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 you're going to be shocked to
Speaker 1: hear this Home Depot says it's raising prices. You know
Speaker 1: why because of the tariffs. We have a great show
Speaker 1: for you today, talking Points memos, own Josh Marshall stops
Speaker 1: by to talk about Trump's unpopular agenda. Then we'll talk
Speaker 1: to the Cato Institute's Scott Linscombe about tariffs and how
Speaker 1: they are completely undermining our entire economy. But first we
Speaker 1: have the most important stories that aren't getting the attention
Speaker 1: they deserve. Mai, we're giddy with how terrible everything is.
Speaker 2: Let's go that's kind of accurate. Actually today this is
Speaker 2: really something. So I think of how much trauma of
Speaker 2: my childhood was, how much I was policed and home
Speaker 2: monitored as a kid because I was a bad kid.
Speaker 2: But now, this is how the Republicans in Texas are
Speaker 2: behaving towards democh product representatives. Is they want them to
Speaker 2: get basically like whole passes to move around, and they
Speaker 2: want them to have police escorts so they can't leave
Speaker 2: the state. Because they really want to do this, stupid
Speaker 2: Jerrymander that's going to really fuck them over.
Speaker 1: Yes, Okay, So here's the thing. Republicans in Texas are
Speaker 1: stealing five seats in Congress. And they're doing this because
Speaker 1: Donald Trump asked them to and because Governor Abbot thinks
Speaker 1: that he can run for president. I mean, that's really
Speaker 1: what this is. Okay. Governor Abbot is a Republican. He
Speaker 1: knows the only way to inherit Maga is with the
Speaker 1: blessing of Donald Trump. He thinks that somehow he will
Speaker 1: become the inheritor of Maga, and so he is giving
Speaker 1: Donald Trump five seats in Congress. Now, let me explain
Speaker 1: to you why this is insane. Okay, mid decade redistricting
Speaker 1: is almost unprecedented. Right, we have a census. The census
Speaker 1: tells you what the numbers are, gives you the number
Speaker 1: of congressional seats. There's redistricting around this. What happened here
Speaker 1: was literally Donald Trump was like, I cannot lose the
Speaker 1: House because then there'll be some accountability. I cannot have
Speaker 1: any accountability because I'm having too good a time right now, airgo,
Speaker 1: you have to make sure I keep the House. Democrats
Speaker 1: did the only thing that they could possibly do because
Speaker 1: they do not control state legislature, and they left right
Speaker 1: that Texas has a thing where you can deny a
Speaker 1: quorum if you leave this date. Now the special session
Speaker 1: is over, it's August nineteenth. They came back. They're going
Speaker 1: to fight it in another way. Do I think it's
Speaker 1: the right move. No. I think they should have just
Speaker 1: stayed out of the state until November. I think that
Speaker 1: would have prevented this, and it would have made time
Speaker 1: for Republicans to realize that a lot of them are
Speaker 1: going to get jerry mandered out of their seats if
Speaker 1: this if we open the door to this, but I
Speaker 1: think it's too late. So now Republicans are going to
Speaker 1: go along with stealing these five seats. One Democrat, Representative
Speaker 1: Collier of District ninety five and Fort Worth, has refused
Speaker 1: to sign these permission slips, and so she is going
Speaker 1: to sit in the chamber. I understand that all of
Speaker 1: this seems stupid to Trumpers, to people who are cynical,
Speaker 1: but the reality is the only way we're going to
Speaker 1: say survive this period is if people do brave shit
Speaker 1: like this. Okay, if they say no, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to do that if they say no. And so as
Speaker 1: much as you may not like Representative Collier, this is
Speaker 1: extremely important to do things like this. You know, this
Speaker 1: is like a terrible moment in American life where things
Speaker 1: are really fucking scary and she just says, I'll just
Speaker 1: sit here. I don't know. I guess I'll wait till Wednesday.
Speaker 1: So good for her, and we should support people who
Speaker 1: are being brave, because most people are being fucking cowards.
Speaker 2: Yeah. When I think of though, there's this weird gray
Speaker 2: area where you're like, what the fuck is going on
Speaker 2: with something? So a few weeks ago, Dan Bongino, no
Speaker 2: friend of ours, kind of let it rip that like
Speaker 2: he was pretty disturbed by what he saw on the
Speaker 2: Epstein files, and it seems he might be on the
Speaker 2: way out at the FBI.
Speaker 1: Wait you think Bongino is not going to last at
Speaker 1: the FBI.
Speaker 2: I have to tell you one of the things, like
Speaker 2: when we're always deciphering between the bullshit artists and the
Speaker 2: true believers, there is this like weird thing that he
Speaker 2: has like a little bit of both in him, Like
Speaker 2: you know, he'll grift you for protein shake, but he'll
Speaker 2: also really seems seems like his anger towards things fuels him.
Speaker 2: And I will tell you I bought that he was
Speaker 2: a little shook by the Epstein files. It seems a
Speaker 2: lot of the reporting has set up.
Speaker 1: Or he just makes a lot more money doing the podcast.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean that can be.
Speaker 1: I mean, I would love to ascribe meaning to Dan
Speaker 1: Bongino's temper tantrums, but I just what there is math.
Speaker 1: There is a thing called math. He has more power
Speaker 1: and makes more money doing the podcast than sitting in
Speaker 1: an office. So but either way, who are we to
Speaker 1: cast aspersions at Dan Bongino? He may very I'll be
Speaker 1: on his way out. We are thrilled to welcome Andrew
Speaker 1: Bailey as co Deputy Director of the FBI. Bondie told
Speaker 1: state run media Fox News Digital he has served as
Speaker 1: Distinguished date Attorney General and also another Trump Lackie. Congratulations
Speaker 1: to all who celebrate, it's going.
Speaker 3: To be great.
Speaker 2: Speaking of unsympathetic characters, at least the phonic just the
Speaker 2: goal to show her space in public. She's thinking about
Speaker 2: trying her Hannah as running for governor, which is really
Speaker 2: going to go great considering at this appearance, I've heard
Speaker 2: a lot of booze before, sometimes even when I've been
Speaker 2: on stage, but nothing like.
Speaker 1: This Marry Christmas.
Speaker 2: In fact, I think I was once booed for, say
Speaker 2: a joke about who she's going to run against for governor.
Speaker 1: At least Dephonic. I think I was there for that,
Speaker 1: Yes you were. It was drowned out by relentless booze
Speaker 1: when she's spoken a Memorial Day event on Monday. Now
Speaker 1: she's not in New York, she's not in Brooklyn, she's
Speaker 1: in Plattsburgh. When she gets booed. All right, I want
Speaker 1: to say two things about this. One least Devonic thinks
Speaker 1: she's going to be governor next year of New York State.
Speaker 1: But Lee Stevonic may also get Jerry Mander out of
Speaker 1: her seat because since Texas stole five congressional seats, there's
Speaker 1: a very likely scenario where New York I mean, Cuomo
Speaker 1: did set it up so they couldn't have partisan redistricting
Speaker 1: and put a GOP judge on that panel. But there
Speaker 1: is a world where if Hochel is worth anything, which
Speaker 1: I'm not convince she is, but if she is, she
Speaker 1: will redistrict those five seats, and my man Aleis Stevonic
Speaker 1: will neither be governor nor a member of Congress. I
Speaker 1: for one, would love to see it the same.
Speaker 2: So this is really exactly that. You know, often we're
Speaker 2: saying we.
Speaker 1: Particularly other shouted trader and go home, and some attendees
Speaker 1: yelled a Nazi. You don't want to be called the
Speaker 1: nazi anyway. Continue.
Speaker 2: Yes, So a lot of the time we're discussing things
Speaker 2: for twenty twenty five that came true. But this is
Speaker 2: the type of thing that wasn't quite in there to
Speaker 2: my memory at least. But I was like, this is
Speaker 2: definitely gonna happen. Citizenship reviews now ask immigrants to show
Speaker 2: positive contributions to the.
Speaker 1: US, positive contributions right. Like, By the way, I'm so
Speaker 1: angry about this because I've just you know, I have
Speaker 1: so many friends who live in DC who have been
Speaker 1: telling me about these horror stories about what has happened
Speaker 1: under federalized DC, which is basically, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of fat guys wearing vests that say police, and they
Speaker 1: are chasing around anyone who's brown and who looks like
Speaker 1: they're Hispanic, and they are chasing them down the streets
Speaker 1: and beating them up and sending them in unmarked cars
Speaker 1: to go to detention facilities to maybe get deported to
Speaker 1: their own country and maybe get deported to Sudan where
Speaker 1: they will die. This is so the idea that a
Speaker 1: good moral character, like good moral character starts at home. Man,
Speaker 1: we are not showing good and moral character. We are
Speaker 1: in a country now where there is a militarized group
Speaker 1: that has billions of dollars, that has no accountability, that
Speaker 1: does not show its badge, that will not tell you
Speaker 1: their name, that are plucking people off the street because
Speaker 1: of the way they look. Like a year ago, this
Speaker 1: would have been unprecedented. So if you're listening to this
Speaker 1: like this is not okay, like none of this is okay,
Speaker 1: we are in unprecedented moment in American life. And by
Speaker 1: the way, good moral character begins at home. Josh Marshall
Speaker 1: is the editor of Talking Points Memo. Josh Marshall, thank
Speaker 1: you for coming on too fast politics.
Speaker 3: I always love it here.
Speaker 1: I was really mean, but it's because it's my birthday,
Speaker 1: and also because Ice has arrested my friend's brother and
Speaker 1: he is now waiting. He just disappeared and now they're
Speaker 1: trying to figure out if he's going to be deported
Speaker 1: to his native country or is he going to be
Speaker 1: deported to Sudan?
Speaker 3: Wow, that's heavy, so.
Speaker 1: He can die there? That is people in DC, because
Speaker 1: DC has become federalized. And that means now that all
Speaker 1: of the really scary people who Donald Trump has made
Speaker 1: his militia are targeting anyone who looks like they are
Speaker 1: not white.
Speaker 4: You know, the thing with the Sudan thing. I've watched
Speaker 4: that closely. But my impression at least is that, you know,
Speaker 4: they're deporting tons and tons of people, and my impression
Speaker 4: at least is that it's a pretty small subset that
Speaker 4: is being deported to Sudan. But I haven't had a
Speaker 4: sense of, you know, what the basis of that subset is, right, Like,
Speaker 4: is it who do they pick? I assume it's something
Speaker 4: to do with obviously they're from countries where there may
Speaker 4: be some legal impediment or something like that.
Speaker 3: But I don't have a But that sounds horrific.
Speaker 4: I mean, it sounds horrific to be deported to any
Speaker 4: country that you've never been to before.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But I also think and I want to talk
Speaker 1: about this for a minute because I think it's so important.
Speaker 1: Like we've seen these photos of these ice skies chasing
Speaker 1: you know, the uber drivers, you know, the food delivery guys,
Speaker 1: the deporting, the lady who worked at the nail salon.
Speaker 1: You know, people been here twenty thirty, forty years. People
Speaker 1: have been here as long as we have. Right, what's
Speaker 1: the goal here? Because Americans have had the opportunities to
Speaker 1: do these jobs and they have not wanted to.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it's not like when certainly when I was
Speaker 4: much younger, and probably when you were two. You know,
Speaker 4: there have been times where you know, and certainly during
Speaker 4: you know, briefly during the Great Recession, where you have
Speaker 4: unemployment approaches double digits. Right, we've basically been in a
Speaker 4: full employment economy as economists define it for a number
Speaker 4: of years, you know, under five percent. So kind of
Speaker 4: by definition, there's nobody else who wants to do this
Speaker 4: job because everybody's got a job. Now, we know, obviously
Speaker 4: some people don't have a job, but when you talk
Speaker 4: about this gets into the technical economics of it, there
Speaker 4: are not other people who want this job who are
Speaker 4: not doing it.
Speaker 3: And when you talk about the goal, I think people.
Speaker 4: For understandable reasons, don't like analogies or kind of blanched
Speaker 4: analogies go back to the Third Reich and the imposition
Speaker 4: of Hitler's dictatorship. One of the things that happened during it,
Speaker 4: A political scientist have a name for this, I can't
Speaker 4: remember it exactly, is that it was fairly disorganized in
Speaker 4: a lot of ways, and Hitler had a system where
Speaker 4: he kind of relied on people to you know, be
Speaker 4: self starters and kind of do stuff on their own,
Speaker 4: people in the state in governmental positions to sort of
Speaker 4: compete with each other to achieve his aims. And there
Speaker 4: is at least something like that going on with Trump
Speaker 4: in the sense that when you say, you know, what
Speaker 4: is the point here, well, well, clearly one of the
Speaker 4: points here is that Stephen Miller like literally went over
Speaker 4: to Ice, went over to DHS and said, I want
Speaker 4: three thousand people a day taken into custody and put
Speaker 4: into the system for deportation. Now, there's clearly a lot
Speaker 4: of people in Ice who want to be nasty people,
Speaker 4: and there's a lot of polalization of Ice, but that
Speaker 4: clearly created a situation where you've got to go where
Speaker 4: the numbers are, and the numbers are people who are
Speaker 4: living law abiding lives and just kind of where you
Speaker 4: think they are, because they're basically long standing residents in
Speaker 4: the United States, and they show up for their immigration hearings,
Speaker 4: and they show up for their job. And that's why
Speaker 4: you have this thing of just you know, kind of
Speaker 4: regular people kind of doing their jobs and I shows
Speaker 4: up and grabs them. And you know, the woman who
Speaker 4: worked at your nail slan, she's not there with like
Speaker 4: an ak right now. She's going to fight them off
Speaker 4: right when they come. These are by definition, fairly pliant people.
Speaker 4: So that's part of it. But you know, you have
Speaker 4: this mix of people who want to deport a lot
Speaker 4: of people for sort of ideological and racial reasons. Also
Speaker 4: have a lot of people who want to punish people.
Speaker 4: They want to see those pictures of terrified families and everything.
Speaker 4: So you have all these kind of things going together.
Speaker 4: But you know, one of the things about the Trump
Speaker 4: system is that you usually have that kind of you know,
Speaker 4: chaos and disorganization, and some of that is that these
Speaker 4: aren't terribly competent or often very smart people.
Speaker 1: Are you saying they're not sending their.
Speaker 4: Best, They are not sending their well, they are sending
Speaker 4: their best, they don't their best are not that good.
Speaker 3: I think, yes, it's the way to put it.
Speaker 4: But another dimension of sort of trump Ism is they
Speaker 4: don't like bureaucracy. They don't like people like, oh, you've
Speaker 4: been here for thirty years, you know how to make
Speaker 4: this system run. Get the fuck out of here. But
Speaker 4: what that means is you have this system where it's
Speaker 4: all kind of at the whim of the top guy.
Speaker 4: So all these things kind of flow together and create
Speaker 4: this system with a lot of sort of predatory behavior
Speaker 4: and malicious behavior and not only hurting people because you
Speaker 4: kind of can't not hurt people if you're trying to
Speaker 4: arrest three thousand people a day. But because hurting people,
Speaker 4: as our Fred Sewer says it, you know, is the point.
Speaker 4: Cruelty is the point.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about Donald Trump's triumphant meeting with all of
Speaker 1: the heads of Europe. You know, you're in great shape
Speaker 1: when all of the heads of Europe, every single one
Speaker 1: comes to Washington. They don't have anything else to do
Speaker 1: to try to get Trump not to be putin's stoode.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well it's sort of like you know, you know,
Speaker 3: you know the shape you're in by who shows up
Speaker 3: at your intervention.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, right, you know you know, you caught your
Speaker 4: first year college roommate is there and you're like, wow,
Speaker 4: thread here real.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I mean, you know, it's so funny because
Speaker 1: it's like, I'm old enough to remember when Georgia Maloney
Speaker 1: was the biggest outlier. Right, She's part of this neo
Speaker 1: fascist Yeah, so one of the bad guys, right, one
Speaker 1: of the bad guys coming to Washington to beg Donald
Speaker 1: Trump not to get rolled by Vladimir Putin.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you're too You're too far gone here, dude, it's
Speaker 4: too much. It's more than I can accept.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I like the White House. There's a podcast I listen
Speaker 1: to that is very access see and the woman on
Speaker 1: it was like, wow, the White House didn't have huge
Speaker 1: plans for the Alaska summit. Oh okay, they didn't. They
Speaker 1: just oh okay, they just went to Alaska because they
Speaker 1: just want to hang out with Putin.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the whole thing is pretty you know. On the
Speaker 4: other hand, there was this weird thing of like, you know,
Speaker 4: they did it in Alaska where you can basically be
Speaker 4: sure that if you're not on the plane on the
Speaker 4: you know, the traveling White House press love Alaska.
Speaker 3: But it's not a big media State, right.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's certainly not on the Air Force base
Speaker 4: where we have our sort of strategic bombers or whatever.
Speaker 3: And they did it on what in the you know,
Speaker 3: on the east.
Speaker 4: Coast in the US is going to be you know,
Speaker 4: kind of late Friday after the hottest August day of
Speaker 4: the year kind of thing. So there's all kinds of
Speaker 4: kind of weird like it that is kind of how
Speaker 4: you'd kill a story. So I don't know quite what
Speaker 4: that was about. But you know, Donald Trump doesn't do things.
Speaker 4: He doesn't do things like lo fi, Like you're not
Speaker 4: going to hear like thirty years from like oh yeah,
Speaker 4: he used to go over to soup kitchen and like
Speaker 4: serve stuff.
Speaker 3: But no, he didn't tell me.
Speaker 1: You'd never get it.
Speaker 4: He did that every Thursday evening, but he never you know,
Speaker 4: step out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you're never going to find out he was
Speaker 1: serving homeless people in soup kitchen. But I want you
Speaker 1: to talk about this for a second, because I'm very
Speaker 1: suspicious about this Alaska summit.
Speaker 3: I think as you should be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and I think that this was completely about
Speaker 1: trying to kill the Epstein story and not about anything else, right,
Speaker 1: Like this whole idea is like, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: win a Nobel Peace Prize, and so I'm going to
Speaker 1: have all of these countries, these leaders from countries that
Speaker 1: are warring, and they're going to come in. And the
Speaker 1: timing of this is just when the Magabas is fighting
Speaker 1: about Ebstein. But that's probably just a coincidence. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you think about Trump, right, he's sitting there and
Speaker 1: he's going like it's August, which is the deadest time.
Speaker 1: So the House is out, the Senate is out, I
Speaker 1: can't try to do anything insane legislative way. I can
Speaker 1: send the National Guard into Washington, DC, which is painful
Speaker 1: and horrible and fun, but then there's nothing else to distract.
Speaker 1: So you could see where this would just work.
Speaker 3: It's definitely possible.
Speaker 4: I mean, I I have lost it's so easy to
Speaker 4: lose track of the forward pace of time and when
Speaker 4: happened or when another thing happened.
Speaker 3: But it was certainly my impression. It wasn't like we
Speaker 3: knew in June.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, there's the there's the August summit, right, they
Speaker 4: just announced that on a pretty short notice. The thing
Speaker 4: is with him is, as we know, these publicity events,
Speaker 4: it's always hard to know, like why did he do this,
Speaker 4: you know, kind of publicity event.
Speaker 3: It's sort of like, why is a crack addict smoking
Speaker 3: crack this time?
Speaker 1: Because they're yeah, yeah, yeah, that.
Speaker 4: Is really the primary reason. And he's addicted to publicity.
Speaker 4: He's addicted to chaotic and kinetic moments where he is
Speaker 4: the center of attention and his actions have everybody is
Speaker 4: reacting to his actions. So some of it is just that.
Speaker 4: But yeah, I mean they're trying to and to a
Speaker 4: certain extent, it seems like they've maybe kind of achieved
Speaker 4: it with at least moment, at least for now at
Speaker 4: the epscene stuff. It's not you know, there's not she
Speaker 4: hasn't been moved from one prison to another recently, or.
Speaker 1: I mean she's she already got to the better prison.
Speaker 4: But yes, yeah, well she I mean I assume there's
Speaker 4: you could be transferred to like Tahiti, you know, I mean,
Speaker 4: you can the sky's the limit.
Speaker 3: But yeah, it's hard to tell.
Speaker 4: But again, it's sort of like, why is this crack
Speaker 4: addict smoking crack because he's addicted to crack?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's right. I just think like all
Speaker 1: of this timing is kind of suspicious. So Trump said
Speaker 1: that there's some security guarantees. I mean, this is all
Speaker 1: ridiculous because we know what Putin's going to do. Putin's
Speaker 1: going to run right through this. And I mean, has
Speaker 1: he even stopped bombing Ukraine? He's still bombing Ukraine.
Speaker 4: No, I don't, there's no there's no stop in. I mean,
Speaker 4: everything has continued, and this is I think, what is
Speaker 4: I mean the irony of I was I think I
Speaker 4: posted maybe on Blue Sky about you know, the sort
Speaker 4: of the latest addition of how much gold shlock he
Speaker 4: has in the in the in the you know, in
Speaker 4: the Oval office. But it was actually a picture of
Speaker 4: his meeting with Zelenski, and I was looking at it
Speaker 4: and thinking, like, I hate to say it, but like
Speaker 4: this went better than the last meeting with Zelenski at least,
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, they're kind of buds now sort
Speaker 4: of maybe, you know, or at least at least to the
Speaker 4: extent he's not humiliating him. And the reason that that
Speaker 4: happened is that Trump clearly did get irritated that when
Speaker 4: Trump made clear that at least stopping the fighting, if
Speaker 4: not bringing a treaty or a truce or something was
Speaker 4: his goal. He felt he needed that, he wanted it
Speaker 4: that Pudin responded by upping the ante. It's not like
Speaker 4: he'd been holding back but doing more. You know, the
Speaker 4: real action is over there in the east where you're
Speaker 4: trying to take territory. But they also do things with
Speaker 4: They just throw a lot of missiles at Kiev or
Speaker 4: something like that, and so he's upping the anti kind
Speaker 4: of humiliating Trump, and that whole thing.
Speaker 3: Just remains, you know.
Speaker 4: I was thinking last night that I think Iowa was
Speaker 4: one of the first people back in twenty sixteen to
Speaker 4: write an article basically saying there's something weird going on
Speaker 4: with this guy and Russia. I think it was in
Speaker 4: July twenty sixteen, and I didn't really have a sense
Speaker 4: of I didn't say and because I didn't know what
Speaker 4: it was. Most of the big stuff we didn't know then.
Speaker 4: But they're just all these connections. They're just weird, weird, weird, weird.
Speaker 4: You don't have like, oh, how many you know, how
Speaker 4: many connections did Eisenhower have da Khrushchev or you know,
Speaker 4: it was. It was so strange, and we've learned a
Speaker 4: lot since then. It's still what the hold he has
Speaker 4: over Trump is still laffling, not clear to me and
Speaker 4: baffling at many levels. But I don't know if you
Speaker 4: or maybe your listeners saw there was a hot mic
Speaker 4: moment where Trump said in in the meetings yesterday, I
Speaker 4: think it was Emmanuel Macron, but it's one of the
Speaker 4: European leaders. You're like, hey, I think he really wants
Speaker 4: to make a deal with me. It like sounds crazy,
Speaker 4: but I really feel it. And it was just like, dude,
Speaker 4: what is your problem? I mean, like, it's like the
Speaker 4: guy who buys a lap dance and things like the
Speaker 4: stripper's in love with them.
Speaker 3: It's like, what's going on with it?
Speaker 4: For all the things we know and all of the
Speaker 4: corrupt things, I think one day we will find out
Speaker 4: we're going on there is a supplicant, submissive thing he
Speaker 4: has with this guy that all the other stuff may
Speaker 4: be true.
Speaker 3: It still would completely explain that.
Speaker 1: It does not make a ton of sense.
Speaker 3: Right, It really doesn't.
Speaker 4: There are a lot of things that sort of give
Speaker 4: you an idea why it might be kind of like that,
Speaker 4: but none of them quite get you to the just
Speaker 4: you know, sometimes someone's got a hold on someone that
Speaker 4: goes beyond any literal thing.
Speaker 3: It's just the other person kind.
Speaker 4: Of goes weak in the knees and you know, they
Speaker 4: roll over on their back and need to be belly
Speaker 4: rubbed or something.
Speaker 1: Yes, with a fascist dictator, that's totally normal.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The thing I was so struck by was like, as
Speaker 1: the child of an alcoholic, that you sometimes do all
Speaker 1: this stuff to try to keep your alcoholic from like
Speaker 1: completely killing themselves and the rest of you. And this
Speaker 1: feels very much like that. You know, obviously it's not
Speaker 1: an alcoholic because he doesn't drink, but like, we have
Speaker 1: all of Europe coming to America, coming to Washington, DC
Speaker 1: to make sure that Trump doesn't do something which puts
Speaker 1: the entire continent in jeopardy. This is our president. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, like these people can protect their constituents from him,
Speaker 1: but who protects us?
Speaker 3: No one?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, no, that is true. It's funny. I was
Speaker 4: just writing a post about a kind of a related
Speaker 4: issue that moves us in a slightly different direction, but
Speaker 4: the basically the importance of the state governments. Yeah, because Trump,
Speaker 4: because he has the executive branch and Congress, and because
Speaker 4: the courts, the Supreme Court has chosen to interpret the
Speaker 4: law and the Constitution in such a way that Trump is,
Speaker 4: within the federal government basically an absolute monarch.
Speaker 3: You can do anything if anybody.
Speaker 4: You know, he's like Anthony in that, you know, sending
Speaker 4: people to the cornfield right in the federal government. But
Speaker 4: we have this quirk of the American political system, which
Speaker 4: is the states which have their separate sovereignty that are
Speaker 4: subordinate to the federal government but separate from it. And
Speaker 4: for us who live in blue states, that is a
Speaker 4: powerful bundle of sovereign power that I think we are
Speaker 4: really we need the state leaders to understand that we're
Speaker 4: going to.
Speaker 1: Be fucked if the state leaders don't stand up for us.
Speaker 1: I mean we are, We're already so fucked. But like Kathy, yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: Kathy Hokle, if you're listening, like this is it man,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, Gavin Newsome, that's it, because he
Speaker 1: is so ambitious that he will, you know, run over
Speaker 1: his granny for a chance to run for president. And
Speaker 1: thank god, lucky for the people of California, because what's
Speaker 1: happening in DC wouldn't be able to you know, they
Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to do it in quite the same way.
Speaker 1: But I do think it is important to remember too,
Speaker 1: what's happening in DC is happening in DC for a reason,
Speaker 1: right A, because cinema and mansion suck, and so they
Speaker 1: refuse to make the mistake, and so the federal government
Speaker 1: has a lot of power there. But the other reason
Speaker 1: is because a lot of journalists and a lot of
Speaker 1: legislators and a lot of people who could be brave
Speaker 1: live in that city. Sorry, that's cool, Josh Marshall, thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you, thanks for joining.
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me as usual. I love coming on.
Speaker 1: Scott Lindseicolm is the vice president of General Economics at
Speaker 1: the right leaning Tato Institute. Dude, welcome to Fast Politics, Scott, Oh,
Speaker 1: thanks for having Trade wars are good and easy to win.
Speaker 1: I was told by Donald J. Trump in the first
Speaker 1: season of Trump Destroys America. Are we winning well?
Speaker 3: Depends on how you measure victory.
Speaker 5: I think if what you want is a giant tariff
Speaker 5: wall around the country and a really amazing vehicle for
Speaker 5: handing out political favors and boosting political power generally, then
Speaker 5: Trump two point zero has been a massive victory and
Speaker 5: surprisingly has resulted in much less foreign retaliation than last
Speaker 5: time around. So in terms of trade wars, there's less conflict.
Speaker 5: You know, China and to a lesser extent, Canada have retaliated,
Speaker 5: but nobody else has smartly.
Speaker 3: From the economics perspective, so if you like tariffs.
Speaker 5: And you think that other countries not retaliating will somehow
Speaker 5: boost your exports because you're a mercantilist.
Speaker 3: Then you've won.
Speaker 5: But from an economics perspective and the political perspective.
Speaker 3: We at CATO are anti corporatist.
Speaker 5: We're not big into government croniism and corruption and all
Speaker 5: that jazz.
Speaker 1: You're not big into corruption.
Speaker 5: No, No, like a limited government, enumerated powers, and prefer
Speaker 5: corporations to focus on their actual business and not lobbying
Speaker 5: the government for favors.
Speaker 3: If you believe in that stuff.
Speaker 5: The tariffs are proving to be just as problematic as
Speaker 5: the dreaded economists predicted.
Speaker 3: The fact is we now have an.
Speaker 5: Effective tariff rate of well above ten percent, up from
Speaker 5: a rate of maybe two to three percent pre Trump.
Speaker 5: Two point zero so back just back in January. It's
Speaker 5: scheduled to go even higher, probably fifteen percent by the
Speaker 5: end of the year. Because there's all sorts of loopholes
Speaker 5: and exemptions and cases, investigations and others. And that gets
Speaker 5: to the second point. We have massive amounts of uncertainty
Speaker 5: and complexity that are being just injected into our trade
Speaker 5: bloodstream as we speak. That adds cost. So you're not
Speaker 5: only taxing people to the tune of hundreds of billions
Speaker 5: of dollars a year, mainly American companies and consumers going
Speaker 5: to pay that, but you're also imposing these really weird
Speaker 5: and visible taxes for the uncertainty and complexity and importers, customs, professionals, businesses,
Speaker 5: institutional investors.
Speaker 3: Are all like, I don't know what they have to do.
Speaker 1: I want you to first talk about this because this,
Speaker 1: I think is really interesting, which is there has to
Speaker 1: be a sort of layer of people who put these
Speaker 1: tariffs in, who collect them, who make sure that the
Speaker 1: goods are paid. You know, it's no longer are these
Speaker 1: goods drugs or something illegal. It's now like, are these
Speaker 1: goods paying the rate of tariff that they're supposed to do?
Speaker 5: Yeah, And I think the way to think about it
Speaker 5: is pre Trump and now I think it's better to
Speaker 5: go back to twenty sixteen because that's probably the last
Speaker 5: time twenty seventeen, last time we had a really relatively
Speaker 5: clean US tariff system because then, of course Trump in
Speaker 5: his first term had steel and aluminum tariffs in China
Speaker 5: tariffs and some other stuff.
Speaker 3: But pre Trump one point zero, you basically, if you
Speaker 3: were a business, when you were importing a product, you
Speaker 3: only had to worry about where it comes from and
Speaker 3: what the tariff rate is. And where the tariff rate
Speaker 3: is was pretty easy for the vast majority of countries.
Speaker 3: The only exceptions were some free trade agreement partners and
Speaker 3: some special preference programs we called, so this was a
Speaker 3: very easy process. Tariffs were also generally low, like I said,
Speaker 3: you know, around two percent, so a lot of times
Speaker 3: you weren't even paying a tariff. You just were importing,
Speaker 3: filing your paperwork, and then you've add on tax. It
Speaker 3: was a little bit, right, It was super easy.
Speaker 5: And we had this thing called the Deminimus exception, which
Speaker 5: for Shian Timu and others meant you could order dire
Speaker 5: directly from a different country, not just China, anywhere in
Speaker 5: the world and it could be shipped to you directly
Speaker 5: and you could.
Speaker 3: Avoid all of those formalities.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 5: So Trump comes along and starts messing with this in
Speaker 5: twenty seventeen twenty eighteen, suddenly Chinese goods got a tariff,
Speaker 5: but maybe they were subject to an exclusion, and there
Speaker 5: were all these processes and stuff for that. Steel and
Speaker 5: aluminum got tariffs, but then there were agreements that carved
Speaker 5: some of that out. You could lobby the government for
Speaker 5: your own exclusion. But then they extended the terrace to
Speaker 5: downstream steel and a limb stuff made with steel in
Speaker 5: a limb, what they call derivatives. Tons of litigation as well,
Speaker 5: so that began the complexity stuff. Now everything's been turned
Speaker 5: up to eleven. Now through the reciprocal tariff regime, you
Speaker 5: have different tariff rates for dozens of different countries that
Speaker 5: are not replacing the old tear tariffs we had. They're
Speaker 5: applying on top of those. So you need to figure
Speaker 5: out what was the old tariff. Okay, what's the new tariff,
Speaker 5: what's the country. But that's just the starting point. Then
Speaker 5: you have to figure out is there any Chinese content
Speaker 5: in it? Because there are different rules for Chinese content
Speaker 5: what they call transhipment. Does it have any steel and
Speaker 5: aluminum in it? Because now we're taxing the content of
Speaker 5: those products of course there are random exemptions and exclusions
Speaker 5: as well, but this time around they're not transparent. You
Speaker 5: could used to be able to go to a website
Speaker 5: finding exclusion. Now it's again much harder. And that's just
Speaker 5: one set of tariffs. There's all these other ones that
Speaker 5: have started. Now we have automotive goods subject of tariffs,
Speaker 5: copper subject of teriffs, investigations on semiconductors and consumer electronics,
Speaker 5: and wood products on minerals.
Speaker 3: I mean, you can go on and on and on.
Speaker 5: So it has turned the US tariff regime from a
Speaker 5: relatively simple and transparent one that basically anybody and his
Speaker 5: uncle could operate to something that is its own tariff
Speaker 5: right because the flexities attacks on smaller businesses and a
Speaker 5: subsidy to big business. You know, GM and FOD they
Speaker 5: have an Apple. They have like entire divisions of logistics
Speaker 5: pros and supply chain pros. People who are just you know,
Speaker 5: starting a small business importing a few products, or like
Speaker 5: running in like an auto repair shop and they just
Speaker 5: need a couple of parts. All of a sudden, they're
Speaker 5: getting bills from DHL for one hundred, two hundred and
Speaker 5: fifty bus dollars. They're getting tariff bills from customs in
Speaker 5: the tens of thousands of dollars. And by the way,
Speaker 5: if they get any of this role, let's say they
Speaker 5: get the country of origin wrong or the steel content wrong,
Speaker 5: all of a sudden, they could get fined by customs,
Speaker 5: investigated by DOJ because they just lacked the ability to
Speaker 5: figure all this out.
Speaker 1: I want to do like a lightning around with you
Speaker 1: here because this is complicated, but I also think there
Speaker 1: are some really important points here. So the first thing
Speaker 1: I want you to just true or falls and explained
Speaker 1: it to me. Is this our tariff's attax a corporate tax. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so there are a tax on imports. The big question
Speaker 1: is who pays the tax.
Speaker 5: So legally most import taxes, most tariffs are paid by
Speaker 5: American importers. So US business is located in the United
Speaker 5: States importing from somebody overseas, they legally have to pay
Speaker 5: the tariff.
Speaker 3: There's one exception. Will avoid that. The bigger question is
Speaker 3: the economic incidents.
Speaker 5: It could be foreign exporters they could lower their prices
Speaker 5: kind of eat the tariff. American companies and consumers. Trump
Speaker 5: one point zero, almost one hundred percent of the tariffs
Speaker 5: were being paid by American companies and consumers. They were
Speaker 5: kind of splitting it. Company gets the product, maybe passes
Speaker 5: on the cost via higher price, maybe maybe doesn't. This
Speaker 5: time around, foreign explorers are paying a little bit more,
Speaker 5: but it's still like ten percent max. And then the
Speaker 5: rest is being split among companies and consumers. So far
Speaker 5: with companies paying more like a corp.
Speaker 1: I want you to talk about the washing machines. So
Speaker 1: in the first Trump administration, explain this.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so, washing machines are a great example of some
Speaker 5: of the weird and unintended consequences of tariffs. So we
Speaker 5: imposed a safeguard measure, basically a global tariff on all
Speaker 5: washing machines to help the American washing machine industry, mainly Whirlpool,
Speaker 5: who was lobbying heavily for those.
Speaker 1: By the way, how fucking corrupt is that? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: Worldpool could lobby heavily for this, and so we tariffed
Speaker 1: another country's washing machines.
Speaker 3: This is trade policy, one oh one.
Speaker 5: The modern lobbying system in the United States has its
Speaker 5: origins in like nineteenth century US tariff policy, which Congress
Speaker 5: used to handle and it was just an absolute corruption buffet, right.
Speaker 1: Which it still is. Right, because fucking Whirlpool does not
Speaker 1: deserve to have in the.
Speaker 5: Steel industry and the shipbuilding industry and the textile guys
Speaker 5: and the sugar guys. So you get yourself a trade,
Speaker 5: you lobby for protection. And because tariffs are mostly invisible,
Speaker 5: like you don't see it on your sales receipt, right,
Speaker 5: because they target foreigners, and we have these anti foreign
Speaker 5: biases because they supposedly support jobs and patriotism and all that,
Speaker 5: it's very politically seductive and pretty easy to get protection.
Speaker 5: The only way we short circuited that dynamic was through
Speaker 5: trade agreements, which, of course Trump has now blown up.
Speaker 5: So we're kind of back in they just wild West
Speaker 5: where you hire a lobbyist. Trade lobbying has skyrocketed this year.
Speaker 5: You hire a lobbyist, you go to Washington, get you
Speaker 5: try to get your own tariff, or you get yourself
Speaker 5: a carve out if you're a big company like Apple,
Speaker 5: where the rest of us are just eating it.
Speaker 3: Right. Oh so, anyway, washing machine tariffs, So we imposed
Speaker 3: washing machine tariffs. Prices of washing machines went up in
Speaker 3: the United States. But the kicker is that prices of
Speaker 3: dryers went up too, because you buy your washer and
Speaker 3: your dryer together.
Speaker 1: If you're going to pay three thousand dollars for your
Speaker 1: washing machine, you're not going to pay two thousand dollar
Speaker 1: for your dryer. Why not make the dryers three thousand docks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so companies figure this out.
Speaker 5: Domestic companies like Worldpool figure this out too, and it
Speaker 5: turns out that consumers ended up paying more than one
Speaker 5: hundred percent of the tariff cost because the price of
Speaker 5: the dryers went up too. So the kicker, however, is
Speaker 5: that Wirlpool hasn't really even benefited. It turns out that
Speaker 5: Samsung and LG had some factories in the United States
Speaker 5: they were already building, so you have Samsung and LG factories,
Speaker 5: whereas Worldpool's actually still struggling, which again is trade policy.
Speaker 1: I have to say, though, that is a little bit
Speaker 1: of a happy ending, because fuck Worldpool, I can say
Speaker 1: because it's my podcast, But no, such a good example
Speaker 1: of how none of this is going to have the
Speaker 1: first roarer of effects we think.
Speaker 5: Right, and it's going to have all sorts of weird
Speaker 5: effects that we're only going to see in retrospect. And
Speaker 5: that's another reason why tariffs are so politically seducted. It
Speaker 5: takes a while for all of this stuff to kind
Speaker 5: of work its way through the economy. You know, a
Speaker 5: company like GM has like three tiers of suppliers, So
Speaker 5: if the supplier at the bottom end is paying the
Speaker 5: tariff and it passes on some and so it's gonna
Speaker 5: it just takes forever for this stuff to wash out.
Speaker 5: Now we're now a good six seven months into this,
Speaker 5: and the economic data are finally starting to show the
Speaker 5: tariff costs, the economic pain, higher prices, slower growth, the
Speaker 5: lobbying stuff, and the rest.
Speaker 1: Right, So, last week, before Donald Trump decided to have
Speaker 1: an emergency summit with Vladimir Putin, totally because it needed
Speaker 1: to happen on that Friday and not to distract from
Speaker 1: anything else, right, those, of course would he there were
Speaker 1: two bits of news that showed that the tariffs are
Speaker 1: going to be a fucking disaster. Talk us through them.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So we had last week the Consumer Price Index
Speaker 5: data that's basically the United States government looks at the
Speaker 5: price you and I are paying for stuff.
Speaker 3: And here you're starting.
Speaker 5: To see the prices of goods that are mainly importing toys, clothes, appliances,
Speaker 5: other things. Those are starting to go up. The bigger
Speaker 5: surprise was in the producer price index, which is the
Speaker 5: prices that producers in the United States, so these don't
Speaker 5: include tariffs, are just selling to each other. That was
Speaker 5: a really big upside surprise, and the big driver were
Speaker 5: the companies that deal in the import space, so like
Speaker 5: wholesalers and distributors, sellers of manufactured machinery and other things.
Speaker 5: So that had everybody looking at those things and going Aha,
Speaker 5: terrifs are starting to really leak into the general inflation
Speaker 5: data and the general price The other data piece we
Speaker 5: got less reported is that we get data on import prices,
Speaker 5: and here import prices were up.
Speaker 3: A little bit. Now why does that important.
Speaker 5: Well, import prices in this data set don't include tariffs,
Speaker 5: so if we were to see, as Donald Trump claims,
Speaker 5: foreigners paying the tariffs, we would expect import prices to
Speaker 5: actually be down a lot, but they're not really at all.
Speaker 5: So this is more evidence that it is Americans mainly
Speaker 5: that are paying these billions in teriffs, and along with
Speaker 5: of course higher prices for American made goods, because the
Speaker 5: steel guys and the copper guys and the whirlpools of
Speaker 5: the world, they're not going to sit around and go, oh,
Speaker 5: you know we're gonna we're gonna charge low prices because
Speaker 5: you know, our competitors higher, they're go in charge higher
Speaker 5: prices too. That's what being insulated from competition. That's the
Speaker 5: whole point, right, And that's what we're getting.
Speaker 1: That is so incredibly unshocking and unsurprising. And I want
Speaker 1: to talk for a minute about like a week before that,
Speaker 1: I read an article that said that all the money
Speaker 1: the government was making from tariffs, because the government right
Speaker 1: now is making a gazillion dollars from tariffs, right, what
Speaker 1: are the numbers.
Speaker 5: It's like fifty billion a month right now, so pretty solid.
Speaker 5: Now it's compared to where we were pre Trump era.
Speaker 5: We would maybe clear one hundred billion a year in
Speaker 5: tarrisks because we did have some tariffs on stuff like
Speaker 5: shoes and clothes, because of course, you know, let's tax
Speaker 5: those things, right, But generally we weren't making a lot.
Speaker 3: Now we have a lot of revenue coming in.
Speaker 1: So fifty billion a month, right, and that's ridiculous numbers.
Speaker 1: I was reading an article that said that no one's
Speaker 1: going to be able to undo the tariffs because this
Speaker 1: money is so delicious and it's going to pay down
Speaker 1: the debt, and we're going to be able to use
Speaker 1: it to fund a whole new gestoppo ice whatever and
Speaker 1: make new Alligator Alcatraz is in all of the things
Speaker 1: that Trump World dreams of. But here's my hottest take
Speaker 1: for you. We are on the precipice of a complete
Speaker 1: financial meltdown. The reason that people, we haven't had tariffs
Speaker 1: like this since the nineteen twenties or thirties.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, I got to go back basically to Smooth Holly.
Speaker 1: How did Smooth Holly end?
Speaker 3: It ended with well, the Great Depression in World War Two?
Speaker 1: But but yes, but there was good stuff in between there.
Speaker 5: I'm going to be the calm intellectual here for a
Speaker 5: second and say, most folks think that that tariff's exacerbated
Speaker 5: other economic problems in the United States. Yeah, I'm not
Speaker 5: as dire.
Speaker 3: As you are. I see this more.
Speaker 5: The way I describe it is it doesn't have to
Speaker 5: be economic catastrophe for economic catastrophe for it to be bad.
Speaker 3: I could cut.
Speaker 5: Off my foot and still hobble around and live. That
Speaker 5: doesn't mean cutting off my foot is a good idea.
Speaker 5: And I think that's more where tariff policy is today
Speaker 5: than the Great Depression.
Speaker 1: Oh that said, at this point, there's only one sector
Speaker 1: of the market that's growing, which is AI.
Speaker 5: Yeah, very likely be above all, right, But remember the
Speaker 5: United States is a massive, I mean thirty trillion dollar economy.
Speaker 5: Imports are only around ten percent of our GDP. The
Speaker 5: United States is actually not as much of a globally
Speaker 5: integrated economy as you think. We're huge, dynamic services economy.
Speaker 5: So you can do a lot of damage in the
Speaker 5: trade and goods sector that'll leak into the services like
Speaker 5: auto repair and other things, but it's not going to
Speaker 5: likely tip us into whatever because so much of the
Speaker 5: rest of the economy can be just fine without you know,
Speaker 5: pay a little more, but be okay. The worry, I
Speaker 5: think is that there's contagion, right, so people start freaking
Speaker 5: out and they don't see that in April as the
Speaker 5: worst case scenarios kind of people started thinking worst case
Speaker 5: and I think that that's when you get into the
Speaker 5: scary area.
Speaker 3: It's that contagion stuff.
Speaker 5: I don't think the director even indirect effects are alone enough.
Speaker 5: But the fact is that you know, the US economy
Speaker 5: was weakening before Trump took off. This it wasn't bad,
Speaker 5: but it wasn't firing on all cylinders. And so the
Speaker 5: problem with all this tariff stuff is that it's just
Speaker 5: making us even weaker.
Speaker 1: Say tomorrow, Donald Trump, and I don't think we're going
Speaker 1: into a depression, but I certainly don't think we're going
Speaker 1: anywhere good. Donald Trump tomorrow says, you know what, I
Speaker 1: made a mistake. Triffs are inflationary. I was elected to
Speaker 1: make things cheaper and also to be mean to people
Speaker 1: who were not born here. I have now made a
Speaker 1: huge mistake. I want to get rid of these tariffs.
Speaker 1: You can't do it, so talk us through how hard
Speaker 1: it is to do it.
Speaker 3: Well, legally, he can't. He could literally sign a piece
Speaker 3: of paper and they'd all go away tomorrow. But will
Speaker 3: prices go down, No, very unlikely.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: It's kind of like when the price at the gas
Speaker 5: station goes up, it takes forever for him to come down.
Speaker 5: When it comes to generally to the price level in
Speaker 5: the United States. What you have to do, and this
Speaker 5: is kind of similar to what happened during the Biden era,
Speaker 5: is you have to just wait for wages to catch
Speaker 5: up to where prices are. U won't keep heading up,
Speaker 5: they'll just kind of flatten out, and that's what you.
Speaker 3: Have to do.
Speaker 5: I think the bigger issue, quite frankly, is the money.
Speaker 5: Like you said, I think the tariffs can prove quite
Speaker 5: durable because now you have tens, if not hundreds of
Speaker 5: billions of dollars in new tax revenue, tax revenue that
Speaker 5: for some insane reason, anti tax Republicans are cheering, and
Speaker 5: we have fiscal problems. So I think it's just going
Speaker 5: to be really hard for it to go away now
Speaker 5: that it started. And this, by the way, again is
Speaker 5: exactly why folks like me warn against tariffs, not just
Speaker 5: the economic harms, not just how they hurt small businesses,
Speaker 5: but because man, once they're in place, they are.
Speaker 3: Incredibly difficult to remove.
Speaker 5: And unfortunately that's what we got to deal with, and
Speaker 5: we do dealing with, of course, because Congress won't do
Speaker 5: its job and actually fix the laws that allow a
Speaker 5: guy like Trump to do this stuff in the first place.
Speaker 1: Scott, thank you, my pleasure. I hope you'll come back.
Speaker 3: Of course.
Speaker 1: No, Mom, Sickly, Jesse Cannon.
Speaker 2: Molly, we got some serious, seriously fuckery going on right here.
Speaker 1: This is special Molly's birthday. Fuck Ray so let's go.
Speaker 1: Jesse Cannon, I'm scared.
Speaker 2: You know, basically I am eight months older than you.
Speaker 2: You give me tons of shit about this. You talk
Speaker 2: about the guest sage. So today what I'm giving you
Speaker 2: as a president is I'm going to tell you every
Speaker 2: politician that is our age, so you can feel absolutely
Speaker 2: terrible about how old we are.
Speaker 1: This is the worst thing out.
Speaker 2: So for listeners out of the note the past, I
Speaker 2: used to buy Molli cabios from people like Rudy Giuliani,
Speaker 2: Alan Dershowitz. I look at the list this year and
Speaker 2: it's just too repulsive of who I would be giving money.
Speaker 1: You don't want to give those people any money anymore.
Speaker 1: It's just no good came up from that.
Speaker 2: So I figured this is the less cruel thing to do,
Speaker 2: even though this is about to be very cruel. Are
Speaker 2: you ready for a list of people who are just
Speaker 2: as old as you?
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 6: Emmanuel McCrone, Really, he's accomplished so much more. Georgia Belodi,
Speaker 6: she's also accomplished so much more. God damn it, they're
Speaker 6: both forty seven. That's horrendous.
Speaker 2: Technically within a year of us is what I'm doing here.
Speaker 2: So it's like you can't do exactly but the Prime
Speaker 2: Minister of Denmark Metta Fredericson, Oh wow, Congressman Seth multen
Speaker 2: voldemir is Lenski what. Yeah, he was born on January
Speaker 2: twenty fifth, nineteen seventy eight, which makes him seventeen days
Speaker 2: younger than me.
Speaker 1: Oh, Jesus fucking Christ.
Speaker 2: All right, this one you're gonna be very proud of.
Speaker 2: Mark Wayne Mullen.
Speaker 1: Wait, that guy's our age, Jay, that guy.
Speaker 2: Is our age. He's technically a hair older than me.
Speaker 1: Mark, Wayne and Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2: Okay, but this is the one that always really hurts
Speaker 2: because she's just a few days older than me. Representative
Speaker 2: Nancy Mace.
Speaker 1: Wow, kind of makes you think.
Speaker 2: Didn't we have a friend of the show, Robert Garcia,
Speaker 2: who's just a few days older than me?
Speaker 1: Ah, Robert Garcia.
Speaker 2: Then, to get into our profession of punditry, Alex Wagner
Speaker 2: is our age. Yeah, she's just two months older than me.
Speaker 1: Also way more successful.
Speaker 2: Just under the gun of being almost exactly a year
Speaker 2: older than you, but still a little less is Steve Kornaki.
Speaker 1: Steve Karnaki, congratulations Karnaki and being our age but you
Speaker 1: know who.
Speaker 2: You're about a month younger than who, Jesse Waters.
Speaker 1: And I'm only married to my first husband, so damn it.
Speaker 2: Okay, we still got a few more to go and
Speaker 2: then this will be over.
Speaker 1: Let's go. No, I never wanted to end. Keep going.
Speaker 2: Okay, you're just a few months older than Representative Byron
Speaker 2: Donald's all right, go on, Victoria Sparts just a few
Speaker 2: months older.
Speaker 1: Then I'm not going to say anything. I don't want
Speaker 1: to get canceled.
Speaker 2: Just a few months older, did Maryland Governor Wes Moore?
Speaker 1: I knew because we went to school together.
Speaker 2: I knew that. Actually, okay, but you got just almost
Speaker 2: exactly a month on Governor Ron DeSantis.
Speaker 1: Wait, I'm a month older than Ron DeSantis, younger, younger,
Speaker 1: I look a lot younger, I think I would agree.
Speaker 1: And I'm also a lot taller than Ron.
Speaker 2: John Oliver is in the same year.
Speaker 1: As us, whoa also more successful than we are. That's annoying.
Speaker 2: Then we have a Congressman Mark Livin.
Speaker 1: Yeah he looks older than we do.
Speaker 2: Then we have former Congressman Adam Kinsinger.
Speaker 1: Yeah he looks younger than we do.
Speaker 2: And then, last, but not least, we have the one,
Speaker 2: the only Senator Josh Holly, who's about a year younger
Speaker 2: than us.
Speaker 1: I mean, yes, Josh Holly, how.
Speaker 2: Do you feel now, BALI did it? Did I cheer
Speaker 2: up your birthday?
Speaker 1: I hate you?
Speaker 2: Well, I had to do it.
Speaker 1: I truly hate you.
Speaker 2: It was this our funding fascist. So there you go.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you. Let's have a clean out here.
Speaker 2: I'm taking a ballot.
Speaker 1: Thank you. I'm going to go have an urban breakdown.
Speaker 1: Thank you. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics.
Speaker 1: Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear
Speaker 1: the best minds and politics make sense of all this chaos.
Speaker 1: If you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a
Speaker 1: friend and keep the conversation going. Thanks for listening.