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 Congressman Troy Nell's won't seek reelection.
Speaker 1: We have such a great show for you today. The
Speaker 1: Lincoln Projects owner Rick Wilson joins us to discuss the
Speaker 1: numerous people in Trump's White House who are doing crimes.
Speaker 1: Then we'll talk to can't win victory Funds Kate Compton
Speaker 1: Barr about why she's a Democrat running in a Republican
Speaker 1: primary for Congress. But first the news, Smiley.
Speaker 2: As we know, there was a horrible shooting of two
Speaker 2: National Guards troops in DC. I'm going to shock you here,
Speaker 2: but the Trump administration is looking for someone to blame
Speaker 2: as always. But you know what's great. They brought out
Speaker 2: Christy Nome with Kristen Welker on Meet the Press to
Speaker 2: fed this all and can you guess how well it went?
Speaker 1: I think you're going to play some sound now.
Speaker 3: When we've at individual under this administration, we know who
Speaker 3: they are, why they are here and going through that.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately this individual, that entire process happened under Joe Biden's watch.
Speaker 4: Well, but just to be very clear, We're going to
Speaker 4: go back to what happened on the Trump administration's watch.
Speaker 4: He was extensively vetted in order to serve alongside US
Speaker 4: service members as a part of the CIA trained Strikeforce.
Speaker 4: But in terms of what happened on the Trump administration's watch,
Speaker 4: just to be very clear, what vetting did the Trump
Speaker 4: administration do before giving this suspect asylum.
Speaker 3: The vetting process, Kristen happens when the person comes into
Speaker 3: the country, and Joe Biden completely did not vet any
Speaker 3: of these individuals, did not vet this individual waited until
Speaker 3: he got into the United States, and then that application
Speaker 3: for asylum was opened under the Joe Biden administration when
Speaker 3: he was the president in the White House and allowed
Speaker 3: that to go forward with the information that they provided.
Speaker 3: That's the Biden administration's responsibility. This is the consequences of
Speaker 3: the dangerous situation he put our in when he allowed
Speaker 3: those people to infiltrate our country during that abandonment of Afghanistan.
Speaker 3: And that's why I'm so grateful we have a president
Speaker 3: now that isn't going to allow it to happen. That
Speaker 3: he now has put in place measures under his watch.
Speaker 5: At the Department of home that we are bringing new
Speaker 5: information on vetting, new information to use, such as what
Speaker 5: do they do on Facebook, what do they do on
Speaker 5: TikTok and other social media platforms, and who are they
Speaker 5: talking to? Who are their conversations with and we use
Speaker 5: their biometric data information now to track to make sure
Speaker 5: they are who they say they are and they're here
Speaker 5: for their right intentions.
Speaker 4: So we are going to talk about some of the
Speaker 4: steps the presidents taking, but it's just want to be
Speaker 4: very clear about this, because his asylum was approved in
Speaker 4: April of this year on the Trump administration's watch, So
Speaker 4: just to be very clear, was there a vetting process
Speaker 4: in place to approve that asylum request?
Speaker 3: Yeah, the vetting process all happened under Joe Biden's administer.
Speaker 6: Was he vetted when.
Speaker 4: He was wanted asylum?
Speaker 6: Are you saying he wasn't vetted? Vetting?
Speaker 3: Is vetting is happening when they come into the country,
Speaker 3: and that was completely abandoned under Joe Biden's administration.
Speaker 1: Oops, whats I mean? Look, I liked it when they said,
Speaker 1: well what about with the court orders? And she said,
Speaker 1: I give all the answers, I give all the decisions,
Speaker 1: I do all of it. So here's the good news,
Speaker 1: these people are morons. Truly, here's the bad news, these
Speaker 1: people are criminals.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It does not inspire confidence at all when you literally
Speaker 2: just stowwall at interview with the world's stupidest talking points
Speaker 2: and just do it in a folks the accent that
Speaker 2: makes us Sarah Palin sound fancy.
Speaker 1: Sarah Palin is like an Albert Einstein compared to Secretary Christy.
Speaker 2: I don't think that that's too far off, So Moley,
Speaker 2: another feature of the Trump administration loves freeing criminals like
Speaker 2: up to socializing things these days. This is like passion
Speaker 2: number two.
Speaker 1: I feel like, here's the deal, my man. Donald Trump
Speaker 1: loves a pardon. He loves a pardon. He likes to pardon.
Speaker 1: He pardons all the time. He's very into partning. And
Speaker 1: why does he love to pardon? Why not? You know,
Speaker 1: I can't imagine that there's a reason that Donald Trump
Speaker 1: loves to pardon so much that wouldn't be totally legit,
Speaker 1: because I know Donald Trump is always the paragon of
Speaker 1: honesty and truth. So I assume his love of pardons
Speaker 1: just comes from his love of being a philanthropist.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely, not to say Eddie, what on our side
Speaker 2: could do anything they want?
Speaker 1: Certainly not think about when he pardoned everyone's favorite member
Speaker 1: of Congress, George Santos, who did lots of crimes, and
Speaker 1: he pardoned him because Donald Trump loves freedom.
Speaker 2: I think he missed Santos' Twitter presence where he says
Speaker 2: really nasty insults the people all day, and he just
Speaker 2: wanted that back.
Speaker 1: I think he wanted George Santos to be able to
Speaker 1: get back to his work with orphans and his philanthropy.
Speaker 1: Another volleyball guy, real stand up guy.
Speaker 2: Speaking of stand up guys, the FDA is just filled
Speaker 2: with them ever since RFK brought in a bunch of
Speaker 2: kooks and wacos and they're now planning to change vaccine
Speaker 2: approval processes.
Speaker 1: I think it's worth realizing that we were just talking
Speaker 1: about Secretary Christy, my favorite, and then we were talking
Speaker 1: about Whiskey Pete, another genius operator. But it's worth remembering
Speaker 1: the person who will ultimately have caused the most deaths
Speaker 1: besides Marco Usa. What's that Rubio and Elon take from
Speaker 1: the poor Mosque is ultimately going to be my man.
Speaker 1: RFK swims in Rock Creek Park candidate junior. So let's
Speaker 1: discuss they plan to change vaccine approval process, claiming that
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen vaccine called child deaths. Here's what COVID vaccine did,
Speaker 1: not that. Okay, they're just trying to undermine vaccines. And
Speaker 1: why are they doing that. They're doing that because partially
Speaker 1: because RFK is part of this wellness influencer community, and
Speaker 1: these wellness influencers do a lot of crazy, non scientific shit,
Speaker 1: and so that's where we are. This is just sketchy
Speaker 1: as hell, you know, that's where we are. So they're
Speaker 1: gonna make it harder to get COVID vaccines. They're gonna
Speaker 1: make it harder to get all vaccine. So that's why
Speaker 1: if you should just be vaccinating, you know, get every
Speaker 1: vaccine you can. I got the shingles vaccine. I know
Speaker 1: I've talked about this before, but by the way, I
Speaker 1: want to point out again this weekend a really incredible
Speaker 1: piece in The New Yorker by Tatiana, the grand of JFK,
Speaker 1: Tatiana Slasburg, and she wrote this really excellent piece about
Speaker 1: having cancer, and she mentioned that her uncle had slash
Speaker 1: funding for MR and A vaccines. MR and A vaccines
Speaker 1: are the future of cancer treatment. He did it because
Speaker 1: he doesn't believe in vaccines, because he swims in Rock
Speaker 1: Creek Park, because he doesn't understand science, because he's all
Speaker 1: of the things you think he would be. Find that
Speaker 1: incredible article about Tatiana Slasburg and her battle with blood cancer.
Speaker 1: It is absolutely worth reading in The New Yorker. A
Speaker 1: heartbreaking story of a thirty four year old woman who's dying.
Speaker 1: The two children has to watch her cousin just destroy
Speaker 1: American medicine. Really important article to.
Speaker 6: Read, Sabi.
Speaker 2: One of the things we have to always decipher is
Speaker 2: when Trump's trying to say something stupid to not talk
Speaker 2: about the Epstein files and his other failures as a president,
Speaker 2: and then when there saw that's really stupid, but also
Speaker 2: gets that a greater thing that they're going to try
Speaker 2: to do with this administration, and that is his new
Speaker 2: aggression where he says all of Joe Biden's autopen signed
Speaker 2: executive orders are all canceled out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, go find the picture of Donald Trump in mar
Speaker 1: A Lago this weekend. I think that Tim Miller tweeted
Speaker 1: it out. He does not look great. He does not
Speaker 1: look great, but he's very worried about Joe Biden's autopen pardons.
Speaker 1: He can't do that, you know, Like, my man's just
Speaker 1: truth in it out right. He's truth socializing again and
Speaker 1: again and again, trying to find something that I'll stick.
Speaker 1: You're more likely to get a twenty five hundred dollars
Speaker 1: Trump check than you are for Donald Trump to be
Speaker 1: able to cancel Biden's autopen pardons or whatever else he
Speaker 1: wants to cancel. Rick Wilson is the founder of The
Speaker 1: Lincoln Project and the host of the Enemy's List.
Speaker 6: Rick Wilson Welcome.
Speaker 7: Back, Hey Molly, how are you. How's your Thanksgiving?
Speaker 6: Just the best? Who doesn't love Paul Dray?
Speaker 7: Absolutely we serve Duck this year.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because Turkey is terrible. Let's start with a man
Speaker 1: called Steve. It turns out that being from a wealthy
Speaker 1: real estate dynasty does not necessarily make you a genius negotiator.
Speaker 6: A negotiator.
Speaker 7: Yeah, No, I mean, look, I think I think the
Speaker 7: most probably the ugliest, most devastating piece.
Speaker 6: Folks.
Speaker 7: You if you think you have a calibration on how
Speaker 7: corrupt this administration is, go read the Washington Post piece
Speaker 7: from this weekend on Witkoff and Kushner and Trump who
Speaker 7: do not care about Ukraine or America's security. They're trying
Speaker 7: to make personal financial deals with Russia. The classes of
Speaker 7: course betraying Ukraine, but they want to make these financial
Speaker 7: deals with Russia to cash in. It is a level
Speaker 7: of corruption that even with these guys, I still look
Speaker 7: at and go, uh what how Yeah, it's dark, It's true,
Speaker 7: it's dark.
Speaker 6: It's dark.
Speaker 1: Also important to remember that Witkoff is also negotiating with
Speaker 1: a guy who is also not serving in the federal government,
Speaker 1: my man Jared Kushner.
Speaker 7: And look, Molly, what we've got here is Kushner and
Speaker 7: Witkoff and this clown show with Marco. They have now
Speaker 7: in order to make separate side financial deals, taken the
Speaker 7: bait with a Russian written, Russian design plan to end
Speaker 7: the Ukraine War. Oh it's going to end, all right,
Speaker 7: It's going to end with Russian troops and tanks in
Speaker 7: the streets in Kiev. And so these guys have shown
Speaker 7: us now abundantly clearly they are not about NATO American
Speaker 7: security Ukraine. They're about making separate side deals. Like one
Speaker 7: of wit Coss friends is a guy who wants to
Speaker 7: buy the Russian nord Stream pipeline, and they are in
Speaker 7: these rare earth mineral deals in Russia, and they want
Speaker 7: to make do development deals in Russia. All of it
Speaker 7: is so profoundly carre up. And the Russians are once
Speaker 7: again playing Trump and everyone around him like a fiddle.
Speaker 1: And I think it's important to see that not only
Speaker 1: are they trying to cash in, but they're also just
Speaker 1: completely incompetent like Russia. You know, there's leaked transcripts of
Speaker 1: the phone calls with the Russian and Russian minister trying
Speaker 1: saying like this is how you negotiate with.
Speaker 7: Trump, when wik Coff is on the phone saying to
Speaker 7: the Russians, here's how you manipulate Trump, Here's how you
Speaker 7: get Trump. Here's how you make Trump bark like a dog.
Speaker 7: I'm sorry, call me old fashion and traditionalist, but that
Speaker 7: strikes me as sort of treasony.
Speaker 1: And also just incompetent, and that I think the wit
Speaker 1: coough incompetence really does. You know, they're corrupt, but they're
Speaker 1: awesome incompetent, and.
Speaker 7: So right, you can be corrupt and stupid. It's it's
Speaker 7: a Venn diagram that overlaps very neatly with these people.
Speaker 1: And by the way, thank god, because these guys were
Speaker 1: good at what they did, we would not have these,
Speaker 1: you know, leaks of the transcripts, leaks of the you know,
Speaker 1: we would not have the kind of reporting we're starting
Speaker 1: to see coming out. And by the way, think about
Speaker 1: if we had a mainstream media like we had in
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, think about of the reporting we'd be getting
Speaker 1: every day, Tron the documents.
Speaker 7: And now they're so afraid to cover a story. They're
Speaker 7: so afraid to stand up. They're terrified every minute of
Speaker 7: the damn day that they're going to end up on
Speaker 7: the new White House social media hate list.
Speaker 1: Right, which was offline for a little bit today, which
Speaker 1: I think is a great metaphor for this admin.
Speaker 7: It is a singularly perfect metaphor for this administration, because
Speaker 7: none of these people, when it comes to capability and
Speaker 7: competence of anything. Even their trolling is bad.
Speaker 6: Right right right, you know, even.
Speaker 7: Their trolling attempts are blame.
Speaker 1: That gets us to this next story, which is in
Speaker 1: the New York Times today, which if you haven't read it,
Speaker 1: it's rat avoid, which is my man, everyone's favorite, and
Speaker 1: by by everyone, I mean no. One's favorite David David
Speaker 1: Sacks all in podcast bro, crypto king and also kleptocrat.
Speaker 7: Yes, David Sachs, who is a man who is never
Speaker 7: not wrong. David Sax is wrong this ratio. Look, I
Speaker 7: get things wrong all the time, but David Sax is wrong.
Speaker 7: This ratio is cosmic. It is he is beyond the
Speaker 7: valley of human understanding. How much of a wrong dipshit
Speaker 7: he is about everything.
Speaker 1: Except using his government connections to make money, and in
Speaker 1: which that good about that?
Speaker 6: Yeah, pretty freaking good at that.
Speaker 7: This is a guy who you know, Susie Wiles even
Speaker 7: said in that he re good piece. And it's like
Speaker 7: Susie Willer's like, no, you can't host this under the
Speaker 7: brand of your podcast.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and does government.
Speaker 6: Employee for Fox sake.
Speaker 1: David's ax is basically a sort of mini Elon Right.
Speaker 1: Elon comes in, he does government deals, he slices and
Speaker 1: dices things he doesn't like, and that's what this is,
Speaker 1: except is smaller but more corrupt, but also more annoying
Speaker 1: for any numberle reasons.
Speaker 7: Look, he's also the guy who is in charge of
Speaker 7: in the White House crypto and AI. And we know
Speaker 7: two things about this right now. We know that crypto
Speaker 7: is on a free fall right now, But I was
Speaker 7: told it was going to be the best thing since
Speaker 7: prepared mustard for people and our economy. Not so much apparently.
Speaker 6: And the other thing.
Speaker 7: He's doing is AI, which is increasingly people are figuring
Speaker 7: it out. The reason we're doing AI is to fire everybody.
Speaker 1: Right. Well, that in itself is bad, but even worse
Speaker 1: is that it seems so far what we've seen is
Speaker 1: that it just it has, as far as I can tell,
Speaker 1: almost no use except like sloppy photos and bad search.
Speaker 6: Well.
Speaker 7: Look, I mean, we're only going to invest one point
Speaker 7: five trillion dollars right through the government, by the way,
Speaker 7: as what helps Sam Waltman, that's what it does.
Speaker 1: Yeah, imagine if they spend that money on like healthwarding healthcare.
Speaker 6: Fuck healthcare.
Speaker 1: I mean, yes, we spend that money in healthcare, but
Speaker 1: like reporting or.
Speaker 7: Like imagine Molly, if they spent that money in education
Speaker 7: and just straight up education for American kids, right, I mean,
Speaker 7: imagine that for one second.
Speaker 6: You know, all the arts, all.
Speaker 7: These all these studies that are coming out this week,
Speaker 7: Like you know, people no longer view college as a
Speaker 7: worthhole investment. Well, of course they don't, because now you know,
Speaker 7: you're talking about spending one hundreds of thousand of dollars
Speaker 7: and AI is about to suck out the very life
Speaker 7: out of every job sector that that doesn't involve, like
Speaker 7: turning a wrench or wiring a circuit.
Speaker 1: I think that some of this sayah stuff is really
Speaker 1: exaggerated and so like, because I see a lot of
Speaker 1: shit that's just.
Speaker 7: Your lips, for God's ear. But I still have very graves.
Speaker 1: Let's move on to whiskey Pete, my.
Speaker 6: Man, whiskey, love our boy Pete.
Speaker 1: It turns out that active alcoholism is not I say,
Speaker 1: this is someone who's been sober since I was eighteen,
Speaker 1: not not the best qualification for doing.
Speaker 7: You know, I think, I think there are a lot
Speaker 7: of people who have held that that is the case
Speaker 7: for some time now, that being a you know, five
Speaker 7: a day drunkard is not where you want to be.
Speaker 7: If you're any secretary of defense. Having known a few
Speaker 7: secretaries of defense, they generally are are men of probity
Speaker 7: and discipline, and they are not crazy people who spend
Speaker 7: more time on social media than they do working to
Speaker 7: defend the country.
Speaker 6: But that's whiskey Pete. Right there, let's just talk about this.
Speaker 1: He basically tweeted that he does war crimes.
Speaker 6: Fucking you.
Speaker 7: The answer was, I do war crimes. Fuck you.
Speaker 6: Yeah, what are you going to do about it?
Speaker 1: But not so unlike Secretary Christie, who was on the
Speaker 1: Sunday shows saying, I defy court orders. What are you
Speaker 1: going to do about it?
Speaker 7: Yeah? By the way, christinome appears to increasingly be made
Speaker 7: out of some sort of synthetic material.
Speaker 6: I like it.
Speaker 1: We don't criticize plastic surgery on this podcast.
Speaker 7: Listen, everything everything in its place, and everything that's measure right.
Speaker 1: But second Christie, she certainly had a lot of.
Speaker 7: Basically, she basically came out today and was in a
Speaker 7: position of saying.
Speaker 6: Oh, well, I don't care, right, I do work.
Speaker 1: I do work crimes, right, Yeah. I mean the question
Speaker 1: of whether, like notice the SYMPI I do war crimes,
Speaker 1: whiskey Pete. What I mean the reporting we saw today
Speaker 1: is that after they had blown up the ship, they
Speaker 1: may have, whiskey Pete, I have ordered for them to
Speaker 1: go back and kill the two other people that they
Speaker 1: thought may or may not.
Speaker 7: Here's the thing, and I'm just I'm just gonna summarize
Speaker 7: this right off the bat. Everything that they say about
Speaker 7: the President has never issued in an illegal order or
Speaker 7: the or the administration has never issued an illegal order
Speaker 7: that was an illegal order, that was an illegal order.
Speaker 7: There is no such thing an American military doctrine in
Speaker 7: the Uniform Code of Military Justice that says no quarter
Speaker 7: given just doesn't exist.
Speaker 6: It doesn't exist. In fact, we are required.
Speaker 7: And the example that is cited in the Manual of
Speaker 7: the Uniform Code of Military Justice in this country. The
Speaker 7: example that is cited says uses a case of what
Speaker 7: if people are on a boat and they're and they're
Speaker 7: injured and out of combat, and what do you do?
Speaker 1: Then?
Speaker 7: Are you allowed to kill them?
Speaker 6: And the answer is.
Speaker 1: No, except if you're whiskey p and then the answer
Speaker 1: is yes. Even though you're not in a war, right
Speaker 1: you've declared war whatever, right you're you're not in a war.
Speaker 7: But you're in a you're in a imaginary conflict with
Speaker 7: supposed drug dealers who are allegedly taking these boats that
Speaker 7: have like a two hundred mile range, and they're they
Speaker 7: have to stop to refuel like seven times if they're
Speaker 7: gonna get to America. But you better you better shoot
Speaker 7: him out of the water right now, because obviously Donnie
Speaker 7: will be unhappy unless you do.
Speaker 6: Let's talk about what else we're seeing here.
Speaker 1: So we have this poll that came out today that
Speaker 1: was pretty fucking devastating. It was, I mean that the
Speaker 1: morning console you saw that.
Speaker 7: Yep. Look, Trump's numbers are basically cratering. They're not coming back.
Speaker 7: There's nothing he is doing, and frankly, nothing he can do,
Speaker 7: Molly to make this thing change. It's not gonna change.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 7: He has killed his presidency. Anybody who doesn't get that
Speaker 7: by now he's not paying attention. He has killed his
Speaker 7: presidency economically and politically and temperamentally and morally and from corruption,
Speaker 7: and it's all going downhill from here. It is never
Speaker 7: going to get any better. This is not a world
Speaker 7: where where people are gonna wake up tomorrow go You know,
Speaker 7: Trump's had a really chaotic one hundred and ninety seven
Speaker 7: days or whatever the number is now. But you know,
Speaker 7: I'm really gonna give him a chance now because obviously
Speaker 7: this is a guy who really, really, he's putting it
Speaker 7: all out there, he's really doing his best.
Speaker 1: He's not. But it is interesting to me that we
Speaker 1: have gotten ourselves into such a moment here where there
Speaker 1: is so we have these these these cratering numbers we have.
Speaker 1: He's underwater on everything. Yep, Affordability continues to be this
Speaker 1: sort of.
Speaker 7: The bleed underneath everything with him is affordable right for
Speaker 7: economy is kill laying him. And here's the funny part
Speaker 7: of this. You know that thing we always talked to
Speaker 7: in the first administration, like there wasn't a lot of
Speaker 7: adult supervision, but there were occasionally people who would go, sir,
Speaker 7: we can't take this argument because no one will buy it.
Speaker 6: Right right now, when he.
Speaker 7: Says the economy is the best it's ever been, were
Speaker 7: the hottest country in the world, every single person in
Speaker 7: that White House it says, yes, sir, you're absolutely right.
Speaker 7: There's no there's no dispute. Here's a poll that says so,
Speaker 7: and it's it's all a lie and they're doing him
Speaker 7: a massive disservice. But I'm here for that.
Speaker 6: Can we do carry on, Susie Wiles?
Speaker 1: Can we do a minute on what the problem the
Speaker 1: Trump's big problem here because it is you know well,
Speaker 1: but it's also he has an unreality problem. Right His
Speaker 1: polls are he says his polls are great. He says,
Speaker 1: his numbers are great. He says, the economy is great.
Speaker 7: And that's why we definitely haven't released the numbers because
Speaker 7: they're so great. We can't release those numbers.
Speaker 1: But it is like when you have problems like that,
Speaker 1: when you get into a sort of unreality problem which
Speaker 1: his president has, there's no way out of it. Explain
Speaker 1: to us what that is about.
Speaker 7: Yeah, Molly, A big part of this problem is once
Speaker 7: you've decided, once you go all in on the bullshit,
Speaker 7: once you go all in on saying the sky is
Speaker 7: purple and not blue, you know, and Donald Trump, you know,
Speaker 7: weighs one hundred and seventy five pousies more fit than
Speaker 7: an AVC, and all the other garbage, all of that stuff.
Speaker 7: It eventually adds up to where when you have to
Speaker 7: tell the truth about something, even if it's something that's
Speaker 7: actually good for you, nobody buys it. This is the
Speaker 7: boy who cried wolf over and over and over again.
Speaker 7: And unfortunately for Trump, you know, being the boy who
Speaker 7: cried wolf, it runs directly up against the actual economic
Speaker 7: realities of every American. Every American family knows the economy sucks.
Speaker 7: They get it. They see it. They know their groceries
Speaker 7: are more expensive. They're in the grocery store, they're swiping
Speaker 7: that credit card to that ATM card in the grocery store.
Speaker 7: They're paying those prices at the gas pump.
Speaker 6: None of that.
Speaker 7: You can't bullshit people away from what's really happening in
Speaker 7: their actual lives.
Speaker 1: One of the things Trump does, though, which I think
Speaker 1: is interesting and I'd love you to talk about, is
Speaker 1: he'll say, well, maybe we'll do a check, a dividend
Speaker 1: check for techs. Sure, right, there's no way he can
Speaker 1: do this, right, there's this one.
Speaker 7: There is zero mechanism for doing this. And I will
Speaker 7: tell you one other thing that I've heard over the
Speaker 7: weekend from a person who was involved in the first administration. Yes,
Speaker 7: told me that when they did the COVID checks, the
Speaker 7: stimulus checks for COVID, that was one thing. There is
Speaker 7: no appetite in Congress now at all to do a
Speaker 7: fake tariff check. He could not get it through the House.
Speaker 7: There are enough conservatives in the House. And I mean
Speaker 7: that in the old way, the small sea way in
Speaker 7: the House. Who are they going to go, oh, no, oh, no,
Speaker 7: we're not spending X billion dollars to give out or
Speaker 7: trillion dollars to give out two thousand dollars checks.
Speaker 1: Which gets us to the Mike Johnson problem, which is
Speaker 1: Donald Trump does not have a Speaker of the House
Speaker 1: who is a Mitch McConnell. He doesn't even have god
Speaker 1: Kevin McCarthy. He's got a man who basically has At
Speaker 1: this point, we are in discharge petition paloozo, which means
Speaker 1: a discharge petition is when the House decides, fuck leadership,
Speaker 1: these are things we want to vote on.
Speaker 6: We're just going to bring them up ourselves.
Speaker 7: We're just going to deal what we want. I mean, really,
Speaker 7: it is. It is the end. It is the end
Speaker 7: of the traditional speakership, all right, it is. It is
Speaker 7: a It is a total departure from what used to be.
Speaker 7: You know, remember, the House already decided, at least the
Speaker 7: Republicans said they're not going to be a part of
Speaker 7: the traditional tripartite government of having a legislative branch. They
Speaker 7: already decided that, they already said.
Speaker 1: Up their power because they let Trump and Russ Vought
Speaker 1: take over.
Speaker 7: That is correct, And because of that, we're now in
Speaker 7: a position where no one in the House can say
Speaker 7: no to Trump. Right, No one in the House can
Speaker 7: say stop it, you're being crazy, or we won't do this.
Speaker 1: But can I just say, no one in the House
Speaker 1: leadership can. But Republicans in the House who are not
Speaker 1: in leadership, with these discharge petitions, have very vocally said,
Speaker 1: we don't have a fuck what Donald Trump wants.
Speaker 7: I mean, there's a number of people that are supporting
Speaker 7: these discharge petitions. Is rising, not falling, This is not
Speaker 7: It's not going to ever get any easier. And in
Speaker 7: terms of the spending to do the imaginary doze checks
Speaker 7: or the imaginary tariff checks would require them to pass
Speaker 7: a spending bill, as we have seen, they are not
Speaker 7: great at passing spending bills.
Speaker 1: Right, No, now, they are very much not great at
Speaker 1: passing spending bills. I think that is a great a
Speaker 1: mild way of plate, a mild way of placing.
Speaker 6: Rick Wilson, Maud John Fast. Will you come back?
Speaker 7: I sure will.
Speaker 1: Kate Compton Barr is the founder of Can't Win Victory
Speaker 1: Fund and a candidate in the Republican primary for North
Speaker 1: Carolina's fourteenth congressional district.
Speaker 8: Welcome to Best Politics, Kate bar Time, Ollie, thanks for
Speaker 8: having me.
Speaker 1: So glad to have you. You're running for Congress and
Speaker 1: you're definitely gonna win. Absolutely, explain to us what the
Speaker 1: play here is.
Speaker 8: Yeah, So I'm running for Congress in North Carolina's fourteenth
Speaker 8: congressional district, which is super jerrymanderd.
Speaker 1: Who's the candidate you're running against? And what beliefs does
Speaker 1: he have about women?
Speaker 8: Go? Yeah, So I'm running against the Republican incumbent Tim Moore,
Speaker 8: and I'm actually running in the Republican primary against him.
Speaker 8: So I changed my letter in order to run in
Speaker 8: the election that counts in our jerrymandered district.
Speaker 9: Tim is known as a bit of a woman.
Speaker 6: I would say. He actually got sued for.
Speaker 8: Alienation of affection by the husband of one of Tim's girlfriends.
Speaker 8: So I don't know, folks should go look at a
Speaker 8: picture of him and decide how they feel about that.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, can you explain what that is?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 8: So, alienation of affection basically means stealing someone's spouse in
Speaker 8: the South and out to be a thing you can
Speaker 8: get sued for down here.
Speaker 1: So embattled North Carolina House Speaker Tim Moore to run
Speaker 1: for Congress. So he already had some problems back in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three when he originally ran. So he's only
Speaker 1: one term congressman. Yeah, and he has a lot of ladies.
Speaker 1: I think it's fair we don't talk about the way
Speaker 1: men look here because we don't want to objectify them.
Speaker 6: Yes, correct, not hot though not.
Speaker 8: Twing to do the opposite of objectifying him. He is
Speaker 8: a one term congressman, but he was actually the leader
Speaker 8: of the state House, and he did about five terms
Speaker 8: in the North Carolina State House.
Speaker 6: And there he met lots of women. Apparently he did
Speaker 6: meet a lot.
Speaker 8: Yeah, that's him there he is, because we're not talking
Speaker 8: about appearance. I also should throw out there that he's
Speaker 8: shorter than me. Just I mean, you could be seven
Speaker 8: feet tall.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And also he could have a lot of game, do
Speaker 1: you guys.
Speaker 9: I mean, he clearly has a lot of work in there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because the fact that he has multiple girlfriends, so
Speaker 1: much so that ex husbands are suing him.
Speaker 8: Yes, this has hurt. He drives a maserati. So maybe
Speaker 8: it's about the car.
Speaker 1: Oh does he come from money?
Speaker 8: Well, he has been a government employee for quite some time,
Speaker 8: and I think he's just done really well for himself
Speaker 8: in the stock market.
Speaker 6: If you know what I'm saying. Wow, Wow, all right,
Speaker 6: So here we go.
Speaker 1: This is Tim Morris. You run against Tim Moore. He
Speaker 1: has been a member of Congress for a year and change.
Speaker 1: Why are you running in a Republican primary in an.
Speaker 6: R plus eleven ish? Yeah? Tell us why?
Speaker 1: So?
Speaker 8: I don't know if y'all saw North Carolina got further jerrymandered,
Speaker 8: Like our state legislature drew new congressional maps a few
Speaker 8: weeks ago, and we already had jerrymandered maps, so they
Speaker 8: just like pushed it farther to try to get yet
Speaker 8: another congressional seat. And basically what that means for voters
Speaker 8: is that there's no competitive congressional district in our state
Speaker 8: when you look at the general election, and we have
Speaker 8: to run where the competition actually happens, which is in
Speaker 8: primary elections. And in order to run in a primary
Speaker 8: election that matters, I have to be a Republican because
Speaker 8: the Republican primary is what will determine who goes to
Speaker 8: Congress from my district.
Speaker 1: What does your Republican primary look like? Is in an
Speaker 1: open primary? What just sort of explained us the math
Speaker 1: of your North Carolina primary, Because like I feel like
Speaker 1: things are so bad for Republicans. I'm going to caveat this,
Speaker 1: and anyone who listens podcast knows this. But things are
Speaker 1: so bad for Republicans that plays like this would seem
Speaker 1: insane could theoretically work.
Speaker 8: Yeah, the math is really interesting here. So in North Carolina,
Speaker 8: we have a partially closed primary, meaning that folks who
Speaker 8: are registered Republican can vote in the Republican primary, and
Speaker 8: folks who are registered unaffiliated can pull the Republican primary ballot.
Speaker 6: The primary is on March third.
Speaker 8: And North Carolinians are pretty smart and so the majority
Speaker 8: of North Carolinians, especially in my district, are registered unaffiliated
Speaker 8: because they know how this game works. The district has
Speaker 8: five hundred and forty four thousand people in it, and
Speaker 8: our estimated win number, because primary turnout is so low,
Speaker 8: is thirty three thousand votes.
Speaker 6: And that's where it gets kind of nuts.
Speaker 8: And why someone like me who's running a completely progressive
Speaker 8: platform could win a Republican prime.
Speaker 1: Wow, what would you need? You would need how many
Speaker 1: votes to win?
Speaker 6: Thirty three thousand? Wow?
Speaker 8: Yeah, so tell me how you do this. So the
Speaker 8: district is thirty eight percent unaffiliated. Plenty of those folks
Speaker 8: are left leaning. A tricky piece of all of this
Speaker 8: is I'm kind of a woman with no party because
Speaker 8: the Republican Party obviously is not supporting my candidacy in
Speaker 8: any way. And then I'm not a Democrat, so the
Speaker 8: Democratic Party is not supporting my candidacy in any way,
Speaker 8: which means we don't have any builtrastructure infrastructure.
Speaker 9: But that's also kind of awesome.
Speaker 8: So we're going to go deep old school grassroots, like
Speaker 8: Neighborhood Captains a lot of lit drops. We are going
Speaker 8: to do like holiday gift bundles with hot chocolate and
Speaker 8: a cookie in them and some vote for Kate Barr
Speaker 8: stuff attached to it as part of that lit drop.
Speaker 8: I'm hoping to do something called drunk dairymandering out in Gastonia.
Speaker 9: What does that mean? In January? What does that mean?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 8: Yeah, So drunk dairymandering is when we invite people who
Speaker 8: are funnier than me and musicians who are more talented
Speaker 8: than me to come and be awesome, and then in
Speaker 8: the middle of it, I get kind of drunk and
Speaker 8: try to give everyone the history of jerrymandering.
Speaker 9: So it's like hiding vegetables inside a grilled cheese.
Speaker 6: Right, Yeah, does that work? Yeah?
Speaker 9: Surprisingly, people will show up for a thing like that.
Speaker 1: No, I meant hiding the vegetables and the grilled cheese.
Speaker 9: Oh, it works on one of my children, but not that, right, Yeah,
Speaker 9: my daughter is.
Speaker 6: Way too smart for that. I mean my kids.
Speaker 1: I'm not allowed to talk about them, but if I were,
Speaker 1: I would say that that has never worked. But also
Speaker 1: I've never cooked for them. So the question here is
Speaker 1: someone in a blue state of blue city far away,
Speaker 1: what's appetite like for this? So far, it seems pretty high.
Speaker 8: I mean, I've been running this for two weeks now,
Speaker 8: so it's early days and this is going to be
Speaker 8: a real sprint. But we had a town hall on
Speaker 8: Wednesday night and I booked a room that would hold
Speaker 8: twenty five people and we ended up with fifty folks there.
Speaker 8: So people are really curious about what's going on. We're
Speaker 8: also in this moment, at least my opinion, like we've
Speaker 8: used to think about politics on this continuum from Democrat
Speaker 8: to Republican and people kind of fell somewhere on that.
Speaker 8: But I think there's a different continuum happening, and that
Speaker 8: is status quo to disruption, burn it down, And I
Speaker 8: don't think that is as related to party so much
Speaker 8: as it is to frankly age and life experience. A
Speaker 8: lot of folks in this district are in a burn
Speaker 8: it down place, and this candidacy is exactly that.
Speaker 1: I think that there's a lot of burn it down
Speaker 1: going on here. And let me rephrase that. I know,
Speaker 1: just anecdotally, that there's a lot that people are very mad,
Speaker 1: and that they are mad at Trump for sure, but
Speaker 1: that my man, Chuck Schumer and the rest of the
Speaker 1: crowd there, they are not you know, it's not twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: it's not Orange Man bad retweet if truth.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, it's really true. And I mean, I frankly
Speaker 8: share that feeling.
Speaker 6: I think a lot of us do.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and we're but we're in an opportunity where, you know,
Speaker 8: we're at the start of something new and it feels
Speaker 8: like chaos because it is, but we also have the
Speaker 8: chance to build something better. That's what I would like
Speaker 8: to be a part of. That's what I want to
Speaker 8: keep thinking about. It's not about party affiliation. It's about
Speaker 8: what does a better version of democracy look like on
Speaker 8: the other side of this, And I think that's a
Speaker 8: really interesting conversation to be having with folks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's right. So let's talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about how you do this. So you do you
Speaker 1: do grasps roots? You come from grassroots World. Tell us
Speaker 1: your background a little bit.
Speaker 8: Yeah, So I have a master's in public health, studied
Speaker 8: all the commie community organizers, and then I worked in
Speaker 8: behavioral science and persuasive communication for twenty years. Most of
Speaker 8: that was remotely for the University of Michigan, trying to
Speaker 8: help people make healthier life choices. So my experience is
Speaker 8: trying to get people to quit smoking or eat vegetables
Speaker 8: instead of sweet treats, which means I am great at
Speaker 8: convincing people to do things that maybe feel uncomfortable to
Speaker 8: them or that they don't want to do.
Speaker 6: And then for a little bit and there I ran a.
Speaker 8: Company just because I have add tell us about your organization. Yes,
Speaker 8: So in twenty twenty four I ran first date Senate
Speaker 8: as in the general election as a Democrat, and I
Speaker 8: ran what we call it can't win campaign where I
Speaker 8: just announced that I lost the day that I filed.
Speaker 8: And that means it was like a protest against jerrymandering
Speaker 8: the whole way through because in a Jerrymander district. The
Speaker 8: outcome is decided before votes are cast. It's just about
Speaker 8: how that district is drawn. And my plan was to
Speaker 8: go back to my day job at Michigan as soon
Speaker 8: as that election was over. But when we started pulling
Speaker 8: the data, it looked like that campaign had actually been
Speaker 8: successful in terms of driving up voter turnout the reddest
Speaker 8: part of my district. That county was actually one of
Speaker 8: only eight counties in North Carolina out of one hundred
Speaker 8: to turn bluer in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 6: I flipped some our.
Speaker 8: Votes to D votes, about five hundred of them by
Speaker 8: our count and I outperformed other state Senate candidates. And
Speaker 8: we were like, who knew that telling everyone you were
Speaker 8: a loser would actually motivate them to show up for you.
Speaker 8: But it kind of made sense, right. These are people
Speaker 8: that have not had any politician show up for them historically.
Speaker 8: Knocked on one woman's door. She'd lived in that house
Speaker 8: for forty years, she's eighty years old, and no candidate
Speaker 8: or Canvasser had ever knocked on her door. And she
Speaker 8: literally tried to give me a puppy in gratitude. And
Speaker 8: so they don't a real Pepper, a puppy, a little baby.
Speaker 8: It was like an English spaniel.
Speaker 6: It was very sweet. It's name was Many.
Speaker 8: My daughter's never forgiven me for not bringing that dogs.
Speaker 8: That's like I almost never forgive you. I know, it's terrible.
Speaker 8: I mean, my husband would have filed paper. So I
Speaker 8: did prioritize the family or the puppy, but it.
Speaker 1: Was touch and go.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 8: But because that campaign actually had positive outcomes for reaching people,
Speaker 8: we launched something called the Can't Win Victory Fund, which
Speaker 8: is a political nonprofit that supports candidates running in Jerrymander
Speaker 8: districts that it's really hard to get support when you
Speaker 8: run in one of those districts, whether it be from
Speaker 8: a party or donors or whatever, because you're going to
Speaker 8: lose and everybody's focused on the winnable races. But that's
Speaker 8: like the democratic obsession with instant gratification. That's not a
Speaker 8: plan for the future. So what we do is make
Speaker 8: sure that awesome candidates have the skills and tools and
Speaker 8: like websites and social media experience and communications training, all
Speaker 8: that stuff that they need to run high quality campaigns
Speaker 8: even though they can't win.
Speaker 1: So, do you have other places where you're doing that
Speaker 1: and what is that?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 8: Right now we're focused in North Carolina because North Carolina
Speaker 8: filing deadline is December nineteenth, so that's coming right up.
Speaker 8: We have been asked to work in Texas and South
Speaker 8: Carolina and Tennessee. We had been asked to work in Utah,
Speaker 8: but their maps look a little better, so we're going
Speaker 8: to kind of see what happens there.
Speaker 9: And we'll just keep growing, frankly, as much as we
Speaker 9: can afford to.
Speaker 1: Can you do just like a minute or two on
Speaker 1: like when your primary is and how it would work? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Republican primary in North Carolina.
Speaker 8: Yeah, so the Republican primary is March third, and Republican
Speaker 8: voters and unaffiliated voters will have the opportunity to register
Speaker 8: for me.
Speaker 6: Is their prevent and just is it just you and
Speaker 6: the incombent? That's it so far?
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 8: If there are Democrats who want to be able to
Speaker 8: vote for me, they have until February sixth to change
Speaker 8: their voter registration to unaffiliated and they can do that
Speaker 8: either on the North Carolina DMV website or down at
Speaker 8: their local Board of Elections. It's super easy. It takes
Speaker 8: about two minutes and you can change it right back
Speaker 8: on March fourth, if you want to.
Speaker 1: Right, that makes sense. I mean, being affiliated doesn't necessarily matter,
Speaker 1: especially if it's so jerry mandard.
Speaker 8: Yeah, Actually being unaffiliated is a powerful voter tool if
Speaker 8: you don't plan to run for office. If you want
Speaker 8: to run for office, you have to be registered to
Speaker 8: either party or go collect signatures. Is an unaffiliated But
Speaker 8: being unaffiliated is a powerful voting tool for folks in
Speaker 8: this state because you can pick your primary ballot, so
Speaker 8: you can vote on the ballot that's going to determine
Speaker 8: your leader.
Speaker 1: You really have been in it with the jerrymandering. We
Speaker 1: talk a lot about the idea that maybe this ends
Speaker 1: up backfiring, that this ends up giving them a dummy mander.
Speaker 1: Does that feel possible?
Speaker 8: It does, And especially in a couple of districts like
Speaker 8: the Texas twenty eighth and thirty fourth, which are like
Speaker 8: right on the southern border.
Speaker 9: Places like that, right, the thing that still gives me pause.
Speaker 8: This is like a feature of jerrymandering that we don't
Speaker 8: talk about very much. Jerrymandering reduces the number of competitive districts,
Speaker 8: which makes voter suppression more efficient and economical because you
Speaker 8: have fewer places that you have to suppress the vote
Speaker 8: to get the outcome you want.
Speaker 9: And so as I look at the places that we
Speaker 9: have ice.
Speaker 8: And border patrol going, those places perfectly align with districts
Speaker 8: where we would be concerned where rather not we those
Speaker 8: districts perfectly align with places that Donald Trump would be
Speaker 8: concerned Latino voters would vote Democrat. So the whole state
Speaker 8: of North Carolina, because we have a really competitive Senate
Speaker 8: race in twenty twenty six, is.
Speaker 9: Ripe for voter suppression tactics.
Speaker 8: We even saw just two days ago the Greenland, Greensboro
Speaker 8: AT and CA and T. The Guildford County Board of
Speaker 8: Elections is closing some of the early voting sites in
Speaker 8: the student communities and in communities of color, beding that
Speaker 8: they don't have resources, but really really right. So the
Speaker 8: thing that makes me worried about counting on dummy manders
Speaker 8: or on a blue tsunami is that, even if we
Speaker 8: have the will for that, I'm worried we're gonna have
Speaker 8: a lot of.
Speaker 6: Voters who are afraid to go to the polls.
Speaker 1: Kate Barr, I hope you'll come back.
Speaker 9: I would love to. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: No moment soon Rick Wilson, Well, I junk fast, you
Speaker 2: are an amazing assistant.
Speaker 6: Now I'm reading these.
Speaker 1: On On did a really good piece about this in
Speaker 1: The Times about how if the fancier you are, the
Speaker 1: less you have to know how to spell or punctuate, which.
Speaker 7: By the way, I'm not unfancy, but spelling and punctuation
Speaker 7: is not Jeffrey Epstein's trunk suit.
Speaker 1: It's not his milieu. But speaking of which, he did
Speaker 1: spend a lot. He wrote a lot of emails to
Speaker 1: a lot of people, including.
Speaker 6: Steve, our good friend, Steve scablrd Bannon.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about these emails.
Speaker 7: Well, he's helping Steve do travel arrangements from Europe. He's
Speaker 7: giving Steve advice on dealing with European political leaders because
Speaker 7: Bannon wanted to set up his Nazi Hogwarts school over
Speaker 7: in Italy.
Speaker 1: Oh right, remember Nazi Hogwarts. I forgot about that from
Speaker 1: season one.
Speaker 7: Oh I remember it very well because I played a
Speaker 7: small role in killing Nazi Hogwarts.
Speaker 6: Michell.
Speaker 7: Tell the story another time, but.
Speaker 1: Yes, heartwarming. But in this story, you have a lot
Speaker 1: of emails between the two of them. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of let's see, Bannon wrote, there's a crazy jihad against you.
Speaker 1: I've never seen anything like it, and I've seen a lot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 7: That there is you know what, I'm just going to say,
Speaker 7: Brother Steve has a lot more explaining to do than
Speaker 7: he would like to admit.
Speaker 1: By the way, every time he saw Trump criticism, he said,
Speaker 1: it's apo, dude, I do this for a living. The
Speaker 1: pieces are dropping are deeply researched anyway, So go on.
Speaker 7: Yeah, well, okay, Steve, thanks for talking the lingo, Steve. Strangely,
Speaker 7: these people on the right who are hyperactively obsessive about
Speaker 7: all things regarding any Democrat, even vaguely adjacent to Jeffrey Epstein,
Speaker 7: there's been a massive wailing silence when it comes to
Speaker 7: his sloppy Steve and his buddy Jeff who when you
Speaker 7: read those emails, folks, Steve Bannon is helping him, and
Speaker 7: he said it to him, I can give you MAGA
Speaker 7: as a shield. I can help use MAGA to protect
Speaker 7: and re form your image. Guys, at this point, we
Speaker 7: knew who Jeffrey Epstein was as a human being. This
Speaker 7: is moments before he gets arrested on federal charges, and
Speaker 7: Steve Bannon has had a total skate on this because
Speaker 7: he's on the fucking speed dials of a lot of
Speaker 7: reporters and he gets a good quote.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I also think that we're going to see a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff. We're going to see a lot of emails,
Speaker 1: and we already saw Larry Summer's resign. I think, and look, Democrat, Republican,
Speaker 1: lock them all up. We don't care. It's a non
Speaker 1: partisan activity.
Speaker 7: If it is Bill Clinton in there, so be it.
Speaker 6: That's it, so be it. Yeah, go for it. Moving on.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
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Speaker 1: minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If
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