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 a Reuter's IPSOS poll found that
Speaker 1: sixty eight percent of Americans do not believe Donald Trump's
Speaker 1: State of the Union claim that the US economy is booming.
Speaker 1: We have such a great show for you today, the
Speaker 1: Atlantics and Applebaum stops by to talk about Trump's attempts
Speaker 1: to tell the American people up is down and down
Speaker 1: is up. Then we'll talk to the New Republics. Mike
Speaker 1: tamask you about what Democrats should be doing to continue
Speaker 1: to highlight Trump's ties to Epstein. But first the news.
Speaker 2: Smiling, I would say, Mike Johnson's majority is hanging by
Speaker 2: a thread. But a thread might be a little much
Speaker 2: of an exaggeration. Right now, so we have Tony Gonzalez
Speaker 2: who is facing a world of fuckery with his accusations.
Speaker 1: His district office staffer set herself on fire after he
Speaker 1: harassed her and had an affair with texted her.
Speaker 2: Truly things that I did not know adults text. Well,
Speaker 2: maybe I knew adults text each other, but it really
Speaker 2: was unbecoming anyway. So now we have learned that in
Speaker 2: a room full of GOP donors at a party retreat
Speaker 2: that Florida Repneil Done has a terminal diagnosis, but is
Speaker 2: going to try to stay in office and make it
Speaker 2: to his term send.
Speaker 1: The end of his term, which means he would need
Speaker 1: to make it until and if he doesn't. Republicans have
Speaker 1: a one seat majority right now, so there's a world
Speaker 1: in which they lose the House before even the election.
Speaker 1: I think it's unlikely, but it's certainly possible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it just seems you know, we saw, we
Speaker 2: discussed Mitch McConnell last week having a senior moment and
Speaker 2: then taking a fall, and it just seems real, real
Speaker 2: grim over in those parts. For these days, they really
Speaker 2: are hanging on bio very little.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, Mitch mcconnald's in the Senate, but certainly
Speaker 1: there are very old people in the House. Unfortunately, there
Speaker 1: are also very old people in the House on the
Speaker 1: Democratic side. And by the way, in order for Mike
Speaker 1: Johnson to win things, he needs all the votes in
Speaker 1: order to pass things, So they really have a numbers
Speaker 1: problem in the House for Republicans, and it means they're
Speaker 1: not going to be able to pass other stuff. And
Speaker 1: remember this very scary Save Act, which is this act
Speaker 1: which would make it so that if you're a woman
Speaker 1: who changed your name when you got married, you basically
Speaker 1: can't vote. The only way to pass that is with
Speaker 1: sixty votes, and they don't have it. They would need
Speaker 1: to get Democrats or they would need to block the filibuster,
Speaker 1: which seems very unlikely.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Okay, so today Bill Clinton testified just as Hillary did yesterday,
Speaker 2: and seemed like they got to see the same Hillary
Speaker 2: we saw when she did testimony.
Speaker 3: On Big Gazi.
Speaker 2: But now Jamie Roskins says, it's let Nick time, baby.
Speaker 1: Yeah, here's the story about that. And again I think
Speaker 1: it's important to remember James Comer, who's the head of
Speaker 1: the Oversight Committee, is not very smart. You know, he
Speaker 1: thinks that he's doing himself some brilliant churn here having
Speaker 1: Bill and Hillary speak. Conservatives are obsessed with the Clintons,
Speaker 1: but realistically, I don't think that normal people care. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: she's not running for president, he's not running for president.
Speaker 1: That dynasty is over, so I don't know, Like I
Speaker 1: understand that it's fun for them, and I understand that
Speaker 1: there's like a contingent of people who really hate them,
Speaker 1: but they don't have a lot to do with the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party at large. What Comer fails to understand is
Speaker 1: that he's setting a new president here. So if you
Speaker 1: can have Bill Clinton testify, that means remember, so much
Speaker 1: of DC is about norms and not laws, right Like,
Speaker 1: you don't go after former presidents in this way. You
Speaker 1: don't have them in congressional hearings because these are norms,
Speaker 1: but it's not against the law. You've had Bill and Hillary,
Speaker 1: and that means that you can have Trump, you can
Speaker 1: have Don Junior, you can have all the kids, you
Speaker 1: can have Malania, you can have the whole kit in
Speaker 1: kaboodle because you've set a president, which says, you know,
Speaker 1: Milania is more implicated in the Epstein files. There's that
Speaker 1: nice email, this very friendly email she writes to Golane.
Speaker 1: You know Hillary doesn't have that. I mean, I do think,
Speaker 1: by the way, that if Hillary and Bill are culpable
Speaker 1: in any way that for sure they should be held responsible.
Speaker 1: And if they're in if it's found that the money
Speaker 1: that Gilaine gave them was involved in starting the Clinton
Speaker 1: Global Initiative, that probably should go. So I'm not in
Speaker 1: any way signing off on their involvement here. I'm just
Speaker 1: saying it sets a precedent like Lutnik, LATINX wife, LATINOX
Speaker 1: kids like you have opened the door to a lot
Speaker 1: of oversight that I don't think Republicans necessarily.
Speaker 2: Want, Yes, especially after that picture of Howard look they
Speaker 2: looking like a Backstreet Boys video on Epstein Island. But
Speaker 2: we do see that Trump said that what Nick is
Speaker 2: a very innocent guy, and Maxwell Frost has a reply
Speaker 2: of that, which is that he is a certain many
Speaker 2: times that he knew nothing of Epstein's crimes. How can
Speaker 2: you know for sure what Nick's a very innocent guy?
Speaker 1: Yes, and even before that, Trump said I've been fully exonerated.
Speaker 1: That's his favorite thing to say. He says, I've been
Speaker 1: fully exonerated. Lutinx very innocent. Meanwhile, the DOJ pulled a
Speaker 1: picture of Lutnik and his kids off the Ebstein files site,
Speaker 1: which is not something you do when you're very innocent,
Speaker 1: or maybe it is. I mean, that's the thing, is
Speaker 1: like the cover up is becoming bigger than the crimes,
Speaker 1: and so it's just the fact that they're behaving in
Speaker 1: a way that seems very very very guilty. Strikes me
Speaker 1: as a pretty good sign that there's where there's smoke,
Speaker 1: there's fire.
Speaker 3: Agreed.
Speaker 2: So the Democrats are demanding seventeen hundred dollars tariff ree
Speaker 2: funds for Americans.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're not the only ones. And there are a
Speaker 1: lot of companies, like hundreds of companies suing this administration.
Speaker 3: Now for tariffs.
Speaker 1: And I'm not sure Trump understood that this is coming,
Speaker 1: but the Supreme Court now said they are illegal, and
Speaker 1: now that means that if they're illegal, that means that
Speaker 1: you can get that money back. This is all like
Speaker 1: this thing that Trump does with the unintended consequences, which
Speaker 1: is like puts these tariffs down. The Supreme Court says
Speaker 1: they're illegal, that means that money has to go back
Speaker 1: to people. So, by the way, it's important to remember
Speaker 1: like Trump has fired huge swaths of the federal government,
Speaker 1: so now you have less people working on more stuff,
Speaker 1: and he's constantly making more and more stuff for people
Speaker 1: to do. I think that it's just you know, we
Speaker 1: saw Pritzker out of the gate being like you owe
Speaker 1: each Illinois resident seventeen hundred bucks or whatever. This is
Speaker 1: a good thing for Democrats to run on because it's
Speaker 1: so stupid. Here's Trump doing stupid crap, and Democrats have
Speaker 1: an opportunity, you know, they can just say it's making
Speaker 1: life more expensive for but which by the way, you know,
Speaker 1: I just want to go back to Trump's State of
Speaker 1: the Union on Tuesday. There are these dials that people
Speaker 1: turn to measure sentiment. You know, they have a group
Speaker 1: of watchers, and it tends to be more Republican, at
Speaker 1: least for thirty eight percent more republican right they're watching it,
Speaker 1: And when he would say the Golden Age, the sentiment
Speaker 1: would go down. They didn't like the Golden Age. And
Speaker 1: it's hard for me to think of a phrase that
Speaker 1: Moore invokes trump Ism. And it's just striking to me
Speaker 1: that that is where people were like, no dice, because
Speaker 1: I think historically, if you looked back on that, that
Speaker 1: phrase has done really well for him. And these changes
Speaker 1: happen slowly and then quickly, and we're in the middle
Speaker 1: of watching a big change.
Speaker 3: That's a great, great point. So Maya, I will tell you.
Speaker 2: Last night, the news break that Netflix is dropping its
Speaker 2: bid for the Warner Brothers deal and Paramount would get it,
Speaker 2: giving the Ellison's control.
Speaker 3: I've been dying to know what you think.
Speaker 2: But I think it's very interesting that Rob Bunta, the
Speaker 2: attorney general we've had on from California before.
Speaker 1: Is the frequent guest of the show.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's saying that's so fast their chief.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, look, it would be malpractice for Democrats
Speaker 1: not to be all over this. There are a couple
Speaker 1: of things that I think it's worth just pointing out
Speaker 1: about this. First of all, this deal is really expensive.
Speaker 1: The reason that Netflix dropped out of it may have
Speaker 1: been because Trump, you gave them a hard time, but
Speaker 1: it's also because it's really expensive and they see that
Speaker 1: the Elesons are over paying here. Now, it's also important
Speaker 1: to realize, like Netflix wasn't even going to buy CNN,
Speaker 1: and there CNN has gotten really small. And I know
Speaker 1: that there are a lot of people who think CNN
Speaker 1: is really important, and I understand that, and I don't disagree. Look,
Speaker 1: I am a work for MSNBC. I get it. But
Speaker 1: I just think there would have been a cheaper way
Speaker 1: to get CNN, which would have been to let Netflix
Speaker 1: buy this and then spin out CNN and buy it
Speaker 1: that way. And the fact that they're doing it in
Speaker 1: this wildly expensive way when Larry ellison stock itself is down.
Speaker 1: And I know he's very, very very rich, and he can,
Speaker 1: you know, just like Elon he can you know, throw
Speaker 1: the balls in the air and service the debt. But
Speaker 1: if you look at this deal, it has a huge
Speaker 1: amount of debt, like crazy levels of debt. And maybe
Speaker 1: I'm wrong, maybe David Ellison is very very smart. There's
Speaker 1: not a lot of evidence to support that, FYI. And
Speaker 1: also last year he was just like running a studio
Speaker 1: no one had ever heard of. So I just think
Speaker 1: Larry has done this before with his kids. He did
Speaker 1: this with his daughter. It was a disaster. I'm not
Speaker 1: convinced that this ends well. That said, there's also just
Speaker 1: a ton of regulatory hurdles that can be put up here,
Speaker 1: and they should be because it's a monopoly and there's
Speaker 1: antitrust stuff here up the wazoo. Right, you'll own all
Speaker 1: these news networks, they'll own you know, whatever, two studios.
Speaker 1: They'll be a huge amount of jobs lost. Democrats should
Speaker 1: put regulatory hurdles in their states, should sue the California
Speaker 1: AG has some jurisdiction. And then the other thing is
Speaker 1: that I think that this is going to take a
Speaker 1: long time. So Trump may not be the free wheeling autocrat.
Speaker 1: You know, if the midterms happen the way they're supposed
Speaker 1: to happen, Trump may not have the kind of power
Speaker 1: and control he has right now, and so this may
Speaker 1: all not go through. So again, who knows. But I
Speaker 1: wouldn't say it's I don't think that people should treat
Speaker 1: this like the end of the world. I think it's bad,
Speaker 1: and it's certainly not good, but I also think there
Speaker 1: are there are reasons that may work against it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think it's very interesting that you know,
Speaker 2: everybody's saying they're going to take it, see it that
Speaker 2: to make it Fox News. It's like, there's not a
Speaker 2: market for this. There's a reason these networks sort of
Speaker 2: have it. If the Ellisons try to do that, they're
Speaker 2: going to lose a lot of money.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, they're doing it with CBS and they
Speaker 1: don't seem to care. So I'm not convinced that they
Speaker 1: won't do that. I think they might try to do that,
Speaker 1: but I think that like when you see with CBS,
Speaker 1: like they've done that and they're down twenty five percent,
Speaker 1: So you don't have a captive audience and even TikTok
Speaker 1: isn't TitTat down people using TikTok.
Speaker 3: Yes, that is correct.
Speaker 2: They won't obviously publicly say what the numbers are, but
Speaker 2: it seems very obvious that they lost a million viewers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so, I mean that's the thing. It's like, you
Speaker 1: can't necessarily like my Space was a thing until it wasn't.
Speaker 1: And you know, you have certain like with x there's
Speaker 1: a certain amount of stickiness despite the fact that the
Speaker 1: algorithm has been so juiced to be conservative and elevate
Speaker 1: Elon Musk. But a lot of these sites don't necessarily
Speaker 1: have that kind of stickiness. I just am not convinced
Speaker 1: that these are. I don't know, We'll see what happens.
Speaker 1: I mean this anything could happen here. I do think
Speaker 1: I was a little bit wrong about Twitter, Like I
Speaker 1: thought he would just kill it, and instead he's sort
Speaker 1: of it's you know, because people are still on there,
Speaker 1: because politicians are still on there. It has a way.
Speaker 1: We have exciting news over at our YouTube channel. The
Speaker 1: third episode is out now from our series Project twenty
Speaker 1: twenty nine, are reimagining, where we examine what went wrong
Speaker 1: with democrats approach to policy and how we can correct
Speaker 1: it and deliver changes for the American people. The first
Speaker 1: episodes dove into campaign finance, reform, antitrust, and regulation. Our
Speaker 1: newest episode is on how we solidify reproductive rights for women.
Speaker 1: We talk to the smartest names in the field, like
Speaker 1: Abortion every Day is Jessica Valenti, The Center for Reproductive Rights,
Speaker 1: Nancy Northok UCLA is own Mary Ziegler, and the gout
Speaker 1: Macher Institute's Kelly Badden. Republicans were prepared for when they
Speaker 1: got the levers of power. Democrats need to be too.
Speaker 1: So please head over to YouTube and search Molly John
Speaker 1: Fast Project twenty twenty nine or go to the Fast
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Speaker 1: us spread the word. And Applebaum is a writer at
Speaker 1: the Atlantic and the author of Autocracy, Inc. The Dictators
Speaker 1: who Want to run the World.
Speaker 4: Welcome, Welcome, and Applebaum Greetings.
Speaker 1: I want you to talk about where Europe is in
Speaker 1: this moment, because I don't think Americans quite understand what
Speaker 1: it is happening across the Atlantic.
Speaker 4: It's a great question because a lot is happening across
Speaker 4: the Atlantic, and no, Americans don't understand it. So you're
Speaker 4: the premise of your question is correct. Look, I think
Speaker 4: that what happened in the last six weeks to not
Speaker 4: all Europeans, but certainly northern Europeans was pretty extreme. So
Speaker 4: remember what happened in January. The Danish government came to believe,
Speaker 4: both because of things Trump said in public and because
Speaker 4: of other information that they had, that an actual invasion
Speaker 4: of Greenland might be imminent. This is their territory, those
Speaker 4: are Danish citizens. They put it in Danish elections, so
Speaker 4: they mentally prepared for this. They thought about whether they
Speaker 4: would shoot count American planes, They thought about whether they
Speaker 4: would shoot American soldiers, would American soldiers shoot badic at them?
Speaker 4: What would this do to NATO? What would it do
Speaker 4: to the economy? Same conversation went on in most other
Speaker 4: European countries.
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 4: The Germans were particularly freaked out. They were also aware
Speaker 4: that America might be about to be at war with
Speaker 4: one of their close allies, you know, Denmark, you know,
Speaker 4: very integrated into the German economy too, and they went
Speaker 4: through this mental exercise, Okay, that's it, we might really
Speaker 4: be going to war with America. And then of course
Speaker 4: it came to an end. Trump gave a speech at
Speaker 4: Davos in which he sort of threw out the idea
Speaker 4: and he mixed up Greenland and Iceland three times, and
Speaker 4: he rambled on about a lot of other things. But
Speaker 4: I don't think people have recovered. So I've just been
Speaker 4: to Copenhagen. I was there last week and I met,
Speaker 4: you know, one person after another who asked me exactly
Speaker 4: the question you just said. Do Americans know what happened?
Speaker 4: Do they know how angry that? Or do do they
Speaker 4: care that we're angry? And I had to tell them, no,
Speaker 4: I don't think Americans know. I'm not sure they care,
Speaker 4: and I'm not sure they realized the significance of it.
Speaker 4: I was in both Munich. I was the Munich Security Conference,
Speaker 4: and then I was in Denmark, and in both places
Speaker 4: I heard people talking about how to hedge against America,
Speaker 4: how to disconnect from America. You know, how we need
Speaker 4: to deal with European American technology and American defense technology,
Speaker 4: and how we need to build something different. And none
Speaker 4: of this is going to happen overnight and won't happened quickly,
Speaker 4: but a very clear shift has happened. I mean over
Speaker 4: the past i'd say two or three months from people saying, well,
Speaker 4: you know Trump, we can deal with him. You know,
Speaker 4: whatever he has, he has quirks and it's all a
Speaker 4: little strange, but we can find a modus operande to
Speaker 4: people saying, Okay, this is really serious. This is a
Speaker 4: different kind of country to the one that we thought
Speaker 4: was our Ally, we can't cope with it anymore.
Speaker 1: There's like a truth question here when it comes to Trump,
Speaker 1: which I think is incredibly disturbing, which is like, it
Speaker 1: does strike me. Remember Iran obviously not people you can
Speaker 1: take to the bank, but they did say that Trump
Speaker 1: had maybe lied about what the war sort of what's
Speaker 1: happening with his wanting to go to war, And I
Speaker 1: wonder if you could talk about that's that seems like
Speaker 1: a very I mean, we have certainly had presidents lie
Speaker 1: about war before, but we've never had it has never
Speaker 1: seemed so possible that Iran might have a point we have.
Speaker 4: So first of all, remember that we have also struck
Speaker 4: Iran before Trump did it last year, and at the time,
Speaker 4: the administration claimed they had destroyed Iran's nuclear program. So
Speaker 4: if that was the case, then why are we now
Speaker 4: negotiating with Iran about their nuclear program. Why did we
Speaker 4: just assemble this massive force in the Middle East supposedly
Speaker 4: to deal with Eron's nuclear program? So, I mean, the
Speaker 4: lies are on multiple levels. There was lies about the
Speaker 4: last engagement. There lies about this engagement. This one seems
Speaker 4: likely to happen, maybe again in the next few days.
Speaker 4: The administration has given no explanation for it. There is
Speaker 4: no clear goal. We don't know what it's for. Is
Speaker 4: it regime change, is it nuclear? Is it some other goal.
Speaker 4: There's no discussion with the American people. Trump didn't mention it,
Speaker 4: didn't talk about the you know at length about a
Speaker 4: coming war with Iran, and his State of the Union speech.
Speaker 4: The Congress hasn't been told. I saw a quote from
Speaker 4: some members of Congress today saying, no one's briefed us.
Speaker 4: We don't know what's happening, and we don't know why.
Speaker 4: I mean, so there is this There is a massive
Speaker 4: amount of American firepower in the Middle East right now,
Speaker 4: and we don't know why. And that's very, very peculiar,
Speaker 4: and I think completely unprecedented and very different even from
Speaker 4: two thousand and three when we did go to a
Speaker 4: war in Iraq, but we discussed it in advance. We
Speaker 4: talked to allies. We had allies. Actually, as people have
Speaker 4: now kind of forgotten, you know, there were a set
Speaker 4: of reasons why we were doing it. You know, you
Speaker 4: can dispute the reasons or don't dispute them, that they
Speaker 4: were presented in a way that was logical. And this
Speaker 4: is completely different. So we're we're both in both in
Speaker 4: Europe where we almost went to war with Denmark, and
Speaker 4: now in the Middle East. We're in just a different
Speaker 4: world where American military power is being used without any
Speaker 4: explanation or justification that we're aware of.
Speaker 1: We still have the president of Venezuela and his wife
Speaker 1: in a Manhattan detention yep.
Speaker 4: And in a way, the weirder thing is that we
Speaker 4: have them in a Manhattan in Hesian. But the regime
Speaker 4: is still in place. And so this very repressive, very
Speaker 4: ugly regime, which was by the end of Maduro's term,
Speaker 4: had been rendered completely illegitimate. They stole an election a
Speaker 4: few some months ago. You know, we haven't changed the regime.
Speaker 4: And Trump is saying how marvelous it is to work
Speaker 4: with Delsea Rodriguez. This is the woman who's now running it.
Speaker 4: And so once again, the purpose of even that is
Speaker 4: again strange. I mean, there was an informal justification for
Speaker 4: the kidnapping of Maduro, which is that he was being
Speaker 4: arrested because he was in violation of US law, and
Speaker 4: I think Rubio has said that, you know, on a
Speaker 4: couple of occasions. But then Trump will occasionally talk about
Speaker 4: Venezuelan to say, it's really great, We're taking all the oil.
Speaker 4: And so once again, the purpose of it, the justification
Speaker 4: for it is the what is the utility to America
Speaker 4: or to Americans or to American foreign policy? That's unclear.
Speaker 4: I mean, clearly some US companies will benefit some money
Speaker 4: from the Venezuelan oil is said to be going to
Speaker 4: an account and cutter. I don't know what happens to
Speaker 4: that money. These are almost like Trump's private actions, taken
Speaker 4: with us the full force of the strongest military in
Speaker 4: the world and really the strongest and most impressive millitary
Speaker 4: machine in human history, and it's just what he feels
Speaker 4: like doing when he wakes up in the morning, and
Speaker 4: it doesn't necessarily have to be part of a strategy.
Speaker 1: It's just wild. I mean, it's also quite scary. I
Speaker 1: wonder if you could talk about because they're so little frost.
Speaker 1: I mean, clearly the American people don't trust it. And
Speaker 1: because Trump has tried has not necessarily tried to sell this,
Speaker 1: do you still think it will happen? And also do
Speaker 1: you think that like that Europe? I mean, I just
Speaker 1: am curious, like you know, sort of your sense of
Speaker 1: who are the bad guys here? Like it seems like
Speaker 1: Marco Rubio went in and gave a sort of more
Speaker 1: polite speech at Davos, but it still had the same substance.
Speaker 4: So I mean, those are two different questions. Yeah, about trust.
Speaker 4: But so the curious thing about the various speeches is
Speaker 4: that there were several things said in Munich. I wasn't
Speaker 4: at Davos, but I was in Munich, right, and I
Speaker 4: heard difference. That's right, and I'm sorry, yeah, it's okay.
Speaker 4: I heard different speeches made it by different people. Usually
Speaker 4: the message was we want Europe to defend itself. You know,
Speaker 4: we're telling Europe now that we're not going to come
Speaker 4: to your aid anymore. You know, we're not going to
Speaker 4: be you know, we're not supplying conventional weapons to you
Speaker 4: and to Ukraine and you have to okay, you know
Speaker 4: Europeans have heard that message they got it. They've been
Speaker 4: spending massively on the military in the last several years,
Speaker 4: actually before Trump. I mean it was really Russia that
Speaker 4: made them do it. But simultaneously there is another message,
Speaker 4: and the other message is we want Europe to be
Speaker 4: run by the kinds of political parties that we like.
Speaker 4: Are right parties who use the same kind of radical
Speaker 4: language that we use. These are not conservative parties. There's
Speaker 4: europe conservatives already right now run Germany, they run Poland
Speaker 4: you know, they but they don't want like those kinds
Speaker 4: of conservatives. They want radicals. And the radical parties with
Speaker 4: they're all a little bit different, but with some with
Speaker 4: some exceptions, tend to be pro Russian. They are against
Speaker 4: European defense spending, and they are opposed to European unity
Speaker 4: and the European unit itself. They want to break it up,
Speaker 4: you know, and which I which if that were to happen,
Speaker 4: European self defense would become impossible. So we're in a
Speaker 4: very weird moment where there's these these different messages going
Speaker 4: out and that means that it's not just a question
Speaker 4: of one or you know, Trump not being trustworthy or nobody,
Speaker 4: you know, it's it's you know, literally, US policy makes
Speaker 4: no sense. It's it's illogical, you know. And again, you know,
Speaker 4: the Danes as they got ready to defend Greenland, you know,
Speaker 4: and prepared their people to fight the United States. You know,
Speaker 4: only a few days later, when Trump kind of dismissed
Speaker 4: the idea, they were being treated as, oh, well, why
Speaker 4: did you take all that so seriously? You know, if
Speaker 4: you're the prime minister of a country that might be
Speaker 4: fighting the United States and you're forced to take it seriously,
Speaker 4: and then you're told not to take it seriously, what
Speaker 4: do you conclude in the end? You know, you can't
Speaker 4: trust anything, you know, you it's not a question of
Speaker 4: whether it's Rubyo or Vans or Trump or anybody else.
Speaker 4: I mean, the whole thing is seems incoherent to people,
Speaker 4: and they are looking for ways out. I mean, it
Speaker 4: is not easy to untangle European and American relations, just
Speaker 4: like it's not easy to untangle Canadian and American relations.
Speaker 4: These are relationships and ties and contacts built up over
Speaker 4: many decades. I think they are the they are the
Speaker 4: fundamental basis of American prosperity. You know, the fact that
Speaker 4: we had these big markets, you know, we have allies
Speaker 4: who treat us like you know, as if we were
Speaker 4: you know, we we you know, always to be trusted
Speaker 4: and always to be you know, and reliability to be
Speaker 4: taken for granted, and all of that is now going
Speaker 4: to take a long time to pick apart, and there
Speaker 4: will be ups and downs, but the process is beginning.
Speaker 1: I wonder if you could talk about the midterms, because
Speaker 1: they're like looming. I think there's a lot of anxiety.
Speaker 1: I wonder if you could talk about what you're seeing
Speaker 1: and and sort of what.
Speaker 4: You think is coming there. So I don't, like, I
Speaker 4: don't I can't predict the midterms. I mean, the thing
Speaker 4: I would I would watch very closely is the administration's
Speaker 4: multiple efforts to manipulate or shape the playing field, or
Speaker 4: maybe even something more dramatic. You know, the the effort
Speaker 4: to manipulate election is not going to be one thing,
Speaker 4: or probably it won't be one thing. It'll be a
Speaker 4: lot of little things, and some of them have already happened.
Speaker 4: You know, the the pressure from the federal government on
Speaker 4: some states to redistrict even out of out of lying
Speaker 4: the census, which has never happened before. When you're entering
Speaker 4: long tradition in America, both parties do it, you know,
Speaker 4: but this is never the the you know, the president
Speaker 4: putting pressure on state legislatures to do it.
Speaker 1: Never happened federal government redistrict This really good point. The
Speaker 1: Texas redistricting was completely unprecedented, unprecedented.
Speaker 4: You know, your redistricts usually happen after a census and
Speaker 4: has any sensus. So that's you know, that's one. But
Speaker 4: there's also the Department of Justice has been demanding that states,
Speaker 4: some states hand over their voter roles, so there are
Speaker 4: lists of voters with voter information on the bogus. I
Speaker 4: don't even know what the bogus grounds. Something to do
Speaker 4: with immigrants, but immigrants. It is well known and has
Speaker 4: been repeatedly shown that illegal immigrants do not vote, like
Speaker 4: they don't want to vote, you know, it would be
Speaker 4: dangerous for them to vote. There's no evidence that they
Speaker 4: vote at all. I mean maybe once or twice, who knows,
Speaker 4: somebody did it by accident, but there's no there's no
Speaker 4: evidence for it. Nevertheless, they're using this as an excuse
Speaker 4: to demand voter roles. There have been a couple incidents
Speaker 4: in the last few years I did a podcast myself
Speaker 4: about this of people voting and then being subsequently kicked
Speaker 4: off voter rolls. This happened in North Carolina. There may
Speaker 4: be other efforts to keep certain kinds of people from voting,
Speaker 4: you know, to keep categories of people from voting. Trump
Speaker 4: has already has talked about eliminating voting machines, voting early voting.
Speaker 4: You know, they're they're looking to do what they can
Speaker 4: to eliminate voting. And so this I think is going
Speaker 4: to be something that is fought at the state level
Speaker 4: in almost every state. And I think people who care
Speaker 4: about voting and think it's important need to pay attention
Speaker 4: to those arguments and have their voices be heard, because
Speaker 4: there there will be an effort to do this. And
Speaker 4: it's not even it's not it takes. It's not like
Speaker 4: conspiratorial to say that they're First of all, they're already
Speaker 4: doing it. The second of all, Trump they tried it before,
Speaker 4: They've said it before, they've tried it before. They tried
Speaker 4: it on you know, in January of twenty twenty one,
Speaker 4: so we you know, we know they're going to do it.
Speaker 4: And then the only question is can they succeed and
Speaker 4: that I don't know. I mean, there are there are
Speaker 4: lawsuits going on, there are states who are resisting, there
Speaker 4: are there's some pushback in Congress against some legislation that
Speaker 4: the Trump administrations I had to pass. You know, we
Speaker 4: now have this same act. You know, we now have
Speaker 4: the exactly we now have the Supreme Court for the
Speaker 4: first time having pushed back on Trump on a really
Speaker 4: important policy, this is tariffs. And so maybe you know,
Speaker 4: maybe we'll get some you know, some some judgments from
Speaker 4: courts you know on this too. But it's a it's
Speaker 4: a serious problem. It's not a joke. It will be
Speaker 4: the theme I think of the next six months. You know,
Speaker 4: we're going to be talking about how will they try
Speaker 4: to steal or rig or shape or manipulate the elections,
Speaker 4: because that's what people like, That's what autocratic populists do. Ye,
Speaker 4: that's what they do when they take power. The way
Speaker 4: you end a democracy is by effectively ending people's right
Speaker 4: to vote according to whatever rules of the system they have.
Speaker 4: And our rules are strange, but there's still our rules,
Speaker 4: and you know, you know, we have the right to
Speaker 4: we have the right to elect our leaders by them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it is it's definitely when you look
Speaker 1: at the Save Act, I mean, basically, it's unconstitutional right
Speaker 1: to federalize elections. Our whole thing is that we have
Speaker 1: state the states are responsible for elections. But that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean trump't try No.
Speaker 4: I mean the lesson of the last year is it
Speaker 4: just because something is legal doesn't mean he won't try it.
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, he he does things all the
Speaker 4: time that are illegal. I mean are he And He's
Speaker 4: asked people to do things that are illegal, and when
Speaker 4: you know, when they discover they're illegal, they object and
Speaker 4: then they're fired. I mean, that's we have I have.
Speaker 4: That was another thing that featured in one of some
Speaker 4: project that I did. So there you know, they know
Speaker 4: that and that's their modus OPERANDEA, we know it's legal,
Speaker 4: We're going to do it and then let the courts
Speaker 4: find us later.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I wonder if you could talk about the propaganda,
Speaker 1: because that is the other thing, and now we're in
Speaker 1: a sort of new, brave, new world of propaganda where
Speaker 1: there are deep fakes, and I mean I feel like
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen was the first election where we really had
Speaker 1: this kind of you know, sort of Earth one, Earth
Speaker 1: two phenomenon. And it's only gotten worse. And I'm sure
Speaker 1: the Europeans are a little more sophisticated did about what
Speaker 1: they're seeing, and they have a little more regulation around it.
Speaker 1: But I'm just curious if you could talk talk about
Speaker 1: that from it.
Speaker 4: So the way our the way our information space now
Speaker 4: works is that we mostly communicate, and mostly, especially younger
Speaker 4: people get information about politics from not from journalism of
Speaker 4: any kind, like, not right wing journalism, not left wing journalism,
Speaker 4: not Fox News, not CNN. They mostly get their information
Speaker 4: from TikTok, from YouTube videos, from you know, maybe they
Speaker 4: use x maybe they use Facebook, and that's how that's
Speaker 4: how people learn about what's going on in the world.
Speaker 4: And all of those platforms are one way or another
Speaker 4: controlled by algorithms that are not designed to promote information
Speaker 4: that's good or i mean, forget about true, you know,
Speaker 4: but information that's you know, calm and you know, designed
Speaker 4: to you know, make you think or make you join
Speaker 4: an argument on all of them are governed by algorithms
Speaker 4: that push extremism, that push anger, emotion, you know. The
Speaker 4: messages that win on any of these mediums are the
Speaker 4: ones that are emotive and strong and angry and often divisive,
Speaker 4: and they also the other way that the way these
Speaker 4: algorithms work is that they allow people to effectively you
Speaker 4: choose your own world to live in. So it's not
Speaker 4: just Earth one and Earth two. There's many earths. You know,
Speaker 4: the world that you've created because of the things that
Speaker 4: you've clicked on, and then you know, then the algorithm
Speaker 4: shows you more of that. I mean I actually had
Speaker 4: a period last week when all I could see was
Speaker 4: ice skating because I watched some of the Olympic ice skating,
Speaker 4: and all my algorithms decided I wanted to see more escating,
Speaker 4: so I had to try and find a way.
Speaker 3: To make it stop.
Speaker 4: You know, I admire and loved the ice skating, it
Speaker 4: was amazing, But I was gonna say the third thing
Speaker 4: is that we also live in a world where we
Speaker 4: have the illusion of free speech. Like you write something
Speaker 4: on Twitter or you write something on Blue Sky, and
Speaker 4: you have the illusion you're saying something and people are
Speaker 4: responding to you and you're having a conversation. I mean,
Speaker 4: actually who sees the thing that you wrote, whether they're
Speaker 4: able to respond to it. All of that is manipulated
Speaker 4: by you know, computers in Silicon Valley, basically so that
Speaker 4: we aren't having a free speech conversation. It's not governed
Speaker 4: by rules that we've all agreed on about who gets
Speaker 4: to talk and when and who has heard yea. Instead,
Speaker 4: we're we're having a conversation that's run by by them,
Speaker 4: and I think the the and they for whatever reasons.
Speaker 4: In some cases it's commercial and in some cases it's political.
Speaker 4: These platforms have decided that, you know, propaganda works for them.
Speaker 4: You know that it travels fast, it gets people to click,
Speaker 4: it gets people, you know, it makes people stay online longer.
Speaker 4: You know, maybe some of them. I think Musk probably
Speaker 4: has a political goal. You know, he wants to convert
Speaker 4: more people into his version of radicalism. And see, you know,
Speaker 4: all of that has made this world that's ideal for
Speaker 4: you know, for the spreading of propagand and of false stories,
Speaker 4: you know, false videos. Now that the federal government does it,
Speaker 4: the White House does it. The White House has published
Speaker 4: doctored photographs of people, The administration puts up kind of
Speaker 4: nazi likely on some of its channels. Now that they're
Speaker 4: doing it too, it's really normalized it and it's now
Speaker 4: available almost everywhere, and you know, I think it's people
Speaker 4: often ask me, how do you know what to read
Speaker 4: or how do you decide what's true? And all I
Speaker 4: can say is, you know, I just based on my experience,
Speaker 4: you know, over many decades, I know who's a responsible
Speaker 4: journalist who's actually gone the work and you know, gone
Speaker 4: to interview people and tried to find things out and
Speaker 4: you know, and told the real story, and who doesn't
Speaker 4: And and you have to, you know, you have to
Speaker 4: you now have to have a personal way of determining
Speaker 4: what's true and what's not true, because you know what
Speaker 4: you read isn't going to do it for you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and thank you so much, Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 4: You're welcome. Nice to see you again.
Speaker 1: Mike tamask He is editor of The New Republic and
Speaker 1: author of The Middle Out The Rise of Progressive Economics. Welcome, Welcome,
Speaker 1: Mike Demaski. Hi, hi, Hi. I'm so glad to have
Speaker 1: you here because there's so much to talk about. Let's
Speaker 1: start with the weird moment we're in. So we have
Speaker 1: the Epstein story. It is really the rest of the
Speaker 1: world is taking this deadly seriously, which I think is
Speaker 1: such a stark contrast to where we are as a nation.
Speaker 1: We have a Norwegian PM who tried to kill himself.
Speaker 1: We have two members of the British you know, one
Speaker 1: former prince, the other a former ambassador, both being swept
Speaker 1: up by the police. And then we have a Republican
Speaker 1: Party and a Trump cabinet filled with the Epstein class.
Speaker 1: So talk us through what's happening here.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, some of we are taking this seriously in
Speaker 5: the United States, a lot of we. But we who
Speaker 5: aren't taking it seriously, unfortunately, are the we who have
Speaker 5: the power to do something about it. And that we
Speaker 5: is you know, the Justice Department and Republicans in Congress,
Speaker 5: and you know other conservative commentators. Who's who who the
Speaker 5: White House listens to, who might be able to pressure
Speaker 5: Pam Bondi to do something right on this. You know,
Speaker 5: that's the we that's the problem. You know, the we
Speaker 5: that includes you and me and Rocanna and Tom Massey
Speaker 5: very much wants to get to the bottom of it.
Speaker 5: But there's another we that's that's blocking it. And so
Speaker 5: I'm fascinated to see where this is going to go
Speaker 5: with this revelation, this story that NPR broke Thursday, and
Speaker 5: these missing missing documents, the missing documents that have to
Speaker 5: do with this poor girl who's thirteen at the time,
Speaker 5: and you know what she had to say. I don't
Speaker 5: want to speculate her responsibly, but there could be a
Speaker 5: story there. Let's just put it that way.
Speaker 1: Yes, Usually, when the DOJ withholds huge chunks of three
Speaker 1: yo two's of interviews, when the DOJ holds large chunks
Speaker 1: of evidence from what is supposed to be a massive
Speaker 1: file dump that is supposed to include everything, it certainly
Speaker 1: looks like they're trying to keep the public from reading
Speaker 1: certain things. I want to talk about me too and
Speaker 1: accountability because I have been working on something and reading
Speaker 1: all of the sort of you know what happened in
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, And one of the things that happens with
Speaker 1: a cultural moment like that, with a sort of sea change,
Speaker 1: is that society sort of makes a contract, that the
Speaker 1: contract sort of changes. And I wonder if you could
Speaker 1: talk about the influence that having someone with so many
Speaker 1: allegations of sexual misconduct mean for the American social contract.
Speaker 5: It has corrupted and corroded the American social contract and
Speaker 5: taken us backwards in a lot of ways. I mean, okay,
Speaker 5: with me too, things did seem to change. We seemed
Speaker 5: to agree. We again I say this we although it's
Speaker 5: a very phantom concept this week, but you know, more
Speaker 5: or less, society seemed to agree that women had not
Speaker 5: been taken seriously for a long time or ever when
Speaker 5: they lodged these allegations, which it generally takes a tremendous
Speaker 5: amount of courage to go public with or even to tell,
Speaker 5: you know, tell a superior at work. And so society's
Speaker 5: view changed that, you know, we were going to take
Speaker 5: these things more seriously and default on the side of
Speaker 5: believing women and maybe not, you know, and then there
Speaker 5: was some going overboard. So there was a little correction
Speaker 5: that said, Okay, you know, let's not believe everything that's
Speaker 5: said about every man, because people do deserve the presumption
Speaker 5: of innocence here in the United States. But let's presume
Speaker 5: that these aren't just made up crazy things, and that
Speaker 5: this is a problem that society needs to take seriously
Speaker 5: and deal with. You know, I think a lot of
Speaker 5: us in that we are still in that place. But
Speaker 5: when you have a phenomenon like the Epstein phenomenon, and
Speaker 5: when the President of the United States has how many
Speaker 5: thirty credible allegations surrounding him, and when a whole media
Speaker 5: apparatus is dedicated to the proposition of defending him no
Speaker 5: matter what the allegation is, then society's bound to take
Speaker 5: a pretty big step backwards.
Speaker 1: I think one of the things I think about is Lutnek,
Speaker 1: because Lutnik is such a good example of someone who
Speaker 1: didn't have any government experience. There are all sorts of
Speaker 1: questions about what his past business acumen was. He then
Speaker 1: elevated by Trump lies about his relationship with Epstein. Now
Speaker 1: we see CBS reported that he did business with Epstein.
Speaker 1: There's certainly an LLC that he signed with Epstein. You know,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of lies and a lot of obfuscation.
Speaker 1: So Trump clearly made this thought that you know, he
Speaker 1: sort of had an eye that if he the first
Speaker 1: time he fired all these people and it was used
Speaker 1: to undermine him, so this time he would fire no one.
Speaker 1: Do you think that that has been a smart play?
Speaker 1: And talk us through sort of what you think in
Speaker 1: connection with Ebstein.
Speaker 5: I hate to call it smart because it's really disgraceful
Speaker 5: and disgusting and immoral, and I can't call anything like
Speaker 5: that smart, but you know I can at the same time,
Speaker 5: concede that it works in the short term. I mean
Speaker 5: lying works for somebody like Trump in the short term.
Speaker 5: Just deny, deny, deny, and turn the accusations. That often
Speaker 5: when you can turn the accusations around on your accuser
Speaker 5: and say what you're guilty of about them, and that
Speaker 5: muddies things up and that confuses and then the press,
Speaker 5: following the rules of mainstream journalism, has to write, well,
Speaker 5: it's complicated, and that confuses a lot of people in
Speaker 5: LATINX case. By the way, nice to see somebody at
Speaker 5: CBS News doing some reporting. Still, that's that's good. That
Speaker 5: was a good story. I don't think let Nick was
Speaker 5: doing anything, you know, sick. It did take his daughters
Speaker 5: with him, but it was obviously some business thing.
Speaker 1: I guess who knows, right, We don't know.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but yeah, the fact is he did lie.
Speaker 3: He just he lied.
Speaker 5: And when you lie that blatantly, there's usually some reason
Speaker 5: in your life.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The Viten diagram of people in the Trump cabinet
Speaker 1: and people in the Epstein files is not quite a circle,
Speaker 1: but there's quite a lot of overlap. Right now, we're
Speaker 1: in a situation where the rest of the world is
Speaker 1: taking this deadly seriously, when the Trump administration is not
Speaker 1: When you look back at me Too, the original Me Too,
Speaker 1: there wasn't a ton of legal accountability, with the exception
Speaker 1: of Harvey Weinstein, but there was a lot of like
Speaker 1: social accountability. Do you think that stuff gets stopped because
Speaker 1: of the admin or you think that could happen anyway,
Speaker 1: because what we've seen is like corporations which used to
Speaker 1: pretend to be moral have really bought into trump Ism.
Speaker 5: My instinct on that is pretty grim. There's not going
Speaker 5: to be a lot of social accountability as long as
Speaker 5: Trump's in the White House and really advance or whoever
Speaker 5: follows him in the White House, because they're going to
Speaker 5: bottle it up in the legal system and they're going
Speaker 5: to prevent these things from coming out, and there's just
Speaker 5: not going to be any oxygen in the culture for
Speaker 5: us to really discuss these things in a serious way.
Speaker 5: The role of presidential administration molly plays in these kinds
Speaker 5: of social and cultural questions, I think is that, you
Speaker 5: know two things. A tone is established by the way
Speaker 5: the president talks and the things the president seems to
Speaker 5: care about not care about. That's number one and number two,
Speaker 5: as I said, legally, a Justice department can keep things
Speaker 5: under wraps and just not let them get out. I
Speaker 5: think on Epstein, you know, if there's a democratic administration
Speaker 5: in twenty twenty nine, I think we'll really get somewhere.
Speaker 5: I'm not sure how we get somewhere before that. It's possible,
Speaker 5: you know, there could be some brief people in the
Speaker 5: Justice Department who have stuff that are willing to be
Speaker 5: whistleblowers and are willing to leak things. We've seen a
Speaker 5: number of whistle blowers already in this first administration or
Speaker 5: in the first year of this administration, and there may
Speaker 5: be well be more.
Speaker 1: That is certainly true. So I want to talk about
Speaker 1: what it looks like you think right now? Because the
Speaker 1: Democrats have an opportunity to sort of claim the moral
Speaker 1: high ground. We've seen that with certain members of party.
Speaker 1: I wonder what you think that might look like.
Speaker 5: You know, on Epstein things, I think they're doing pretty well. Conna,
Speaker 5: I think it has done a terrific job, and others
Speaker 5: like Raskin have pitched in. You know, there's only so
Speaker 5: far they can get until all of those documents are released.
Speaker 5: And I also, you know, we assume they've read a
Speaker 5: lot more than you and I have had access to.
Speaker 5: So they know things, but they just can't say it yet, right,
Speaker 5: don't you think?
Speaker 1: Yes, they know certain things, But then there's also all
Speaker 1: this reaction that wasn't supposed to be there that they
Speaker 1: can't get. So I would say I think the co conspirators,
Speaker 1: Les Wexner, I think there's more certainly, yes, you know,
Speaker 1: and Massey has that list of two hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: names that the survivors gave him. The thing that's so
Speaker 1: insane about this case is you have more than a
Speaker 1: thousand victims, you have huge numbers of them who are
Speaker 1: in contact with legislators, and you have states like New
Speaker 1: York where the statute has been changed.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Still though, you know, it takes a lot of courage
Speaker 5: to come forward. And so this woman who was a
Speaker 5: girl at the time, with these Trump allegations that are
Speaker 5: part of the story that NPR broke, you know, who
Speaker 5: is she? Where is she? Is she contemplating coming forward?
Speaker 5: I mean there's a lot, you know, she risks a lot.
Speaker 5: You know, she's going to get death threats and kind
Speaker 5: of all that sort of thing. I could see why
Speaker 5: she wouldn't want to do it.
Speaker 1: You know, when I talked to Danny Belski, who's one
Speaker 1: of the most coherent, thoughtful, I want to say, she's
Speaker 1: a person who is an extremely good speaker, besides having
Speaker 1: had her life just completely pillaged by Epstein. And this
Speaker 1: group of survivors, they all have a relationship with each other.
Speaker 1: Not all of them, but many of them are sort
Speaker 1: of a support group for each other, which is incredibly
Speaker 1: wonderful but also incredibly awful that that needs to happen.
Speaker 1: And when you talk to them, you really do see
Speaker 1: they didn't have a relationship until these files, you know,
Speaker 1: until this law was.
Speaker 5: Passed, right, Yeah, I think this law was a really
Speaker 5: important landmark in helping to give that community of people
Speaker 5: some courage and galvanize them hopefully into a sense of
Speaker 5: common action. But it's still a very hard thing to do,
Speaker 5: you know, to come forward against powerful people, especially President
Speaker 5: of the United States, who's as vindictive as we know this
Speaker 5: one to be.
Speaker 1: I talked to a member of Congress who said, one
Speaker 1: of the problems is you can't say you can defend
Speaker 1: people when you maybe can't defend them when you're just
Speaker 1: trying to defend yourself. When people like Eric Swallwow, and
Speaker 1: Mark Kelly or being pursued by this Justice Department for
Speaker 1: you know, Mark Kelly's a great example of someone who
Speaker 1: made an ad that said you don't have to break
Speaker 1: the law, and the Trump administration went after him. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's hard to feel safe in that environment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we don't.
Speaker 5: Need any more evidence that. You know, they'll go after
Speaker 5: political enemies with all the weight prosecutorial weight they have.
Speaker 5: Now these things all get thrown out. So James Comy, Leticia, James,
Speaker 5: et cetera, and their prosecutors are Keystone Cops half the time.
Speaker 5: So you know, it's really in a sense if I were,
Speaker 5: if you're one of those people, it's kind of nothing
Speaker 5: to worry about because it's it's are very strong and
Speaker 5: it's going to get thrown out. But still, you know
Speaker 5: your life's going to be turned upside down and you've
Speaker 5: got to go through your emails and your texts and
Speaker 5: you know, and and just and spend you know, at
Speaker 5: least I would imagine fifty to seventy thousand dollars on
Speaker 5: a lawyer at the very least.
Speaker 1: It's funny because it's like, you know, when you think
Speaker 1: about a DOJ that really just exists to promote Trump
Speaker 1: and trump Ism and protect him. It's hard to imagine
Speaker 1: coming back from that.
Speaker 5: It is, but we live in a very weird universe, Molly.
Speaker 5: It was hard to imagine Donald Trump coming back from
Speaker 5: what he came back from.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a good point. So we're in the beginning
Speaker 1: of midterms. We're about to go into a primary season
Speaker 1: which is going to be, I'm sure as crazy as anything.
Speaker 1: What are you watching in the Democratic Party? We're seeing
Speaker 1: crazy donations to candidates, but the starving of the DNC.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm just curious what kind of trends you're seeing.
Speaker 5: I want to see Democratic candidates who you know, fight
Speaker 5: and throw some elbows and not stick to this horrible
Speaker 5: consult playbook of being cautious and just talking about prescription
Speaker 5: drugs or whatever it is, and you know, not talking about, oh,
Speaker 5: don't take on Trump, or don't talk about democracy, or
Speaker 5: don't you know those kinds of things. I mean, one
Speaker 5: the thing that I liked about Abigail Spanberger's response to
Speaker 5: the State of the Union Wednesday night was that she
Speaker 5: did those things, you know. I mean, she talked a
Speaker 5: lot about affordability, but then she talked a lot about Ice.
Speaker 5: She talked a lot about Trump's personal corruption, which I
Speaker 5: thought was great. So I hate this conversation, this internal
Speaker 5: conversation among Democrats that like just stick to these safe
Speaker 5: kitchen table issues or should do you know, don't do demotion, No,
Speaker 5: talk about it all. It's all true, and it's all related,
Speaker 5: talk about it all and attack. So I want to
Speaker 5: see Democratic candidates who will fight an attack. And then
Speaker 5: I guess you know, there are a couple of particularly
Speaker 5: interesting primaries that I know you're watching too. The Texas
Speaker 5: primary election is what next week, I think, So, yeah,
Speaker 5: that's an interesting one between Taller, Rico and Crockett for
Speaker 5: that Senate.
Speaker 1: Nod and the Democrats have I mean that just the
Speaker 1: sheer number of voters. Democrats are at like one hundred
Speaker 1: and two percent of the twenty twenty number, whereas Republicans
Speaker 1: are at like fifty percent.
Speaker 5: Yeah, enrollment's favorite Democrats. Enthusiasm certainly favorites Democrats. So it
Speaker 5: should be a wipeout, you know, assuming the election happens.
Speaker 1: Yes, and we shall assume it happens. Mike TAMASKI, thank you, thank.
Speaker 3: You, thank you. No moment.
Speaker 2: Jesse Cannon Somali the Irs broke the law by disclosing
Speaker 2: confidential information to Ice forty two thousand times.
Speaker 1: I am shocked to hear that Trump's Ice has broken
Speaker 1: the law. It was a really good piece today in
Speaker 1: the Atlantic about this book that's coming out about Christy Nome.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you saw it.
Speaker 3: I did see it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Corey and what they're up to. And I
Speaker 1: think we're going to be in the golden age of
Speaker 1: some really good reporting on just how insane what's happening is.
Speaker 1: I think there's going to be a lot of reporting
Speaker 1: about this homeland security. And remember, like we already know
Speaker 1: that Corey wanted to be Christie's truth of staff and
Speaker 1: Trump turned it down. And there's a lot of gossip
Speaker 1: that the reason that they fired the pilot was about
Speaker 1: a bag and maybe there was something in the bag.
Speaker 1: And I just think at this moment, these people are
Speaker 1: really like, it's just a house cards. But yeah, they're
Speaker 1: doing a legal shit. We know they're doing a legal shit.
Speaker 1: They tell us they're doing ilegal shit every day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
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