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 Secretary of Education Linda McMahon won't
Speaker 1: rule out URFK Junior taking over school vaccine programs. This
Speaker 1: is insane. We have such a great show for you today.
Speaker 1: Lincoln Project's own Rick Wilson jobs by to talk to
Speaker 1: us about Trump's dismantling of the Department of Education. Then
Speaker 1: we'll talk to Wesleyan University President Michael S. Roth about
Speaker 1: Trump's attempts to bully universities into his policies.
Speaker 2: Smiles.
Speaker 3: Googling around to see if activists have ever brought down
Speaker 3: a Senate majority leader, and I'm going to shock you,
Speaker 3: but I could not find any existence of precedent for this.
Speaker 3: So it does not really shock me that Schuber is
Speaker 3: basically saying I ain't stepping down.
Speaker 1: Here's the deal. People are mad at Chuck Schumer. People
Speaker 1: are really mad, and actually the base and the people
Speaker 1: who are protesting everywhere, and by the way, hey, this
Speaker 1: is not getting the kind of mainstream media coverage that
Speaker 1: it should. There's a lot of protests going around and
Speaker 1: there's not getting a ton of coverage. But people are
Speaker 1: protesting and they are really, really really mad. I took Schumer.
Speaker 1: Now they're mad because they feel that they didn't get
Speaker 1: anything right the truck. Schumer did not get anything for
Speaker 1: the cr This is because we've seen Republicans get things
Speaker 1: for CRS. Right, We've seen them threaten to crash the economy,
Speaker 1: to blow through the death ceiling, and we've seen people
Speaker 1: get stuff and Schumer didn't get anything. Now, that said
Speaker 1: Schumer was when it went through Congress. Once this bill
Speaker 1: had gotten to the Senate, it was going to be
Speaker 1: very very hard to stop it.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Once the bill had gotten to the Senate, it was
Speaker 1: odd Democrats to shut down the government. Had it not
Speaker 1: gotten through the House, that would have been a different story.
Speaker 1: But again, Elon and Trump together are votes for Mike Johnson.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: We know this to be true. We know that Elon
Speaker 1: is donating to people in the Republican Party who do
Speaker 1: what he wants, and this has worked incredibly well for
Speaker 1: Trump and his people. So could Schumer do more? Yes?
Speaker 1: Should Schumer do more? Apps fucking lutely, here's another problem
Speaker 1: with us. There is no one right now who wants
Speaker 1: the job. If a Democrat wants to take this job.
Speaker 1: They need to stand up and say I want this job. Now.
Speaker 1: Is that Chris Murphy, I don't know, Maybe it is,
Speaker 1: maybe it's Brian Shotts. I mean, there are any number
Speaker 1: of people who could take this job, but if they're
Speaker 1: not out there trying to get the job, then there's
Speaker 1: a feeling that maybe no one wants this job. So
Speaker 1: I do think that this only works if someone comes
Speaker 1: forward and says they want the job, which again, Chris
Speaker 1: Murphy could absolutely do. So could there are any number
Speaker 1: of Democratic members of the Senate who could. But until
Speaker 1: that happens, it's going to be hard. And I think
Speaker 1: that if you want to stand up for democracy, you
Speaker 1: need to be brave.
Speaker 3: So this is another disturbing deportation. The niece of a
Speaker 3: green cardholder who's been the US for fifty years has
Speaker 3: been detained by Ice.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, we're just going to hear a story
Speaker 1: after story like this. You know why, because this is
Speaker 1: what we're doing, Like, this is what we as a
Speaker 1: country are now deporting people without checking into their status.
Speaker 1: We're deporting first and asking questions later. So here's the question.
Speaker 1: Here's sixty four year old aunt called Anti Lynn first detained.
Speaker 1: She's sixty four, detained by Custom and Border Patrol at
Speaker 1: Seattle Tacoma International Airport. She was returning from a trip
Speaker 1: to the Philippines. She immigrated to the US from the
Speaker 1: Philippines when she was get ready fourteen. So she has
Speaker 1: lived in this country for half a century, right, half
Speaker 1: a century. She is now in a Northwest ice detention facility.
Speaker 1: She has lived in this country for half a century. Okay,
Speaker 1: by the way, it's a ice processing center which is
Speaker 1: privately owned by the Geo Group, a private prison company. Right,
Speaker 1: they're fifteen hundred other detainees. It's been open since two
Speaker 1: thousand and four. Her family has not been told anything
Speaker 1: by ICE. She has a non violent conviction for embezzlement,
Speaker 1: which is probably why she came up in the computers
Speaker 1: in the first place. She was in a halfway house
Speaker 1: for thirty days and she has a sixty four hundred
Speaker 1: dollars fine. This is what it is. So a sixty
Speaker 1: four year old woman is in a private prison, an
Speaker 1: ice detainment center. How does this make America great?
Speaker 2: I don't think it does.
Speaker 3: Neither does the richest man on earth, who's going to
Speaker 3: sue everybody who talks about him into submission to not
Speaker 3: say anything about him, as is evidenced by Elon Musk
Speaker 3: promising a lawsuit after ex Congressman Jamal Bowman called him
Speaker 3: a Nazi.
Speaker 1: This is one of these things. It turns out that
Speaker 1: Elon is actually not a free speech absolutist. He was
Speaker 1: just a guy who wants the people he agrees with
Speaker 1: to get elevated and not the people he doesn't agree with.
Speaker 1: You know, it's funny because it's like all of these
Speaker 1: free speech people didn't like certain types of speech. I
Speaker 1: am not surprised by this one bit there. He's going
Speaker 1: to keep doing this. And look, Musk and the far
Speaker 1: right have had a lot of success with suing people
Speaker 1: for saying things they didn't like, so none of us
Speaker 1: should be surprised by this. This is going to keep going,
Speaker 1: Bowman said on Thursday and CNN the American people do
Speaker 1: not trust Musk because Musk is incompetent. This is going
Speaker 1: to keep going.
Speaker 3: Speaking of bad legal news, so this seemed to be
Speaker 3: the real top line headline for a lot of people
Speaker 3: in the legal world of scary things that well, I'm
Speaker 3: gonna be honest, this is a little bit about my
Speaker 3: pay gread Could you explain it?
Speaker 1: Trump targeted this law firm that is called Paul Weiss.
Speaker 1: It's a big blue chip law firm. They represented people
Speaker 1: who tried to prosecute Trump or criticize Trump or whatever
Speaker 1: the crime quote unquote was. Paul Weiss made the decision
Speaker 1: that a lot of billionaires have made this sort of
Speaker 1: decision that they thought that if they went to Trump
Speaker 1: and they said, oh, mister Trump, we we love you,
Speaker 1: we are sorry we ever represented someone you didn't like,
Speaker 1: that Trump would stop targeting him. This executive order targeted
Speaker 1: the firm and it could have cost them business. Now,
Speaker 1: Paul was a huge law firm makes gazillions of dollars.
Speaker 1: They didn't want to fight with Trump. They thought it
Speaker 1: would be easier and better just to give up and
Speaker 1: maybe they could manipulate him into doing what they want.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing, and this is what we see
Speaker 1: again and again, just like what we saw with Columbia.
Speaker 1: You give into a bully, you don't win. These billionaires
Speaker 1: think maybe that they can manipulate Trump into getting what
Speaker 1: they want, and maybe Elon can, but a lot of
Speaker 1: these people are just going to see that Trump is
Speaker 1: just going to bully them. More so, Paul White happy
Speaker 1: to go along with whatever I said that they would
Speaker 1: donate forty million dollars in free legal work for things
Speaker 1: of Trump believes in. That is a totally incredible I'm
Speaker 1: fascinated to see what they end up doing. You know,
Speaker 1: the head of Paul Whites went into the White House
Speaker 1: and tried to suck up to Trump. What we know
Speaker 1: from Trump one point zero is you do this and
Speaker 1: it doesn't work. If it worked, that would be one thing,
Speaker 1: But that is not what happens here. George Conway, frequent
Speaker 1: Trump critic and friend of this podcast, they have a
Speaker 1: moral duty to defend the very system that has allowed
Speaker 1: them to make the kind of money that they make.
Speaker 1: These law firms are now basically so profit driven that
Speaker 1: they are putting their own economic interests above that of
Speaker 1: the system. Conway said, this is not only morally appalling
Speaker 1: and morally fraud and just contemptible, but in the end
Speaker 1: of the day, it is self defeating. That's right, because
Speaker 1: if the rule of law doesn't matter, which Paul Weiss
Speaker 1: is saying it doesn't, then why do we even need lawyers?
Speaker 1: And that is a real question, and good for George
Speaker 1: Conway for saying it. Rick Wilson is the founder of
Speaker 1: the Lincoln Project in the host of the Enemies List.
Speaker 1: Welcome back a few fast politics, My buddy, Rick Wilson.
Speaker 2: Molly John Fast. Lovely to see you as always.
Speaker 1: So it's Sunday, week nine and Trump's America Sunday.
Speaker 2: Sunday Sunday. That kind of thrills the spills. You're the
Speaker 2: fans want to see you in here.
Speaker 1: Yes, things are going great.
Speaker 2: The world is really really doing well.
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel like other countries finally respect us.
Speaker 2: You know, we've waited so long to be respected again,
Speaker 2: and until this very day, until the magic of our
Speaker 2: of our Golden Age economy, our robust system of the
Speaker 2: rule of checks and pounds protecting the rights of others,
Speaker 2: the checks and balances that other nations only could dream
Speaker 2: of achieving. Until today. Honestly, I mean, no one, no
Speaker 2: one could have anticipated that Donald Trump would have ushered
Speaker 2: in this era of stability, prosperity, comedy, goodwill toward men.
Speaker 1: I'm sick of winning, personally.
Speaker 2: I'm exhausted by the winning, so much winning.
Speaker 1: So you're listening to this, you're driving to work. It's Monday.
Speaker 1: You have another week. Let's just get them up to
Speaker 1: speed about what happened this weekend. You tell me if
Speaker 1: you think this appropriate. Members of Trump's administration clowned themselves
Speaker 1: on national television trying to defend the indefense of ball.
Speaker 2: I think that's really part one of the most perfect
Speaker 2: summaries of this weekend I could have imagined, because even
Speaker 2: on some of their more friendly outlets, there seems to
Speaker 2: be creeping into the dialogue a little bit of like, really, really,
Speaker 2: what you do?
Speaker 1: What? Yeah? I mean, It's like, I feel like a
Speaker 1: good gauge for how bad things are is Rupert Murdoch.
Speaker 1: If Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal and New York Post
Speaker 1: are saying things like we implore the president to stop
Speaker 1: fucking up our stock market and doing da da da,
Speaker 1: that is an important data point.
Speaker 2: I will say that the important data point that we're deriving,
Speaker 2: especially from the Rupert verse, begging Donald Trump to cut
Speaker 2: the shit out, Begging Donald Trump to put Elon Musk
Speaker 2: on a leash, Begging Donald Trump to stop the threats
Speaker 2: to invade Greenland.
Speaker 1: You don't want to invade Greenland.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Look, I still believe we would be greeted as liberators.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, they love that.
Speaker 2: But that's the problem with Greenland is it's so close,
Speaker 2: it's so tempting, it's so sparsely populated. I would like
Speaker 2: to make a proposal. If we do invade Greenland, I
Speaker 2: believe it should become the center of the Maga universe.
Speaker 2: I believe that is many of the trust stars reality.
Speaker 1: Here, buddy, all right, all right, all right, so I'm
Speaker 1: not going to let you get too far off the leash. Here,
Speaker 1: Betsy DeVos. Today on CNN, we had Steve witkof, you know,
Speaker 1: making international pieces harder than I thought.
Speaker 2: Can I just say this about Steve wick.
Speaker 1: Cough, Yes, please.
Speaker 2: If they were going to hire somebody who was such
Speaker 2: a profound sucker for Vladimir Putin's sewage pipe tidal wave
Speaker 2: of lies and bullshit, who has such an evident lack
Speaker 2: of any historical knowledge, it's a good choice for that
Speaker 2: this job. I mean, just hire somebody direct from the
Speaker 2: Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Because with Cough he did
Speaker 2: try to wander through his talking points. They're like, oh,
Speaker 2: the don boss, And I'm sorry, guys, it's only four
Speaker 2: fucking items. Okay, Just want to memorize a little thing
Speaker 2: here and there.
Speaker 1: They did not send their best nor their brightest.
Speaker 2: No, no, they didn't. And as for Betsy de Vas,
Speaker 2: let's be very very honest about this. There is a
Speaker 2: I believe an inverse correlation between your desire to burn
Speaker 2: down the Department of Education and your education, because this
Speaker 2: is another area where even some of his most passionate
Speaker 2: followers are like, yeah, my state is not great on education.
Speaker 2: Could you not like completely? Because unfortunately they're learning that
Speaker 2: the main job of the Department of Education is not
Speaker 2: to promote wiganism or lesbianism, or paganism or any other
Speaker 2: is in their catalog of horrors. It's actually the fund
Speaker 2: of some education programs in the States. Oh oh, oh, who.
Speaker 1: I think that's correct. I also think that part of
Speaker 1: what we're seeing here is, you know, they're moving fast
Speaker 1: and breaking things. They've broken a lot of stuff, a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff the courts have said they can't break.
Speaker 1: We have you know, the deportation stuff. I mean, what
Speaker 1: is the thing that keeps you up at night?
Speaker 2: Go the courts?
Speaker 1: But the courts have stayed.
Speaker 2: Oh no, what I'm saying is Trump ignoring the courts? Yeah,
Speaker 2: right now, to my mind, that is the universal problem matrix,
Speaker 2: both Trump trying to burn down the courts and his
Speaker 2: people actively now trying to do what they did before
Speaker 2: January six, which was to fill the minds of maga's
Speaker 2: up with the idea, just as they did before January six,
Speaker 2: that they said the election is stolen, it's corrupt. The
Speaker 2: communists took over all these things that scare MAGA voters.
Speaker 2: Right now they're saying these judges are enemies of America,
Speaker 2: they are unpatriotic, they're corrupt, they're bought off, they're dangerous,
Speaker 2: they're trying to destroy Donald Trump. And I think we
Speaker 2: historically have seen a pattern where when you tell MAGA
Speaker 2: voters this or are not those sharpest knives in the drawer,
Speaker 2: and when it comes to interpreting whether Trump is telling
Speaker 2: the truth or not, they freak out and bad things
Speaker 2: start happening. Right I think we should be very wary
Speaker 2: that we don't end up with judges in more danger
Speaker 2: than they're in when they start saying, you can't do this, Donald,
Speaker 2: and Donald does this, we move to the contempt phase
Speaker 2: of the courts. I really am very concerned it hasn't
Speaker 2: quite gotten as bad as it's going to get. In
Speaker 2: that space.
Speaker 1: No, I think we can all agree that things are
Speaker 1: going to get worse before they get better.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, look, someday the reaper will take Donald
Speaker 2: Trump from us and the obituary will be read and
Speaker 2: people will go, Okay, wow, we got through it. But
Speaker 2: I don't know that that day is going to come
Speaker 2: without a lot more pain first, right.
Speaker 1: I would also say, like nobody wants anything bad to
Speaker 1: happen to anyone. We all want the to end peacefully.
Speaker 2: I don't necessarily agree with that, moll. I think a
Speaker 2: lot of Republicans want bad things to happen to Trump's enemies.
Speaker 1: Right, right, right, that's certainly true.
Speaker 2: I don't want people to pretend that we are dealing
Speaker 2: with the my honorable friend problem.
Speaker 1: We still have a lot of stuff that's coming down
Speaker 1: the pike pretty quickly. Right. They're going to try to
Speaker 1: pass this tax cut bill. We'll see what happens. We
Speaker 1: have measles is still growing in Texas.
Speaker 2: In the year of Our Lord twenty twenty five. There
Speaker 2: is no goddamn reason for measles to be an issue,
Speaker 2: except for the man in charge of America's healthcare system
Speaker 2: now believes that measles can be treated with cob liver
Speaker 2: oil and vitamin A.
Speaker 1: He's really into cops liver oil. But right now we
Speaker 1: have Texas cases now confirmed in Alaska, California, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky,
Speaker 1: New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhde Island, Vermont. So do
Speaker 1: me a favor or get your measles vaccine.
Speaker 2: Please, everyone go get your measles vaccines. They are affected
Speaker 2: and they are safe. There is nothing in this world
Speaker 2: I find more disappointing and disheartening than the idea that
Speaker 2: millions of Americans believe that a proven and safe vaccine
Speaker 2: that has saved countless lives is now dangerous for political reasons.
Speaker 1: What do you think are like the new fake challenges
Speaker 1: that Trump world will be confronted with this week, besides
Speaker 1: ending the war in Ukraine in one day.
Speaker 2: As you can see from Witkoff this weekend, as he said,
Speaker 2: a piece is harder than we thought. Blah blah blah.
Speaker 2: I don't think we are anywhere near the end of
Speaker 2: the Trump administration getting suckered by Vladimir Putin. They have
Speaker 2: only begun to be suckered by Vladimir Putin. They're barely
Speaker 2: even off the out of the takeoff phase of this
Speaker 2: flight of being suckered by Vladimir Putin. But one of
Speaker 2: the things I think is really important to keep an
Speaker 2: eye on this week is the market last week sort
Speaker 2: of got the message from Trump World We're going to
Speaker 2: back off of some of this trade work garbage. Don't worry.
Speaker 2: You know, we're feeding the rubes. You know, this is
Speaker 2: all boob bait for the Rube class. Blah blah blah.
Speaker 2: And the market got a little calmer on Friday.
Speaker 1: Are any of these tariffs actually enacted?
Speaker 2: Here's the other part of that is they are still
Speaker 2: mostly mostly on the This kicks in in thirty one days,
Speaker 2: fifty days, ninety days, that sort of shit. That hasn't
Speaker 2: made it better for a lot of these Wall Street
Speaker 2: folks and for a lot of companies in America who
Speaker 2: have to plan out a long way ahead of time,
Speaker 2: who have to do this sort of thing not days
Speaker 2: in advance, but a quarter or one hundred and eighty
Speaker 2: days in advance. I had someone yesterday tell me that
Speaker 2: he says, the most frightening thing that nobody has picked
Speaker 2: up on here yet in Trump Land is Walmart and
Speaker 2: Target and hobby lobby and every other big retailer starts
Speaker 2: ordering their stuff for Christmas in May, the first week
Speaker 2: of May. It arrives in July, and goes on sale
Speaker 2: in late September. So all that holiday merch that all
Speaker 2: these companies are going to be flooding into America. They're
Speaker 2: rushing to do a lot of things now so that
Speaker 2: they don't get, you know, caught up in a few
Speaker 2: weeks with much higher prices for consumers. And I think
Speaker 2: that this is something that we just have not we
Speaker 2: have not processed this appropriately in the market yet, because
Speaker 2: this is kind of poisonous. It's kind of really super dumb.
Speaker 1: Right, they completely insane tariffs I want to talk about.
Speaker 1: We're Chuck Schumer is right now on Sunday shows. Well,
Speaker 1: I think this is important. It's important because, like you know,
Speaker 1: I was texting with an activist friend of ours in
Speaker 1: Wisconsin who was saying, you know, they have a big
Speaker 1: election in Wisconsin. The Supreme Court judge Ship talked about
Speaker 1: it on Substack when we did a subset show together
Speaker 1: on Friday.
Speaker 2: Not which people seem to like a lot. I know,
Speaker 2: while we're back with you folks on.
Speaker 1: Friday Fridays, on Mondays.
Speaker 2: On any others all the days of the week.
Speaker 1: On YouTube's what we talked about, which I think you know,
Speaker 1: is this big Wisconsin judge Rays and I was talking
Speaker 1: to I always feel like I see protest, but I
Speaker 1: live in a blue city in a blue state. Have
Speaker 1: you seen any protests?
Speaker 2: For you, I live in a blue city in a
Speaker 2: red state, but I have not seen any protests at scale.
Speaker 2: But I will tell you two quick stories. This weekend
Speaker 2: down in Annapolina Luna's district in Clearwater, Florida, our friend
Speaker 2: Whitney Fox and Eric Swalwell did a town hall because
Speaker 2: Annapolinaluta won't do it, and she lives in the district
Speaker 2: in Florida with the highest per capita number of Social
Speaker 2: Security recipients in the country, and she refuses to meet
Speaker 2: with them and answer their questions. They ended up with
Speaker 2: these people crawling the walls. In Tallahassee this weekend, a
Speaker 2: group not with it, not with any leadership from any
Speaker 2: of the visiting congressmen, but a group got together to
Speaker 2: ask Congressman Neil Dunn to meet with them. He refused,
Speaker 2: and they had about three hundred people at a VFW
Speaker 2: hall here in Tallahassee. Because this is an area with
Speaker 2: a lot of veterans, it's an area with a lot
Speaker 2: of folks on social Security, and they're not getting answers
Speaker 2: from the Republicans. I think the Republicans do not understand
Speaker 2: what's happening these meetings and these town halls that they're
Speaker 2: blowing off, that they've been told by the leadership in
Speaker 2: the Republican Party, don't do it. You don't have to
Speaker 2: do it. These people are nobodies. You can ignore them.
Speaker 2: I think they're realizing you can't ignore all these folks.
Speaker 2: You can't just say it's all it's all astro turf.
Speaker 2: There's nobody real here that's bothered by this. Now, folks,
Speaker 2: there's some real folks that are bothered by it, that
Speaker 2: are scared of it, that are every day right now
Speaker 2: looking at you know, whether or not they're going to
Speaker 2: be able to eat next week, and they are, they
Speaker 2: are terrified.
Speaker 1: I've run into a bunch of different protests just walking
Speaker 1: down the street, run into protests. I have friends who
Speaker 1: protest every weekend, so that seems like a big deal
Speaker 1: to me. And then the other thing that I'm seeing,
Speaker 1: and again, you know, this is all anecdote at all, right,
Speaker 1: but I think there's a lot of people who are
Speaker 1: sort of starting to tune in, which is in my
Speaker 1: mind good. I think there's a lot of feeling that,
Speaker 1: you know, this wasn't exactly what they thought. And you know,
Speaker 1: I think that Trump really benefited from this amnesia from
Speaker 1: the pandemic, sure, and so people sort of didn't remember
Speaker 1: what he was like. And now people seem angrier than
Speaker 1: they did, even because remember, he had sort of very
Speaker 1: normal poll numbers when he was first reelected, even much
Speaker 1: better poll numbers than he had the first time. And
Speaker 1: I think there's a feeling now I think people sort
Speaker 1: of see it.
Speaker 2: I could not agree more. I think people right now
Speaker 2: are having a really tough time reconciling the promises of
Speaker 2: Trump for economic stability and prosperity and everything he's done.
Speaker 2: And I don't mean this, folks, just as a critique
Speaker 2: of Trump, even though it is. But everything Donald Trump
Speaker 2: promised to do that would be motivating and economically helpful
Speaker 2: to his own people, to his own base, to his
Speaker 2: own voters, he has done the exact opposite over and
Speaker 2: over again. That is hurting him. I think it's relevant
Speaker 2: to the damage that he's doing to himself politically and
Speaker 2: to his people. I don't see if you're a Maga
Speaker 2: voter right now, Yes, to troll the Libs and to
Speaker 2: own the Libs and all that other garbage, you're going
Speaker 2: to say. No, Trump is perfect. I'm so happy. But
Speaker 2: those numbers are not showing up in the survey work,
Speaker 2: in the polling. They are very unhappy on the economic front,
Speaker 2: on the trade war. That is becoming something that is
Speaker 2: very hard for them to articulate and argue even to themselves.
Speaker 1: Yeah, talk to me about what you're seeing with that,
Speaker 1: because that is really interesting.
Speaker 2: We came out of the field this weekend and Wisconsin
Speaker 2: related and the data really Yes to Trump voters still
Speaker 2: love Trump. They love Trump. Trump voters love Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: But when you describe the trade war policies that are
Speaker 2: hitting them in the face, they are angry. They are
Speaker 2: scared to death. They are especially if they are working
Speaker 2: or working middle class voters, especially in agriculture or in
Speaker 2: heavy industry. And that's you know, that's and that's a
Speaker 2: meaningful thing in Wisconsin. That's motorcycles, that's car, that's auto
Speaker 2: parts and auto you know, infrastructure stuff. They are really scared.
Speaker 1: This is something from what I understand the polling I
Speaker 1: have seen. My sense is this, they hate Elon.
Speaker 2: Yes, let me take this to the next phase. They
Speaker 2: think Elon is a weirdo. They blame him for the
Speaker 2: chaos in Washington. They think he has caused this, and
Speaker 2: they're starting to believe that Elon Musk is hurting Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: As we know, there is nothing in the world that
Speaker 2: Trump folks are more sensitive to than anything that hurts
Speaker 2: Donald Trump. He has benefited, I think, a little bit
Speaker 2: from Elon as a buffer for a little while. But
Speaker 2: I also think that that buffer has a limit. It's
Speaker 2: got It's like a filter that gets full eventually, and
Speaker 2: and you know you're gonna have to replace it. And
Speaker 2: does Elon control Trump because of the money and everything else? Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's a big argument for that. Does Trump have a
Speaker 2: self preservation instinct like no other creature I've ever seen
Speaker 2: in politics? You bet he does. There's going to come
Speaker 2: a day soon when Susie wils has had five seconds
Speaker 2: alone with Trump and she says, mister President, we all
Speaker 2: love Elon so much. We're very worried he's hurting you.
Speaker 2: And here is Tony Fabrizio on the phone to tell
Speaker 2: you how much Elon is hurting you, wouldn't you like
Speaker 2: to have a majority in Congress for the last two
Speaker 2: years of your term because if you don't, this is
Speaker 2: going to kill you. And look, Trump does a lot
Speaker 2: of irrational things, but when it comes to protecting his
Speaker 2: own interest, he is highly rational. And I think that's
Speaker 2: where we're going to end up. Your guess is as
Speaker 2: good as mine. But if Elon thinks that the Wilson
Speaker 2: rule of politics, of everything Trump touches dies has ever failed,
Speaker 2: he is mistaken. He can take the same whack all
Speaker 2: these other people have taken. It's not going to be hard.
Speaker 2: And Trump will just say one day Elon was very success,
Speaker 2: We thank him for his service, and that for Trump
Speaker 2: is like the nicest way he can end it. And
Speaker 2: Elon has to realize that's the nicest way it could
Speaker 2: possibly end for him. There's another way where Trump is
Speaker 2: punitive and nasty and shit gets ugly. While most people
Speaker 2: think that would never happen. Trump is also the scorpion
Speaker 2: on the back of the frog over and over again
Speaker 2: in our history, where even people who he depended on,
Speaker 2: who depended on him, who had this relationship with him,
Speaker 2: who thought I'm invulnerable. I'll never be I'll never be
Speaker 2: out of the picture. Ask Steve Bannon how that worked out.
Speaker 2: Ask Kelly Ann how that worked out. As Roger Stone,
Speaker 2: how that worked out. They have a value when they
Speaker 2: have a value, and when they don't have a value,
Speaker 2: he slits their throats and throws them off the back
Speaker 2: of the boat for the sharks.
Speaker 1: Michael AS Roth is the president of Wesleyan University and
Speaker 1: the author of The Student, A Short History, Welcome Too
Speaker 1: Fast Politics.
Speaker 4: Michael Roth, glad to be here.
Speaker 1: I'm so happy to have you here. So you're the
Speaker 1: president of Wesleyan University, where I briefly went to college.
Speaker 1: Do I get to be an alumni even if I
Speaker 1: dropped out?
Speaker 4: You know why the power is invested in me? I
Speaker 4: make you an alum.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, amazing. I'm steps away from an honorary
Speaker 1: bachelor's which is the dream for me. This is a
Speaker 1: moment when Trump world has It's funny because it's like
Speaker 1: my grandfather was arrested by McCarthy the house in American Hoovac.
Speaker 1: He was jailed, he was blacklisted, and the red scare
Speaker 1: was this war on the intelligentsia. We should have seen
Speaker 1: this coming the war on academic institutions. But he's here,
Speaker 1: and it is loud and it is real, and you
Speaker 1: are the only college president so far to have stood
Speaker 1: up for it. Why are you different than everyone else?
Speaker 4: It feels like the we're questions for passoversion.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 4: You know, there are others who spoken a few. Patricia Maguire,
Speaker 4: who's the president of Trinity Washington University is a college
Speaker 4: in Washington, d C. She's been very vocal and very
Speaker 4: thoughtful in her opposition to these policies. And there's a
Speaker 4: guy named Michael gave In at his Delta College and
Speaker 4: in the Midwest Community College. I want to make sure
Speaker 4: that these guys have been fighting, and they they're at
Speaker 4: small places and standing up.
Speaker 2: For a trait.
Speaker 4: And the President Princeton, he came out with an article
Speaker 4: in Atlantic this week talking about the danger of the
Speaker 4: Trump administration's intervention in Columbia. I'm not entirely alone, but
Speaker 4: I am interested in Moline. How many of the folks
Speaker 4: in the press are interested in what we were wearing
Speaker 4: when we were attacked kind of thing I mean focuses
Speaker 4: on like why are president is not responding rather and
Speaker 4: why is the government behaving like a tyrannical would be
Speaker 4: totalitarian regime.
Speaker 1: That's to be I agree, and that contempt prior to
Speaker 1: investigation is uncalled for. I'm glad to see Princeton now,
Speaker 1: especially because you know a lot of these Ivy League
Speaker 1: institutions have enormous endowments, right, which are set up to
Speaker 1: get an institution through a period like this. We may
Speaker 1: have lost sight of that, but they're not for swimming
Speaker 1: pools and stadiums, therefore protecting taught.
Speaker 4: Well they are, But you know, I think the trade
Speaker 4: off that any school has to go through is that
Speaker 4: the endowment is supposed to be there forever, and so
Speaker 4: if you spend it in a sustainable way, it keeps
Speaker 4: up with inflation and with your spending. So you can
Speaker 4: give one thousand dollars gift, you spend a couple of
Speaker 4: bucks every year, it's still one thousand dollars, still generating
Speaker 4: a couple of bucks every year. If you spend five
Speaker 4: hundred all of a sudden, you get through a rainy day,
Speaker 4: then you're not going to ever recoup that initial gift.
Speaker 4: So I think that schools do have a trade off.
Speaker 4: I say that knowing that some of the schools are
Speaker 4: extraordinarily wealthy, and that they do have resources. But one
Speaker 4: of the interesting things about this is that people are
Speaker 4: being becoming more aware that how invested the United States
Speaker 4: government has been in the research dimension of higher education,
Speaker 4: and that has served the country really well. I mean
Speaker 4: in terms of creating new drugs and new technology, transportation, commerce,
Speaker 4: and all kinds of ways in which the pact between
Speaker 4: the government and the university has been we will fund
Speaker 4: a lot of stuff for you guys. You can have
Speaker 4: the freedom to do the research you want, but many
Speaker 4: of the byproducts of that research will go on to
Speaker 4: contribute to the public good. And over many many years now,
Speaker 4: whoever was the president could have been a Republican. They
Speaker 4: more or less respected that, you know, in other words,
Speaker 4: not telling people how to do their research, because the
Speaker 4: government doesn't know how to do the research, but to
Speaker 4: give money so it happens, because it makes America stronger,
Speaker 4: makes the economy stronger, makes science better, makes medicine better.
Speaker 4: And what Trump has done, quite extraordinary, really is to
Speaker 4: say I don't give a shit about that. You guys
Speaker 4: are nice to me, I'm gonna take your money away.
Speaker 4: And it's been frighteningly easy so far for him to
Speaker 4: do that, because up until now people have just respected
Speaker 4: the norm that you don't do that. And of course
Speaker 4: President Trump his respect for norms is very small.
Speaker 1: So we're both choose and liberal ish. I mean, I
Speaker 1: would say I think of myself as you know, liberal,
Speaker 1: but not wildly liberal. What Trump the administration they are
Speaker 1: rationale for deporting people, for taking away grants. Is anti Semitism. Okay,
Speaker 1: talk me through this.
Speaker 4: I mean, yeah, it's nonsense. I mean, it's a nonsense
Speaker 4: reason I tweeted yesterday. I think it was that the
Speaker 4: United States has decided to cut off all to Israel
Speaker 4: because there was a massive demonstration in Jerusalem. You know,
Speaker 4: Jews demonstrate. That's one of the things we do, you know,
Speaker 4: we go to demonstrations. And you know, my daughter texted
Speaker 4: me last I hope she wasn't myself. My daughter texted
Speaker 4: us last night and said, look, mommy daddy. She's twenty seven.
Speaker 4: But she said, the rabbi that bod mitzn Me is
Speaker 4: leading a protest at Foley Square. And there was a
Speaker 4: Rabbi Goldenberg, you know, leading a protest. Now I'm gonna
Speaker 4: say Rabbi Goldenberg is anti Semitic, you've got to be
Speaker 4: out of your mind. On the other hand, of course
Speaker 4: there's anti sematism, and things at Columbia were Jews last year,
Speaker 4: especially for many Jews, were really difficult. And I think
Speaker 4: that the getting a handle on campus politics and the
Speaker 4: rights of students, faculty, and staff both maneuver around a
Speaker 4: campus without being intimidated. I think it's really important. And
Speaker 4: a normal administration that was concerned about anti simptism would say, Okay,
Speaker 4: what are you guys doing to make it better? And
Speaker 4: they have done a whole bunch of things, maybe not
Speaker 4: out of good maybe I don't know enough, but you
Speaker 4: get to work together to improve the procedures at the
Speaker 4: university so that when some antisemitic action happens, like a
Speaker 4: Jewish spit on because he's Jewish, or Jewish kids are
Speaker 4: not allowed to go through a certain part of campus
Speaker 4: because they might be zion as well. You've got to
Speaker 4: stop that from happening. And the government should help the
Speaker 4: school stop that from happening. And I think that was
Speaker 4: in process already. What we have here is I think
Speaker 4: just the government flexing its muscles to show it can
Speaker 4: really screw things up. The trin administration cares as much
Speaker 4: about antisemitism at Columbia as it cares about swimming records
Speaker 4: at penn They just canceled a couple one hundred million
Speaker 4: dollars of contracts with Penn univers Pennsylvania because a year
Speaker 4: or two ago they had a trans woman swimmer. And
Speaker 4: this is really saying, we can do whatever the heck
Speaker 4: we want.
Speaker 1: Four hundred million dollar grants at Colombia. Colombia has a hospital,
Speaker 1: it has a medical school. You know, there's four hundred
Speaker 1: million dollars. They're not grams for protests, right, they're grands
Speaker 1: for stem cell research or I mean, so, I think
Speaker 1: that's a really important point, Like none of what's happening
Speaker 1: is actually affecting the things they even say it's affecting absolutely.
Speaker 4: So what you have is you'll have all these Jewish
Speaker 4: scientists getting fired because the funding went away, and others
Speaker 4: getting fired, and you know, you're working on diabetes or
Speaker 4: leukemia and your work's thus it's really quite astonishing. I
Speaker 4: just was on a call this morning with some people
Speaker 4: out on the West coast and they were saying, at
Speaker 4: University of California, San Francisco, the medical school of the
Speaker 4: University of California. They haven't gotten any payments from the
Speaker 4: government since the inauguration. Now UCSF is deeply involved in
Speaker 4: the most sophisticated kinds of cancer research, which means some
Speaker 4: people are getting drugs and trials to see if they
Speaker 4: can cure their leukemia for their lung cancer, and then
Speaker 4: the drug stops because there's no money. And so this
Speaker 4: is such an extraordinary disruption of the best research system
Speaker 4: in the world, you know, the one in America. I mean,
Speaker 4: everybody around the world recognizes, some with envy, some with admiration,
Speaker 4: that the scientific research ecosystem of the United States is
Speaker 4: the greatest, has been the greatest. But when you put
Speaker 4: it under ideological threat like this, it sends a chill
Speaker 4: through the entire international scientific community.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about this, but I also want
Speaker 1: to talk about Mood Khalil. He is a grad student
Speaker 1: on a green card, married to a citizen pregnant. This
Speaker 1: is the kind of thing where you may not like
Speaker 1: the protests, you may not like you may not believe
Speaker 1: in any of this, but you do not want people
Speaker 1: in Louisiana camps not charged with anything but vibes. So
Speaker 1: what does this mean?
Speaker 4: Yeah, This is again an extraordinary abuse of power, and
Speaker 4: the playbook is clear. They pick on someone who many
Speaker 4: Americans would find distasteful. To find the politics of this
Speaker 4: guy distasteful, and just like the people they deported recently
Speaker 4: against the court order, is a bad guy. You know,
Speaker 4: he was engaged in protests that many Americans would find wrong.
Speaker 4: I find it wrong, But of course it's much worse
Speaker 4: to have such a person subject to arrest and deportation
Speaker 4: because you don't like what they believe or do they think.
Speaker 4: He didn't do anything criminal. He's not been accused of
Speaker 4: doing anything criminal, and so what you have instead is
Speaker 4: this ideological test being imposed on a permanent residence. They
Speaker 4: seem to have thought he was still a student when
Speaker 4: they came for him, and then change their story. And
Speaker 4: then we have the nephrologist as I think she's a
Speaker 4: kidney transplant specialist at Brown, who was sent back to Lebanon.
Speaker 4: These are interventions in education meant to scare the hell
Speaker 4: out of people so that they don't stray too far
Speaker 4: from the leader's ideology, and maybe working in that regard,
Speaker 4: because I think it's that if they can take Maku
Speaker 4: Khalil and just take them and put them in Louisiana
Speaker 4: without any charges. What's to stop them from doing that
Speaker 4: to anyone else? And we have heard other horror stories
Speaker 4: of people being arrested or detained for a while with
Speaker 4: very unclear as to why. The only thing we could
Speaker 4: do about is speak up about it and said, this
Speaker 4: is not this is not the America we want to
Speaker 4: live in.
Speaker 1: Right, this is using the quest against anti Semitism to
Speaker 1: advance as oratarianis.
Speaker 4: So absolutely this is you know, anti anti semitism from
Speaker 4: the Trump administration is a tool of convenience. I mean,
Speaker 4: how many there aren't that many trans athletes. You can't
Speaker 4: ride that horse wherever, you know, I mean, I can't
Speaker 4: choose a group that many Americans find it hard to understand,
Speaker 4: or an issue like trans women in high school sports.
Speaker 4: Reasonable people may have different views about how fair it is,
Speaker 4: but demonized group and then use the demonization of that
Speaker 4: group to increase your own power. And that's what this
Speaker 4: anti anti semitism is doing, because you know they love
Speaker 4: anti semis. It's extraordinary and I'm writing something about this
Speaker 4: now and for Jews to go along with this as
Speaker 4: many are doing. I got the nastiest notes I've gotten about.
Speaker 4: My interventions have been from other Jews because they hate
Speaker 4: this Colia's views. And they said, well, if I hate them,
Speaker 4: I must find a reason to silence him. Oh, you
Speaker 4: don't need to find a reason to silence him. But
Speaker 4: this is the authoritarian playbook, Emali. I think you do
Speaker 4: trans people's anti anti semitism, and these are attacks on
Speaker 4: civil society, on places like colleges and universities that have
Speaker 4: independent sources of allegiance, information expression. You make them line up,
Speaker 4: and then after that it'll be businesses like law firming.
Speaker 1: Well, the businesses seem delighted. The billionaires. I was really
Speaker 1: impressed with the cowardice of the billionaire class, Like these
Speaker 1: people have millions of dollars, right, they are by definition above,
Speaker 1: you know, they can have citizenships, they can jump on airplanes.
Speaker 1: Those guys were the first of coward They were like,
Speaker 1: you know, is there a chance for a tax gut? Okay,
Speaker 1: we love this guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: They weren't encowering. They were lining up for the feedbay.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of money to be made in an
Speaker 4: administration that has send every signal that restraints on corruption
Speaker 4: are gone. And so well, Columbia announced that it's Art
Speaker 4: department is making a movie about the First Lady, just
Speaker 4: like Amazon, or make a huge donation to some fund,
Speaker 4: you know, the Donald Junior Fund for Trophy Animals or something.
Speaker 4: These are guys realize a lot of money to be made,
Speaker 4: and you know, they see what President Musk is doing
Speaker 4: and they want to get on board. And I do
Speaker 4: think there will be others, you know, they haven't raised
Speaker 4: their hands yet. I do think there'll be others who
Speaker 4: will find it appalling to see these American freedoms eroded.
Speaker 4: Not just universities, but it'll be libraries, It'll be purchase
Speaker 4: some synagogues and chambers of commerce. These are all parts
Speaker 4: of civil society that they depend on the government for
Speaker 4: some things, just like we depend on the fire Department
Speaker 4: and we depend on the fire Apartment. Doesn't mean we
Speaker 4: all have to actually find out what the fire department
Speaker 4: chiefs politics are. We have independence and entanglement, but Trump
Speaker 4: is taking away the independence or means to take away
Speaker 4: the independences.
Speaker 1: So it seems so, what do you think is the
Speaker 1: best way for citizens to push back to protect American
Speaker 1: norms and institutions organize?
Speaker 4: I mean, I do think that people have to find
Speaker 4: friends and allies and then allies who weren't their friends,
Speaker 4: to defend this sector of freedom, the space of deliberation,
Speaker 4: conversation that shouldn't be squashed by governmental ideology. So I've
Speaker 4: been trying to talk as well to conservatives and people
Speaker 4: who think of themselves as really American patriots and believe
Speaker 4: in American freedom rather than a central government that tells
Speaker 4: you what to do, because these, I think are going
Speaker 4: to be very important allies going forward. And that's hard
Speaker 4: because at universities, you know, a lot of people were
Speaker 4: incentivized to be extraordinarily critical of the United States, and
Speaker 4: you know, that's the way it goes, especially in my
Speaker 4: world of the humanities and interpret of social sciences. But
Speaker 4: I think we see how important these freedoms have been.
Speaker 4: We've taken them for granted, at least I've taken them
Speaker 4: for granted, and now I need to some may a
Speaker 4: cult book, you know, like, yeah, I've been very critical
Speaker 4: of the United States, but I need those good old
Speaker 4: American values to protect me against the regime that is
Speaker 4: really antithetical.
Speaker 2: To those values.
Speaker 4: And I know, freedom of expression, freedom of inquiry, these
Speaker 4: are things that a few years ago my smart friends
Speaker 4: on the left, and so there is no such thing
Speaker 4: as freedom of inquery. It's always a product of the Panaptacon,
Speaker 4: which it pushes surveillance down on people so that they
Speaker 4: you know, I could do that stuff, you know, but gosh,
Speaker 4: we need good old American freedoms to defend ourselves against
Speaker 4: the central government that is so powerful and that is
Speaker 4: running amok.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Michael Ross, President of Wesleyan University, thank you.
Speaker 2: You're welcome.
Speaker 4: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: Weally drunk fast. Is it time for the moment of fuckery?
Speaker 1: It is always time for the moment. So Rick Wilson,
Speaker 1: what is your moment of fuckery?
Speaker 2: My moment of fuckery is I think one of the
Speaker 2: most callous and hardless and terrible things I've ever seen
Speaker 2: on Twitter. And I was around on Twitter for fourteen
Speaker 2: years until Elon banned me, so I've seen it all.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's right, you're no longer you're.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've been banned from Twitter for life, for just
Speaker 2: for now. I have two emails from Twitter. One says
Speaker 2: unless you delete the tweet, you're suspended forever or indefinitely,
Speaker 2: and one says you're suspended for thirty days. I don't
Speaker 2: know which is which thirty day email came first. I
Speaker 2: don't know. I don't know. All I know is that
Speaker 2: Elon is a gutlass pussy. But anyway, moving on, he's
Speaker 2: also one of the cruelest and most heartless human beings
Speaker 2: I've ever seen, because he tweeted this weekend my son's
Speaker 2: Davier was killed by the woke mind virus. Molly, I think,
Speaker 2: honest to God, the Rosetta stone, the fucking rosebud of
Speaker 2: Elon Musk is that he has a trans kid. I
Speaker 2: asked the question that like a year and a half
Speaker 2: ago on in an article like who red Pilled Elon?
Speaker 2: And the longer I've considered it, the more I've come
Speaker 2: to understand that that is what has made him who
Speaker 2: the monster he is. And I got to tell you
Speaker 2: when I read that, I'm not on Twitter, but somebody
Speaker 2: else sent me a tweet from my friend Matti Timmer,
Speaker 2: who's lost a child to suicide two years ago. She
Speaker 2: and her husband Jeff are dear friends of mine and
Speaker 2: they were absolutely devastated, just heartbroken in a way. Maddie
Speaker 2: had I think the best response of anybody, and I
Speaker 2: saw on Twitter to it, she said, this is obviously
Speaker 2: from a man who has never actually lost a child,
Speaker 2: especially a grown child. Look, I hope that some shred
Speaker 2: of humanity in this guy someday emerges, because nobody benefits
Speaker 2: from that. It's just gratuitous and shitty, and it does
Speaker 2: get to a level in my mind where it's one
Speaker 2: more data point of why the richest man in the
Speaker 2: world and the most powerful man in American government it
Speaker 2: is currently reposed in the figure of Elon Musk, who
Speaker 2: is a guy of towering cruelty and horrendousness.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and also, you know, Vivian's on the fucking cover
Speaker 1: of teen Vogue and she fucking rules and she's killing it.
Speaker 2: And by the way, that article, Vivian's witty and together,
Speaker 2: I mean, this is not a dead child.
Speaker 1: Oh, she's great.
Speaker 2: This is someone who is clever and smart and it's
Speaker 2: going to make a place in society.
Speaker 1: The reality is just this guy's a fucking asshole and
Speaker 1: he should leave his kid alone. And he just yes,
Speaker 1: she's awesome and she's very smart, and it's horrible that
Speaker 1: she has to live through a father who is so
Speaker 1: profoundly shitty.
Speaker 2: He is in the actual sense of the word monstrous.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and He deserves our iron for any number of things,
Speaker 1: but one of them is how terrible he is to
Speaker 1: his daughter.
Speaker 2: Normally we make some sort of witty thing about the
Speaker 2: whole bow and a fuckery, not this one. He's just
Speaker 2: a bastard.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
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