he's getting killed in the courts today, is just
Speaker 3: getting absolutely killed. They've had enough of him. And the
Speaker 3: only place he has any success and has only marginal
Speaker 3: successes with this judge in Florida. But I don't think
Speaker 3: at the end of the day, I think she can
Speaker 3: delay the case of she's if that's what she's intending
Speaker 3: to do. And she can take slapes of the government
Speaker 3: along the way. But I think at the end of
Speaker 3: the day, the evidence in that case is just air tight.
Speaker 3: I will see how any jury could acquit him, and
Speaker 3: how he may manage to get a hung jury somehow.
Speaker 4: If a maga person is seef, I do it.
Speaker 2: But they'll get retried, right, That's kind of amazing.
Speaker 3: That's the point. To go back to the original point
Speaker 3: I made. The reason why he's running is to stop
Speaker 3: all this, and constitutionally that is correct. Even though man
Speaker 3: doesn't deserve the protection of the Constitution because he doesn't
Speaker 3: expect the constitution, I do think that he would have
Speaker 3: a strong, if not air tight. I think a compelling
Speaker 3: argument that Article two would prevent him from being not prosecuted,
Speaker 3: but incarcerated during his time in office. He's reelected, and
Speaker 3: that the only course to get him out would be impeachment,
Speaker 3: which we've seed doesn't really work.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: No, it's true. I shouldn't laugh.
Speaker 3: The framers did not foresee the right of political parties,
Speaker 3: where that a political party would adhere to the whims
Speaker 3: of a criminal before following the constitutional obligation side.
Speaker 2: American democracy was not ready for Trump.
Speaker 3: The problem is that American democracy created. There's those a
Speaker 3: lot of things in hindsight that led to him just
Speaker 3: this anti government further the Tea Party, you know, I
Speaker 3: mean the Tea Party started off okay and then went
Speaker 3: off the rails.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I just think a lot of things been tast size
Speaker 3: and ways that I didn't foresee. I mean, it's it's
Speaker 3: not an illegitimate thing to think that the government overreaches. Often,
Speaker 3: it is not an illegit think that the government taxes
Speaker 3: people too much, that the government is too involved in
Speaker 3: people's lives. And for liberals who say, oh, Eric goes again,
Speaker 3: it's like, do you really want that? Kind of the
Speaker 3: problem with the reason why here government is because some
Speaker 3: lunatic might end up running it.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well that is true.
Speaker 3: You know, the very smart liberals I talked to lot,
Speaker 3: they get that I have a lot more respect for
Speaker 3: where they're coming from, and they have more respect from
Speaker 3: where I came from, precisely because it's like, Okay, we're
Speaker 3: actually fighting the same fight in different ways. Concentration of abuse,
Speaker 3: of the ability to abuse power. And I think that
Speaker 3: you know, for liberals, they tend to think that the
Speaker 3: private sector is the bigger danger. They're not wrong in
Speaker 3: a lot of cases, but to me, it's like the
Speaker 3: concentration of government power is a big danger age.
Speaker 4: And we focus on the different things.
Speaker 3: I focus on economics. They may focus on physical privacy,
Speaker 3: even though I don't disagree with them on that, and
Speaker 3: they may not disagree wholly with me on my views.
Speaker 3: We just have different embassies. At the end of the day,
Speaker 3: there's more that unites us than divides us. I think
Speaker 3: that's the thing that we have to remember.
Speaker 1: Yeah, George Conway, thank you so much. Ron Brownstein is
Speaker 1: a senior editor at The Atlantic. Welcome back to Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: Ron Brownstein, Hey, busy nights. So excited to have you
Speaker 1: to talk about these results. I can't think of anyone
Speaker 1: I would rather talk through this with, because.
Speaker 4: You know, a lot of stuff we try.
Speaker 1: I mean, the things that I saw that look like
Speaker 1: good look like a good night so far for Democrats
Speaker 1: is the fact that we can have this conversation right now, so.
Speaker 5: Far, and things could change in the final hours. This
Speaker 5: looks a lot like twenty twenty two. Yeah, where you
Speaker 5: have we have multiple polls showing that voters are disenchanted
Speaker 5: with President Biden's performance, their sour on the economy, they
Speaker 5: give Republicans lead in polls on who you think can
Speaker 5: handle the economy, all of the conditions that should be
Speaker 5: there for the party out of the White House to
Speaker 5: be racking up victories and posting very good nights, But
Speaker 5: instead the opposite, as in twenty twenty two, is happening,
Speaker 5: that Republicans are underperforming what you would expect giving these
Speaker 5: attitudes about, you know, the way things are going in
Speaker 5: the country, And what it says is that there are
Speaker 5: clearly a lot of voters, particularly in the major metros,
Speaker 5: that is a thread running through all of these races who,
Speaker 5: whatever they think about the way things are going in
Speaker 5: the country, whatever they think about Joe Biden's performance, they
Speaker 5: are still reluctant to entrust Republicans with power. And we
Speaker 5: are seeing that in the Kentucky governorship where Andy Basheer
Speaker 5: is winning by I think a fairly astonishingly wide margin,
Speaker 5: much more than.
Speaker 2: Last time, right because last time was five thousand votes.
Speaker 5: Yeah, or that people expected. The Pennsylvania State Supreme Court
Speaker 5: election looks pretty one sided at the moment. It may
Speaker 5: get tighter, but it may not. The Ohio ballot Initiative
Speaker 5: is you know, coming in right where the polling said
Speaker 5: sixty percent of the state pretty much voting to overturn
Speaker 5: the six week abortion ban. And the latest indications as
Speaker 5: we you know, converse here that despite this enormous effort
Speaker 5: by Glenn Youngkin, Democrats are on track to maintain the
Speaker 5: state Senate and possibly take the state House in Virginia.
Speaker 2: You know, millions of dominions.
Speaker 5: Why the vlerating is forty percent, right, I mean, that's
Speaker 5: these set of things should not be able to happen,
Speaker 5: and it is I think a very significant result because
Speaker 5: it says that, yes.
Speaker 4: Voters aren't happy with the way things are going in
Speaker 4: the country. But Democrats have.
Speaker 5: Shown the ability in many key states that when they
Speaker 5: can focus a campaign and a spotlight on the Republican agenda,
Speaker 5: it can significantly offset those doubts about the Democratic performance.
Speaker 1: But it's also I mean, Republicans aren't running on something right,
Speaker 1: They're just running on sort of trump Ism, autocracy, beating
Speaker 1: up trans kids.
Speaker 2: I mean, when we look.
Speaker 1: At that bscher, uh, the Andy Buscher election, we see
Speaker 1: he ran on keeping choice, he ran on you know,
Speaker 1: overturning the LGBTQ bans.
Speaker 2: I mean he vetoed that ban.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean there is a certain sent in
Speaker 1: which like you're either being offered like dystopia or normal.
Speaker 2: You're going to pick normal.
Speaker 5: The you know, the general trend of our politics was
Speaker 5: established before Trump, where one of the key trends was
Speaker 5: this geographic polarization where the Republicans getting stronger in small
Speaker 5: town and rural America and Democrats really consolidating an advantage
Speaker 5: in the largest, most economically productive metros everywhere, which tend
Speaker 5: to be culturally liberal places on issues like abortion and
Speaker 5: LGBTQ rights. And this trend took one notch up under Trump,
Speaker 5: it ratcheted up under Trump, and it has significantly ratcheted
Speaker 5: up again since the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right
Speaker 5: to abortion. And if you look across the country tonight,
Speaker 5: and you know, there's only so many races. This is
Speaker 5: not a midterm We're not examining everywhere, but whether we're
Speaker 5: talking about Louisville and Lexington, or Philadelphia in Pittsburgh, Columbus,
Speaker 5: Cincinnati and Cleveland, or the suburbs of Richmond and Northern Virginia,
Speaker 5: which both delivered probably the decisive results in the last
Speaker 5: few minutes to allow Democrats to hold the States Senate.
Speaker 5: In all of these places, you are seeing the same
Speaker 5: thing that even if voters are dissatisfied with the economy,
Speaker 5: they are voting to block this MAGA cultural agenda and
Speaker 5: democratic democratic backsliding. And that is just remarkably consistent across
Speaker 5: I mean, you know, you can look at these little
Speaker 5: maps that Politico or the New York Times will put up,
Speaker 5: and you will that Democrats are waning, like all of
Speaker 5: the counties that cast the most votes in all of
Speaker 5: these states, and that is the dynamic that is allowing
Speaker 5: them to survive as we started conditions that are usually
Speaker 5: really bad for the.
Speaker 4: Party in the White House.
Speaker 5: I mean, you know, like if you have only forty
Speaker 5: percent approving of a president, his party usually does not
Speaker 5: have the kind of results the Democrats are seeing tonight,
Speaker 5: or even even with the loss of the House, the
Speaker 5: kind of results that they posted in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1: I'm going to reduce something from Dave Wasserman, who is like,
Speaker 1: this is his night, right, I'm looking at these numbers,
Speaker 1: pretty evident Kentucky Republicans had a turnout enthusiasm problem today.
Speaker 2: Talk to me about that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean that that was a little you know
Speaker 5: that David and I used to share a wall, you know,
Speaker 5: in the back to Jason offices in the National Journal Atlantic,
Speaker 5: you know, global media conglomerate. That's a little surprising, right,
Speaker 5: I mean, because the Trump era Republican Party's great strength
Speaker 5: has been turning out its base, and the problem has
Speaker 5: been losing the softer side of their the software under
Speaker 5: their coalition among independents who usually lean Republicans. We'll see
Speaker 5: Republicans nominated a black attorney general in Kentucky, right, So,
Speaker 5: I don't know how that affected the willingness of that
Speaker 5: may have Who knows if that affected the willingness of
Speaker 5: small town you know, Republicans to turn to turn out.
Speaker 5: But you know, Basher, Basher is kind of an interesting
Speaker 5: candidate because you know, he hasn't, as you pointed out,
Speaker 5: he hasn't really uh a, you know, surrendered to the
Speaker 5: right on cultural issues. He has focused as much as
Speaker 5: he can on economic uplift. That's certainly what Democrats are
Speaker 5: trying to do in in Mississippi. And look, abortion, as
Speaker 5: we talked about many times, did not work for Democrats everywhere.
Speaker 5: It worked in swing states very powerfully. In twenty two
Speaker 5: and apparently very powerfully again in twenty twenty three, it
Speaker 5: was not enough to ome yeah right, but well, in
Speaker 5: Ohio when a vote directly out abortion sixty percent, you know,
Speaker 5: voted to maintain abortion rights, that wasn't enough to cause
Speaker 5: Republican voters not to vote for Mike DeWine last year,
Speaker 5: who signed the van in the first place.
Speaker 4: And that was the difference, right, I mean, in the.
Speaker 5: Red states like Texas, Iowa, Florida, Tennessee, Ohio that actually
Speaker 5: restricted abortion, this single issue wasn't enough to cause ordinarily
Speaker 5: Republican voters to cross over to Democrats who they think
Speaker 5: are going to open the border and you know, let
Speaker 5: loose climb and go crazy in the schools.
Speaker 4: But the Virginia results again and the Pennsylvania, the likely
Speaker 4: Pennsylvania results, and even the results in Kentucky just continue
Speaker 4: to say that there is a tremendous metro suburban resistance
Speaker 4: to banning abortions specifically and more broadly to this Republican
Speaker 4: cultural agenda, you know, and all of this like, you know,
Speaker 4: I would not you could not argue that these kind
Speaker 4: of results erase all the warning signs that are out there,
Speaker 4: you know, for Leiden but they do show that when
Speaker 4: there is an actual campaign and Democrats can have the
Speaker 4: can can shine a light on what the Republican agenda is,
Speaker 4: that it can offset many of these, you know, expressions
Speaker 4: of unease about the way things are going in the country.
Speaker 4: So like it doesn't this doesn't guarantee that Biden is
Speaker 4: going to win four, but it does show you that
Speaker 4: there is a pathway for him to do better, much
Speaker 4: better than he's doing right now, because the comparison can
Speaker 4: be drawn more sharply, as these elections show than it is,
Speaker 4: you know, in a poll a year before election.
Speaker 1: I mean, can we also say that there's some possibilities
Speaker 1: since the polls have been wrong in twenty sixteen, twenty
Speaker 1: and twenty two and now twenty three, perhaps these polls
Speaker 1: are just not right.
Speaker 6: I mean, isn't there Well, no, look, I guess I
Speaker 6: guess I'm not in that camp because here's what I think.
Speaker 4: I think that polling on the.
Speaker 5: Horse racing year before the election is historically not usually valuable.
Speaker 5: I also think, as I just said, that Trump's vulnerabilities
Speaker 5: are somewhat suppressed now because people he's not really in
Speaker 5: people's face the way he was as president. But may
Speaker 5: I would say that the expressions of unease about Biden
Speaker 5: are real. I mean those are those are the feeling
Speaker 5: that he may be too old to do this for
Speaker 5: another four years, and the belief that his agenda has
Speaker 5: not made me better off.
Speaker 4: Those are real problems. And you can't just inflation as
Speaker 4: a way.
Speaker 2: I mean, inflation is inflation.
Speaker 5: Inflation is causing that, right, yeah, you know, uh the
Speaker 5: uh you know. But but again, like what we're seeing
Speaker 5: tonight is what we saw in twenty twenty two. Everything
Speaker 5: I just said was also present in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 5: That you know, people a majority disapproved of Biden. Three
Speaker 5: quarters or more were negative on the economy. Most people
Speaker 5: said they didn't want him to run again. And yet
Speaker 5: Republicans underperformed in the House, only won it very narrowly and.
Speaker 1: Gave the big right and Democrats really gave them those
Speaker 1: seats by messing up I mean New York, those New
Speaker 1: York five seeds should not have I mean they were
Speaker 1: really that was just screw up after screw up. Screw up.
Speaker 5: Yeah right, Well, I think I think, like the big
Speaker 5: story from tonight continues to be that whatever people think
Speaker 5: about what is going on in the country.
Speaker 4: There is still a critical slice of voters, overwhelmingly situated
Speaker 4: in major metros, who are rejecting the Maga era Republican
Speaker 4: agenda as a threat to their rights and values.
Speaker 5: That that that is like kind of the through line
Speaker 5: in these you know, in these races. And again, like
Speaker 5: it's no guarantee for Biden in twenty twenty four, but
Speaker 5: it is a reminder that like when the choice is
Speaker 5: posed as you know, as starkly as it is in
Speaker 5: the campaign, you know, there there there's more to the
Speaker 5: story than just people being unhappy about inflation and how
Speaker 5: much things are costing. They are happy about how much
Speaker 5: things costing at the grocery store, and they don't think
Speaker 5: you know, their initial reaction is not, yes, Joe Biden
Speaker 5: is ready to do four more years at age eighty
Speaker 5: or eighty one. But but you see in these elections
Speaker 5: the power of forcing the choice, right, I mean, that's.
Speaker 1: So abortion as a ballot initiative in every I mean,
Speaker 1: if you're a Democrat, this shows that people still care
Speaker 1: about bodily autonomy.
Speaker 5: Yes, absolutely, and it shows that they are not you know,
Speaker 5: as Cylinda Lake said to me, a Democratic poster said
Speaker 5: to me last week. It's not like people are learning
Speaker 5: to live with this. The status quo is unacceptable to
Speaker 5: the majority.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean the.
Speaker 5: Bigger challenge look, yes, I mean I think you know,
Speaker 5: abortion initiatives to secure abortion rights have now passed in
Speaker 5: every place they've been put on the ballot, and red
Speaker 5: states as well as blue states, and the consistent pattern,
Speaker 5: as I've written, is that they run up the score
Speaker 5: in all of the biggest communities, right, I mean, that's essentially,
Speaker 5: you know, we're watching this kind of cultural divide between
Speaker 5: Metro and non Metro America plan although you know, in
Speaker 5: Ohio it's there's a lot of smaller places that are
Speaker 5: voting to overturn this as well. The challenge, I mean,
Speaker 5: I think that the precedent is that these things are
Speaker 5: going to keep passing. The challenge for Democrats is going
Speaker 5: to be to convince voters that their ballots for the House,
Speaker 5: the Senate, and the presidency will also affect their you know,
Speaker 5: the likelihood of their having kind of continued access to
Speaker 5: abortion rights, because you know, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin in
Speaker 5: particular have gone to great lengths in the last couple
Speaker 5: elections to try to ensure that abortion rights remain legal
Speaker 5: through the election of governors and state Supreme Court justices
Speaker 5: and ballot initiatives. And the risk that unified Republican control
Speaker 5: would revoke that kind of come in from above and
Speaker 5: overturn that decision by banning it on some sort of
Speaker 5: national basis is probably, in my mind, the last the
Speaker 5: best asset that Biden has in those states against any
Speaker 5: Republican nominee, but especially Trump.
Speaker 2: And Democrats have held the Virginia Senate.
Speaker 5: Yes, Democrats have held the Virginias and you know, look
Speaker 5: they held it in the same way that I mean,
Speaker 5: like we're watching the same thing unfold in state after
Speaker 5: state after state, right, and that is like, you know,
Speaker 5: you know, this is these are these are local elections
Speaker 5: or idiosyncratic factors, but the consistent thread is that in
Speaker 5: these big population centers, you know, in the suburbs of
Speaker 5: Richmond and in even the outer suburbs of d C,
Speaker 5: you are seeing you know, Glenn Youngkin wanted, you know,
Speaker 5: he forced this race to be to pivot on whether
Speaker 5: voters would accept a fifteen week abortion ban, and not
Speaker 5: enough did. I mean, it's just pretty clear, especially in
Speaker 5: those big population centers, and look at those numbers seventy
Speaker 5: five percent or more voting for repeal of the ban
Speaker 5: in Ohio, in the county centered on since and Atti,
Speaker 5: Columbus and Cleveland and the surrounding suburbs of all of them,
Speaker 5: including a lot of places that Donald Trump ran well,
Speaker 5: are also voting against this. This is not a cultural
Speaker 5: agenda outside of you know, some core and core red states,
Speaker 5: although even in there, you know, whether it's Texas or Iowa,
Speaker 5: the biggest places, the kind of diverse, well educated, info
Speaker 5: age metros are just rejecting this agenda, even at a
Speaker 5: moment where they're broadly unhappy with the economy. I mean,
Speaker 5: that's was so striking about all this, By the way,
Speaker 5: in the one last point, because I do have to
Speaker 5: run one last point about Virginia, is that Virginia seems
Speaker 5: to me to embody kind of the national set of
Speaker 5: ingredients the most precisely of any of these elections. Because
Speaker 5: you know, in that Washington Post George Mason University poll
Speaker 5: from the other day, Republicans led by double digits, and
Speaker 5: who could handle the economy and who could handle crime?
Speaker 5: Youngkin's approval was fifty and Biden's is now under fifty.
Speaker 4: Even though he won the state by ten points, and.
Speaker 5: It did not It didn't pull them over because because
Speaker 5: because voters did not want to give him the free
Speaker 5: hand to ban abortion in fifteen weeks and as well
Speaker 5: as by the way, the Democratic candidates didn't only run
Speaker 5: an abortion, they ran on other rights.
Speaker 4: They ran on book bands right and voting rights and
Speaker 4: the idea.
Speaker 5: You know, the way I say it, the way I
Speaker 5: wrote it today again is what is allowing Democrats to
Speaker 5: win these races is that there is a critical slice
Speaker 5: of voters who believe that Democrats have not delivered for
Speaker 5: their interests, but are still voting for them anyway because
Speaker 5: they view Republicans as a threat to their rights and values.
Speaker 5: And that was true in twenty two. That was the
Speaker 5: big story in the big swing states, and I think
Speaker 5: it is again the big story tonight.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you so much, Thank you Ron.
Speaker 4: All Right, guys, good luck.
Speaker 1: Tim o'bri ian is the editor of Bloomberg Opinion. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to Fast Politics, Tim O'Brien.
Speaker 4: Hey, Mike here.
Speaker 1: We are so happy to have you. You know, you
Speaker 1: write on a lot of stuff. You're an expert on
Speaker 1: Trump's legal problems and Trump. I'm sorry to tell you,
Speaker 1: but you've also been doing this a long time. Yesterday
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff went down. There were these insane
Speaker 1: New York Times polls that started the day, and the
Speaker 1: day ended with Donald Trump screaming at a federal judge.
Speaker 1: And in the middle we had Joe Biden going to
Speaker 1: an Amtrak station in Delaware announcing sixteen billion dollars of infrastructure,
Speaker 1: which I would not have known had I not been
Speaker 1: listening to c Span discuss well and Joe.
Speaker 4: Biden doing the things that we want politicians to do.
Speaker 4: Whether or not you agree with whether or not Amtrak
Speaker 4: should get sixteen billion more dollar, it's a policy move.
Speaker 4: It's about trying to purpose we do stuff for the
Speaker 4: American people, as opposed to turning a man in courtroom
Speaker 4: into vaudeville, which is what Trump has done it. You know,
Speaker 4: I think there's a long learne you can trace from
Speaker 4: the celebrification of the US presidency. If that's even a word.
Speaker 1: It's for our purposes, it is, yeah, Yeah, begin with JFK, right,
Speaker 1: like going directly to the people going around the party,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of virtues of that.
Speaker 4: JFK did it with TV, and Trump has done it
Speaker 4: with social but JFK was a rational, talented human being.
Speaker 4: Donald Trump is an unhinged, dangerous person, but he is
Speaker 4: very plugged into what triggers people's emotions, and an important
Speaker 4: part of politicking is emotion. It's not policy. We want,
Speaker 4: you know, that great wedded kind of thing of someone
Speaker 4: who's great on policy and also really good at campaigning
Speaker 4: like Obama was, I think, and whether or not you
Speaker 4: agree with them, Reagan was right FDR one and Trump
Speaker 4: has no interest in policy. Trump has an interest in
Speaker 4: his burning the house down on the altar of his
Speaker 4: own mediums every single day till there's no thing lot.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that Trump did, and actually
Speaker 1: Judge accused him of doing this and I think it
Speaker 1: was very much right, was that he used this moment
Speaker 1: being on the witness stand to politic and his politic
Speaker 1: thing is largely this idea that people are after him
Speaker 1: and so he needs to get back at them. And
Speaker 1: this is what the American people want. I understand the
Speaker 1: Republican primary base has been charmed and somehow they have
Speaker 1: decided that Trump is our guy. But I just have
Speaker 1: trouble seeing this as a message that will reverberate with
Speaker 1: swingstate voters.
Speaker 4: I agree with you, Molly. I think you're right about that,
Speaker 4: and I don't think the polls are capturing the meat
Speaker 4: of that particular election. I think the people in each
Speaker 4: party that come out in the primaries are the most
Speaker 4: passionate voters, and I think the people that respond to
Speaker 4: poles are the most passionate voter. So you've got the
Speaker 4: most passionate people saying, yeah, Biden bad on cross immigration
Speaker 4: or impulsing the ecodomy. And now we weren't Trump. But
Speaker 4: I think that you know, in those six there's maybe
Speaker 4: seven swing states, but I think there's just six of them,
Speaker 4: and I think the voters in those states are grossed
Speaker 4: out by Donald Trump's shredding of civic norms and his
Speaker 4: underlining of institutions. And I think these courtroom dramas that
Speaker 4: Trump worked his straight because he you know, and he's
Speaker 4: doing it particularly in this case, and he's going after
Speaker 4: Arthur and go around the judge in the civil's broad
Speaker 4: case because he's already lost that case on legal grounds,
Speaker 4: so he got nothing to lose by spoofing the whole thing.
Speaker 4: He got everything to gain because it does get traction
Speaker 4: with his core folks but I think I think when
Speaker 4: push comes to shove and those swing states, you're going
Speaker 4: to see it. I think a different response than some
Speaker 4: of the polls may be capturing. But I qualified, I
Speaker 4: would like to be wrong, right, And I.
Speaker 1: Mean, it is one of the things when you look
Speaker 1: at those polls and if you were to do a
Speaker 1: deep dive, and again I sort of take them with
Speaker 1: the grain of salt. But they say that Biden seems
Speaker 1: older than Trump, even though Biden is two and a
Speaker 1: half years older than Trump, so or three years older
Speaker 1: than Trump. But you could see that there have been
Speaker 1: so many pieces written both in the right wing media
Speaker 1: and in the mainstream media, right like the but her
Speaker 1: email's kind of phenomenon when it comes to his age,
Speaker 1: and there have been hundreds of pieces written about like
Speaker 1: is Joe Biden too old? And there have been almost
Speaker 1: no muss written about is Donald Trump too old?
Speaker 4: Well, I think because Joe Biden has the gummiest nonlinear
Speaker 4: way of speaking. He seems so overtly adult in the
Speaker 4: way that he speaks, and Trump is like always on
Speaker 4: red ball. You know, it's like it's amazing at this
Speaker 4: guy who eats bird steak and fried food and doesn't exercise.
Speaker 4: Is still this force of nature, but that's starting, I
Speaker 4: think to change as well. You know, we've had this
Speaker 4: series of events where he doesn't know what state he's in,
Speaker 4: and he doesn't know who he's campaigned again, and he's
Speaker 4: mashing his sentences, and there's been some coverage of that.
Speaker 4: There's reason to worry about acuity because of the way
Speaker 4: he speaks publicly. But again, and I would qualify that
Speaker 4: by saying, I think he's surrounded himself the first rate team,
Speaker 4: and they've executed on a number of things very well,
Speaker 4: and running on. Remember when Obama gave him that like
Speaker 4: what was meant to be to be a brief Rose
Speaker 4: Garden speech when he said he wouldn't run against Hillary, right,
Speaker 4: but he was still Obama's vice president, and it was
Speaker 4: supposed to be like an afternoon ebop of like four
Speaker 4: to five minutes, and twenty five minutes later he was
Speaker 4: going on and on about his vision to the American
Speaker 4: dream and everything, and he's never been able to help himself.
Speaker 4: But I do think he sounded gummier and a little
Speaker 4: more aduled now than getting the packs.
Speaker 1: It's funny, though, because I was listening to his speech
Speaker 1: in Delaware at that Amtrak station or wherever it was,
Speaker 1: and he actually he sounded pretty good. And I mean, again,
Speaker 1: it's reading a teleprompter, but I'm listening at one and
Speaker 1: a half as again, he's not running against the almighty right,
Speaker 1: He's running against Trump. And I think that was something
Speaker 1: I was thinking a lot about with this primary contest,
Speaker 1: which is theoretically still going, is that if you had
Speaker 1: a Joe Biden running against someone like a Ron De
Speaker 1: Santis who's forty five years old, that's a different story.
Speaker 2: But you don't.
Speaker 4: I think that's right. I think he's a little more
Speaker 4: fuzzy than he was in twenty twenty. But I think
Speaker 4: the reasons that people voted for him in twenty He
Speaker 4: wasn't an ideal candidate in twenty twenty for a lot
Speaker 4: of people, but he was somebody who had spent his
Speaker 4: entire life in public service. He is not militia. He
Speaker 4: wants good things for people, and he's not a maniac
Speaker 4: at the steering wheel who's going to drive the car
Speaker 4: off the exit, wrap down into the canyon and blow
Speaker 4: the car up with you in the backseat. And Trump
Speaker 4: is all those other things. He needs such a wild
Speaker 4: card of unknown proportion that age alone and coherency allows
Speaker 4: aren't to me the reasons you vote for against that guy.
Speaker 2: True.
Speaker 1: Now we have in the House a House speaker, Mike Johnson.
Speaker 1: He was in leadership sort of. He's been in Congress
Speaker 1: since twenty sixteen, so not very long. He is very religious.
Speaker 1: His first sort of shot across the bow was this
Speaker 1: Israel funding emergency aid package with of sets that included
Speaker 1: cutting the irs and growing the deficit. What do you think,
Speaker 1: where does this go? Is this too crazy? I mean
Speaker 1: still has a one person motion to vacate.
Speaker 4: Also, remember he supported the big line that the twenty
Speaker 4: twenty election unfairly stolen. To me, what you need signifies
Speaker 4: in a big way is that trump Ism is now
Speaker 4: fully rooted beyond Donald Trump. The fact that the entire
Speaker 4: party came behind Johnson because they thought it was better
Speaker 4: to get an extraordinarily out there person at the helm
Speaker 4: for a sign of fake unity. I guess at the
Speaker 4: expense of actually trying to steer the party away from
Speaker 4: the worst forms of trump Ism, which is irrationality, anti institutional, timetra,
Speaker 4: factual counter expertise. And I think he's just an example
Speaker 4: of the degree to which trump Ism.
Speaker 7: Now has institutional half beyond Trump themselves, and that there
Speaker 7: aren't moderate Republicans or traditional Republicans who are willing to
Speaker 7: band together with Democrats say to just steer things in
Speaker 7: a new direction.
Speaker 4: They just can't stomach that. I think they believe their
Speaker 4: own voters won't forgive them for collaborating with the dark side,
Speaker 4: you know, I eed, the Democrat And that may be true.
Speaker 1: Actually, it's so interesting because one of the problems Republicans
Speaker 1: have in the House is that trump Ism does not
Speaker 1: make allowances for the district you got elected in. For example,
Speaker 1: someone like Mike Lawler, who is sitting in a Biden
Speaker 1: plus three district running for re election against Mondir Jones,
Speaker 1: who happens to be a good friend of mine, but
Speaker 1: also more importantly a Democrat and what should be a
Speaker 1: Democratic seat theoretically, anyway, he had to vote for Mike Johnson.
Speaker 1: That in itself is sort of disqualifying, I would think.
Speaker 2: I mean, he seems like such is zalot.
Speaker 4: Well, I think he is a zealot. What shade of
Speaker 4: difference is he from some of the other loonies who
Speaker 4: threw their hats into the ring. Jim Jordan, like, where
Speaker 4: where on the spectrum do Johnson and Jordan depart? And
Speaker 4: everyone felt right out of the gates that Jim Jordan
Speaker 4: was in no way yeah, that this was a guy
Speaker 4: who had never passed legislation, that he was a complete
Speaker 4: flame thrower, and that, like many others in his party,
Speaker 4: had made a name for himself by you know, pandering
Speaker 4: to Fox and social media and not doing things for
Speaker 4: his constituent. And then after all the infighting, everyone just
Speaker 4: throws them the tonnel and says yes Johnson, and I
Speaker 4: think what you just cited is the perfect kind of
Speaker 4: granular example of how that affects people in more moderate
Speaker 4: district The party's going to have to wrestle with this, right, Like,
Speaker 4: if the Republican Party believes that Trump is makes sense
Speaker 4: for that beyond Trump himself, then we're going to wrestle
Speaker 4: with this as a country for a much longer time
Speaker 4: regards what happens to Trump in this next selection. I
Speaker 4: think if Trump gets re elected, it's going to get
Speaker 4: Trump is some greater traction and tether within that party
Speaker 4: and in the American light than it has now. I
Speaker 4: think if he doesn't, there will still be people who
Speaker 4: want to come across any sake Trump, you know, whether
Speaker 4: that's Roder Santis or Mike Chahson.
Speaker 1: That is the problem we saw in the Republican primary,
Speaker 1: which theoretically is still going on, and there's a debate
Speaker 1: on the day that this podcast publishes Wednesday night, but
Speaker 1: no one will watch it because the front runner is
Speaker 1: not in it. There was no one who offered of
Speaker 1: all the people who are running, the real people who
Speaker 1: are running, you know, Chris Christy and Asa Hutchinson weren't really.
Speaker 1: I mean maybe Asa thought he was running, but Chris
Speaker 1: Christie knew he was never going to get the nomination, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's no way, no.
Speaker 4: I think he thought he was there to just say
Speaker 4: either one will say the thing about Trump that no
Speaker 4: one else will, right, But.
Speaker 1: Of course so undermined by the fact that he had
Speaker 1: gotten COVID from Trump, he worked in the Trump administration.
Speaker 1: It does seem to me that nobody who was a
Speaker 1: front runner Ronda santa just didn't have a bold vision.
Speaker 1: He just had deluded Trumpism without the charisma quote unquote.
Speaker 4: And actually the failure of the Santas's national candidacy shows
Speaker 4: do you just can't take this buy anti woke agenda
Speaker 4: that targets corporate America and libraries and school and people
Speaker 4: of color and basically say that if you're interested in
Speaker 4: the yesterday's people of color and he actually think libraation
Speaker 4: of different kinds of books on the shelf, that means
Speaker 4: you're kind of a woke maniac and a threat to America.
Speaker 4: That didn't sell nationally, and that's a healthy that's a
Speaker 4: good thing. And I think that comes back to our
Speaker 4: discussion about where the polls are right now and Trump
Speaker 4: and what might happen to the vote. You know, Ron
Speaker 4: Desantist was expected to come out on fire in this
Speaker 4: primary season, and part of it is that he's a
Speaker 4: weird guy himself. He's not a good campaign right. But
Speaker 4: also I can't just think that that like, you know,
Speaker 4: woke agenda garbage didn't sell. You know, Nikki Hayley is
Speaker 4: really interested in me in this context. I think she
Speaker 4: wants to be serious about policy. I think she does
Speaker 4: a lot he bakes her up policy, but she is
Speaker 4: not an irrational plank thrower like some of the others.
Speaker 4: You know, she has now started to break out of
Speaker 4: the pack a little bit. I think, you know, in
Speaker 4: a field of also ran. He's running better than the others,
Speaker 4: but she's still and also ran herself.
Speaker 1: It does seem to me that Nikki Haley, which she
Speaker 1: is operating in North one, which many of those Republican
Speaker 1: candidates are not. So what I think is interesting is like,
Speaker 1: if you look back on the twenty twenty election, the
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen in Democratic primary field, there was a moment
Speaker 1: when Democrats said, Okay, Biden is the guy. You may
Speaker 1: not love him, but we think he's got the best shot.
Speaker 1: And people sort of started to get around Biden and
Speaker 1: they dropped out, even if they weren't thrilled about it,
Speaker 1: they dropped out because they said defeating Trump is more important.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, it was really a very sort
Speaker 1: of quick thing where people kind of got in line
Speaker 1: behind the person they thought was most likely to be
Speaker 1: able to win. And you know, he picked up a
Speaker 1: lot of progressive and he got Bernie involved in the budget.
Speaker 1: I mean, he did the things he needed to do
Speaker 1: to pay back those choices of people made from here's
Speaker 1: the question, So why were Republicans. I mean, if Republicans
Speaker 1: had all dropped out and said Nikki Haley is our
Speaker 1: answer to Trump is and we are going to support her.
Speaker 2: She would have had a shot.
Speaker 4: We're in an age of remarkable political powered it. There
Speaker 4: are very few people in the GOP who are just
Speaker 4: willing to say we should do this thing or the
Speaker 4: right thing, and Trump is a plague and we need
Speaker 4: to get rid of the plague if we're going to
Speaker 4: be a purposeful party. Like Mitt Romney says that Mitt
Speaker 4: Romney's leaving the Senate, other people in the GOP said
Speaker 4: that have like they been on their way out the door,
Speaker 4: and some of the ones who still said it in
Speaker 4: office turned around on and die when the consequences saying
Speaker 4: that kind of stuff threatened their careers. Kevin McCarthy Mitch
Speaker 4: McConnell are two examples. Are after January six, thing, you know,
Speaker 4: we will drive Trumps for what it was and incendiary
Speaker 4: and dangerous dema god within week, that's it out. Maybe
Speaker 4: not because they're terrified of the emotive powering as with
Speaker 4: his base combined with the media presence, and how quickly
Speaker 4: that can shred their career. In the euro room right
Speaker 4: now where people are baked in in media cauldrons, and
Speaker 4: you wind up with lunatics like Marjorie Taylor Green and
Speaker 4: Lauren Bobert.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right, and that's where we are right now.
Speaker 1: Tim O'Brien, thank you so much for joining us from Singapore.
Speaker 4: It is always fun being our ound. Thank you. Problem lable.
Speaker 8: Moment Jesse Canon, Molly Jong Fast. Let's count up some
Speaker 8: wins tonight. Glenn Youngkin, He's wanted to have a big
Speaker 8: win tonight. He did not get it at all. What
Speaker 8: else did you see?
Speaker 1: Andy Bscher has gotten reelected, maybe by a larger margin
Speaker 1: than he did in his first term. We also saw
Speaker 1: Ohio the ballot initiative codifying row past sixty plus percent. Well,
Speaker 1: where we're really seeing some fuckeray is in the great
Speaker 1: state of Mississippi. And this is how you know things
Speaker 1: are not going well. At eight fifteen pm, Brandon Presley says,
Speaker 1: if you're in line, stay in line.
Speaker 2: You have a right to cast your ballot.
Speaker 1: Something went wrong in the state of Mississippi, and that
Speaker 1: is our moment of fuckerray. That's it for this episode
Speaker 1: of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday
Speaker 1: to hear the best minds in politics makes sense of
Speaker 1: all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard, please
Speaker 1: send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
Speaker 1: And again thanks for listening.