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 Michigan has become the first date
Speaker 1: in sixty years to have right to work laws repealed.
Speaker 1: We have such a great show for you today. Politico's
Speaker 1: Rachel Baide gives us an update on the never ending
Speaker 1: chaos in Congress. Then we'll talk to on the tape
Speaker 1: host Dan Nathan about what's happening with our economy. But
Speaker 1: first we have the editor of Balls and Strikes, Jay Willis.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 2: Jay, thank you so much for having me to talk
Speaker 2: about Taylor Swift at the Super Bowl. I wasn't expecting
Speaker 2: an invitation to talk about this, but I can go
Speaker 2: for two hours, three hours? How long do you want
Speaker 2: to do this?
Speaker 1: So it was fixed?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: Yes? Okay, clearly?
Speaker 2: Oh shit, wait, people are going to listen to this right.
Speaker 1: Explain to me what's happening in Fulton County right now?
Speaker 2: Well, boy, so, the prosecutor in Fulton County, Fanny Willis
Speaker 2: no relation, has been leading an investigation into Donald Trump's
Speaker 2: efforts to Sorry for the legal jargon here, but fuck
Speaker 2: with the vote count in the twenty twenty presidential election
Speaker 2: in Georgia, Donald Trump unquestionably did like some very bad
Speaker 2: things in there. He you know, was on the phone
Speaker 2: with the secretary of State, the Republican secretary of State
Speaker 2: in Georgia, urging him to and I'm quoting here find
Speaker 2: the votes or threatening him with some sort of like
Speaker 2: vaguely defined criminal prosecution. I have no idea what Trump
Speaker 2: was referring to. I kind of assumed he didn't know
Speaker 2: what he was referring to either. But this is the
Speaker 2: sort of thing that one does not do without incurring
Speaker 2: the wrath of a prosecutor. The problem is that this
Speaker 2: particular prosecutor apparently had an affair with someone in her office,
Speaker 2: which is just like deeply misguided on several levels. But
Speaker 2: what it's led to is Trump's defense team basically arguing
Speaker 2: that the whole case needs to get thrown out, that
Speaker 2: it is tainted by this scandal, and he might prevail
Speaker 2: on that. I really know yet, but generally speaking, when
Speaker 2: you're a prosecutor and things are on the rocks because
Speaker 2: of who you slept with, it's not going great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what is the larger implication for this?
Speaker 2: I mean, so there are several parallel investigations into Donald
Speaker 2: Trump's various alleged forms of criminality. Right, this case is
Speaker 2: being brought by a local prosecutor. It is independent from,
Speaker 2: for example, the criminal investigation into Trump in DC, which
Speaker 2: is not to be confused with the civil investigation into
Speaker 2: Trump in New York and so on and so forth.
Speaker 2: But I think the real damage here is sort of
Speaker 2: in the way that Trump is going to start spinning
Speaker 2: this sort of thing if he can create a narrative
Speaker 2: among his followers and among people who might be susceptible
Speaker 2: to being his followers, that it is in his best
Speaker 2: interest to sort of lump these different criminal investigations together.
Speaker 2: And if he can use Fanny Willis's misconduct in one
Speaker 2: particular investigation to sort of smear all of the criminal
Speaker 2: investigations against him as tainted, as biased, as Democratic hit jobs,
Speaker 2: that's good for him, which is exactly why he's trying
Speaker 2: to muddy the waters here.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The other thing that it does, right is that
Speaker 1: it aids one of Trump's biggest legal tactics, right, which
Speaker 1: is delay.
Speaker 2: That's right for both legal and practical reasons, Like, legally speaking,
Speaker 2: if he is the nominee and wins election and becomes
Speaker 2: the president again, he suddenly has a whole lot of
Speaker 2: control over the federal investigations into him. I mean, setting
Speaker 2: aside the obvious issue of whether or not the president
Speaker 2: should be directing Department of Justice investigations. Of course, not
Speaker 2: like it's not like Donald Trump gives a shit about that.
Speaker 2: He would presume just take action and kill that on
Speaker 2: day one. But then also, just like practically politically speaking,
Speaker 2: if he is president, I think it becomes a whole
Speaker 2: lot more fraught, for example, for a local prosecutor like
Speaker 2: Fanny Willis to prosecute him. So he is doing everything
Speaker 2: he can in this investigation, in other investigations to just
Speaker 2: run out the clock. I don't know if he's going
Speaker 2: to be able to run out the clock on every
Speaker 2: one of them. But again, the more he is able
Speaker 2: to narrow down the scope of legal problems he faces,
Speaker 2: the better his odds are of wriggling out of it.
Speaker 1: One more time. I want to just unpack this for
Speaker 1: another minute. So basically Trump is doing two things here.
Speaker 1: He wants to discredit this investigation by sort of spreading
Speaker 1: salacious gossip about Fanny Willis right that she was cheating
Speaker 1: on her spouse or she actually wasn't married but her
Speaker 1: boyfriend was cheating on his spouse. By the way, the
Speaker 1: irony here, the thrice married adulter who has his problem
Speaker 1: where he paid off a porn star and that's one
Speaker 1: of his many legal challenges, is sort of rich. But
Speaker 1: basically what he's trying to do here is try this
Speaker 1: case with his people, his fans, right, that's right.
Speaker 2: A lot of this is effectively going on in the
Speaker 2: court of public opinion. I mean, what's happening with Fanny
Speaker 2: Willis is a part of like functionally more of a
Speaker 2: pr campaign than anything else. Right, If he can portray
Speaker 2: the prosecutor who is investigating him as tainted, as biased,
Speaker 2: as just as mired in scandal, is he is, that's
Speaker 2: a victory. Like he doesn't necessarily have to rise above it, right,
Speaker 2: dragging everyone else down to his level creates the same result.
Speaker 2: I will say, Like, if you're a prosecutor, like, come on,
Speaker 2: it's so easy not to sleep with one of your colleagues.
Speaker 2: You got to not do that. One of the clearest
Speaker 2: through lines of the legal system in this country is
Speaker 2: prosecutors fucking up and doing something dumb. At the worst
Speaker 2: possible time. But like at the same time, it's not
Speaker 2: like that changes what Trump did. So again it's the
Speaker 2: creation of an additional salacious story to the salacious story
Speaker 2: that landed Trump in court in the first place. And
Speaker 2: the last thing I'll say about this is if a
Speaker 2: judge disqualifies Fanny Willis Fanny Willis's office, the case could
Speaker 2: go forward still. But again, as you say, it's all
Speaker 2: about delay. Reading about reporting this morning, there's only a
Speaker 2: few other das in Georgia who have the bandwidth to
Speaker 2: take on a case like this. So if Fanny Willis
Speaker 2: gets booted, suddenly we're looking for somebody else, like who
Speaker 2: has the manpower, who has the bandwidth to do this?
Speaker 2: Maybe there is someone, But how long does that process take?
Speaker 2: The longer it takes, the closer we get to election day,
Speaker 2: and the closer this gets to practically speaking.
Speaker 1: Not mattering, right, and that's the golf for Trump. But
Speaker 1: also it would take a long time for a Fanny
Speaker 1: Willis replacement to get read in on this case, right,
Speaker 1: Can you talk about that? Because the preparation it's month
Speaker 1: to month.
Speaker 2: And month sure, I mean, nothing in the legal system
Speaker 2: ever moves in like sort of the expeditious timeline that
Speaker 2: we're used to that perhaps we would like to see
Speaker 2: for purposes of the news cycle, for purposes of on election.
Speaker 2: That is very much fixed on the calendar. And a prosecutor,
Speaker 2: even someone who wanted to take this case, even if
Speaker 2: they could take it on, like, they can't go into
Speaker 2: court tomorrow and start freely discussing the subject matter. They
Speaker 2: have to get read up on it, just like Willis
Speaker 2: has been over the development of the case. So yeah,
Speaker 2: it's not just a matter of designating another lawyer. It's
Speaker 2: designating another lawyer, another da I mean, who can then
Speaker 2: begin the arduous process of reading in on the file
Speaker 2: enough to actually be able to do something with it.
Speaker 1: But also today Trump had another legal snaffo. Can you
Speaker 1: talk about this?
Speaker 2: So yeah, the case in New York is going considerably
Speaker 2: different than the one in Georgia, very different. Tenor no
Speaker 2: prosecutors sleeping with other prosecutors to the best of our knowledge.
Speaker 2: And in that one we actually have a trial on
Speaker 2: the calendar. Now the judge says the hush money trial
Speaker 2: is going to go forward on March twenty fifth. That
Speaker 2: is a case in New York State Court. So it's
Speaker 2: not something that if he were to become president he
Speaker 2: could do anything about. Yeah, the specter of this man
Speaker 2: being in court again, in a courtroom passing notes to
Speaker 2: his attorney on the rare occasions he constrained together more
Speaker 2: than three or four words written down, that'll be fun.
Speaker 1: I do think that Trump is not happy being a defendant.
Speaker 2: I go back and forth on that question, sort of
Speaker 2: the perils of trying to psychoanalyze a man whose brain
Speaker 2: consists mostly of cottage cheese. I do sort of think
Speaker 2: sometimes that, like me, he doesn't think that any of
Speaker 2: this will ever result in meaningful legal consequences for him.
Speaker 2: He has derived that lesson from living his entire life,
Speaker 2: in which there have never been any meaningful legal consequences
Speaker 2: for anything. If you sort of take him as someone
Speaker 2: who is running for president largely because he has nothing
Speaker 2: else to do, and also it seems like probably the
Speaker 2: best weapon he can wield in his legal fights. I
Speaker 2: sort of think he does like being able to frame
Speaker 2: himself as a victim persecuted on multiple fronts in multiple states,
Speaker 2: in different courtrooms, which is why, again, this Fanny Willis
Speaker 2: thing is such a godsend for him, because what is
Speaker 2: the George of prosecution about again who knows, right, we're
Speaker 2: talking about the personal lives of the prosecutors now, not
Speaker 2: the stuff that landed Trump there in the first place.
Speaker 2: It's of course, like benefits him. That's exactly what he wants.
Speaker 1: Right, exactly, But it is silatious and it's legal, and
Speaker 1: it's coming. So just give us an update on where
Speaker 1: these are. Other cases are the immunity case, will you
Speaker 1: explain to us what an ongoing bonk is and what
Speaker 1: that means and if that's happening.
Speaker 2: Yes, so, in the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit,
Speaker 2: Trump has asserted that as president he has absolute immunity
Speaker 2: against criminal prosecution for any acts that he committed as president.
Speaker 2: If you want to like go a level or two deeper,
Speaker 2: His argument is that as president, to basically, impeachment is
Speaker 2: the only method of holding him legally accountable. Therefore, unless
Speaker 2: he was impeached and convicted by the Senate, he has
Speaker 2: immunity from criminal prosecution for it. Today, there are sort
Speaker 2: of a number of problems with this, namely that it
Speaker 2: resolves the issue of the president's criminal acts entirely to
Speaker 2: like the ability to marshal a two thirds majority in
Speaker 2: the Senate, which, like, I don't know if we could
Speaker 2: get two thirds of the Senate to agree on anything,
Speaker 2: much less convicting a president on impeachment charges. Fortunately, the
Speaker 2: DC Circuit rejected Trump's claim of absolute presidential immunity, and
Speaker 2: he is now asking the Supreme Court to sort of.
Speaker 1: Block that ruling to do him as solid.
Speaker 2: Yes while he seeks what's called en banc review, basically
Speaker 2: asking the entire DC Circuit to hear the case rather
Speaker 2: than the smaller three judge panel that issued that decision
Speaker 2: on bank review is sort of the last step before
Speaker 2: appealing the merits to the Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: Would you think the Supreme Court will go along with God,
Speaker 1: King Emperor Trump or now?
Speaker 2: I do not think that they will want to set
Speaker 2: a precedent of presidents can never be prosecuted criminally for
Speaker 2: anything they do in office.
Speaker 1: I think the only.
Speaker 2: Question is exactly how they how they try and dispose
Speaker 2: of it to make as few waves as possible. I
Speaker 2: don't think there's any way they can do it without
Speaker 2: making waves. It's just how big are those going to be?
Speaker 2: And what could they be the easiest thing they could
Speaker 2: do is just decline to hear the case, right to
Speaker 2: just let the DC Circuit's opinion speak for itself and
Speaker 2: to allow the which would functionally allow the prosecution to
Speaker 2: move forward.
Speaker 1: But Alito and Thomas seem like such partisan hacks, and
Speaker 1: also Gorsage and also Kavanaugh. Do you really think they
Speaker 1: would do something like not help out their guy.
Speaker 2: I've been wrong a bunch before, I'll probably be wrong again,
Speaker 2: But I do think that's probably a bridge too far.
Speaker 2: Like these justices had the opportunity to get involved in
Speaker 2: the twenty twenty election if they so wanted, and that
Speaker 2: was not a fight they're willing to do. The reason
Speaker 2: control of the Supreme Court is so important for the
Speaker 2: Republican Party and the conservative legal movement is the legal
Speaker 2: system has sort of this unearned veneer of legitimacy.
Speaker 1: So they would compromise that.
Speaker 2: That's right. They have a lot more to gain by
Speaker 2: not giving Donald Trump everything he wants here in future cases,
Speaker 2: in future issues that are much bigger than any one
Speaker 2: person's political career, any one person's presidential aspirations. This is
Speaker 2: one where they can save a bunch of political capital,
Speaker 2: burnish the court's reputation, and fight another day, fight a
Speaker 2: lot more days.
Speaker 1: Jesus so interesting. Also, we're all going to die. Thank
Speaker 1: you for joining us, Thank you.
Speaker 2: For having me. Let's save the Taylor Swift conversation for
Speaker 2: next time. I look forward to it.
Speaker 1: Did you know Rick Wilson and I are bringing together
Speaker 1: some friends for a general election kickoff party at City
Speaker 1: Winery in New York on March sixth. We're going to
Speaker 1: be chatting right after Super Tuesday about what's going on,
Speaker 1: and it is going to probably be the one fun
Speaker 1: night for the next eighty days. If you're in the
Speaker 1: New York area, please come by and join us. You
Speaker 1: can go to City Winery's website and grab a ticket.
Speaker 1: Rachel Bade is a senior Washington correspondent of Politico and
Speaker 1: author of Unchecked Welcome Back, Too Fast Politics. Rachel Bade,
Speaker 1: thank you, Mollie.
Speaker 4: I've missed you.
Speaker 3: Glad to be back.
Speaker 1: I missed you, and I'm excited to have you back
Speaker 1: because I think of you as someone I mean, first
Speaker 1: of all, Congress Historically it can be a slightly sleepy beat.
Speaker 1: Sometimes what is happening right now doesn't it feel unprecedented? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Absolutely, the chaos is. It's definitely ranting supreme. I can
Speaker 3: tell you that going into this year. My being thought
Speaker 3: was like, Okay, the Hill's going to be quiet, the
Speaker 3: campaign triot is going to be interesting.
Speaker 4: I'm going to ignore Congress for a while.
Speaker 3: No, I keep getting dragged back to my old stomping grounds,
Speaker 3: the House of Representatives, because I mean, the Republicans right
Speaker 3: now are just you know, eating each other alive. And
Speaker 3: the thing that's most shocking to me in recent weeks
Speaker 3: is the level of hypocrisy that we are seeing from
Speaker 3: the GOP right now. I mean, in a cosey, it's Washington,
Speaker 3: They're all I mean, this is we become cynical as reporters.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's important just just couches. You
Speaker 1: are not a partisan, absolutely not it. You come from Congress,
Speaker 1: you work at politicos, so you're really here to just
Speaker 1: say what you're seeing. But what you're seeing ishpocrasy.
Speaker 3: Yes, I mean, I've covered the Hill for over a decade,
Speaker 3: especially Republicans have a lot of great relationships with them,
Speaker 3: and they will tell you some even on.
Speaker 4: The record, that the level of hipocrasy or here.
Speaker 3: Is just uncanny. I mean, I'm thinking first of all
Speaker 3: about what happened with the border deal recently, so.
Speaker 1: Talk us through that just for the people who are
Speaker 1: not completely right in.
Speaker 3: The White House obviously wants to send more money to Ukraine.
Speaker 3: They've been asking about this for months now, and Speaker
Speaker 3: Mike Johnson initially put up a requirement that, Okay, if
Speaker 3: we're going to fund Ukraine, first we have to deal
Speaker 3: with our defense here at home. We need to crack
Speaker 3: down on the border. So this was a Speaker johnson
Speaker 3: initial push right after he became Speaker, and he basically said, look,
Speaker 3: I want to buy partisan border deal. It takes four months.
Speaker 3: Lawmakers go into this rabbit hole in the Senate and
Speaker 3: they come out and they have a bill that gives
Speaker 3: Republicans a whole bunch of conservative policy wins.
Speaker 4: Democrats get very little in terms of immigration.
Speaker 1: It's not so far from HB two, right.
Speaker 3: So HR two, which is the House version, just the
Speaker 3: House version of like a border crack down. It definitely
Speaker 3: goes further. But these are not policy changes that Democrats
Speaker 3: would want for free. It's like pulling their teeth here,
Speaker 3: and it's all because they want Ukraine money, right, like
Speaker 3: increasing Sanders or asylum, giving new authority to expel migrants,
Speaker 3: basically ending what Republicans call catch and release, you know,
Speaker 3: making it easier to detain people and not release them
Speaker 3: but actually keep them in house while they're waiting for
Speaker 3: their asylum cases. Anyway, a lot of conservative policy wins,
Speaker 3: and Johnson blows it up, says no because Donald Trump
Speaker 3: pressures him not to give Joe Biden a win on
Speaker 3: the border, which is clearly one of his biggest political
Speaker 3: problems right now. A lot of people do not like
Speaker 3: how Biden's handling the border issue, and Johnson follows suit.
Speaker 3: And then after the Senate just a few days ago,
Speaker 3: passes this Ukraine assistance package without the border. Since Johnson
Speaker 3: said no to what he originally.
Speaker 4: Requested, they send it to the House and.
Speaker 3: Guess what the speaker says now, he says it doesn't
Speaker 3: address the border, so we can't accept it.
Speaker 4: It's just like, oh my.
Speaker 1: Gosh, right, it's not a great look to say the
Speaker 1: thing you gave me I don't want. And also I
Speaker 1: won't help you unless you give me the thing which
Speaker 1: I just rejected.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and like, look, I know we always talk about
Speaker 3: how during a presidential election year, like I wish we
Speaker 3: were talking about at the beginning, Usually it goes dark.
Speaker 3: Not a lot gets done. All the votes are usually
Speaker 3: like very sort of posturing votes. Messaging, yeah, messaging, but like,
Speaker 3: you know, there's a real need on the border right now.
Speaker 4: It's a top concern for voters.
Speaker 3: And you know, you had people like me McConnell in
Speaker 3: the Senate who were really championing and cheerleading this for
Speaker 3: a long time until they saw the writing on the
Speaker 3: wall and then they backtracked. It was just a stunning,
Speaker 3: sort of embarrassing thing on Capitol Hill recently. I will
Speaker 3: also say that, you know, Speaker Mike Johnson, a lot
Speaker 3: of House Republicans were excited about his ascension. Now, a
Speaker 3: lot of them, and I just wrote about this in
Speaker 3: Playbook a few days ago, a lot of them are
Speaker 3: pining for Kevin McCarthy again. And that is saying something
Speaker 3: people like Thomas Messy, who is a conservative libertarian esque
Speaker 3: member from Kentucky. He has long been a top critic
Speaker 3: of Kevin McCarthy, never been a good fan of him.
Speaker 3: He said that after Republicans tried and failed to impeach
Speaker 3: may Orcists just a few days ago, and it's sort
Speaker 3: of an embarrassing display. He was like, you know, getting
Speaker 3: rid of McCarthy was a huge mistake, and people are
Speaker 3: starting to say that Republicans are saying that a lot
Speaker 3: behind the scenes right now.
Speaker 1: Not a great look for mad Gates, who was the
Speaker 1: driving force behind getting rid of McCarthy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, that's actually a really interesting point.
Speaker 3: I should probably find him on the hill and catch
Speaker 3: up little Buyer's remorse. I'm sure he will never admit it, right,
Speaker 3: I mean, I think this is like Gates's crowning achievement
Speaker 3: that he got rid of somebody he completely despised. But look,
Speaker 3: it's showing that maybe the issue wasn't McCarthy so much
Speaker 3: as the fact that they have a slim majority in
Speaker 3: Republicans larger so divided right now between like the Magawine
Speaker 3: of the party and the more traditional Republicans. Obviously the
Speaker 3: Magawine is winging out hardcore right now, and that's a
Speaker 3: problem when you know, the functions of Congress is to
Speaker 3: govern and pass legislation and compromises needed, and that is
Speaker 3: very out of fashion right now.
Speaker 1: It's one of the things that I think makes your
Speaker 1: point really well is that they lost a sixth procedural
Speaker 1: vote on salt. I know Jesse loves to talk about
Speaker 1: but it's a sort of like the state and local adoption.
Speaker 1: Republicans from New York, and I think, quite smartly, believe
Speaker 1: that if there's any chance of them keeping their seats,
Speaker 1: they need to try to pass this solid deduction. Can
Speaker 1: you talk us through what's happening there?
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, So these are a lot of Republicans in
Speaker 3: New York and Biden districts. They're worried about their.
Speaker 1: Seats in California too, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, California too, absolutely, and a lot of their constituents
Speaker 3: high cost areas. Right, they want to be able to
Speaker 3: take the state and local tax deduction. They want the
Speaker 3: sort of cap on that to be higher. So basically
Speaker 3: a bigger tax break for the fact that they're paying
Speaker 3: all these other state and local taxes at a much bigger
Speaker 3: rate than the rest of the country is. The centrist
Speaker 3: Republicans were pushing Johnson to allow vote on this. He
Speaker 3: said he would allow it, but it didn't even come
Speaker 3: to a full vote because before you have the vote
Speaker 3: on the legislation, you have what's called a rule in
Speaker 3: the House of Representatives. It's basically just governing the debate
Speaker 3: for them considering this bill, and usually it's up to
Speaker 3: the majority. To carry a rule two passage, they need
Speaker 3: to get a majority of the House. Usually it's the
Speaker 3: majority of Republicans are the ones who are supposed to
Speaker 3: carry this. Instead, eighteen Republicans voted against it. All Democrats
Speaker 3: voted against it. The rule went down and it.
Speaker 4: Never got considered. And the thing to know about this
Speaker 4: is it's it's the sixth time this has.
Speaker 3: Happened since Johnson began Speaker, and that is more than
Speaker 3: I believe something in like half a century, Congress has
Speaker 3: not seen a rule go down or fail on the
Speaker 3: floor this often, and more than half a century. And
Speaker 3: I will also note former Speaker Nancy Pelousi never lost
Speaker 3: a single vote on the House floor. Johnson has lost
Speaker 3: more than a half a dozen, including an effort to
Speaker 3: try to impeach the DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorchis and try
Speaker 3: to fund Ukraine to Israel, which is a largely bipartisan
Speaker 3: issue on Capitol Hill, but the way he did it
Speaker 3: pissed a lot of people off and it went down.
Speaker 1: He like did this sort of weird hell Mary pass
Speaker 1: where he's like, we're going to do Israel funding with
Speaker 1: no offsets, which would mean just like more money more
Speaker 1: foreign a. Politically, there's a lot of popularity for it,
Speaker 1: and it died too, and the Israel people were like,
Speaker 1: don't do it this way.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So initially he had put this money up for a
Speaker 3: vote months ago, but with these controversial offsets, basically targeted
Speaker 3: a bunch of democratic priorities to cut spending there and
Speaker 3: move that money to fund this new assistance for Israel.
Speaker 3: That pissed off a lot of Dems. They said, no,
Speaker 3: this isn't easy out. Now he sort of moved forward
Speaker 3: getting rid of those offsets, just doing what they call
Speaker 3: a clean bill that doesn't include sort of these partisan
Speaker 3: policy winds. But it came right after Johnson killed the
Speaker 3: border bill. And what's important to know about this is
Speaker 3: that the White House has been asking for a national
Speaker 3: security package that includes money for Israel, money for Ukraine,
Speaker 3: and money for Taiwan. They want to keep them all
Speaker 3: together because the belief is that the medicine goes down
Speaker 3: with a little sugar, right, So you know, people who
Speaker 3: don't want to vote for Ukraine, maybe they vote for
Speaker 3: this package because they do want to support Israel. Johnson
Speaker 3: sort of carved that up, took Israel out, and tried
Speaker 3: to pass it what is known as under suspension of
Speaker 3: the rules of the House. This means it requires two
Speaker 3: thirds of a majority to actually pass, not just a
Speaker 3: simple majority. So a lot of Republicans and Democrats needed.
Speaker 3: A lot of Democrats or pissed that he was trying
Speaker 3: to curve off this money just on Israel instead of
Speaker 3: also addressing Ukraine. And then he had also flip flopped
Speaker 3: on this notion of offsetting this funding, so a lot
Speaker 3: of Conservatives who wanted to see this money paid for
Speaker 3: were pissed at him too. So it's just the thing
Speaker 3: I keep hearing over and over about him by Republicans
Speaker 3: in the House is that he's all over the place.
Speaker 3: He's flying by the seat of his pants.
Speaker 4: With McCarthy, they said, at least he had a strategy.
Speaker 3: Not everybody liked it, and a lot of people accused
Speaker 3: him of lying all the time, which was a big
Speaker 3: problem for him. But he had a strategy, he pitched
Speaker 3: it to his members, and oftentimes he stuck to it.
Speaker 3: With Johnson, it seems like his mind is changing depending
Speaker 3: on you know, the week, and you know he's doing
Speaker 3: one thing with Israel, then he backtracks a couple weeks later,
Speaker 3: his members get mad. He's telling members that he does
Speaker 3: support helping Ukraine, but then refuses to put Ukraine money
Speaker 3: on the House floor because of the threat from the
Speaker 3: magawing and some of his members like Marjorie Taylor Green
Speaker 3: saying they will oust him a speaker if he allows
Speaker 3: such a vote. So he's all over the place and
Speaker 3: that's really angering a lot of people, whether they're Conservatives,
Speaker 3: modern Republicans, Hawks, or even doves in the House right now,
Speaker 3: and it's not a good place for him.
Speaker 1: I want to ask you about retirements because one of
Speaker 1: the things that we're seeing Republicans in the House and
Speaker 1: Democrats do, but the Republican ones have gotten a lot
Speaker 1: of attention. Mark Green, who's the Chair of Homeland Security,
Speaker 1: is leaving after only six years. And these are like
Speaker 1: young Gish people for Congress anyway, young I just was
Speaker 1: hoping you could talk about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Mark Green still has a brown hair, so yes,
Speaker 3: that's not that's not the majority in Congress. It's a
Speaker 3: huge deal Chairman leaving, and what it says is that
Speaker 3: Republicans are not confident about keeping the House number one. Well,
Speaker 3: obviously the majority is very slim right now. When is
Speaker 3: it like a three C.
Speaker 1: Wait, I found the people are resigning, So with Kay Granger,
Speaker 1: who voted to Keith McCarthy, Ken Buck, who's been actually
Speaker 1: very vocal about the majorcist stuff, Blake luke Meyer. Right,
Speaker 1: but these are all sort of twenty ten. I mean
Speaker 1: Greg Pence, we knew, Mike Bence's brother. I mean, if
Speaker 1: you look at the numbers, and then Kevin leaves, Kathy
Speaker 1: McMorris Rogers, Mike Gallagher, they're sort of young ish and
Speaker 1: sort of ambitious and leaving right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, No, I mean CMR Kathy mc morris Rodgers once
Speaker 3: in Republican leadership herself. Yeah, I mean, she's got a
Speaker 3: powerful committee position that she's wanted for a long time.
Speaker 3: Gallagher has very much been seen as sort of an
Speaker 3: up and comer. He's super young. I don't think he's
Speaker 3: gonna be like in his what lordies, No, not even
Speaker 3: I think he's like in his thirties, actually maybe forties.
Speaker 3: He yeah, the case closer to my age, but I
Speaker 3: could be totally warm about that. But again, he has
Speaker 3: brown hair, which is not the norm in Congress. But
Speaker 3: two things that this says. Number one is thirty ninety nine.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 4: Okay, he's older than me, I'm just saying, but still
Speaker 4: very young. It says two things.
Speaker 3: It says that people are number one, there they're pissed
Speaker 3: about Congress not working anymore, and like, you know, Republicans
Speaker 3: are in the majority, and you don't hear a lot
Speaker 3: of them talk about this on the record, but basically
Speaker 3: every one of them will admit this to you, either
Speaker 3: on background or you know, in a private conversation, that
Speaker 3: they're a shit show right now. They don't know what
Speaker 3: they're doing, and the party's all over the place, and
Speaker 3: they think it's going to get worse because Donald Trump
Speaker 3: is going to be the nominee and there's a big
Speaker 3: fear of him also pulling down Republicans. But like, if
Speaker 3: you come to Congress, actually pass legislation, get things done,
Speaker 3: and like you have Republicans openly admitting that they're not
Speaker 3: putting a solution on the floor because Donald Trump wants
Speaker 3: to keep that problem to run on in twenty twenty
Speaker 3: four read the border specifically. That's frustrating to a lot
Speaker 3: of members. And so you know, people are sort of
Speaker 3: looking at the ready on the wall. They think they're
Speaker 3: probably not going to be in the majority again in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty five. And look, they're just saying this is
Speaker 3: they're looking at their time and saying that they'd rather
Speaker 3: be doing other things.
Speaker 4: So it's pretty telling.
Speaker 1: Yeah, talk me through Maorca's this impeachment now starts. It
Speaker 1: means that the Senate can't do anything right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, No, the Senate they can if they want, but
Speaker 3: they have to do this trial.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: That's actually been something that I've been doing some reporting on.
Speaker 3: There's a number of ways Democrats can try to get
Speaker 3: out of the trial, and there are conversations happening right
Speaker 3: now in the White House and also among Senate Democrats
Speaker 3: about how quickly can they make this go away. There
Speaker 3: is definitely a feeling amongst Democrats, and by the way,
Speaker 3: a lot of Republicans in the Senate, in the sort
Speaker 3: of legal constitutional scholar braining act community too, that sort
Speaker 3: of leans to the right, that this impeachment was not merited.
Speaker 3: It was not high crimes into misdemeanors. The Founders talked
Speaker 3: about whether they should allow impeachment to be done for
Speaker 3: policy issues, and the Founders completely rejected that debate and
Speaker 3: decided that no, they didn't want that yet. That's exactly
Speaker 3: what the House did, so there's a feeling amongst Democrats
Speaker 3: that they want to get rid of this. There's talk
Speaker 3: right now about doing what's called emotion to dismiss, basically
Speaker 3: after the articles come over to the Senate, which will
Speaker 3: happen next week. It's going to happen right after the
Speaker 3: Senate comes back from their President's Day recess. They can
Speaker 3: basically vote right away to try to get rid of
Speaker 3: the articles dismiss. They can also allow for opening statements.
Speaker 3: But by the way, if they do that, that means
Speaker 3: Marjorie Taylor Green is going to be presenting on the
Speaker 3: Senate floor talking about Biden and the border.
Speaker 1: That was my next question. Tell us who these impeachment
Speaker 1: managers are, because this is amazing.
Speaker 4: The one that obviously stuck out to me was Marjorie
Speaker 4: Taylor Green.
Speaker 3: And this is not someone that the White House is
Speaker 3: going to be wanting to give a huge microphone too.
Speaker 4: So again, this is why Democrats are looking to end.
Speaker 1: This or maybe they should.
Speaker 3: Well that's actually a good point because I did have
Speaker 3: that thought too. But also she could say a lot
Speaker 3: of things that are not exactly true. During a trial,
Speaker 3: you can't just rebut her, right, the managers present, and
Speaker 3: then the defense presents. You can't interrupt and say objection,
Speaker 3: this is not true, So it's basically giving her like
Speaker 3: a free rate to say what she wants. They can
Speaker 3: just dismiss it at the front. They can do opening
Speaker 3: arguments and then dismiss it. And then the thing that
Speaker 3: a lot of people are talking about right now is
Speaker 3: actually referring these impeachment articles to a committee. This has
Speaker 3: been done with non presdential impeachments in the past, things
Speaker 3: like judicial impeachments, where they basically send it to a committee,
Speaker 3: the committee investigates it and then recommends that the full
Speaker 3: Senate vote up or down. In the Senate votes up
Speaker 3: or down. So the problem with this though is even
Speaker 3: if it goes to a committee, we could see hearings
Speaker 3: on this matter. And again I think the White House
Speaker 3: wants this to go away asap. It'll be interesting to
Speaker 3: see what they do, but definitely don't expect like a
Speaker 3: long drawn out process.
Speaker 1: So so interesting making Marjorie Taylor Green an impeachment manager.
Speaker 1: The theory of the case here with Republicans, I think
Speaker 1: is that the base loves Marjorie Taylor Green and the
Speaker 1: rest of us or the sort of persuadable voter, of
Speaker 1: which you know there are fewer and fewer that they
Speaker 1: will grow to love her. But if you're trying to
Speaker 1: keep the House, is this a brilliant play?
Speaker 4: Absolutely not, I would say there are.
Speaker 3: I know from conversations with Republicans on the Hill a
Speaker 3: lot of them know that she is a loose cannon
Speaker 3: and that it will very much blow back on them politically.
Speaker 3: The reason she is in this position is because of
Speaker 3: the power she wields in the House. I can tell
Speaker 3: you you know, when they were doing these Biden and
Speaker 3: impeachment hearings a while ago, just to give you some
Speaker 3: insight into this, there was a debate about whether the
Speaker 3: achiachment should be going through the House Oversight Committee or
Speaker 3: the House Judiciary Committee. There was a couple hearings in
Speaker 3: the House Oversight Committee that were frankly embarrassing or Republicans
Speaker 3: where their own witnesses said that what Biden had done
Speaker 3: or these allegations of gets Biden again were not.
Speaker 1: Liberal turally right, yes, yes, exactly not so liberal, but
Speaker 1: definitely very conservative.
Speaker 4: And so there was talk about, Okay, Oversight.
Speaker 3: Doesn't know what they're doing. Jim Jordan is the chair
Speaker 3: of the Judiciary Committee. Let's just move this over to Jordan.
Speaker 3: A lot of Republicans were telling me they wanted to
Speaker 3: do this. The answer, however, was no, because of one
Speaker 3: main reason. Marjorie Taylor Green is on oversight and she
Speaker 3: wants this and if we take it from her, she
Speaker 3: will get pissed, and nobody wanted to piss her off
Speaker 3: in leadership. So the reason she is getting this position
Speaker 3: is not because Republicans think she's a great messenger. They
Speaker 3: know she's a very flawed one. The reason she's getting
Speaker 3: it is because they're trying to praase her. And if
Speaker 3: they don't give her this position when she's been lobbing
Speaker 3: for it considerably behind the scenes, then they're going to
Speaker 3: be in trouble. And that again, it's not a place
Speaker 3: that these chairmen or Republican leaders be in right now.
Speaker 1: So it's yet another Republicans being held hostage by their crazy.
Speaker 3: By the bar right by the mataway, yes, and against
Speaker 3: what they know is their best interest in their own
Speaker 3: political gut instincts.
Speaker 1: So it's really interesting, really interesting. Thank you so much, Rachel.
Speaker 3: Happy to be on while I get to see you.
Speaker 1: Dan Nathan is a panelist on Fast Money as well
Speaker 1: as the co host of the podcast on the tape
Speaker 1: and Okay Computer. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Dan Nathan.
Speaker 5: Thanks for having me back, Molly. It's one of my
Speaker 5: favorite podcasts. You know, I have a few of my own,
Speaker 5: so therefore I have to put it in one of
Speaker 5: my favorite but I love Fast Politics.
Speaker 1: Oh your best. So I'm very happy to have you here.
Speaker 1: And first I want you to explain to us because
Speaker 1: it's sort of an interesting week in the public markets,
Speaker 1: not getting a ton of like non market related press.
Speaker 1: It has not carried over into the news cycle, but
Speaker 1: a little bit interesting. Talk to this about what happened
Speaker 1: on Monday and is sort of market volatility that followed.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so we had a situation where all eyes were
Speaker 5: on this CPI report. This is an inflation reading that
Speaker 5: a lot of market participants follow very closely, and you know,
Speaker 5: expectations have been and for the last year that a
Speaker 5: lot of the effects of the Fed's monetary policy was
Speaker 5: to bring down the level of inflation. We saw it
Speaker 5: get as high as nine percent in twenty twenty two,
Speaker 5: and therefore, you know they have this two percent target.
Speaker 5: They've been speaking about it every time they have the
Speaker 5: opportunity to do so. On the administration has been touting
Speaker 5: the fact that inflation has come down dramatically from those
Speaker 5: lofty levels in twenty twenty two. So we got a
Speaker 5: reading for January inflation on Tuesday morning, and it was
Speaker 5: a little hotter than expected.
Speaker 1: Three point one for the year.
Speaker 5: Correct three point one percent year over year, and so
Speaker 5: a lot of I guess economists or strategists were expecting
Speaker 5: possibly a two point something reading, right, getting closer to
Speaker 5: their two percent target, which would give the Fed the
Speaker 5: ability to then lower interest rates, right, And so that's
Speaker 5: something that markets have been keying off. The stock market
Speaker 5: just made a new all time high with the S
Speaker 5: and P five hundred at this nice round number of
Speaker 5: five thousand. Well, there we were, we close there on Monday.
Speaker 5: And on Tuesday, with that hotter than expected reading, which
Speaker 5: is pushing out the Fed's ability to lower interest rates,
Speaker 5: the stock market sold off pretty aggressively. It has since
Speaker 5: recovered over the last couple of days, but a lot
Speaker 5: of economists, a lot of investors, a lot of strategists
Speaker 5: are starting to price in the fact that maybe the
Speaker 5: Fed will not be able to lower interest rates sooner
Speaker 5: than some had expected, which is something that buoy's stock
Speaker 5: market valuations, which is one of the main reasons why
Speaker 5: the stock market from its October lows has rallied more
Speaker 5: than twenty percent.
Speaker 1: Right, weill unpack that number for us, because it's actually
Speaker 1: a little bit misleading.
Speaker 5: Right, Yeah, a lot of folks have been like arguing
Speaker 5: for a very long time the way that that CPI
Speaker 5: is calculated. You know, it just doesn't incorporate a lot
Speaker 5: of things that a lot of regular Americans feel, whether
Speaker 5: it be a hump and whether it be food, whether
Speaker 5: it be auto insurance, whether it be certain services that
Speaker 5: we all have to pay for, And so that reading
Speaker 5: is a little funky, you know. It's also one of
Speaker 5: these things where it seems like every sort of economic
Speaker 5: reading that has the ability to kind of move the
Speaker 5: stock market as it relates to what the Fed might
Speaker 5: do with monetary policy, there's always some folks who just
Speaker 5: want to tear them apart and say they're not actual
Speaker 5: good readings. There's a lot of stuff in the employment
Speaker 5: data that speaks to the same thing. And that's another thing.
Speaker 5: You know, we can talk about inflation, but that January
Speaker 5: employment report was really hot too. Write it's showing that
Speaker 5: wage growth is really good at a time where unemployment
Speaker 5: is that fifty year lows, basically all time lows. So
Speaker 5: you can speak as much as you want about inflation
Speaker 5: coming down, right, But you can also talk about a
Speaker 5: very hot jobs market. You can talk about you know,
Speaker 5: upward pressure on wages. That is also a big input
Speaker 5: as it relates to inflation, so you know, and then
Speaker 5: you've got to go back to, Okay, well, if the
Speaker 5: employees are making more money year over year, right, and
Speaker 5: if inflation is still higher than the Fed would like
Speaker 5: it to be, if that inflation rate is below the
Speaker 5: wage growth level, right, that should be good for consumers.
Speaker 5: So there's all these sorts of ways that kind of
Speaker 5: parse this out. But the upshot of this week and
Speaker 5: some of the data that we've seen unemployment over the
Speaker 5: last week or two is that the economy is still
Speaker 5: really strong. And as long as the economy is strong,
Speaker 5: then the Fed doesn't really have much case to lower
Speaker 5: interest rates. And that very high interest rate is the
Speaker 5: thing that could put the US economy into a recession,
Speaker 5: and that's the thing that a lot of people are fearful, right.
Speaker 1: So there's a circular logic here, and also even more
Speaker 1: than that in those inflatiary numbers, wasn't the sort of
Speaker 1: the largest uptick in real estate?
Speaker 5: Yeah? Right, So one of the things that you think
Speaker 5: that with you know, interest rates going higher, mortgage rates
Speaker 5: going higher, the ability to kind of for people to
Speaker 5: to kind of move it has been hindered. So you've
Speaker 5: had this kind of really unnatural situation where you know,
Speaker 5: like housing prices have stayed very high because people are
Speaker 5: not willing to move out of their very low mortgage rates. Right,
Speaker 5: So we've seen mortgage rates as high as they've been
Speaker 5: in the last year or so in many decades or so,
Speaker 5: So you know, you have asset prices that are very high.
Speaker 5: So you have housing, you have the stock market, you know,
Speaker 5: a whole host of other things. And so the Fed
Speaker 5: again what they're trying to do with these high interest
Speaker 5: rates is kind of tamp down demand. Right. They want
Speaker 5: the economy to cool a little bit because they don't
Speaker 5: want inflation to become entrenched in the economy because then
Speaker 5: it's a situation where like in the seventies and Mally,
Speaker 5: you and I you don't really remember you the idea
Speaker 5: of stagflation, right, where you have a low growth environment,
Speaker 5: but you have high prices and therefore it just that
Speaker 5: that's the sort of thing that would weigh on risk assets.
Speaker 5: So the FED is not ready to drop the mic
Speaker 5: and take a victory lap and say mission accomplished just yet.
Speaker 5: And that's the one thing, going back to your original question,
Speaker 5: that cause volatility in the equity market, because on the
Speaker 5: CPI report, you saw interest rates move higher and you
Speaker 5: saw stock market prices go lower, and that's the sort
Speaker 5: of thing that if that were just kind of you know,
Speaker 5: if investors were starting to think that, oh man, we
Speaker 5: are not going to get to that two percent in
Speaker 5: a target, and the Fed's going to keep interest rates higher,
Speaker 5: meaning more restrictive on the economy, then the longer that
Speaker 5: goes on, is that the greater the likelihood that we
Speaker 5: have to go into recession. And just so you know,
Speaker 5: as we're recording this today, two of the headlines that
Speaker 5: I saw is that the UK pushed into a recession
Speaker 5: over the last quarter, and so did Japan. So we're
Speaker 5: starting to see this in some very large economies around
Speaker 5: the world.
Speaker 1: Right, UK and Japan both countries that said no to immigration,
Speaker 1: thus having a tighter labor market, thus having more inflation,
Speaker 1: US tipping into recession, not necessarily why they tipped into recession,
Speaker 1: but certainly Brexit is not helping.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean this situation. I mean, we know that
Speaker 5: Japan has this massive demographic issue and it's been going
Speaker 5: on for a very long time. Their economy has been
Speaker 5: really stuck in the mud for a long time also,
Speaker 5: But when you think about the UK and obviously the
Speaker 5: break from the EU, you know, the EU is probably
Speaker 5: the next shoe to drop, as you know, as it
Speaker 5: relates to a recession. You know, the war in Ukraine
Speaker 5: has obviously been a bit of a headwind for the
Speaker 5: European economy and so you know, it brings us back
Speaker 5: to the US a little bit, and all the kind
Speaker 5: of fiscal wrangling that we have about aid towards Ukraine.
Speaker 5: I mean, the situation in Ukraine was one of when
Speaker 5: Russia invaded, was one of the major issues that caused
Speaker 5: that inflationary spike. In twenty twenty two. We were just
Speaker 5: coming out of COVID, We're dealing with a lot of
Speaker 5: the supply chain disruptions. A lot of that came from
Speaker 5: you know, China and the like. But then all of
Speaker 5: a sudden, we saw it with energy. We saw it
Speaker 5: with grain, and so this is one of the reasons
Speaker 5: why I just don't get the Republican stance towards aid
Speaker 5: to Ukraine if you think about just the potential bottlenecks
Speaker 5: that it has with the global economy. The other aspect
Speaker 5: that I just mentioned is obviously an expanded war in the
Speaker 5: Middle East, and we already know what's happened to shipping
Speaker 5: routes in the Red Sea right causing the US and
Speaker 5: the UK the bomb you know, the Hooti rebels who
Speaker 5: are causing a lot of disruptions there. You know, that
Speaker 5: is inflationary. And then throw into the fact that on
Speaker 5: the flip side of this, we have further you know,
Speaker 5: wrangling about you know, trade situations with China which are
Speaker 5: obviously inflationary at a time where the Chinese economy is
Speaker 5: actually in the opposite situation, it is deflationary. And you
Speaker 5: could make the argument, while we have inflation in the
Speaker 5: developed world, you know, a deflationary economy in China because
Speaker 5: so much of the world relies on China rights as
Speaker 5: a as a place to you know, kind of do
Speaker 5: business with them. That's a really, really bad situation in
Speaker 5: my opinion, so not being priced into the stock market
Speaker 5: here in the US at all time highs in my opinion.
Speaker 1: Yeah, those hooty rebels, God forbid you disrupt shipping lines.
Speaker 1: America is not going to tolerate that. I'm not taking
Speaker 1: the side of the hoosy rebels. I mean, whatever is
Speaker 1: going on there is.
Speaker 5: Not a good stance. But you know, one of the
Speaker 5: things that I am routinely, you know, as I sit
Speaker 5: on the desk at Best Money on CNBC and the
Speaker 5: podcast that we do in the life, there's a little
Speaker 5: bit of a conundrum playing out here right now because
Speaker 5: when I think about the stock market at all time highs,
Speaker 5: I think about consumer confidence at pretty decent levels. I
Speaker 5: think home prices where they are, right, I see, you know, households.
Speaker 5: You know, we're starting to see the savings rate tick
Speaker 5: down a little bit, consumer credit tick up considerably, but
Speaker 5: consumer confidence is pretty high. We have, again, we have
Speaker 5: decent waves growth above four percent year every year. We
Speaker 5: have unemployment below four percent at all time highs. We
Speaker 5: see you know, inflation, while this is a measure of
Speaker 5: year over year, so at three point one percent, it's
Speaker 5: still high, right, that's a cumulative sort of level here
Speaker 5: things seem okay for the economy. We avoided a recession
Speaker 5: that the stock market in twenty twenty two was pricing
Speaker 5: in in twenty twenty three. The thing that I can't
Speaker 5: figure out is that why registered voters, right and even
Speaker 5: Democrats feel so pessimistic about the economy in this election year.
Speaker 5: And it's one of the things that I'm going to
Speaker 5: be you know, I'm going to be really trying to
Speaker 5: figure out for most of this year because we see
Speaker 5: how the Biden administration, how poorly they rank when it
Speaker 5: comes to the economy. And given everything that we know
Speaker 5: about Donald Trump and the chaos that he causes with
Speaker 5: just the kind of world order, the comments that he
Speaker 5: made about NATO, that should be one of the scariest things.
Speaker 5: If you are a US multinational company and you do
Speaker 5: a lot of business in Europe, you do a lot
Speaker 5: of business in Asia, you do a lot of business
Speaker 5: in the Middle East. What he has to say about
Speaker 5: NATO is massively disruptive, in my opinion, and you should
Speaker 5: be scared shitless about that, right, And so nothing is
Speaker 5: being priced into that now. I don't want to talk
Speaker 5: about Donald Trump every day like we had to in
Speaker 5: twenty sixteen or like we had to in twenty twenty,
Speaker 5: at least from my standpoint as a market show. But
Speaker 5: I feel like the markets are really underestimating this sort
Speaker 5: of thing. And at some point the Biden administration has
Speaker 5: to start leading with their successes that they've had on
Speaker 5: the economic front. Right, at some point it has to
Speaker 5: kind of plow through to the voter.
Speaker 1: I'm going to blow your mind here when I tell
Speaker 1: you that. In fact, Joe Biden and even in Axios yesterday,
Speaker 1: Axios in a piece about how the Inflation Reduction Act is
Speaker 1: actually creating these mini booms in states that have not
Speaker 1: had any investment. I mean, I agree, and I think
Speaker 1: they have to take it to the road. But I
Speaker 1: just want to point out that the road. For example,
Speaker 1: I was with a bunch of smart people and they
Speaker 1: were like, why doesn't Biden go out there. He's out
Speaker 1: there literally every day giving speeches. They are not being
Speaker 1: covered because people find it boring unless he gaffs. So
Speaker 1: you do see, I mean, I have seen and the
Speaker 1: I mean these guys you kind of get them too.
Speaker 1: I mean, you cannot get them to shut up about chips.
Speaker 5: Well, they need better surrogates. I mean, like it's really simple.
Speaker 5: I mean, I don't know if you watched John Stewart's
Speaker 5: return to the Daily Show the other night, it was
Speaker 5: a pretty brilliant piece where he came out on that
Speaker 5: Thursday night press or he was unhappy with you know,
Speaker 5: like the you know, the categorization of him as a
Speaker 5: well meeting elderly man with a bad memory and John
Speaker 5: Stewart's bit. And I'm so glad he's back. I really
Speaker 5: missed him. I actually honestly think that if he and
Speaker 5: Colbert had not gone off Comedy Central in twenty sixteen
Speaker 5: before the election, I think that Hillary would have won.
Speaker 5: I'm not blaming them. I go, like, kudos to those guys,
Speaker 5: but I'm glad he's back. But the point there is that,
Speaker 5: like he had the opportunity to come out, be force full,
Speaker 5: stick to the message, be combative with some of these
Speaker 5: fox a holes, and then he just couldn't let it
Speaker 5: be and he had to come back and remind everybody
Speaker 5: that he literally in twenty twenty campaigned from his basement
Speaker 5: in Delaware. He will not be able to kind of
Speaker 5: deliver the message on his own. Kamala Harris will not
Speaker 5: be able to deliver the message on the areas that
Speaker 5: they need to be strong on, whether it be the economy,
Speaker 5: whether it be you know, his legislative agenda that was
Speaker 5: very successful in the first term. So I don't know, man,
Speaker 5: I think we're kind of like whatever the bad def
Speaker 5: con is, you know what I mean, I don't know
Speaker 5: one or five, but we're getting close to that one.
Speaker 5: And when folks, you know, John Stewart and his return
Speaker 5: to the Daily Show, you know, put a very fine
Speaker 5: point on it. We know who that audience is, and
Speaker 5: we know the sort of messaging they have. They need
Speaker 5: better sarrogates, that's how they get covered.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if we're going to open the door. And does
Speaker 1: John Stuart make a great point by making fun of
Speaker 1: Biden for his age? I mean, okay, I mean I
Speaker 1: don't know. I've watched a lot of Biden's speech shoes
Speaker 1: And is the man a gifted orator he gifts a
Speaker 1: good speech? No, he never was.
Speaker 5: You know, let me tell you something. I'm going to
Speaker 5: point you to a podcast that my friend Wilfred Frost
Speaker 5: did that his father did with Joe Biden in nineteen
Speaker 5: eighty eight, and it's in the podcast stores. It's called
Speaker 5: the I Think it's called the Frost Files. And this
Speaker 5: was a never before released interview of Joe Biden when
Speaker 5: he was running for president the first time in nineteen
Speaker 5: eighty eight. And go listen to this. He sounded like
Speaker 5: an absolute fighter and a rock star. And I get
Speaker 5: it, it was a long time ago, but you know what's crazy.
Speaker 5: As I was listening to this interview, Okay, this was
Speaker 5: David Frost and Joe Biden, it sounded like Gavin Newsom
Speaker 5: in twenty twenty four. And that's the sort of fighters
Speaker 5: that we need out there, you know what I mean,
Speaker 5: like kind of like making the case against Trump right now,
Speaker 5: against against Maga politics, against you know, like isolation is
Speaker 5: sort of stuff that that couldn't be worse for our
Speaker 5: country's future as we think about this kind of rhetoric,
Speaker 5: as they know, and the economy, if the economy is
Speaker 5: doing well, then they need to make a better case
Speaker 5: for it. If Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are not
Speaker 5: the people to do it, certainly Janet Yellen's not the
Speaker 5: person to do it, then they need to find those people,
Speaker 5: and they need to find them fast. Because I'll tell
Speaker 5: you this, Molly right now, and you get me a
Speaker 5: little fired up here, okay. Is that the economy's okay
Speaker 5: right now? Okay, So if we think to November fifth, Okay,
Speaker 5: if we think about that date, they'll likely and if
Speaker 5: we want to look at the probabilities, okay, whether the
Speaker 5: economy is much better than it is right now or
Speaker 5: much worse, Okay, I'm kind of leaning towards much worse
Speaker 5: as we get longer into this year, okay, And that
Speaker 5: will be an absolute disaster. And it also brings me
Speaker 5: back to twoth Zoan and eight and that election year
Speaker 5: where the McCain thing was sunk because the economy fell apart, right,
Speaker 5: and obviously he was not doing a great job on
Speaker 5: the campaign front and everything like that. But I get
Speaker 5: really nervous about that. And so as bad as Biden
Speaker 5: is polling right now in the economy, and the fact
Speaker 5: that all this stuff as it relates to Trump, all
Speaker 5: the stuff that's in the news, and all the gas
Speaker 5: and all the nastiness and all the cruelty and all
Speaker 5: the demronic sort of things that he says, that Joe
Speaker 5: Biden is still pulling the way he is on the
Speaker 5: economy in this environment. It's just crazy to me, and
Speaker 5: I don't think it gets better from here.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about the tight labor market for a minute.
Speaker 1: Labor markets still tight. No immigration passed yet again, because
Speaker 1: why legislate, I mean, what is the solve for that?
Speaker 5: Well, the hard part here is that until they actually
Speaker 5: get any credit for putting some policy in place, and
Speaker 5: I know that they wanted to do this bipartisan deal
Speaker 5: on the border, the border is the thing that's going
Speaker 5: to actually get all that headline.
Speaker 1: I mean, it'll get all the right wing headlines.
Speaker 5: But it's crowding everything else out. And so when you
Speaker 5: think about immigration, and you started talking about this as
Speaker 5: it relates to unemployment, we're talking about that data, you
Speaker 5: know what I mean, Like, look at the demographic problems
Speaker 5: that a country like China has. They have over you know,
Speaker 5: one point two billion people some estimates, by twenty fifty,
Speaker 5: they're going to have eight hundred billion people. They have
Speaker 5: a huge problem. So, like the whole idea that China
Speaker 5: is our big advisary right now over the next few decades,
Speaker 5: that just might not be the case. But fixing our
Speaker 5: border in a bipartisan way, in a humanitarian way, you
Speaker 5: know what I mean, And then doing the sorts of
Speaker 5: things that I think Democrats want to do the way
Speaker 5: that they view immigration, and you know, for you know,
Speaker 5: our economic well being, we can't do that until we
Speaker 5: fix the border. And that's obviously another place right or
Speaker 5: wrong that this administration and the party in general, they
Speaker 5: rank very poorly on.
Speaker 1: I'm going to blow your mind here, which is you
Speaker 1: know that the Republicans blow up the border?
Speaker 5: Do you know that? But like when you think about
Speaker 5: who are the people that are going to dictate who
Speaker 5: wins this election in November, it's from four or five states.
Speaker 5: We know the states very well, okay, we know the
Speaker 5: economic sensibilities of those states. Again, you and I on
Speaker 5: Fast Politics or whatever, we have these sorts of conversations
Speaker 5: among the people that we generally agree with. We can
Speaker 5: talk about it until we're blue in the face. But
Speaker 5: I'll tell you this, I'm gonna blow your mind. A
Speaker 5: lot of very left leaning people that I speak to
Speaker 5: who are in business or in Wall Street or or
Speaker 5: related industries who actually vote against their economic best interests
Speaker 5: for social reasons as it comes to democratic politics, are
Speaker 5: really freaking worried right now. Okay, And I don't think
Speaker 5: there's enough of that you know, trepidation in the public
Speaker 5: scene right now among Democrats. I think it's a huge problem.
Speaker 5: So we're all gonna sit here and make ourselves feel
Speaker 5: better about like how we align on certain social issues,
Speaker 5: how we align on geopolitical issues. But we're going to
Speaker 5: lose this election. Okay, we're going to lose this election
Speaker 5: if we really don't get our act together, become a
Speaker 5: bit more vocal about some of these really important points
Speaker 5: that I don't think between now and November they're going
Speaker 5: to rank better on the economy. I don't think they're
Speaker 5: going to rank better on the war in gozep between
Speaker 5: now in November. And you can talk to about to
Speaker 5: me about gun control, you can talk to me about
Speaker 5: abortion and all those sorts of things that they have
Speaker 5: won elections on over the last few cycles, and they're
Speaker 5: not going to matter this time because these other ones
Speaker 5: are going to be more important, and it's going to
Speaker 5: be in my opinion, it's about messaging and it's about
Speaker 5: choosing the right fighters.
Speaker 1: So you're getting this off polls, well, you tell me.
Speaker 1: I mean, I just saw New York's third district where
Speaker 1: Democrats won by eight points. It was this sixteen points
Speaker 1: in Nassau County. It was a Republican seat.
Speaker 5: They never should have lost that seat.
Speaker 1: You can Monday Morning Gorter Rag And in fact, when
Speaker 1: you listen to the voter interviews, the voters were One
Speaker 1: of the things Swazi did, which I think is quite
Speaker 1: smart and Democrats need to do, is he said there
Speaker 1: was a border deal. The reason why you believe and
Speaker 1: a lot of New York people believe that migration even
Speaker 1: though it's down for the last two months, but okay,
Speaker 1: is because the Republican governor from Texas is busing migrants
Speaker 1: into New York City, and the New York Post, which
Speaker 1: is owned by Rupert Murdoch, who is a reactionary fascist
Speaker 1: and who would die for another Trump presidency, is running
Speaker 1: pictures of migrant crime all the time. So I go
Speaker 1: to my dermatologist and she says, what are they going
Speaker 1: to do about the migrants because we have a manufactured
Speaker 1: bomb here. Fine, okay, tight labor market. So I have
Speaker 1: complicated feelings about demonizing a group of people desperate for
Speaker 1: a better life, like our grandparents and great grandmars. But okay,
Speaker 1: but I'm just saying, if you look at what Swazi did,
Speaker 1: which was smart and is A really good template was
Speaker 1: he went to voters and he said, look, Democrats made
Speaker 1: all these compromises to get a border deal. Donald Trump
Speaker 1: told Speaker Mike Johnson not to take the deal. And
Speaker 1: there is no orderdale and so these people have no
Speaker 1: path to make money. There is no legal way for
Speaker 1: them to earn money. They cannot pay Social Security taxes,
Speaker 1: they cannot work, and so they live on the doll.
Speaker 5: Yeah, listen, iimus is sympathetic to all of that. Okay,
Speaker 5: Like I live in New York City, I see what's
Speaker 5: going on. I give to a whole host of things,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean, And I try to be
Speaker 5: extremely empathetic to all that.
Speaker 1: So you don't even need to be sympathetic. This is
Speaker 1: economic sense to have people work in the labor market.
Speaker 5: You and I are on the same page. But what
Speaker 5: I'm saying is is, like we have the potential to
Speaker 5: maybe win back the House, the potential to hold the Senate,
Speaker 5: right but like the strong potential or the probability right
Speaker 5: now is that we lose the White House, and we
Speaker 5: know what's going to happen. He didn't give a crap
Speaker 5: who owns what House or the Senate. Like things are
Speaker 5: going to get really nasty here. And so my point
Speaker 5: is really happy about this, you know, special election. He's
Speaker 5: going to have to run again in November, right like
Speaker 5: then we need more people voicing those sorts of messages
Speaker 5: in a way that that's kind of relating to the people. Listen.
Speaker 5: I live in New York City. I canceled the New
Speaker 5: York Post in twenty sixteen. You know, I read the
Speaker 5: Wall Street Journal. I don't read the page, but I
Speaker 5: read the New York Times. Read the same things that
Speaker 5: you do, right like every morning, and I don't read
Speaker 5: the ruper burdock crap. It is busting through you know
Speaker 5: what I mean? Oh yeah, Bubble, I agree with No.
Speaker 1: No, it's a good point. Thank you so much. I
Speaker 1: didn't mean to be combative.
Speaker 5: No, I love it. Let me tell you something. I'll
Speaker 5: leave you with this. Okay, if we on this side
Speaker 5: don't have these sorts of battles right now, we are
Speaker 5: literally going to be in for it, man. Because if
Speaker 5: you thought twenty seventeen, eighteen, nineteen twenty and into early
Speaker 5: twenty one were bad, just wait.
Speaker 1: No, and I agree. And the truth is like the
Speaker 1: road to Hillary Clinton losing was filled with a lot
Speaker 1: of smugness.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I talked to a lot of people like you, Molly,
Speaker 5: who have big voices in bullhorns and the like, and
Speaker 5: everybody has just coalesced around the fact that this is
Speaker 5: the team. It's Biden Harris and I get it. There's
Speaker 5: not this you know, you can't challenge them. You're never
Speaker 5: going to have a future in the Democratic Party. The
Speaker 5: DNC's rigged it. There's not you know, primary apparatus in place.
Speaker 5: But man, if this guy you know, trips over a
Speaker 5: podium like his, I guess Defense secretary and his immobilized,
Speaker 5: I mean, its lights out because Kamala Harris at the
Speaker 5: top of the ticket, that's not winning. And you tell
Speaker 5: me how you get a you know, Gavin Newsom Witner
Speaker 5: ticket that dog hunts. I'm just telling you that Doug
Speaker 5: hunts right now. But listen, I'm going off here. But
Speaker 5: I think more people need to start to speak up
Speaker 5: and figure out what a plan be is because we're
Speaker 5: right about ready to be in a very difficult situation
Speaker 5: and not so distant future. Thank you, Dan, all right,
Speaker 5: MOLLI seea thanks.
Speaker 1: No moment Jesse Cannon Hi jug fast.
Speaker 5: There is a lot of exciting clips coming out of
Speaker 5: the Fanny Willis trial today, what'd you see here?
Speaker 1: I'm enraged about this trial. First of all, it's not
Speaker 1: a trial, it's a hearing. The Republicans are trying to
Speaker 1: get Fanny Willis. The Fulton County DA kicked off of
Speaker 1: this case because she had before the indictment data. One
Speaker 1: of the lawyers on the case, by the way, she's
Speaker 1: no longer with him. And it was an entire four
Speaker 1: or five six hours, a bunch of hours of them
Speaker 1: trying to sully her and imply that she was somehow
Speaker 1: doing something improper. It was like yet another time when
Speaker 1: I've watched Maga World try to target a woman, in
Speaker 1: this case, a woman of color with like a low,
Speaker 1: sleeezy innuendo, and it's funny because it's like, it's not funny,
Speaker 1: it's infuriating. But if you think about it, the Republicans,
Speaker 1: this is all in service to one Donald J. Trump,
Speaker 1: who in fact did pay a porn star when his
Speaker 1: third wife was pregnant so that she would not rat
Speaker 1: him out during his run for president. I mean, all
Speaker 1: of the CD innuendo, all of the sleazy crap that
Speaker 1: these lawyers are trying to pin on this woman because
Speaker 1: she wants to hold Donald Trump accountable. Well, all that stuff,
Speaker 1: by the way, Donald Trump did it. So to sit
Speaker 1: there and watch really a professional, smart woman, who with
Speaker 1: a really accomplished career, who had had all of these
Speaker 1: very accomplished jobs be sullied by these disgusting lawyers in
Speaker 1: service to Donald Trump, it gave me real flashbacks to
Speaker 1: some of the many, many times we've seen Trump sick
Speaker 1: of fans do disgusting things to women in the name
Speaker 1: of Donald Trump, and those fuckers they're my moment of fuckery.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
Speaker 1: every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to hear the best minds
Speaker 1: in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you
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Speaker 1: and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.