1
00:00:00,650 --> 00:00:04,590
Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly Jongfast, and this is Fast Politics, where

2
00:00:04,610 --> 00:00:07,510
Speaker 1: we discuss the top political headlines with some of today's

3
00:00:07,670 --> 00:00:12,020
Speaker 1: best minds. And Homeland Security is now using an obscure

4
00:00:12,100 --> 00:00:15,480
Speaker 1: law to spy on journalists. We have such a great

5
00:00:15,520 --> 00:00:19,060
Speaker 1: show for you today. The Lincoln Project's Rick Wilson joins

6
00:00:19,120 --> 00:00:21,939
Speaker 1: us to discuss how Trump's old tricks aren't working anymore.

7
00:00:22,460 --> 00:00:26,740
Speaker 1: Then we'll talk to historian Kai Bird about his new book,

8
00:00:26,900 --> 00:00:32,410
Speaker 1: American Scoundrel Roy Cohn, Dark Journey from Joe McCarthy to

9
00:00:32,520 --> 00:00:33,990
Speaker 1: Donald Trump. But first, the news.

10
00:00:34,290 --> 00:00:39,790
Speaker 2: Somali, we're running a little dry over in defense land. Apparently,

11
00:00:39,890 --> 00:00:43,030
Speaker 2: we need to replenish our missiles. They're plotting all sorts

12
00:00:43,090 --> 00:00:46,409
Speaker 2: of ways to get the Pentagon more money. And Trump,

13
00:00:46,570 --> 00:00:49,480
Speaker 2: in one of his sundowning rants, is talking about invading

14
00:00:49,560 --> 00:00:50,580
Speaker 2: Micronesia and.

15
00:00:50,500 --> 00:00:51,339
Speaker 3: The Marshall Islands.

16
00:00:51,620 --> 00:00:54,520
Speaker 1: So Trump posted a picture on his Truth Social account

17
00:00:54,560 --> 00:00:58,320
Speaker 1: Thursday night. Trump did or Natalie Harp did. We don't know. Right.

18
00:00:58,600 --> 00:01:02,640
Speaker 1: Showing U.S. territory, showing the flags of Micronesia and the

19
00:01:02,680 --> 00:01:04,780
Speaker 1: Marshall Islands, along with multiple U.S.

20
00:01:04,810 --> 00:01:05,330
Speaker 3: Territories.

21
00:01:05,910 --> 00:01:09,190
Speaker 1: And the image included a map of the Straits. of Hormuz.

22
00:01:09,350 --> 00:01:13,830
Speaker 1: The straits, however, are closed by Iran because Donald Trump

23
00:01:13,930 --> 00:01:17,530
Speaker 1: invaded Iran because of nukes, which we had a deal

24
00:01:17,590 --> 00:01:21,250
Speaker 1: to prevent. I think that what's happening here is Donald

25
00:01:21,270 --> 00:01:24,470
Speaker 1: Trump is trying to grasp with the many bad decisions

26
00:01:24,490 --> 00:01:26,530
Speaker 1: that he has made that have brought him from as

27
00:01:26,610 --> 00:01:29,460
Speaker 1: popular as he's ever been to as unpopular as he's

28
00:01:29,540 --> 00:01:31,919
Speaker 1: ever been within less than two years. And that's what

29
00:01:31,959 --> 00:01:34,500
Speaker 1: we're looking at here. So late at night when he's

30
00:01:34,540 --> 00:01:37,959
Speaker 1: had multiple Diet Cokes and he's sitting with Natalie Harp

31
00:01:38,060 --> 00:01:41,120
Speaker 1: staring at his phone, he is trying to make sense

32
00:01:41,190 --> 00:01:43,910
Speaker 1: of all of his bad choices. Now, here's the deal

33
00:01:43,970 --> 00:01:46,530
Speaker 1: with the straights. We are a country with a serious

34
00:01:46,610 --> 00:01:49,770
Speaker 1: munition problem. We don't have the tankers. We don't have

35
00:01:49,790 --> 00:01:53,180
Speaker 1: the ships. We don't have the munitions. We don't have

36
00:01:53,200 --> 00:01:55,560
Speaker 1: the will of the people. And Donald Trump is trying

37
00:01:55,580 --> 00:01:57,710
Speaker 1: to figure out how to get the straits back open.

38
00:01:57,950 --> 00:02:00,810
Speaker 1: And he's just running through bad ideas. And because he

39
00:02:00,850 --> 00:02:03,570
Speaker 1: doesn't have people around him who are professionals who know

40
00:02:03,610 --> 00:02:07,290
Speaker 1: what they're doing, it's just him and some reality TV hosts.

41
00:02:07,850 --> 00:02:10,799
Speaker 1: And actually weekend TV news host, which I guess is

42
00:02:10,820 --> 00:02:14,750
Speaker 1: a little different. You got reality TV. You got Road Rules.

43
00:02:14,870 --> 00:02:15,830
Speaker 2: The Sean Duffeys.

44
00:02:15,870 --> 00:02:18,950
Speaker 1: The Sean Duffeys. And then you have like television hosts.

45
00:02:18,990 --> 00:02:22,310
Speaker 1: You got the Fox News hosts like the Judge Pirro

46
00:02:22,510 --> 00:02:27,270
Speaker 1: and the Sean Parnells and the, you know, there's Pete Hegseth.

47
00:02:27,610 --> 00:02:27,830
Speaker 3: Yeah.

48
00:02:28,070 --> 00:02:32,180
Speaker 2: So interesting thing here. Judges are always the thing that

49
00:02:32,220 --> 00:02:34,840
Speaker 2: gets in the way of Trump's. And three Trump appointed

50
00:02:34,860 --> 00:02:37,980
Speaker 2: judges have delivered a major blow to Kelshi, which we

51
00:02:38,020 --> 00:02:41,000
Speaker 2: know Trump Jr. has a big stake in.

52
00:02:41,290 --> 00:02:46,500
Speaker 1: Kalshi wants to block the state of Nevada from regulating

53
00:02:46,600 --> 00:02:50,320
Speaker 1: its platform. Here's a thought here. The state of Nevada,

54
00:02:50,340 --> 00:02:55,660
Speaker 1: known to be a place where you can do gambling, prostitution.

55
00:02:55,740 --> 00:02:58,700
Speaker 1: I mean, isn't everything legal in Nevada?

56
00:02:59,020 --> 00:03:00,200
Speaker 3: That's the brand. Right.

57
00:03:00,520 --> 00:03:04,520
Speaker 1: So but they want to put some regulation on Koushi

58
00:03:04,580 --> 00:03:07,050
Speaker 1: and Koushi's like, fuck you. We don't want to ever

59
00:03:07,110 --> 00:03:09,750
Speaker 1: be regulated. This is such a sign of the many

60
00:03:09,790 --> 00:03:12,270
Speaker 1: ways in which our federal government has let us down.

61
00:03:12,530 --> 00:03:16,190
Speaker 1: Like it's falling to the state of Nevada. to try

62
00:03:16,210 --> 00:03:19,160
Speaker 1: and regulate cow sheep. We have like a small and

63
00:03:19,260 --> 00:03:22,800
Speaker 1: very fucked up gambling situation that is growing to.

64
00:03:22,919 --> 00:03:23,740
Speaker 4: Eat us all.

65
00:03:23,980 --> 00:03:26,450
Speaker 1: And if you have a teenage son, you know that

66
00:03:27,030 --> 00:03:30,470
Speaker 1: a very large percentage of teenage boys are now addicted

67
00:03:30,490 --> 00:03:31,110
Speaker 1: to gambling.

68
00:03:31,250 --> 00:03:33,810
Speaker 2: I don't have a teenage son and I know it

69
00:03:33,880 --> 00:03:37,160
Speaker 2: because I simply talk to youth and I employ the

70
00:03:37,200 --> 00:03:39,590
Speaker 2: youth and I can't believe what I see with it.

71
00:03:40,000 --> 00:03:41,680
Speaker 2: People skipping meals for bets.

72
00:03:42,040 --> 00:03:44,920
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. We really fucked ourselves with this.

73
00:03:45,140 --> 00:03:49,040
Speaker 2: OK, so I'm actually curious what your hypothesis is here.

74
00:03:49,480 --> 00:03:53,120
Speaker 2: So the Treasury is barring a bunch of New York Times,

75
00:03:53,150 --> 00:03:57,290
Speaker 2: Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg reporters from the G20 finance meeting.

76
00:03:57,650 --> 00:04:00,810
Speaker 2: This feels like please don't see my corrupt ways to me.

77
00:04:01,640 --> 00:04:06,310
Speaker 1: So interesting what's happening right now with the mismanagement of

78
00:04:06,470 --> 00:04:10,610
Speaker 1: our federal government in every which way. So specific reporters

79
00:04:10,630 --> 00:04:12,310
Speaker 1: from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and

80
00:04:12,350 --> 00:04:15,240
Speaker 1: Bloomberg were not granted credentials to cover the meeting of

81
00:04:15,320 --> 00:04:18,860
Speaker 1: financial leaders this week in Asheville, North Carolina. The G20

82
00:04:19,460 --> 00:04:24,420
Speaker 1: is like this huge international meeting. I don't know how

83
00:04:24,720 --> 00:04:27,719
Speaker 1: they cannot give credentials to certain journalists. I mean, I

84
00:04:27,760 --> 00:04:29,140
Speaker 1: think it was a way of trying to stick it

85
00:04:29,180 --> 00:04:32,120
Speaker 1: to them. It doesn't matter because the reporting is going

86
00:04:32,140 --> 00:04:34,780
Speaker 1: to come out. There are a gazillion journalists. I mean,

87
00:04:34,820 --> 00:04:37,120
Speaker 1: this is a way of trying to punish people they

88
00:04:37,140 --> 00:04:40,469
Speaker 1: don't like, which is like, so this administration, so petty.

89
00:04:40,850 --> 00:04:44,150
Speaker 1: Alan Rappaport, a policy reporter who reports on the Treasury

90
00:04:44,170 --> 00:04:47,750
Speaker 1: Department for The Times, he began covering this in 2017.

91
00:04:47,750 --> 00:04:50,960
Speaker 1: They don't want him coming back. There's a journal reporter

92
00:04:51,000 --> 00:04:53,680
Speaker 1: they don't like. I think this is just like them

93
00:04:53,839 --> 00:04:56,820
Speaker 1: fucking with reporters to try to make life hard for them.

94
00:04:56,920 --> 00:04:59,360
Speaker 1: But it doesn't matter. I mean, like, this is the

95
00:04:59,420 --> 00:05:03,660
Speaker 1: pettiness of this administration. A spokesman for the Treasury Department

96
00:05:03,680 --> 00:05:06,260
Speaker 1: said in a statement that they'd be welcoming nearly 300

97
00:05:06,260 --> 00:05:09,190
Speaker 1: members of the media from a dozen countries. I mean,

98
00:05:09,210 --> 00:05:12,750
Speaker 1: this is just like a way to fucking try to

99
00:05:12,910 --> 00:05:17,349
Speaker 1: be shitty. Secretary Besson will participate in numerous media engagements.

100
00:05:17,410 --> 00:05:20,650
Speaker 1: The idea here is that They want to punish people

101
00:05:20,750 --> 00:05:23,609
Speaker 1: where they don't like the coverage. It's petty. It's stupid.

102
00:05:23,990 --> 00:05:26,330
Speaker 1: It happens on the left and the right. It's not

103
00:05:26,620 --> 00:05:30,620
Speaker 1: how it should be, but it's not at all surprising.

104
00:05:31,060 --> 00:05:32,960
Speaker 1: And it's also just like it's a way to make

105
00:05:33,220 --> 00:05:36,630
Speaker 1: media outlets mad. And in the end, I don't know

106
00:05:36,650 --> 00:05:37,770
Speaker 1: that it serves them well.

107
00:05:38,050 --> 00:05:42,940
Speaker 2: Yep. I am with you. So we heard that apparently,

108
00:05:42,980 --> 00:05:45,779
Speaker 2: you know, America would be rich from us kidnapping the

109
00:05:45,839 --> 00:05:49,600
Speaker 2: president of Venezuela. Turns out the Pentagon is where the money.

110
00:05:49,440 --> 00:05:49,919
Speaker 4: Is going to go.

111
00:05:50,180 --> 00:05:53,130
Speaker 1: Yeah. So a deal caps months of secretive negotiations to

112
00:05:53,170 --> 00:05:55,110
Speaker 1: give the U.S. rights to some of the world's largest

113
00:05:55,250 --> 00:05:58,320
Speaker 1: oil reserves. This whole thing is half cocked. Like, You know,

114
00:05:58,370 --> 00:06:02,250
Speaker 1: Trump does all of these like kleptocratic things. And I'll

115
00:06:02,290 --> 00:06:05,190
Speaker 1: be shocked if we actually get money from this. I mean,

116
00:06:05,210 --> 00:06:08,050
Speaker 1: there are other issues here. Like, should we be stealing

117
00:06:08,070 --> 00:06:12,570
Speaker 1: oil from Venezuela, which is under this terrible regime because

118
00:06:12,630 --> 00:06:15,669
Speaker 1: we kidnapped their president? Like, I mean, if you think

119
00:06:15,730 --> 00:06:18,760
Speaker 1: about that, that is an insane. It's already insane. Like,

120
00:06:18,880 --> 00:06:22,480
Speaker 1: what is America? Obviously, we shouldn't have Venezuela's oil. I mean,

121
00:06:22,520 --> 00:06:25,860
Speaker 1: that's just insane because we kidnapped their president. Insane.

122
00:06:26,100 --> 00:06:26,400
Speaker 3: But.

123
00:06:26,960 --> 00:06:29,500
Speaker 1: We have an insane president, so we do insane things

124
00:06:29,560 --> 00:06:32,940
Speaker 1: as a country. But I still believe that even despite this,

125
00:06:33,160 --> 00:06:34,820
Speaker 1: I think we won't end up seeing a lot of

126
00:06:34,860 --> 00:06:39,460
Speaker 1: money from this because, you know, this administration is very corrupt,

127
00:06:39,560 --> 00:06:43,810
Speaker 1: but it's also very, very incompetent. So even when the

128
00:06:43,910 --> 00:06:47,570
Speaker 1: corruption lines up with things that, you know, might benefit

129
00:06:47,610 --> 00:06:50,890
Speaker 1: the American people, though money to the Pentagon doesn't necessarily

130
00:06:50,930 --> 00:06:53,370
Speaker 1: benefit the American people, even then they can't figure out

131
00:06:53,390 --> 00:06:53,850
Speaker 1: how to do it.

132
00:06:53,970 --> 00:06:56,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, what it really always seems to be

133
00:06:56,380 --> 00:06:59,500
Speaker 2: is it's a pretend that this benefits the American people. Really,

134
00:06:59,520 --> 00:07:03,380
Speaker 2: what it does is it benefits Trump's donors. There's an

135
00:07:03,540 --> 00:07:07,000
Speaker 2: interesting thing here. We talk about how data centers are

136
00:07:07,020 --> 00:07:10,640
Speaker 2: this unprecedented. The backlash is growing just as fast as

137
00:07:10,660 --> 00:07:13,600
Speaker 2: the technology. But the other issue that I think is

138
00:07:14,020 --> 00:07:18,190
Speaker 2: interesting that Democrats need to get onto is the flock cameras,

139
00:07:18,210 --> 00:07:21,170
Speaker 2: because even Greg Abbott sees the way the wind is

140
00:07:21,190 --> 00:07:25,230
Speaker 2: blowing and is now blocking funding in Texas for flock cameras.

141
00:07:25,510 --> 00:07:27,770
Speaker 1: So you and I were having a conversation about this

142
00:07:28,010 --> 00:07:32,480
Speaker 1: offline and like trying to figure out why Greg Abbott

143
00:07:32,560 --> 00:07:36,720
Speaker 1: was doing this. Obviously, flock camera is very unpopular. The

144
00:07:36,740 --> 00:07:40,400
Speaker 1: whole idea of libertarianism, right, which is supposedly a big

145
00:07:40,440 --> 00:07:43,140
Speaker 1: part of the Republican Party or used to be some

146
00:07:43,180 --> 00:07:45,240
Speaker 1: part of it, was that they didn't want the government

147
00:07:45,280 --> 00:07:47,350
Speaker 1: in their business. So like, do you want to have

148
00:07:47,430 --> 00:07:51,730
Speaker 1: cameras all over your state videotaping everything you're doing? Obviously not.

149
00:07:52,720 --> 00:07:55,020
Speaker 1: Part of why I think this is interesting is like

150
00:07:55,230 --> 00:07:59,150
Speaker 1: the idea that Greg Abbott is doing populist stuff means

151
00:07:59,210 --> 00:08:02,670
Speaker 1: that he is ultimately worried because he is up for election.

152
00:08:03,430 --> 00:08:06,680
Speaker 1: And if he didn't think he could lose, he would

153
00:08:06,740 --> 00:08:09,380
Speaker 1: not be doing things like this. This is like a

154
00:08:09,460 --> 00:08:12,200
Speaker 1: person who gets that they could lose. And I think

155
00:08:12,320 --> 00:08:17,800
Speaker 1: that is relevant. So he has frozen state spending on

156
00:08:17,960 --> 00:08:23,430
Speaker 1: the cameras. This was right before the Texas Tribune published

157
00:08:23,460 --> 00:08:28,030
Speaker 1: an investigation probing how one state agency poured at least

158
00:08:28,030 --> 00:08:32,949
Speaker 1: $ 30 million into expanding the reach of the license plate readers.

159
00:08:33,390 --> 00:08:36,109
Speaker 1: So again, I want to point this out. Local news...

160
00:08:36,309 --> 00:08:38,650
Speaker 1: You know, I was saying local news is so important,

161
00:08:38,750 --> 00:08:41,929
Speaker 1: and I was on this show this week, Bill Maher,

162
00:08:42,150 --> 00:08:44,230
Speaker 1: and I said local news is so important, and everyone

163
00:08:44,250 --> 00:08:46,870
Speaker 1: made fun of me. But here's what's interesting about this.

164
00:08:47,090 --> 00:08:51,620
Speaker 1: This is local reporting about the Texas state spending money

165
00:08:51,700 --> 00:08:55,100
Speaker 1: on flock cameras. And here's what happened when this local

166
00:08:55,140 --> 00:08:59,160
Speaker 1: reporting came out. The governor of Texas stopped spending money

167
00:08:59,300 --> 00:09:02,120
Speaker 1: on it. And that is why local news is so important,

168
00:09:02,140 --> 00:09:05,380
Speaker 1: is because if you don't hear these stories regularly, your

169
00:09:05,540 --> 00:09:09,240
Speaker 1: legislators are not held accountable and they don't change their behavior.

170
00:09:09,620 --> 00:09:13,120
Speaker 1: And so if you don't have local reporting, you don't

171
00:09:13,179 --> 00:09:15,780
Speaker 1: know what's going on at the state level. And that

172
00:09:15,940 --> 00:09:19,199
Speaker 1: is a real problem. And so this is a really

173
00:09:19,260 --> 00:09:22,380
Speaker 1: great example of why. And this is the Texas Tribune,

174
00:09:22,420 --> 00:09:26,180
Speaker 1: which is like this amazing newspaper. Texas is a huge state.

175
00:09:26,240 --> 00:09:29,020
Speaker 1: It's the size of a country. And like you have

176
00:09:29,040 --> 00:09:34,070
Speaker 1: this amazing newspaper that is covering what their government is doing.

177
00:09:34,120 --> 00:09:38,069
Speaker 1: And I think That is so important. And so, again,

178
00:09:38,490 --> 00:09:42,530
Speaker 1: another moment where we say technology is bad and local

179
00:09:42,570 --> 00:09:43,710
Speaker 1: news is good.

180
00:09:43,730 --> 00:09:44,910
Speaker 3: Yeah, I do want to point out one thing.

181
00:09:44,929 --> 00:09:47,410
Speaker 2: I don't think we should call these things license plate

182
00:09:47,429 --> 00:09:51,370
Speaker 2: readers because it's a false characterization of them. Ben Jordan,

183
00:09:51,410 --> 00:09:53,770
Speaker 2: who is the reporter who really got us to understand

184
00:09:54,330 --> 00:09:56,930
Speaker 2: flock cameras, points out that these are all over parks

185
00:09:57,330 --> 00:10:01,219
Speaker 2: where there's no streets because it's a lie that these

186
00:10:01,260 --> 00:10:05,719
Speaker 2: are anything but surveillance also for humans with facial recognition.

187
00:10:05,820 --> 00:10:09,200
Speaker 1: Listen i didn't call it a license plate reader actually

188
00:10:09,220 --> 00:10:19,340
Speaker 1: you did i didn't fuck you you're fired Rick Wilson

189
00:10:19,380 --> 00:10:21,179
Speaker 1: is the founder of the Lincoln Project and the host

190
00:10:21,240 --> 00:10:24,130
Speaker 1: of the Lincoln Project podcast. Welcome, welcome, Rick Wilson.

191
00:10:24,690 --> 00:10:27,030
Speaker 3: Hello, Molly. I don't know about you, but it's still

192
00:10:27,070 --> 00:10:27,950
Speaker 3: Lake Ontario to me.

193
00:10:28,450 --> 00:10:31,990
Speaker 1: It will always be Lake Ontario to me. So Donald

194
00:10:32,010 --> 00:10:34,900
Speaker 1: Trump did something that is one of the things that

195
00:10:34,920 --> 00:10:37,200
Speaker 1: has worked really well for him historically, but seems to

196
00:10:37,240 --> 00:10:40,059
Speaker 1: not be working so well for him anymore, which is

197
00:10:40,500 --> 00:10:45,530
Speaker 1: when confronted with a wildly unpopular trade war that is

198
00:10:45,830 --> 00:10:49,110
Speaker 1: going to cost Americans more money when they're feeling the pinch,

199
00:10:49,510 --> 00:10:54,530
Speaker 1: he decided to do a stupid stunt and rename something

200
00:10:55,230 --> 00:10:59,689
Speaker 1: Lake America. And... It didn't work the way it historically

201
00:10:59,730 --> 00:11:00,370
Speaker 1: has for him.

202
00:11:00,770 --> 00:11:05,250
Speaker 3: It didn't work because none of it's working anymore. When

203
00:11:05,290 --> 00:11:09,410
Speaker 3: Donald Trump had net favorable approval ratings, 7, 8, 10

204
00:11:09,410 --> 00:11:11,650
Speaker 3: points back in the day, when he had net favorable

205
00:11:11,830 --> 00:11:14,600
Speaker 3: approval ratings on the economy in the teens and 20s,

206
00:11:15,030 --> 00:11:18,150
Speaker 3: he had a lot more power. But now he has

207
00:11:18,610 --> 00:11:21,330
Speaker 3: approval ratings that are reaching historic lows for any president

208
00:11:21,350 --> 00:11:24,300
Speaker 3: in modern time. Nixon had 24% approval when he left

209
00:11:24,780 --> 00:11:27,520
Speaker 3: the Oval Office. Trump, in a poll I saw on Friday,

210
00:11:27,580 --> 00:11:30,780
Speaker 3: has a 29% approval rating. He is in the territory

211
00:11:30,840 --> 00:11:33,870
Speaker 3: of when Nixon ran from office because he was about

212
00:11:33,890 --> 00:11:37,410
Speaker 3: to get his ass thrown out. When he was net

213
00:11:37,429 --> 00:11:39,750
Speaker 3: favorable on the economy, he had a lot more leeway.

214
00:11:40,010 --> 00:11:42,609
Speaker 3: But nobody buys that he's good on the economy anymore.

215
00:11:42,670 --> 00:11:46,130
Speaker 3: Nobody's accepting that theory anymore because they know it's not true.

216
00:11:46,540 --> 00:11:49,120
Speaker 3: And they know he's a failure on the American economy

217
00:11:49,200 --> 00:11:53,470
Speaker 3: at every level. And so trying to do the slamma jamma,

218
00:11:53,500 --> 00:11:55,650
Speaker 3: I'm going to do a card trick. I'm going to

219
00:11:55,690 --> 00:11:58,950
Speaker 3: draw in Sharpie on a map and make everybody freak

220
00:11:59,030 --> 00:12:01,230
Speaker 3: out about it. Now people just make fun of him

221
00:12:01,290 --> 00:12:01,530
Speaker 3: for it.

222
00:12:02,170 --> 00:12:02,390
Speaker 1: Yeah.

223
00:12:02,670 --> 00:12:04,970
Speaker 3: It used to be outrageous. Now people are just like, oh,

224
00:12:05,050 --> 00:12:06,530
Speaker 3: senile grandpa yells at Cloud.

225
00:12:07,000 --> 00:12:12,809
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, it's also, the thing is when you can,

226
00:12:13,350 --> 00:12:16,170
Speaker 1: when it seems like you are, when you, it seems

227
00:12:16,190 --> 00:12:19,809
Speaker 1: like your ideas are good or might work, you have leeway.

228
00:12:20,050 --> 00:12:23,110
Speaker 1: And even it's funny because like, if you look at 2020,

229
00:12:23,110 --> 00:12:26,640
Speaker 1: even in 2020 with COVID, people still thought his ideas

230
00:12:26,780 --> 00:12:30,200
Speaker 1: on the economy would work and make them richer. And

231
00:12:30,320 --> 00:12:34,280
Speaker 1: so what happened was, and in some ways COVID did

232
00:12:35,080 --> 00:12:37,750
Speaker 1: Trump was voted out during COVID, I think, because people

233
00:12:37,850 --> 00:12:41,030
Speaker 1: were whatever. But they still had faith in him that

234
00:12:41,070 --> 00:12:43,850
Speaker 1: he could do economic stuff. Now, why they had faith

235
00:12:43,910 --> 00:12:47,050
Speaker 1: in him, who even knows? I mean, an insane, objectively

236
00:12:47,090 --> 00:12:50,500
Speaker 1: insane thing. But when they put him back into office,

237
00:12:50,510 --> 00:12:53,740
Speaker 1: I mean, he was as popular as he had ever been.

238
00:12:53,760 --> 00:12:57,679
Speaker 1: Fast forward to less than two years later.

239
00:12:58,160 --> 00:13:01,680
Speaker 3: Right. And all the things that were a presumption about

240
00:13:01,720 --> 00:13:05,160
Speaker 3: Trump from the very beginning in 2015, that he was

241
00:13:05,200 --> 00:13:08,240
Speaker 3: a dealmaker, he was a negotiator, he was a businessman.

242
00:13:08,700 --> 00:13:14,220
Speaker 3: He understood the economy. Unlike those liberal Democrats, that's all gone.

243
00:13:14,620 --> 00:13:18,720
Speaker 3: I mean, Donald Trump is running a communist crime racket

244
00:13:19,000 --> 00:13:21,400
Speaker 3: out of D.C. and people now figured it out. He's

245
00:13:21,559 --> 00:13:24,540
Speaker 3: wrecked the economy. People figured it out. All the things

246
00:13:24,590 --> 00:13:29,070
Speaker 3: he promises for promised them for the last decade are

247
00:13:29,290 --> 00:13:32,810
Speaker 3: a wreck. We're losing our farms. We're losing small businesses.

248
00:13:32,850 --> 00:13:36,350
Speaker 3: We're not gaining manufacturing jobs. We're not gaining jobs, period,

249
00:13:36,390 --> 00:13:39,070
Speaker 3: at this point. They had revised the job figures from

250
00:13:39,110 --> 00:13:44,210
Speaker 3: last quarter down 79,000. It's madness, right? All of it

251
00:13:44,790 --> 00:13:47,010
Speaker 3: is unspendable. Now you can't just go, hey, hey, Trump

252
00:13:47,050 --> 00:13:49,080
Speaker 3: just owned the libs. It's okay that I got my

253
00:13:49,120 --> 00:13:52,719
Speaker 3: house repossessed. I just got the libs owned. That's not

254
00:13:52,760 --> 00:13:53,939
Speaker 3: working for anybody.

255
00:13:54,320 --> 00:14:00,100
Speaker 1: The culture war stuff, the girls and boys sports, that stuff,

256
00:14:00,929 --> 00:14:06,490
Speaker 1: Only works if everything is fine for you. If you

257
00:14:06,610 --> 00:14:10,490
Speaker 1: are not hurting financially, then you can worry about stuff

258
00:14:10,530 --> 00:14:12,930
Speaker 1: that you don't really care about, ultimately.

259
00:14:13,490 --> 00:14:16,690
Speaker 3: In polling, we call this a luxury issue, right?

260
00:14:16,710 --> 00:14:17,130
Speaker 1: Right.

261
00:14:17,360 --> 00:14:19,460
Speaker 3: When your life is good, you can worry about things

262
00:14:19,500 --> 00:14:24,120
Speaker 3: that are more esoteric. Right. When the economy is strong,

263
00:14:25,200 --> 00:14:27,480
Speaker 3: then you're like, okay, well, my job is secure and

264
00:14:27,520 --> 00:14:30,950
Speaker 3: my taxes are going to go lower and- And so

265
00:14:31,390 --> 00:14:34,590
Speaker 3: now I'm going to get pissed off at imaginary communism

266
00:14:34,650 --> 00:14:38,810
Speaker 3: or imaginary Muslim terrorists or imaginary trans terrorists, whatever it is.

267
00:14:39,170 --> 00:14:40,130
Speaker 1: Right.

268
00:14:40,150 --> 00:14:40,870
Speaker 3: Antifa.

269
00:14:41,390 --> 00:14:41,570
Speaker 1: Right.

270
00:14:42,110 --> 00:14:47,900
Speaker 3: Antifa. But now it's become this very desperate situation for

271
00:14:47,940 --> 00:14:50,760
Speaker 3: about 150 million Americans who are feeling a lot of

272
00:14:50,840 --> 00:14:53,780
Speaker 3: economic uncertainty. And a lot of the things that you're

273
00:14:53,820 --> 00:14:56,600
Speaker 3: hearing and seeing out there, like all the anxiety about

274
00:14:56,640 --> 00:14:58,920
Speaker 3: data centers is a proxy for how badly Trump has

275
00:14:58,960 --> 00:15:02,080
Speaker 3: failed on the economy. and how badly they fear AI

276
00:15:02,120 --> 00:15:04,260
Speaker 3: is going to be trained to take their jobs, and

277
00:15:04,300 --> 00:15:08,080
Speaker 3: how uncertain they feel about gas and food prices and

278
00:15:09,110 --> 00:15:12,470
Speaker 3: health insurance and their economic ability to keep their home

279
00:15:12,510 --> 00:15:16,370
Speaker 3: and all these things. And so the trickery, Lake Ontario,

280
00:15:17,430 --> 00:15:19,890
Speaker 3: a year ago, might have still been a one-week story,

281
00:15:19,910 --> 00:15:22,810
Speaker 3: and there were ponderous op-eds in all the papers about

282
00:15:22,850 --> 00:15:25,970
Speaker 3: it and how terrible it was. And now it's just like, again,

283
00:15:26,290 --> 00:15:29,450
Speaker 3: crazy old man yells at clouds. And people aren't buying

284
00:15:29,470 --> 00:15:31,190
Speaker 3: it in the way they used to buy it. And

285
00:15:31,230 --> 00:15:33,790
Speaker 3: I think that's a deadly problem for Trump in the fall.

286
00:15:34,010 --> 00:15:36,400
Speaker 3: I really do. Because he's going to make the campaign

287
00:15:36,440 --> 00:15:37,360
Speaker 3: about himself now?

288
00:15:37,840 --> 00:15:41,720
Speaker 1: Well, that is... So the old tricks aren't working anymore, really,

289
00:15:41,900 --> 00:15:45,790
Speaker 1: is the net-net of it. But so he did this meeting...

290
00:15:46,160 --> 00:15:48,350
Speaker 1: at the end of last week, where he met with

291
00:15:48,390 --> 00:15:50,610
Speaker 1: a bunch of Republicans and he said, and now MAGA Inc.

292
00:15:50,690 --> 00:15:53,790
Speaker 1: is sitting on, what, $ 300, $ 400 million?

293
00:15:53,810 --> 00:15:58,110
Speaker 3: I'm trying to get their cash position, but it sounds

294
00:15:58,150 --> 00:16:01,030
Speaker 3: like about $ 450 is the number I got the other day.

295
00:16:01,320 --> 00:16:05,000
Speaker 1: So that's like a small country. And that's the GDP

296
00:16:05,040 --> 00:16:09,440
Speaker 1: of a small country. And he has not spent any

297
00:16:09,520 --> 00:16:12,780
Speaker 1: of it. And now he reveals to Republicans that the

298
00:16:12,900 --> 00:16:17,420
Speaker 1: way he's going to spend it is on ads tying

299
00:16:17,540 --> 00:16:18,880
Speaker 1: them to his legacy.

300
00:16:19,310 --> 00:16:21,430
Speaker 3: If you're a Republican in one of those swing seats

301
00:16:21,510 --> 00:16:22,950
Speaker 3: out there in the.

302
00:16:22,910 --> 00:16:26,650
Speaker 1: In like in any one of the swing seats like Alabama.

303
00:16:27,050 --> 00:16:29,920
Speaker 3: Right. I mean, like the other day I had somebody

304
00:16:29,960 --> 00:16:32,080
Speaker 3: make a decent case for me that Mississippi could be

305
00:16:32,120 --> 00:16:34,400
Speaker 3: in play if the numbers keep tracking the way they're tracking.

306
00:16:34,820 --> 00:16:37,720
Speaker 3: which is insane on paper, right? Which is nuts on paper.

307
00:16:37,800 --> 00:16:40,700
Speaker 3: But Donald Trump is the one thing they can't afford

308
00:16:40,720 --> 00:16:43,040
Speaker 3: to have stuck on them right now. Because if they

309
00:16:43,080 --> 00:16:45,760
Speaker 3: have to, if Trump goes into, let's even just say,

310
00:16:45,900 --> 00:16:48,900
Speaker 3: let's say he goes into Iowa and says, you better

311
00:16:48,940 --> 00:16:52,040
Speaker 3: vote against Rob San and Josh Turek because I've done

312
00:16:52,120 --> 00:16:55,080
Speaker 3: so much good for Iowa farmers. And Iowa farmers are

313
00:16:55,100 --> 00:16:57,490
Speaker 3: going to be like, the hell are you talking about, chief?

314
00:16:57,620 --> 00:16:57,880
Speaker 1: Yeah.

315
00:16:58,210 --> 00:17:01,780
Speaker 3: Because Trump making it about himself is for two reasons. One,

316
00:17:01,790 --> 00:17:03,390
Speaker 3: he's going to steal the money and take it out

317
00:17:03,410 --> 00:17:06,380
Speaker 3: of MAGA Inc. And like, pay. MAGA Inc. is run

318
00:17:06,400 --> 00:17:09,520
Speaker 3: by the Trump family already, as we know. So they're

319
00:17:09,540 --> 00:17:11,220
Speaker 3: going to skim as much off of that cream as

320
00:17:11,240 --> 00:17:14,300
Speaker 3: they can. But it's the idea you're going to go

321
00:17:14,619 --> 00:17:17,760
Speaker 3: make this about him and not about affordability is just

322
00:17:17,960 --> 00:17:19,820
Speaker 3: as if you're a Republican, I mean, you got to

323
00:17:19,840 --> 00:17:21,719
Speaker 3: be thinking about the witness protection program at this point.

324
00:17:21,960 --> 00:17:25,380
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I think that, look, the problem is

325
00:17:25,700 --> 00:17:29,310
Speaker 1: ultimately that Donald Trump has really, you know, his whole

326
00:17:29,350 --> 00:17:31,070
Speaker 1: thing was that he was the president for the people

327
00:17:31,090 --> 00:17:33,530
Speaker 1: who voted for him and not for the people who didn't. Right.

328
00:17:33,550 --> 00:17:36,909
Speaker 1: So you couldn't get disaster funding if you were in

329
00:17:36,930 --> 00:17:40,100
Speaker 1: a blue state. Right. FEMA would get funded, you know,

330
00:17:40,220 --> 00:17:41,980
Speaker 1: but they would come to your state if you were

331
00:17:42,020 --> 00:17:43,440
Speaker 1: in a red state, but not if you were in

332
00:17:43,460 --> 00:17:47,420
Speaker 1: a blue state. Well, here's the thing. All of Trump's

333
00:17:47,990 --> 00:17:54,379
Speaker 1: economic policies have ultimately hurt people in red states, right?

334
00:17:54,680 --> 00:17:59,139
Speaker 1: Farmers and, you know, ranchers, ranchers, right? The cattle ranchers.

335
00:17:59,180 --> 00:18:02,060
Speaker 1: Now he's bringing in beef from other countries, like.

336
00:18:02,280 --> 00:18:04,240
Speaker 3: Poison Argentinian beef, right?

337
00:18:04,600 --> 00:18:10,090
Speaker 1: At every point, the people who were supposed to benefit

338
00:18:10,270 --> 00:18:11,250
Speaker 1: are getting fucked.

339
00:18:11,710 --> 00:18:17,810
Speaker 3: Molly, he, his message for, for the 2024 campaign, both

340
00:18:17,890 --> 00:18:20,949
Speaker 3: to more affluent suburban women and, which is one of

341
00:18:21,010 --> 00:18:23,469
Speaker 3: their big target sets, was we're going to bring down

342
00:18:23,510 --> 00:18:25,630
Speaker 3: the price of groceries. We're going to make your kids

343
00:18:25,670 --> 00:18:29,280
Speaker 3: feel safer in school. You're going to have a better economy.

344
00:18:29,520 --> 00:18:31,780
Speaker 1: No more DEI. You're not going to have.

345
00:18:31,660 --> 00:18:33,700
Speaker 3: To compete with people who are maybe... Your kids won't

346
00:18:33,740 --> 00:18:36,159
Speaker 3: have to learn about civil rights or anything that you

347
00:18:36,200 --> 00:18:36,900
Speaker 3: don't like.

348
00:18:37,359 --> 00:18:38,100
Speaker 4: Right.

349
00:18:38,280 --> 00:18:42,260
Speaker 3: And then he was saying to white male students, voters,

350
00:18:42,420 --> 00:18:45,699
Speaker 3: including a lot of white male Democratic voters, to be

351
00:18:45,740 --> 00:18:49,159
Speaker 3: honest about it. He was saying, I saw like 40 plus.

352
00:18:49,680 --> 00:18:50,820
Speaker 3: He was saying to them, I'm going to lower the

353
00:18:50,859 --> 00:18:52,619
Speaker 3: price of diesel that you need to put in your truck.

354
00:18:53,080 --> 00:18:55,030
Speaker 3: I'm going to bring an economic boom. So you're going

355
00:18:55,050 --> 00:18:57,970
Speaker 3: to be building things and fixing things. And the working

356
00:18:58,010 --> 00:19:00,429
Speaker 3: class is going to benefit from what I'm going to

357
00:19:00,470 --> 00:19:05,730
Speaker 3: do to these bad guys, right? Well, turns out that

358
00:19:05,770 --> 00:19:09,780
Speaker 3: the people who've been hit hardest on both the economic

359
00:19:09,820 --> 00:19:13,699
Speaker 3: calamity of tariffs, the economic calamity of the war, the

360
00:19:13,740 --> 00:19:18,910
Speaker 3: economic calamity of his insane corruption, like this beef thing,

361
00:19:18,950 --> 00:19:22,350
Speaker 3: he's got a deal. There's a deal under this beef thing.

362
00:19:22,530 --> 00:19:24,630
Speaker 3: I promise you we're going to find out what it is.

363
00:19:25,230 --> 00:19:28,050
Speaker 3: And those people are hit hardest. And it's like in

364
00:19:28,070 --> 00:19:31,770
Speaker 3: health care. Look how voters used ACA at a slightly

365
00:19:31,830 --> 00:19:35,320
Speaker 3: higher rate than you would expect, given their economic status

366
00:19:35,400 --> 00:19:38,120
Speaker 3: and given their locations in the country. They were using

367
00:19:38,200 --> 00:19:41,919
Speaker 3: ACA2 and now they're getting screwed because their health insurance

368
00:19:41,960 --> 00:19:44,550
Speaker 3: is now out of reach in many cases and getting

369
00:19:44,609 --> 00:19:47,170
Speaker 3: more out of reach. And Trump, of course, a couple

370
00:19:47,190 --> 00:19:48,850
Speaker 3: of weeks ago or about 10 days ago, maybe he's like,

371
00:19:48,869 --> 00:19:50,950
Speaker 3: we're going to have a great healthcare plan any minute now,

372
00:19:51,310 --> 00:19:54,030
Speaker 3: which I believe you may recall we've been hearing about

373
00:19:54,070 --> 00:19:54,730
Speaker 3: since 2016.

374
00:19:54,730 --> 00:19:58,550
Speaker 1: But also like the cuts to SNAP, like those people

375
00:19:58,570 --> 00:20:00,669
Speaker 1: in the red states, they use the SNAP just as

376
00:20:00,730 --> 00:20:02,280
Speaker 1: much as the people in the blue states.

377
00:20:02,340 --> 00:20:05,520
Speaker 3: People in red states depend on SNAP. They depend on disability.

378
00:20:05,690 --> 00:20:09,070
Speaker 3: They depend on Medicaid. They depend on Social Security and all.

379
00:20:09,420 --> 00:20:11,640
Speaker 3: And in fact, in many states, in many very red

380
00:20:11,700 --> 00:20:18,000
Speaker 3: states like West Virginia, Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, they depend

381
00:20:18,359 --> 00:20:22,380
Speaker 3: on those social benefit programs at a higher rate than

382
00:20:22,420 --> 00:20:23,270
Speaker 3: the people they hate.

383
00:20:23,730 --> 00:20:24,010
Speaker 1: Right.

384
00:20:24,150 --> 00:20:25,810
Speaker 3: Which is mind-boggling.

385
00:20:26,290 --> 00:20:28,210
Speaker 1: One of the things that I was struck by when

386
00:20:28,250 --> 00:20:32,430
Speaker 1: we were talking about these NIH grants, we were talking

387
00:20:32,450 --> 00:20:36,619
Speaker 1: about the NIH cuts. Right. It's such an interesting, Elon

388
00:20:36,660 --> 00:20:39,540
Speaker 1: Musk went in there and he cut all sorts of

389
00:20:39,600 --> 00:20:44,480
Speaker 1: government programs like USAID, which bought, what did USAID buy?

390
00:20:44,730 --> 00:20:48,330
Speaker 1: USAID do, which was actually, it's a Republican program and

391
00:20:48,350 --> 00:20:50,890
Speaker 1: it was actually brilliant. You probably cooked up by your

392
00:20:50,910 --> 00:20:53,290
Speaker 1: old boss. Explain what they did, because.

393
00:20:53,090 --> 00:21:00,050
Speaker 3: I think it's- USAID bought corn, soybeans, flour, cooking oil,

394
00:21:00,090 --> 00:21:02,930
Speaker 3: a whole portfolio of agricultural products.

395
00:21:03,430 --> 00:21:04,030
Speaker 1: From red states.

396
00:21:04,050 --> 00:21:05,389
Speaker 3: From American farmers.

397
00:21:05,910 --> 00:21:07,090
Speaker 1: Right. In red states.

398
00:21:07,770 --> 00:21:09,669
Speaker 3: In red states. Okay. I have a great story for

399
00:21:09,690 --> 00:21:11,730
Speaker 3: you on this one too. In red states, they sent

400
00:21:11,780 --> 00:21:14,280
Speaker 3: that food in bags that said a gift from the

401
00:21:14,320 --> 00:21:15,220
Speaker 3: people of the United States.

402
00:21:15,720 --> 00:21:16,120
Speaker 1: Soft power.

403
00:21:16,140 --> 00:21:19,399
Speaker 3: To places where they were starving or there were famines

404
00:21:19,460 --> 00:21:21,679
Speaker 3: or there were disasters. And it was like, oh, the

405
00:21:21,720 --> 00:21:25,360
Speaker 3: Americans helped us. Now those bags are written in Mandarin.

406
00:21:25,950 --> 00:21:28,000
Speaker 3: And the Chinese are the ones taking credit for it.

407
00:21:28,530 --> 00:21:31,350
Speaker 3: But a great story about this. I recently met a

408
00:21:31,369 --> 00:21:33,250
Speaker 3: guy about a year ago. I met a guy who

409
00:21:33,270 --> 00:21:35,889
Speaker 3: had been a three-time Trump voter, was a Trump fanatic.

410
00:21:36,410 --> 00:21:38,930
Speaker 3: And he reached out through a cousin of mine. Long

411
00:21:38,950 --> 00:21:41,570
Speaker 3: story short, he's like, you know, you and I don't

412
00:21:41,609 --> 00:21:43,450
Speaker 3: get along, but I need to figure out how to

413
00:21:43,490 --> 00:21:46,380
Speaker 3: save my soybean operation because I'm going to go bankrupt

414
00:21:46,760 --> 00:21:50,280
Speaker 3: because my product was sold to UID of my income,

415
00:21:50,760 --> 00:21:55,800
Speaker 3: of my farm's income of $ 4 million, $ 0. 7 million a year. Whoops.

416
00:21:55,820 --> 00:21:56,600
Speaker 3: So this guy.

417
00:21:57,000 --> 00:21:58,380
Speaker 1: Shouldn't have voted for Trump.

418
00:21:58,859 --> 00:22:00,540
Speaker 3: Absolutely. Voted for Trump three times.

419
00:22:01,020 --> 00:22:01,520
Speaker 1: I'm sure.

420
00:22:02,060 --> 00:22:05,020
Speaker 3: And look, honest to God, my temptation when I first

421
00:22:05,060 --> 00:22:07,500
Speaker 3: met him on email and texting with him was like,

422
00:22:07,960 --> 00:22:10,040
Speaker 3: I was really tempted to be a dick. Yeah. I

423
00:22:10,060 --> 00:22:11,560
Speaker 3: was really tempted to be like, ha ha, fuck you.

424
00:22:12,119 --> 00:22:14,220
Speaker 3: But then I was like, talk to me. You want

425
00:22:14,240 --> 00:22:16,350
Speaker 3: to do some ads? What is it? Is it just

426
00:22:16,369 --> 00:22:18,890
Speaker 3: because it hit you now? Or is it be bigger

427
00:22:18,930 --> 00:22:22,050
Speaker 3: than that? And he's not an unsophisticated person, right? He

428
00:22:22,090 --> 00:22:25,210
Speaker 3: runs a big operation. He's like, You know what? He goes,

429
00:22:25,350 --> 00:22:26,730
Speaker 3: you know, you get caught up in it and then

430
00:22:26,770 --> 00:22:28,910
Speaker 3: you don't want to back down from Trump. You don't

431
00:22:28,950 --> 00:22:31,619
Speaker 3: want to back back off of being a Trump guy.

432
00:22:31,650 --> 00:22:33,300
Speaker 3: You want to you don't want your friends to say,

433
00:22:33,340 --> 00:22:36,220
Speaker 3: ha ha, you're a pussy. But now it's because it's

434
00:22:36,240 --> 00:22:38,500
Speaker 3: not just costing me. It's across the ag belt. It's

435
00:22:38,540 --> 00:22:42,300
Speaker 3: across the soybean belt in in the southeast, particularly hard.

436
00:22:42,780 --> 00:22:45,379
Speaker 3: I mean, really bad. And you know what?

437
00:22:45,580 --> 00:22:45,840
Speaker 1: Yeah.

438
00:22:46,300 --> 00:22:51,359
Speaker 3: Those those purchases from those farmers served a great national purpose.

439
00:22:52,050 --> 00:22:54,050
Speaker 3: It wasn't just that we were supporting farmers. It was

440
00:22:54,090 --> 00:22:57,070
Speaker 3: that we were out around the world showing that America

441
00:22:57,109 --> 00:23:00,950
Speaker 3: had goodness. And I asked him about that. I said,

442
00:23:00,970 --> 00:23:04,030
Speaker 3: did you ever think about what it meant? He goes, oh, no.

443
00:23:04,290 --> 00:23:06,109
Speaker 3: I know where our product went. I know what it

444
00:23:06,450 --> 00:23:08,609
Speaker 3: was being used for. I know people who got fed

445
00:23:08,670 --> 00:23:10,990
Speaker 3: because of it. And it's just like you look at

446
00:23:11,020 --> 00:23:17,719
Speaker 3: it and you're like, my God. The spiteful, shitty Elon Musk, Doge,

447
00:23:17,840 --> 00:23:22,960
Speaker 3: data Republican dipshit crew. that are out there looking through

448
00:23:23,100 --> 00:23:26,310
Speaker 3: all the grants for a word like climate or a

449
00:23:26,330 --> 00:23:30,090
Speaker 3: word like race or a word like diversity. So we've

450
00:23:30,109 --> 00:23:34,750
Speaker 3: done that. Simultaneously, farmers, our national reputation, and people in

451
00:23:34,770 --> 00:23:36,010
Speaker 3: other countries. It's triple.

452
00:23:36,430 --> 00:23:39,189
Speaker 1: But it's also like these were the guys who were

453
00:23:39,830 --> 00:23:42,760
Speaker 1: so smart that they didn't need, you know, they were

454
00:23:42,820 --> 00:23:45,520
Speaker 1: too smart. They were so smart that they didn't need

455
00:23:45,540 --> 00:23:48,480
Speaker 1: the government. They were so smart that they didn't need regulation.

456
00:23:48,520 --> 00:23:51,169
Speaker 1: They were so smart. They were too smart for the

457
00:23:51,210 --> 00:23:54,629
Speaker 1: rest of us, and they ended up electing really one

458
00:23:54,670 --> 00:23:57,510
Speaker 1: of the stupidest people who's ever been president again.

459
00:23:57,530 --> 00:24:00,210
Speaker 3: I don't know if he's one of the stupidest people.

460
00:24:00,310 --> 00:24:03,570
Speaker 3: I believe he may well be the stupidest president. I

461
00:24:03,609 --> 00:24:07,449
Speaker 3: know my presidents pretty well, and I think Donald Trump is,

462
00:24:07,510 --> 00:24:09,730
Speaker 3: in fact, the stupidest person to ever hold that office

463
00:24:09,750 --> 00:24:12,170
Speaker 3: by several different metrics.

464
00:24:12,810 --> 00:24:15,359
Speaker 1: One of the things that I'm struck by when we

465
00:24:15,390 --> 00:24:20,090
Speaker 1: talk about this is we have a— we have like

466
00:24:20,330 --> 00:24:24,610
Speaker 1: a moment here where Trump is the most powerful president

467
00:24:24,750 --> 00:24:27,750
Speaker 1: we've ever had, right? Because the Supreme Court ruling, because

468
00:24:27,790 --> 00:24:30,750
Speaker 1: of what he's done, because of the Congress, the makeup

469
00:24:30,770 --> 00:24:35,350
Speaker 1: of the Congress being completely fucked for any number of reasons.

470
00:24:35,970 --> 00:24:39,950
Speaker 1: We have the most powerful president and the stupidest. I mean, like,

471
00:24:40,109 --> 00:24:42,270
Speaker 1: and you know, I've been reading, I just want to

472
00:24:42,310 --> 00:24:45,590
Speaker 1: say one other thing. I've been reading Maggie Haberman and

473
00:24:45,630 --> 00:24:50,669
Speaker 1: Jonathan Swan's book, Regime Change. And it is, you are,

474
00:24:51,230 --> 00:24:54,290
Speaker 1: it's a horror movie. It's a horror, like, you read

475
00:24:54,350 --> 00:24:57,320
Speaker 1: it and you can't, like, it's so scary.

476
00:24:57,520 --> 00:25:01,699
Speaker 3: You can't believe that people in that process with him,

477
00:25:01,780 --> 00:25:05,700
Speaker 3: in the White House with him, don't snap. Don't lose

478
00:25:05,720 --> 00:25:08,679
Speaker 3: their minds and just say, fuck this, I'm out. I'm

479
00:25:08,700 --> 00:25:12,800
Speaker 3: going to go public. You can't imagine. It's like the stupidity,

480
00:25:13,460 --> 00:25:20,270
Speaker 3: the corruption, the cult, all together are horrible. We're going

481
00:25:20,330 --> 00:25:22,800
Speaker 3: to have a hard time unless we do some real

482
00:25:22,859 --> 00:25:28,780
Speaker 3: serious soul searching and some serious accountability after this. We're

483
00:25:28,800 --> 00:25:30,399
Speaker 3: going to have a hard time ever recovering from this

484
00:25:30,440 --> 00:25:33,560
Speaker 3: if we don't change direction as a country hard.

485
00:25:34,060 --> 00:25:38,330
Speaker 1: And it is fucking wild. I mean, that is, it

486
00:25:38,410 --> 00:25:42,929
Speaker 1: is just wild. And that's what I would say is

487
00:25:43,150 --> 00:25:45,170
Speaker 1: it's just completely insane.

488
00:25:45,590 --> 00:25:45,990
Speaker 3: Insane.

489
00:25:46,210 --> 00:25:47,310
Speaker 1: Yeah. Insane.

490
00:25:48,700 --> 00:25:48,900
Speaker 4: Yeah.

491
00:25:49,260 --> 00:25:51,420
Speaker 3: But at least we've got Lake America now.

492
00:25:52,119 --> 00:25:55,380
Speaker 1: Lake America. By the way, that's like the red meat

493
00:25:55,420 --> 00:25:59,340
Speaker 1: for the base. Right. It's like they're eating the dogs. Racism. Right.

494
00:25:59,359 --> 00:26:03,770
Speaker 1: They're eating dogs. Right. And then we're going to rename stuff.

495
00:26:05,090 --> 00:26:05,990
Speaker 3: To own the libs.

496
00:26:06,490 --> 00:26:07,190
Speaker 1: To own the libs.

497
00:26:07,730 --> 00:26:09,369
Speaker 3: But you can't eat owning the libs.

498
00:26:10,010 --> 00:26:13,250
Speaker 1: But then there's one other thing that Donald Trump does,

499
00:26:13,730 --> 00:26:17,320
Speaker 1: which I'm going to read to you right now. Donald Trump,

500
00:26:17,460 --> 00:26:21,020
Speaker 1: it's a truth from this morning, and he said that

501
00:26:21,100 --> 00:26:25,320
Speaker 1: he would like Kristen Welker to have the... I'm going

502
00:26:25,340 --> 00:26:29,080
Speaker 1: to read you the truth. Kristen Welker, the unpopular hostess,

503
00:26:29,240 --> 00:26:31,879
Speaker 1: it's in quotes, of the once great Meet the Press

504
00:26:31,920 --> 00:26:34,790
Speaker 1: is now considered Meet the Fake Press. I guess he

505
00:26:34,830 --> 00:26:38,580
Speaker 1: watched it and he's not happy. And again... This is

506
00:26:38,700 --> 00:26:41,660
Speaker 1: actually a little bit interesting. He's mad about the same

507
00:26:41,700 --> 00:26:44,159
Speaker 1: thing he was mad at Bill Maher for, which is

508
00:26:44,400 --> 00:26:47,560
Speaker 1: her saying that not all of his endorsements worked.

509
00:26:48,090 --> 00:26:52,790
Speaker 3: Right. The power of the Trump endorsement was unquestioned for

510
00:26:52,830 --> 00:26:55,990
Speaker 3: a long time in primary elections.

511
00:26:56,550 --> 00:26:56,869
Speaker 1: Yeah.

512
00:26:57,450 --> 00:27:00,350
Speaker 3: And now, even in primary elections, the power of the

513
00:27:00,369 --> 00:27:03,070
Speaker 3: Trump endorsement is falling off. The one race they spent

514
00:27:03,150 --> 00:27:07,189
Speaker 3: money in this year, Darlene Graham, for the primaries- worked

515
00:27:07,390 --> 00:27:10,380
Speaker 3: but barely i mean for trump to have to go

516
00:27:10,440 --> 00:27:13,219
Speaker 3: and spend several million dollars to back darling graham in

517
00:27:13,240 --> 00:27:17,100
Speaker 3: uh in in south carolina a state where he was

518
00:27:17,180 --> 00:27:20,879
Speaker 3: beloved for three separate three three terms one south carolina

519
00:27:20,900 --> 00:27:22,980
Speaker 3: every time the effect he had to go and work

520
00:27:23,000 --> 00:27:25,140
Speaker 3: it there and she barely won the.

521
00:27:25,060 --> 00:27:27,619
Speaker 1: Primary right right.

522
00:27:27,100 --> 00:27:30,119
Speaker 3: It is fading the magic is going away and as

523
00:27:30,240 --> 00:27:32,720
Speaker 3: much as people should never take their eye off the

524
00:27:32,740 --> 00:27:34,720
Speaker 3: ball that Trump is going to be dangerous. Trump is

525
00:27:34,740 --> 00:27:37,380
Speaker 3: like a snake, right? Once you shoot the snake, some

526
00:27:37,420 --> 00:27:40,219
Speaker 3: snakes will still be able to bite you. So he's dangerous.

527
00:27:40,880 --> 00:27:42,580
Speaker 3: even though he's a wounded animal.

528
00:27:42,600 --> 00:27:44,800
Speaker 1: He's also going to mess with the midterms.

529
00:27:44,920 --> 00:27:46,070
Speaker 3: Well, of course he is.

530
00:27:46,140 --> 00:27:46,380
Speaker 1: Yeah.

531
00:27:46,420 --> 00:27:49,420
Speaker 3: No, we should, we should not folks do not expect good,

532
00:27:49,830 --> 00:27:52,670
Speaker 3: good outcomes when he is in the room. He's going

533
00:27:52,690 --> 00:27:54,510
Speaker 3: to keep fucking with everything to vote.

534
00:27:54,590 --> 00:27:57,550
Speaker 1: Their vote will be counted. This is probably actually the

535
00:27:57,590 --> 00:27:59,469
Speaker 1: most important election of our lifetime.

536
00:28:00,109 --> 00:28:04,330
Speaker 3: But legitimately folks, the most important election of our lifetime.

537
00:28:04,770 --> 00:28:10,090
Speaker 1: Yeah. Kai Bird is a Pulitzer Prize winning historian and

538
00:28:10,109 --> 00:28:15,310
Speaker 1: the author of American Scoundrel, Roy Cohn's Dark Journey from

539
00:28:15,369 --> 00:28:18,330
Speaker 1: Joe McCarthy to Donald Trump. Welcome, Kai.

540
00:28:18,350 --> 00:28:20,050
Speaker 4: Thank you, Molly. Great to be here.

541
00:28:20,210 --> 00:28:23,170
Speaker 1: So you have this biography and you are, I'm going

542
00:28:23,190 --> 00:28:27,050
Speaker 1: to say this, you're very venerable. You've won many, you've

543
00:28:27,070 --> 00:28:33,810
Speaker 1: won a Pulitzer Prize. You have, uh, Guggenheim, you pretty

544
00:28:33,850 --> 00:28:37,550
Speaker 1: much can't ask for more. And you have turned your

545
00:28:37,590 --> 00:28:41,890
Speaker 1: focus to Roy Cohn, right? Roy Cohn, who is very

546
00:28:41,950 --> 00:28:45,410
Speaker 1: much part of the origin story of Donald Trump. So first,

547
00:28:45,470 --> 00:28:46,180
Speaker 1: tell me why.

548
00:28:46,760 --> 00:28:50,500
Speaker 4: As you've implied, I've had a long career writing about

549
00:28:50,980 --> 00:28:56,680
Speaker 4: establishment figures. John McCloy, the Rockefeller liberal Republican who was

550
00:28:56,820 --> 00:29:01,350
Speaker 4: allegedly chairman of the establishment. McGeorge Bundy, the Harvard dean.

551
00:29:01,570 --> 00:29:06,370
Speaker 4: Robert Oppenheimer, Mr. Atomic. Jimmy Carter, a president. And I

552
00:29:06,430 --> 00:29:10,960
Speaker 4: did so because I was really interested in writing biographies

553
00:29:11,000 --> 00:29:14,560
Speaker 4: that would explain how power works in America. The establishment.

554
00:29:14,680 --> 00:29:17,260
Speaker 4: And then when I finished my biography of Jimmy Carter,

555
00:29:17,480 --> 00:29:20,340
Speaker 4: I suddenly realized that I had written about Roy Cohn

556
00:29:20,400 --> 00:29:23,100
Speaker 4: in all of these books. And then a paragraph or

557
00:29:23,140 --> 00:29:27,170
Speaker 4: a page here or there as this annoying test of

558
00:29:27,350 --> 00:29:31,770
Speaker 4: a nasty lawyer, a mob lawyer who was always upsetting

559
00:29:31,810 --> 00:29:35,810
Speaker 4: the apple cart, but wasn't really historically very important. And

560
00:29:35,970 --> 00:29:39,550
Speaker 4: then in 2021, when I had finished Jimmy Carter and

561
00:29:39,570 --> 00:29:42,500
Speaker 4: I was looking around for a new project, it hit

562
00:29:42,540 --> 00:29:46,120
Speaker 4: me that the establishment was gone. It's dead. It's been buried.

563
00:29:46,700 --> 00:29:50,580
Speaker 4: And in its place is Roy Cohn, who is haunting

564
00:29:50,680 --> 00:29:54,160
Speaker 4: us from his grave. He died in 86. But he's

565
00:29:54,220 --> 00:29:58,700
Speaker 4: haunting us with his values, his political outlook, his sort

566
00:29:58,770 --> 00:30:03,830
Speaker 4: of populist right-wing ideology. And, of course, he was the

567
00:30:04,090 --> 00:30:08,750
Speaker 4: president's mentor, our current president's mentor. So that's why I

568
00:30:08,790 --> 00:30:10,650
Speaker 4: took it on. And it's been a lot of fun,

569
00:30:10,690 --> 00:30:12,610
Speaker 4: I have to say, writing about a villain.

570
00:30:13,170 --> 00:30:16,990
Speaker 1: Well, he also, Roy Cohn, why I think is so

571
00:30:17,120 --> 00:30:20,520
Speaker 1: important at this moment is that he taught Donald Trump

572
00:30:20,580 --> 00:30:24,580
Speaker 1: that style of attack, which is like a very big

573
00:30:24,620 --> 00:30:25,200
Speaker 1: part of Mac.

574
00:30:25,220 --> 00:30:29,340
Speaker 4: Yes. Attack, deny. He taught Donald Trump that the rules

575
00:30:29,400 --> 00:30:32,520
Speaker 4: were not for him. The rules were for the small guy,

576
00:30:32,540 --> 00:30:36,790
Speaker 4: the inconsequential citizen. You could break the rules and you

577
00:30:36,850 --> 00:30:40,870
Speaker 4: could challenge the judges. Roy went around famously saying, don't

578
00:30:40,910 --> 00:30:42,730
Speaker 4: tell me what the law is. Tell me who the

579
00:30:42,770 --> 00:30:45,990
Speaker 4: judge is. You know, he was indicted three times for

580
00:30:46,070 --> 00:30:50,570
Speaker 4: fraud and bribery in the 1960s. He got off three

581
00:30:50,630 --> 00:30:54,410
Speaker 4: times in jury trials. And so when Donald Trump met

582
00:30:54,450 --> 00:30:57,560
Speaker 4: him in 1973, he knew that this was the guy

583
00:30:57,660 --> 00:31:01,060
Speaker 4: who had scammed the system. And he liked that. So

584
00:31:01,420 --> 00:31:05,580
Speaker 4: I would argue that Roy enabled the young Donald. Donald

585
00:31:05,620 --> 00:31:09,890
Speaker 4: was always a narcissist and always someone who was intending

586
00:31:09,950 --> 00:31:13,030
Speaker 4: to break the rules. But Roy Cohn told him that

587
00:31:13,350 --> 00:31:15,370
Speaker 4: this could be done and he could get away with it.

588
00:31:15,390 --> 00:31:17,650
Speaker 1: So I want to go back to the origin story

589
00:31:17,670 --> 00:31:21,170
Speaker 1: of Roy Cohn, because he has a lot of similarities

590
00:31:21,210 --> 00:31:23,680
Speaker 1: to Stephen Miller, I think. And I'd love you to

591
00:31:23,740 --> 00:31:26,280
Speaker 1: talk through them besides the fact that they look a

592
00:31:26,300 --> 00:31:26,880
Speaker 1: little alike.

593
00:31:27,400 --> 00:31:31,680
Speaker 4: They look a little like they're nasty individuals and they

594
00:31:31,720 --> 00:31:34,860
Speaker 4: take pride in their nastiness. They're not trying to hide

595
00:31:35,000 --> 00:31:38,000
Speaker 4: their image. Roy Cohn came like Stephen Miller. He came

596
00:31:38,040 --> 00:31:40,500
Speaker 4: from a privileged background. Roy was the son of a

597
00:31:40,600 --> 00:31:45,580
Speaker 4: Bronx judge who was elevated during the Franklin Roosevelt administration.

598
00:31:45,680 --> 00:31:49,040
Speaker 4: They were Democrats. They were Jewish. You know, they were privileged.

599
00:31:49,080 --> 00:31:51,340
Speaker 4: His mother was the daughter of a wealthy banker.

600
00:31:51,360 --> 00:31:52,040
Speaker 3: Right.

601
00:31:52,440 --> 00:31:53,810
Speaker 4: Roy was an only son.

602
00:31:53,830 --> 00:31:55,120
Speaker 1: Didn't he go to Fieldstone?

603
00:31:55,400 --> 00:31:58,850
Speaker 4: He went to Fieldston and he didn't learn many ethical

604
00:31:58,970 --> 00:32:00,210
Speaker 4: culture values.

605
00:32:00,890 --> 00:32:04,250
Speaker 1: But it's also he was the conservative in a liberal bastion,

606
00:32:04,330 --> 00:32:08,330
Speaker 1: just like Stephen Miller, who grew up in Santa Monica

607
00:32:08,430 --> 00:32:11,520
Speaker 1: and felt that the liberals were that he was like

608
00:32:11,600 --> 00:32:15,800
Speaker 1: it started as a troll and grew into a personality. Right. Yes.

609
00:32:16,220 --> 00:32:19,140
Speaker 4: Although Roy, you know, went on to Horace Mann in

610
00:32:19,580 --> 00:32:24,580
Speaker 4: high school where he met Anthony Lewis and Cy Newhouse

611
00:32:24,800 --> 00:32:30,560
Speaker 4: and Genovese Pope Jr., the future publisher of the supermarket

612
00:32:30,700 --> 00:32:35,480
Speaker 4: gossip National Enquirer Reg. And at the time at Horace Mann,

613
00:32:35,540 --> 00:32:38,740
Speaker 4: he was sort of a liberal, but he began to

614
00:32:38,840 --> 00:32:41,760
Speaker 4: flip when he went to college at Columbia. He's a

615
00:32:41,800 --> 00:32:46,850
Speaker 4: product of an Ivy League education. And he claims that

616
00:32:46,950 --> 00:32:53,740
Speaker 4: the Alger Hiss case turned him into an anti-communist hunter. Why?

617
00:32:54,120 --> 00:32:56,000
Speaker 1: What did he say and what do you think is real?

618
00:32:56,550 --> 00:33:00,030
Speaker 4: Well, he claims that two FBI agents gave him a

619
00:33:00,090 --> 00:33:04,810
Speaker 4: briefing on how Alger Hiss and many other liberal Democrats

620
00:33:04,870 --> 00:33:08,910
Speaker 4: associated with Dean Acheson were actually secret communists and had

621
00:33:09,010 --> 00:33:10,550
Speaker 4: infiltrated the State Department.

622
00:33:10,630 --> 00:33:11,410
Speaker 1: Do you believe that?

623
00:33:11,710 --> 00:33:14,330
Speaker 4: No, I think that was bullshit. I think what happened

624
00:33:14,510 --> 00:33:18,830
Speaker 4: was when Roy Cohn was 8, 9, 10 years old,

625
00:33:19,390 --> 00:33:24,100
Speaker 4: his mother, Dora, who was an enabling mother, she raised

626
00:33:24,150 --> 00:33:27,480
Speaker 4: Roy with no guardrails. She was taking him up to

627
00:33:27,600 --> 00:33:32,620
Speaker 4: Singh Prison every weekend to visit his beloved Uncle Bernie,

628
00:33:33,120 --> 00:33:36,960
Speaker 4: who was the only banker who was imprisoned for bank

629
00:33:37,040 --> 00:33:40,140
Speaker 4: fraud coming out of the 1929 crash.

630
00:33:40,680 --> 00:33:41,060
Speaker 1: Wow.

631
00:33:41,700 --> 00:33:46,550
Speaker 4: And Dora, the mother, told Roy that poor Uncle Bernie

632
00:33:46,890 --> 00:33:50,670
Speaker 4: was a victim of a conspiracy of Jewish communists.

633
00:33:50,870 --> 00:33:51,870
Speaker 1: Right. Yeah.

634
00:33:52,850 --> 00:33:58,250
Speaker 4: And waspy, powerful establishment bankers who refused to bail him

635
00:33:58,350 --> 00:34:01,740
Speaker 4: out when he got into trouble with cash flow. And

636
00:34:01,760 --> 00:34:04,960
Speaker 4: it was all a conspiracy. So I think this planted

637
00:34:05,140 --> 00:34:09,440
Speaker 4: the notion in Roy to beware of the establishment. He

638
00:34:09,480 --> 00:34:12,980
Speaker 4: had resentments about when he finished law school, he couldn't

639
00:34:13,000 --> 00:34:15,940
Speaker 4: get a job at a white shoe law firm in Manhattan.

640
00:34:16,040 --> 00:34:17,759
Speaker 1: Right. Because he was Jewish. Right.

641
00:34:18,340 --> 00:34:21,549
Speaker 4: So he adopted the politics of resentment. And it was

642
00:34:21,590 --> 00:34:24,680
Speaker 4: a very timely thing to do in the late 40s,

643
00:34:24,730 --> 00:34:27,650
Speaker 4: early 50s with the rise of Joe McCarthy.

644
00:34:27,830 --> 00:34:33,100
Speaker 1: So he goes to work for McCarthy eventually.

645
00:34:33,360 --> 00:34:34,740
Speaker 4: He becomes chief counsel.

646
00:34:35,160 --> 00:34:38,299
Speaker 1: Chief counsel. He interacts with my grandfather.

647
00:34:38,680 --> 00:34:39,230
Speaker 4: Tell us.

648
00:34:39,830 --> 00:34:42,230
Speaker 1: Howard Fast, communist. Yes.

649
00:34:42,969 --> 00:34:44,150
Speaker 4: The famous novelist.

650
00:34:44,310 --> 00:34:44,630
Speaker 1: Yes.

651
00:34:44,730 --> 00:34:45,730
Speaker 4: Your grandfather.

652
00:34:45,750 --> 00:34:49,330
Speaker 1: One of the early people to be jailed for the

653
00:34:49,370 --> 00:34:52,110
Speaker 1: House and American activities for contempt of Congress.

654
00:34:52,290 --> 00:34:57,870
Speaker 4: He actually was required to testify in 1953 before McCarthy's committee.

655
00:34:58,130 --> 00:35:02,130
Speaker 1: This was actually after my grandfather had been out of jail. Yes.

656
00:35:02,550 --> 00:35:05,990
Speaker 4: And Joe McCarthy, at the urging of young Roy Cohn,

657
00:35:06,010 --> 00:35:11,940
Speaker 4: who was then all of 26, was investigating libraries, American

658
00:35:12,000 --> 00:35:16,680
Speaker 4: libraries run by U.S. embassies in Western Europe. And Roy

659
00:35:16,820 --> 00:35:20,380
Speaker 4: and David Shine, his sidekick, famously went on a junket

660
00:35:20,460 --> 00:35:27,050
Speaker 4: throughout Western Europe for 10 days in which he hit Berlin, Rome. Frankfurt, London,

661
00:35:27,250 --> 00:35:31,850
Speaker 4: and went into libraries there and scared the librarians into

662
00:35:32,090 --> 00:35:36,569
Speaker 4: essentially burning books in part and taking books off the

663
00:35:36,610 --> 00:35:42,900
Speaker 4: shelf of people like your grandfather, Howard Fast and Dashiell Hammett.

664
00:35:43,300 --> 00:35:46,980
Speaker 4: It was outrageous. They were accusing these men of being,

665
00:35:47,219 --> 00:35:51,489
Speaker 4: subverting American culture with their political views. And it was

666
00:35:51,530 --> 00:35:54,760
Speaker 4: an outrage, but it got Roy Cohn on the cover

667
00:35:54,780 --> 00:35:59,730
Speaker 4: of Time Magazine. unbelievably, at the age of 27. And then,

668
00:35:59,950 --> 00:36:05,220
Speaker 4: of course, shortly thereafter, there's this crisis in American political culture,

669
00:36:05,960 --> 00:36:09,960
Speaker 4: sort of in the early Eisenhower administration, the fetid general

670
00:36:10,020 --> 00:36:13,100
Speaker 4: who won World War II for us with D-Day and all,

671
00:36:13,320 --> 00:36:17,820
Speaker 4: is newly inaugurated as president, and Joe McCarthy is going

672
00:36:17,940 --> 00:36:22,089
Speaker 4: after him. And Roy Cohn is directing the attack and

673
00:36:22,270 --> 00:36:26,529
Speaker 4: explaining to Joe that Eisenhower is not really a Republican.

674
00:36:26,950 --> 00:36:29,420
Speaker 4: And look what he did during World War II. He

675
00:36:29,480 --> 00:36:34,359
Speaker 4: gave officer commissions to veterans of the Lincoln Brigade who

676
00:36:34,420 --> 00:36:35,279
Speaker 4: were communists.

677
00:36:35,800 --> 00:36:37,069
Speaker 1: Right. Jesus.

678
00:36:37,469 --> 00:36:42,089
Speaker 4: So Roy Cohn and Joe McCarthy in early 1954 were

679
00:36:42,510 --> 00:36:46,590
Speaker 4: about to go after Eisenhower to question him on these grounds.

680
00:36:46,870 --> 00:36:50,350
Speaker 4: And Eisenhower was sticking his head in the sand and

681
00:36:50,410 --> 00:36:54,370
Speaker 4: was refusing to attack Joe McCarthy by name because he

682
00:36:54,410 --> 00:36:56,799
Speaker 4: said he didn't want to get in the gutter with

683
00:36:56,840 --> 00:37:00,960
Speaker 4: the guy. But what happened was White House aides realized

684
00:37:01,040 --> 00:37:04,739
Speaker 4: that this was a serious political attack. And in response,

685
00:37:04,840 --> 00:37:09,620
Speaker 4: they organized the Army McCarthy hearings. And for 36 days,

686
00:37:09,640 --> 00:37:13,440
Speaker 4: it was great political theater. But 20 million Americans saw

687
00:37:13,620 --> 00:37:17,880
Speaker 4: Roy Cohn. in all his nastiness. And they went after

688
00:37:17,940 --> 00:37:21,750
Speaker 4: Roy with sort of sexual innuendo, I have to say,

689
00:37:21,770 --> 00:37:22,069
Speaker 4: you know.

690
00:37:22,110 --> 00:37:23,690
Speaker 1: Right, for being gay, yeah.

691
00:37:23,710 --> 00:37:28,270
Speaker 4: For being a closeted gay man. Everyone sort of understood this,

692
00:37:28,670 --> 00:37:31,980
Speaker 4: although it wasn't ever spoken aloud. Anyway, they got rid

693
00:37:32,020 --> 00:37:36,719
Speaker 4: of Roy Cohn by means of that theater. live television.

694
00:37:37,020 --> 00:37:39,960
Speaker 4: And he comes back to New York and his career

695
00:37:40,219 --> 00:37:44,290
Speaker 4: is not over. He's feted at the Hotel Astor by

696
00:37:44,290 --> 00:37:49,490
Speaker 4: 2,000 people, standing ovation. And he goes on to build

697
00:37:49,590 --> 00:37:54,129
Speaker 4: a great law career representing wealthy people for their divorces.

698
00:37:54,650 --> 00:37:59,880
Speaker 4: And he makes connections to all five mob families in

699
00:37:59,940 --> 00:38:04,500
Speaker 4: New York City. And he becomes their go-to lawyer. It's

700
00:38:04,540 --> 00:38:06,940
Speaker 4: an incredible story. And then, of course, it leads to

701
00:38:07,000 --> 00:38:11,650
Speaker 4: Donald Trump in 1973 and when he becomes his main

702
00:38:12,170 --> 00:38:16,670
Speaker 4: go-to lawyer as well. And he helps to fashion Trump

703
00:38:16,750 --> 00:38:19,170
Speaker 4: and mold him into what we see today.

704
00:38:19,510 --> 00:38:24,720
Speaker 1: He really does use what happens with Army McCarthy to

705
00:38:24,780 --> 00:38:29,560
Speaker 1: make himself a sort of conservative gone wrong. a hero

706
00:38:29,739 --> 00:38:30,480
Speaker 1: of the right?

707
00:38:30,860 --> 00:38:34,360
Speaker 4: A victim, a victim, a martyr. When I was first

708
00:38:34,760 --> 00:38:38,069
Speaker 4: jumping into history, I sort of looked at the McCarthy

709
00:38:38,190 --> 00:38:40,170
Speaker 4: era and we were all taught that this was the

710
00:38:40,250 --> 00:38:43,890
Speaker 4: low point in American history, but it was one we survived.

711
00:38:44,380 --> 00:38:47,480
Speaker 4: Terrible things had happened, but we survived it, we got

712
00:38:47,540 --> 00:38:50,279
Speaker 4: past it, and it would never happen again. Now I

713
00:38:50,360 --> 00:38:55,200
Speaker 4: realize that's, you know, completely wrong. It was not an aberration. No, exactly.

714
00:38:55,620 --> 00:39:02,690
Speaker 4: And every few decades, America sort of retreats from its liberal, tolerant,

715
00:39:03,090 --> 00:39:08,920
Speaker 4: multicultural self and enters a dark, paranoid world. period in

716
00:39:08,980 --> 00:39:14,200
Speaker 4: which we're hunting immigrants and the other and hunting blacks

717
00:39:14,300 --> 00:39:17,620
Speaker 4: and minorities. And this is Roy Cohn. And I like

718
00:39:17,660 --> 00:39:22,610
Speaker 4: to think of myself as a historian who's a critical patriot. Yeah.

719
00:39:22,650 --> 00:39:25,029
Speaker 4: But that means you have to face up to the

720
00:39:25,070 --> 00:39:28,529
Speaker 4: dark side. And that's what Roy Cohn is. He's the

721
00:39:28,590 --> 00:39:32,160
Speaker 4: dark side of Americans. that's the subtitle of the book,

722
00:39:32,239 --> 00:39:36,529
Speaker 4: American Scoundrel. It's, you know, Roy Cohn's dark journey from

723
00:39:36,590 --> 00:39:38,450
Speaker 4: Joe McCarthy to Donald Trump.

724
00:39:38,850 --> 00:39:41,529
Speaker 1: It's funny because my book that I'm working on is

725
00:39:41,840 --> 00:39:46,500
Speaker 1: this idea that America loses its mind, that like post-Reconstruction,

726
00:39:46,620 --> 00:39:50,620
Speaker 1: we have moments in American life where we are terrible.

727
00:39:50,960 --> 00:39:54,060
Speaker 1: We're just terrible. And this is one of those moments.

728
00:39:54,360 --> 00:39:57,560
Speaker 1: But the fact that it's connected from that, that that

729
00:39:57,620 --> 00:40:00,820
Speaker 1: moment is connected to this moment is just wild. Explain

730
00:40:00,860 --> 00:40:04,710
Speaker 1: to us how... So Roy Cohn has a relationship with

731
00:40:04,750 --> 00:40:10,130
Speaker 1: these mafia families, right? How these mafia families are involved

732
00:40:10,170 --> 00:40:10,830
Speaker 1: in building.

733
00:40:11,170 --> 00:40:11,410
Speaker 4: Yes.

734
00:40:11,610 --> 00:40:14,510
Speaker 1: Because that's the origin story of New York. Donald Trump

735
00:40:14,650 --> 00:40:16,190
Speaker 1: gets introduced to Roy Cohn.

736
00:40:16,300 --> 00:40:21,640
Speaker 4: How? It's October 1973, and they're both at a private

737
00:40:21,880 --> 00:40:27,549
Speaker 4: dinner venue, the Le Club in Midtown Manhattan. And the

738
00:40:27,730 --> 00:40:31,710
Speaker 4: conventional story that Donald Trump himself has told repeatedly is

739
00:40:31,790 --> 00:40:36,430
Speaker 4: that he spied the powerful lawyer Roy Cohn sitting at

740
00:40:36,530 --> 00:40:40,950
Speaker 4: a nearby table in Manhattan. And went over and introduced himself.

741
00:40:41,340 --> 00:40:45,640
Speaker 4: And I actually had four telephone interviews with Donald Trump

742
00:40:46,120 --> 00:40:47,840
Speaker 4: talking to him about Roy Cohn.

743
00:40:48,260 --> 00:40:48,980
Speaker 3: Wow.

744
00:40:50,100 --> 00:40:52,969
Speaker 4: And in my first phone interview with him, I got

745
00:40:53,010 --> 00:40:55,850
Speaker 4: him on the phone. It was a cold call. It's crazy.

746
00:40:56,170 --> 00:40:59,669
Speaker 4: He picks up the phone and I introduce myself and say,

747
00:40:59,730 --> 00:41:04,239
Speaker 4: I'm writing a biography of Roy Cohn. And he says, oh, terrific.

748
00:41:04,880 --> 00:41:07,540
Speaker 4: He was such a wonderful guy. I so miss him.

749
00:41:07,900 --> 00:41:09,720
Speaker 4: We won a lot of cases together.

750
00:41:09,739 --> 00:41:10,959
Speaker 1: What?

751
00:41:11,280 --> 00:41:13,420
Speaker 4: And then he proceeds to tell the story when I

752
00:41:13,520 --> 00:41:15,899
Speaker 4: ask him, well, how did you first meet? And he

753
00:41:16,110 --> 00:41:18,969
Speaker 4: completely flicks the story around and says, yes, it was

754
00:41:19,070 --> 00:41:22,710
Speaker 4: at the club. But Roy Cohn spied me, an up

755
00:41:22,790 --> 00:41:25,290
Speaker 4: and coming famous young developer.

756
00:41:25,310 --> 00:41:25,870
Speaker 3: Right.

757
00:41:26,730 --> 00:41:29,780
Speaker 4: He was only 27 years old. And of course, Donald

758
00:41:29,820 --> 00:41:32,840
Speaker 4: Trump was completely unknown at that time. And he claims

759
00:41:32,880 --> 00:41:36,589
Speaker 4: that Roy Cohn came over and introduced himself and solicited

760
00:41:36,930 --> 00:41:38,370
Speaker 4: legal business from him.

761
00:41:38,710 --> 00:41:42,030
Speaker 1: Right, which makes no sense. Roy Cohn... I think important

762
00:41:42,050 --> 00:41:45,900
Speaker 1: to mention, was very much a part of Manhattan society.

763
00:41:46,020 --> 00:41:49,750
Speaker 1: So even though he represented the underbelly, he was involved

764
00:41:49,790 --> 00:41:54,050
Speaker 1: in the mafia, he dated Barbara Walters.

765
00:41:54,090 --> 00:41:58,040
Speaker 4: So he wasn't just sketchy. Yeah, he wasn't just sketchy.

766
00:41:58,100 --> 00:42:01,420
Speaker 4: He could be extremely charming over the dinner table. And

767
00:42:01,660 --> 00:42:04,580
Speaker 4: one of the difficult things in writing American Scoundrel was

768
00:42:04,640 --> 00:42:09,149
Speaker 4: to explain how Roy Cohn had sort of weaseled his

769
00:42:09,230 --> 00:42:13,310
Speaker 4: way into New York society. You know, he would host

770
00:42:13,370 --> 00:42:17,549
Speaker 4: his own birthday party every year, usually at places like

771
00:42:17,910 --> 00:42:21,720
Speaker 4: Studio 54 or the New York Armory. And he would

772
00:42:21,780 --> 00:42:26,500
Speaker 4: invite 200 or 300 of New York's most famous sort

773
00:42:26,540 --> 00:42:31,340
Speaker 4: of and most powerful elite society members, judges and politicians

774
00:42:31,460 --> 00:42:35,009
Speaker 4: and media, people like Barbara Walters, who served as his

775
00:42:35,110 --> 00:42:38,029
Speaker 4: beard at times. And they would all come. And how

776
00:42:38,070 --> 00:42:40,390
Speaker 4: do you explain this? They all knew who he was.

777
00:42:40,570 --> 00:42:44,049
Speaker 4: They all knew how despicable he was and that he

778
00:42:44,070 --> 00:42:46,870
Speaker 4: was a mob lawyer and that he had gone all

779
00:42:46,969 --> 00:42:51,489
Speaker 4: over Manhattan leaving unpaid bills, his dry cleaning bills, his

780
00:42:51,570 --> 00:42:57,120
Speaker 4: liquor bills, his limousine bills. And he got away with it.

781
00:42:57,310 --> 00:43:01,430
Speaker 4: And people like Barbara Walters felt in his debt. He

782
00:43:01,450 --> 00:43:06,430
Speaker 4: was very adept at sort of transactional relationships. So When

783
00:43:06,590 --> 00:43:09,530
Speaker 4: Barbara Walters, as a very young woman in her 20s,

784
00:43:10,260 --> 00:43:13,140
Speaker 4: was just getting started, Roy helped her get her first

785
00:43:13,420 --> 00:43:17,680
Speaker 4: job into broadcasting. When her father got into trouble not

786
00:43:17,719 --> 00:43:20,719
Speaker 4: paying taxes and there was a warrant out for his

787
00:43:20,780 --> 00:43:23,660
Speaker 4: arrest in New York City, he couldn't come back to

788
00:43:23,700 --> 00:43:26,860
Speaker 4: New York. She calls up Roy Cohn, the only lawyer

789
00:43:26,920 --> 00:43:30,259
Speaker 4: she knows, and weeps on his shoulder and he says,

790
00:43:30,300 --> 00:43:32,320
Speaker 4: don't worry, Barbara, I'll take care of it. And a

791
00:43:32,380 --> 00:43:37,020
Speaker 4: week later, the warrant for her father's arrest disappears. And

792
00:43:37,080 --> 00:43:40,930
Speaker 4: she feels in his debt. It's incredible. So he's this

793
00:43:41,030 --> 00:43:45,810
Speaker 4: despicable character who has no ethics. And yet I found,

794
00:43:45,850 --> 00:43:49,310
Speaker 4: for instance, a handwritten letter from Barbara Walters written to

795
00:43:49,370 --> 00:43:53,649
Speaker 4: Roy Cohn in the 70s, late 70s. They had just

796
00:43:53,710 --> 00:43:57,170
Speaker 4: come back from a vacation in the Caribbean together. And

797
00:43:57,230 --> 00:44:00,479
Speaker 4: she writes, oh, dear, Roy, you are such a sweet man.

798
00:44:02,260 --> 00:44:05,880
Speaker 1: Yeah. Roy Cohn at some point stops getting away with it.

799
00:44:06,000 --> 00:44:10,290
Speaker 1: He gets AIDS. Yes. In the early times when AIDS

800
00:44:10,330 --> 00:44:13,230
Speaker 1: was really a death sentence. Talk us through how it

801
00:44:13,390 --> 00:44:16,850
Speaker 1: ends for Roy Cohn because it's... It's a sad story.

802
00:44:17,150 --> 00:44:20,820
Speaker 1: He died a terrible death. He was diagnosed with AIDS

803
00:44:20,880 --> 00:44:26,080
Speaker 1: in October of 84, survives until August of 86. Donald

804
00:44:26,120 --> 00:44:29,560
Speaker 1: Trump sort of realizes he's got AIDS and he keeps

805
00:44:29,600 --> 00:44:30,360
Speaker 1: his distance.

806
00:44:30,900 --> 00:44:34,140
Speaker 4: Because he's a germaphobe. But he does, to his credit,

807
00:44:34,430 --> 00:44:38,350
Speaker 4: Trump invites him down to Mar-a-Lago soon after he bought

808
00:44:38,390 --> 00:44:41,649
Speaker 4: the place. And this is in March of 86, just,

809
00:44:41,850 --> 00:44:44,270
Speaker 4: you know, a few months before Roy's death. And he

810
00:44:44,390 --> 00:44:48,290
Speaker 4: hosts him at a fabulous dinner and toasts Roy and such.

811
00:44:48,430 --> 00:44:51,180
Speaker 4: But Now, Roy had become a sex addict at the

812
00:44:51,219 --> 00:44:54,600
Speaker 4: end of his life, and he was paying hustlers $ 100

813
00:44:54,560 --> 00:44:59,460
Speaker 4: a night for the tricks. And he was in complete

814
00:44:59,520 --> 00:45:04,500
Speaker 4: denial about being gay. Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes asked

815
00:45:04,540 --> 00:45:07,890
Speaker 4: him point blank, are you dying of AIDS? And he says, Mike,

816
00:45:07,950 --> 00:45:11,290
Speaker 4: you know me, I'm a macho heterosexual man. I couldn't

817
00:45:11,350 --> 00:45:13,350
Speaker 4: possibly be dying of AIDS.

818
00:45:13,850 --> 00:45:15,870
Speaker 1: And he said in the end, he said he had

819
00:45:15,910 --> 00:45:17,890
Speaker 1: liver cancer, right? Exactly.

820
00:45:17,989 --> 00:45:20,840
Speaker 4: He claimed he had liver cancer. And in the meantime,

821
00:45:20,860 --> 00:45:25,880
Speaker 4: as he's dying, he's also being investigated by the New

822
00:45:25,920 --> 00:45:31,240
Speaker 4: York Bar Association for one misdeed and crime after another.

823
00:45:31,440 --> 00:45:36,489
Speaker 4: And most specifically, they got him on Back in 1973,

824
00:45:36,489 --> 00:45:38,830
Speaker 4: he flew down to Miami to see one of his

825
00:45:38,930 --> 00:45:43,230
Speaker 4: old clients and friends, Lou Rosenstiel, the liquor baron of Kentucky.

826
00:45:43,590 --> 00:45:48,029
Speaker 4: And Lou had dementia. He was falling apart. And he

827
00:45:48,090 --> 00:45:52,580
Speaker 4: walks into the hospital room and grabs Lou's hand and

828
00:45:52,640 --> 00:45:56,580
Speaker 4: gets him to sign a signature that is completely illegible,

829
00:45:56,780 --> 00:46:00,299
Speaker 4: that is a codicil to his will, appointing Roy as

830
00:46:00,460 --> 00:46:04,420
Speaker 4: a executor of the will and this is fought through

831
00:46:04,480 --> 00:46:07,760
Speaker 4: in Florida courts and the Florida courts within six months

832
00:46:07,940 --> 00:46:11,890
Speaker 4: declare the will invalid and they formally reprimand Roy for

833
00:46:12,030 --> 00:46:16,930
Speaker 4: having legal fraud and finally this incident in particular catches

834
00:46:17,050 --> 00:46:19,670
Speaker 4: up to him in the New York Bar Association and

835
00:46:19,770 --> 00:46:23,230
Speaker 4: he is about three weeks before he dies he's formally

836
00:46:23,350 --> 00:46:26,319
Speaker 4: disbarred as a lawyer so it does come back to

837
00:46:26,380 --> 00:46:29,340
Speaker 4: haunt him He also was at this time not paying

838
00:46:29,380 --> 00:46:32,540
Speaker 4: his taxes like Donald Trump. He was under audit for

839
00:46:32,700 --> 00:46:37,320
Speaker 4: two decades. But after he died, the IRS finally swooped

840
00:46:37,480 --> 00:46:40,120
Speaker 4: in and seized his townhouse.

841
00:46:40,260 --> 00:46:41,520
Speaker 1: On 64th Street?

842
00:46:41,739 --> 00:46:42,940
Speaker 4: East 68th Street.

843
00:46:43,239 --> 00:46:46,339
Speaker 1: This is so interesting. I cannot wait to read this

844
00:46:46,420 --> 00:46:49,500
Speaker 1: book and to read about my grandfather and also to

845
00:46:49,940 --> 00:46:54,000
Speaker 1: just get into it. But thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Kai.

846
00:46:54,100 --> 00:46:56,360
Speaker 4: Thank you, Molly. This was a lot of fun to

847
00:46:56,400 --> 00:46:56,880
Speaker 4: talk to you.

848
00:46:58,780 --> 00:47:01,530
Speaker 3: And now, your moment of fuckery.

849
00:47:01,610 --> 00:47:02,320
Speaker 1: Rick Wilson!

850
00:47:02,640 --> 00:47:03,310
Speaker 3: Hello, Molly.

851
00:47:03,770 --> 00:47:05,770
Speaker 1: What is your moment of fuckery? This is like the

852
00:47:05,890 --> 00:47:07,010
Speaker 1: one that's made for you.

853
00:47:07,430 --> 00:47:10,170
Speaker 3: This is made for me. This is a delight. This is...

854
00:47:10,830 --> 00:47:15,629
Speaker 3: It was like, Alexa, order all the schadenfreude available. Milo Yiannopoulos,

855
00:47:16,130 --> 00:47:23,870
Speaker 3: former wingman of Steve Bannon, former bright alt-right weirdo, former...

856
00:47:24,219 --> 00:47:27,800
Speaker 3: gay dude who was apparently saved and became a straight

857
00:47:27,860 --> 00:47:31,779
Speaker 3: dude by some magical process, which is, it always works

858
00:47:31,820 --> 00:47:34,080
Speaker 3: out well, trust me, I've seen that one play out,

859
00:47:34,520 --> 00:47:37,319
Speaker 3: has been deported. He was a British citizen, he was

860
00:47:37,500 --> 00:47:40,520
Speaker 3: overstaying his visa, he did not show up to his

861
00:47:41,060 --> 00:47:46,270
Speaker 3: immigration hearings, and Laura Loomer, the dark force of the

862
00:47:46,310 --> 00:47:51,570
Speaker 3: Republican Party, took it into her black soul to destroy Milo,

863
00:47:51,810 --> 00:47:55,200
Speaker 3: and And she's now taking a big victory lap because

864
00:47:55,260 --> 00:47:59,190
Speaker 3: Milo has been deported back to the UK, where he

865
00:47:59,390 --> 00:48:01,670
Speaker 3: is apparently never going to be allowed to return to America.

866
00:48:01,890 --> 00:48:02,910
Speaker 3: Kanye hardest hit.

867
00:48:03,670 --> 00:48:06,290
Speaker 1: I want to add a little bit of color to

868
00:48:06,310 --> 00:48:06,910
Speaker 1: this story.

869
00:48:06,930 --> 00:48:07,509
Speaker 3: Oh, yes, please.

870
00:48:07,530 --> 00:48:09,640
Speaker 1: He was in Louisiana.

871
00:48:09,860 --> 00:48:10,160
Speaker 3: Correct.

872
00:48:10,180 --> 00:48:15,300
Speaker 1: Going to a Kanye concert, which was way old, right?

873
00:48:15,320 --> 00:48:18,279
Speaker 1: Of course. Where there were very few people, and he

874
00:48:18,340 --> 00:48:20,549
Speaker 1: was picked up by ICE and deported.

875
00:48:21,050 --> 00:48:22,750
Speaker 3: And the funniest part of this, Molly, is you go

876
00:48:22,790 --> 00:48:25,330
Speaker 3: back on his tweets, Milo's tweets for the last year

877
00:48:25,370 --> 00:48:28,410
Speaker 3: or so. And it's always like, why can't ICE deport

878
00:48:28,450 --> 00:48:30,790
Speaker 3: more of them per day? Why can't ICE, you know,

879
00:48:30,830 --> 00:48:33,350
Speaker 3: we should protect ICE for anything they do in the

880
00:48:33,410 --> 00:48:37,680
Speaker 3: line of their duty. All this pro-ICE, anti-immigrant stuff. And

881
00:48:37,719 --> 00:48:40,420
Speaker 3: I'm thinking to myself, you fell into the classic trap

882
00:48:40,440 --> 00:48:43,520
Speaker 3: of the Trump universe. You thought that was only brown people.

883
00:48:43,940 --> 00:48:45,520
Speaker 3: This was going to sweep up. Whoops.

884
00:48:46,200 --> 00:48:48,660
Speaker 1: Whoops. Yes, that's right.

885
00:48:49,320 --> 00:48:51,460
Speaker 3: All I can say is if we can send Milo

886
00:48:51,500 --> 00:48:54,040
Speaker 3: and the Tates back out of the U.S., it'll be

887
00:48:54,060 --> 00:48:54,480
Speaker 3: a win.

888
00:48:54,860 --> 00:48:59,640
Speaker 1: Thank you. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics.

889
00:49:00,100 --> 00:49:06,050
Speaker 1: Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday to hear

890
00:49:06,130 --> 00:49:10,370
Speaker 1: the best minds in politics make sense of all this chaos.

891
00:49:10,870 --> 00:49:13,590
Speaker 1: If you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a

892
00:49:13,670 --> 00:49:17,650
Speaker 1: friend and keep the conversation going. Thanks for listening.