Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds.
Speaker 2: And Donald Trump continues to attack Judge Merchant's daughter. We
Speaker 2: have such an interesting show today. The New York Times
Speaker 2: Shane Goldmocker breaks down all the strange ways Trump is
Speaker 2: paying his legal bills that we'll talk to polster Cornell
Speaker 2: Belcher about how to analyze polls when giving to candidates.
Speaker 2: But first we have the host of the Enemy's List,
Speaker 2: Lincoln Project's own Rick Wilson.
Speaker 1: Rick, it's a Friday, and that means it's done for insanitday,
Speaker 1: Rick Wilson.
Speaker 3: Sunday, Sunday Sunday. That kind of thrills, the spills you,
Speaker 3: the fountains well to see and here, Sorry, I've probably
Speaker 3: done that joke before, but it never gets old for me,
Speaker 3: as a child of the seventies raised in Florida.
Speaker 1: Never ever ever gets old. So it's a Friday, It's
Speaker 1: two hundred and twenty one days to the election, two
Speaker 1: hundred and a mere two hundred and twenty one days.
Speaker 1: I feel like we've hit this moment in the news
Speaker 1: site go where things are a little bit quiet but
Speaker 1: also bubbling under the surface a little bit insane.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, look, I think the peak of this
Speaker 3: week's insanity, of course, was Donald Trump, a lifelong retrobate, adulter, cheater, liar, procureur.
Speaker 3: And I can think of a hundred different adjectives for
Speaker 3: Donald Trump's low moral character. But the idea of Donald
Speaker 3: Trump and Lee Greenwood, two men with seven wives between them,
Speaker 3: marketing a American flag themed Trump Bible, I think that
Speaker 3: in many ways it's like Trump's always challenging you to
Speaker 3: like be shocked by his shamelessness. This was a good one.
Speaker 3: This I gotta say. I gotta give the guy props.
Speaker 3: If you're looking to be a shameless, venal scumbag who
Speaker 3: is tempting the Lord to strike you down with lightning
Speaker 3: or turn you into a pillar of salt, Donald Trump
Speaker 3: is really really working the system this week. I'm impressed
Speaker 3: with how completely shameless, I mean, how utterly shameless this
Speaker 3: guy was about it.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing about Trump Bibles. We knew, right this
Speaker 1: is what he had been doing, sneakers. I mean, this
Speaker 1: is a man even before he was a sort of
Speaker 1: fake Christian grifter, when he was still a fake liberal grifter.
Speaker 1: He was selling steaks and bombis, water models, vodka, mon
Speaker 1: and also you'll remember he had, you know, all sorts
Speaker 1: of weird real estate schemes that were like multi level
Speaker 1: marketing schemes. So this is not a huge shock, but
Speaker 1: if you look at the cover of it, it is
Speaker 1: really a thing of I was going to say beauty,
Speaker 1: but I was kidding.
Speaker 3: It's a thing of audacity.
Speaker 1: Holy Bible, God Bless the USA. And then there's a Bible.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know who this is for.
Speaker 3: Again, I said this on my podcast yesterday. I'm like,
Speaker 3: no one is going to wake up in the morning
Speaker 3: and say that Rick Wilson, he's an exemplary Christian. He's
Speaker 3: the best of the best. But when you look at
Speaker 3: a guy like Donald Trump, the contrast here. I mean this,
Speaker 3: I feel sorry for the Christians who believe Donald Trump
Speaker 3: is one of them. I feel sorry for the Evangelicals
Speaker 3: who have decided, Okay, you know, we kind of know
Speaker 3: there's some issues with this guy, but he's our tribune,
Speaker 3: he is our leader. He's the one who's going to
Speaker 3: help us bring in the era of Christian nationalist government.
Speaker 3: I feel bad for these people because Trump hates them.
Speaker 4: Trump loaths them.
Speaker 3: He thinks they are dumb, slack, jawed, blah blah blah.
Speaker 3: All of that stuff is absolutely pathetic. It's absolutely fundamentally wrong.
Speaker 3: You know, I don't have a lot of mercy for Maugas,
Speaker 3: but I do feel like there are some of them
Speaker 3: who are who feel trapped like well, it's either a
Speaker 3: godless communist Joe Biden Satan worshiper, or Donald Trump flawed Christian. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I can tell you the fact that we've got Joe Biden,
Speaker 3: who is, regardless of his liberalism, people still a Catholic
Speaker 3: in the eyes of the Catholic Church, who goes to
Speaker 3: church regularly, who takes mass regularly, versus Donald Trump again,
Speaker 3: a reprobate, scumbag low life.
Speaker 1: He takes omelet bars pretty regularly.
Speaker 3: Right, He worships at the first Church of the golf
Speaker 3: course on Sunday. This is not a guy who should
Speaker 3: have the support of Christians because everything about him is
Speaker 3: anathema to actual Christian practice and behavior. But once again,
Speaker 3: call me crazy, because they frequently don't give a fuck.
Speaker 1: So last week the presidents came three presidents.
Speaker 3: By really lowered your voice the registered Last week.
Speaker 1: Last switching time. I'm switching out of this tirade about
Speaker 1: Donald Trump being a real or faith Christian because you know, honestly,
Speaker 1: like organized religion is, I'm not so engaged in it,
Speaker 1: and neither are a lot of Americans, which is super interesting.
Speaker 1: But so we're talking about last week the presidents Biden,
Speaker 1: Obama and Clinton came and they did a huge fundraiser
Speaker 1: and they raised somewhere north of twenty five million dollars,
Speaker 1: probably a little bit more. That was an underestimate. And
Speaker 1: that same day, Megan Kelly wants you to know Donald
Speaker 1: Trump went to a wake of a slain policeman in
Speaker 1: I assume Long Island because that's where the Republicans are.
Speaker 1: I want to talk to you about that because it's like, now, look,
Speaker 1: Biden has to raise money, and Biden is out raising
Speaker 1: Trump at an enormous clip as well. He should be
Speaker 1: because he wants to continue American democracy, which is what
Speaker 1: we all want. But my question to you is the
Speaker 1: fact that Trump actually went to awake and not a
Speaker 1: golf club or to see an adult movie star makes
Speaker 1: me wonder if Chris la Sevitas, if he's actually getting
Speaker 1: a little bit better advice on the campaign trip.
Speaker 3: You can't deny that he's getting better advice than he
Speaker 3: would have gotten from Corey Lewandowski, or Brad Parscal or
Speaker 3: Steve Bannon or a box car full of monkeys.
Speaker 1: Okay, right, it doesn't take much to raise that I
Speaker 1: forgot Brad from last season.
Speaker 3: Yes, don't forget Brad, Brad, I got Brad fired.
Speaker 1: The last time we saw Brad, he was wearing no
Speaker 1: shirt and being coughed.
Speaker 3: Yes, he was being knocked to the ground by the police.
Speaker 3: Then he had a brief flirtation with Ron de sanctimonious
Speaker 3: to use the name of Donald Trump. The reason he
Speaker 3: went to this funeral was not to honor the memory
Speaker 3: of a police officer who lost his life or was
Speaker 3: injured in the line of duty. You know what, we
Speaker 3: didn't give.
Speaker 1: A shit about the Capitol policeman who died.
Speaker 3: That's exactly the point. As many people said, did he
Speaker 3: go to the funeral of Brian Sicknick, who died after
Speaker 3: the Capital attack? No he did not. Did he go
Speaker 3: visit any of the injured cops in the hospital. Absolutely not.
Speaker 3: None of this is real. This is trolling.
Speaker 1: Does he have better advisors? I think as a question.
Speaker 3: He has better advisors, but again he has a deficit.
Speaker 3: No matter how good the advice is, Donald Trump remains
Speaker 3: this is a technical try we kind of use in
Speaker 3: Republican politics. Batshit, bug, fuck nuthouse crazy, and he's not
Speaker 3: going to be able to retain and maintain the idea
Speaker 3: that he currently is expressing that He's like, I care
Speaker 3: about these cops and I'm worried about crime. Are they
Speaker 3: trying to frame the election about being crime and immigration?
Speaker 3: Of course they are. Have they got some really big
Speaker 3: deficits in that regard. Well, yeah, what with him being
Speaker 3: a criminal in all, and what with Trump being the
Speaker 3: one who's keeping an immigration bill and border security from passing.
Speaker 3: They were trolling. They were looking for a way to
Speaker 3: troll Joe Biden, and I'm sure las Avita or Susie
Speaker 3: Wiles came up with this. And by the way, I'm
Speaker 3: just going to say this right now because this will
Speaker 3: be picked up by their algorithmic Google alerts. Chris Losovita
Speaker 3: is the smartest, most brilliant campaign consultant Trump has ever had,
Speaker 3: and he's smarter than Donald Trump by a long way.
Speaker 3: I'm literally doing that just so that I know, for
Speaker 3: a fact that they monitor every single mention of everybody
Speaker 3: around him, now, like the fucking stazzy Right, anytime I
Speaker 3: mention Chris Losovita in a way that praises him, Chris Losovida,
Speaker 3: the golden God of political wisdom, it drives Trump crazy, right.
Speaker 1: All right, So let's get back to this question though,
Speaker 1: that Trump may be having better people advise him, which
Speaker 1: I think is something that is worth thinking about. But
Speaker 1: it is true that in Playbook this morning there was
Speaker 1: a whole thing about how Trump is also like a
Speaker 1: little bit freaked out that Biden's raising so much money,
Speaker 1: and so there was a whole thing about how they're
Speaker 1: going to raise thirty five million dollars at a fundraiser
Speaker 1: at Mara Lago where the high ticket donor is eight
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty eight one hundred thousand dollars, so almost
Speaker 1: a million dollars to get I guess, a picture and
Speaker 1: an omelet with Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: Look what you are going to see in the coming weeks,
Speaker 3: the large dollar Republican donors go back to Trump. Okay,
Speaker 3: I've been saying it for a year. We've talked about
Speaker 3: it before. They're all going to go back to Trump
Speaker 3: in the end, and a couple of them have already
Speaker 3: sort of like written their their apology for it, like
Speaker 3: I want a true, a better country for my children
Speaker 3: and grandchildren, and Trump is not good. He's not good
Speaker 3: for this or that. Okay, fine, but make your whatever
Speaker 3: excuses you want. You guys are all chicken shits, and
Speaker 3: you want to fucking tax cut. We get it, Okay,
Speaker 3: we get it. As they go back to him, there's
Speaker 3: still a mathematical equation, like how do you get back
Speaker 3: to the point where you have that much cash when
Speaker 3: you're not burning the equivalent amount. Remember what Biden raised
Speaker 3: last night is basically Trump's legal bills for I don't know,
Speaker 3: January and February.
Speaker 1: So the New York Times had a piece and we
Speaker 1: actually had one of the journalists on the podcast about
Speaker 1: how Trump has spent about one hundred million dollars on lawyers.
Speaker 3: Yep, it's about right.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I actually believe is proof
Speaker 1: that the guard Whils have not had is that Trump
Speaker 1: has managed to delay all of his trials, with the
Speaker 1: exception of the New York City election interference hush money trial.
Speaker 1: It turns out that delaying justice is quite expensive.
Speaker 3: Look delaying justice is expensive. There's also something here that
Speaker 3: I find I don't know who else doesn't find that offensive,
Speaker 3: but I find it unbelievably offensive that you've got a
Speaker 3: guy who is able to not only threaten the judges,
Speaker 3: threaten their families, delay these trials over and over again,
Speaker 3: exercise every single legal loophole in the known universe, and
Speaker 3: the rule of law parties like fine with it. It's like, oh,
Speaker 3: it's all fake, nothing's there, It's all fake, it's all imaginary.
Speaker 3: What I think that is one of the things that
Speaker 3: I as an ex Republican and as a guy who
Speaker 3: still believes the rule of law is really important, which
Speaker 3: I think anybody should believe that it's important. Right.
Speaker 1: Liz Cheney would agree, And in fact, Liz Cheney is
Speaker 1: filling these enormous stadiums with people talking about how and
Speaker 1: I thought this was a ballsy move. The Supreme Core
Speaker 1: is actually enabling trump Ism.
Speaker 3: I will tell you very very clearly, there is a
Speaker 3: world where the critique of Donald Trump from the right
Speaker 3: gets its legs under it again, and it will never
Speaker 3: be a majority of the Manga Party Like at the
Speaker 3: Lincoln Project. We've gotten this joke for a long time.
Speaker 3: We're not trying to win over fifty percent of Republicans.
Speaker 3: I don't need to win over fifty percent of Republicans.
Speaker 3: I need to move about twenty percent tops in a
Speaker 3: couple of states. And the worse he gets with all
Speaker 3: this stuff. And as Liz Cheney is, she's letting Republican voters.
Speaker 1: She's an off ramp right right.
Speaker 3: They understand that she is an unquestioned conservative. There's no
Speaker 3: argument you can make in this universe or anywhere else
Speaker 3: that Liz Cheney is some kind of liberal rhino squish.
Speaker 3: You can't. It just doesn't work for anybody. The most
Speaker 3: painful thing about leaving the Republican Party is nobody wants
Speaker 3: to leave the warmth of the tribal campfire, right. They
Speaker 3: don't want to walk away from their friends, their associates,
Speaker 3: their lives. I know how hard it is. But when
Speaker 3: you start to see prominent people who you know are
Speaker 3: not secret liberals, who are not radical progressive Soros, you know,
Speaker 3: Bill Gates, whatever, it's hard and harder for them to say, well,
Speaker 3: the only option is Trump in this world, the only
Speaker 3: choice it will ever be is Trump or Trump is
Speaker 3: because it's not true, it's not the only option, and
Speaker 3: it doesn't have to be. And so she's showing people
Speaker 3: that if you believe as I do, that the country
Speaker 3: would function better with two actual center right party or
Speaker 3: two actual parties one center right one center left, then
Speaker 3: you know you'll never get there. With Donald Trump. He's
Speaker 3: only going to be an authoritarian lunatic for sure, and
Speaker 3: he's only going to be that as long as Republicans
Speaker 3: let him be that.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about Donald Trump for another minute. He is
Speaker 1: threatening judges, he's threatening the daughter of the judge in
Speaker 1: the hush money case. The thing I'm struck by with
Speaker 1: him is like, obviously he's a bully, right, that's like
Speaker 1: eighty percent of his personality, But threatening judges and threatening
Speaker 1: these kind of threats to Republicans like it works, right,
Speaker 1: Like Mitch McConnell endoors right, Like there is no world
Speaker 1: in which Mitch McConnell is like, yes, Trump again, let's
Speaker 1: go oh you know, I mean yeah, like he's.
Speaker 3: Like, yeah, I can speak with some authority on that matter.
Speaker 1: That is correct, yeah, right, Like he endorsed I mean,
Speaker 1: you know all these people, Tom Emmers, you know Tom
Speaker 1: Emmers is not like yes, you know this guy who
Speaker 1: fucked me over and kept me from being speaker, even
Speaker 1: though I'd be much better speaker than Mike Johnson. He's
Speaker 1: my man. Like all of these people have gone and
Speaker 1: kissed the ring because they're scared of him and they
Speaker 1: don't want to spend what Mitt Romney did on private security.
Speaker 1: I mean, is that right or is there some other
Speaker 1: thing I'm missing.
Speaker 3: As a guy who spends some money on private security. Yes.
Speaker 3: And look when I went up against Trump initially in
Speaker 3: fifteen and sixteen and they started to figure out, you know,
Speaker 3: who was against them, they didn't just go at me.
Speaker 3: They went at my children. And many many other people
Speaker 3: have had this problem. I know a member, a former
Speaker 3: member of Congress who was a rock ribbed conservative. Okay,
Speaker 3: not a liberal, not some left winger. He was a
Speaker 3: right wing dude. And he left Congress back in eighteen
Speaker 3: in part because he said one thing in a town
Speaker 3: meeting that wasn't like obedient to Trump. And his kids
Speaker 3: school got death threats the next day and bomb threats
Speaker 3: the next day, and his wife got people calling at
Speaker 3: her office saying, you know, you better get your husband
Speaker 3: do the right thing, or you'll be raising those girls
Speaker 3: on your own. I mean, these people love threatening people.
Speaker 3: They love trying to intimidate people. And I got to
Speaker 3: tell you something. Here's the thing about these judges, And
Speaker 3: I know they're all fearful, like, oh, if I you know,
Speaker 3: sanction him, it'll blowback. No, you have to sanction him.
Speaker 3: You have to punish him for saying these things. I
Speaker 3: swear to God, the judge should call his lawyers in
Speaker 3: and say one more goddamn word about my daughter trying
Speaker 3: to intimidate me in this case. And Donald Trump is
Speaker 3: going to be in fucking rikers with a ballgag in
Speaker 3: his mouth, and he's going to stay there until I
Speaker 3: decide he's calmed the fuck down. I mean, these people
Speaker 3: are intimidated by him, and they need to stop or
Speaker 3: he will kill them all. And by kill them, I
Speaker 3: mean literally kill them if he gets the chance.
Speaker 1: You don't want to be the person who ends up
Speaker 1: putting Donald Trump in jail. That's going to be such
Speaker 1: a nightmare.
Speaker 3: It's a nightmare. But here's the thing. Do we have
Speaker 3: one system of justice or two? Because if I was
Speaker 3: a mob boss in the courtroom saying, you know, your
Speaker 3: honor your daughter who ha ha, I'm gonna put her
Speaker 3: name out there for my friends to see. I hope
Speaker 3: she's okay. Hope nothing happens to your daughter. Judge. Guess
Speaker 3: what if that was a mob boss or a drug dealer,
Speaker 3: or frankly a twenty year old black marijuana dealer, that
Speaker 3: person would be in jail right this minute, write this minute.
Speaker 3: And the fact that Trump and his people rolled there,
Speaker 3: so he wasn't doing anything illegal, that's just his first
Speaker 3: Amendment rights to sick his mob on the judge's family.
Speaker 3: I am sorry. That is not how this ship works
Speaker 3: or should, but it does unfortunately right now. Sorry, I'm
Speaker 3: a little hot about this one.
Speaker 4: Can you tell no?
Speaker 1: I agree. I mean yesterday, by the way, one of
Speaker 1: Trump's sawyers said that it was Trump's first Amendment right
Speaker 1: to try to overturn the twenty twenty elections. So they're
Speaker 1: really push in that first Amendment for all it's worth.
Speaker 1: It's protected political speech, you guys. He can't try that
Speaker 1: for every criminal count. I mean, that's not a criminal
Speaker 1: because it's a federal count, I think. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean crazy.
Speaker 3: I'm telling you, if one of these judges does not
Speaker 3: exercise some discipline on this Trump. Here's the thing Trump
Speaker 3: has been playing this game with every one of these
Speaker 3: judges and every one of these prosecutors, Okay, and not
Speaker 3: one of them has effectively sanctioned him, even in the
Speaker 3: Egen Carol case. I mean, she's probably got a third
Speaker 3: defamation case, so you don't have to poke it too
Speaker 3: hard to see a third defamation case there. But people
Speaker 3: who let him get away with this stuff and think,
Speaker 3: I don't want to be the one who pulls the
Speaker 3: trigger on this. I don't want to be the one
Speaker 3: who puts Trump in jail for contempt. If you give
Speaker 3: him a separate track, if you give him a separate
Speaker 3: set of privileges under the law, you diminish the entire
Speaker 3: judicial system. Look, he may be an ex president and
Speaker 3: he may have a powerful mob behind him, but if
Speaker 3: we don't uphold the law, he will exploit it and
Speaker 3: he will do things that in the end you will
Speaker 3: look at this part of the show and go, oh God,
Speaker 3: that was the easy part. Rick Wilson, Molly Jong Fast,
Speaker 3: I'm delighted to be with you as always and look
Speaker 3: forward to seeing you again the same time next week.
Speaker 2: Shane Goldmacher is a national political correspondent at The New
Speaker 2: York Times.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 5: Shane, thank you for having me on.
Speaker 1: So excited to have you. So let's talk about You've
Speaker 1: written like a number of really interesting reported pieces about
Speaker 1: Trump money, from legal bills to the RNC. So where
Speaker 1: do you want to start? Because it's all super interesting.
Speaker 5: I mean, I think the most important place to start
Speaker 5: is that Donald Trump is facing multiple converging financial challenges
Speaker 5: all at once.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know.
Speaker 5: You can pick which one you want to talk about.
Speaker 5: But there is the question of political finances, which is
Speaker 5: how is he going to finance his campaign for the presidency,
Speaker 5: and he starts far behind Joe Biden. You have his
Speaker 5: legal financing, which is how is he going to continue
Speaker 5: to pay for the lawyers. We just reported this week
Speaker 5: that he has now spent more than one hundred million
Speaker 5: dollars on legal and investigation related bills since he left
Speaker 5: the White House, and the funds he's been using to
Speaker 5: pay for all those bills are nearly gone. And then
Speaker 5: the third one, almost the most urgent of the three,
Speaker 5: is posting a bond to meet the New York civil
Speaker 5: fraud case, which was reduced this week but is still
Speaker 5: a massive bond of more than one hundred and seventy
Speaker 5: million dollars and he only has a short period to
Speaker 5: do that. And so you have all three of these
Speaker 5: financial things converging at once, representing just a real challenge
Speaker 5: on a personal front, on a business front, and on
Speaker 5: a political front for Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: I mean, the reason why he's had so much legal success, right,
Speaker 1: which is for trials, it seems very likely that at
Speaker 1: least two and maybe three of these cases will for
Speaker 1: sure not happen until after the election.
Speaker 5: I mean, we know only one for sure is going
Speaker 5: to happen before the election exactly.
Speaker 1: And one of the reasons why that's worked is because
Speaker 1: he has used really actually good lawyers to delay, delay, delay,
Speaker 1: and that has turned out to be quite expensive.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, he does have some top notch lawyers,
Speaker 5: and he has a huge team of lawyers, and there's
Speaker 5: just some structural advantages that defendants have, right. In general,
Speaker 5: the criminal system is designed for the defendants to get
Speaker 5: their say, and he's able to use the fact that
Speaker 5: there are different jurisdictions that aren't able to coordinate with
Speaker 5: one another to benefit himself. Right. You can make one
Speaker 5: argument in a New York case and then use that
Speaker 5: argument to push for delay in the Georgia case to
Speaker 5: push for delay in the document's case and that's all
Speaker 5: sort of within his rights. And yeah, this comes at
Speaker 5: a real cost again, more than one hundred million dollars
Speaker 5: for lawyers and legal related investigation call since he left office.
Speaker 5: And it hasn't been his own money that he spent
Speaker 5: on that, right.
Speaker 1: Really, I'm shocked. So where has the money come from?
Speaker 1: Because you have a really good piece about this hundred
Speaker 1: million dollars, So explain where it came from and how
Speaker 1: it got to the lawyers.
Speaker 5: It's one of the things that people often will ask
Speaker 5: me questions about, you know, Readers say, well, how is
Speaker 5: he paying for all of this? And the answer really
Speaker 5: dates back to twenty twenty, to the last election that
Speaker 5: he lost, when he said I didn't really lose. Give
Speaker 5: money to me, support my election defense fund, and Republican
Speaker 5: donors poured money into his campaign after the twenty twenty
Speaker 5: election at rates that basically surpassed anything he raised during
Speaker 5: the race, as he claimed fraud. I have to go
Speaker 5: look up a number specifically, but if something like one
Speaker 5: hundred million dollars came in online in the first ten
Speaker 5: days after the election and between the day after the
Speaker 5: election and Joe Biden's inauguration, he raised through his various committees,
Speaker 5: two hundred and fifty four million dollars in online contributions. Now,
Speaker 5: he spent some of that on reaccounts and lawyer's fighting
Speaker 5: for various cases, almost all which he lost to try
Speaker 5: to stop and overturn the twenty twenty election. But that
Speaker 5: money ended up being a huge pot that he exited
Speaker 5: office with and he used it in part to finance
Speaker 5: his political operation. But so much of that money he
Speaker 5: just sat on and the costs he started to accumulate
Speaker 5: in twenty twenty one as the House began its investigation
Speaker 5: into January sixth, and twenty twenty two, as he faced
Speaker 5: more investigations, including over whether he had taken classified documents,
Speaker 5: was lawyers and so this account, which basically had something
Speaker 5: one hundred and five million dollars at the end of
Speaker 5: twenty twenty one, he's been spending it down on legal
Speaker 5: stuff ever since. And at this point, that account, it's
Speaker 5: called Save America, it's his political action committee. That account
Speaker 5: has less than four million dollars if you included its
Speaker 5: unpaid bills as of the most recent month. And there's
Speaker 5: this complicated thing, and we can get into it if
Speaker 5: you won't want where his super pac has been giving
Speaker 5: the funds back to it. But even that account is
Speaker 5: running out of money that it can refund, so you're
Speaker 5: really looking at his ability to tap other people's money.
Speaker 5: The short version is his ability to tap other people's
Speaker 5: money to pay for his lawyers is running out, and
Speaker 5: he's unlikely to be able to do so as early
Speaker 5: as this summer, and that's going to be a quandary
Speaker 5: for him because he hasn't had to pay for these
Speaker 5: lawyers himself, and he's going to face the question of, well,
Speaker 5: how does he pay for them at that point.
Speaker 1: It does strike me when you're talking about this a
Speaker 1: little bit earlier on, you mentioned that the sheer volume
Speaker 1: of fundraising he did after the Big lie, and I'm
Speaker 1: wondering it does sound from this that one of the
Speaker 1: most successful of Trump's fundraising tactics has been this line
Speaker 1: about the election.
Speaker 5: It raised an enormous amount of money at the end
Speaker 5: of twenty twenty, and if you think about it, what
Speaker 5: it means is that the money he raised while denying
Speaker 5: the twenty twenty election result is paying for his legal
Speaker 5: defense in cridinal cases. Around his behavior from denying the
Speaker 5: twenty twenty election result in Georgia and in the January
Speaker 5: sixth case from the Special Council. And this is how
Speaker 5: he's paid for his attorneyees is from the money given
Speaker 5: by Republicans who supported him at the time and bought
Speaker 5: into his false claims that there was sufficient voter fraud
Speaker 5: to overturn the election.
Speaker 1: The lawyer money is a real big issue. And then
Speaker 1: how does this fit in with what's happening at the
Speaker 1: RNC right now?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, so you know, he has taken over
Speaker 5: the Republican National Committee in a more fulsome way than
Speaker 5: I think his standard. Right, every new nominee kind of
Speaker 5: takes charge of the party. Joe Biden kind of took
Speaker 5: charge of the party in twenty twenty when he took
Speaker 5: over as the nominee, but you don't usually take over
Speaker 5: quite like the Trump team has a He pushed out
Speaker 5: Ronal McDaniel and put an new chair that was sort
Speaker 5: of more his person, even though she was once his person.
Speaker 5: He also put in his daughter in law, so there's
Speaker 5: literally a Trump family member at the table, the decision
Speaker 5: making table as co chair of the Republican National Committee
Speaker 5: and his team has gone in imposed mass layoffs inside
Speaker 5: the rn C. Now they have said pretty clearly we
Speaker 5: are not going to take rn C money and use
Speaker 5: it to pay for his lawyers.
Speaker 1: Right, I mean, first she said she would, and then
Speaker 1: she said she wouldn't when she got some pushback Laura Trump. Yes, shockingly,
Speaker 1: there's been some flip.
Speaker 5: Flop on that there has. His political advisors have been
Speaker 5: pretty consistent, but she absolutees like, well, why wouldn't the
Speaker 5: Republican nationally? And look, but what he has done is
Speaker 5: sort of found a way to help raise more money
Speaker 5: for this pack which has funded his lawyers, which is
Speaker 5: there's this thing called a joint fund raising agreement, and
Speaker 5: Joe Biden has someone with the Democrats and Trump will
Speaker 5: have one now with the Republicans. And what it means
Speaker 5: is if you get mega checks from big donors, the
Speaker 5: kind of people are going to give to Joe Biden
Speaker 5: doing an event with the two presidents, you know, with
Speaker 5: Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, or the ones that Trump
Speaker 5: does with these massive dinners. These are like nine hundred
Speaker 5: thousand dollars checks, eight hundred thousand dollars checks. There's a
Speaker 5: sort of order of which groups get the money, and
Speaker 5: Trump has put his pack, which is paying for his
Speaker 5: lawyers second in this sort of waterfall. Who gets the cash.
Speaker 5: His campaign is first, then his pack which just has
Speaker 5: been paying layers, and then the Republican National Committee. And
Speaker 5: so what that means is every major donor who gives
Speaker 5: to these events in the coming months is funding five
Speaker 5: thousand dollars per person his account that pays for his attorneys.
Speaker 5: And if you're giving an eight hundred thousand dollars check,
Speaker 5: it's a small fraction of it doesn't probably register, right,
Speaker 5: But if you're giving a twenty five thousand dollars check
Speaker 5: or fifty thousand dollars check, you're giving twenty percent ten
Speaker 5: percent of your donation is going to the fund that
Speaker 5: is paying for Trump flayers. And it's another way he
Speaker 5: may try to inject some money and not directly taking
Speaker 5: from the RNC, but he's putting his pack ahead of
Speaker 5: the party itself in terms of some of other fundraising proceeds.
Speaker 1: Yeah, some of this stuff with the RNC, they had
Speaker 1: sort of more on the ground stuff. And isn't it
Speaker 1: right that they laid off like a huge number of
Speaker 1: employees and now are interviewing them to rehire them and
Speaker 1: have sort of litanus tests of whether or not they
Speaker 1: believed the big life.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so when they came in on Friday, the new
Speaker 5: party chairman was selected on a recent Friday, and on Monday,
Speaker 5: the Trump team arrived at the RNC headquarters in Washington.
Speaker 1: D C.
Speaker 5: And they arrived with mass layoffs. They sent messages and
Speaker 5: emails and meetings to around sixty more than sixty people.
Speaker 5: And at the time I was told about the total
Speaker 5: pay roll was about two hundred, so you talking about
Speaker 5: a third of the r and C was told either
Speaker 5: you have lost your job or you have to apply
Speaker 5: for your job, and your job only lasts at the
Speaker 5: end of March, and you know, you have to re
Speaker 5: justify your existence for us. And you know the Washington Post,
Speaker 5: you know, broke a good story in which they said
Speaker 5: that among the questions people are getting as they reapply
Speaker 5: for their jobs, other people are applying for the jobs,
Speaker 5: as do you believe the twenty twenty election was stolen
Speaker 5: or rightfully decided? And yeah, that's a pretty loaded question, right,
Speaker 5: I mean, this is something that Trump has said repeatedly
Speaker 5: without evidence, that the election was stolen. And you know
Speaker 5: a lot of people around him have urged him to
Speaker 5: stop talking about that this is not a winning political issue,
Speaker 5: but you know, he has continued to talk about it.
Speaker 5: And the idea that people who want to get hired
Speaker 5: inside the party have to sort of tow that line
Speaker 5: is a pretty remarkable statement four years later.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Man, it just is such a crazy place to
Speaker 1: be in American democracy right now. So can we talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about a sort of this idea that
Speaker 1: Trump is going after Biden's biggest advantage and what that
Speaker 1: is and a little bit about that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, so, look, if you look at a
Speaker 5: lot of the polls, at the snapshot at the start
Speaker 5: of the general election, Joe Biden is behind. And he's
Speaker 5: not just behind in the polls, but he's trailing Trump
Speaker 5: on some of the most salient issues. If you take abortion,
Speaker 5: which has obviously been a powerful issue for Democrats off
Speaker 5: the table for a moment, and you look at the economy,
Speaker 5: you look at immigration, you look at job approval on
Speaker 5: some of the most important issues, Donald Trump is in Poland,
Speaker 5: and so, well, what does Joe Biden have going for him? Well,
Speaker 5: it turns out, in terms of the mechanics and the
Speaker 5: money and the infrastructure of running for a president. Joe
Speaker 5: Biden is really remarkably ahead of Donald Trump. Now, everyone
Speaker 5: who holds the White House typically has a little bit
Speaker 5: of an advantage on these fronts, but they're pretty big here.
Speaker 5: Financially between the party and the candidates. It's like one
Speaker 5: hundred million dollar gap at the beginning of this race,
Speaker 5: and that gap is only expected to grow because Democrats
Speaker 5: have been out raising Republicans in recent years. So the
Speaker 5: money gap is really substantial. And it's sort of like
Speaker 5: nuts and bolts and infrastructure. Where those R and C
Speaker 5: layoffs comes in is Joe Biden is opening like a
Speaker 5: hundred field offices in the states.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 5: The data point that struck me recently was that he
Speaker 5: was in Wisconsin order to open up forty four offices
Speaker 5: across that state.
Speaker 1: Isn't that like the whole state?
Speaker 5: That's basically the whole stair, right, And Trump didn't have
Speaker 5: a single person devoted to Wisconsin yet now he will
Speaker 5: have people devoted to Wisconsin. But that's an important head start, right.
Speaker 5: These are states that were decided by like ten thousand votes,
Speaker 5: and you do the math on like, okay, well, how
Speaker 5: many votes can like an office win Like the person
Speaker 5: like working at that office. Well, they got you know,
Speaker 5: a couple hundred days, can they flip fifty one hundred
Speaker 5: people get them out to vote? That's that adds up
Speaker 5: Like that, that helps close the potential gap or expand
Speaker 5: the gap of the election. And so in a race
Speaker 5: that most people, the smartest people in both campaigns think
Speaker 5: will likely be closed, these are the kinds of things
Speaker 5: that can end up mattering. And the Biden people say, look,
Speaker 5: you know, yes, they don't disagree that they have some
Speaker 5: disadvantages on polling on some of these key issues. They
Speaker 5: think that can change in the coming ones, but that
Speaker 5: this infrastructure advantage won't necessarily change that they will stay
Speaker 5: ahead of the Trump team in terms of those edges.
Speaker 1: One of the things I was struck by was that
Speaker 1: I read reporting that said that the RNC had these
Speaker 1: Latino outreach centers which they actually closed.
Speaker 5: It sounds like there was conversations about doing that in
Speaker 5: those first days where they were implementing these mass labs.
Speaker 5: They've since said they're not in fact closing these community ors,
Speaker 5: but there had been plans under Ronald McDaniel to expand
Speaker 5: the number of them. Look, a lot of this is
Speaker 5: up in the air right, like they are trying to
Speaker 5: triage what to spend their money on and what to
Speaker 5: prioritize and what Donald Trump wants to prioritize. And when
Speaker 5: Trump talks about the Republican National Committee, you know, the
Speaker 5: person he selected as chairman was the former chair of
Speaker 5: the North Carolina Republican Party. And what was drawing him
Speaker 5: to him was the idea of you know, what they
Speaker 5: call election integrity, and that they would focus on, you know,
Speaker 5: stopping the steal and election frau and you know, putting
Speaker 5: lawyers in all of these places. And that's what Trump
Speaker 5: has really been focused on, wanting the party to do
Speaker 5: more than opening field offices and minority outreach. Like he
Speaker 5: thinks of the already as an instrument to do that,
Speaker 5: and so not everyone at the party thinks that. And
Speaker 5: so what will happen in the coming looks this is
Speaker 5: gonna be really interesting. What does the R ANDC prioritize?
Speaker 5: Do they do exactly what Trump thinks personally he wants
Speaker 5: to do, or do what some of the political professionals
Speaker 5: around him would like the party to do.
Speaker 1: One of the things I was struck by was the
Speaker 1: reason that Trump was able to kick out Ronna Romney
Speaker 1: mcdanields was because she had this anemic fundraising right like dad,
Speaker 1: and very little cash on hand or a credit line, right.
Speaker 1: And I'm curious how he thinks that this team will
Speaker 1: be better at fundraising.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, by basically any measure, twenty twenty three
Speaker 5: was a bad year for the Republican National Committee in
Speaker 5: terms of its fundraising and the numbers during the election year.
Speaker 5: We're bad, you know, in conservative circles. You know, there
Speaker 5: was real pressure on her because of what that looked like,
Speaker 5: and it ticked up a little bit at the beginning
Speaker 5: of the year. But the issue is really a the
Speaker 5: RNC in twenty twenty three wasn't able to advertise itself
Speaker 5: as helping Trump, and its fundraising list, at least its
Speaker 5: online fundraising list, was built around the Trump presidency and
Speaker 5: so all of their supporters were wanting to swarre Trump,
Speaker 5: and then they were not asked about Donald Trump in
Speaker 5: twenty twenty three because the party stopped sending messages because
Speaker 5: he was in a competitive primary. So they're able to
Speaker 5: start sending messages about Trump now, and I would expect
Speaker 5: that that list, which again was built during the Trump
Speaker 5: presidency will begin netting more donations, and in fact it
Speaker 5: did right when Laura Trump became the co chair. That
Speaker 5: was their best weekend of fundraising, they said since twenty twenty.
Speaker 5: But the issue is a little bit broader, which is
Speaker 5: just like the Republican landscape for online fundraising has stunk
Speaker 5: in the last couple of years, and the Democratic landscape
Speaker 5: has has shrunk. Like there's been reduced enthusiasm compared to
Speaker 5: the sort of the heydays of twenty twenty, but nowhere
Speaker 5: near as much of a slowdown as Republicans civics sperience,
Speaker 5: and really across the party there's deep concern about what
Speaker 5: is going to happen with their online donor base and
Speaker 5: if they are just happed out or frustrated or disengaged.
Speaker 5: Even as there's a lot of polls showing Republican support
Speaker 5: and enthusiasm for Trump, and certainly he locked up the
Speaker 5: nomination fairly quickly, whether the people who have given money
Speaker 5: online will continue to give or will ever give back
Speaker 5: at the pace that they did in twenty twenty is
Speaker 5: an open question and a real concern across the party.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because one of the things I saw in the
Speaker 1: Financial Times was that he had sort of like two
Speaker 1: hundred thousand lass unique donor small dollar donors.
Speaker 5: I don't think I saw that story, but I've seen
Speaker 5: some comparisons that he raised less than twenty twenty three
Speaker 5: than twenty nineteen, and candidly like, I'm not that surprised
Speaker 5: by that. Right, he was the president then, he was
Speaker 5: attitive primary now. But look, I mean, at this point,
Speaker 5: the more important comparison isn't how does Trump do now
Speaker 5: to how did Trump do four years ago? It's how
Speaker 5: is he going to do compared to Joe Biden? And
Speaker 5: Biden campaign announced they raised million dollars around the State
Speaker 5: of the Union in a twenty four hour period, and
Speaker 5: that's about what Donald Trump raised online, give or take
Speaker 5: in the month of February. You're going to likely see
Speaker 5: this edge for the Democrats to expand it. Look, money
Speaker 5: doesn't matter in presidential politics quite the same way it
Speaker 5: does in like a house race, right where the voters
Speaker 5: don't know who the two candidates are and they only
Speaker 5: see the television ads. People know who Donald Trump and
Speaker 5: Joe Biden are. But when you talk about that infrastructure
Speaker 5: in offices and specific outreach to specific communities, if you
Speaker 5: have more money, you can expand the map you can
Speaker 5: decide to. If you're the Democrats and you saw that,
Speaker 5: you know the president went there, you know you can
Speaker 5: decide that North Carolina, where you lost, is somewhere you
Speaker 5: want to investor early on. And if you're Trump, right like,
Speaker 5: you're not going to run any advertising yet. In fact,
Speaker 5: they aren't running any advertisements. So there's a real early
Speaker 5: structural advance the Democrats have at this point, Shane, so interesting.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much for joining us, Thanks for having.
Speaker 2: Ornelle Belcher is the president of Great Corners and a
Speaker 2: NBC MSNBC political analyst.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Vast Politics, Cornell.
Speaker 4: Thanks for having me back. Is always a pleasure.
Speaker 1: I'm so happy to have you, and I wanted to
Speaker 1: talk to you about the topic that I don't know
Speaker 1: if it's that we're not talking about it or we're
Speaker 1: not talking about it right. But let's talk about voters,
Speaker 1: and let's focus in on black voters, but also on
Speaker 1: the different voters and what you're seeing, because I think
Speaker 1: of you as really, really smart.
Speaker 4: I appreciate that. Thank you.
Speaker 1: So what are you seeing?
Speaker 4: Well? We should first start by telling our listeners stop
Speaker 4: paying attention to all the pollard And one of the
Speaker 4: things I think you and I have talked about this
Speaker 4: a little bit on the side. One of the things
Speaker 4: that has origen over the last couple of cycles that
Speaker 4: there was not true you know, a decade or more ago, right,
Speaker 4: certainly wasn't true in OA and twelve is how people
Speaker 4: are now using polls to drive a political narrative, whatever
Speaker 4: political that they want. So there's too much polling.
Speaker 1: This is polls as disinformation.
Speaker 4: Really they are. They're polls for spin. And then you
Speaker 4: see it. I mean, look, and even it is even
Speaker 4: at the national level, even at the even at the
Speaker 4: campaigns or Senate level, even the congressional level. And I'm
Speaker 4: guilty of it as well. It's like they'll that will
Speaker 4: put out polls that basically make our candidate a good
Speaker 4: investment and say that you should invest in our our
Speaker 4: our and our candidate. It's not what polling was creating for.
Speaker 4: It is not its intent. And often we're looking for
Speaker 4: polls to be crystal balls and tell us what the
Speaker 4: future is. And I'm sorry, people, but that's not a
Speaker 4: job of polls, and folks can't do that. Poles are instructive,
Speaker 4: they're not predictive. From a campaign standpoint, what we're looking
Speaker 4: for in a poll is to instruct us on how
Speaker 4: to target and how to find the messaging that resonates
Speaker 4: both from a positive and a negative side, and how
Speaker 4: to target and move that right. It is not something
Speaker 4: where we use to say, oh, this is where the
Speaker 4: public canceled, this is what the future is going to be.
Speaker 4: And I think there's too much of that. And from
Speaker 4: the media standpoint, Look, you and I are in the
Speaker 4: media a lot, so we'll beat up on it every
Speaker 4: time we get questions and we spend five or ten
Speaker 4: minutes talking about a poll. I think it's a disservice
Speaker 4: to the voters.
Speaker 3: I do it.
Speaker 4: I'm a poster. It's to the voters because what we're
Speaker 4: doing is we're sensationalizing politics around a horse race in
Speaker 4: a way that's entertainment. Whether New York Times poll or
Speaker 4: Fox poll and is Biden down five or tied or
Speaker 4: what have you. It is becoming a conversation about where
Speaker 4: someone is in a horse race, which, by the way,
Speaker 4: is probably right or wrong depending on what universe they
Speaker 4: have that they're polling, and which is the art more
Speaker 4: in the science, but as opposed to having a five
Speaker 4: or ten minute conversation about where the candidates are in
Speaker 4: a poll. How about having five or ten minute conversation
Speaker 4: about where the editors are on issues that actually matter
Speaker 4: to voters so we can help voters make an informed decision,
Speaker 4: because we don't do that enough.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: Where is Donald Trump on debt? Forgiveness? Right? So many parents? Look,
Speaker 4: and I'm in Ohio today, you know so many working
Speaker 4: class parents and students. You know they struggle with upper
Speaker 4: mobility because of large sums of debt. Where's Donald Trump
Speaker 4: on debt? I know where Biden is on debt? Where's
Speaker 4: Donald Trump on debt? How about a real conversation about
Speaker 4: where the candidates are? Look, I'm not been being artists
Speaker 4: in here, but a real conversation that lays out where
Speaker 4: the candidates are on issues that help these working Americans
Speaker 4: make an informed decision.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to talk to you for another minute
Speaker 1: about this idea because I think so much about in
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty two cycle when you had all.
Speaker 4: The red star where we had the red waves, this
Speaker 4: red tsunami.
Speaker 1: Well, I was thinking about actually Mandela Barnes in Wisconsin,
Speaker 1: because that was a candidate where he pulled really badly.
Speaker 1: He lost the Democratic machine, the money, and he lost
Speaker 1: by one point, which means that had there not been polls,
Speaker 1: he would have probably kept getting Democratic money and would
Speaker 1: and we would not have Ron Johnson in the Senate today,
Speaker 1: which would have been humongous for American sanity, would have
Speaker 1: been humongous for right. And it would also be another
Speaker 1: black senator. We have very few black senators, like an
Speaker 1: embarrassment considering the makeup of this country. And so in
Speaker 1: my mind, I think so much about that candidate because
Speaker 1: everyone kept saying to me, you know, he's just a
Speaker 1: bad candidate, he's not right for Wisconsin. Keeping the lieutenant governor,
Speaker 1: I thought it was great. It's this idea that polls
Speaker 1: as you know, that they can sort of shape a
Speaker 1: campaign in a really insane way.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they're being misused and that's my whole point, and
Speaker 4: we should push back and stop it. And whether the
Speaker 4: side you are, stop coming at us with poles and
Speaker 4: drive narratives, come at us with where a candidate is
Speaker 4: on the issues, right, especially on the media standpoint, isn't
Speaker 4: it the job and that's in the media to give
Speaker 4: to help make voters, help give voters the information they
Speaker 4: need to make informed decisions. I would think that that's
Speaker 4: part of the job of us in the media, and instead,
Speaker 4: you know, well, every day will spend you know, several
Speaker 4: minutes across the cable channel, actually hours talking about where
Speaker 4: candidate is in the poll, as opposed to where they
Speaker 4: are on voting rights or where they are on K
Speaker 4: through twelve education.
Speaker 1: This is a moment where we have a lot of like,
Speaker 1: really important issues. We got the Supreme Court having these
Speaker 1: insane oral arguments about methapriss down and someone who listened
Speaker 1: to them. You know, Republicans are telling us what they
Speaker 1: want to do, and they involve you know, the eighteenth
Speaker 1: century Comstock Act to make it illegal to send things
Speaker 1: in the mail. I mean, how much do you think
Speaker 1: issues are driving voters? And what do you think that
Speaker 1: looks like?
Speaker 4: You know, there's never one silver bullet, And I think
Speaker 4: too often we oversimplify, you know, the most famous political
Speaker 4: saying and the world, at least in American politics, has
Speaker 4: probably done a lot of a lot more harm than good. Right,
Speaker 4: it's the economy stupid because it makes it seem like
Speaker 4: Americans are one dimension and just awfully transaction and it's
Speaker 4: never just the economy. It is, there's always multiple variables
Speaker 4: at play and the decision making of voters. They're seldom
Speaker 4: a silver bullet, so it is usually a combination of Yes,
Speaker 4: both pocketbook issues, but also, look, we act like culture
Speaker 4: is not a real important front and central space where
Speaker 4: voters make decisions about who they like and who they
Speaker 4: don't like, and who's fighting for them. One of the
Speaker 4: things and that people know me for working for Obama,
Speaker 4: but for our for Obama, I work for our.
Speaker 1: D Yeah, frequent guest on this podcast, by the.
Speaker 4: Way, who was fantastic and does not get enough credit
Speaker 4: for the building of the Democratic Party that we did
Speaker 4: under this they say strategy things that Kairman Dean said
Speaker 4: that always stuck with me when we'd be in spaces
Speaker 4: where progressives would be arguing that, look, working class voter,
Speaker 4: particularly working class white voters, are voting against their economic
Speaker 4: interests because look, Democrats are well aligned with the economic
Speaker 4: issues of working class voters, but working class white voters
Speaker 4: continually break against Democrats, and so they would argue that
Speaker 4: they're voting against their economic interest And one of the
Speaker 4: things that I thought was just brilliant always stuck with
Speaker 4: me that Governor Dean said was no, they're voting for
Speaker 4: their higher interest And it's not that they're voting against
Speaker 4: their economic interests, but they have higher interests. And I
Speaker 4: from a data standpoint, and you're seeing that really with
Speaker 4: Donald Trump. Donald Trump is really brought this home. You
Speaker 4: cannot disconnect someone's tribal identity from their economic understanding and
Speaker 4: their economic concerns and their positioning. You just can't write.
Speaker 4: And this echoed in the conversations that you here. When
Speaker 4: Donald Trump stood before audiences in twenty sixteen, he said,
Speaker 4: I'm going to give you back your country. That was
Speaker 4: both an economic and a cultural and a tribal and
Speaker 4: a status conversation right to a group of people who
Speaker 4: and look I heard we started hearing the take we
Speaker 4: need to take back our country calls shortly after Barack
Speaker 4: Obama got elected and certainly going into twenty ten with
Speaker 4: the rise of the Tea Party, which again they said
Speaker 4: was about economic anks. In this bullshit, economic anks is
Speaker 4: a part of it, but it's connected to status. And
Speaker 4: so when Donald Trump stood up and said, you know,
Speaker 4: I'm going to give you back your country, and when
Speaker 4: he's stayed in front of his audiences, right now talking
Speaker 4: about you know, immigrants and brown people poisoning the blood
Speaker 4: of America. He is having a conversation about tribalism and
Speaker 4: about status, and we think that it's simply about oh,
Speaker 4: a pocketbook transaction. Well, I'm going to give you a
Speaker 4: higher minimum way, and so therefore you should vote for me,
Speaker 4: because that's more important than you were. His historic status,
Speaker 4: as you see it, in a racial zero sum game.
Speaker 4: They're playing chess ins like progressives are playing checkers.
Speaker 1: Right, this was just this anti multi racial democracy I
Speaker 1: think of like that Susan Faludi Backlash book, like you
Speaker 1: come forward a little bit and then you know, I
Speaker 1: mean Donald Trump was willing to lie to people in
Speaker 1: a way that no politician had ever been willing to
Speaker 1: you know. He said like, I'm going to bring back
Speaker 1: your coal jobs.
Speaker 4: But why did they fall for all this? This was
Speaker 4: the predicate of my book that I wrote in Going
Speaker 4: to twenty sixteen about after looking at data over the
Speaker 4: years about the rise of racial version. Donald Trump is
Speaker 4: not a figure we have not seen in American history before.
Speaker 4: And I'll argue that quite rightly, he's a lesser political
Speaker 4: version of Pat Buchanan. But in the past, those candidates
Speaker 4: did not get the runway or the momentum that they did.
Speaker 4: Look all the things that Donald Trump sort of leads into,
Speaker 4: Pat Pukennon lead into those earlier, and he couldn't win
Speaker 4: the Republican nomination. It's different after Barack Obama gets elected
Speaker 4: all of a sudden, and let's understand what Barack Obama's
Speaker 4: election means. It means, for the first time in America
Speaker 4: and our history, you had the vast majority of white
Speaker 4: voters break one way. And because people look at Barack
Speaker 4: Obama as its hate some sort of post racial breakthrough,
Speaker 4: the truth of the matter is it wasn't a post
Speaker 4: racial warder because if you look at the percentage of
Speaker 4: the white vote nationally that Barack Obama got, and look
Speaker 4: at while winning, and look at the percentage of the
Speaker 4: white vote that John Carry got while losing, there's no
Speaker 4: difference in between that number. What the difference is that
Speaker 4: is with John Kerry losing and Barack Obama winning is
Speaker 4: probably a little bit over ten million more people of color,
Speaker 4: brown people showing up and voting. And let's understand and
Speaker 4: are re electing in twenty twelve, on his way to
Speaker 4: winning his back to back majorities. Barack Obama garnered less
Speaker 4: than forty percent of the white vote, right, so this
Speaker 4: is what's happening. So this is the wolf at the door.
Speaker 4: There's no longer at the door, but it's in the
Speaker 4: living room, and all of a sudden is we are
Speaker 4: losing our country. And look, as a social scientist, you know,
Speaker 4: you don't beat up on people who have eggs. You
Speaker 4: had to try to understand that eggs. And I recognized
Speaker 4: that in two thousand and eight that there was a
Speaker 4: large swath of voters who were really anxious and concerned
Speaker 4: about the changes that were happening in America and the
Speaker 4: idea that they're losing out because of others and others
Speaker 4: are gaining at their expense, right, which is something that
Speaker 4: is old as human nature, but it's real. And what
Speaker 4: I argue is we have to speak to that. Now
Speaker 4: Trump is speaking to that in grievance politics. We've got
Speaker 4: to speak to that in a different way, or we're
Speaker 4: good areas country apart.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but don't you think that Biden has done well
Speaker 1: being able to sort of relate to those voters in
Speaker 1: a way that is not racist and is also addresses
Speaker 1: them in a not patronizing but also sort of realistic way.
Speaker 4: Well, let's go to the faction and look more manufacturing
Speaker 4: jobs coming back to this country and being in this
Speaker 4: country then we've seen in a long long time. And
Speaker 4: people thought manufacturer was dead. And part of the issue
Speaker 4: with the gutting out of some of the working class
Speaker 4: vote was about the loss of these jobs, like manufacturing
Speaker 4: jobs that were going overseas with.
Speaker 1: Chips and stuff like that. You're bringing those manufacturing jobs back.
Speaker 4: You bring those manufacturing jobs back and focused on it,
Speaker 4: by the way, in a real way, not that Donald
Speaker 4: Trump did, but but that Biden actually did bringing back
Speaker 4: manufactured jobs. This was a policy that he focused on
Speaker 4: and they're actually doing. Is Biden doing better? Amonge working
Speaker 4: glass white voters now that he was now?
Speaker 1: Because why? Because he can't transmit that to them because
Speaker 1: of the siloed media ecosystem, or is there something else?
Speaker 4: It goes back to the point, it's not just the economy, stupid,
Speaker 4: It's not just a pocketbook transaction. Voters are a lot
Speaker 4: more complicated than that. And if voters fear that their
Speaker 4: group is losing, how can they not feel also that
Speaker 4: they're losing. So you have to start addressing Look, you've
Speaker 4: got to do the policy stuff right, and again, if
Speaker 4: you look at what he's done for a policy standpoint,
Speaker 4: and let's even go further and talk about within the
Speaker 4: infrastructure bill. You know as well as I do, that's
Speaker 4: going to be brick and mortar and highway construction. Those
Speaker 4: are again working class jobs. Those are not white collar
Speaker 4: jobs that are being created by the infrastructure. Again, the
Speaker 4: jobs that most impacted pocketbooks and economics are working class
Speaker 4: white people. So if they were just simply making an
Speaker 4: economic decision, if it was simply an economic pocketbook decision,
Speaker 4: it would be hard to beat Biden.
Speaker 1: Right, But that's not what this is.
Speaker 4: But that's not what it is. At some point, again,
Speaker 4: you've got to be able to address add on this
Speaker 4: divisive conversation about losing America and somehow we've got to
Speaker 4: break the tribal fever that Donald Trump and Republicans are
Speaker 4: leaning into and flaming.
Speaker 1: Do you have a quick song for that that takes
Speaker 1: like forty seconds?
Speaker 4: Oh? Hell, if I had that, I would be Oh,
Speaker 4: I should just we should just saw that saw the
Speaker 4: American Originals then in forty sage. No, I didn't, but
Speaker 4: I think it's somewhere in this space. I think it's
Speaker 4: in this space. It is the enemy. Can't be other Americans,
Speaker 4: or we lose the future while we're fighting and dividing
Speaker 4: amongst each other being divisive here overseas. That there they are,
Speaker 4: they're they're they're they're winning the competition for the future. Right,
Speaker 4: Can we and this sounds terrible, but can we divert
Speaker 4: tribalism away from other fellow Americans and put it somewhere
Speaker 4: else where? Then we can rally all Americans to meet
Speaker 4: the future and for America to win. There may be
Speaker 4: some there there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Cornell, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 4: Always a pleasure. Thanks for having.
Speaker 3: No moment?
Speaker 1: What is our moment of fuckery?
Speaker 3: My moment of fuckery? Is? This? Un believable flock of assholes?
Speaker 3: Is a lesser known eighties knockoff banded flock of seagulls
Speaker 3: of who The Minute, a ship that lost control crashed
Speaker 3: into the Francis Scott Keybridge in Baltimore. The Minute, while
Speaker 3: bodies were still being pulled from the water, decided to
Speaker 3: blame it on DEI. Why Yes, the DEI Mayor and
Speaker 3: the DEI Port director and the DEI Okay, stop it.
Speaker 3: What these people are saying. Whenever you hear DEI or CRT,
Speaker 3: you should just understand that that is maga for the inWORD.
Speaker 3: That is what they're trying to say. That's what they
Speaker 3: want to say. I just think about that again, like
Speaker 3: put that word in your head because that's what they're saying. Unbelievable.
Speaker 3: And look, there was a period of time in America
Speaker 3: where where during moments of national tragedy there was at
Speaker 3: least a nod in a wink to bipartisanship. These people
Speaker 3: can't even bring themselves with that because they want to
Speaker 3: say the in.
Speaker 1: Word, right, Well, they're just racist assholes.
Speaker 3: Well there is that. You know.
Speaker 1: My moment of rockery is My moment of vrockery is
Speaker 1: carried Lake pretending to be normal. This week we saw
Speaker 1: a number of profiles of Carrie Lake. Carrie Lake has
Speaker 1: decided that she actually occupies a purple state. This is
Speaker 1: the first time ever, right, and she's like, perhaps I
Speaker 1: shouldn't continue this thing that I'm governor of Arizona. Because
Speaker 1: you'll remember when she lost the governorship to Katie Hobbs,
Speaker 1: she was like, no, no, I'm governor. She was like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm the rightful governor. So it's like somebody has clearly
Speaker 1: she's raised up money, so somebody has said to her,
Speaker 1: maybe you should just try to win those votes as
Speaker 1: opposed to being insane. Now she's trying to look less
Speaker 1: in saying.
Speaker 3: It's not gonna work. There's no filter for sanity that
Speaker 3: Carrie Lake can put up.
Speaker 1: She should try, right, she is my moment of fuckery.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
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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.