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 President Trump has frozen one hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy five million dollars of the University of Pennsylvania's
Speaker 1: funding over an excuse that he's using, which is trans women.
Speaker 1: We have such a great show for you today, ye
Speaker 1: Al Franken shows. Al Franken discusses changing leadership in the
Speaker 1: Senate and what it would mean. Then we'll talk to
Speaker 1: et Injermentum newsletter editor Josh Cohen about the future Democrats want.
Speaker 2: But first the news, Mollie.
Speaker 3: The thing that makes me be able to go to
Speaker 3: sleep without taking a truckload of melatonin each night is
Speaker 3: that Donald Trump keeps suffering multiple legal blows every single day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is Trump one point zero being a lot
Speaker 1: like Trump two point zero being a lot like Trump
Speaker 1: one point zero, a lot of the stuff that Trump
Speaker 1: wants to do. And again, I'm going to remind all
Speaker 1: of you that in July, Jesse and I did this
Speaker 1: YouTube series. It makes us look like we're psychics. We
Speaker 1: just read this stupid website that the Heritage Foundation stupidly published.
Speaker 3: Read a pdf that had command to f a lot
Speaker 3: of times to see how many different ways they said
Speaker 3: the same fucking thing over and over again.
Speaker 2: Exactly.
Speaker 1: It was not gone with the wind, it was not
Speaker 1: check off, it was not the brothers caramotts off. It
Speaker 1: was in fact the Heritage Foundations mandate for leadership.
Speaker 3: But some would say there was some power broker going
Speaker 3: on it.
Speaker 1: There was some power broker in going and it was
Speaker 1: a lot of repetition and a lot of chapters written
Speaker 1: by members of Trump's first administration who, surprised, surprise, went
Speaker 1: back into his second administration. Who could have seen this coming?
Speaker 1: How about everyone who was paying attention. So one of
Speaker 1: the things that we both I think, when we were
Speaker 1: talking about this in July and so sbsequently in the
Speaker 1: healthscape that is our lives, we noticed that a lot
Speaker 1: of this stuff seemed really illegal, right, like you know,
Speaker 1: dissolving agencies like you know, ending the Department of Education,
Speaker 1: stuff like that. And so in fact it turns out
Speaker 1: that all of the courts also think these illegal things
Speaker 1: are illegal, which is now created an atmosphere where MAGA
Speaker 1: now hates all the federal judges. And so the good
Speaker 1: news is that Trump just keeps losing in court like
Speaker 1: he did the first time. The bad news is that
Speaker 1: these federal judges are basically like the rest of us
Speaker 1: now being harassed by the Maga wing of the Mega Party,
Speaker 1: which uses X as a sort of four Chan to
Speaker 1: get together and organize, utilize, and harass the rest of us.
Speaker 3: I do like this four Chan metaphor for what X
Speaker 3: is for them. It's good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's basically, you know, it's a it's
Speaker 1: a message board for people who you know, use straight
Speaker 1: armed salutes to invoke bad guys from the Second World
Speaker 1: War who I have no idea.
Speaker 3: So one of the worst things I've done in my
Speaker 3: brain is I've listened to like episodes of Joe Rogan
Speaker 3: and Steve Bennon's War Room, where I've heard these people
Speaker 3: who love to think their immune systems are just so
Speaker 3: awesome talking about how if we could just figure out
Speaker 3: the antibodies from the people who don't catch things, that's
Speaker 3: where we're really going to find the good stuff. And
Speaker 3: it's like some bad movie plot that we're going to
Speaker 3: solve bird flu with this, And that is exactly what
Speaker 3: RFK Junior is telling our government to do.
Speaker 2: Wait what Wait?
Speaker 1: First, wait what, Oh, okay, RFK juniors unveils into drubbing
Speaker 1: planned to combat bird flu. So let's just talk about
Speaker 1: this for a minute. Trump is at war with the Cords. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: MAGA is at war with nature, basically nature and science.
Speaker 2: This is like a larger theme.
Speaker 1: We're seeing that the truth has gotten so stretched out
Speaker 1: and sort of impaled that it is no longer the truth. Right,
Speaker 1: It's a sort of mimiogram of the truth. And one
Speaker 1: of the things we see here is like Trump has
Speaker 1: these statements. I'm going to go back to the story
Speaker 1: we were just talking about for a minute because they
Speaker 1: think that it can shed light on the story we're
Speaker 1: talking about right now. So Trump is on Truth's Social
Speaker 1: complaining about these judges, and he says, if a president
Speaker 1: doesn't have the right to throw murderers and other criminals
Speaker 1: out of our country because a radical left lunatic judge
Speaker 1: wants to assume the role of president, then our country
Speaker 1: is in very big trouble and doesn't fail. Okay, So right,
Speaker 1: this is this way of perverting the truth. Right. The
Speaker 1: truth is this judge is just not a radical left lunatic,
Speaker 1: and he's saying, you just have to do due process
Speaker 1: before you kick people out of the country, and make
Speaker 1: sure that you're kicking out the right people, sending them
Speaker 1: to a country that perhaps they've been to before. This
Speaker 1: is exactly the same kind of thing with the RFK stuff, Right,
Speaker 1: It's this idea that you're not seeing the world in
Speaker 1: a normal way, you're seeing the world in this kind
Speaker 1: of paranoid way. And in fact, the thing that makes
Speaker 1: me think of is the paranoid style, right, Richard Hofsteinter,
Speaker 1: this idea the paranoid style of American politics. Right, This
Speaker 1: is this idea that the sort of world of conservative
Speaker 1: thinkers looks at things in a way that is sort
Speaker 1: of the opposite of what's really happening.
Speaker 2: And this is like the sort of legacy of Nixon
Speaker 2: and Agnew. Yeah, I was thinking about pat Buchanon.
Speaker 3: See, I only say that the way John McLaughlin used
Speaker 3: to say it did and yell at going.
Speaker 2: But you can, right.
Speaker 1: So Pap Buchanan is another one, right, where there's sort
Speaker 1: of there's a sense in which everything that's real is
Speaker 1: not really real and things that are wrong or maybe right.
Speaker 1: So here's the deal. RFK Junior has taken a step further.
Speaker 1: He is doing these things when it comes to public health.
Speaker 1: And I think, honestly, this is where we see the
Speaker 1: post COVID paranoid style of post COVID politics in a
Speaker 1: way that is the most destructive, right, because Trump's war
Speaker 1: on the judiciary is destructive. But it's a little bit different, right,
Speaker 1: We've sort of seen it before. We know what it is.
Speaker 1: It's much more on the surface, ourf case war against
Speaker 1: science and technology, and the sort of hearkening back to
Speaker 1: the early earlier times in American life when we didn't
Speaker 1: have vaccines is actually more insidious.
Speaker 2: So here's what's happening.
Speaker 1: He has decided that the bird flu should be allowed
Speaker 1: to spread unchecked to identified birds that could be immune.
Speaker 1: And I think this is important because what he is
Speaker 1: saying here is that he's just not going to try
Speaker 1: And this is what they did with COVID too, Right
Speaker 1: with COVID, they said, Now, why this is going to
Speaker 1: be bad is because we are going to all get
Speaker 1: bird flu and die. Maybe we won't all get bird
Speaker 1: flu and die, but a a lot of birds are
Speaker 1: going to die.
Speaker 2: B a lot of people are going to get.
Speaker 3: Sick, and crucial to a lot of US Americans, a
Speaker 3: lot of pets are going to die, right, A lot.
Speaker 2: Of pets are going to die. It's just terrible.
Speaker 1: Kennedy said in a reason Fox News interview that farmers
Speaker 1: should consider maybe the possibility of letting it run through
Speaker 1: their flock so they can identify the birds. They'll identify
Speaker 1: them all right, because they'll be dead and preserve the
Speaker 1: birds that are immune to it, an idea experts say
Speaker 1: would be dangerous and hurt the poultry industry.
Speaker 3: So, Mali, I know you sometimes tell people you're nepo
Speaker 3: oldie online, but I got news for you that's getting
Speaker 3: put into policy now. Because the DOJ is asserting Trump
Speaker 3: hypothetically as the power to purge all female agency heads
Speaker 3: or those over forty. That's two strikes there. Miss.
Speaker 2: Here's the thing.
Speaker 1: Just because a lot of conservative men don't like being
Speaker 1: married to women over forty doesn't mean they don't have
Speaker 1: a use on this planet. I'm sorry to tell you
Speaker 1: that's not how any of this works. And look, you'll
Speaker 1: remember that women over a college educated women did not
Speaker 1: over Trump, right, because we read the Trump Department of
Speaker 1: Justice asserted in court on Tuesday that under its theories,
Speaker 1: could the president decide he was not going to a
Speaker 1: point or allowed or remain in office any female heads
Speaker 1: of agencies or heads over forty years old. Judge Karen Henderson,
Speaker 1: a wild leftist Reagan appointee on the DC Circuit of Appeals,
Speaker 1: asked the Deputy Assistant Attorney General, and you know what
Speaker 1: he said?
Speaker 2: He said, I.
Speaker 1: Think that would be within the president's constitutional authority under
Speaker 1: the removal of power, because honestly, who wants to be
Speaker 1: married to someone over forty.
Speaker 3: Not I My wife turns it in August and putting
Speaker 3: her on notice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right, baby, we are, by the way, kidding,
Speaker 1: we're both mid to late forties.
Speaker 3: Yes, Somali. Mister Trump told me and the American people
Speaker 3: that day one he's going to putin in his place,
Speaker 3: and the war in Ukraine, He's going to make peace
Speaker 3: in the Middle East.
Speaker 2: Yeah, good work.
Speaker 3: Then there was these recent ceasefires, and I have news
Speaker 3: for you. They're done. They're fucking done.
Speaker 2: I am shocked. I am shocked to hear that.
Speaker 1: I think from Trump one point zero, where he said
Speaker 1: who knew healthcare could be so complicated? I feel like
Speaker 1: we could put this on every thing that Trump falls into.
Speaker 1: Who knew that any of this could be so complicated.
Speaker 1: It's complicated and Donald Trump learning how to do government
Speaker 1: one minute at a time.
Speaker 2: Lucky us.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Al Franken is a former senator and the host of
Speaker 1: the Al Frankin show.
Speaker 3: Oh and Molly. He appears in the new Netflix TV
Speaker 3: series The Residence, which is out now.
Speaker 1: Welcome Back, Too Fast Politics, Al Franken.
Speaker 4: Thank you, great to be back. Molly. How you doing now?
Speaker 2: You're actor Alfred versus.
Speaker 4: I'm actor Al Franklin again. I've done it before, but
Speaker 4: there's been a hiatus from my acting career. But I'm
Speaker 4: very excited about this show. I'm in The Residence all
Speaker 4: right to pitch the show. It's a murder mystery. It
Speaker 4: takes place basically. The biggest character in it is the
Speaker 4: White House Residence, not the West wing, but the East wing,
Speaker 4: and there's a murder. The chief usher is the murderer.
Speaker 4: So this involves all the staff and all the people
Speaker 4: who were at this big dinner for the Australian Prime Minister.
Speaker 4: It's a great show. When I got the script, I
Speaker 4: really loved it, but I didn't know how it's going
Speaker 4: to be great it's going to be but it was
Speaker 4: and it is so I was very excited when I
Speaker 4: saw and they sent me the episodes and they're great,
Speaker 4: great cast.
Speaker 2: Who else is in it with you?
Speaker 4: Well, Uzzo Aduba, who people would know from Orange is
Speaker 4: the New Black. She's the only person I know that
Speaker 4: is one an Emmy in acting for both a comedy
Speaker 4: and a drama in the same show.
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So each one year they submitted it as a comedy,
Speaker 4: one year they submitted as a drama, and when it
Speaker 4: got more dramatic, and she won in both categories two
Speaker 4: different years. So she has that distinction. She plays the
Speaker 4: detective who solves this thing after in the and you
Speaker 4: solve it in the eighth episode she does.
Speaker 2: That is very cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I feel like we have our distractions from
Speaker 1: watching Donald Trump dismantle the federal government. Mine is my
Speaker 1: book is coming out in June. Yours is this very
Speaker 1: cool show, which Jesse and are both going to watch.
Speaker 1: I think of this, like, you have been a United
Speaker 1: States senator, so you really do care about the federal
Speaker 1: government and like what is happening right now. I would
Speaker 1: love to just talk through a little bit about what
Speaker 1: you think is happening right now to Republican senators because
Speaker 1: there are still a bunch that are there that you've known,
Speaker 1: and they have survived one Trump administration, right and now
Speaker 1: they are into their next and I just am wondering
Speaker 1: what you think it's like for like a John Soon.
Speaker 2: I don't think they are having fun either.
Speaker 4: Oh God, no, no, I don't think anybody's having fun
Speaker 4: there right now, because the Republicans have all caved except
Speaker 4: for Markowski and Collins and McConnell.
Speaker 2: Bafflingly, Well, it's not baffling, but you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: It's not baffling at all. McConnell, I don't know it was.
Speaker 4: But how many did he vote?
Speaker 2: Know on three four?
Speaker 4: I think at least three. But I mean, he's not
Speaker 4: running for reelection, so everybody else is just scared. You know.
Speaker 4: We have Musk saying he's going to spend at least
Speaker 4: one hundred million on the primary of these guys if
Speaker 4: they defy him, and they all seem to be scared
Speaker 4: of him. They all are scared of him, There's no
Speaker 4: doubt about it. So that's why they're caving every day.
Speaker 1: Elon has done a ton of stuff over the first
Speaker 1: six weeks, and now we're starting to see the courts
Speaker 1: are just basically like, no, you can't do any of that.
Speaker 1: So you can't do usai D, you can't do this,
Speaker 1: you can't fire. I mean, God bless the democratic ags.
Speaker 1: Jesse and I interviewed one in July who was like,
Speaker 1: basically said, we don't think she's going to win, and
Speaker 1: we have spent the last six months sitting down and
Speaker 1: figuring out all the lawsuits we're going to have to file.
Speaker 4: That was in July, Yeah, July.
Speaker 1: And we were both like, no, he doesn't know what
Speaker 1: he's talking about.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: After we end up recording, I go and she's going
Speaker 2: to win and he was.
Speaker 1: Like, no, she's not gonna win. He's like, but here
Speaker 1: are the lawsuits we're going to file. But they filed
Speaker 1: all these lawsuits.
Speaker 4: Who do you blame that she didn't win? I know
Speaker 4: who I blame.
Speaker 1: So this age was Okay, go ahead, you know it's
Speaker 1: not his fault. But I'm just saying, I just want
Speaker 1: to I want to tell you what he told us
Speaker 1: because I think.
Speaker 4: No, it's not his fault at all. That's not what
Speaker 4: I'm no.
Speaker 1: I know, but I mean, I just want to tell
Speaker 1: you what he told us because I think think it
Speaker 1: is interesting, and it got me thinking about the election
Speaker 1: in a certain way. He said, I am in He's
Speaker 1: in a blue state, in a but very Latino state,
Speaker 1: and he said, they're just not going to vote for her.
Speaker 1: He said, the Latino men are not going to vote
Speaker 1: for her. And it was like in his mind, he said,
Speaker 1: it just doesn't matter. He said, it's just not happening.
Speaker 1: I think Latino men, I think white, non college educated women.
Speaker 2: I don't think she could have broken through there.
Speaker 4: Well, I think it because it started so late and
Speaker 4: Trump took the right tack and you know, and went
Speaker 4: after both her and Biden. I was scared throughout, but
Speaker 4: I thought it was going to be fifty to fifty
Speaker 4: on election night, and it wasn't. It was fifty forty nine.
Speaker 2: Who do you blame?
Speaker 1: This is the most spiritual thing you can do is
Speaker 1: re litigate the twenty twenty four cycle.
Speaker 2: I can't stop so well.
Speaker 4: I blame Biden for not dropping out much sooner, for
Speaker 4: not honoring what he said going into the I thought
Speaker 4: he had a great presidency in many ways, many pomplishments,
Speaker 4: but he had to know that he wasn't up to snuff.
Speaker 4: And of course that debate was a harrowing thing to watch. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and then to not pull out then was ridiculous as well.
Speaker 4: But that's relitigating stuff that everyone relitigates in their mind
Speaker 4: every day as they go to sleep.
Speaker 1: I don't think we should continue on but on this
Speaker 1: depressing dijectory. But since we're just going to do it
Speaker 1: one more minute, not it the cardinal sin as I
Speaker 1: see it is running from populism whatever. That looks like
Speaker 1: Democrats had a much more populist policy program, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: tax cuts for rich people is not populism.
Speaker 4: Well, how about these these medicaid cuts.
Speaker 2: Eight hundred and eighty billion over ten years.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and that wait, wait till people on medicaid see
Speaker 4: that realize that's happening to them.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about that.
Speaker 1: Because there's sort of a pause between Trump doing crazy
Speaker 1: stuff and like the average American feeling it.
Speaker 2: How long do you think that is?
Speaker 4: I don't know. I don't know when this kicks in,
Speaker 4: but when it kicks in that you know. One of
Speaker 4: the things is like Medicaid expansion, which was under the
Speaker 4: Affordable Care Act, and one of the great things in
Speaker 4: the Affordable Care Act. You look at how many red
Speaker 4: states didn't sign up for that, but then through voters
Speaker 4: insisting on it in all these different red states, it
Speaker 4: was adopted in a you know, on by a ballot initiative,
Speaker 4: and it's the best thing happens to rural hospitals. And
Speaker 4: the states that haven't done it, those red states that
Speaker 4: are in basically the Confederacy and Wisconsin, I guess those
Speaker 4: states have lost rural hospitals. It's a disaster for them.
Speaker 4: And so but now we're going to have people who
Speaker 4: are on straight medicaid, not through Medicaid expansion, and they're
Speaker 4: going to be really hurting. Yeah, they're going to notice that,
Speaker 4: and hopefully that will work in the midterm, but that's
Speaker 4: a long way away. And in the meantime, this horrible
Speaker 4: stuff has happened.
Speaker 1: It's like the accelerationist case for Trumpism, right, like that
Speaker 1: you want people to notice it because last time Democrats
Speaker 1: were in a way too effective at preventing some of
Speaker 1: the effects of Trumpism, right, Like, he's not going to
Speaker 1: cut stuff because he wasn't able to last time. Was
Speaker 1: a refrain I heard all the time.
Speaker 4: I guess, so, you know, I was there during part
Speaker 4: of that, and that part of it. He had the whole.
Speaker 4: He had the whole thing. First couple of years he
Speaker 4: had the House, the Senate, and the White House. Now
Speaker 4: he does and it's a whole different story here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm curious because they passed the CR.
Speaker 2: It is not great.
Speaker 4: Either way was bad.
Speaker 2: Now either way was bad. Now here's my question for you.
Speaker 1: You and I both know, and I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people that a lot of the conversations I've had,
Speaker 1: like behind the scenes, have been with staffers or members
Speaker 1: who have said things like, you know, it was impossible
Speaker 1: situation right, Like I know for a fact they told
Speaker 1: Schumer's office that RUSSA could not wait for a shutdown,
Speaker 1: that he planned to make every single hr person in
Speaker 1: all the federal agencies deemed essential workers and then just
Speaker 1: keep going, right, just spend those weeks of no of
Speaker 1: government shutdown just firing everyone he could without the purview
Speaker 1: of the federal government.
Speaker 4: That sounds about right, and that's why Schumer did what
Speaker 4: he did. But the counter to that is that how
Speaker 4: long would that have lasted? The air traffic controllers are necessary,
Speaker 4: and I guess you end up having Trump say what's
Speaker 4: necessary and what's not necessary. Right.
Speaker 1: Besides that is the counter that is would Mitch McConnell
Speaker 1: have been like, Oh, okay.
Speaker 4: I guess he would have. I don't know, But so
Speaker 4: what so the government shuts down, right, that gives Trump
Speaker 4: all the power to decide what's essential and what's not essential.
Speaker 4: And Mitch is just one of the three that I mentioned.
Speaker 4: They all voted yes on it, all the Republicans, right,
Speaker 4: I think it was every one of them, And so
Speaker 4: I don't know what McConnell would have done, but I
Speaker 4: don't think it would have done anything different.
Speaker 2: Right if Mitch had been in leadership at the time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, yeah, that's what I mean. If we're doing
Speaker 4: a lot of what ifs today, the.
Speaker 1: Question is could you have gotten anything out of Trump
Speaker 1: world if you have no leverage?
Speaker 2: I mean, I think that's the real question.
Speaker 1: People are mad because they feel that Chuck Schumer did
Speaker 1: not get enough from Trump World.
Speaker 4: They got nothing. Right, They wrote that bill without any
Speaker 4: any concessions at all. When he said let's vote you know,
Speaker 4: yes on this. It was a terrible choice between the
Speaker 4: worst of both worlds. I mean, it was terrible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So do you think that?
Speaker 1: So A lot of people are saying now that tchumor
Speaker 1: should not be in leadership.
Speaker 2: What do you think about that?
Speaker 4: Well, I could see them trying to make a change.
Speaker 4: It just be who would challenge and who would wants
Speaker 4: that job?
Speaker 2: Who do you think want that job?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 4: I I see, you know, Chris Murphy being out there
Speaker 4: very loudly, but I think that he probably thinking about
Speaker 4: the White House as opposed to being leadership of the
Speaker 4: you know, of a minority right now, and it's it's
Speaker 4: a kind of a thankless job. So yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 4: It's not going to be Durbin or them. They would
Speaker 4: want someone young, right, I.
Speaker 2: Mean, I think Durbin may not run again.
Speaker 1: As from what I understand, I think we really have
Speaker 1: a question of like what leadership should look like. For example,
Speaker 1: Nancy Pelosi, people were mad at her because she was older,
Speaker 1: but she never brought things up to the floor that didn't.
Speaker 4: Pass right, right, right, she was brilliant.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: We saw how good she was at that when we
Speaker 1: saw Mike Johnson get in there, because Mike jun then
Speaker 1: it's actually quite a hard job.
Speaker 2: So she is a really good leader.
Speaker 1: Now does she reflect the entirety of the Democratic Party?
Speaker 1: Absolutely not, But doesn't necessarily.
Speaker 4: Matter, and no one does, right.
Speaker 1: And it's a big tent. So the question I think is,
Speaker 1: first of all, do you want a leader who who
Speaker 1: is a spokesman? Can those things be different?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 1: Because usually you kind of have a candidate, a presidential candidate,
Speaker 1: and then you have a member of the party who
Speaker 1: is in leadership, and those two things don't necessarily need
Speaker 1: to be the same.
Speaker 4: Oh, not at all. You know Harry Reid. I remember
Speaker 4: always people saying why is Harry Reid the leader? And
Speaker 4: I said, for a really good reason. But you know,
Speaker 4: he wasn't a popular national figure, but he was a
Speaker 4: great leader. Nancy Pelosi never Speaker of the House, doesn't
Speaker 4: usually run for president. Sometimes you have, but senators do.
Speaker 4: But I can't think of a majority leader or minority
Speaker 4: leader except for Bob Dole who ran for president.
Speaker 2: Can you no? And it did not go well for
Speaker 2: Bob Dole, I think more importantly.
Speaker 4: Well, he did lose, and he lost by quite a bit.
Speaker 4: That was that Clinton midterm. And it's not a road
Speaker 4: to the White House certainly, And I don't know who
Speaker 4: would want this job right now. I haven't heard any
Speaker 4: rumblings of that, have you.
Speaker 1: So Punchbowld today had some thing about Brian Shots Punchball,
Speaker 1: which I listen to and read, but is much much
Speaker 1: better sourced.
Speaker 2: On the right than the left. When you read it,
Speaker 2: you see that.
Speaker 1: And that's not true for all of them, but they
Speaker 1: had sort of Brian Shots his wants at Durbin's job,
Speaker 1: but maybe he wants leadership.
Speaker 4: Durban is the whip right.
Speaker 1: Is the whip right, and he's also the chair of Judiciary.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's super important.
Speaker 4: Well, Shots doesn't want that.
Speaker 1: And the other thing is that if you're leader in
Speaker 1: the Senate, you need to know all of those people, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, the job is to be able to talk
Speaker 1: to everyone and to form consensus, whatever that looks like
Speaker 1: in a Trump Senate. So I would think you don't
Speaker 1: necessarily want the youngest person. You actually want people who
Speaker 1: have you know, Chuck Shots.
Speaker 4: Has been there a pretty long time now, I would say, yeah.
Speaker 2: No, he has.
Speaker 1: I mean I think he'd be good, though, Like, what
Speaker 1: you need if you have someone taking on humor, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure you have that is someone who is ensconsed
Speaker 1: enough to be like a Shot, but brave enough to
Speaker 1: go against one of your party's biggest leaders, right.
Speaker 4: And I just don't see it happening. I mean, I
Speaker 4: think of Sheldon white House or someone like that as
Speaker 4: that kind of person, But I don't think Sheldon wants
Speaker 4: that kind of job.
Speaker 1: Right, And that I think is the thing that the
Speaker 1: more vocal part of the party doesn't totally understand, is
Speaker 1: that this is not happening in a vacuum. This is
Speaker 1: happening in an institution where people do six year terms.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and who are very comfortable in those terms. And
Speaker 4: I just don't see someone challenging Schumer, that's all.
Speaker 1: And Schumer is now has all these protesters, he had
Speaker 1: to cancel his book tour, he had this, and that
Speaker 1: I mean, you.
Speaker 4: Know, not, it's a shame on the book tour. What's
Speaker 4: it is about being Jewish?
Speaker 1: It's a book about anti Semitism. So, okay, we're both Jewish.
Speaker 1: You're Jewish, we're Jewish.
Speaker 2: We're both too right, Yeah, right, congratulations to us.
Speaker 4: Are you interested in the book by Chuck Schumer on
Speaker 4: any Semitism?
Speaker 2: You're so mean? Why do you ask me such? Hi?
Speaker 2: Oh look, we're out of time. I'll Reagan. I hope
Speaker 2: you'll come back.
Speaker 4: Oh I will, I will if you'll have me.
Speaker 2: Are you kidding me of course.
Speaker 4: And watch The Residents on Netflix.
Speaker 2: Netflix. I'll watch it.
Speaker 4: It's great.
Speaker 1: Josh Cohen is the editor of the newsletter at Injermentum.
Speaker 1: Welcome back, but it's been a while too fast politics.
Speaker 5: Josh, Hello, it's good to be honest. It's been like
Speaker 5: I think last of Masani was during the election.
Speaker 2: Oh that turned out great. Yeah, so let's talk.
Speaker 1: We're in the wilderness here. You have this really good block.
Speaker 1: You're such a good and interesting writer and thinker. And
Speaker 1: one of the things you do is you've sort of
Speaker 1: you've been running through the possibility is for twenty eight,
Speaker 1: but also what do you sort of think talk to
Speaker 1: me about who you feel like as leading the party
Speaker 1: right now.
Speaker 5: It's a really tricky situation because I did immediately after
Speaker 5: the election, when they first started putting out the twenty
Speaker 5: twenty eight polling, the consistent thing, if we're gonna like
Speaker 5: look that far ahead, it has consistently shown Kamala Harris
Speaker 5: with like a meaningful lead. She's been around thirty thirty
Speaker 5: five forty percent of the vote, while everybody else, like
Speaker 5: this whole list of mostly identical kind of white governors
Speaker 5: in swing states and Pete Budachees on top of that,
Speaker 5: they've been AOC has been pulling him like the mid
Speaker 5: to low to high single digits. So in that sense,
Speaker 5: like she is still kind of like the front runner
Speaker 5: and the person that people like think of when they
Speaker 5: think of the Democratic Party. But the thing is, and
Speaker 5: I noted this like a couple like a week ago
Speaker 5: and people got really mad about it, is that she's
Speaker 5: been very very absent since the election. Like part of
Speaker 5: that is like the tradition, but she's only really shown
Speaker 5: up for like Broadway plays and award shows. It's like
Speaker 5: the traditional kind of thing that an outgoing administration does,
Speaker 5: where they like don't criticize a new party. But the
Speaker 5: thing is is that this isn't really a traditional set
Speaker 5: of circumstances, and they certainly didn't certain yeah, and they
Speaker 5: didn't campaign on Trump being a traditional opponent. So for
Speaker 5: her to kind of abide in to go to like
Speaker 5: the kind of default mode where they just kind of
Speaker 5: sink into the background, I think that there's like a
Speaker 5: contradiction there and their behavior and kind of how people
Speaker 5: feel about the moment. And this is something that I
Speaker 5: thought was very interesting. I read this in an AP
Speaker 5: piece about the huge rallies that Bernie Sanders has been
Speaker 5: doing his office. Actually, during the first couple of weeks
Speaker 5: of Trump's administration, they deliberately just thought, like, Okay, we
Speaker 5: could probably organize these things, but we'll just wait back
Speaker 5: to see if, like anybody wants to take a public
Speaker 5: role in like doing this kind of tour and like
Speaker 5: trying to press an argument and framework for the next
Speaker 5: four years. But nobody did it over the first month,
Speaker 5: so they just thought, well, if nobody's doing it, we
Speaker 5: should do it. And that they did it and it
Speaker 5: got this massive response he's been getting like presidential campaign
Speaker 5: rally sizes and like the February in March of an
Speaker 5: off year. I think that things are very much up
Speaker 5: for grabs. Anybody who's kind of treating this moment in
Speaker 5: the way that they kind of described it over the
Speaker 5: past number of years is somebody who I think people
Speaker 5: will gravitate towards. Because there's a lot of people who
Speaker 5: didn't necessarily like Bernie when he ran for president that
Speaker 5: I've seen, like across social media, like saying that they
Speaker 5: have a renewed appreciation for him just because he's going
Speaker 5: out and giving speeches. It's not any like kind of
Speaker 5: huge thing. But he's acting in the way that you
Speaker 5: would expect someone to act in this moment. And I
Speaker 5: think that anybody who fits that role as somebody who
Speaker 5: could get a lot of goodwill very early.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean what Trump did that was smart and that
Speaker 1: set him up. Trump right defies gravity. He's his own
Speaker 1: I mean, you can't run on his playbook, because his
Speaker 1: playbook is be famous for twenty years for being a
Speaker 1: brother businessman, Like it's unreplicatable. But what he did, which
Speaker 1: I think is smart, is in the first two years
Speaker 1: of the Biden administration. I'd love you to like actually
Speaker 1: tell me everything my theory is right or wrong, because
Speaker 1: I have this theory that what Biden did wrong was
Speaker 1: that he spent two years wildly avoiding the press, shutting
Speaker 1: them down at every moment, being aggressively boring, refusing to
Speaker 1: participate in anything a start contrast to and again this
Speaker 1: is no love for Trump here, but Trump does pool sprays,
Speaker 1: He talks to the media on the airplane, he's in,
Speaker 1: he's out, He's talking to them all the time. Now
Speaker 1: he only does interviews with friendly outlets like Fox or
Speaker 1: Real America Voice or Mark Levin, but he's still doing
Speaker 1: a ton of media and like Biden, in the first
Speaker 1: two years, you know, you could count in one hand.
Speaker 1: And then in the second two years they just started
Speaker 1: panicking and trying desperately to get some coverage, but they
Speaker 1: still didn't want to give their guy out.
Speaker 2: So it ended up being.
Speaker 1: Just like whereas Trump has been sort of running a
Speaker 1: shadow government this whole time, which I think has served
Speaker 1: him guy.
Speaker 5: I totally agree with that. One of the things that
Speaker 5: really struck me when he first got into office was
Speaker 5: just the following politics and their buying for four years
Speaker 5: and he was such like a managed kind of just
Speaker 5: his total lack of a presence. And then Trump comes
Speaker 5: in on day one. He has like these press pools
Speaker 5: around the resolute desk in the Oval office where he's
Speaker 5: just like talking with them about whatever for like an hour,
Speaker 5: and that totally drives the news on the conversation. It
Speaker 5: made me realize, like, oh, Biden really did leave a
Speaker 5: lot on the table here, and a lot yeah, he
Speaker 5: had such to put nicely communication deficiencies that I don't
Speaker 5: know if he did try to do a blitz throughout
Speaker 5: his four years that it would have. But like even
Speaker 5: like just basic stuff like press conferences. He only gave
Speaker 5: like three Oval office addresses, even though his presidency was
Speaker 5: very eventful and he had a lot of stuff he
Speaker 5: needed to manage public opinion. It was just a very
Speaker 5: reactive kind of strategy instead of a proactive one, and
Speaker 5: they ended up kind of being swamped on the issues
Speaker 5: by the end of.
Speaker 1: It because they couldn't control the narrative at all. And
Speaker 1: it's something I see in democratic electives at large, is
Speaker 1: this idea. You know, you'll see like a good example
Speaker 1: is congressional leadership. Right, they'll come out with a statement,
Speaker 1: You'll get them on TV. You know, you get leader
Speaker 1: Jeffries on TV once, so we you know, maybe you'll
Speaker 1: make a little video.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: There's just not the same kind of effort at flooding
Speaker 1: the zone.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I think that the stuff that Bernie has done is
Speaker 5: because like as somebody who's more on the left, he
Speaker 5: does stand out even like among our tendency, as somebody
Speaker 5: who's been uniquely successful and like the remarkable thing and
Speaker 5: like this is stuff people were saying like about him,
Speaker 5: like early in the eighties before anybody knew who he
Speaker 5: was nationally, is that he was an extremely effective messenger
Speaker 5: in terms of discipline, just saying the same thing over
Speaker 5: and over, like when he was mayor of Burlington. It
Speaker 5: got to the point where he defined the terms of
Speaker 5: the debate so much that by the end of his
Speaker 5: tenure even his opponents were really speaking like kind of
Speaker 5: the same language as him, just proposing different kinds of
Speaker 5: ways of doing the problems that he made the center
Speaker 5: of politics. That's art that Democrats have really lost, I
Speaker 5: think in kind of the very consultant driven kind of
Speaker 5: like structure that they have where it's always chasing polling
Speaker 5: instead of driving it, which I think is possible.
Speaker 2: Chasing polling is a really good point.
Speaker 1: So the people we've seen out on the stump, right,
Speaker 1: Chris Murphy, endless right videos, movies on television and everything
Speaker 1: everywhere tweeting up a storm.
Speaker 2: I mean, Bernie was the first.
Speaker 1: To do it, and he is doing the town halls
Speaker 1: and they're getting huge response. And I actually was texting
Speaker 1: with one of his people about like the huge response
Speaker 1: and they're going to Republican districts. So okay, So we've
Speaker 1: got him, We've got Murphy, and we've got Tim Walls.
Speaker 1: I mean, can you think of anyone else who's sort
Speaker 1: of out there in that same kind of way.
Speaker 5: He did bring Sean Fain on his tour.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, you're very smart.
Speaker 5: And he also is bringing AOC to his tour in
Speaker 5: the West. He's going to like Colorado, Nevada, and Arizona,
Speaker 5: I think, and she's coming along with him, which is
Speaker 5: like an interesting piece of kind of secession management.
Speaker 1: Right because he's been criticized for not having a successor
Speaker 1: because he is eighty three.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he is eighty three. He'll be eighty seven and
Speaker 5: twenty twenty eight, and that'll be a pretty valuable endorsement.
Speaker 5: And you don't know if that he'll be around to
Speaker 5: give that hopefully. I mean, he seems pretty spry right now.
Speaker 2: But he's pretty spy and he's very sharp.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the chief of staff of my guy Pritzker, you
Speaker 1: know who she is.
Speaker 2: Right, Anna had this very.
Speaker 1: Smart thing which she tweeted, which was basically, this is
Speaker 1: not about left or right right, the left side of
Speaker 1: the party, the middle of the party, the more sort
Speaker 1: of modern never trumpling of the party, which is basically
Speaker 1: what it is at this point. It's actually about are
Speaker 1: you going to fight or are you going to not fight?
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I think that people really underestimate how like
Speaker 5: there was the kind of like now infamous James Carville
Speaker 5: line in his New York Times off ever, he said, Oh,
Speaker 5: Democrats need to play dead, and he's obviously just one person,
Speaker 5: But that really is the kind of strategy that the leadership,
Speaker 5: the kind of fighter versus not fighter thing, that's what
Speaker 5: they're taking. They are trying to be as non confrontational
Speaker 5: as possible. They're trying to just like let Republicans take
Speaker 5: up all the attention so when things get bad then
Speaker 5: people will blame them and they'll go to Democrats as
Speaker 5: an alternative.
Speaker 2: That's the wrong play, I think.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's not really what any opposition I think is
Speaker 5: ever really done.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: He doesn't work.
Speaker 5: They didn't do that in twenty eighteen. There was like
Speaker 5: they were very active in opposing him, and there's I
Speaker 5: think there's sort of like this weird kind of revisionist
Speaker 5: history where everybody's trying to paint everything that involve the
Speaker 5: eight years of resistance to Trump as this kind of
Speaker 5: retrospective failure because of what the end result was. But
Speaker 5: if you look at what they did during his first
Speaker 5: four years, like this kind of era that's now being
Speaker 5: looked back on, is like this embarrassing too woe thing
Speaker 5: that created a backlash. It was very effective in and
Speaker 5: of itself. Trump came in with the trifecta in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 5: and he left in twenty twenty. His party had lost
Speaker 5: the presidency of the House in the Senate, the last
Speaker 5: time that had happened so quickly for I think a
Speaker 5: president whose party was newly elected, I think was like
Speaker 5: Grover Cleveland or something. It's not typical for a party
Speaker 5: to come in like I know Herbert Hoover did, but
Speaker 5: he was like at the tail end of three administrations.
Speaker 5: It's not typical for a party to lose that much
Speaker 5: goodwill that fast. That was a real like. So a
Speaker 5: lot of what Democrats did during the first four years
Speaker 5: did work. Yeah, it did work.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And you know what annoys me about that because
Speaker 1: I agree. I think there's a lot of like shitting
Speaker 1: on twenty sixteen because you know, saying it was cringe
Speaker 1: or whatever.
Speaker 5: Or twenty eighteen the resistance.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: When you would talk to people about the twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four election, you would say, well, you know, Donald Trump
Speaker 1: wants to do this, this and this in voters would say,
Speaker 1: but he didn't do it last time, so he won't
Speaker 1: do it this time. And in some ways Democrats were
Speaker 1: really a victim of their own success, right Like Trump
Speaker 1: had wanted to repeal Obamacare had it not been for
Speaker 1: Meghan McCain's dad. You may remember him as a United.
Speaker 5: States Senator, as obscure figure.
Speaker 2: Right who me and Meghan made it all on her own.
Speaker 2: Of course, had she not made it on her own,
Speaker 2: she had this.
Speaker 1: Father who actually was the vote that thumbs down that
Speaker 1: saved healthcare for all of these millions of people. I
Speaker 1: don't know why we're shitting on the sort of success
Speaker 1: of that. And the other thing I want to ask you,
Speaker 1: I heard a friend of mine say this on a podcast,
Speaker 1: and I got really mad at him, and I actually
Speaker 1: called him up and yelled at him because I was like,
Speaker 1: my favorite thing to do is call people up and
Speaker 1: yell at them about their opinions.
Speaker 2: But he had said, we are in.
Speaker 1: A cycle of back to back to back backlashes where
Speaker 1: voters are so angry that they're going to backlash, you know.
Speaker 1: And he said Hair's going to lose and Trump is
Speaker 1: going to win, not because they want trumpsm but because
Speaker 1: they're angry at the administration, they have right now talk
Speaker 1: me through that idea.
Speaker 5: There is something to say about that. And I think that, like,
Speaker 5: if you look at it for a very broad view,
Speaker 5: it's just this kind of long period where people don't
Speaker 5: really feel like the central issues that they're angry about
Speaker 5: are are being like really directly addressed. We are now
Speaker 5: on like a third straight like this will be a
Speaker 5: one term presidency. I'm like, it's our third straight one
Speaker 5: term presidency. I can't like I think like during the
Speaker 5: Cold War period, only like there were two total presidents
Speaker 5: like Carter and hw Bush were one term presidents and
Speaker 5: just lost reelection and it wasn't because they were killed.
Speaker 5: This is a remarkable period of like swings back one
Speaker 5: way and the other. And I do think that there
Speaker 5: is a lot to be said about people voting for
Speaker 5: Trump over Harris because like not necessarily as an endorsement of
Speaker 5: his program, obviously it was a very narrow election. And also,
Speaker 5: like what you were saying about Trump's first term, this
Speaker 5: is something I wrote about, like is in this piece
Speaker 5: or like a month or two ago, about the main
Speaker 5: contradictions of like Trump's presidency, Trump's biggest advantage, like by
Speaker 5: the end of the election, was that people, like a
Speaker 5: majority of people looked back on his first administration or
Speaker 5: they saw it as a retrospective success, which was not
Speaker 5: the case at all. He never had positive approval during
Speaker 5: his first term, but people look back in what he
Speaker 5: did then when like they thought, like the international scene
Speaker 5: was relatively peaceful and the economy wasn't undergoing like an
Speaker 5: acostal living crisis, and just like relative stability compared to
Speaker 5: the post COVID world, and they looked back on that positively.
Speaker 5: But I think is fascinating is that that is that
Speaker 5: that comes after four years where the right has broadly
Speaker 5: written off Trump's first term as a miserable, compromised failure.
Speaker 5: Like their entire way to explain the election to this
Speaker 5: they like twenty twenty to the sent that they recognized
Speaker 5: that they even lost it was that, oh, Trump had
Speaker 5: too many globalists around him, he wasn't prepared enough, he
Speaker 5: didn't have he wasn't truly socially conservative enough, he wasn't
Speaker 5: dedicated enough to the cause. So they have undergone this
Speaker 5: extensive effort to really like institutionalize this form of politics
Speaker 5: that they're imagining is what people really wanted. And at
Speaker 5: the tail end of that entire process, when they get JD.
Speaker 5: Vance's VP and they have the America First Policy Institute
Speaker 5: and Product twenty twenty five planning out all these radical changes,
Speaker 5: what people vote him in on is over that first term,
Speaker 5: they have gifts avowed more than anybody else. And I
Speaker 5: think that if that's what a lot of people expected,
Speaker 5: they were going off with what they knew, and his
Speaker 5: approval has like plummeted in the past couple of weeks,
Speaker 5: like even more rapidly than a honeymoon bomb usually fades.
Speaker 5: And I think that the people were generally by the
Speaker 5: end of twenty twenty four, they were fine with the
Speaker 5: idea of a good economy and mean tweets. They weren't
Speaker 5: like so disgusted by Trump as a figure, Like it's
Speaker 5: been a decade since he entered politics. They're basically just
Speaker 5: CETI sized to whatever his shtick is. They were fine
Speaker 5: with that. But instead of getting like what they got
Speaker 5: during his first term, which is just him being this
Speaker 5: character while things seem to go well, which is a
Speaker 5: compromise people were willing to make, they're getting this huge
Speaker 5: paleocon ideological project that was never really litigated during the
Speaker 5: term itself, and I think like presenting like obviously, there's
Speaker 5: the oligarchy thing, and like talking about how the rich
Speaker 5: people control it and it's not real democracy. I think
Speaker 5: that's a very effective framing that Republicans can't really respond to,
Speaker 5: but also just kind of turning the narrative of elite
Speaker 5: capture on its head and talking about how his administration
Speaker 5: is being run by these kind of like super ideological creeps.
Speaker 5: It's a message that the right has hit liberals with
Speaker 5: for a long time. Like I think making the Heritage
Speaker 5: Foundation a household name was one of the few real
Speaker 5: impressive successes of twenty twenty four on the Democratic side,
Speaker 5: and more of that I think will be helpful.
Speaker 1: It definitely seems like we're in a very abnormal them
Speaker 1: all time in American politics. So when we talk about
Speaker 1: like Democrats winning back at the midterms, like it feels
Speaker 1: like a fair amount of sunny optimism here, we are
Speaker 1: definitely down rabbit hole. Certain things make me think like
Speaker 1: will be okay. The incompetence of this administration, the feeling
Speaker 1: that Trump you know, already running out of gas. The
Speaker 1: things that make me think we're not going to be okay,
Speaker 1: Elin and Trump basically whipped the House vote. You know,
Speaker 1: that's clearly what happened here, Republicans in Congress of giving
Speaker 1: away their power at an alarming clip. I mean, what
Speaker 1: are you watching to sort of tell you whether or
Speaker 1: not to sleep at night?
Speaker 5: This is going to sound like kind of dire, but
Speaker 5: I guess, like to the U Stent, they're actually listening
Speaker 5: to court orders. I mean, no, no, it's not dire.
Speaker 2: I mean that's right.
Speaker 5: You've had jd Vance like LARPing about like oh like
Speaker 5: and like whatever, like eighteen year old Nazi staffer posted
Speaker 5: a Napoleon quote on his Twitter page, right, But at
Speaker 5: the same you do see them kind of complying with
Speaker 5: even like the stuff with the deportation flights. They like
Speaker 5: there was obviously all the bragging on Twitter, but like
Speaker 5: they're still litigating that and they're making this convoluted legal
Speaker 5: argument as to why it was still legal, like to
Speaker 5: the extent that. I mean, there's like all these really
Speaker 5: the right wing like Third Amendment Project whatever they're called,
Speaker 5: Like these right wing people on Twitter who are like
Speaker 5: freaking out and like saying, oh, the judiciary better get
Speaker 5: their act in line, because nothing says we have to
Speaker 5: listen to them. So the extent that like the constitutional
Speaker 5: order is still in operation, I think that that is
Speaker 5: a positive sign.
Speaker 1: Yes, so sad that we're having this conversation, but.
Speaker 5: Yes, go on the question of like elections, I think
Speaker 5: is something people are worried about. That's less of like
Speaker 5: in terms of the just the pure logistics of it.
Speaker 5: That's less of an immediate concern because those are held
Speaker 5: the state level. If there was like a problem with
Speaker 5: Republicans like in red states, like stopping elections, they've had
Speaker 5: that power for a while and they haven't like exercised
Speaker 5: it yet, I guess. And even then, like I mean,
Speaker 5: I don't know, there's just a lot of like the
Speaker 5: basic kind of machinery that is still I guess intact
Speaker 5: at this point. I guess that makes it so I
Speaker 5: can kind of talk about stuff like twenty twenty eight
Speaker 5: without feeling like it's pointless.
Speaker 1: I'll take it. I'll take it. Yeah, Josh, will you
Speaker 1: please come back soon?
Speaker 5: Of course, of course, any time.
Speaker 6: They're no more thickly Jesse Cannon Smelly, we are often
Speaker 6: exhausted by the stupidity of GOP State House laws.
Speaker 3: But Arkansas, I think they did the thorough pummeling of
Speaker 3: my exhaustion this week where they brought up a bill
Speaker 3: that could ban hairdressers from giving gender non conforming haircuts
Speaker 3: to minors.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The Party of Freedom, MALLI, the Party of Freedom.
Speaker 2: The Party of Freedom. So yeah.
Speaker 1: Earlier this month, Arkansas State Rep. Mary Bentley, looking for
Speaker 1: a place on the Supreme Court, introduced HB sixteen sixty
Speaker 1: eight a law that would be more appropriate in sixteen
Speaker 1: sixty eight, the Vulnerable Youth Protection Act. It's an anti
Speaker 1: trans bill that does not actually criminalize anything, but it
Speaker 1: weaponizes civil enforcement by permitting lawsuits against people who support
Speaker 1: trans people by providing or helping to receive gender affirming
Speaker 1: care or affirming young people in their transition.
Speaker 2: So again, this is the same as Sbaight.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: These are the idea right. Remember in Sbaight, it was
Speaker 1: this abortion law in Texas made it so that men
Speaker 1: whose wives or girlfriends had had abortions could sue the
Speaker 1: people who helped them. This is this idea that you
Speaker 1: can deputize other Americans to be your henchmen, and it
Speaker 1: is meant to scare people, and it is meant to
Speaker 1: make life harder for people, and it is meant to
Speaker 1: put women, especially those in abusive relationships, in a place
Speaker 1: where they have less power. So this is a page
Speaker 1: out of the Matthew Cosmeric, the judge from Texas who
Speaker 1: has been very involved in the Comstock Act. This is
Speaker 1: a page out of these guys book. Right, this idea
Speaker 1: that you can deputize people to go and harass women
Speaker 1: who have had abortions, and here we have a way
Speaker 1: to harass people who give haircuts to minors. This is
Speaker 1: the kind of thing where it seems very stupid and trivial,
Speaker 1: but it's actually sort of this step towards a police state, right,
Speaker 1: It's a step towards less for.
Speaker 3: America, the true or Wellian state where your neighbors are
Speaker 3: telling on each other and your neighbor you've deputized everybody
Speaker 3: as a law enforcement agent. Of this and exactly what
Speaker 3: the warning was and orwell, yeah, that stuff.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
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Speaker 2: Thanks for listening,