Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discuss the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds. And we have reports that show Dianne
Speaker 1: Feinstein is in far worse health than her staff is closed.
Speaker 1: We have an excellent show today, a show of shows
Speaker 1: Representative Jake Ackenclass and Lucas Kans, who is running to
Speaker 1: unseat our least favorite runner Josh Holly in the Senate.
Speaker 1: We'll stop by to talk about just how ridiculous Josh
Speaker 1: Holly's new book is. Then we'll talk to the Daily
Speaker 1: Beasts Sam Brody about all the latest fuckery in Congress.
Speaker 1: But first we have fan favorite friend of mine, the
Speaker 1: host of the Laurence O'Donnell Show, MSNBC's very own Laurence o'donnals.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Fast Politics, fan favorite and my personal favorite, Lawrence.
Speaker 2: Let me just say something about hosting guests in a
Speaker 2: tone format. The one thing, the one thing I Lawrence
Speaker 2: O'Donnell can never say, is this is my favorite guest.
Speaker 2: You know, I don't think Johnny Carson ever said that.
Speaker 2: I don't think Letterman ever said that. It's just like,
Speaker 2: you know, you say that and there's one hundred guests
Speaker 2: out there who are never coming back.
Speaker 1: Let me say, if you say everyone is the favorite.
Speaker 3: Guest, okay, then you're covered. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I'm not saying I do that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but you better start now.
Speaker 1: I mean, so, let's talk about the fourteenth Amendment. Not
Speaker 1: without its problems. We are in this debt ceiling situation.
Speaker 1: It is reliant on the stupidest person to ever have
Speaker 1: been speaker. Maybe that's a bold statement, Am I wrong?
Speaker 3: Yeah? But I believe it's a true statement.
Speaker 2: We have looked at the SATs of every speaker going
Speaker 2: back to seventeen eighty and yeah.
Speaker 1: Kevin McCarthy, it feels like he's a man out of
Speaker 1: his depth.
Speaker 2: I actually don't think he is exactly. He's a stupid
Speaker 2: man in many ways who is the representative of and
Speaker 2: quote leader of. But we know he's not the leader
Speaker 2: of the stupidest party delegation in the history of the
Speaker 2: House of Representatives. So you'd have to look at the
Speaker 2: Republican House and say, do you have anyone smarter than
Speaker 2: Kevin McCarthy, And the answer is, oh, yes, sure a few.
Speaker 2: You know Tom Cole, for example, who used to be
Speaker 2: a reasonable Republican. But Tom Cole, now you know, very
Speaker 2: faithfully follows all the principles of trump Ism and as
Speaker 2: Kevin McCarthy does, and lives in service to them out
Speaker 2: of fear of two things in the case of Tom Cole.
Speaker 2: One is not being re elected and the other is
Speaker 2: not being able to be chairman of the Rules Committee.
Speaker 2: If he was re elected and wasn't playing the role
Speaker 2: of dumb pro Trump guy, then he would not have
Speaker 2: a chairmanship. And so that's enforcing the dumb behavior on
Speaker 2: the very small group of Republican House members who are
Speaker 2: are not idiots.
Speaker 1: Right, and then there are some in that group who
Speaker 1: are like the Thomas Massey is not stupid, but have
Speaker 1: such bad libertarian brainworms that there's no help.
Speaker 2: You're going to have to do the neurology on distinguishing
Speaker 2: how libertarian brainworms are different from stupid in any functional
Speaker 2: way at all.
Speaker 1: Right, true, let's just talk about this for a second.
Speaker 1: We were careening towards a dead ceiling drama. I mean,
Speaker 1: where do you think this goes?
Speaker 3: I have no idea.
Speaker 2: Okay, So, audience members, if you don't want to listen
Speaker 2: to someone who has no idea, this is your moment
Speaker 2: to go switch over to something else. I feel like
Speaker 2: that must be declared by everyone participating in this discussion.
Speaker 2: I've changed my mind about it a few times along
Speaker 2: the way, and I'm ready to again. In the end,
Speaker 2: we may look at it and diagram it and say
Speaker 2: Biden played it exactly right. We don't know that yet,
Speaker 2: but he might have done so. And so I have
Speaker 2: been attracted to the fourteenth Amendment solution so called, in
Speaker 2: which the president simply says, when you hit the debt ceiling,
Speaker 2: which is kind of a mythological moment. You know, it's
Speaker 2: that they're saying it's June first, but it's not exactly
Speaker 2: like your checking account that it hits, you know, a
Speaker 2: spot where there's no money. And so that the president
Speaker 2: can simply authorize the issuance of new and additional debt
Speaker 2: because it is his duty, as Lawrence Tribe points out brilliantly,
Speaker 2: I think it is his duty to faithfully execute all
Speaker 2: of the laws Congress has passed. And Congress has passed
Speaker 2: all these laws mandating spending in medicare and social security
Speaker 2: and defense and education and all sorts of things, and
Speaker 2: so he must follow those laws. It's his duty to
Speaker 2: fund those things. And by the way, there is nowhere
Speaker 2: anywhere even the hint or suggestion that there is an
Speaker 2: executive authority presidential or in the Treasury Secretary to decide
Speaker 2: what bills not to pay. That's not an authority that exists.
Speaker 2: So the Republicans think, like, sure, you hit the debt ceiling,
Speaker 2: and then Biden just doesn't pay for anything liberal and
Speaker 2: he pays for all the soldier stuff. It's like, no,
Speaker 2: there's no, there's no authority that allows him to do that.
Speaker 2: And so I would say, if you were going to
Speaker 2: use the Fourteenth Amendment power, the power that people believe
Speaker 2: resides there, I would have announced it a while ago.
Speaker 2: I might have even announced it in the State of
Speaker 2: the Union address and just say, the debt ceiling as
Speaker 2: currently legislated, will intersect, you know, with the debt at
Speaker 2: some point later this year. And I want this Congress
Speaker 2: to know that, absolutely, under no circumstances, will we default
Speaker 2: on the debt, because I will if Congress does nothing,
Speaker 2: I will take the action executive action necessary to authorize
Speaker 2: the extension of additional debt. And then your no negotiation position,
Speaker 2: I think my guess is becomes even stronger because you're
Speaker 2: saying to them, look, I don't care if you don't
Speaker 2: legislate anything, and you're saying it to them six months
Speaker 2: ahead of time. I think there's a chance that would
Speaker 2: have changed the dynamics of this. And the other thing
Speaker 2: about it that makes it the kind of thing you
Speaker 2: do want to say six months ahead of time is
Speaker 2: there are market issues with it. You know, when you
Speaker 2: say we're going to continue to extend the debt and
Speaker 2: expand the debt even though we've crossed the line the
Speaker 2: number that's in the debt ceiling, the buyers of that
Speaker 2: new debt, right, the buyers of the new treasury bonds
Speaker 2: that would be sold under that condition would rightfully demand
Speaker 2: a higher interest rate because this debt is being issued
Speaker 2: under a condition we've never seen except back before there
Speaker 2: was ever a debt ceiling, which is like it's only
Speaker 2: been around for less than one.
Speaker 1: Hundred years, right, But I mean they just started deciding
Speaker 1: that it was optional in two thousand and seven, right,
Speaker 1: that's correct.
Speaker 2: We used to pass it by unanimous consent. I thought
Speaker 2: when I was working on the Finance Committee, which has
Speaker 2: jurisdiction over it, that we did only one markup and
Speaker 2: as they call it in the committee. And one passage
Speaker 2: of a debt ceiling increase. There was only one I
Speaker 2: could remember because the other one we did unanimously. So
Speaker 2: and traditionally, by the way, in those days, what would
Speaker 2: happen is the party in power that needed to increase
Speaker 2: the debt ceiling voted for it, and many of the
Speaker 2: members of the party not in power voted against it.
Speaker 2: They didn't obstruct it, they didn't demand anything, they just
Speaker 2: voted no. And that's the way they did it. In
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety three, the first time Bill Clinton had to
Speaker 2: raise the debt ceiling, you know, Bob Dole led all
Speaker 2: the Republicans in, by the way, very congenially voting no,
Speaker 2: not being obstructive in any way. And then you know,
Speaker 2: fifty seven Democrats, you know, voted to pass the debt
Speaker 2: ceiling and there was no struggle whatsoever. It was always
Speaker 2: a posture, you know, because Bob Dole had participated already
Speaker 2: in raising the debt ceiling for Republican presidents. And the
Speaker 2: most regrettable vote, and possibly only regrettable vote that Senator
Speaker 2: Obama ever cast, was when he was in the minority
Speaker 2: in the Senate and there was a Republican president. The
Speaker 2: Democrats mostly voted against the increase in the debt ceiling,
Speaker 2: and that was just a stunt. It was nothing but
Speaker 2: a stunt. They all knew the debt ceiling should be increased,
Speaker 2: and it's fine to cast that vote as a senator
Speaker 2: as long as you never become president him exactly. That's
Speaker 2: the only stunt component of it in the past was
Speaker 2: that the party that didn't have to vote for it
Speaker 2: didn't vote for it.
Speaker 3: Generally.
Speaker 2: There were some principal senators who always voted for it always,
Speaker 2: you know, no matter who was in power.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now it's reached this madness level, which you know we
Speaker 2: saw coming, you know, since election night last year.
Speaker 1: I want you to talk me through this because I
Speaker 1: feel like you have opinions on this too. So we
Speaker 1: have this Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams, who won,
Speaker 1: He won his primary conservative what worked with Bashir was
Speaker 1: able to hold onto his seat through Republican primary. I mean, again,
Speaker 1: this is in no way an endorsement, but more of
Speaker 1: a question. Here's a candidate who did in a ruby
Speaker 1: red state, who did actually sort of the Trump hast
Speaker 1: made a run at him and didn't win. I mean,
Speaker 1: do you think this is hopeful or do you just
Speaker 1: get do you think this is just sort of one
Speaker 1: of these things that happens.
Speaker 2: It's hard to say yet whether it's a trend and
Speaker 2: the balance of the electorate is relatively unchanged. I mean
Speaker 2: the electorate. It's not like there's a lot of New
Speaker 2: Yorkers who go, hey, I want to move to Kentucky,
Speaker 2: you know, and so it's not one of those places
Speaker 2: with a very dynamically changing demographic. It's a bit mysterious.
Speaker 2: I mean, Kentucky has a democratic history. If you go
Speaker 2: back far enough beyond the nineteen nineties, they all kind
Speaker 2: of do those states. But I have a feeling that
Speaker 2: those kinds of elections are very very much about the individual,
Speaker 2: very much about the individual. When the Democrat wins in
Speaker 2: the state that is generally not supportive of Democrats, it
Speaker 2: tends to be the individual. Historically, that's what it has
Speaker 2: tended to be. That doesn't mean it's something that's something
Speaker 2: you can duplicate very easily.
Speaker 1: Right, That's the question we're going to be watching in
Speaker 1: those twenty four elections. Is the Trumpest fever breaking or
Speaker 1: will they just keep losing?
Speaker 2: So there are two factors in this coming election that
Speaker 2: we've never had before. One is year eight of Trump, right,
Speaker 2: And so I've always looked at administrations as TV series,
Speaker 2: you know, and some of them run for four years,
Speaker 2: which is respectable, and some of them run for eight years,
Speaker 2: which is considered a very big success for TV series.
Speaker 2: But what happens in all TV series is there becomes
Speaker 2: a certain audience fatigue that sets in, and that's that's
Speaker 2: why those series end. I mean, I think Er with
Speaker 2: George started with George Clooney, you know, was his big break.
Speaker 2: I think Er went like fourteen seasons and it was
Speaker 2: a giant rated show. But you know, the last three years,
Speaker 2: the line was just going down, you know, and the
Speaker 2: show was the show was every bit as good as
Speaker 2: it was in the in the first year, didn't have
Speaker 2: George Clooney, so maybe not quite as good. That's kind
Speaker 2: of the way it works, you know. There's a fatigue
Speaker 2: that sets in with these people. So the Trump fatigue question,
Speaker 2: which is a question for Republicans because Democrats have had
Speaker 2: Trump fatigue since the second week of his first campaign, right.
Speaker 1: That's right around when he came down that escalation.
Speaker 2: Right, So there's the Trump fatigue question, how does it work,
Speaker 2: what's the effect of it? And oh, by the way,
Speaker 2: in an additional parentheses on the end of the Trump
Speaker 2: fatigue question, it's the defendant Trump question. You know, the
Speaker 2: criminal defendant. How many cases is he a criminal defendant
Speaker 2: in while running for president? That's a weight we've never
Speaker 2: seen before on a candidate. And then the other part
Speaker 2: of it is Roe versus Way. That's the thing that
Speaker 2: for you know, fifty years stabilized a certain aspect of
Speaker 2: our politics. And there was a comfort that the people
Speaker 2: who wanted Roe versus Way to stay in place, They
Speaker 2: earned their their comfortable sensation that it would stay in place,
Speaker 2: and they de energized as voters on that particular issue
Speaker 2: because it was, from their perspective, quote taken care of,
Speaker 2: and it's not. We've seen that that dynamic has produced
Speaker 2: a voting energy that gets you to fifty one percent
Speaker 2: in places where you know, you couldn't get out of
Speaker 2: the forties before. Those are the big things, and each
Speaker 2: one of them are things we've never had in our
Speaker 2: politics before. You know, we've never had this Row versus Way.
Speaker 2: It's been overturned. You know, what does that do at
Speaker 2: the ballot box and the Trump fatigue factor at this
Speaker 2: level of it, and with criminal defendant Trump running, and
Speaker 2: so those all feel like negatives for the Republican side.
Speaker 1: To put it mildly, Yeah, it's funny because you know,
Speaker 1: I was talking to Mike Tamaski about the editor of
Speaker 1: The New Republican. He was saying that he wondered and again,
Speaker 1: we don't really know, we really don't know, and we're
Speaker 1: so far out from the election, but that he could
Speaker 1: you could see this going very badly for Trump.
Speaker 2: I have a suggestion for renaming the podcast. Yes we
Speaker 2: don't know with Maladjung Fast, our first guest, Lawrence at all,
Speaker 2: the king of we don't know.
Speaker 1: We wildly speculate because that's all we can do.
Speaker 2: That's right, or yes, that's right, wild speculation with Malajung Fast.
Speaker 1: Yes it's a little long. I want to ask you
Speaker 1: about this idea. I read a pretty interesting article about
Speaker 1: this idea of the judiciary being really at this point
Speaker 1: creating more legislation than any of the legislative bodies.
Speaker 3: Is it supposed to be this way?
Speaker 2: It's been, you know, trending that way for fifty years.
Speaker 2: You know, that's what that's what the argument was about
Speaker 2: Roe versus. Way, was like, okay, we understand kind of
Speaker 2: procedurally how it ended up here. But one of the
Speaker 2: reasons that ended up in the Supreme Court is that
Speaker 2: the Congress had done nothing on the subject. You know,
Speaker 2: the Congress could have and they did absolutely nothing on
Speaker 2: the subject. And by the way, they were greatly relieved.
Speaker 2: You know, both sides were greatly relieved that the Republicans
Speaker 2: and Democrats were thrilled that the Supreme Court took abortion
Speaker 2: out of their hands so then they could just posture
Speaker 2: on it and never had to do.
Speaker 1: Anything right like immigration, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they loved it.
Speaker 2: And so yeah, it's been an increasing trend over time
Speaker 2: for at least fifty years. Some people would argue, you know,
Speaker 2: the Brown versus Board of Education is part is part
Speaker 2: of that trend, like that should have been legislated. But
Speaker 2: it goes into incredible levels of complexity in corporate law,
Speaker 2: and there's all sorts of stuff that the Supreme Court's
Speaker 2: doing every day, you know, that we don't even know
Speaker 2: about because there's very very complex, you know, business litigation
Speaker 2: in there that is in effect legislating, and it is
Speaker 2: the current condition and the Congress during my lifetime just
Speaker 2: chose willfully chose to become weaker and weaker. You know,
Speaker 2: the phrase imperial presidency did not exist until the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 2: and one of the things that made it exist was
Speaker 2: we went to war. We lost over fifty thousand American
Speaker 2: soldiers in war without a declaration of war. And the
Speaker 2: one thing that you were absolutely sure of in the
Speaker 2: Constitution is that the war making power belongs exclusively to
Speaker 2: the Congress. And they gave it up, and they gave
Speaker 2: it up willingly because they as weak politicians, they looked
Speaker 2: at it and said, geez, that's really a tough decision.
Speaker 2: I would prefer not to participate in the tough decisions.
Speaker 2: So then you got this thing, you know called you know,
Speaker 2: the executive authority of the president to just fire off
Speaker 2: missiles literally anywhere in the world, like at any time,
Speaker 2: right right, what do you want to you want to
Speaker 2: hit Syria?
Speaker 3: Go ahead? Do you have any authority to now?
Speaker 2: We don't have a document now, And the Congress has
Speaker 2: never objected to it because of their own weakness. They've
Speaker 2: done that on a bunch of different fronts, and so
Speaker 2: the executive and the judiciary have been you know, through
Speaker 2: Congress's complicit weakness increasingly taking over legislative authorities.
Speaker 1: Lawrence, thank you so much. I hope you will come back.
Speaker 3: When I come back, I won't know anything.
Speaker 1: Jake Achenclaus represents Massachusetts fourth District. Lucas Kuntz is running
Speaker 1: from the Missouri Senate. So welcome Congressman Jake Auchenclous and
Speaker 1: Lucas Kuntz. So you guys are here together because you
Speaker 1: are filming a buddy comedy. No really tell us why
Speaker 1: you have united to write an op ed together.
Speaker 4: So first, Mallie, thanks for having me on. It's nice
Speaker 4: to be back, and it's a real privilege to be
Speaker 4: sharing the stage with Lucas. And January sixth, twenty twenty
Speaker 4: one was my second day in Congress. It has imprinted
Speaker 4: itself upon me in a lot of different ways, but
Speaker 4: one of the defining images from that horrific day for
Speaker 4: American democracy with Senator Josh Holly first raising his fist
Speaker 4: in a petulant manner to the crowd, and then hours
Speaker 4: later scurrying away from the mob, hiding behind the Capital Officers,
Speaker 4: who he would later vote to defund in an act
Speaker 4: of cowardice that really kind of sums up his approach
Speaker 4: to politics, which is to say, this superficial, contrarian, smug
Speaker 4: attitude to America's problems that is wholly unsubstantiated by anything
Speaker 4: he actually does in office to help working people. And
Speaker 4: Lucas and I are articulating that in plain language for
Speaker 4: the American public to see and digest.
Speaker 1: Lucas explained to us what you're how you got involved
Speaker 1: in this?
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So I'm running against Josh Holly right now for the
Speaker 5: US Senate seat here in Missouri. I mean, look like
Speaker 5: people are tired of fakers. We're tired of fakers everywhere,
Speaker 5: We're especially tired of in Missouri. It's funny, you know,
Speaker 5: his approval in Missouri's forty two, his disapprovals forty three.
Speaker 5: He's underwater in a red state. Like that's an accomplishment, right,
Speaker 5: And it's an accomplishment that he has pieved just based
Speaker 5: on his own character, Like Jake says, right, like, the
Speaker 5: guy's a fraud, he's a phony, and people don't like him.
Speaker 5: And he does this like weird, fake, populous thing where
Speaker 5: he claims that the Republican Party is going to be
Speaker 5: the party of working people. But he goes against absolutely
Speaker 5: everything that we need. And so for me, we know
Speaker 5: what I want to talk about here, and what Jake
Speaker 5: is bringing up to is that like this whole his
Speaker 5: weird manhood stick, it's just getting creepy, and it's all
Speaker 5: about his own power. What he wants to do is
Speaker 5: tell people want to do what to do. He doesn't
Speaker 5: want to give us the tools to do things on
Speaker 5: our own. And that's what we need, is what people
Speaker 5: in Missouri want. And so for me, you know, it's
Speaker 5: a real opportunity kind of out here on the front
Speaker 5: lines in the fight for democracy to make a stand,
Speaker 5: to go against a guy who's faking it and you know,
Speaker 5: win one for the good guys.
Speaker 1: That is an incredible, incredible line. He also doesn't live
Speaker 1: in Missouri, right.
Speaker 5: I'm not going to judge any of this stuff. There's
Speaker 5: lots of things out there people can look up what
Speaker 5: they want to look up. For me, like, the real
Speaker 5: critical part of this is really just hitting I mean,
Speaker 5: maybe that's part of the fakeness, but the fakeness of
Speaker 5: the things he says versus the things he does right.
Speaker 5: And so for me, I grew up in a working
Speaker 5: class neighborhood in Jeff City, Missouri. My family went bagbru
Speaker 5: for medical bills. We really struggled. And the way we
Speaker 5: made it is because in that neighborhood, people with no
Speaker 5: more money than we had asked the plate for us.
Speaker 5: Down at church, you know, they brought more tunic cast
Speaker 5: role by the house than we could eat. And we
Speaker 5: really were able to take care of each other. Everyone
Speaker 5: there did that. Everyone in Missouri does that. And when
Speaker 5: we don't have politicians like Josh Holly a dividing us
Speaker 5: is many ways as they can and be defunding us
Speaker 5: by taking away our opportunities to have meaningful work, our
Speaker 5: opportunities to get a good wage, our opportunities to get
Speaker 5: over time, and a bunch of other things like we
Speaker 5: can take care of ourselves and we do a good
Speaker 5: job of it. And so for me, this is about
Speaker 5: empowering everyday people, investing in everybody every day people who
Speaker 5: make this country strong, and going against his passions, which
Speaker 5: is just like you know, in order to be a man,
Speaker 5: you have to be more like me, which in itself
Speaker 5: is just crazy.
Speaker 1: Right Yeah, Jake Congressman, I can cross. Sorry, I'm always
Speaker 1: want to stay fancy. I want to ask you you
Speaker 1: both are veterans, can you talk to me about that.
Speaker 4: One of the defining things that you learn in officer
Speaker 4: candidate school and basic officer course and the entire Marine
Speaker 4: Corps training pipeline is leadership by example first and foremost.
Speaker 6: So don't tell people what to do.
Speaker 4: Act in the manner that you wish other people would
Speaker 4: know you for and whatem you. And again we see
Speaker 4: with Senator Holly, you know, exemplified by January sixth, but
Speaker 4: doubled down every day thereafter is he puts forward this
Speaker 4: fake populist fervor, but acts totally differently in how he
Speaker 4: actually votes and what he actually stands for. And so
Speaker 4: just really not leadership by example at all. And then
Speaker 4: the other thing you learn is officer z E last,
Speaker 4: which is to say that it's only after every member
Speaker 4: of the platoon has what they need food supplies, R
Speaker 4: and R that an officer should see to their own
Speaker 4: needs or comforts. And Washington could use a lot more
Speaker 4: of that mentality, frankly overall, but certainly we need it
Speaker 4: from people in positions like a senator from Missouri. I mean,
Speaker 4: we've seen Holly vote against affordable care acts, vote against
Speaker 4: better pay and overtime benefits for workers in Missouri. We've
Speaker 4: seen him vote against the infrastructure and high tech manufacturing
Speaker 4: bills that have doubled down on this country's economic strengths
Speaker 4: and infrastructure. He just is not taking care and looking
Speaker 4: out for the everyday American. He's looking out for himself
Speaker 4: and his own political ambitions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Lucas, will you explain to us just a little
Speaker 1: bit about how being a veteran affects your running for
Speaker 1: office and your governing?
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, I mean a lot, is what Jake just said. Right,
Speaker 5: you're leading for other people, and so for me. You know,
Speaker 5: the whole reason that I joined the Marine Corps to
Speaker 5: begin with is because when we were kids, this guy
Speaker 5: who ran our parish church kitchen. Actually it's probably like
Speaker 5: my little sister and I. We would volunteer at the
Speaker 5: at the like soup kitchen nights, and he'd ask everybody
Speaker 5: always like, Hey, what do you guys? What chores do
Speaker 5: you want to do? You know, do you want to
Speaker 5: set the table? Do you want to greet people? Do
Speaker 5: you want to clear plates? What do you want to do?
Speaker 5: And so my little sister and I were we always like, oh,
Speaker 5: oh ow, we want to do the dishes we want
Speaker 5: to do the dishes. And I was always like it
Speaker 5: was wrong with these kids, like who want to do
Speaker 5: the dishes?
Speaker 6: That's crazy? And finally he figured it out that we
Speaker 6: didn't have a.
Speaker 5: Dish washing machine at our house, and with a family
Speaker 5: of six, like, that's a real amount of toil you're
Speaker 5: doing every night. They had dishwashers at the Paris and
Speaker 5: so we thought we were scamming him, right, because we
Speaker 5: just threw the place in there and locked away, like, ell,
Speaker 5: such did it right? He chores here, and so I'll
Speaker 5: figure that out. And one day, several years later, when
Speaker 5: he renovated at his house, the dishwasher out.
Speaker 3: He put it into his big.
Speaker 6: Blue picked up frot.
Speaker 5: He brought it over our house and had it installed
Speaker 5: for us. Thing about al was he was a marine
Speaker 5: officer in Vietnam. He learned, you know, selfless care, taking
Speaker 5: care of others, not asking for anything in return in
Speaker 5: the Marine Corps. And so you know, I joined because
Speaker 5: I wanted to be like him. My thirteen years, i'd
Speaker 5: live up to the standard he helped. And it's like
Speaker 5: Jake said, we need more members of Congress who are
Speaker 5: there to invest in other people, like all invested in us.
Speaker 5: He saved us forty five minutes of hard labor every
Speaker 5: single night. Right that the way we could focus on
Speaker 5: school or whatever else like these are the types of
Speaker 5: small investments that we can also make it a big scale,
Speaker 5: and then people like Josh Holly again, they are not
Speaker 5: willing to make He never learned real leadership. His Manhood
Speaker 5: book is about telling people what to do. It's not
Speaker 5: about showing them. It's not about empowering them, and it's
Speaker 5: not about giving folks the resources to live their lives
Speaker 5: in a manner where we can all take care of
Speaker 5: each other.
Speaker 6: Mollie.
Speaker 4: It's also worth noting what is right beneath the surface
Speaker 4: of Senator Holly's definition of manhood, and at times actually
Speaker 4: has been made explicit, which is that he'd used it
Speaker 4: a zero sum calculation. With the empowerment of women in
Speaker 4: this country, he basically thinks that every step forward that
Speaker 4: women take in terms of empowerment in the workplace, in
Speaker 4: control over their own bodies, in their ability to have
Speaker 4: more agency in our economy and society, some of the
Speaker 4: real achievements of the last fifty years. His worldview is
Speaker 4: that every step forward is necessarily a step backwards for men,
Speaker 4: and that is a dangerous worldview because his definition of
Speaker 4: manhood is saying, we've got to roll back the clock
Speaker 4: for women in this country. And that's not just rhetoric.
Speaker 4: As we've seen over the last several years. We've got
Speaker 4: a Supreme Court that, especially if empowered by the Senate,
Speaker 4: wants to start doing that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. One of the things that I think is so
Speaker 1: interesting about these Trumpers is that they're actually like less
Speaker 1: progressive than the United States military, which I think is interesting.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm sure you guys talk about this all
Speaker 1: the time. There's a lot of these Trump Republicans attack
Speaker 1: the military for things like, you know, just being sort
Speaker 1: of you know, if you're a woman and you work
Speaker 1: hard in the military, you sort of have the same experiences.
Speaker 1: I mean, you largely are able to get the same
Speaker 1: kind of promotions that the men are. And I think
Speaker 1: that some of that kind of equality is really infuriating
Speaker 1: to the Magro Republicans.
Speaker 4: Well, Molly, it's actually it's become even more dangerous than that.
Speaker 4: We've seen Senator Tuberville of Alabama, who is cut from
Speaker 4: the same cloth as Senator Holly. He is with holding
Speaker 4: up through senatorial privilege hundreds of senior military promotions in
Speaker 4: the Indo Pacific because he's having a tantrum over the
Speaker 4: military's abortion policy. And this is unprecedented. Even Senate Minority
Speaker 4: Leader Mitch McConnell, not exactly a paragon of progressive values,
Speaker 4: has said it's inappropriate and it's directly threatening national security
Speaker 4: at a time in the United States needs to stand tall,
Speaker 4: both in terms of military posture and in planning an
Speaker 4: organizational competence in the Indo Pacific against the CCP and
Speaker 4: their designs on the Taiwan Straight and the South China Sea.
Speaker 4: We've got one senator from Alabama who's so mad that
Speaker 4: women have control over their own reproductive decisions that he
Speaker 4: is threatening our entire national security. That is the direction
Speaker 4: that the MAGA wing of the Senate GOP wants to
Speaker 4: take in terms of politicizing the military. And you can
Speaker 4: bet that Senator Holly will be an enthusiastic participant in that.
Speaker 6: I mean, he's.
Speaker 4: Already, for example, opposed aid to Ukraine, opposed Finland Sweden
Speaker 4: joining NATO. I mean, these are slam dunk issues in
Speaker 4: the Senate Conference, the Senate GOP conference, and yet out
Speaker 4: of his desire to be contrarying and build his own
Speaker 4: political ambitions up. He really has run against the grain
Speaker 4: of core American security priorities.
Speaker 1: So tell Us Lucas one of the things I'm always
Speaker 1: interested in, And we just had Colin on this podcast.
Speaker 1: We were talking about how actually Ted Cruz only kept
Speaker 1: his seat by three points. So tell Us Lucas how
Speaker 1: you can win in a red state which did have
Speaker 1: a Democratic senator pretty recently.
Speaker 5: Right, I mean, we actually had all Democrats, almost all
Speaker 5: Democrats state wides up through twenty seventeen. We lost our
Speaker 5: last one this year. Actually she didn't run again for
Speaker 5: the state order And yeah, I mean it's a state
Speaker 5: where people are willing to go both ways. I mean,
Speaker 5: when you look at some of the ballot measures we've
Speaker 5: passed lately, people are shocked. Right, Like Missouri overturns the
Speaker 5: anti union right to work at ballot initiatives sixty eight
Speaker 5: percent to thirty two percent. Holly was on the wrong
Speaker 5: side of that. We increased our minimum wage five dollars
Speaker 5: over the federal level. We passed a legalization of first
Speaker 5: medical and then recreational Milrijuana. We expanded medicaid again. All
Speaker 5: of these things over the politicians. And so while we
Speaker 5: have a very like progressive or even populous streak, which
Speaker 5: is what ally take the crime to happen into, we
Speaker 5: also got people that are willing to vote the opposite
Speaker 5: way on politicians. Again, I talked about people who were
Speaker 5: all recently elected. But even in twenty sixteen, the last
Speaker 5: time we had a Senate race with the presidential race
Speaker 5: here in Missouri, Chasing Candor came within three points of
Speaker 5: getting Roy Blind when Donald Trump here won by seventeen points.
Speaker 5: And so it's stay where people will vote based on
Speaker 5: the person. And I say, right now, Holly's way less
Speaker 5: popular than Roy Blunt was at the time. Jason Candor
Speaker 5: was an Afghanistan veteran. You know, I'm a veteran of
Speaker 5: Iraq and Afghanistan. So we're kind of similar in many ways.
Speaker 5: And we just have a situation where you have a
Speaker 5: very unpopular guy who can't raise money.
Speaker 6: I mean, you know, Jake was talking.
Speaker 5: About how these guys will do all these things against
Speaker 5: American interests in order to be conveying and get campaign capital.
Speaker 5: And it's true, like in the publicing campaigns right now,
Speaker 5: there's only two sources of capital, right it's corporate money
Speaker 5: or it's culture war capital. And so Josh Holly, he's
Speaker 5: already tossed away the corporate money because on January sixth,
Speaker 5: they decided to flee him. That's how he originally got in,
Speaker 5: and now he's leaning in on the cultural side, but
Speaker 5: he's doing it in just such like a creepy way,
Speaker 5: with like this manhood book and everything else that actually
Speaker 5: just turns people off. That's why he's unpopular. So, oh,
Speaker 5: we got a real exciting opportunity that I'm I'm decited
Speaker 5: to roll all the way to.
Speaker 1: Yet, tell us a little bit about your friendship, because
Speaker 1: this is pretty interesting.
Speaker 4: First and foremost Marines just always watch out for one another,
Speaker 4: and we connected Lucas and I because for as long
Speaker 4: as I've been in Congress, and especially since January sixth,
Speaker 4: I've seen Senator Holly as emblematic of so much of
Speaker 4: what's wrong in this town and have been eager for
Speaker 4: a candidate of the quality of Lucas, who's got the
Speaker 4: work ethic, who's got the biography, got the strategy to
Speaker 4: unseat this guy and actually bring authentic, principled representation for
Speaker 4: the great site of Missouri.
Speaker 5: Thanks Jake, yeah, we almost thank you card. Thanks Josh
Speaker 5: Holly for sucking so much, bringing us together and making
Speaker 5: this seat so imminently winnable.
Speaker 3: Great guy.
Speaker 1: Well, I do really hope that this works out for you, guys,
Speaker 1: and I do hope you'll take this buddy comedy on
Speaker 1: the road because it's much needed for this moment.
Speaker 6: Well, me too.
Speaker 5: You know, Jake just had a baby though, so we
Speaker 5: gotta see how that plays out.
Speaker 6: Congratulations, my king, thank you. Yeah, my leash is pretty
Speaker 6: short these days.
Speaker 4: I think my wife's tolerance for a.
Speaker 5: Road show with callavancing around the country is a little well,
Speaker 5: I just.
Speaker 1: Want to get back to this seat for one more second. Lucas,
Speaker 1: what do you need right now?
Speaker 5: So right now we're obviously doing a big and publicity
Speaker 5: push around the campaign around Holly's book and all the terrible.
Speaker 6: Things he's doing.
Speaker 5: So if people would follow us on Twitter, it's Lucas
Speaker 5: Koont's m so Lucas ay you n ce m o.
Speaker 5: You can see what we're up to, you kind of
Speaker 5: follow what we're tracking. We always need donations. You can
Speaker 5: give those at lucascoons dot com. We actually raised three
Speaker 5: times from donations. What Holly did last quarter. Again, the
Speaker 5: guy he's run out of that sort of capital and
Speaker 5: he's just banking on culture capital.
Speaker 6: So we're gonna have a real opportunity to go after
Speaker 6: him there.
Speaker 5: And just otherwise, if Missouri spread the word, if you
Speaker 5: know anybody in Missouri, spread the word. There's a real
Speaker 5: grassroots component of this campaign that we want to make
Speaker 5: sure we get out there.
Speaker 1: And you're going to every district.
Speaker 6: Done. Oh, we're in every small town.
Speaker 5: I'll tell you what. We went to Freeberg the other
Speaker 5: day a year and a half before the election, and
Speaker 5: there's a town of four hundred people, and one hundred
Speaker 5: folks came out to the American Legion there to see us.
Speaker 6: So we're going everywhere. We're getting there and we're getting
Speaker 6: good crowd.
Speaker 1: It's nice, fantastic. Well, good luck to you and thanks.
Speaker 1: I hope you both will come back of course.
Speaker 6: Mollie, thanks take care.
Speaker 1: Hi. It's Mollie and I am wildly excited that for
Speaker 1: the first time, Fast Politics, the show you're listening to
Speaker 1: right now, is going to have merch for sale over
Speaker 1: at shop dot fastpoliticspod dot com. You can now buy shirts, hats, hoodies,
Speaker 1: and toe bags with our incredible Designs. We've heard your
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Speaker 1: at shop dot fastpoliticspod dot com. Thanks for your support.
Speaker 1: Sam Brody is a congressional reporter for The Daily Beast.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Fastolick, Sam Brody.
Speaker 6: Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: You are a fan favorite. I am very excited you
Speaker 1: are in the halls of Congress. It's all happening. How
Speaker 1: many people has Marjorie Taylor Green tried to impeach this week?
Speaker 6: There's how many people she's actually tried to impeach, and
Speaker 6: then how many people she said she's going to impeach?
Speaker 6: So I started losing count at like three or four.
Speaker 1: She filed articles of impeachment today against Biden, Now that's.
Speaker 6: Right, she did, and it was all centered on immigration
Speaker 6: and the border. So maybe she's saving some more impeachment
Speaker 6: articles they have to do with Unterbiden's laptop or things
Speaker 6: of that nature. But it was surprisingly, it was surprisingly targeted.
Speaker 6: When I was looking those over this morning.
Speaker 1: Yeah, incredible stuff. You are in Congress. You are there
Speaker 1: in the halls of power, the venerable, whatever. Just tell
Speaker 1: me what's going on there.
Speaker 6: Oh, there's a lot that's going on right now in Congress.
Speaker 6: It's a pretty busy time. You have like these big picture,
Speaker 6: extremely important, like macro level things that are happening, namely
Speaker 6: avoiding a catastrophic default on the US federal debt.
Speaker 1: I've heard about that.
Speaker 6: You may have seen this in the nearest and then
Speaker 6: you have these just like insane little Grandma's playing out.
Speaker 6: And by that I'm talking about you know, one particular
Speaker 6: freshman congressman from New York who you're stairs may be
Speaker 6: familiar with.
Speaker 1: Oh, tell me more about the congressman from Nassau County one.
Speaker 1: And we don't even really know that that's his real name,
Speaker 1: George Santos.
Speaker 6: We don't actually know. I mean, I don't take anything
Speaker 6: for granted at this point. And these things inter sect too,
Speaker 6: because George Santos is a key swing vote for Speaker
Speaker 6: Kevin McCarthy, which continues to be which continues to be
Speaker 6: startup hilarious. Right, So, yesterday Democrats tried something interesting, which
Speaker 6: was they put forward what's called a privileged resolution to
Speaker 6: expel George Santo from Congress, and a privilege resolution is
Speaker 6: a sort of rare tool in that it actually forces action.
Speaker 6: You can't just file it and people can ignore it
Speaker 6: and forget it. It has to be addressed in one
Speaker 6: way or the other. And so Democrats kind of up
Speaker 6: the ante with that with obviously George Hittos being indicted
Speaker 6: on criminal charges, and so what Republicans did was instead
Speaker 6: of kind of just taking it as an up or
Speaker 6: down vote, they reframed it as a as emotion to
Speaker 6: refer the matter of Santos's expulsion to the House Ethics Committee.
Speaker 6: So Republicans, like a lot of them, don't want Satos
Speaker 6: to be there, but they don't want to have to
Speaker 6: take this vote. And importantly, Kevin McCarthy come and needs
Speaker 6: his vote for the time being. And so yesterday all
Speaker 6: Republicans did vote to refer the matter to House Ethics,
Speaker 6: which is famous for taking an extremely long time to
Speaker 6: literally do anything.
Speaker 1: And I want to point out the statistics on House Ethics.
Speaker 1: Have they ever found anyone guilty?
Speaker 6: Ever? They actually have, They have what penalties on members
Speaker 6: in the past, but usually after very very very long investigations.
Speaker 1: Right, so the chances that Santos would be censured before
Speaker 1: his term was up, seems unlikely.
Speaker 6: There's an existing precedent that that members have woing ty,
Speaker 6: which is that Congress has not expelled a member until
Speaker 6: their criminal proceedings were basically until they were convicted guilty,
Speaker 6: and so they're holding to that. President though I think
Speaker 6: there's plenty of people who'd argue that asked examples, you
Speaker 6: know they're bad. Obviously it's members who wrote the law.
Speaker 6: But insider trading, okay, that's not good. This use of
Speaker 6: campaign funds, that's not good. Well, Santo's I mean, you
Speaker 6: don't even know where to begin. And there's people who
Speaker 6: make a point that it's it's actively, actively bad and
Speaker 6: dangerous to have this guy in Congress, and so therefore
Speaker 6: past precedent should not apply. Maybe Republicans didn't find that persuasive,
Speaker 6: but there's a lot of interest in upholding the precedent
Speaker 6: and then also ensuring that they don't often do anything
Speaker 6: about this right right now. So so DJ is going
Speaker 6: to pursue it's it's thing. But interestingly, how Ethics has
Speaker 6: said that they're not going to pause their investigation on
Speaker 6: Sanatos while DJ is acting, which is unusual. So I
Speaker 6: don't know what that'll mean, but you know, there could
Speaker 6: be more that House Ethics is looking into that maybe
Speaker 6: is outside the scope of DJ He could be facing
Speaker 6: some problems. I think we can definitively say that.
Speaker 1: That's a really sad story. And also whatever I mean,
Speaker 1: he certainly has some kind of legal you know, exposure
Speaker 1: for all his criming. But the thing that makes me
Speaker 1: so bummed out is how a Democrat lost this seat.
Speaker 6: It's pretty baffling when you look at the history of
Speaker 6: that scene, what the dynamics were, and it was the
Speaker 6: story really across sort of New York, right, New York State. Yeah,
Speaker 6: that wasn't even the most product leading seat that a
Speaker 6: Republican won in twenty twenty two. And you know, I
Speaker 6: think about it all the time. I mean, this guy
Speaker 6: was sort of hiding in plain sight and the kind
Speaker 6: of lies that heats. Bold were just not accustomed to
Speaker 6: that level of insane fabrication. Usually, you know, obviously, when
Speaker 6: somebody says I worked here, here's where I went to school,
Speaker 6: you know, you want to it should be checked out.
Speaker 6: But it's just so rare to see the level of fabrication.
Speaker 6: And then by the time it was caught. It was
Speaker 6: it was too late.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 6: I think what's interesting is like what Santos's endgame really is.
Speaker 6: You know, He's continuing to draw a salary. We know
Speaker 6: this is important to him, given that he filed for
Speaker 6: unemployment while actually having a job, or that's he's allegedly
Speaker 6: vlaw by doing that.
Speaker 1: He had signed onto a bell two. That was, yeah,
Speaker 1: can you tell us explain that, because that's a fascinating wrinkle.
Speaker 6: It's one of the many just sort of like you
Speaker 6: can't make it up. Ironies to Santos's sort of brief
Speaker 6: life in Congress. But when Republicans were negotiating and passing this,
Speaker 6: you know, their version of the Duck ceiling spending bill,
Speaker 6: George Santos was the loudest voice in that entire group
Speaker 6: pushing for work requirements for you know, federal benefits to
Speaker 6: be stricter. He was like, no, we got to do
Speaker 6: you know, you got to work at these thirty hours
Speaker 6: a week to get this, like this is my red line.
Speaker 6: And people are like, all right, George Santos, okay. And
Speaker 6: then he was a lead sponsor of legislation that would
Speaker 6: you know, the goal of the legislation was to crack
Speaker 6: down on people who had abused pandemic unemployment benefits. So
Speaker 6: fast forward, George Santos is literally indicted functuately using pandemic
Speaker 6: unemployment benefits as he sponsored this legislation to crave down
Speaker 6: on people like him, and then you know it puts
Speaker 6: his whole work requirements bush in a totally different date.
Speaker 6: The reason is the question like what the hell is
Speaker 6: this guy doing and what is his end game? And
Speaker 6: I've looked at like what he's done. He's tried to
Speaker 6: be kind of maga, but he's also tried to be
Speaker 6: like this kind of pro labor union New York sort
Speaker 6: of swing Republican. He can't really decide like what his
Speaker 6: tribe is, and so he's sort of just thrown spaghetti
Speaker 6: at the wall to see what sticks and to change
Speaker 6: the subject from this sort of endless you know, this
Speaker 6: endless pariadi of scanals and out legal action that he faces.
Speaker 1: One of the things that somebody said about Santos a
Speaker 1: journalist who is covering the house, and I'm curious if
Speaker 1: this tracks is what you've seen, is that when he
Speaker 1: got to the house, he was very and this is
Speaker 1: something I've seen in the reporting about him. He was
Speaker 1: quite quiet, a little bit nervous, pretty uncomfortable. And then
Speaker 1: he sort of discovered that the Maga Caucus is you know,
Speaker 1: cannot be shamed, is unshamable, has that same kind of
Speaker 1: trumpy inability to be held responsible for things they do,
Speaker 1: and he joined with those guys.
Speaker 6: Yeah, exactly, and he quickly found that crew. I mean,
Speaker 6: the first few days he's sort of sitting by himself
Speaker 6: during the speaker about and it was like on TV
Speaker 6: for everyone to see him sort of sitting alone at
Speaker 6: the lunch table. But then you know, he gravitated towards
Speaker 6: the people in the Maga caccaus, you know, many of
Speaker 6: whom have faced their own sort of accusations of the engultraveils,
Speaker 6: and he kind of settled into these folks and yeah,
Speaker 6: you know, it's been interesting to watch Santo's even adopt,
Speaker 6: you know, the Trumpean language, you know, tweeting witch hunt
Speaker 6: in response, as you know, if he thinks grabs on target.
Speaker 6: Who knows that the Republican Party is kind of so
Speaker 6: bulable to think that if you just say witch hunt
Speaker 6: whenever you're keys that are doing anything bad that you
Speaker 6: know you're you're gonna be fine, But I'm waited to
Speaker 6: bet that Versantos is probably not held in the esteem
Speaker 6: in the Republican Party that Donald Trump is. And you know,
Speaker 6: it's been interesting to watch Santos' I think you're starting
Speaker 6: to see Republicans like really really lose their patience with
Speaker 6: him in the building. I think at first he was
Speaker 6: sort of this like distracting amusement, and now he's being
Speaker 6: charged with serious crimes. Democrats are needling them over it,
Speaker 6: and like I think this week there was a palpable
Speaker 6: sense of exasperation, like this guy just needs a fucking resign, Like, right,
Speaker 6: what is he going to get by by being here?
Speaker 6: Because no matter which way you slice it, he's not
Speaker 6: long that for that building, whether he's you know, convicted,
Speaker 6: or whether he's going to be defeated in a primary
Speaker 6: election next year. I mean, there's just no good ending
Speaker 6: to this for him, and so maybe he's just trying
Speaker 6: to write it out like his pateent, right, you know,
Speaker 6: until the end comes.
Speaker 1: The fundamental problem Republicans have, right, is that they're saying
Speaker 1: that Trump can do stuff like this because he's popular,
Speaker 1: and Santos can't because he just doesn't come from a
Speaker 1: red enough district. I mean, that's the moral problem these
Speaker 1: Republicans have.
Speaker 6: Santo's is famous because like literally because of all the
Speaker 6: crazy stuff that he's done. You know, this is his
Speaker 6: intire reputation at this point, and I think when it
Speaker 6: gets there, the idea that this is like some sort
Speaker 6: of witch hunting is like, I don't know who sees
Speaker 6: that tweeting those, Yeah, they're really how to get this guy.
Speaker 6: I mean, like, you know, this is the same week
Speaker 6: that he needed guilty and I guess at Brazilian court
Speaker 6: to stuff he'd been charged with there.
Speaker 1: So I don't want to beat a dead horser. But
Speaker 1: it's not so different than Trump. I mean, like Eugene
Speaker 1: is the standout and he's got twenty six allegations. I mean,
Speaker 1: the guy has you know, he led an insurrection. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know where there's smoke and smoke and smoke and
Speaker 1: smoke and it's burning, there's fire.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And I think there is a fundamental similarity. And
Speaker 6: like what did Trump sort of show other politicians that
Speaker 6: if you just deny, obstruct, deflect, change the subject, attack,
Speaker 6: when these things happen, you'll make it through. And I
Speaker 6: think that is a really important lesson, and you've seen
Speaker 6: politicians adapt to that and take that lesson. But people
Speaker 6: like George Santos have a shorter in rental day to
Speaker 6: get away with that than a Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: Then a Donald Trump.
Speaker 6: And also just I mean the staggering, the staggering array
Speaker 6: of stock that George Santos has piled up that you
Speaker 6: just really can make up.
Speaker 1: So talk to me about the discharge petition Biden has
Speaker 1: to negotiate with probably the dumbest speaker of the House's
Speaker 1: ever had. I'm just going to say that for me
Speaker 1: because I'm on the opinion side, so I can say
Speaker 1: stuff like that. The Republicans have said, like if you
Speaker 1: use the fourteenth Amendment, will you do something horrible to you?
Speaker 1: But there is also this tool of the discharge petition.
Speaker 1: Tell us about the discharge petition.
Speaker 6: It's another one of those like congressional mechanisms that can
Speaker 6: force something to get to the floor whether the majority
Speaker 6: leadership wants it to or not. And it's been used
Speaker 6: various times in the past, sometimes even by members of
Speaker 6: the majority party. Since really the beginning of the Republican
Speaker 6: majority in the House, people have been talking about using
Speaker 6: a discharge or petition. It requires a certain number of signatures,
Speaker 6: and then it starts this process to force a bill
Speaker 6: to the floor. There is talk about using that to
Speaker 6: get a debt ceiling extension to the floor, thinking that,
Speaker 6: you know, Republicans were not going to be able to
Speaker 6: get their act together and that there would be this
Speaker 6: springmanship and that there would need to be some kind
Speaker 6: of offering to that. So Democrats this week started that
Speaker 6: process of the discharge petition, thinking was, you need majority
Speaker 6: in the House to do it. So if every Democrat
Speaker 6: joined with like six Republicans, five republicans, rights, right, that
Speaker 6: they could do it. Here's the problem is the way
Speaker 6: this thing works, like the actual like dotting the eyes,
Speaker 6: crossing the t's of this takes a very long time.
Speaker 6: And so if they had wanted to really have this
Speaker 6: as a live option, they would have had to do
Speaker 6: it months ago, because like, right now.
Speaker 1: Why does it take so long?
Speaker 6: Oh gosh, it's like I don't think it's like it
Speaker 6: just takes a long time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it needs to go to different members needs well, they.
Speaker 6: Need to get the signature is a and then like
Speaker 6: there's some like kind of parliamentary stuff that I don't
Speaker 6: even like quite fully understand. I just know that, like
Speaker 6: it just takes time. There's like no way you can
Speaker 6: aass track it, you know, as folks know, it's forecast
Speaker 6: that sometime in June the Treasury's going to hit the
Speaker 6: actual hard borrowing commit at which point there would be
Speaker 6: there would be a default if if it's not extended.
Speaker 6: So they don't have time to do this right now.
Speaker 6: So could this become relevant if say the two sides
Speaker 6: agree to like a short term extension, say give it
Speaker 6: another month, right, However, like, could it become relevant? It's
Speaker 6: it's possible. But I think the other really relevant thing
Speaker 6: is that I've been surprised by how unified Republicans have
Speaker 6: been so far behind McCarthy from kind of both his
Speaker 6: like you know, center right flight to like the far
Speaker 6: right flank. They are sort of giving him room to
Speaker 6: do this. And I don't think that any Republican would
Speaker 6: sign on to the discharge right now, because that would
Speaker 6: be really a shot across about a McCarthy basically saying
Speaker 6: we would trust you to get this done, you're risking default.
Speaker 6: We're going to go with the Democrats and get this
Speaker 6: thing on the floor. I don't think any of them
Speaker 6: are inclined to do that, right now.
Speaker 1: Do you think that McCarthy is going to allow a default?
Speaker 6: That's right? You asked this, I was, I was asking
Speaker 6: Republican members yesterday. You might have caught Donald Trump's comment
Speaker 6: at this hand on Hall that we could just do
Speaker 6: a little default, you know.
Speaker 1: Right, yes, I did, you just do a little bit
Speaker 1: of that. Why should he run the country any different
Speaker 1: than he runs his business?
Speaker 6: Right, right, just have a little default, it's fine. And
Speaker 6: every Republican will tell you, like, no, like, that's not
Speaker 6: how this works. We don't want a default. Yeah, as folks,
Speaker 6: you know, Democrats will point out, like, the only reason
Speaker 6: they're negotiating stance is credible? Is it because people have
Speaker 6: to believe that, like they would default if they didn't
Speaker 6: get what they wanted, And so McCarthy is walking that line.
Speaker 6: The thing that's so important here is Democrats are playing
Speaker 6: ball in a way that I think, frankly, is surprising
Speaker 6: even to some of the party. Biden started by saying
Speaker 6: we're not going to negotiate at all. Then he said
Speaker 6: we're not going to negotiate on the debt limit, but
Speaker 6: we'll negotiate on the budget. Two different things, right, now
Speaker 6: he's saying, oh, well, we're just talking about the budget
Speaker 6: while this deep Bault crisis is happening. You know, just
Speaker 6: look past that. We're still just negotiating about the budget.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 6: I think the fourteenth Amendment stuff is an expression really
Speaker 6: a frustration among Democrats that Biden has really kind of
Speaker 6: embraced the mantle of negotiating.
Speaker 1: Right publicans would like to tank the economy so that
Speaker 1: they can get their guy in in twenty four. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's hard to imagine that these people are good phase negotiators. Again, look,
Speaker 1: the fourteenth Amendment, there could really be problems with that, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, if it ends up kicked up to the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court. I mean it's hard to imagine a world
Speaker 1: where the Supreme Court does something that's not incompletely insane.
Speaker 6: I think that's yeah, it's untry to tear. I do
Speaker 6: think that McCarthy and certainly like McConnell, at the end
Speaker 6: of the day, I think in their heart of parts
Speaker 6: who are like, yeah, we shouldn't have a default, I
Speaker 6: do think unlike in past fights like this, I do
Speaker 6: think there is a segment of the Republican Party that
Speaker 6: really doesn't care and I need to forget about the
Speaker 6: you know, the political aspect of this, or whether this
Speaker 6: hurts Biden. I think Trump honestly complicated things for himself.
Speaker 6: Because of a default does happen, he'll have been seen
Speaker 6: as cheering all default and helping me get happened. So
Speaker 6: let's set that aside there.
Speaker 1: I don't think he gets held responsible for the things
Speaker 1: he does by his base.
Speaker 6: I think that's right too. But there are some Republicans
Speaker 6: who genuinely believe that a default would be better than
Speaker 6: not cutting spending dramatically.
Speaker 1: But they are morons.
Speaker 6: I mean, I think that's going to be the dynamic
Speaker 6: that defines this whole thing, because McCarthy will come back,
Speaker 6: say they strike some deal with Biden, and he's going
Speaker 6: to come back to his members, who are some of
Speaker 6: them under the illusion that they're just going to like
Speaker 6: both basically on the bill that they passed on a
Speaker 6: party line, right, and he's going to take a deal
Speaker 6: of them, and they're gonna hate it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I Mean, that's what I don't understand is even
Speaker 1: if you get McCarthy to agree, there's no evidence that
Speaker 1: McCarthy really has power over this caucus. I mean, remember
Speaker 1: how many votes he had to go through to be speaker.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's right. And as part of that vote, they
Speaker 6: gained the power. Are the members gained the power to
Speaker 6: force him out if a few of them wanted to
Speaker 6: have the vote?
Speaker 1: I have you saw that? There are sort of blue
Speaker 1: dog Dems who've said that if he brings a vote,
Speaker 1: they will make sure to keep him as speaker.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's right. They're trying to say, no, look you,
Speaker 6: if you do the right thing here, we'll back you up.
Speaker 6: I still think he gets very tricky, and when which
Speaker 6: comes to shove, is that actually going to be what happens?
Speaker 6: I mean, the conventional wisdom has been, you know, whatevers
Speaker 6: this of this debt limit thing, it's probably gonna end
Speaker 6: McCarthy's speakership. I don't know, but I'm certainly again, I'm
Speaker 6: more surprised at how much room his party has has
Speaker 6: seemed to give him in this, just considering, you know,
Speaker 6: how bad the start of his speakership was. I think
Speaker 6: they're giving him some room. Now, what will that translate
Speaker 6: when they're actually talking about a specific deal. I'm not
Speaker 6: so sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not either. It really has just continually been
Speaker 1: a shit show.
Speaker 6: It has been a shitow. And I think back a
Speaker 6: lot to that week in January where it took them
Speaker 6: so long to have McCarthy and you still let your
Speaker 6: people talk about how much that kind of set back
Speaker 6: the business of the Republican majority, which is something that
Speaker 6: at the time they strenuously denied that this was going
Speaker 6: to do anything. But I think any sensible person would say,
Speaker 6: you know, this probably will have some cutters can be
Speaker 6: back there. Yeah, and that's what's happened. But look, I mean,
Speaker 6: he passed you know, people might say, oh, well he
Speaker 6: passed the bill. It's just like Republicans like, you know whatever,
Speaker 6: that's not that hard. It actually was incredibly hard. I
Speaker 6: don't think people expected him to do that, and so
Speaker 6: that really, I mean, he's not made it easy for Biden.
Speaker 6: I think be the White House might have thought that this
Speaker 6: was going to be easier for them, and they could
Speaker 6: have stuck to their guns and saying, look, you know,
Speaker 6: we're not going to negotiate with you guys over this.
Speaker 6: We're not going to reward hostage taking. You're starting to
Speaker 6: see in the last week some discontent bubble from Democrats.
Speaker 6: We feel that Biden is actually, in fact rewarding hostage
Speaker 6: taking by by negotiating from Garcia.
Speaker 1: Sam Brody, we've gone way over time. As always, I
Speaker 1: appreciate you, Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 6: Always. I'd be doing anytime, no moment.
Speaker 1: Jesse Cannon, my John Fast.
Speaker 3: You know, most people don't know most amendments, and the
Speaker 3: fourteenth one. You know, I feel like we've only been
Speaker 3: recently hearing about this. What do you see in here?
Speaker 1: Look, the fourteenth Amendment was added to the Constitution as
Speaker 1: part of the end of slavery and the end of
Speaker 1: the Civil War. But in it there is a line
Speaker 1: that says that the United States honors its debts, which
Speaker 1: means that runs completely contrary to the idea of a
Speaker 1: debt sealing limit, where the United States decides it's not
Speaker 1: going to pay its debts because Republicans don't want to.
Speaker 1: So today we had Jeff Merkley, Bernie Sanders, Peter Welsh,
Speaker 1: John Fetterman, and a couple of others, and they have
Speaker 1: put together a sort of suggestion that the Biden administration
Speaker 1: should go along with the fourteenth Amendment. Now, it would
Speaker 1: be really complicated for them to do the fourteenth Amendment,
Speaker 1: and ultimately it would probably get kicked up to the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court. This Supreme Court, as we know, tends to
Speaker 1: run very, very, very trumpy. I don't love the idea
Speaker 1: of being dependent on this Supreme Court to keep us
Speaker 1: out of default. That said, I think that the fourteenth
Speaker 1: Amendment is a good way to try to force Kevin
Speaker 1: McCarthy's hand, and so I think it's smart that these
Speaker 1: Democrats are doing it, and so they are not our
Speaker 1: moment of fuckery. But Kevin McCarthy, one of the stupidest
Speaker 1: Speakers of the House ever, does get our 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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