Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds. And Ken Martin has been elected the
Speaker 1: new DNC chair. We have such a great show for
Speaker 1: you today the Lincoln Projects. Rick Wilson stops by to
Speaker 1: talk about Trump's many assaults on.
Speaker 2: The rule of law.
Speaker 1: Then we'll talk to author Thomas Frank about why Democrats
Speaker 1: fear embracing populism.
Speaker 3: But first the news mally tariffs.
Speaker 4: It's tariff time, baby. We're going to crush the market
Speaker 4: to own the libs.
Speaker 1: So Donald Trump on Saturday, because there's no weekend in
Speaker 1: how he said he was going to enact these tariffs,
Speaker 1: signing Steve tariffs twenty five percent Mexico Canada, ten percent
Speaker 1: are China, and then of course a little less on
Speaker 1: the crew because Donald Trump loves oil. Ten percent on
Speaker 1: the fuel. He acknowledged what economists, members of Congress, and
Speaker 1: some of his old aides have said, Americans will find
Speaker 1: themselves paying the cost.
Speaker 2: I love this.
Speaker 1: He posted a non truth social this will be the
Speaker 1: Golden age of America.
Speaker 3: Explanation point.
Speaker 1: Will there be some pain question mark Yes, maybe and
Speaker 1: maybe not. Explanation point again the message, which appeared an
Speaker 1: hour before Trump arrived in his West Palm Beach, Florida
Speaker 1: golf club for the second day in a row. Because
Speaker 1: when you're crashing the economy, it's important.
Speaker 3: To make sure you can play golf.
Speaker 1: He's serious about fulfilling his campaign promise to end a
Speaker 1: legal migration by making everything more expensive.
Speaker 4: Listen that blue You don't understand how it sells in
Speaker 4: America because you don't drink molly. But let me tell you,
Speaker 4: we're really going to be upset about this Canadian teriff
Speaker 4: for ex sports.
Speaker 3: It's so stupid.
Speaker 2: It's so stupid, it doesn't.
Speaker 3: Even make any sense.
Speaker 1: But you know what does make sense is that hedge
Speaker 1: funds are betting billions that the market's going to crash
Speaker 1: on Monday. When you're listening to his podcast, just don't
Speaker 1: go look at your stocks because they're going to be down.
Speaker 1: And look, maybe here's the amazing thing about this, Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: If you look at the stock market.
Speaker 1: Tomorrow morning, when you're on your way to go play golf,
Speaker 1: you can just cancel the tariffs and then the market
Speaker 1: will bounce back. This person is one of the few
Speaker 1: people in a position to be.
Speaker 2: Able to do this.
Speaker 1: In January, right before Donald Trump took office, Investor's placed
Speaker 1: ten times more bets on the US stock market falling
Speaker 1: than equivalent bets. So they were shorting the market. You
Speaker 1: know why they were shorting the market because we have
Speaker 1: a lunatic as a president.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's almost like for months people have been begging
Speaker 4: him to reconsider the stupidity.
Speaker 1: But it's also just I mean, markets really hate uncertainty.
Speaker 1: Donald Trump is really unpredictable and uncertain.
Speaker 2: And look, the other thing is, as much as.
Speaker 1: People were mad at Biden for not doing enough for inflation,
Speaker 1: one of the things he did was he didn't do
Speaker 1: wildly inflationary things like making everything more expensive, which we're
Speaker 1: about to see.
Speaker 2: How that goes.
Speaker 4: I think the thirty five dollars egg prices in Los
Speaker 4: Angeles right now would like a word.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's just really bad.
Speaker 4: So may we know One of the things that these
Speaker 4: Heritage Foundation types and Republicans have longs to do is
Speaker 4: take a torch to the Education Department.
Speaker 5: We don't the flames are here.
Speaker 1: They do want to dissolve the Department of Education. You
Speaker 1: know why because Jimmy Carter started it and part of
Speaker 1: Trump's thing is that he wants to get rid of
Speaker 1: everything Jimmy Carter did, so that's everything from the Department
Speaker 1: of Education to FEMA. But this is actually a McCarthy
Speaker 1: ish witch hunt for people who have ever ever attended
Speaker 1: a diversity training event. So several employees began receiving leave
Speaker 1: notices late Friday and reported them to their local union
Speaker 1: president at the American Federation of Government Employees, which, by
Speaker 1: the way, that guy's real busy right nowsically trying to
Speaker 1: figure out whoever has gone to a DEI training could
Speaker 1: end up being fired. Now, I think it's important to
Speaker 1: realize that literally everyone has been doing DEI training. This
Speaker 1: is not it wasn't even an opt in or opt
Speaker 1: out thing. People just did it. So, just like Trump
Speaker 1: has fired people in the FBI who slow walked the
Speaker 1: January sixth investigation, people who were white conservative men who
Speaker 1: thought the whole thing was silly, but still maybe prosecuted
Speaker 1: one or two cases, those people got fired. Well, now
Speaker 1: we have federal employees in the Department of Education, many
Speaker 1: of whom may actually not even be liberals or even
Speaker 1: for a DEI or even for diversity, some of which
Speaker 1: could be huge racists, and those people will be fired too.
Speaker 1: So I just want to point out like at every
Speaker 1: point this is like taking a sledgehammer to something that
Speaker 1: you know, I think weeding people out because of their
Speaker 1: ideology is is not how the federal government is supposed work.
Speaker 1: But even if you were to do that, that's not
Speaker 1: what's happening here. What's happening here is just chaos. And
Speaker 1: again this will of course end up being litigated to
Speaker 1: the hilt, but more than anything, it's also just a
Speaker 1: question of just such a stupid way to go about things,
Speaker 1: and we're going to see more of that.
Speaker 4: So Maley with the tariffs, of course, Mexico and Canada
Speaker 4: are actually fighting back. I think particularly some of Canada's
Speaker 4: strategy around this is pretty interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: First of all, they're, yeah, make it worse for red states.
Speaker 1: So Canada is going to target red states. They're going
Speaker 1: to target red state exports, things like orange juice that
Speaker 1: comes from Florida and liquor that comes from Kentucky, and
Speaker 1: they're going to go after the things that will actually
Speaker 1: hurt Trump voters.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and now Trump is saying that he'll raise the
Speaker 4: tariffs even more on Canada if they try to do
Speaker 4: things like this as usual in this era, the stupidity
Speaker 4: just keeps being a race to the bottom.
Speaker 2: Correct.
Speaker 1: Rick Wilson is the founder of the Lincoln Project and
Speaker 1: the host of the Enemy's List. Welcome back to Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: Rick Wilson.
Speaker 5: Hello, Molly John Fast. Welcome to the forty second month
Speaker 5: of the second Trump presidency.
Speaker 3: We're closing in on two weeks.
Speaker 5: Yes, indeed, but it.
Speaker 3: Does not feel like two weeks, does it.
Speaker 5: You know, they promised that they were going to flood
Speaker 5: the zone with shit, and I think it's important to
Speaker 5: emphasize the with shit part.
Speaker 2: You Know.
Speaker 1: What I'm struck by, as someone who who has done
Speaker 1: a lot of research on Project twenty twenty five is like,
Speaker 1: what we did that documentary on it?
Speaker 5: Wait? What project?
Speaker 2: What? Yeah?
Speaker 5: Exactly Trump's talking to do that. He said he wasn't, He.
Speaker 2: Said he wouldn't.
Speaker 1: But when we got involved in covering it in July
Speaker 1: and interviewing all the people who were academics to talk
Speaker 1: about it, one of the things I was struck by
Speaker 1: was just how it was like a laundry list of
Speaker 1: everything everyone who's conservative I had ever wanted.
Speaker 3: So it was like, you know, make life harder.
Speaker 1: For LGBTQ people were going to do this, We're going
Speaker 1: to do that, But the central focus this sort of
Speaker 1: unraveling of the federal government at breakneck speeds. I did
Speaker 1: not realize how much DOGE would be a part of
Speaker 1: trying to dismantle the federal government.
Speaker 2: And it's really something.
Speaker 5: I think it's important to understand that there are three
Speaker 5: factions inside of the Trump universe right now, and they're
Speaker 5: working together for the moment. There are the political arsonists
Speaker 5: who believe you have to not only reform government or
Speaker 5: shrink it, but.
Speaker 2: Kill it right and that's who That's.
Speaker 5: The russ Voughts. That's probably the majority of the coalition
Speaker 5: right now. There are the rologarchs and the kleptocrats, and
Speaker 5: I put Elon in kind of both camps, who want
Speaker 5: to take control of the systems in the government that
Speaker 5: will make them more rich. You know, call me crazy,
Speaker 5: but a guy who receives billions and millions and billions
Speaker 5: of dollars of taxpayer money every year having control over
Speaker 5: the system that hays people who get billions of dollars
Speaker 5: of taxpayer money every year is a little bit of
Speaker 5: a conflict. Call me crazy and Finally, there's the what
Speaker 5: I call the faith based weirdo community who want to
Speaker 5: reorganize American society along biblical lines and all this.
Speaker 3: Stuff we want to bring about the rapture.
Speaker 5: They are so hot for the rapture. But all of
Speaker 5: these groups right now are working somewhat together. Oh and
Speaker 5: there's a tiny fraction of the normies who just want
Speaker 5: their tax bill.
Speaker 2: Cut, right. I mean, I think that the voters are
Speaker 2: more like that.
Speaker 5: Some but a lot of them also are these revolutionary
Speaker 5: types who believe that, you know, things like the Agency
Speaker 5: for International Development is a Satanic cabal, right.
Speaker 2: I mean, not a lot of them, but that's the base.
Speaker 2: That's the base.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's not a lot, but it is a meaningful
Speaker 5: part of the basis what I call the catalog of
Speaker 5: imaginary demons.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think that.
Speaker 5: Right now we have one overwhelming piece of fact evidence
Speaker 5: right now, overwhelming piece of data about this world, and
Speaker 5: that is that President Musk is the single dominant force.
Speaker 5: As you point out, we did not some people did
Speaker 5: not anticipate the doge, which is just Elon by the way,
Speaker 5: and his minions, that they would be running and breaking
Speaker 5: into government computer systems that today they'd be at the
Speaker 5: State Department, an agency for international development, trying to get
Speaker 5: into classified records for which they have zero clearance.
Speaker 3: Right, and we're not elected to do more importantly.
Speaker 5: Right, as somebody said the to day, if Barack Obama
Speaker 5: had said to George Soros and his team go rifle
Speaker 5: through all the payment systems and government records in the government,
Speaker 5: what would the reaction on Fox be? Nuclear war?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: This is the kind of thing.
Speaker 1: If Democrats did a fifteenth of this, they would all
Speaker 1: end up there would be a mutiny. But the thing
Speaker 1: is Democrats would never do this, nor would they do
Speaker 1: the things that they should do that would counter this,
Speaker 1: which is basically how we got here.
Speaker 5: I was on an email chain and I kind of
Speaker 5: lost my mind with somebody this morning. And I don't
Speaker 5: really do that a lot. I don't really go are
Speaker 5: you fucking kidding me? Very frequently to allies. But this
Speaker 5: very good intention person is arguing to me, Oh, man,
Speaker 5: come on, we can just get him on the economy. Now,
Speaker 5: he's going to screw up the economy and we'll talk
Speaker 5: about how we're good for working people. And all I
Speaker 5: could think of was, are you ef thing kidding me?
Speaker 5: These guys have already taken away working people from the
Speaker 5: Democrats by calling the Democrats satanic, pedophile satanists every day.
Speaker 5: And the Democrats think they're going to sit across the table.
Speaker 5: And this person said to me, in good faith, you know,
Speaker 5: our focus groups keep telling us that voters want us
Speaker 5: to work together. And I'm like, so you're gonna let
Speaker 5: them fuck you in public and then fuck your mother
Speaker 5: and your dog in public and humiliate you.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So one of the things I was struck by.
Speaker 1: And again I think there's way too much talking about
Speaker 1: strategizing and not enough just actually doing stuff.
Speaker 3: But one of the things I was stripped by was
Speaker 3: the Justin Trudeau.
Speaker 1: Was explaining how tariffs work in a really clear way
Speaker 1: that I had not heard any of the Democrats, do
Speaker 1: you know. He said like, Donald Trump is going to
Speaker 1: punish us. But then he started speaking to Americans and
Speaker 1: He's like, and here's what he's that's going to.
Speaker 2: Do to you.
Speaker 1: And and I think that some of it was this
Speaker 1: fundamental like I didn't know that there were a lot
Speaker 1: of products like car parts that would come to Canada
Speaker 1: go back, go back again.
Speaker 2: You know that that will go.
Speaker 1: Back and forth, you know, four or five times, and
Speaker 1: so you know, they these things will be impossible to
Speaker 1: teariff Mutually.
Speaker 5: Beneficial trade between the United States and Canada and between
Speaker 5: the United States and Mexico has been one of the
Speaker 5: most fundamental economic facts that has helped all three countries meaningfully.
Speaker 5: This crap Trump's spewing out today, Oh, we're subsilois Canada. No, Donald,
Speaker 5: we really don't. All of it comes down to a
Speaker 5: fundamental misread and misunderstanding of modern economics. If Trump had
Speaker 5: any macroeconomic thinkers on his staff, they would say, oh, God,
Speaker 5: tariffs are a disaster. You have to stop this. You know,
Speaker 5: everybody was sort of like, oh, Steve Bissona seems very normal.
Speaker 5: The Treasury Secretary seems like a normy. He should be good.
Speaker 5: And now what is he doing? I mean, I'm looking
Speaker 5: right now on my screen. The world is shorting American
Speaker 5: markets for tomorrow. The stock Mark's going to open tomorrow
Speaker 5: or today? Is when this is being heard with a
Speaker 5: blood bath?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5: And these people they understand that Donald Trump has a
Speaker 5: wrong and dumb approach to this, but they are too
Speaker 5: afraid to say Donald, this is wrong and dumb.
Speaker 3: Well, they don't want to get fired.
Speaker 5: Well, they would be fired, that's true.
Speaker 1: Yeah, agreed, And I also think that this incredible story.
Speaker 1: Now we have Mayor Pete talking about Pete Buddhadage talking
Speaker 1: about how a lot of air traffic controllers were actually
Speaker 1: offered by it. Right, So even though there weren't necessarily
Speaker 1: though you know, there's a real crisis getting enough air
Speaker 1: traffic controllers, but a bunch of air traffic controllers got those,
Speaker 1: you know, got something similar to the emails right, the
Speaker 1: fork in the road email.
Speaker 5: The quick now get till August, or will fire you
Speaker 5: and you'll get nothing.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So watching that, you know, that's another thing. I mean,
Speaker 1: the whole idea of mate, you'll make the government more efficient.
Speaker 1: It will happen the way that Elon made X more efficient,
Speaker 1: which means that all of these services that made it
Speaker 1: a place you wanted to go will disappear.
Speaker 5: I want people to understand very clearly that Elon is
Speaker 5: looking for sort of b s, you know, splashy, fox
Speaker 5: friendly cuts that he'll be able to say, oh, well,
Speaker 5: we did this because we had to cut this program
Speaker 5: at aid for Lutheran Social Search that's FAD five million
Speaker 5: dollars a.
Speaker 3: Year today's Elon enemy is Lutherans.
Speaker 5: In case you wondering, those perdicious Lutherans are the problem.
Speaker 5: Here's my point on this though, and I think it's
Speaker 5: really important we understand this. The Lutherans are the rounding
Speaker 5: error of a fraction of a fraction of a deminimous
Speaker 5: amount of trivial spare change money. If you really wanted
Speaker 5: to cut trillions of dollars, as Elon claims he wants
Speaker 5: to do, you have to go for the big things.
Speaker 5: You have to go for Social Security, you have to
Speaker 5: go for Medicare, you have to go for Medicaid. And luckily,
Speaker 5: now that Elon Musk is in charge of all those
Speaker 5: payment systems, he can start cut. This is what makes
Speaker 5: me crazy about this right now.
Speaker 1: Who is a person who made billions of dollars on
Speaker 1: government subsidies?
Speaker 5: Yeah, and then let's let's be very real and very clear.
Speaker 5: Elon Musk is a welfare queen. He produces pretty rockets,
Speaker 5: which I really like, and his company receives billions of
Speaker 5: dollars of federal subsidies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, billions of dollars billion, way more than US Aid does.
Speaker 2: And I think right, order of magnitude right, and.
Speaker 1: I think that it's also worth remembering. So basically Trump
Speaker 1: doesn't understand soft power, right, he doesn't understand why you
Speaker 1: give money to AID organizations.
Speaker 5: I think some of this is Elon and a lot
Speaker 5: of these weirdos do understand how important those things are
Speaker 5: to American soft power. If you're the Chinese and the
Speaker 5: Russians watching USAID get dismantled, watching a way that the
Speaker 5: United States can go into other countries in Africa, in
Speaker 5: Asia and Latin America and South America and show our
Speaker 5: best selves our foes, our competitors, and our foes hate
Speaker 5: that kind of thing. They would much rather it be
Speaker 5: about who can the Chinese roll into the Central African
Speaker 5: Republic and bribe? Who can the Russians roll into meandmar
Speaker 5: and bribe? They would much rather it be that kind
Speaker 5: of world. And Elon and his calling it a criminal
Speaker 5: or organization, we really are going to come to a
Speaker 5: moment here. You can decide if you think it's a
Speaker 5: criminal organization or not if your review the books, But
Speaker 5: we're going to come to a moment here where it
Speaker 5: is a statutory, implemented government agency, it is in law.
Speaker 5: At some point, the Democrats in Congress will stand the
Speaker 5: fuck up, call up the guys at Future Forward or
Speaker 5: are still sitting on one hundred million dollars, and say,
Speaker 5: hire every fucking lawyer in America. We're going to court.
Speaker 5: Hire them all. We're going to court, because right now,
Speaker 5: the idea that we're going to sort of like hope
Speaker 5: that somebody maybe sort of steps up and defends the
Speaker 5: institutions is clearly not happening.
Speaker 3: Explain this a little better, you would like that to happen.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, we need to fight this battle, even if you
Speaker 5: lose it in the Supreme Court, and I don't think
Speaker 5: you will, by the bye, I don't think you will
Speaker 5: lose this in the Supreme Court. Taking it to court
Speaker 5: slows down the chaos, and they need as much chaos
Speaker 5: in as short a period of time as they can
Speaker 5: possibly wrangle. That idea that we're just going to sit
Speaker 5: here and let them do all these things is mistaken,
Speaker 5: and it's also something that the Democrats have to do
Speaker 5: in Congress itself. Right No, they have told on with
Speaker 5: every lobbyist in Washington, because a lot of lobbyists are like, oh, well,
Speaker 5: you know this, it's going to be okay, we'll work
Speaker 5: it out. We'll bribe Trump. They need to basically start saying,
Speaker 5: play some hardball, stop everything. If Mitch McConnell was a
Speaker 5: Democrat right now, do you think this and it would
Speaker 5: be rolling over like it is for Trump's nominees. If
Speaker 5: Mitch McConnell was a Democrat.
Speaker 2: No, certainly not.
Speaker 1: When the market's open tomorrow and the creator what happens.
Speaker 5: Next, Well, I think Trump will try to first break
Speaker 5: the markets to his will right and say it's a
Speaker 5: conspiracy by the globalist elites. But you know, I don't
Speaker 5: think that it really is going to hold up, and
Speaker 5: Elon is going to try to continue doing all this stuff. Look,
Speaker 5: these guys are Elon is like a sieve for data
Speaker 5: right now. His people are stealing American government day wholesale.
Speaker 5: He wants this to go as long as he can.
Speaker 5: We need to see the American financial community figure out
Speaker 5: that the pain that Trump is trying to inflict is
Speaker 5: fundamentally going to blow back on us. At the end
Speaker 5: of the day. Canada and Mexico will take some damage, Okay,
Speaker 5: you know what they will. They'll take some damage, but
Speaker 5: at the end of the day, the damage here will
Speaker 5: be even greater. And we need the markets to understand
Speaker 5: that fast sooner than later.
Speaker 2: I think they do, and I think they do.
Speaker 5: I mean, we've seen that right now as we're recording
Speaker 5: this on Sunday afternoon, the Dow is down almost four
Speaker 5: hundred points in the pre market trading, and the SMP
Speaker 5: is down about thirty three points in the pre market trading,
Speaker 5: and Nasdaq is down as well, about thirty five points.
Speaker 5: I think we're not going to have a pretty day
Speaker 5: tomorrow because one thing markets want is rationality, consistency, predictability,
Speaker 5: and right now I don't see a lot of predictability
Speaker 5: in this system we're looking at.
Speaker 1: Yes, I think Democrats are not doing enough, not loud enough,
Speaker 1: not clear enough about what they should be doing to
Speaker 1: stop this. And also again the drum beat should be this,
Speaker 1: you did not vote for Elon Musk. You did not
Speaker 1: vote to give him your data. You did not vote
Speaker 1: for him to control the payments. But the other thing
Speaker 1: that I do think is good about this moment is
Speaker 1: Donald Trump is not Justice Roberts, right, He is not.
Speaker 1: He is not Justice John Roberts. He is just as
Speaker 1: Sam Alito. He is burning the whole fucking place down.
Speaker 5: Whatever pissed him off in this world. He wants it
Speaker 5: to die.
Speaker 1: Right, And so the last two weeks it's very hard
Speaker 1: to point to something that wasn't insane.
Speaker 3: And now the idea that they're going to go, you know, it's.
Speaker 1: Very hard to say. And I also think the warring fractions.
Speaker 1: Steve Bannen has not is not giving Elon a pass
Speaker 1: by any stretch of the imagination. If anything, he's after
Speaker 1: him more.
Speaker 5: Steve right now is having a weird moment because he's
Speaker 5: aroused by the burning down of the government and the arson,
Speaker 5: but he hates Elon because he knows that Elon is
Speaker 5: doing this.
Speaker 2: Look all the.
Speaker 5: Boom bait Elon's throwing out about wokeness and all that
Speaker 5: craft that they're purging out of the computer systems and everything.
Speaker 5: What it really is about is Elon becoming a trillionaire
Speaker 5: and Elon deploying his money and power against anybody that
Speaker 5: gets in his way. It's why Susie Wiles, the great
Speaker 5: and powerful Susie Wiles, has absolutely failed to check Elon's power.
Speaker 5: She's not even trying anymore. So President Musk is running wild,
Speaker 5: and Steve Bannon is now like the guy who's like,
Speaker 5: I didn't want to go to the problem with you anyway.
Speaker 1: Right, there are a lot of most people in the
Speaker 1: federal government, though a lot they're in places that they
Speaker 1: probably should not be, and some of them have SUPRISD.
Speaker 5: Which is within one hundred mile radius of Washington, DC.
Speaker 1: Right, But I mean, are there checks and balances for
Speaker 1: the hat No?
Speaker 5: No, because right now Trump is now aware that every
Speaker 5: single one of these people that is out there trying
Speaker 5: to get into classified data systems like they're doing at
Speaker 5: the State Department right now, trying to get into skiffs
Speaker 5: as Elon Musk tried to do today. Elon Musk doesn't
Speaker 5: have a security clearance. Guys, he was denied a security
Speaker 5: clearance because he is a ketamine addict and a weirdo.
Speaker 3: Well, we don't know why he has denied it. Let's
Speaker 3: not consued here.
Speaker 5: Ok. Yeah, then, as someone who had a security clearance,
Speaker 5: I can tell you that if you're a ketemine adict
Speaker 5: and a weirdo, they won't give you a security clearance.
Speaker 5: So but long story short, all of this, to my mind,
Speaker 5: is still about the financial incentives for Elon and the
Speaker 5: billionaire class. They really, really really want to control of
Speaker 5: these government monetary systems and payment systems and everything else,
Speaker 5: because you see what Elon's already doing, Like government agencies
Speaker 5: are now posting only to Twitter their information at press releases. Yeah,
Speaker 5: how is that not Elon Musk receiving a government benefit
Speaker 5: and a molument of a contract without any sort of
Speaker 5: of propriety. Well, I mean, I know, propriety is like
Speaker 5: low on their checklist, right anyway, Right.
Speaker 2: Rick Wilson, thank you for joining us.
Speaker 5: You are welcome as always. I will talk to you
Speaker 5: again next time.
Speaker 1: Thomas Frank is the author of books like What's the
Speaker 1: Matter with Kansas and The People Know? Welcome back to
Speaker 1: Fast Politics, Thomas.
Speaker 2: Frank, Well, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: Jesse and I are big fans of yours, so whenever
Speaker 1: we get an opportunity to have you on, we're.
Speaker 3: Both like, oh my god, we're your people. So I'm
Speaker 3: hoping you wrote a really.
Speaker 1: Smart topic in the New York Times which you described
Speaker 1: the moment you knew that Trump was going to win again.
Speaker 1: Would you explain to us what happened there and how
Speaker 1: you got to that thought process.
Speaker 2: Well, look, I mean I could also have said I
Speaker 2: understood all of this stuff was going to happen when
Speaker 2: I was back in high school. There's just been a
Speaker 2: recurring theme of my of my entire life. You know,
Speaker 2: it just goes on and on and on. What's the
Speaker 2: matter with Kansas came out twenty years ago. It never ends.
Speaker 2: I've been looking back over, you know a lot of
Speaker 2: the sort of the raw material of the Democratic Party's
Speaker 2: downfall of the last Oh jeez, is it fifty years?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, since sixty eight is the sort of the was
Speaker 2: the moment when it all changed?
Speaker 1: Why is sixty eight the high water mark in your mind?
Speaker 1: They started losing working voter.
Speaker 2: They lost the election that year, and it was close, right,
Speaker 2: It wasn't like, it wasn't a blowout. Everybody thought that
Speaker 2: Hubert Humphrey was going to go down in a landslide,
Speaker 2: but it turned out to Richard Nixon. It turned out
Speaker 2: to be fairly close. But it nevertheless convinced the Democratic Party.
Speaker 2: Their failure that year convinced the Democratic Party that they
Speaker 2: had to change course, you know, that they had to
Speaker 2: undertake this like self examination and become something very different.
Speaker 2: And they did it deliberately. Well, it was. There was
Speaker 2: a reform at called the McGovern Commission, but they've been
Speaker 2: basically doing that ever since, right, constantly, constantly isay.
Speaker 5: What went wrong? What do we have to do differently?
Speaker 2: I mean, so for you know, I was fifteen when
Speaker 2: Ronald Reagan got elected, and it's just been one self
Speaker 2: examination after another since then. But what's amusing about it
Speaker 2: is that all of these self examinations, and sometimes they're
Speaker 2: very liberal.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 2: We think of George McGovern as being very very liberal,
Speaker 2: and then we think of the Democratic Leadership Council where
Speaker 2: Bill Clinton came out of. We think of them as
Speaker 2: being more centrist or even conservative, But they all lead
Speaker 2: to they all take the party in the same direction
Speaker 2: no matter where they come from, right, which is why
Speaker 2: the catchphrase is that the New Deal has to end. Right,
Speaker 2: That's what they would always say when I was young,
Speaker 2: we have to stop being the party of the New Deal.
Speaker 2: And they would come up with different reasons for that,
Speaker 2: and they'd come up with different, you know, ideas for
Speaker 2: how to what should succeed the New Deal Democrats, but
Speaker 2: it basically always wound up being we need to become
Speaker 2: the party of highly educated professionals, you know, affluent white
Speaker 2: collar suburbanites. Always so, whether it's liberals pushing this change
Speaker 2: or whether it's conservatives pushing this change, and whether they're
Speaker 2: doing it in the name of nineteen sixties style, you know, enlightenment,
Speaker 2: existential enlightenment, or whether they're doing it in the name
Speaker 2: of globalism, war, globalization. I'm thinking of Clinton's faction here,
Speaker 2: globalization and technology and you know, the Internet and all
Speaker 2: that stuff. Whether they're doing it in the name of
Speaker 2: the one or whether they're doing it the name of
Speaker 2: the other, it's always it's always wind's up being the
Speaker 2: same goddamn thing. It's really fascinating, but it's not intentional.
Speaker 1: I mean that's like sometimes it is, but a lot
Speaker 1: of times it's not right. What we're talking about here
Speaker 1: is the Democratic Party's inability to connect with the working class,
Speaker 1: or let me rephrase that, the Democratic Party's loss of
Speaker 1: some of the working class, despite the fact that they
Speaker 1: have policies that are much more favorable to the working
Speaker 1: class or even to the middle class.
Speaker 2: I mean, look at poor Joe Biden. He did some
Speaker 2: truly decent things. He was the first president to ever
Speaker 2: march on a union line. Yeah, in a picket line, yell.
Speaker 1: And then his vice president was not able to be
Speaker 1: was not endorsed by unions.
Speaker 2: Like I mean, that was insane. There's something really tragic
Speaker 2: about the whole thing. I don't really want to pick
Speaker 2: on on Joe Biden here is not able to defend himself.
Speaker 2: He had there was a neo Rooseveltian side to him
Speaker 2: that I really liked. But he was also there, you know,
Speaker 2: at the same time, had a lot of these very
Speaker 2: typical neoliberal democrats in his administration who are pushing the
Speaker 2: other way. So maybe this is a really Washingtonian thing.
Speaker 2: I don't think it is, but maybe it is. He
Speaker 2: was really good on anti trust. What he did on
Speaker 2: anti trust is like that's I've been calling for that
Speaker 2: for decades, and I was overjoyed that he did these things.
Speaker 1: The case for Lena and the fact that no one
Speaker 1: explained to the American people, I.
Speaker 2: Mean, oh, Harris didn't even mention it. It didn't even
Speaker 2: come up. Biden was doing some pretty you know, revolutionary things. Well,
Speaker 2: I mean, that's that's the wrong word, but no, but
Speaker 2: it's true revolutionary is the way. We didn't even talk
Speaker 2: about it at the convention. And certainly Harriston once her
Speaker 2: campaign got rolling, all that stuff really fell away. You know,
Speaker 2: she's out there embracing the Chinese and all this stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Biden had really good policy, really bad pr I mean,
Speaker 1: ultimately could not transmit the policy, but.
Speaker 2: Not across the board. Now, there's plenty of areas in
Speaker 2: which Biden failed. Okay, so talk to me about that. Well,
Speaker 2: it's foreign policy. This is this is catastrophic. It's too little,
Speaker 2: too late in a lot of ways. You know. The
Speaker 2: handful of things about what he was doing that I
Speaker 2: really really appreciated, never went far enough to be felt
Speaker 2: by ordinary Americans or to be felt, you know, in
Speaker 2: a way that that caused them to, you know, come
Speaker 2: around to this poor guy, Joe, And I'm sorry, I
Speaker 2: just feel I feel like I feel like there's a
Speaker 2: tragedy here, you know.
Speaker 1: Right, No, for sure, I mean I feel very interested
Speaker 1: in sort of figuring out what went wrong in the
Speaker 1: hopes of not repeating it, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I liked Biden. Fine.
Speaker 1: I think he did some very cool legislation that we
Speaker 1: would not have had otherwise, right, Like, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, Like the stuff, the antitrust stuff I thought
Speaker 1: was really good.
Speaker 2: The Chips and Sciences Act was really good. Yeah. No,
Speaker 2: his infrastructure spending that's going to you watch what happens,
Speaker 2: Trump is going to reap all the all the gains
Speaker 2: of that. Well, this is okay, So this is a
Speaker 2: lot of this is they phased that stuff in really slowly.
Speaker 2: I don't know why Democrats always do things like that,
Speaker 2: but they do. And it drives me crazy. And can
Speaker 2: I just say, Mollie, one of the things that is,
Speaker 2: I just want to get this out there because otherwise
Speaker 2: I'll forget and I want It just burns me up
Speaker 2: so much. When Obama was president. You remember, in Obama's
Speaker 2: second term, I was writing for Salon dot com at
Speaker 2: the time. Obama wouldn't he wasn't doing anything. He wouldn't
Speaker 2: do anything in his second term, and it was it
Speaker 2: was absolutely maddening to people like me, and his defenders
Speaker 2: made the most outrageous excuses for it. There was this
Speaker 2: whole line that he used to come across and from
Speaker 2: the you know, the pundit core here in Washington, d C.
Speaker 2: Where they'd say the presidency isn't isn't a very powerful office.
Speaker 2: They used to use this phrase, you know, to demand
Speaker 2: that Obama do anything. Was what they called the green
Speaker 2: Lantern theory of the presidency, where he was magical and
Speaker 2: this made me so angry. Do you remember this? And
Speaker 2: he made me so angry. I called a bunch of
Speaker 2: my policy wonk friends and said, what could Obama do
Speaker 2: without Congress? Like, really, give me five really momentous things
Speaker 2: that he could do. And we came up with them
Speaker 2: and I wrote the essay. One of them, by the way,
Speaker 2: was antitrust.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 2: That doesn't require Congress. The laws are already on the books.
Speaker 2: You know, he just has to order his attorney general
Speaker 2: to you know, start doing it. Well, bum didn't do
Speaker 2: any of them, of course, of the things that I
Speaker 2: came up with, But it just burns me up that
Speaker 2: as a party, Democrats are committed to this idea of
Speaker 2: presidential powerlessness as a party, and then the Republicans are Republicans.
Speaker 2: Look at what Trump has done in one week.
Speaker 1: It is crazy when we look at this trumpy kind
Speaker 1: of presidential power question. I want you to talk to
Speaker 1: us more about what Democrats can do because the thing
Speaker 1: that keeps me up at night, right, is this really
Speaker 1: a lot of policy that's popular. Is the party that
Speaker 1: wants to give people free healthcare is losing the people
Speaker 1: who get the free healthcare.
Speaker 2: So how why explain only a few of them really
Speaker 2: want to do the free health care thing. That's a
Speaker 2: Bernie Elizabeth Warren.
Speaker 1: You have one party that's encouraging Medicaid expansion, you have
Speaker 1: one party that wants to gut it, and yet the
Speaker 1: people on Medicaid don't want to vote for So what
Speaker 1: make it make sense?
Speaker 2: Make it make sense? As though you just ye, sorry,
Speaker 2: oh Mollie, have you ever did you ever call the
Speaker 2: wrong guy? Now I'm kidding. I'm like the one guy
Speaker 2: who probably can I can take a swing at this,
Speaker 2: and I would say first of all, that the Democrats aren't.
Speaker 2: The most important thing is that what you just identified
Speaker 2: would be. It would be like, really awesome if we
Speaker 2: had a traditional middle class oriented party of the left
Speaker 2: in America that was fighting for things like that. And
Speaker 2: I think such a party would with the right leadership,
Speaker 2: would be kicking ass all over the place at this
Speaker 2: very moment. But the perception that people have and it's
Speaker 2: not I mean, you know the words the liberal elite.
Speaker 2: They've been hanging this label on the Democrats since the
Speaker 2: days of Richard Nixon, and they've been doing it very successfully.
Speaker 2: This is what what's the matter with Kansas was about
Speaker 2: the thing that keeps me up at night and makes
Speaker 2: me so angry. Is the way that democrats. This is
Speaker 2: such a big subject here, but they walk right into it.
Speaker 2: They walk right into it again and again and again,
Speaker 2: and they can't see how they might be perceived as
Speaker 2: an elite. You know, it's incredibly obvious, but they can't
Speaker 2: see it, and they walk into it again and again
Speaker 2: and again. Did I ever tell you about the neighborhood
Speaker 2: I grew up in in Kansas City. It's in Johnson County, Kansas,
Speaker 2: you know, right over the border from Missouri. It was very,
Speaker 2: very affluent. The Frank family wasn't well to do, but
Speaker 2: nevertheless we lived there. But there's some weird flute. We
Speaker 2: happened to live there among these people. And so my
Speaker 2: playmates when I was a kid were the ruling class
Speaker 2: of Kansas City. They owned the place, They owned the banks,
Speaker 2: they owned the industries, they owned you know whatever, they
Speaker 2: advertising agencies, they owned the place. They and they owned
Speaker 2: the state. It was theirs. And they were all Republicans.
Speaker 2: When I was a kid, I thought these were the
Speaker 2: most Republican people I would ever meet. They loved Bob Dole,
Speaker 2: you know, you used to when I would go to
Speaker 2: vote back in well, I was in college and I
Speaker 2: was I was by then, I was voting for Democrats.
Speaker 2: You would go to the polling place and they had
Speaker 2: this you know that you'd give them your name and
Speaker 2: they had this thick rent out of all the Republicans
Speaker 2: in the neighborhood, and then the Democrats were a single
Speaker 2: page right right. But that was in the eighties, and
Speaker 2: I was there for you know, I don't have any
Speaker 2: connection with the place anymore. We find my parents died,
Speaker 2: We sold the house and I moved out, you know,
Speaker 2: I moved all my stuff out actually just last year.
Speaker 2: But I was there for the election of twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: I was there with my elderly father. It was COVID
Speaker 2: time and I was I was, you know, keeping him
Speaker 2: healthy and safe.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 2: I also took the opportunity to check up on what,
Speaker 2: you know, our neighbors were doing, whose yard signs they had,
Speaker 2: and the neighbor the neighborhood was converted to the Democratic Party.
Speaker 2: Is the most incredible thing I ever saw. This is
Speaker 2: the ruling elite of that part of the world. And
Speaker 2: Biden won every precinct and Hillary did quite well there too.
Speaker 2: In twenty sixteen, although I wasn't there to at the
Speaker 2: time to check on it. But this is happening all
Speaker 2: over America. The highly educated in the Affling, yes, but
Speaker 2: rich people whose wealth is associated with education, so rich
Speaker 2: people who like have inherited, or rich people who own
Speaker 2: the local buick dealership, if such things still exist, those
Speaker 2: people still tend to be Republicans. But our neighbors back
Speaker 2: in Mission Hills were you know, yeah, they became Democrats.
Speaker 2: It's the most shocking thing I ever saw. I spent
Speaker 2: my life making fun of Republicans. Yeah, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: it's true. And look what happened.
Speaker 1: What you're talking about is a democratic party that cannot
Speaker 1: connect with populism, despite the fact that there has a
Speaker 1: word populist values. So well, you talk about in that essay,
Speaker 1: and what you talk about a lot is this idea
Speaker 1: that the Democrats are doing things to alienate the populist voter.
Speaker 2: So talk about that. This is, by the way, one
Speaker 2: of my perennial subjects. The people who mate who invented
Speaker 2: the word populism were guys from Kansas, and they were
Speaker 2: what we would now think of as a left wing party.
Speaker 2: I mean, they didn't use terms like left and right
Speaker 2: back then. But that's what they were, and you know,
Speaker 2: they were a farmer labor party. They of merged or
Speaker 2: got co opted by, or went into the Democratic Party.
Speaker 2: Beginning in the eighteen nineties, the Democratic Party became the
Speaker 2: more left of the two parties. Now, this didn't work out.
Speaker 2: It took years for it to work itself out fully.
Speaker 2: And it wasn't until you know, Franklin Roosevelt that that
Speaker 2: was established that the Democratic Party was a left. But
Speaker 2: the Democratic Party has They are the natural bearers of
Speaker 2: the populist tradition in this country, and yet the right
Speaker 2: wing has swiped that from them. This is what I've
Speaker 2: written about my whole life. I mean, I'm trying to,
Speaker 2: by the way, just so you know, I'm trying to
Speaker 2: get away from this subject now and not write about
Speaker 2: it anymore because it's become I just can't keep saying
Speaker 2: the same thing over and over again. But the right
Speaker 2: wing has stolen this from them, and there is no
Speaker 2: better example than Donald Trump. Well, because it wins, because
Speaker 2: that's the bath to success.
Speaker 1: But why can't Democrat keep it? What are they doing
Speaker 1: to alienate the voters they need?
Speaker 2: Well, there's a lot of things. You know. I went
Speaker 2: to both conventions last year on behalf of a French newspaper.
Speaker 2: They sent me there. One of the most remarkable speeches
Speaker 2: at the Republican convention, by the way, Donald Trump's speech was.
Speaker 2: I was down on the floor. I was within twenty
Speaker 2: yards of Trump. He was very boring. Can you Amy,
Speaker 2: isn't that amazed? On and on and on, and he
Speaker 2: was quite boring. Yeah, always, well, I remember in sixteen
Speaker 2: he was more he was slightly more exciting, but whatever.
Speaker 2: You know, who was interesting was Vance. JD.
Speaker 5: Vance.
Speaker 2: It's like they instructed him, JD. You're going to be
Speaker 2: our populist guy this time around. You're going to carry
Speaker 2: the populis banner. And he went out there in his
Speaker 2: speech and he blamed the Democrats for NAFTA. That's fair, right,
Speaker 2: that was Bill Clinton who got that done. But in
Speaker 2: fact NAFTA was negotiated by Republicans, by George Bush Senior,
Speaker 2: by Ronald Reagan's government. But he blamed the Democrats for NAFTA.
Speaker 2: He blamed the Democrats, I believe, yeah, for the bank bailouts.
Speaker 2: I don't have my notes on this. And then he
Speaker 2: blamed the Democrats for the Iraq war. Yeah really, yes,
Speaker 2: Well he blamed Biden for voting for it. I mean,
Speaker 2: he did vote for it, I know, But this is
Speaker 2: a Republican convention.
Speaker 6: It's like, there's a guy called George Bush. I just
Speaker 6: got to tell you about this guy, George Bush. There's
Speaker 6: a guy called Dick Cheney. I just got to remind you.
Speaker 6: And here's the Democrats go out and embrace Dick Cheney.
Speaker 6: There's you know, there's a lot of reasons why the
Speaker 6: Democrats have done this to themselves, and a lot of
Speaker 6: it is you take a guy like Bill Clinton, who
Speaker 6: really did so much to move the Democratic Party to
Speaker 6: the right back in the nineteen nineties, and he thought
Speaker 6: he was doing it because of the sort of you know,
Speaker 6: grand global sweeping forces of historical change, and he was
Speaker 6: bringing the Party of the Left into step with modernity.
Speaker 2: That's really what he thought. If you're unless you're like
Speaker 2: even more cynical than me, that's what Bill Clinton was
Speaker 2: trying to do. So though he sincerely thought he was
Speaker 2: doing a good thing, doing the right thing, when he
Speaker 2: signed off on NAFTA, when he deregulated banks, when he
Speaker 2: ended welfare, and he intended to advertize social security too.
Speaker 2: He didn't get around to that. But you know this
Speaker 2: is these are all the kind of things. Yeah, these
Speaker 2: are no kidding, that's you know, having elderly parents, you know,
Speaker 2: you you wake up and thank God for Franklin D.
Speaker 5: Roosevelt every day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Tomas, frank thank you so much for coming out.
Speaker 2: We're done. I'm just getting looked up here.
Speaker 1: It's twenty minutes, baby, We're at twenty two minutes.
Speaker 2: Can I make one last point, though, please do, please
Speaker 2: do the really cynical take. So I said, that's the
Speaker 2: earnest take. The cynical take is that Democrats like being
Speaker 2: the party of the rich. You look at their Look
Speaker 2: at their presidential libraries over the years. Harry Truman's, which
Speaker 2: is in Kansas City or a suburb of Kens City,
Speaker 2: very modest, one story building. It cost him a little
Speaker 2: over a million dollars to build in the nineteen fifties
Speaker 2: or whatever. Look at Barack Obama's, like Chike can't structure.
Speaker 2: They're putting up right now in the South side of Chicago.
Speaker 2: That's the difference. And that's the it's fun being the
Speaker 2: party of let's be really blunt, it's fun being the
Speaker 2: party of.
Speaker 1: The Rich interesting, Thomas Frank, thank you, you got it.
Speaker 2: Molly anytime, no moment pactly, Jesse Cannon, Molly Junk Fast.
Speaker 4: So I have to say, I don't know about you,
Speaker 4: but the amount of techs I got about Elon and
Speaker 4: his goons getting access to the US Treasury payment system
Speaker 4: and now the skiff all weekend, it's just been a
Speaker 4: long weekend of me was going.
Speaker 5: I wish I could not have to think about him. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Elon, he got into the federal payment system that
Speaker 1: pays out government money, and now he is looking around
Speaker 1: in there under the guise of government efficiency.
Speaker 3: He's tweeting about it.
Speaker 1: He's shutting down illegal payments to quote unquote legal payments
Speaker 1: right to organizations. He's posting stuff online. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: just exactly what you thought it would be. It's a
Speaker 1: very unstable kid in a candy shop.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it's not feel feeling good about what damage
Speaker 4: she can inflict.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
Speaker 1: every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear the best
Speaker 1: minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If
Speaker 1: you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend
Speaker 1: and keep the conversation going Thanks for listening,