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.
Speaker 2: And Mike Johnson says the House will investigate the January
Speaker 2: sixth Committee. We have such a great show for you
Speaker 2: today as we start to come back from our vacation,
Speaker 2: Heathens Emily Atkin stumps by to explain to us where
Speaker 2: we stand on climate change going into the Trump administration.
Speaker 2: But first we have MSNBC contributor Charlie Sykes on the
Speaker 2: chaos and the GOP going into this administration.
Speaker 1: Welcome to back to Fast Politics. Charlie sikes.
Speaker 3: Wow, I am honored the very first one for this
Speaker 3: year because twenty twenty five is going to be Molly,
Speaker 3: It's going to be a hell of a ride.
Speaker 1: It was like New Year's I was like, I am
Speaker 1: really not convinced that twenty twenty five will be better
Speaker 1: than twenty twenty four.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's got to be better, because twenty twenty four
Speaker 3: was so awful. That was it, you pronounced it. I'm
Speaker 3: not going to even try now. Twenty twenty four was
Speaker 3: pretty brutale. We know what's going to happen a little
Speaker 3: bit in twenty twenty five. I hope that people have
Speaker 3: charged up their batteries again. I hope we remember to
Speaker 3: pace ourselves because I think the issues are going to
Speaker 3: be pretty crystal clear this year.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is true, it is It's hard, but let's
Speaker 1: we have not podcasted since right before Christmas. So I
Speaker 1: am wondering right at during the Christmas break because Trump
Speaker 1: world is just forever and ever and there are no vacations.
Speaker 1: There erupted a lot of fighting over H one B
Speaker 1: one visas the lifeblood of cheap, very educated labor in
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley. Not surprisingly, Elon is pro Maga is anti Now.
Speaker 3: This was really interesting because it's a core issue for MAGA,
Speaker 3: and it's a fundamental It's a fundamental division. There's some
Speaker 3: real substance here, and there's a It reminds us that
Speaker 3: there's something inherently st able about a populist movement basically
Speaker 3: being run by Elita's billionaires. And I think you saw
Speaker 3: that tension flair out there.
Speaker 1: So here's my question. Who wins? Like for now, Trump wins,
Speaker 1: but what happens when Trump is in power?
Speaker 3: We look I think the phrase four now is important.
Speaker 3: I thought was interesting that Trump sided with Elon Musk
Speaker 3: and vivik Aramaswami as opposed to the people who've been
Speaker 3: with him from the beginning, the H one B. I
Speaker 3: don't want to get into the weeds of the H
Speaker 3: one B visa, but this was a real flashpoint back
Speaker 3: in twenty sixteen. He pledged to do away with him,
Speaker 3: and it was a nasty fight between the Steve Bannons
Speaker 3: of the world and Elon Musk and Donald Trump came
Speaker 3: down solidly when favor of his paymaster. Now, is he
Speaker 3: going to be able to continue to do that? Will
Speaker 3: that be the pattern? Is he going to be able
Speaker 3: to pacify the base? And I think that this is
Speaker 3: maybe a preview of some of the fights we're going
Speaker 3: to have over trade overspending imber. Elon Musk is in
Speaker 3: charge of that whole doge, this massive cut in government spending,
Speaker 3: and I think that he's about to discover the laws
Speaker 3: of political gravity that every conservative Republican has learned it
Speaker 3: one time or another, or should have learned, which is
Speaker 3: that people always say they want to cut government programs
Speaker 3: until you talk about cutting their government program Yeah, abstract.
Speaker 1: That's what's so interesting is if you look at it
Speaker 1: from just a completely a political view. Right, Elon has
Speaker 1: I believe he completely ruined Twitter, but he has kept
Speaker 1: it alive, right with much less staff. Right, so in
Speaker 1: somewhat by some measurements, that was a six. We made
Speaker 1: it much cheaper. He has SpaceX is does really a
Speaker 1: lot of incredible stuff. So he's had a lot of
Speaker 1: you can argue that, you can argue a lot of
Speaker 1: processes and minuses, but he's had some real tangible successes.
Speaker 1: And I think that he seriously thinks that now he
Speaker 1: will conquer government. But government is really a different animal, Oh.
Speaker 3: A completely different animal. And what you're seeing now is
Speaker 3: hubris because a lot of those skills are not transferable
Speaker 3: to politics. And in terms of hubris, I think there's
Speaker 3: a fantasy. And I wrote my newsletter today to the
Speaker 3: contrary newsletter today on what we've seen from Elon Musk
Speaker 3: and Donald Trump in the last week. These are people
Speaker 3: who are not sobered by responsibility. I think that there's
Speaker 3: always that fantasy that authoritarians and extremists are going to
Speaker 3: be tempered by the weighty responsibilities of power. Yeah, No,
Speaker 3: Elon Musk has actually gone on this incredible narcissistic terror.
Speaker 3: Actually that doesn't cover it. Think about the kinds of
Speaker 3: things that he's doing that he's got the ear of
Speaker 3: the president, and he's got this massive responsibility, and yet
Speaker 3: he's gone off on his own. He launched that fight
Speaker 3: about Visus on his own. He's now embraced seeing the
Speaker 3: neo Nazi far right party in Germany. He switched out
Speaker 3: his avatar on on social media to Pepe the Frog,
Speaker 3: which is an alt right symbol. So here's a guy
Speaker 3: who is acting like there are no limits, there are
Speaker 3: no checks. It is this pure arrogance, and I think
Speaker 3: history is full of that kind of hubris and arrogance,
Speaker 3: leading to some rather spectacular downfalls, particularly when you have
Speaker 3: two giant egos involved. How long do you think how
Speaker 3: long do you think this bromance lasts?
Speaker 1: That is the big question. And we saw over the
Speaker 1: break that, supposedly Mike Johnson, there was a lot of
Speaker 1: Trump is sick of Elon chatter, and we saw that reported,
Speaker 1: We heard that, I heard that secondhand from some other people.
Speaker 1: Like so, if Trump is channeling that, then that is
Speaker 1: probably not a great sign for Elon.
Speaker 3: It's going to play out because obviously he feels the
Speaker 3: Elon and and he's still siding with him, but at
Speaker 3: some point there's got to become a breaking point. That's
Speaker 3: why I mentioned the whole spending cut thing. At some point,
Speaker 3: when Elon comes in trailing his clouds of arrogance with
Speaker 3: his plan to cut two trillion dollars out of the
Speaker 3: federal budget, Donald Trump's going to be faced with some
Speaker 3: hard political realities, and I think that the bromance might
Speaker 3: end at that point. Now. Actually, I did see an
Speaker 3: interesting point over the weekend from I think it was
Speaker 3: Eric Erickson of all people, who pointed out that Elon
Speaker 3: Musk is creating his own little cult of personality. Yes,
Speaker 3: at some point that bumps up against Trumps. Oh yeah,
Speaker 3: there is that, and the fact that he's been acting
Speaker 3: as an independent figure over the last several weeks. And
Speaker 3: I think it's just an incredible tell.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's a really good and interesting point.
Speaker 1: And I would say, look, what Elon has going for
Speaker 1: him is that he's the richest man in the world, right,
Speaker 1: so he can, theoretically, in a world where there are
Speaker 1: no real campaign limits, he could fund every single candidate
Speaker 1: to the tune of whatever amount of money he wants.
Speaker 1: And that I think is a sort of on I
Speaker 1: don't know how you get around that. But in the
Speaker 1: same point, Trump does not like to be the co star,
Speaker 1: and I think that is a real tension there.
Speaker 3: There's another tension. Think about the people in Trump world,
Speaker 3: the Trump warbit, how they're all basically second rate, third
Speaker 3: grade characters who own their power and their celebrity to
Speaker 3: Donald Trump. They don't have independent power bases. He you know,
Speaker 3: maybe they did in the first term, but now they don't.
Speaker 3: They're all creatures of Donald Trump. He can brush them
Speaker 3: off like lint, with the exception of Elon Musk. Elon
Speaker 3: Musk has now created an independent power center that Trump
Speaker 3: has to deal with, and frankly, that power center has
Speaker 3: become more extreme and more dangerous with every passing day.
Speaker 3: So if anyone thinks and again and go back to
Speaker 3: this thing that I think Trump will have to moderate
Speaker 3: because he has to listen to Wall Street, the cross
Speaker 3: currents of this administration are going to be very intense.
Speaker 3: You have the Project twenty twenty five folks, You have
Speaker 3: the heavy breathing Magabase, which is going to demand certain
Speaker 3: levels of cruelty, and then you have Elon Musk, who
Speaker 3: is quite frankly a wild card, the fact that he's
Speaker 3: been engaging basically in foreign policy during that transition on
Speaker 3: his own. It's like, what can go wrong? What can
Speaker 3: go wrong here?
Speaker 1: Yeah? No, for sure, that is a real question and
Speaker 1: also super important, I do think. And he's also the
Speaker 1: problem with Elon too is not just it's not just Elon,
Speaker 1: it's all of his companies. So it's SpaceX and Tesla,
Speaker 1: and the guy has all these satellites. Right, This is
Speaker 1: a person who has so many entities that he's representing
Speaker 1: besides his own his own political ambitions that I think
Speaker 1: that is really just so it's hard to even know
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of. So a lot of these billionaires have
Speaker 1: gone have bravely gone down tomorrow ago to visit bravely
Speaker 1: with Trump, including Jeff Bezos. And suppose like Elon went
Speaker 1: to the Jeff Bezos dinner. Right, who is the big
Speaker 1: competitor of Elon with SpaceX?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Exactly. So if you're Donald Trump, you know that
Speaker 3: most circumstances, you can destroy somebody with just a bad twitch.
Speaker 3: So and so's really dumb, so and so's really a disappointment.
Speaker 3: So and so I can't do that with Elon Musk
Speaker 3: because Elon Musk for he can't do it, but Elon
Speaker 3: Musk owns Twitter. Elon Musk can fire back. So it's
Speaker 3: going to be difficult to see how how this plays out,
Speaker 3: although I have to admit that I do think this
Speaker 3: is going to be one of the great storylines of
Speaker 3: Trump two point zero. And by the way, talk about
Speaker 3: Trump in the last couple of days, the posts he's
Speaker 3: made after New Orleans and the terrible terror attacks there,
Speaker 3: so that it's design okay. I think you keep in
Speaker 3: mind that Donald Trump becomes president of the United States
Speaker 3: of America in about seventeen sixteen seventeen days, right, and
Speaker 3: you would think that at a certain point you would
Speaker 3: become more presidential. In the wake of that attack in
Speaker 3: New Orleans. First of all, he spread false information from
Speaker 3: that fake Fox News report blak, lashed out at the
Speaker 3: Biden administration, and then had this statement just on January first,
Speaker 3: where he talks about our country is a disaster, a
Speaker 3: laughing stock all over the world, and then it goes
Speaker 3: on to say that the USA is breaking down, a
Speaker 3: violent erosion of safety, national security, and democracy all in
Speaker 3: caps is taking place all across our nation. Only strength
Speaker 3: and powerful leadership will stop it. So there's no let
Speaker 3: us come together, let's unify, let's have a bipartisan front,
Speaker 3: let us appeal to the better angels of our nature.
Speaker 3: It's like he's going in there filled with his personal grievances.
Speaker 3: And so for people who say that you and I
Speaker 3: suffer from Trump derangement syndrome, I think it's going to
Speaker 3: be interesting sitting back and going, guys, we told you
Speaker 3: you thought we were exaggerating.
Speaker 1: But here's my hottest take those tweets. America is beyond repair.
Speaker 1: What it's like, it's his template. Every Trump tweet is
Speaker 1: American carnage. The question I think is if we look
Speaker 1: back historically, I'm thinking about using twenty sixteen as the template.
Speaker 1: And this is not to say that I don't think
Speaker 1: he's super dangerous and I don't think America. I don't
Speaker 1: think American. I think American democracy is in it. Like
Speaker 1: the next four years are going to be like, really,
Speaker 1: fifty to fifty we come out of this thing and
Speaker 1: don't turn into Russia. But like one of the things,
Speaker 1: like if you look at twenty sixteen, he did this
Speaker 1: same he was like, we're going to go to war
Speaker 1: with Mexico. We're going to go to war with Canada,
Speaker 1: and then in the end he renegotiated. Knaf does not
Speaker 1: really I do feel like he tends to like the
Speaker 1: hyperbolic rhetoric is in order to own the lebs and
Speaker 1: make people hysterical and then be like and to pretend
Speaker 1: he's crazier than he is. Again, is he crazy? For sure?
Speaker 1: And maybe that was because the people around him were
Speaker 1: better at maybe because he doesn't have the same kind
Speaker 1: of Kelly and Maddis around him. He will do crazier stuff,
Speaker 1: but there was a certain amount of calculated craziness.
Speaker 3: There is and you can really see having watched him
Speaker 3: so closely for eight or nine years, you can see
Speaker 3: the times when he just does things to distract, is
Speaker 3: to seize the news cycle. I would put say, the
Speaker 3: talk about taking Greenland as a classic, that's a distraction.
Speaker 3: He's not actually going to do that, But everything else.
Speaker 3: I do think that this time around we need to
Speaker 3: take it literally and seriously, because, as you point out,
Speaker 3: you have a completely different cast of characters around him
Speaker 3: than you had before, and they have a plan and
Speaker 3: the people who are really driving the agenda are not
Speaker 3: anything close to the mainstream. This is where we're getting
Speaker 3: back to who's really driving the agenda? Is it the
Speaker 3: magabase or is it Elon Musk? What is the rational
Speaker 3: moderating voice in his ear right now? Right?
Speaker 1: No, I think that's a real question.
Speaker 3: Maybe maybe some of these Wall Street moguls are going
Speaker 3: to say, do whatever you like, rip as many families
Speaker 3: apart as possible, but don't do anything that will affect
Speaker 3: the bond market. So talked up on tariff PA, don't
Speaker 3: actually maybe that's going to happen. Give us our little
Speaker 3: bit of pelf and when bootle and grift, and then
Speaker 3: you can do whatever else you like, but don't screw
Speaker 3: up the stock market. That's my best that's my best
Speaker 3: case scenario.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's I think that is the best
Speaker 1: case scenario that all of us believe is the best
Speaker 1: case scenario. Is that there's some amount of pushback from
Speaker 1: people like the people like the Scott Basset, that there's
Speaker 1: some amount of there's some amount of pushback from Republicans.
Speaker 1: I think we should talk about what's happened now in
Speaker 1: the Senate because John Thune is actually you know, he
Speaker 1: said he's keeping the filibuster again, right, But that's that
Speaker 1: Trump law. Rick Scott was Trump's pick. He lost.
Speaker 3: Discuss Yeah, actually, I'm struggling against unwanted optimism about that's
Speaker 3: because those were two important votes. Donald Trump wanted to
Speaker 3: have a magaloyalist as a majority leader. He lost decisively.
Speaker 3: He wants them to eliminate the filibuster, and it just
Speaker 3: sounds like they're not going to do that. Now. Again,
Speaker 3: we've seen Republicans cave in over and over again. But
Speaker 3: I don't I know that they have the votes to
Speaker 3: do away with a filibuster. And by the way, this
Speaker 3: was something that over the last four years, I just
Speaker 3: want to remind people I did occasionally say, be careful
Speaker 3: what you wish for. You're going to want that filibuster
Speaker 3: in place sometime in the future. And now it becomes
Speaker 3: really important because it is possible that the House, when
Speaker 3: they get done with their circus like votes, will pass
Speaker 3: some of this Trumpian this Trumpian legislation. Now it may
Speaker 3: only be with one or two votes, but that's enough.
Speaker 3: So then it goes to the Senate, and you hope
Speaker 3: that the Senate is where those ideas either go to
Speaker 3: die or whether there's a roadblock against the most extreme
Speaker 3: elements of that. The other thing is I don't want
Speaker 3: to read too much into it either, but the year
Speaker 3: end report from Chief Justice John Roberts seems to at
Speaker 3: least hint that perhaps he understands the degree to which
Speaker 3: he has damaged the credibility of the judiciary. And by
Speaker 3: the way, this is the world that John Roberts created
Speaker 3: with that immunity. One of the reasons why I think
Speaker 3: people are so pessimistic and everybody's bowing the knee is
Speaker 3: because we no longer have confidence that the federal courts
Speaker 3: and the Supreme Court is going to be a is
Speaker 3: going to be a guardrail for our constitutional republic as
Speaker 3: it has been in the past. And that's John roberts legacy.
Speaker 3: And maybe there's a sense there that, oh shit, look
Speaker 3: what we have created, Look what we now face, and
Speaker 3: the fact that the public no longer has confidence in
Speaker 3: an independent judiciary. So maybe we'll see the courts begin
Speaker 3: to stand up a little bit again. But even as
Speaker 3: I say that, I'm blusher cannot how many times do
Speaker 3: I have to hold this fucking football right, I try
Speaker 3: to kick the fucking football that's going to be pulled
Speaker 3: out from under us. But those are these two little
Speaker 3: and I guess my overall sense of twenty twenty five
Speaker 3: is that hubris does lead to downfalls, and political parties
Speaker 3: that come into power will almost invariably overreach, over extend themselves.
Speaker 3: And this one strikes me as the Republican under Donald Trump,
Speaker 3: who are going to dramatically overreach themselves, dramatically misread their
Speaker 3: quote unquote non mandate, and I think that's going to
Speaker 3: have real consequences over the next few months.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is a real question. And it's so funny
Speaker 1: because the one thing, and I know we're almost out
Speaker 1: of time, but I just want to like marinate on
Speaker 1: this for a minute, because I think you appreciate this.
Speaker 1: Donald Trump is not his brand, is not the Republican brand, right, No,
Speaker 1: it's not its own thing. And the reason that he
Speaker 1: was able to defy political gravity was any number of reasons.
Speaker 1: But as I think, certainly, being a forward facing person
Speaker 1: who ran for president for the last four years did
Speaker 1: not hurt. But I wonder we were spending so much
Speaker 1: time marinating on what we got wrong and and what
Speaker 1: Democrats should do differently, mostly to very little good effect.
Speaker 1: But I'm wondering if part of it was just of
Speaker 1: necessary Certainly there were people who could have defeated Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: but maybe the biggest mistake Democrats made it was just
Speaker 1: not was underestimating the power that he had.
Speaker 3: That's right, and I think that they do need to
Speaker 3: understand that he's tapped into some actual grievances in the
Speaker 3: least good faith way possible. But that's why I say
Speaker 3: I think that this year is going to be clarifying
Speaker 3: because I think one of the secret elements of Donald
Speaker 3: Trump's appeal was when he broke with Republican orthodoxy and said,
Speaker 3: I'm not going after Social Security and Medicare. I will
Speaker 3: not go after those kinds of programs. And I think
Speaker 3: that when Elon Musk comes sauntering into his office someday
Speaker 3: with his big Doge report, he's going to find out
Speaker 3: that promise is going to be really at risk. Will
Speaker 3: he side with Elon Musk if it means cuts to
Speaker 3: Social Security and Medicare or will he side with his
Speaker 3: base and by his base, the people who actually voted
Speaker 3: for him. And that's going to be that I think
Speaker 3: is going to be one of the defining moments.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, exactly, And that is the big question. Thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you. Thank you.
Speaker 3: It is always great talking with you.
Speaker 2: Momy Ellie. I can write some newsletter he did.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Fast Politics, Emily.
Speaker 4: My gosh, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: It's a cheery time.
Speaker 4: I am always so happy every day.
Speaker 1: The people on the climate be really doing great, So
Speaker 1: let's talk.
Speaker 4: We are known for being perpetually just like cheery and
Speaker 4: rosie and having really nice things to say.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, the problem here is that there's no
Speaker 1: world in which the second Trump admin isn't really bad.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's really like not a lot of nuance here,
Speaker 4: and there's almost something like easier about that because covering
Speaker 4: of Biden administration is like there's a lot of new ones.
Speaker 4: There's some good stuff and some horrible stuff, and it's
Speaker 4: you know, challenging to appropriately contextualize this the I guess
Speaker 4: the one upside here, but the Trump administration is that
Speaker 4: like there's like zero contextualization that I need to do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you know what, Let's start by talking about
Speaker 1: Elon mush Or, as Trump calls him Leon Leon started
Speaker 1: out caring about climate or never cared about climate. Because
Speaker 1: this guy was supposed to be a climate guy. Theoretically
Speaker 1: at one point.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there was like a point years ago, maybe like
Speaker 4: twenty eighteen, where I remember he went on a podcast
Speaker 4: and talked about climate change. I don't think this was
Speaker 4: the one where he got really high, like the Joe
Speaker 4: Rogan one, but he like it might have been, I
Speaker 4: don't quite remember, but he got really emotional about climate change.
Speaker 4: He's called it like the greatest threat to humanity, and
Speaker 4: I remember in this podcast appearance he actually got a
Speaker 4: little choked up and a little teary about it. So
Speaker 4: he has at least expressed like he cared about it.
Speaker 4: But that's also I think it's important to like put
Speaker 4: a little caveat on that and be like that's also
Speaker 4: been central to his business model, like all being, climate
Speaker 4: change is part of Tesla's business model. He's always really
Speaker 4: wanted to be seen as a world savior, and I
Speaker 4: think climate change played a really good part into framing
Speaker 4: himself that way for a long time. And just right
Speaker 4: now it's not really beneficial to him in that way.
Speaker 1: So make it make sense, he just doesn't really give
Speaker 1: a shit about climate change.
Speaker 4: I think that when you're insane.
Speaker 1: Right, you think there's more. It's sort of a mental
Speaker 1: health issue.
Speaker 4: Not even a mental health issue, but more of like
Speaker 4: a megalomaniac issue, where you really believe that you are
Speaker 4: the world's savior. You can really convince yourself that what
Speaker 4: you're doing is net positive and net good. Like, for instance,
Speaker 4: there are a lot of people who really think that,
Speaker 4: you know, we can solve climate change by let's say,
Speaker 4: just using carbon capture and increasing the use of gas,
Speaker 4: which when burned emits less than coal. Right, that's misinformation.
Speaker 4: There's no scientific scenario that says just those two things
Speaker 4: can meaningfully slow climate change to a degree where it's
Speaker 4: like not your revers like not you know, more than
Speaker 4: ninety seven percent of the coral reefs on Earth dye, right,
Speaker 4: But there are people that really believe that, and they're
Speaker 4: not lying, and they don't not care about climate change.
Speaker 4: They just believe misinformation. And to a degree, sure, I like,
Speaker 4: I can't tell you whether Elon Musk really cares about
Speaker 4: climate change or not, but I do think that he's
Speaker 4: like high on his own supply of what can happen
Speaker 4: to solve climate change. And the problem is that most
Speaker 4: of these people like just aren't listening to scientists. They're
Speaker 4: listening to themselves and to what sounds good to them.
Speaker 1: That is the idea that he's the central play right.
Speaker 1: The other people in the world are NPCs, non playing characters,
Speaker 1: so the rest of us don't really exist. Right.
Speaker 4: That's my like, you know, armchair psychoanalysis of the situation,
Speaker 4: because I've definitely written articles unheated before about just speculating.
Speaker 4: You know, Jeff Bezos must be a megalomaniac, right, like
Speaker 4: these billionaires who say, like I'm devoting one hundred billion
Speaker 4: dollars to climate solutions, you know, saying to themselves like, well,
Speaker 4: so we can't have democratic past climate policy, but I
Speaker 4: will decide what can solve climate change? Right, I can
Speaker 4: the decision through my foundation what solves this global problem.
Speaker 4: It's like in my mind, I'm like, well, you have
Speaker 4: to be you have to be some like absolute megalomaniac
Speaker 4: to think that you know best for all of us
Speaker 4: for a problem that you don't even experience as a
Speaker 4: super person.
Speaker 1: So here we are. We're on the precipice of another
Speaker 1: Trump admin climate hard to imagine that EPA, although he
Speaker 1: did not put a oil and gas and it was
Speaker 1: a coal lobbyist. The last time Scott threw it. This time,
Speaker 1: we have a Republican friend of Trump's who failed to
Speaker 1: win the New York governorship. But does it in your mind,
Speaker 1: does it seem like the EPA there's no world in
Speaker 1: which Trump cares about climate more this time than last time. Right?
Speaker 4: I don't think so. I mean, I do think that
Speaker 4: some people think that because Elon Musk is in there,
Speaker 4: that perhaps things will get better.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I forgot his name. Lee's Alden, right, Lee's Elden,
Speaker 1: friend of Trump who needed a job, gone.
Speaker 4: Right, who has puzzlingly little experience an environmental policy, right.
Speaker 1: But at least is not a coal lobbyist. If you're
Speaker 1: going to just say.
Speaker 4: One thing, sure, but you don't need a coal lobbyist
Speaker 4: at the head of the EPA to have the coal
Speaker 4: industry run the EPA. You just somebody who is going
Speaker 4: to say yes to the coal industry. And that's what
Speaker 4: Trump has to in all of these fields, which are
Speaker 4: yes people. And I think what Trump probably realized from
Speaker 4: the first administration, the clown buffoonery of having Scott prew
Speaker 4: It Andrew Wheeler at the head of the EPA was
Speaker 4: that you know, they were former coal lobbyist former fossil
Speaker 4: fuel lobbyists doing buffoonery things, doing former coal lobbyist things, right,
Speaker 4: So it made a good headline. I think probably Trump
Speaker 4: has realized that without the buffoonery of Scott Preuit getting
Speaker 4: like a sixteen buying like a sixteen thousand dollars private
Speaker 4: phone booth for his office, for all those vintage you know,
Speaker 4: people who remember what happened in the first Trump administration, Like,
Speaker 4: without that, the reality of dismantling environmental regulations is pretty boring.
Speaker 4: And the only thing that makes it not boring is
Speaker 4: if you have people accurately talking about the stakes of
Speaker 4: that of the dismantling, but the minutia of regulatory of
Speaker 4: dis mantling the regulatory state is like a sucky story
Speaker 4: that nobody really cares about wanting to listen to if
Speaker 4: you've got like other crazy stuff happening to distract you elsewhere.
Speaker 4: And that's what like Trump is there for, right, Trump
Speaker 4: is there at the nucleus and at the center to
Speaker 4: be the big distracting things, saying things that you've never
Speaker 4: heard before, you know, making splashy headlines like that. So
Speaker 4: I don't really see much of a difference. And I
Speaker 4: also think it's important. This is like a weird rabbit hole.
Speaker 4: I'm wondering if you're.
Speaker 1: Down, No, please please, please do it.
Speaker 4: This is an Elon Musk rabbit hole. So I feel
Speaker 4: like you're gonna be anything that's.
Speaker 1: Not us for twenty minutes. Talking about how fucked we
Speaker 1: are is good, okay, because nobody wants to hear that.
Speaker 4: No, and we're not fully fucked, but we can. We
Speaker 4: can get into that later too. But the rabbit hole
Speaker 4: that I went down that I would love for you
Speaker 4: to come with me for just a hot second, is about, well,
Speaker 4: why I don't think Elon Musk is really like going
Speaker 4: to be the climate savior of this administration. And it
Speaker 4: just has to do with like, I think that Elon
Speaker 4: Musk is sort of like a coal baron in disguise.
Speaker 1: Yes, that makes a lot of sense, but say more.
Speaker 4: I know that some people would hear that and be like,
Speaker 4: what are you talking about? He literally is an electric car.
Speaker 1: Guy, which is why I want you to say more.
Speaker 4: Exactly so in the US, electricity demand is skyrocketing in
Speaker 4: art because of electric cars and electrification in general, but
Speaker 4: also because of data centers Bitcoin.
Speaker 1: I knew you were going to say bitcoar.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm so sorry.
Speaker 1: Good. I really hate bitcoin.
Speaker 4: No, I'm like super resentful that I have to know
Speaker 4: anything about it. Yeah, yeah, me too, Like I'm resentful
Speaker 4: that I have to talk to you about it right now.
Speaker 4: But like, yeah, bitcoin artificial intelligence things that Musk himself
Speaker 4: is like deeply invested in, particularly bitcoin as well as
Speaker 4: electric cars. Now, electrification is supposed to be, you know,
Speaker 4: from a climate perspective, it's supposed to like take you
Speaker 4: away from fossil fuels. But because electrification is needed for
Speaker 4: like you need electricity to power a data center, for
Speaker 4: AI and for bitcoin mining, right, So that is like
Speaker 4: the huge increase in demand for electricity because of all
Speaker 4: three of those things is saving coal. It's prolonging the
Speaker 4: life of coal plants. Like we listen to like a
Speaker 4: heated will listen to like coal company investor calls right
Speaker 4: like yeah, you know, like the CEOs will openly talk
Speaker 4: about how the AI boom and the bitcoin boom and
Speaker 4: the electric car boom is like helping coal, right, is
Speaker 4: like you know, improving their forecast. It's also highly increasing
Speaker 4: demand for gas. So well, the electricity needed is helping
Speaker 4: the fossil fuel industry now I was like, Wow, that's
Speaker 4: that's interesting. It wasn't until I heard that, until I
Speaker 4: learned about that that then I understood why the CEO
Speaker 4: of one of America's biggest coal companies was donating so
Speaker 4: much money to Elon Musk's pack, the CEO of Alliance
Speaker 4: Resource Partners. It's like a huge coal company was one
Speaker 4: of the biggest donors to Elon Musk's pack to reelect Trump.
Speaker 4: This coal CEO and Elon Musk were working together very closely,
Speaker 4: and this was this dude's biggest one time election donation ever.
Speaker 4: Alliance Resource Partner CEO. He's made donations before, but he's
Speaker 4: never made a one time donation as big as he
Speaker 4: did to Elon Musk. And I was like, well, why
Speaker 4: would a coal CEO be working directly with Elon Musk?
Speaker 4: What is their common interest? And they're both of Their
Speaker 4: common interest is electricity is like increasing demand for electrification
Speaker 4: and increasing demand for more data processing for more bitcoin.
Speaker 4: So it's like I think that for a long time
Speaker 4: Musk saw his business as electrification electrification to move away
Speaker 4: from fossil fuels. But now that we need to have
Speaker 4: so much demand for electrification because of AI and bitcoin.
Speaker 4: He's seeing that fossil fuels are not his competition, it's
Speaker 4: important for him to work with them. So I think
Speaker 4: that's why you see his shift as somebody who used
Speaker 4: to care about climate changing anyway from fossil fuels and
Speaker 4: now he's like, I care about climate change, but we
Speaker 4: can do it with fossil fuels. That's like that's not
Speaker 4: aligned with the science because it's just not aligned with
Speaker 4: his business interests. So he's just a coal baron now.
Speaker 1: But it is so crazy because like he has the
Speaker 1: most money of anyone in the world, So what's the goal.
Speaker 4: Oh, just like probably he didn't get enough validation And
Speaker 4: as a kid, so like more, I keep thinking about.
Speaker 1: My priors and how I got here and how bad
Speaker 1: my optimism problem is. But I just want to be
Speaker 1: optimistic for a minute. It's like really an illness now,
Speaker 1: Like if we look at Texas, Texas is now has
Speaker 1: solar capacity. Can you talk to us about that and
Speaker 1: maybe why that's a reason not to want to die.
Speaker 4: Well, Texas has been like one of the leaders in
Speaker 4: renewable energy for a long time in the US, and
Speaker 4: that just keeps happening. That's not going to go away.
Speaker 4: And one of the things that I hear and that
Speaker 4: you know, my perriial he hears all the time from
Speaker 4: just like straight up energy analysts, people that all day
Speaker 4: are like, you know, be boop with here's what's happening
Speaker 4: with energy. I don't really care about the stakes either way.
Speaker 1: Right, It's an amazing way to be by the way,
Speaker 1: because it's like, yeah, it's like this is everything, right,
Speaker 1: Like you have kids, this.
Speaker 4: Is that yeah, right. But you know, I love these
Speaker 4: kinds of people who just like this is their work.
Speaker 4: They do the nale us as, they silo their brain,
Speaker 4: like this is this is what is happening.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: They're very bullish that Trump cannot stop the explosion of
Speaker 4: renewable energy that's happening in places like Texas, in a
Speaker 4: lot of red states. That's happening because of the Inflation
Speaker 4: Reduction Act. That's happening because of government investment in renewable technologies.
Speaker 4: And I do believe that specifically because of the sources
Speaker 4: that it comes from, like the beep boop, you know,
Speaker 4: like it's not just MURTSI groups telling us this this
Speaker 4: you know, energy analysts, and I think like in particularly
Speaker 4: places like Texas, which are so affected by climate change,
Speaker 4: by extreme weather, by hurricanes, especially flooding and heat, and
Speaker 4: then all of a sudden, like they'll get weird snow
Speaker 4: because climate change is weird. Like that. The diversified power grid,
Speaker 4: like because they have so much renewables, the only reason
Speaker 4: that their power grid doesn't fail under all this extreme
Speaker 4: whether there have been multiple instances over the last few
Speaker 4: years where you know, blackouts have started occurring because use
Speaker 4: the gas plants can't handle the extreme heat, right, but
Speaker 4: the wind and solar can. So it's also the opposite
Speaker 4: of what a lot of like Republican climate denial profossil
Speaker 4: fuel pundits will say. They'll be like, yeah, see this
Speaker 4: is why we need fossil fuels because they fail in
Speaker 4: extreme heat. And it's really like it's the opposite of
Speaker 4: what's happening. I think that's the most optimistic that.
Speaker 1: We can be, is that, like it may be an unstoppable.
Speaker 4: Yeah, truly, the renewable revolution is unstoppable. What is not
Speaker 4: unstoppable is the growth of fossil fuels in handom. Like
Speaker 4: renewables can either we can either like add renewables to
Speaker 4: a plate and like have renewables take up the entire
Speaker 4: plate or just like pile them on top of a
Speaker 4: plate where you know fossil fuels are also piling up
Speaker 4: at the same time, right.
Speaker 1: And that makes a lot of sense. And that's what
Speaker 1: you've said before about Exxon. So talk us through that, right,
Speaker 1: this idea that oil and gas company people know they're
Speaker 1: on their way out.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well that's why they're so freaking aggressive about their lobbying,
Speaker 4: about their donations, about pouring efforts into trade groups that
Speaker 4: will you know, do their pr dirty work for them,
Speaker 4: because like Exon doesn't want to come out and be
Speaker 4: like Exon, big oil company, I want to repeal every
Speaker 4: single like environmental regulation in the US. That's not going
Speaker 4: to help Exon because Exon, I think I've talked about
Speaker 4: this with you before. These oil companies, and they've talked
Speaker 4: about this in their internal documents. They rely on social
Speaker 4: license to operate, to continue operating, which is like fancy
Speaker 4: lingo for the public needs to support their right to exist. Essentially,
Speaker 4: if they lose social license, then they are in deep shit,
Speaker 4: as one might say, right, Yeah, they like a for
Speaker 4: memberships and trade group to like do that advocacy for them.
Speaker 1: But because they see the writing on the wall, which
Speaker 1: means they know that it's like cigarettes, right or flavored
Speaker 1: vapes everyone's favorite.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they know the.
Speaker 1: Window is closing, so they just want to stay out
Speaker 1: there as long as possible.
Speaker 4: Right. And at the same time, however, like they'll also
Speaker 4: buy up a lot of renewables so that they are
Speaker 4: at least diversified enough so that they have control over
Speaker 4: the competition, which makes sense.
Speaker 1: And then the thinking is, will they make the renewables
Speaker 1: less renewable because they don't give a fuck or is
Speaker 1: that really just they just do it because.
Speaker 4: I think it's good for them to be I mean, look,
Speaker 4: the vast majority of growth is going to go like
Speaker 4: over the next hour many years, This is like not
Speaker 4: a controversial thing to say, is going to go towards
Speaker 4: decarbonization and renewable energy, and just like general energy transition sectors,
Speaker 4: it's good for them to be invested in in those
Speaker 4: things into any decarbonization, renewable energy, and energy transition sectors.
Speaker 4: I don't think that they would tank it just for
Speaker 4: no reason, but it has to be in partnership with
Speaker 4: their core business, which is fossil fuel growth, which is carbonization.
Speaker 4: Like they're making the vast majority of their profits from
Speaker 4: selling fossil fuels and plastic, right, So they're always going
Speaker 4: to do that. And I don't think that the growth
Speaker 4: of renewables is necessarily a threat to Axon unless it's
Speaker 4: displacing Exxon. So if they have control of the decarbonization technologies,
Speaker 4: then they also have control of whether or not it
Speaker 4: displaces them.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 4: Welcome.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
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