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.
Speaker 2: New Reuters ipso's poll says fifty one percent of Americans
Speaker 2: are opposed to military strikes against drug boats.
Speaker 1: We have such a great show for you today. Notice
Speaker 1: his own Evan McMorris, San Toro stops by to talk
Speaker 1: about the post Epstein email fallout. Then we'll talk to
Speaker 1: Semaphore's Dave Weigel about the vibe shift since election Day.
Speaker 1: But first the news.
Speaker 3: What would you say if I told you that Trump
Speaker 3: is taking his cues from Zoronmandani.
Speaker 1: I would say that I wouldn't actually be that surprised,
Speaker 1: because I had some reporting that's said as much.
Speaker 3: Well, now all everybody's talking about is affordability, and I
Speaker 3: think it's a very interesting story that particularly more is
Speaker 3: Cats told on our podcast last week that when everybody
Speaker 3: was thinking of other things, Zoron had a hunch that
Speaker 3: even though the pulling said othertherwise, that affordability was the
Speaker 3: real thing people needed to talk about.
Speaker 4: And now it's trickled all the way up to the
Speaker 4: White House.
Speaker 1: So we know that Trump found Mondani to be popular
Speaker 1: and to be charming, and that he had sort of
Speaker 1: like game recognized his game, Like he saw a politician
Speaker 1: that had that thing that he has, and he was
Speaker 1: both threatened and also inspired by it. But the problem
Speaker 1: was affordability for Trump. Is that Trump is now, I mean,
Speaker 1: he's basically in if you do the math, his fifth
Speaker 1: year in office, and he has yet to make anything
Speaker 1: more affordable. If anything, things seemed to be less affordable
Speaker 1: than ever.
Speaker 3: Right, you walk in the grocery aisles, your jaw drops
Speaker 3: at the prices these days.
Speaker 1: Right, So the idea that Trump could somehow vibe shift
Speaker 1: this seems in my mind to be kind of not
Speaker 1: But maybe he'll be able to do it. But this
Speaker 1: affordability issue is kind of like I just don't think
Speaker 1: you can put lipstick on a pig like this. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's this idea that the richest cabinet in the world, right,
Speaker 1: the richest cabinet, These are the richest people in the
Speaker 1: world serving in the government. You have an administration that
Speaker 1: the first three months you had Elon Musk practicing reverse philanthropy.
Speaker 1: It's hard to spin this as now they care about
Speaker 1: affordability just because Democrats want an election on affordability.
Speaker 3: So Fanny Willis's Georgia election interference case against Trump will
Speaker 3: carry on for now with a new prosecutor.
Speaker 1: Yeah again, look, this is super interesting because, like, this
Speaker 1: is something that Trump does not want, just like the
Speaker 1: Epstein files being released, just like the Supreme Court arguing
Speaker 1: against his tariffs, right, just like him hearing some of
Speaker 1: his Supreme Court justices complaining about the tariffs or pushing
Speaker 1: back on the tariffs. This is not what Donald Trump wants.
Speaker 1: And you know, little cracks in Trumpism are showing, and
Speaker 1: you know, you could say I'm being overly optimistic, but
Speaker 1: I really think that's what this is. Like, he is
Speaker 1: losing his power over the Republican Party. When Marjorie Taylor
Speaker 1: Green and Lauren Boepert and Nancy Mays and Tomas Massey,
Speaker 1: when these people are breaking with him, they're breaking with
Speaker 1: him because they see opportunity, because they see a place
Speaker 1: where the party is no longer Donald Trump's. And so
Speaker 1: things like this, every little bit of this starts to
Speaker 1: disintegrate the power of trump Ism. And these things are meaningful.
Speaker 1: And Georgia is a really good example of the place
Speaker 1: where there are two Democratic senators. They lost a state
Speaker 1: house race. I think this is meaningful.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I totally agree with you that I think
Speaker 3: this is a show of the increasing weakness. So weird,
Speaker 3: weird week of lots of related news stories. We see
Speaker 3: such a disturbing story in the New York Times about
Speaker 3: former congressman and Trump's ag pick, Matt Gates and a
Speaker 3: seventeen year old girl who is trying to get braces.
Speaker 1: Think about this is like a backlash to a backlash
Speaker 1: to a backlash, right, me too, you know, sort of
Speaker 1: canceled a lot of these bad guys, and then there
Speaker 1: was kind of a backlash and Donald Trump got reelected,
Speaker 1: and now we come back to this fact that some
Speaker 1: of these people are just bad people. So here's the story.
Speaker 1: Trump initiated a g pick. He denies report he paid
Speaker 1: for sex with a homeless seventeen year old saving money
Speaker 1: for braces. Like, every part of the story is so bad.
Speaker 1: But these kind of stories, people don't come up with
Speaker 1: these things haul coths usually, so a bombshell bipartisan report
Speaker 1: from the House Ethics Committee. By the way, the House
Speaker 1: Ethics Committee is known to be toothless. So the idea
Speaker 1: that they have come up with something that is this
Speaker 1: bad is a pretty good sign that my man Matt
Speaker 1: Gates was too no good that he Gates regularly paid
Speaker 1: women to engage in sexual activity. One of those transactions
Speaker 1: involved a seventeen year old girl in twenty seventeen. The
Speaker 1: girl's lawyer, Lord be Wolf, spoke to The New York
Speaker 1: Times after a federal judge unsealed documents related to the
Speaker 1: seventeen year old's alleged experience. So she's homeless, she is underage,
Speaker 1: and she's being taken advantage of. Greenberg later paid her
Speaker 1: four hundred dollars to meet him on his boat. Greenberg
Speaker 1: is an ally and friend of Gates is who was
Speaker 1: in jail for sex trafficking. Greenberg contacted her again and
Speaker 1: paid first sex seven times before inviting her to a
Speaker 1: party at the home of Chris Dorthworth, a former Republican
Speaker 1: member of the Florida State House of Representatives. Gates attended
Speaker 1: the party, which took place Underly fifteenth twenty seventeen, had
Speaker 1: sex with the seventeen year old twice that evening. Her testimony,
Speaker 1: which was included in the report seen by The New Time,
Speaker 1: stated that she was paid four hundred dollars documents stay
Speaker 1: she danced in front of them and swam naked in
Speaker 1: the polls popper. She then moved to Texas to use
Speaker 1: her minimum wage income to pay for braces. The alleged
Speaker 1: incident only came to light when Greenberg was investigated for
Speaker 1: mailing fake letters to a school where a political opponent worked,
Speaker 1: claiming the opponent had sexual relationship with a student. Look,
Speaker 1: this guy could have been the head of the DOJ.
Speaker 1: Like the DOJ.
Speaker 3: Everybody think he was running for governor this round, And yeah,
Speaker 3: I think this is the end of that.
Speaker 4: In congratulations Governor Byron do.
Speaker 1: It's so so so disturbing, and it's so dark and
Speaker 1: it's just horrific.
Speaker 4: Speaking of Florida, not my favorite state.
Speaker 3: When we did our little dot com project twenty twenty five,
Speaker 3: one of the things you really noticed reading that document
Speaker 3: is these people are real excited to get their warped
Speaker 3: ideas into schools. And what we now see is Florida
Speaker 3: will be adopting the Heritage Foundation's school agenda.
Speaker 1: This is so if Florida has really cooked its own
Speaker 1: education crew and just beyond and they've adopted this conservative
Speaker 1: education plan, it is from Heritage. Heritage is pretty cooked.
Speaker 1: It's developed by again, this is Project twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: Basically Florida Governor Ronda sant All Governor Ronde Santas wants
Speaker 1: is to be president and he thinks that if he
Speaker 1: goes the most MAGA, he will be president. And there
Speaker 1: is almost really no evidence to support that MEGA is
Speaker 1: ideological as much as it is just you know, charismatic
Speaker 1: and a lot of ways, MAGA is really just whatever
Speaker 1: Trump wants it to be. But this crew has a
Speaker 1: sort of ideological bent. And so they're going to take
Speaker 1: over these Florida schools and you know, God only knows
Speaker 1: what they'll do to these kids. They'll teach them, you
Speaker 1: know that dinosaurs were not you know, real, and who
Speaker 1: even knows, But Florida students and families deserve investment in
Speaker 1: their public schools, not a political pledge written by outside groups.
Speaker 1: Isn't this actually just political campaigns? Like it's a little
Speaker 1: ironic trojan horse. Here, here we are, ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker 1: and there we go. Dave Weigel is a reporter at
Speaker 1: some before. Welcome to Fast Politics, Evan, Alight, thanks for
Speaker 1: having me. I'm so excited to have you to talk
Speaker 1: about how this insane moment in American political life.
Speaker 5: That's your evergreen intro, right, you use that for every
Speaker 5: episode pretty much.
Speaker 1: I think today sometimes American politics is just really disappointing
Speaker 1: and sometimes it's really worrying. But right now we're in
Speaker 1: this period like I feel like the first nine months
Speaker 1: of Trump's administration, it was like, oh shit, this American
Speaker 1: democracy experiment may be over. And now I feel like,
Speaker 1: oh no, these guys are doing what they did last time.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, you know I did. I was in a
Speaker 5: c SPAN analyst on election night, so I sat there
Speaker 5: all night a.
Speaker 1: Question try and to make me jealous.
Speaker 4: No, yes, exactly, but no.
Speaker 5: The fun thing about doing on CCS.
Speaker 1: On you know, I'm like obsessed with c SPAN, and
Speaker 1: you take calls.
Speaker 5: And everything, and the funny thing about it is that
Speaker 5: it's like you're just kind of like a learning the
Speaker 5: studio with the host and you're watching all of the.
Speaker 1: And also no one is watching it, but may that's right.
Speaker 5: Well, you only had some callers it, Okay, my mom watched,
Speaker 5: I think, but they they do a lot of uh
Speaker 5: they you know, they show all the speeches and everything.
Speaker 5: So it was fascinating for me because that night was
Speaker 5: sort of as you say, it was this moment of like,
Speaker 5: oh right, like politics are actually still happening, Like this
Speaker 5: administration is failed to message itself because you know, heading
Speaker 5: into that cycle, right, the whole idea was this administration
Speaker 5: is so different. This is a dimocrat of politics. Right,
Speaker 5: They're going to be able to stay in power forever.
Speaker 5: We're going to win every election. Democrats have nothing, they
Speaker 5: can't do anything. And then sort of every different kind
Speaker 5: of style of Democrats they were around the ballot effective
Speaker 5: won all over, which is I was a strange moment
Speaker 5: of like, oh okay, I guess the loss of Grabby
Speaker 5: do apply. And then of course the most hilarious part
Speaker 5: about that is that I'm like home that someday or whatever,
Speaker 5: whatever Sunday, that what recent Sunday, doing my newsletter that
Speaker 5: I have you for notice, and like as we're watching
Speaker 5: this implosion of the democrats shutdown strategy happen in real time,
Speaker 5: and I was another moment where all of a sudden,
Speaker 5: everyone's like, oh my god, the Democrats they're they're they're
Speaker 5: they're doing it, they're blowing it. It's this oh my god,
Speaker 5: and we're and we're backing this idea that like politics
Speaker 5: is broken forever and the Democrats are blowing it. And
Speaker 5: then where we sit today, the President looks completely feckless.
Speaker 5: He's had his own business yelling at him by H
Speaker 5: one B. Visa's telling him about Epstein, yelling him about
Speaker 5: the things he's been saying and doing.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 5: And the Democrats, which like three days ago were like
Speaker 5: forever gone and destroyed because of this of this shutdown
Speaker 5: thing that's like agent history now and now we're back
Speaker 5: in this world in which Trump is once again bad
Speaker 5: and not and has no control and can't handle anything.
Speaker 5: So you're right, And this is one of the wildest
Speaker 5: roller coasters I had been on, and I think it
Speaker 5: does sort of end with Trump is like not doing
Speaker 5: that great and his administration is not doing a great
Speaker 5: job of communicating or rechiging itself very well.
Speaker 1: He's also, my man is underwater on all the things.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Look, the most interesting thing I've been tracking this since
Speaker 5: the beginning of the administration, right, because the main thing
Speaker 5: this administration tried to do and pitch, just like on
Speaker 5: administrations do, was twenty twenty fours economics an economy election.
Speaker 5: This president said, I'm an economy guy where I do
Speaker 5: a bunch of economy stuff, and I've been tracking through
Speaker 5: the entire time kind of the messaging that they've been
Speaker 5: trying to do, and if it has mostly been look,
Speaker 5: we know what we're doing. People are going to tell
Speaker 5: you this is bad, but it's actually really good. You
Speaker 5: got to hang out air, trust us, and you've got
Speaker 5: to believe us. Right, the polts have shown that that's
Speaker 5: now really been working, and now this president has reverted
Speaker 5: to the kindie economic messaging that was just the Biden
Speaker 5: economic message. You like, actually, you the American people are wrong.
Speaker 5: Everything is great, We're doing great. Everything rocks. And that
Speaker 5: is kind of a funny full circle moment because you're
Speaker 5: in the situation where you're just looking at this. I've
Speaker 5: talked to Biden officials throughout the administration like sort of
Speaker 5: like from the beginning of this, Like you can go
Speaker 5: back and look at the reporting I was doing in
Speaker 5: January to now, and I ran the story a bunch
Speaker 5: of times of like officials from a Biden administration being like,
Speaker 5: oh my god, Like they're saying the same stuff that
Speaker 5: we said. They're doing the same stuff that we said. Right,
Speaker 5: Because this this central challenge of like, we have these
Speaker 5: basic economic problems that will probably take a long like
Speaker 5: need long term solutions, but the public wants short term solutions.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 5: This guy was supposed to be able to figure that out,
Speaker 5: because the whole thing about Trump is he's such a
Speaker 5: great communicator, he's so well trusted and so well believed
Speaker 5: that he's the guy people will follow into hell because
Speaker 5: some promises there, but the other side things will be good,
Speaker 5: and that is one thousand percent not happening. And so
Speaker 5: you were watching them flail around the same way that
Speaker 5: other administrations short face the same problem flail around, which
Speaker 5: is that way they have no way to explain to
Speaker 5: people what to do about these prices and things like that.
Speaker 1: But I do think that a real difference between trump
Speaker 1: Ism and normal administrations of any stripe is that Trump
Speaker 1: did tariffs, and tariffs made things more expensive. So like
Speaker 1: he ran saying like I'm going to make bacon cheaper
Speaker 1: and then almost immediately did everything he could to make
Speaker 1: things more expensive. Now, I don't think he thought that's
Speaker 1: what he was doing, but that is a direct a
Speaker 1: direct consequence of.
Speaker 5: The tariffs, that's right. And I'm going to tell you
Speaker 5: they had no plan for this have been talking to that.
Speaker 5: I think I've been reporting on just being an administration, okay,
Speaker 5: because I kept asking them, you know, like there's a
Speaker 5: political supporter perspective, So what's your plan from prices go
Speaker 5: up because of terrorists? What's your plan? What are you
Speaker 5: going to say?
Speaker 6: What are you going to do?
Speaker 5: And what they would say to you repeatedly over and
Speaker 5: over was they're not going to go up. They're not
Speaker 5: going up. It's not going to happen. They're not going
Speaker 5: to go up. They're not going to go up. Lately
Speaker 5: they've been saying things like, well, look a little bit
Speaker 5: of short term pain, you know, but they haven't been
Speaker 5: doing that right along, and they can't. And now they're
Speaker 5: talking about me piling back some of these teriffs. You know,
Speaker 5: just switch over. But I'll say, you know, the other
Speaker 5: major difference is that they don't appear to have a
Speaker 5: message that at all connects with what people are actually
Speaker 5: feeling and thinking about. You know, like a lot of
Speaker 5: things with the Biden administration, they did a lot of
Speaker 5: stuff that actually sort of like was sort of what
Speaker 5: experts and a lot of folks think it's sort of
Speaker 5: the right thing to do to freeze and manufacturing jobs back,
Speaker 5: raise wages. You know, you can look at the inflation
Speaker 5: and the rest of the whole world and the inflation
Speaker 5: of America, and it was like kinds of better in
Speaker 5: America during that inflationary period, et cetera. They couldn't really
Speaker 5: communicate that because of various and surnry reasons, primarily you know,
Speaker 5: Biden was not the best person to be commun getting it.
Speaker 5: The Trump administration is like face planting wildly with its attempts.
Speaker 5: Like a thing that really fascinated me to happen recently
Speaker 5: was almost sudden You're like, oh, what about a fifty
Speaker 5: year mortgage?
Speaker 6: Guys?
Speaker 7: Cheaper it's longer, it's gonna be fifty years, so like
Speaker 7: it's cheaper to get it because you have to pay
Speaker 7: less money every year. Brilliant and like immediately maga world
Speaker 7: and sort of folks who aren't like the populists right
Speaker 7: said like what are you talking about? Like you wann't
Speaker 7: be able to pay more money to the banks? You
Speaker 7: want there to be more debt, like.
Speaker 5: Like like this this is a solution that like when
Speaker 5: it was rolled out, it was like strutting around like
Speaker 5: a ha, we got it, Like did off fifty year mortgage.
Speaker 5: And it's like immediately everyody's like this insitute i've ever
Speaker 5: heard and you've not heard about it again, right, this
Speaker 5: This is the kind of thing that's happening, is that
Speaker 5: the reality of the situation is they have got to
Speaker 5: give you know, they wanted they get an affordability message
Speaker 5: that actually like takes on some of this stuff like
Speaker 5: prices and things like that and some destructural stuff that
Speaker 5: they're just not that interested in. Tariffs were supposed to
Speaker 5: do it. But tariffs again makes everything more expensive right now,
Speaker 5: Theoretically down the road, it doesn't. And they needed Trump
Speaker 5: to be the guy to carry the public forward with them,
Speaker 5: and it's not happening. One the taco thing, right, he
Speaker 5: kept flipping around on these terairufs.
Speaker 6: Anyway.
Speaker 5: Two, they can't stand the heat, which no administration can
Speaker 5: stand either, which is like they're doing this, well, holy crap,
Speaker 5: we could just drop the tariffs and maybe prices will
Speaker 5: go down, and they're gonna do that's what they're talking about.
Speaker 4: Truth.
Speaker 5: But you know, the healthcare thing, they have no plan
Speaker 5: on the healthcare thing, as they've never had, right, Democrats
Speaker 5: had a plan out, They've talked about it they have
Speaker 5: an idea of how to bring healthcare costs down. In
Speaker 5: this particular case, this ACA subsidy thing that would shut
Speaker 5: down what's about was like literally a moment where you
Speaker 5: could sign it, build and bring costs down. Republicans don't
Speaker 5: want to do it. They're trapped in their own kind
Speaker 5: of world on this. And I think it was sort
Speaker 5: of always coming. But everybody just thought that these magicians
Speaker 5: in Trump's White House, led by Trump himself, that somehow
Speaker 5: have some sort of magic beings that could you know,
Speaker 5: get through through this. They don't have it. And now they,
Speaker 5: you know, they look like people who are just kind
Speaker 5: of like grabbing anything they can get their hands on,
Speaker 5: like a fifty year mortgage that nobody wants.
Speaker 1: Yes, the fifty year mortgage that nobody wants. What you
Speaker 1: see with this administration when you when you see them
Speaker 1: start to fall apart. What I think is so interesting
Speaker 1: is you see what good messaging looks like and bad
Speaker 1: messaging looks like. For example, Ebstein. So this administration is
Speaker 1: on the run from Ebstein, right, And there was this
Speaker 1: dump yesterday of thousands of emails. They had things like,
Speaker 1: you know, Trump in Epstein, an in Palm Beach Thanksgiving
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen. Now did they have a meal together, Who knows,
Speaker 1: But there are emails that say they were both there
Speaker 1: at the same time after Trump was already president, which
Speaker 1: means that Trump's timetable, if these emails are true, is incorrect. Right,
Speaker 1: that his timetable of not speaking to the guy since
Speaker 1: two thousand and four is bullshit. So they're just the
Speaker 1: dump after dump after dump of emails and this and
Speaker 1: this one and that one, and a lot of them
Speaker 1: that say Trump is stupid, like a lot.
Speaker 5: Yeah, very traffic emailing.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's right, Yes, I mean a lot of typos.
Speaker 1: What are your take? What's your I want to talk
Speaker 1: about the messaging on the Epstein, but first I want
Speaker 1: you to talk about your take on the Epstein emails.
Speaker 5: Wellok, the Epstein emails themselves. I don't know that what
Speaker 5: we had seen, Like you mentioned this idea of like
Speaker 5: the timeline changing and things like that. I think all
Speaker 5: you have to know about whether or not the administration
Speaker 5: was worried about out more Epsteam stuff coming out is
Speaker 5: because of how worried they are about more stuff coming out,
Speaker 5: they're casting, you know, they drag Lauren Bobert through the
Speaker 5: situation room to try and get her to kill this
Speaker 5: discharge petition.
Speaker 1: Did it work the first and last time that Lauren
Speaker 1: Bobert will ever be invited to the situation room?
Speaker 5: Oh no, I mean never say never. Twenty twenty eats
Speaker 5: up that far away, Molly, I shut up?
Speaker 1: Why do you hate me? But as Sarah Palin Lauren
Speaker 1: Boebert ticket.
Speaker 5: Now, I think it's a Bobert emptg. I think I
Speaker 5: think it's like it's time to get the space lasers
Speaker 5: onto the sky.
Speaker 4: I think it's well, you do.
Speaker 1: Not use my queen's name in vain and continue.
Speaker 5: But anyway, so you only have to know that they
Speaker 5: that they don't want themut because it worked too hard
Speaker 5: to think you get them out in ways that are
Speaker 5: really embarrassing. I mean, you know they've tried to pressure
Speaker 5: lawmakers and they couldn't get them to do it. On
Speaker 5: the messaging front, I will tell you I spent yesterday
Speaker 5: or the day after the emails came out. I just
Speaker 5: sort of watched every stream daily stream of and email
Speaker 5: and checked with my colleagues, reached out to every single
Speaker 5: one of the right wing influencers that got that binder
Speaker 5: back in February from PAYM Bondy the Epstein Binder that
Speaker 5: like completely kicked off his entire.
Speaker 1: Things was such a disaster, right, amazing, You've reached to
Speaker 1: every single one of them.
Speaker 5: I reached out to everything one of that. Well, we
Speaker 5: reach out to a one or watch their st because
Speaker 5: we all do daily streams and stuff. So we checked
Speaker 5: in and see what they were all doing and saying. Right,
Speaker 5: and in general, what they're saying is that like, look,
Speaker 5: these emails don't don't change the story. Trump is like
Speaker 5: not part of this. He's not the bad guy, and
Speaker 5: these emails like he's not the bad.
Speaker 1: Guys in all the emails.
Speaker 5: Their view on the substance is that this doesn't actually
Speaker 5: incriminate him more. And look, look these emails, they don't
Speaker 5: say anything. They're not definitive, right, definitive is that birthday book?
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 5: That's like, oh wow, things are this is very bizarre.
Speaker 1: But I do say things like he knew about the girls.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but like you know, you look at the context,
Speaker 5: like whatever, this is what they said. But on the
Speaker 5: messaging front, I will tell you, on the messaging front,
Speaker 5: they are absolutely baffled. One guy said, I don't know
Speaker 5: why he keeps using the word hoax. I think he
Speaker 5: doesn't know what the word hoax means. Like, wow, everything
Speaker 5: that the White House is doing to try to shut
Speaker 5: this down Trump talking about a hoax. You know they
Speaker 5: were not into the distart petition. I will say, like,
Speaker 5: you can look at some messaging, like I don't know
Speaker 5: what the White House is doing in terms of.
Speaker 6: Pocket of these folks.
Speaker 5: My colleague Jasmine is pretty sure that they are fairly
Speaker 5: regularly reaching out to the right wing media spear on
Speaker 5: this issue. Though as yet it's not like those influencers
Speaker 5: were egging the Republicans on to break with the president
Speaker 5: and vote for the and vote for the bill to
Speaker 5: get these morripcing files out. But they were baffled at
Speaker 5: the messaging, very confused and really like I said, this
Speaker 5: whole thing, but you know, he doesn't know what a
Speaker 5: word hoax is, Like why he keep staying oaks Like
Speaker 5: you're in the emails, this is real. What you've told
Speaker 5: people is that you didn't do anything wrong and you're
Speaker 5: not part of any of the amy criminal And the
Speaker 5: emails don't seem to change that conversation. Why not just
Speaker 5: let them out? Why not just talk more about that
Speaker 5: and put that more out. It's opposed to this weird
Speaker 5: thing of like this is not a real story. This
Speaker 5: is not a real story. So that's from people who
Speaker 5: like desperately want want that to be real. They're the
Speaker 5: ones who are saying Trump is really messing up this messaging.
Speaker 5: So that to me was really fascinating, and I think
Speaker 5: there was a really illuminating as to where this moment
Speaker 5: is that like they really don't know how to deal
Speaker 5: with this because they've got a guy at the top
Speaker 5: to keep saying, what are you talking at? Hoakx fak,
Speaker 5: they're making this up and like nobody thinks that everybody
Speaker 5: wants to see these emails, and they're not able to
Speaker 5: get up in front of it because they have this
Speaker 5: weird message of like this is not a work, this
Speaker 5: is a waste of everybody's sorry, and like which by
Speaker 5: the way, may end up very well being, but like,
Speaker 5: who do you want to see this?
Speaker 6: At this point?
Speaker 5: Who doesn't want to see them?
Speaker 6: Though?
Speaker 1: My favorite for problematic messaging problem involves Megan Kelly, who
Speaker 1: had a clip where she was saying a young fifteen
Speaker 1: year old is not the same as a five year old.
Speaker 1: Live your life, so you are never defending the difference
Speaker 1: between having sex with teenagers and having sex with toddlers. Fair.
Speaker 5: Fair, it's a good word to live. I do have that.
Speaker 5: I do have that tattooed on my arm. You know,
Speaker 5: I think it's a good it's a good rule of thumb. Look,
Speaker 5: how did she get.
Speaker 1: To how did she mental gymnastics herself into a moment
Speaker 1: where she was defending that?
Speaker 5: So I look, I think I don't really know what
Speaker 5: to get in the head of digging Kelly particularly, but
Speaker 5: I will. You know, this is this thing of how
Speaker 5: they're all trying to cretchel themselves to deal with this,
Speaker 5: and you know, this is a good this this is
Speaker 5: the very like only like the weirdest libertarians you've ever
Speaker 5: met in your life are the ones who do the like, well,
Speaker 5: actually California is actually right, like it doesn't really particularly
Speaker 5: matter very much, like, but but down this road, it's like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: this is this is one of those stopp incriminating yourselves conversations,
Speaker 5: you know, right, But I think that, But I think
Speaker 5: that it's because they're in this really tough spot because
Speaker 5: they have they have nothing to grab onto because nobody
Speaker 5: like the messaging of this thing is not like, yeah,
Speaker 5: put them all out. We're fine, We're fine, but please
Speaker 5: don't release anything else. And also like, look, you know
Speaker 5: it's been interesting because Megan tell you think it is
Speaker 5: representative of something going on in the concerative movement right now.
Speaker 5: You know, she was the one who really cluded me in.
Speaker 5: I watched her stream and clued me into all the
Speaker 5: posts Charlie kirk assassination and talk about the conspiracies and
Speaker 5: you know, about Israel, about exactly Israel and the idea
Speaker 5: like she was only clued me into all that because
Speaker 5: she was the one talking about Candice Owens being a
Speaker 5: genius and all that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: So she's anti Semitic too.
Speaker 6: Well, I don't know anything about that.
Speaker 5: She says that she's not at all. She's like, she's
Speaker 5: very strongly she strongly does.
Speaker 1: Think Israel might be responsible.
Speaker 5: Well, no, she had a whole clip that was talking
Speaker 5: about Candace. This is right off the assassination things. You know,
Speaker 5: there's things have changed ince then. But she talked about
Speaker 5: how there was a you know, this sort of leading
Speaker 5: that Charlie Kirk was supposed to have had at Bill
Speaker 5: Appman's house and like this, you know, and and how
Speaker 5: it was. The whole idea was that Charlie Kirk was
Speaker 5: moving into an anti Israel position. And this is only
Speaker 5: just very worthwhile to note all their worked while to
Speaker 5: understand and this is a really reasonable conversation to have,
Speaker 5: and like that is a sort of growing conversation as well.
Speaker 5: And so when you see making Kelly's saying something that
Speaker 5: sounds like really like the sort of farthest right take
Speaker 5: on stuff, it's because like that far right is really
Speaker 5: gaining a lot of traction right now, and at the
Speaker 5: same time, the White House is trying to figure out
Speaker 5: its way through this you know, really self imposed thicket
Speaker 5: that if I mean, you know, it grew a thicket
Speaker 5: and jumped into it when it comes to this, you know,
Speaker 5: to this Epstein stuff, I mean, it's you know that
Speaker 5: I don't know. The Binders are the perfect example of that,
Speaker 5: where it's like they didn't release all the files but
Speaker 5: said that they did, and like the whole thing was
Speaker 5: really really wild.
Speaker 1: But like I think this there's all.
Speaker 5: Swirling in a moment right now where like just suddenly
Speaker 5: this whole political project does not seem that standing on
Speaker 5: such a firm ground right now, they're talking about you know,
Speaker 5: there's some in this conspiracy world. They're Taksinbau, who counts
Speaker 5: as a panophile. These were paying Megan Kelly, you know
Speaker 5: even the other people are talking about is the presence
Speaker 5: bringing up talking about a hoax? Is it is kind
Speaker 5: of like a moment where if you were in politics,
Speaker 5: if you were running for something right now, you would
Speaker 5: not want to be in their camp. Yeah, and that
Speaker 5: is like a rare moment that has not been true
Speaker 5: since sort of November of last year.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh man, it's all happening.
Speaker 6: It is.
Speaker 5: I mean, it really is like a very very very
Speaker 5: rapid plip. But it's getting weirder and weirder. Molly, I
Speaker 5: think it's like a I.
Speaker 1: Don't know, you mispronounced stupider and more depressing.
Speaker 5: I don't know, we get that a shutdown conversation and
Speaker 5: like just just right after we get coming up from
Speaker 5: New Year's break. So I mean, if you.
Speaker 1: Like that, thank you, Evan, of course.
Speaker 5: Molly, thank you. Please help me on as it gets
Speaker 5: weirder and weirder.
Speaker 1: Yes, Evan McMorris Santro is a reporter at Notice. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Fast Politics, Dave.
Speaker 6: Blagle, It's good to be here. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: We find ourselves and yet an they're incredibly strange but
Speaker 1: also very stupid moment in American history. You're an intrepid reporter,
Speaker 1: and you have been intrepidly reporting. What are you seeing?
Speaker 1: Here's the fundamentally worst question ever in American politics? What
Speaker 1: are the vibes?
Speaker 6: Is that the worst?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 6: Okay, I'll roll with that. So they shifted. I guess
Speaker 6: that's the worst answer to that question. They did shift,
Speaker 6: And I wrote it about this last week, and I
Speaker 6: followed up a little bit this week after I went
Speaker 6: to Omaha and talked to Democrats in a swingy region
Speaker 6: there that before Tuesday there was a worry this is
Speaker 6: very different than eight years ago, a worry that Trump
Speaker 6: actually was more popular than Democrats, understood that Poles were
Speaker 6: underrating him, and that he had made games with Latinos
Speaker 6: and young people that Democrats were not doing good job
Speaker 6: of reversing. And you saw this in coverage. I'd say
Speaker 6: more coverage of New Jersey than Virginia. Reporters going into
Speaker 6: the field, it's finding that, Okay, we went to a
Speaker 6: Latino event, they don't seem that excited. Therefore, things that
Speaker 6: have been moving in Trump's direction, and then the election
Speaker 6: happens and they weren't. So you saw that big shift
Speaker 6: in how Democrats conceive of the electorate and its concerns,
Speaker 6: which is, if I could sum it up, what we
Speaker 6: need to do as Democrats is to point out the
Speaker 6: costs are still high and a bunch of other economic
Speaker 6: problems are still bad. And Trump didn't fix this, and
Speaker 6: so he hit us with She's for them and he's
Speaker 6: for you. We're going to him with my Republican opponent
Speaker 6: is for Trump, and I'm for you. I'm the one
Speaker 6: who cares about you. This guy is just making money
Speaker 6: for himself. He's cutting tax for his friends. Insert the
Speaker 6: rest of democratic messaging. But what changed is that they
Speaker 6: weren't sure it was working, and now that thin get.
Speaker 1: Is Yeah, I'm going to tell a story that sounds tangential,
Speaker 1: but I actually think is really relevant. I have a
Speaker 1: friend who's a very smart strategist. He's very smart, but
Speaker 1: I think he's a little bit centrist in a way
Speaker 1: that I think is a little bit destructive. But I
Speaker 1: heard him on a podcast saying voters are so angry
Speaker 1: that Biden is going to lose and we're going to
Speaker 1: have backlash to backlash to backlash. Basically like voters are
Speaker 1: just going to they don't have patience, so they'll kick
Speaker 1: one person out and then they'll kick that. They'll change
Speaker 1: so quickly they'll be bodship to bib ship to bid ship.
Speaker 1: Is that what's happening here?
Speaker 6: That was the concern. And specifically, let's say that everyone,
Speaker 6: if you average of everyone's media consumption of politics, the
Speaker 6: country is less trusting of institutions than it was at
Speaker 6: any point in modern history. Enterplayed mass media history and
Speaker 6: that benefits Republicans. That was the worry for Democrats is
Speaker 6: that occasionally we're going to be the party that's not
Speaker 6: in power, and we can exploit that. When we're in power,
Speaker 6: we don't know how to make people stop rejecting us.
Speaker 6: And so this was a lot of the angst about Biden.
Speaker 6: And I covered this over the course of the year.
Speaker 6: Ye's not over, but I think most debates were mostly
Speaker 6: happening before November. Hey, we Democrats, we reponsible Democrats tried
Speaker 6: this with Joe Biden. We did a bunch of populous
Speaker 6: stuff and it didn't benefit us. So gosh, maybe we're
Speaker 6: stuck in a backlash loop. Like you were saying forever,
Speaker 6: and I don't think that was changed by the election.
Speaker 6: But Democrats in Virginia, New Jersey, in New York all
Speaker 6: have opportunities to deliver something in the context to don
Speaker 6: Trump being president trying to undermine them. And so what
Speaker 6: was really powerful for Mamdannie and Cheryl more than well
Speaker 6: the whole year for Demo president In Virginia, the fact
Speaker 6: that Trump was was firing federal workers was toxic Republicans.
Speaker 6: They never came up with an answer. They punted, they
Speaker 6: got destroyed. In New Jersey and New York, it was
Speaker 6: more direct. The President out of spite, is going to
Speaker 6: be cutting things. New York and New Jersey was expecting
Speaker 6: things they paid through the tax dollars paid for. So
Speaker 6: New York was suing all year and I mean, you
Speaker 6: know this suing all year for just funding that the
Speaker 6: city had received that the administration wanted to take back.
Speaker 6: In New Jersey, it was the Gateway tunnel. Trump in
Speaker 6: a snit was just going to cancel this funding that
Speaker 6: the state fought twenty years for. That threat is going
Speaker 6: to continue existing. And so this is a new dynamic
Speaker 6: for Democrats is the parties in power in a bunch
Speaker 6: of places. It's going to try to do things and
Speaker 6: Trump will be they're undermining it. And will voters say,
Speaker 6: we wish you would change your policy and just agree
Speaker 6: with Trump, or will they say, dang, I wish Trump
Speaker 6: was not screwing this up. Is it giving them not
Speaker 6: in the jail out, get out of jail free card,
Speaker 6: but something to say if let's say, in four months, mom,
Speaker 6: Donnie's entire agenda has not been in place. Yeah, I
Speaker 6: think it does. And Republicans experienced us under Biden. It
Speaker 6: was easier for their incumbents even to get elected with
Speaker 6: a very few exceptions under Joe Biden because they could say, look,
Speaker 6: I'm greag ab but I'm trying to fix the border,
Speaker 6: and this administration screwing with me a less intense versus
Speaker 6: of that, I think happening. Fewer people being trafficked in
Speaker 6: buses across state lines, but I see that happening already.
Speaker 6: And I want to repeat myself too much from the
Speaker 6: first question, But there was a year Democrats not being
Speaker 6: sure if that was true. But maybe maybe it turns
Speaker 6: out that voters do think Trump is right. And you
Speaker 6: saw this in New York right away because I from
Speaker 6: the story I wrote yesterday or for Wednesday. I talked
Speaker 6: to people who've been on the Spikey Cheryl campaign and
Speaker 6: then we're going to work for Kathy Hogel, and they
Speaker 6: this is at least to Fanic was not that threatening
Speaker 6: to them on Tuesday last week, very much less so
Speaker 6: on Wednesday, because it looks like she's just going to
Speaker 6: defend the Trump agenda even if it hurts the state,
Speaker 6: and that's a terrible place Republicans to be. They figured
Speaker 6: that out.
Speaker 1: Yes, I think that's right. Has there ever been a
Speaker 1: politician with worse timing than a least to phonic.
Speaker 6: Maybe Hillary Quittin and Kamala Harris because they both Hillary
Speaker 6: and then Kamala in twenty nineteen ran at the one
Speaker 6: time in history when being a Democrat who was tough
Speaker 6: on crime was bad. Maybe that first Stephanic. She's one
Speaker 6: of many House members who are going to run statewide
Speaker 6: this next year. The leading candidates for governor of Iowa
Speaker 6: for governor of Wisconsin the Republican primary have been in Congress,
Speaker 6: voting for Republican priorities in Congress and against Democratic bills.
Speaker 6: She has done the same thing, but in a much
Speaker 6: more intense way, and her campaign. I don't know if
Speaker 6: if she is an auxiliary of the New York Post
Speaker 6: or the New Ropost and auxiliary for every day her
Speaker 6: campaign is basically at least dephonics said something terrible at HOKL.
Speaker 6: But when your post has a feature on it and
Speaker 6: then the campaign puts out what the New York Posts said,
Speaker 6: a bottles to phonic, that was always going to exist.
Speaker 6: But is this a bad cycle to be a Republican
Speaker 6: on record for their whole agenda? It looks like it
Speaker 6: kind of is, because what was the benefit from the
Speaker 6: tax bill so far Republicans If they all voted for
Speaker 6: the tax bill this summer in bluespates, that means they
Speaker 6: could say, hey, I cut your taxes with the salt deduction.
Speaker 6: They did fine in Nassau County and that's it. I mean,
Speaker 6: they got they got pretty creamed. And the rest of
Speaker 6: New York, certainly in the high tax parts of New Jersey,
Speaker 6: Morris County is the sort of place that it's full
Speaker 6: of people who want, we're going to use that salt deduction.
Speaker 6: And it had been a Republican and it flipped to
Speaker 6: Mikey Sheryl again, I compare a lot of stuff in
Speaker 6: twenty seventeen twenty eighteen, because I think Democrats are in
Speaker 6: a different position, but Trump is also more eubuistic and
Speaker 6: less limited by his advisors. In twenty eighteen, Republicans say, well,
Speaker 6: at least we have an economic situation that people are
Speaker 6: not blaming Trump for. It's pretty good where you can
Speaker 6: run on that no matter what other things blow up
Speaker 6: for Trump and immigration was really their biggest weakness in
Speaker 6: twenty eighteen. Now Republicans are a week if you look
Speaker 6: at polling on who's handling the economy? Did are their
Speaker 6: policies helping you? And they're just pretending that they're not.
Speaker 6: They're pretending to hear Republicans. It's the Scott Bessett line.
Speaker 6: It's all going to be great yet next year, don't
Speaker 6: worry about it. Now, there's a little bit of punitory saying, well,
Speaker 6: that's exactly what Joe Biden was doing four years ago.
Speaker 6: It didn't work. Biden had an okay midterm considering.
Speaker 1: I mean, part of the problem for Biden was the
Speaker 1: way overperformed in the midterms, and that gave him confidence
Speaker 1: to run again.
Speaker 6: Yes it duh. So the economy though might one people
Speaker 6: see they didn't see Biden at that point, and over
Speaker 6: time they blamed him for inflation, even after inflation had
Speaker 6: gone back down. But in polvan And said who's responsible
Speaker 6: for the econmy Biden and wagging Trump already owns that,
Speaker 6: and Trump wanted to own it. Trum Trump that talks
Speaker 6: about the golden age of America beginning on his inauguration
Speaker 6: day and talked about how great the economy was all year,
Speaker 6: and in the same interview they'll say that things are
Speaker 6: better and also if they're bad, it's Joe Biden's fault.
Speaker 6: This is the JD. Dvance line we inherited and Joe
Speaker 6: Biden but fully suggests the voters don't think that. And
Speaker 6: you're seeing the most significant response to that since the
Speaker 6: election has been the administration rolling back some tariffs. Are
Speaker 6: saying it's going to and not saying sorry, we're wrong,
Speaker 6: that the terroriffs actually cost you money and they're unpopular,
Speaker 6: but saying to lower prices. We're going to get rid
Speaker 6: of these tariffs. Who knows who put them in there.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not like Trump has been on the
Speaker 1: record just musing about how great tariffs are all the time.
Speaker 6: Yes, and that turned out to be unpopular. So really,
Speaker 6: like in New Jersey and Virginia, I was giving Democrats.
Speaker 6: And the piece I've written since the election is that
Speaker 6: I think I said just that the interest of journalists
Speaker 6: and candidates are often at odds, and journalists wanted the
Speaker 6: Democrats to have more exciting messages to write and new
Speaker 6: responses to Republicans. And also you saw this, I'm not
Speaker 6: really being negative at the Year Times, but you saw
Speaker 6: a one year Time story by Shing Goldmacher a couple
Speaker 6: weeks for the election about demograph are still running around
Speaker 6: about Trump? Are they ever feeding the mistakes of the past?
Speaker 1: Does it work?
Speaker 6: Does it work? And yes? The reason it worked is
Speaker 6: because Trump was taking credit for a great economy and
Speaker 6: voters thought, actually, tariffs are costing me too much, and
Speaker 6: everything else is costing me too much, So I don't
Speaker 6: want to vote for the park. He's taking credit for
Speaker 6: this economy and it's too late. You already see people
Speaker 6: blaming them for just prices not being that simple. Now.
Speaker 6: There are layoffs that people who have been laid off
Speaker 6: or unhappy about, but the main one is just he
Speaker 6: said prices would go down, he cleaned they were down already.
Speaker 6: They weren't, so he's just going to keep saying it,
Speaker 6: and he's the well part where he is. I think
Speaker 6: analogus to Biden is the bidenminstration would say, Hey, good news, everybody.
Speaker 6: This one good that has been famously too expensive is
Speaker 6: now much less expensive and people didn't care anymore. Oh
Speaker 6: we fixed the baby formula outage. Nobody cared. That is
Speaker 6: one thing they have in common that even Trump can't benefit.
Speaker 6: If people are angry about something, and you're angry about
Speaker 6: goes away, nobody says thank you, President for fixing it.
Speaker 6: He's better at advertising than Biden, but hasn't really done
Speaker 6: anything for him.
Speaker 1: I also think the problem for him is there is
Speaker 1: a reason why politicians don't promise undoable things, and that's
Speaker 1: because a lot of political gravity that didn't apply to
Speaker 1: Trump is sort of catching up with him, right. Like
Speaker 1: he used to be able to say stuff and no
Speaker 1: one would ever be like, well what about But it
Speaker 1: does seem like now there's you said tariffs were great.
Speaker 1: Now everything's more expensive, you know what I mean? Like
Speaker 1: there seems to be some amount of political gravity catching
Speaker 1: up to him.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I'm obsessed. I don't think I wrote about this
Speaker 6: week except for social media. I'm obsessed with how the
Speaker 6: deministration will keep floating that people are going to get
Speaker 6: three months either a rebate check from Doze or from
Speaker 6: teriffs or the terroriffs. From that positim than anything. And
Speaker 6: before we got on, I was just checking my email
Speaker 6: and indep I have a fundraising email. I'm on a
Speaker 6: couple fundraising lists. Is to see what they get. What
Speaker 6: people who donate to the CAAAN it's get not they donate.
Speaker 6: I just signed up. It's psychotic. Don't do it unless
Speaker 6: you're reporter. But yesterday I have If you are a
Speaker 6: donor to Donald Trump, you got an email saying would
Speaker 6: you accept a terror rebate check signed by Trump? And
Speaker 6: I do think it's starting. I watch a lot of
Speaker 6: local news, partly because that's where campaigns are advertising and
Speaker 6: spending time, and local loser report. How there are a
Speaker 6: lot of segments, and there have been all year, but
Speaker 6: in the last week since this terror frebate discussion began,
Speaker 6: segments that are just a version of the President says
Speaker 6: he might send out a check. What would it look like.
Speaker 6: We talked to an expert about whether you're going to
Speaker 6: get your check after a while. I think it's reasonable
Speaker 6: for people to say I am unhappy because I thought
Speaker 6: i'd get a check and I did not. That's what
Speaker 6: it's happening too.
Speaker 1: That's a fundamental problem with Trump is is he has
Speaker 1: only a couple of ideas, and he's like, well, send
Speaker 1: people money that work during COVID, but there's not a
Speaker 1: mechanism for that. We got to talk about the shutdown.
Speaker 1: So it feels like the Democrats in the House did
Speaker 1: actually stay together, you know. I mean Mike Johnson helped
Speaker 1: them in a certain way by never bringing them back,
Speaker 1: and it was the Senate that caved. Now, I from
Speaker 1: someone who has covered the Senate deems the way that
Speaker 1: this vote went down to have only people were up
Speaker 1: for reelection in twenty thirty, people who were retiring, and
Speaker 1: people who were not necessarily in danger voting to reopen
Speaker 1: the government seemed a little bit too cute, I have
Speaker 1: in my mind. Then, to have the Senate majority leader
Speaker 1: vote now and give a long speech, it felt as
Speaker 1: if the vibes were Chuck wanted to end the shutdown.
Speaker 6: That is fair. I've not been my colleague Burgess ever
Speaker 6: it and other people who covered a Senate more closely
Speaker 6: and daily than I do have gotten the feedback on this.
Speaker 6: So it's fair to say that Schumer and other Democrats
Speaker 6: were pushed into this shutdown strategy that they did not
Speaker 6: fully support, and they were surprised how well it works.
Speaker 1: That is, and they turned it down in March, right,
Speaker 1: and then they got so much pushback they had to
Speaker 1: go along with it.
Speaker 6: One they got pushed back. I think also importantly, and
Speaker 6: you've talked about this, is that in March the idea
Speaker 6: of a lot of holdouts he did not want to
Speaker 6: do a shutdown was if do a shutdown, russ vote
Speaker 6: is going to fire a bunch more people because he
Speaker 6: wants to do that anyway. And they learned over the
Speaker 6: course of the year that russ vote was just gonna
Speaker 6: just fire people anyway. They actually did get well. One
Speaker 6: of the only things they got as a benefit from
Speaker 6: ending the shutdown is officially that there's not gonna be
Speaker 6: any more reduction the force while the government shut down.
Speaker 6: Now in the law, there shouldn't have been any reductions
Speaker 6: of forces during the shutdown anyway, but that changed everything
Speaker 6: where Democrats said, we actually have a president who's just
Speaker 6: going to try to fire people try to cut funds,
Speaker 6: do it before court stops them, and then if the
Speaker 6: court stops them, it's too late. That changed everything, and
Speaker 6: I think that's gonna that's gonna That mindset will be
Speaker 6: there for the next impass in January. I'm already predicting
Speaker 6: an impass over over healthcare funding. They also became convinced
Speaker 6: that if you're a Democrat, wanted to be over and
Speaker 6: I actually Timillary has expressed this, I think better than
Speaker 6: a lot of Democrats had, is well, you've changed the
Speaker 6: conversation to healthcare, right, which yeah, yeah, and you got
Speaker 6: things queued up for the Epstein discharge petition, which is
Speaker 6: an advantage. So you should just take this win and
Speaker 6: go on because you're not going to get something out.
Speaker 6: And that, to me is credible because there's no shutdown
Speaker 6: the part in order to shut to the end the shutdown,
Speaker 6: the President just gave the House or the holdouts whatever
Speaker 6: they wanted. That's that's not crazy. But for the Schumer
Speaker 6: role in it was that definitely that he was pushed
Speaker 6: by both progressives and by reality and he was talking
Speaker 6: to Robins trying to make a scandal out of this,
Speaker 6: but he was taught, he was in contact with progressive
Speaker 6: groups like Indivisible to Move On that were saying, please
Speaker 6: shut the government down? Should he not be? I guess
Speaker 6: the idea there is that Democrats should not listen to
Speaker 6: their interest groups. But the end that's true, that that
Speaker 6: is true, and those same interest groups are going to
Speaker 6: want a new leader. But not to write Schumer's biography
Speaker 6: for him. But the role of him as leader for
Speaker 6: the next few weeks or a few years is going
Speaker 6: to be losing a bunch of Donald Trump, maybe winning
Speaker 6: the Senate and then maybe facing pressure. I actually already
Speaker 6: facing pressure AT's retire next year. So it's like being
Speaker 6: being the Senate leader is not a great is not
Speaker 6: a great place to suddenly come in and dominate and
Speaker 6: run your party's agenda. If did Bernie Sanders is in
Speaker 6: the party leadership, like undermining you, that's part of a job.
Speaker 1: Didn't he say that he was going to not run
Speaker 1: for reelection.
Speaker 6: He didn't say that.
Speaker 1: He hasn't He hasn't come out and said it.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 6: So what happened with Biden was that Biden's team in
Speaker 6: twenty nineteen let word go out for some reporters that hey,
Speaker 6: he was considering a one term pledge, and so people
Speaker 6: who wanted to think Biden would run for one term
Speaker 6: got some got something to hang on. And I'm not
Speaker 6: trying to insall he'll for not memorizing ever news article,
Speaker 6: but that became like didn't I read one somewhere that
Speaker 6: he probably one term?
Speaker 1: It really did help him when because he could make
Speaker 1: a case that maybe it was that Trumpian thing of
Speaker 1: being a roar shack, right, you'll be whatever is wanted.
Speaker 6: Yes, and that Schumer has not been that definitive. It
Speaker 6: did just that people in New York politics looking at
Speaker 6: his calendar, which includes Schumer used to be famous for
Speaker 6: going to every county in the state every year. He
Speaker 6: has not done that discycle. So he he turns seventy
Speaker 6: five this month, he turned seventy six after the midterms.
Speaker 6: Would he be announcing in twenty twenty seven that he
Speaker 6: wants to run for reelection That would take him into
Speaker 6: his mid eighties. That's the assumption. So does he want
Speaker 6: to say I Chuck Schumer right now, want to give
Speaker 6: up my leverages leader and say that I got bullied
Speaker 6: out of this job by move on? Yeah? Probably not,
Speaker 6: but the invisible I guess job application going on for
Speaker 6: Senate leader. That's already been happening, and part of it
Speaker 6: is people in New York saying we don't think Schuber's
Speaker 6: going to run it again. There's so many different angles
Speaker 6: on this, but I want to get too tangential about
Speaker 6: who would replace Humor. That's already happening because a lot
Speaker 6: of people think he's not going.
Speaker 1: To run, who would replace Schuma.
Speaker 6: So a lot of conversations about aoc NO in leadership.
Speaker 6: In leadership, Brian Schottz Center for What Hawaii has done
Speaker 6: most of the work to get himself ready for that
Speaker 6: compared to other people Amy Clover Shard in the leadership
Speaker 6: and would be in the position. No one else has
Speaker 6: been making moves that way, especially because I do think
Speaker 6: there are their discrepancies between what progresses want the job
Speaker 6: to be what the job ends up being. And so
Speaker 6: a lot of progresses say, why can't we have the
Speaker 6: most progressive fighter we have in the Senate every day
Speaker 6: leading the messaging and the counterpoint. B Well, that's not
Speaker 6: Republicans have Republicans didn't say, look at the Senate, we
Speaker 6: need somebody like Josh Hawley or Rick Scott to lead us.
Speaker 6: Rick Scott rand he lost. You have to be kind
Speaker 6: of a sin eater in the job. You have to
Speaker 6: be there for awful deals, and you have to if
Speaker 6: you let's say there's a big Senate if Democrats have
Speaker 6: a great Senate election in the midterms and they win,
Speaker 6: Sharon Brown wins the seat, and Mary Paul Tola and
Speaker 6: Alaska wins and they get everything, they get almost everything
Speaker 6: they want to. But there's a new demograph from Iowa.
Speaker 6: Some of them are just not going to vote with
Speaker 6: Progresses on everything, and so you'll need some of these.
Speaker 6: So I'm not trying to That is why shots who
Speaker 6: got elected as a progressive, he was appointed to the
Speaker 6: seat and then got reelected with the supported Progresses over
Speaker 6: a more conservative candidate. He's already been willing to buff
Speaker 6: progressive on some issues, and that's why people think, all right,
Speaker 6: well he's ready. He's getting himself ready to win if
Speaker 6: he runs for leader. His colleagues, including conative more conservative Democrats,
Speaker 6: to say, great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Dave Wigo, I hope you'll come back.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, thanks for having me. All these post election
Speaker 6: periods are we actually have data? Really are great, so
Speaker 6: happy to do it. They're no more pfectly.
Speaker 3: Jesse cannon Somali Trump and his administration as a weapon
Speaker 3: they're just so thrilled to use against anyone whoever wronged them.
Speaker 3: And friend of the show, Congressman Eric Swolwell is the
Speaker 3: latest victim of their weapon. He just announced today that
Speaker 3: he's going to be running for governor of California and
Speaker 3: they're going to go after him for mortgage fraud.
Speaker 1: Bill Pulti works in the Trump administration, and what he
Speaker 1: does is he finds people who have mortgages, and then
Speaker 1: he finds enemies of Trump and he puts that Vinn
Speaker 1: diagram together. And I think that Eric is the fource
Speaker 1: Democrat that Bill Poulti has accused of mortgage fraud, with
Speaker 1: varying degrees of success. But you know, here's the thing
Speaker 1: about prosecuting people politically, it doesn't have to work and
Speaker 1: necessarily like it's clearly bullshit, but it doesn't necessarily have
Speaker 1: to work in order for them to get the Jews
Speaker 1: from it. So that's what we're seeing here is just
Speaker 1: a lot of them sort of grasping at straws and
Speaker 1: trying to get this going. I don't think that they
Speaker 1: can get any of these going because they've just done
Speaker 1: so many, and they've all looked so intentional. So I
Speaker 1: don't think that Trump world will get to do this.
Speaker 1: And like, this is one of these things where it's like,
Speaker 1: thank god they're stupid, because if they had been smart,
Speaker 1: you know, and they had been like and they had
Speaker 1: sort of like made up different cases, like some were
Speaker 1: mortgage fraud and some were this and some were that.
Speaker 1: Like in Putin's Russia, people get arrested for stuff like
Speaker 1: iss right. So I do think that as much as
Speaker 1: there's a certain amount of this that is scary, it's
Speaker 1: also so stupid and thank god it's so stupid. That's
Speaker 1: it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday,
Speaker 1: and Saturday to hear the best minds and politics make
Speaker 1: sense of all this chaos. If you enjoy this podcast,
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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.