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 Nancy Mace was caught on video
Speaker 1: locking lips with another woman. We have such a great
Speaker 1: show for you today, talking points memos. Josh Marshall stops
Speaker 1: by to preview a hint of the next Trump administration.
Speaker 2: It's going to be a mess.
Speaker 1: Then we'll talk to Rolling Stone's own Noah Shachman about
Speaker 1: Eric adams desperate plans to suck up to Trump and
Speaker 1: the mockery that has ensued.
Speaker 3: But first the news Smiley, Well, get to talk about
Speaker 3: this fun fellow. RK Jr. I want to first ask
Speaker 3: you something, though. Did you ever take like those Sassy
Speaker 3: personality quizzes when we were teenagers.
Speaker 1: Sassy and Jane, the two magazines that shaped both of
Speaker 1: our personalities.
Speaker 3: It is true, you know, my high school girlfriend really
Speaker 3: loved giving me a personality to test to see if
Speaker 3: I was the one, and it turned out I was not. Anyway.
Speaker 3: RFK Junior I think also was a fan of these
Speaker 3: because he has a personality test. He's calling it an
Speaker 3: application to work under him at the HHS. It is psychotic.
Speaker 1: Okay, so it's unclear where the test originated, but probably
Speaker 1: Jane Magazine, but it was like by Puff News and
Speaker 1: PUP can confirm they claim they can confirm the Trump
Speaker 1: team that Kennedy is using this to bet potential employees.
Speaker 1: One section reviewed by The Independent asks applicants to pick
Speaker 1: three or four moods.
Speaker 2: Or attitudes that suit them.
Speaker 1: By the way, this is so la, I require excessive admiration,
Speaker 1: I don't have much interest in a sexual experience.
Speaker 2: With another person.
Speaker 1: Super normal questions when one wants to work in the
Speaker 1: United States government. One option offers I believe in things
Speaker 1: many don't like, having a sixth sense, clairvoyance and telepathy.
Speaker 1: As an adolescent, I had bizarre fantasies or preoccupations. Our
Speaker 1: entire government is going to be filled with sociopaths when
Speaker 1: this is over. Those things actually do seem to be
Speaker 1: criteria for schizotypal personality disorder and also, or perhaps instead,
Speaker 1: narcissistic personality disorder, laid out in the Diagnostic and Statistical
Speaker 1: Manual otherwise known as the DSM fifth Edition.
Speaker 3: What I really like is I really feel like RFK
Speaker 3: Junior The answers that he would like are much more
Speaker 3: different than with the Project twenty twenty five. Heritage Foundation
Speaker 3: philistines would like like when they're asking, like, if you
Speaker 3: believe that too much tax money goes to support ours?
Speaker 3: I think RFK loves an artist. I think he likes
Speaker 3: to have a groovy little retreat and then you know,
Speaker 3: poetry something I could see him liking. But the philistines
Speaker 3: at the Heritage Foundation know, and I think this is
Speaker 3: a recipe for disaster of what freaks and weirdos are
Speaker 3: going to be mixing together in this and a minute.
Speaker 1: So let's take a minute to sort of just talk
Speaker 1: about this. Heritage has a plan Project twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: You got people like the one surviving Cooke brother, these
Speaker 1: Republican donors have a plan and it does not involve clairvoyance.
Speaker 1: It does not involve OURFK Junior at all. In fact,
Speaker 1: and I think there we're going to really see a
Speaker 1: collision course here pretty quickly. But what Jesse's talking about
Speaker 1: here is one of the options on this personality test
Speaker 1: is believe.
Speaker 2: That too much money goes to support.
Speaker 1: Artists, does not like poetry, and tries to avoid complex people.
Speaker 2: I think this is going to be wild I'll.
Speaker 3: Say so, it's almost gonna be as wild as when
Speaker 3: Robert F. Kennedy Junior goes to Warwi corn syrup.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, let's talk about this because look, one of
Speaker 1: the totally fascinating and amazing things about URFK Junior, besides
Speaker 1: the fact that he's totally sold out to Magas, he's
Speaker 1: still at least ostensibly pretends to believe in these things.
Speaker 2: So he wants to ban food coloring. He wants to
Speaker 2: ban well.
Speaker 3: The food coloring already got banned this week by the
Speaker 3: Biden administration.
Speaker 1: Well, good for the Biden deministration, but Kennedy does want
Speaker 1: to go further ban corn syrup, all sorts of different
Speaker 1: kind of You know, I think the VAX stuff is crazy,
Speaker 1: but certainly some of this stuff really aligns with my values,
Speaker 1: you know, corn syrup, chemicals and food, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 3: I hear you're a big one on putting the cocaine
Speaker 3: back in Coca cola.
Speaker 1: Yes, also want the cocaine and coca cola very good.
Speaker 2: People in AI love cocaine and their joke.
Speaker 1: So what's interesting here is that Kennedy, well also being
Speaker 1: anti vax, really does have some reasonable opinions, and he's
Speaker 1: going to run smack into Heritage Foundation and that crew
Speaker 1: because that crew does not want to make food healthier.
Speaker 1: They do not want to remove preservatives, and in fact,
Speaker 1: a lot of them are sort of the factory farming types,
Speaker 1: and that you know, for example, like if you think
Speaker 1: about the Koch Brothers do plastics and paper products and
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff that's both bad for the environment
Speaker 1: and also leaches chemicals into farming.
Speaker 2: So I think this is good.
Speaker 1: We're going to see things really quickly collide here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, top Trump downer Dick Euleen, who makes some of
Speaker 3: the most wasteful products.
Speaker 2: I was just thinking about the Eulens.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's good. That's going to go real, real
Speaker 3: well with him, but his donations. Yeah yeah, I can't
Speaker 3: wait to see the shit show unfold. Yeah, so let's
Speaker 3: actually talk about these food dyes that were bad. You
Speaker 3: and I have actually done a segment on this while back,
Speaker 3: and yeah, it looks like there's some major milestones for
Speaker 3: chemical safety happening here.
Speaker 2: This is actually really good.
Speaker 1: Biden Harris administration is banning two cancer causing chemicals. It's
Speaker 1: a major milestone for chemical safety and it's this bipartisan
Speaker 1: Toxic Substance Control Act, and there's no to use any
Speaker 1: of these chemicals. So one is that causes liver cancer,
Speaker 1: kidney cancer, non Hodgkins lymphoma, and it is being phased out,
Speaker 1: and the other one is solvent in cleaning products. They're
Speaker 1: both going to be phased out unless Trump decides to
Speaker 1: bring them back, which, if we know Donald Trump, is
Speaker 1: certainly well within the range of possibility. That said, if
Speaker 1: it does happen, Trump will probably have to fight with
Speaker 1: RFK Junior, which will be a completely fascinating and bizarre
Speaker 1: dynamic that none of us are coming.
Speaker 2: Speaking of Donald Trump, yeah.
Speaker 3: He's inheriting quite the economy from President Joe Biden, and
Speaker 3: much like what happened when he got an economy from
Speaker 3: Barack Obama. And I can't wait to see what he
Speaker 3: does with it. With these terroriffs, Yeah.
Speaker 1: They're luckiest man in America otherwise known as Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: is now going to inherit an economy that should be
Speaker 1: pretty great. Inflation has dropped from nine point one in
Speaker 1: June twenty two to two point six percent. The economy
Speaker 1: includes a steady increase in jobs and arise in the
Speaker 1: stock market. This country has an absolute debt problem, and
Speaker 1: that's going to be a problem. But luckily Donald Trump
Speaker 1: will solve the federal debt by giving tax cuts to
Speaker 1: billionaires in corporation.
Speaker 3: Can't wait.
Speaker 4: Let me just tell you, counting the.
Speaker 1: Days and also cutting Social Security and medicair, cutting food
Speaker 1: stamps will make up the shortfall.
Speaker 2: Josh Marshall is the editor of Talking Points.
Speaker 5: Memo.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to Fast Politics.
Speaker 4: Josh Marshall, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: Very You're welcome, very subdued. It may not be good.
Speaker 6: No, I'm totally charged up. That was just me in
Speaker 6: like in whatever mode before you turn it on.
Speaker 4: I'm totally ready.
Speaker 1: Okay, good, well, let's go. It's so great election. Things
Speaker 1: went really good.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: By the way, for two seconds, I was wrong about
Speaker 1: this election and spent all this time writing.
Speaker 2: Pieces about how I was wrong and.
Speaker 1: Sort of going on, you know, going to DC talking
Speaker 1: to members of Congress saying like I got this so wrong?
Speaker 2: What did you see in You're you.
Speaker 4: Know, like a full of apology tour mode.
Speaker 2: Not quite, but you know, just sort of like what
Speaker 2: did I miss? How do I get this so wrong?
Speaker 1: And what were the factors that got me making such
Speaker 1: bad decisions. I was like, everyone else is probably doing
Speaker 1: this too, you know what everyone else.
Speaker 4: Was doing saying they were right all along, yes.
Speaker 2: And then everyone else was wrong.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I mean it's one thing for people who are in
Speaker 6: I don't know, for lack of a better word, sort
Speaker 6: of like you know, kind of commentary, here's what's happening,
Speaker 6: here's what I think might happen next. And then there's
Speaker 6: the people who have like a kind of like an angle, right,
Speaker 6: an ideological angle, personnel angle, all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 6: And to me, one of the worst things about when
Speaker 6: a group or coalition or whatever suffers a political defeat,
Speaker 6: the first reflex of most people is to say I
Speaker 6: was obviously right all along, thank you very much, thank you.
Speaker 2: I was like, you know, I think I was wrong
Speaker 2: about this.
Speaker 1: I was wrong about that, and literally everyone else is like, no,
Speaker 1: this person was wrong. I mean, like nobody is going
Speaker 1: to just say, well, maybe I had some priors, et cetera.
Speaker 2: Et cetera.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, first of all, maybe it is an
Speaker 6: overhang of a mix of people responding to the twenty
Speaker 6: sixteen election and the many and very merited reckonings that
Speaker 6: society was going through after things that happened in twenty
Speaker 6: eighteen and nineteen and twenty twenty and so on and
Speaker 6: so forth. But we have sort of grafted in now
Speaker 6: about elections, this whole culture of reckonings. You got to
Speaker 6: have a reckoning, you know, like okay, like not totally.
Speaker 6: I mean, you know, some political party has to lose.
Speaker 6: And one of the things that has been sort of
Speaker 6: foundational for me for as long as I've been thinking
Speaker 6: about politics is is that every losing campaign is run
Speaker 6: by idiots.
Speaker 4: That is like doctrine, right, And.
Speaker 6: People have a very hard time holding in their head
Speaker 6: or you know, kind of keeping in their mind at
Speaker 6: the same time that you can have run a really
Speaker 6: solid election and lose, and that's just a reality. So
Speaker 6: I don't know, I'm certainly this was a result I
Speaker 6: did not want. And what I would say is that
Speaker 6: I did find it unlikely that the polls would miss
Speaker 6: some Trump strength for the third time in a row.
Speaker 6: That did not seem likely to me. And frankly, I
Speaker 6: think there was good reasons to think it was not likely.
Speaker 6: And yet here you know, and yet here we are.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 6: It was a slight difference, but it was a difference,
Speaker 6: and you know, and here we are.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's really so exactly important. And I
Speaker 1: had the same sort of thing. I also do think
Speaker 1: we find ourselves in a moment like this selection.
Speaker 2: What I think is interesting about this election is.
Speaker 1: That Trump really did overperform. He was able to make
Speaker 1: the case to people. He was able to say, you're angry,
Speaker 1: I'm going to make things cheaper, with almost no evidence
Speaker 1: to support this idea at all. But like in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: and again you can say there are other factors, but
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen, Republicans, you know, had like this forty
Speaker 1: or fifty seat majority in the House of Representatives, like
Speaker 1: they really you know, they had state houses. I mean
Speaker 1: I remember being at events where people were talking through
Speaker 1: what had happened, and you know, they were I remember
Speaker 1: seeing a graphic of like Democrats not controlling any state,
Speaker 1: you know, just as like, like clearly everyone had just
Speaker 1: fucking dropped the ball when it came to state legislator,
Speaker 1: when it came to this, when it came to that,
Speaker 1: that's not what happened this time.
Speaker 4: Not at all.
Speaker 6: And you know, there was one of the many illustrious
Speaker 6: TPM alums out there is Brian Boiler who I'm sure
Speaker 6: many of your listeners are familiar with. And one thing
Speaker 6: that Brian said sometime in twenty sixteen I can't remember,
Speaker 6: and it stuck with me because I thought it was
Speaker 6: true at the time, and it ended up being truer than,
Speaker 6: you know, than one would have hoped. But that was
Speaker 6: that the twenty sixteen campaign and Hillary Clinton's role in
Speaker 6: it was basically a single point of failure proposition. Everything
Speaker 6: was looking good, but if Hillary lost, suddenly things looked
Speaker 6: extremely bad because, as you said, Republicans not only controlled
Speaker 6: Congress but controlled it by sizable margins. They had spent
Speaker 6: the Obama years building up these, you know, huge majorities,
Speaker 6: far less contested than they should have been in state houses,
Speaker 6: and for all of those reasons, as you say, that
Speaker 6: is not none of those are the case right now.
Speaker 6: And you know, as we know, elections are binary. You know,
Speaker 6: you can lose the presidency by one vote, and there
Speaker 6: can be stuff with the popular vote. In electoral college,
Speaker 6: only one person gets the pen, right, and that's where
Speaker 6: we are, and at least nominally it is that way
Speaker 6: in Congress. And that's this is why among the many
Speaker 6: reasons when we think about elections, there's the nature of
Speaker 6: an election, and there's the consequences of an election, and
Speaker 6: the consequences of this election are pretty clear. He's president,
Speaker 6: and that is very bad, if there's anybody listening who's
Speaker 6: not pugged in on that front. But the election itself, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 6: the election itself, Democrats did quite well kind of almost
Speaker 6: everywhere else, right, It's important to remember that, not to
Speaker 6: kind of say, well, Donald Trump isn't totally president or
Speaker 6: something like he's one hundred percent president. But you can
Speaker 6: also see that strength in other areas, and that is
Speaker 6: that's really important to understand for you know, following elections
Speaker 6: and the underlying strength that Trump has and that's why
Speaker 6: they've gone so hogwild with this you know, overwhelming double
Speaker 6: overwhelming landslide victory and there's never been anything like it,
Speaker 6: which is nonsense. And again it's not a matter of
Speaker 6: seeing some silver law. The reason that's important is that
Speaker 6: his he he, You do not have a public out
Speaker 6: there that is like, go for it, bro, you know,
Speaker 6: eighty percent of the populations behind you.
Speaker 4: It's not like that at all.
Speaker 6: That and that is important for having some visibility into
Speaker 6: what's going to happen over the next couple of years.
Speaker 1: It was a low turnout election, which also I feel
Speaker 1: like we don't necessarily talk about like if Harris had
Speaker 1: gotten the same numbers that Biden had gotten in twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: she would have won.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, certainly if she'd gotten the same number of votes.
Speaker 6: I mean it, you know, I saw there was one
Speaker 6: one of these publications, maybe it was even ny con
Speaker 6: at times, if someone wrote a piece basically saying that
Speaker 6: you know, don't assume that you know, those twenty twenty Democrats,
Speaker 6: if they had shown up, would have voted for Kamala Harris,
Speaker 6: And to me, that goes without saying it just inasmuch
Speaker 6: as if they really wanted Kamala Harris to win, they
Speaker 6: would have showed up, right, I mean, that's sort of
Speaker 6: the point.
Speaker 4: There's a reason.
Speaker 6: I mean, we can infer a lot by the fact
Speaker 6: that they did not show up. And I think what
Speaker 6: we the proper thing to infer is they didn't care
Speaker 6: that much, which is pretty close to voting against right.
Speaker 6: So it's not like, you know, we can't go too
Speaker 6: far into inferring those numbers. However, this is why you
Speaker 6: need to keep your coalition on side and energized and
Speaker 6: all that stuff, and it wasn't.
Speaker 4: So you know, she lost.
Speaker 6: There's no getting around that. The oddity of this election
Speaker 6: is that you would have in most elections in history,
Speaker 6: you would have expected Republicans to maybe pick up twenty
Speaker 6: or thirty House seats to get closer to you know,
Speaker 6: maybe sort of fifty five Senate seats, maybe even a
Speaker 6: couple more because it translates over into house stuff, and
Speaker 6: it didn't. And that's odd and odd in an encouraging
Speaker 6: way for Democrats, not for Kamala Harris or Joe Biden,
Speaker 6: especially not for Joe Biden.
Speaker 1: Yeah, can you talk to me about what it looks
Speaker 1: like with this question of what happens next with like
Speaker 1: protecting the norms and institutions, because that's the thing I
Speaker 1: think about so much, right, Like Trump, you know, he's
Speaker 1: trying to sell that he has a mandate whatever, but
Speaker 1: you know he doesn't really care, right, I mean, he
Speaker 1: just basically does what he wants. So it feels like
Speaker 1: this is going to be a game of inches again,
Speaker 1: like just trying desperately to get Republicans to do their jobs.
Speaker 2: Is that your take? I mean, what do you think?
Speaker 4: I think that's basically right?
Speaker 6: You know, we don't know what limits they are going
Speaker 6: to try to push. They could try to push all
Speaker 6: of them at once. You know, one constraint on Donald
Speaker 6: Trump is energy. He tends to and this is you know,
Speaker 6: I'm kind of a compatriot of his in this sense.
Speaker 6: A little hard time focusing me too, Yeah, on any
Speaker 6: one thing for very long, and that is a constraint.
Speaker 6: So but you know, big picture, I do think it
Speaker 6: will be a game of it, and one that at
Speaker 6: least at the beginning that the good guys will be
Speaker 6: losing more inches than they're.
Speaker 4: Gaining, but still a game of inches.
Speaker 6: You said one thing about, you know, kind of trying
Speaker 6: to get Republicans to do their jobs. I actually and
Speaker 6: maybe this is a cock guide optimism.
Speaker 1: You sound like you're about to engage in cock guide optimism.
Speaker 6: No, no, it's actually something. It's actually something a little different.
Speaker 6: When I think about a Susan Collins or a Joni Ernst,
Speaker 6: a Senator till Us down in North Carolina, I don't
Speaker 6: want to be trying to get them to do their job.
Speaker 6: I want people in those states and around the country
Speaker 6: to be saying, give it your all, because we cannot
Speaker 6: wait to run against you in twenty twenty six, So
Speaker 6: load yourself down with absolutely as many as many crazy
Speaker 6: votes because we we can't wait. You know, begging is
Speaker 6: not a great thing in life, but begging is not
Speaker 6: a great thing in politics. That's why they call it
Speaker 6: begging when you're not coming from a position of strength.
Speaker 1: And in twenty six we'll see Susan Collins will be
Speaker 1: up again, and so well.
Speaker 4: Tom tell Us, Tom Tillis, and I believe is earnstuff
Speaker 4: in twenty twenty six.
Speaker 2: I think she is as such, maybe she is.
Speaker 6: In any case, I'm sure a lot of people are thinking,
Speaker 6: good luck, that's Iowa. You know, there was that whole
Speaker 6: kind of thing we got into a few weeks ago
Speaker 6: about that largely was discussed in terms of trans politics,
Speaker 6: but there was that article by Adam Gentilsen in you know,
Speaker 6: a Times column, and one thing he said in that piece,
Speaker 6: which I think was to me was the really important
Speaker 6: piece is super majority thinking is you need to have
Speaker 6: one part of your brain not just thinking how you
Speaker 6: get to fifty one percent, but how you get to
Speaker 6: fifty eight percent? Right, and very tall order winning a
Speaker 6: Senate seat in Iowa. But you are not going to
Speaker 6: get to supermajorities without thinking about tall orders and thinking
Speaker 6: in advance what you're going to do over the next
Speaker 6: two years in that state to make that a possibility, likelihood,
Speaker 6: but a possibility. That is the kind of advanced thinking
Speaker 6: you start to do. You know, there's that scene in
Speaker 6: Apollo thirteen that I think about a lot, when they
Speaker 6: have just found out that they have this wrecked spacecraft,
Speaker 6: what like three hundred thousand miles away halfway to the
Speaker 6: moon and they need to figure out how to fix it.
Speaker 6: It's a crazy situation, but that's where they are. And
Speaker 6: they dump out that box right where they have the
Speaker 6: tubes and a couple gaskets and stuff, and like, this
Speaker 6: is the stuff they have in the think, this is
Speaker 6: what we have to work with, and this is kind
Speaker 6: of where we are, and sort of like we need
Speaker 6: a box for Iowa, and we need a box for
Speaker 6: Main and we need a box for North Carolina. And
Speaker 6: you need people thinking of you know, because tariffs are
Speaker 6: not great for farmers.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 6: The point is this is a corollary of the fifty
Speaker 6: state strategy.
Speaker 4: What do you need to start doing now to make
Speaker 4: it possible you actually.
Speaker 6: Win back the Senate in twenty twenty six, because you know,
Speaker 6: you lose every game you don't show up for. But
Speaker 6: on the other point, with Joni Earnst, with that in mind,
Speaker 6: I want her to kind of like, you know, just
Speaker 6: chain herself to Donald Trump because I want as many
Speaker 6: as many terrifhotes to run some candidate's going to run
Speaker 6: against her in twenty twenty six.
Speaker 4: And like Susan.
Speaker 6: Collins, I don't want anybody begging Susan Collins because that's like,
Speaker 6: that's not dignified.
Speaker 4: We know who she is. So say, Susan, go for it.
Speaker 4: You're innerle outwater, Susan. We can't wait.
Speaker 1: The one thing that I would say is when we
Speaker 1: talk about protecting norms and institutions, for example, like Cash Patel, right,
Speaker 1: nobody needs to protect norms and institutions from Marco Rubio.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: You may not love him, but he's not going to
Speaker 1: turn the secretary of State.
Speaker 6: I mean, you don't even have to protect the weight
Speaker 6: machine from Marco Roup exactly.
Speaker 4: Come on.
Speaker 1: But I mean and Pam BONDI, you know, not the sharpest,
Speaker 1: but she certainly will be fine. But the question is
Speaker 1: like Cash Patel, will Cash Patel eroade norms?
Speaker 2: I mean it seems very likely.
Speaker 4: It's an absolute given.
Speaker 2: I mean he's promising to yeah, and.
Speaker 4: I mean, look, these things tend to be harder to do.
Speaker 4: Talk is cheap.
Speaker 6: This is one of the reasons I like Adamkinzinger's response
Speaker 6: to like, oh, we're going to jail the jan six committee,
Speaker 6: people like bring it on, dude, Like, okay, let's let's
Speaker 6: see bro because the problem we have I think in
Speaker 6: a lot of cases, and yes, things could get terrible,
Speaker 6: things could get terrible, and some things will get terrible,
Speaker 6: and it's possible that all things will get terrible. But
Speaker 6: terrible is often harder than it seems on paper, just
Speaker 6: as doing good things are a lot harder then it
Speaker 6: seems on paper. And what I think the opponents of
Speaker 6: Donald Trump often end up living within the space created
Speaker 6: by his threats, which basically means that he can, you know,
Speaker 6: occupy a lot of ground with talk. There is this
Speaker 6: you know, balance that people have to maintain between. On
Speaker 6: the one hand, it's not a matter of pie in
Speaker 6: the sky thinking or everything's going to be fine, but
Speaker 6: it's saying yeah, that's bad. I'm going to think it's
Speaker 6: real when I actually see you doing it, not when
Speaker 6: you're mouthing off to Kirsten Welker or something.
Speaker 2: You know, it's funny.
Speaker 1: I mean, I was just talking to Mark Ollias about
Speaker 1: this idea that it is like very important to stand
Speaker 1: up to bullies. I'm thinking of myself as like not
Speaker 1: very brave because I'm very cowardly.
Speaker 4: But that would get you there.
Speaker 2: It would do it.
Speaker 1: But you know, with my grandfather, like he went to jail,
Speaker 1: refused to name names, went to jail, there's something about
Speaker 1: having that as a precedent where you're kind of like, like,
Speaker 1: you know, obviously none of us want to go to jail,
Speaker 1: but like you kind of were like, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: you can do stuff like that. He wasn't so brave either.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I knew him. He was complicated.
Speaker 1: You kind of like you have to like suspend your
Speaker 1: disbelief almost to believe in yourself as a brave person.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean, look, there's or at least I do.
Speaker 6: For one thing, there's physical bravery and moral there's you know,
Speaker 6: physical courage and moral courage and not the same thing.
Speaker 6: And you know, one of the things they say is
Speaker 6: that you know kind of well it's to extreme. An example,
Speaker 6: everybody's probably capable of more than they think. And it's
Speaker 6: important to take things one step at a time, because
Speaker 6: what is absolutely true is that talk is cheap, and
Speaker 6: you cannot know anything about Donald Trump's, you know, kind
Speaker 6: of fifty years in the public eye without knowing that
Speaker 6: most of him is talk and most of what he
Speaker 6: gets is based on talk. And so especially with him,
Speaker 6: you want to say, I want to see what's going
Speaker 6: to be on the table besides talk, because I'm skeptical
Speaker 6: that you've got a lot more than talk. And that's
Speaker 6: not the same as saying everything's going to be fine,
Speaker 6: because he's got a lot of power now, he has
Speaker 6: people who will do things on his behalf. But it's
Speaker 6: never a good thing to be over odd. Even if
Speaker 6: you're going to go down in flames. It's good to
Speaker 6: not be over awed while it's happening.
Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 4: John, thank you, thank you, thank you, Molly.
Speaker 1: Noah Shackman is a contributor to Rolling Stone and a
Speaker 1: former editor in chief of Rolling Stone and The Daily Beast.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Fast Politics, Noah Shackman, Hi, we got
Speaker 1: to talk about our city. I'm going to pay you
Speaker 1: the picture here last week I'm on television with your
Speaker 1: friend and mine worst mayor of New York He says,
Speaker 1: we know who it is, right, and he even said
Speaker 1: that later on PIXE.
Speaker 2: Eleven, we know who it is, but we're not going
Speaker 2: to say because we don't want to give him the
Speaker 2: heads up. You think the mayor knew who it was?
Speaker 7: Sure seems to conflict with existing reporting that the person
Speaker 7: was discovered. This guy, Luigi Menjoni, was discovered at the
Speaker 7: last minute. Now it's possible the mayor knew something we didn't,
Speaker 7: or it's possible that you know the mayor's writing this
Speaker 7: reporting is wrong. However, the mayor sometimes I don't mean
Speaker 7: to shock you, Molly, I don't mean to shock you
Speaker 7: fast policy ticks nation, But the Mayor of New York City,
Speaker 7: Eric Adams, is not always the most truthful individual.
Speaker 2: What what.
Speaker 1: One of the things I love about our mayor is
Speaker 1: that he's both always late for everything and also says
Speaker 1: insane things like shees is like Heroin.
Speaker 7: He said that he also counseled parents to look for
Speaker 7: cocaine in their children's Teddy Bears and backpacks. That video
Speaker 7: is amazing, Yeah, it's incredible. He's also talked about the
Speaker 7: magic crystals underneath the New York City. He's quite a guy.
Speaker 2: Explain to us what is happening right now in New
Speaker 2: York City.
Speaker 1: They've caught Luigi, probably through no fault of their own.
Speaker 1: I want you to give us, like the mayor is
Speaker 1: still under federal indictment, where do his legal troubles find him?
Speaker 2: Right now?
Speaker 7: They did find this shooting suspect, and I think there
Speaker 7: was a fair amount of good police work done here.
Speaker 7: I mean, look, they had to scrub through hours and
Speaker 7: hours and thousands of hours of footage to get decent
Speaker 7: pictures of the guy, and those decent pictures wound up
Speaker 7: shogging the memory of this McDonald's guy in Altoona, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 7: and that's how he was caught. So I mean, I
Speaker 7: wouldn't say, like, you know, look, the NYPD threw everything
Speaker 7: at it. Not all of it worked. The majority of
Speaker 7: it didn't work, but some of it did, and it
Speaker 7: eventually led to this guy getting caught. Look, I thought
Speaker 7: once it had come out that this guy had left
Speaker 7: New York and was in the wind, I figured he
Speaker 7: was gone forever. So I mean, I guess I'm a
Speaker 7: little pleasantly surprised that he was caught. That's my two
Speaker 7: cents about police work. But look, and now, in terms
Speaker 7: of the mayor, who himself is the target of not one,
Speaker 7: not two, not three, not four, not five, but six
Speaker 7: separate investigations, I should say, the mayor and his inner circle,
Speaker 7: five of them federal that we know of, and one
Speaker 7: local that we know of. You know, he is still
Speaker 7: very much an object of interest to a lot of investigators,
Speaker 7: both for his financial dealings in his various campaigns, his
Speaker 7: relationships to members of or emissaries of various foreign governments,
Speaker 7: and also because it seems like a lot of his
Speaker 7: top deputies engaged in some behavior that sure seems like
Speaker 7: they may have been on the take. So you know,
Speaker 7: he's still got a significant amount of legal exposure himself.
Speaker 1: Right, But he is not resigning. In fact, he seems
Speaker 1: as if he is just going to malign our justice
Speaker 1: system instead of resigning.
Speaker 2: So walk me through what happens next.
Speaker 7: Right, Well, so first, just a little bit of context
Speaker 7: for those listeners west of the Hudson River. The mayor
Speaker 7: when he was indicted basically for illegal campaign donations for
Speaker 7: some bribery, you know, like you do, he said, that
Speaker 7: it was all retaliation for him not going along with
Speaker 7: the Biden administration's immigration plan.
Speaker 1: I mean that doesn't even mean anything, right, because what
Speaker 1: was the Biden administration's deportation plan?
Speaker 7: Right? Right?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 7: No, I mean he was basically he was an early
Speaker 7: critic of Biden on immigration, and his implication was that
Speaker 7: this was somehow retaliation. There's no evidence, by the way
Speaker 7: to back that up his theory of the case. Shall
Speaker 7: we say, he doubled down on it when Hunter Biden
Speaker 7: received a pardon, and he said, see, everybody now agrees
Speaker 7: that the Biden Justice Department is politicized and therefore is
Speaker 7: politicized against me, and therefore if Hunter Biden got a parton,
Speaker 7: so should I. That's what he's been saying. It has
Speaker 7: not been lost on Politico's left and right that a
Speaker 7: lot of his rhetoric seems to echo more and more
Speaker 7: the rhetoric of our incoming president, mister Trump, and by
Speaker 7: all observers seem to think that the mayor is angling
Speaker 7: for a pardon. The people who think that he is
Speaker 7: angling for a pardon include Donald J. Trump himself, our friend,
Speaker 7: friend of the pods. When SUP saying, and I did
Speaker 7: a story last week for Rolling Stone about how Trump
Speaker 7: and the members of his inner circle have been laughing
Speaker 7: about how hard a quote unquote thirsty. Eric Adams is
Speaker 7: campaigning for a pardon, and at one point suggested that
Speaker 7: perhaps the mayor would start wearing a Maga hat to
Speaker 7: his press conferences. So far, that has not happened.
Speaker 2: Amazing. Eventually he's going to go to corn, right.
Speaker 7: I don't think it's clear what's going to happen yet.
Speaker 7: He's got a trial scheduled for April twenty first. Currently,
Speaker 7: his lawyer, Alex Spiro, who was Elon Musk's lawyer. His
Speaker 7: lawyer wants to actually move the trial date up to
Speaker 7: the first of April or thereabouts. And then what's going
Speaker 7: to happen with his other investigations I think is very unclear,
Speaker 7: very very unclear. Trump has named a new attorney for
Speaker 7: the Southern District of New York who's actually, by Trump standards,
Speaker 7: are relatively straight shooting, and so it's entirely possible the
Speaker 7: cases go on. It's entirely possible that this one case
Speaker 7: goes on, but that all the other investigations kind of
Speaker 7: go away. It's really unclear at this moment. Eric Adams
Speaker 7: is like top person is a woman named Ingrid. Ingrid
Speaker 7: Marton herself has been the target of federal investigators, and
Speaker 7: after she had her phone seized in the fall, she
Speaker 7: went on the radio call in show of her defense attorney,
Speaker 7: as one does, as one does, and she said on
Speaker 7: that show that while they may have done some crime,
Speaker 7: it wasn't merely to the scale that should be investigated.
Speaker 2: I love that.
Speaker 7: So her defense was like, we only crimed a little.
Speaker 2: I mean, who among us?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 7: Go on that defense attorney is now rumored to be
Speaker 7: named as the US Attorney for the Eastern District of
Speaker 7: New York for Brooklyn. So good times.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just like politically for a minute, the mayor is
Speaker 1: running for reelection.
Speaker 7: Next year, correct, as a Democrat.
Speaker 1: So far he's going to have this trial. He will
Speaker 1: either get convicted or get a pardon. Do you think
Speaker 1: he's going.
Speaker 2: To run again?
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, yeah, he's definitely.
Speaker 2: Oh interesting.
Speaker 7: I think there's a fair chance that even if he
Speaker 7: loses the Democratic primary, which is pretty early, I think
Speaker 7: it's in June. Yeah, I think there's some chance he
Speaker 7: runs as an independent.
Speaker 1: What do you think happens here? Like, does the trial happen?
Speaker 1: Sooner rather than later. Sketch out what you think the
Speaker 1: timetable looks like, and make as many guesses as you want,
Speaker 1: because if you're wrong, I promised to not remind you
Speaker 1: about it one hundred times.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Look, at the risk of being a bad pundit, I
Speaker 7: don't want to predict too much, but I will say that,
Speaker 7: like the trial is set for late April, it could
Speaker 7: move up to early April. Then there's a primary not
Speaker 7: that long afterwards in June. But here's the thing. There's
Speaker 7: a bunch of people running in that primary, which is
Speaker 7: very unusual for New York to have a sitting mayor
Speaker 7: challenge like this. But a lot of them have very
Speaker 7: similar politics. They're all to the left of them, and
Speaker 7: a lot of them, I would say, are absolute people
Speaker 7: you would want to hang out with, have a beer with.
Speaker 7: But a lot of them are relatively inexperienced, unknown right,
Speaker 7: and relatively unknown outside of their core districts. So it
Speaker 7: is entirely possible that Adams could win a Democratic primary. However,
Speaker 7: there is a couple of other heavyweight candidates that seem
Speaker 7: to be looming in the shadows, the heaviest of which
Speaker 7: is former governor of New York.
Speaker 1: Andrew Cuomoll, Yes has an independent expenditures fund already going right,
Speaker 1: I think so, yes, But.
Speaker 7: Put this right, him raising money would not be an issue.
Speaker 7: It would not be an issue. I would also note
Speaker 7: that he recently appointed himself or got appointed to be
Speaker 7: somehow like some lawyer representing Benjamin Nette and Yahoo in
Speaker 7: some kind of international campaign. And I know that he
Speaker 7: has told associates that quote, the Blacks and the Jews
Speaker 7: will be behind him if he rumps as a member
Speaker 7: of one of those two groups. I have a big
Speaker 7: old question mark over my head about But Quamo still
Speaker 7: is a lot of people have a lot of affection
Speaker 7: for him. Some people think that he was drummed out
Speaker 7: of office unfairly. Some people think that his way handled himself
Speaker 7: during COVID, with what he's been accused of covering up
Speaker 7: deaths and many many deaths and nursing homes, wasn't that bad.
Speaker 7: And the leadership and stood up to Trump during that time.
Speaker 7: And you know, he will have ready access to capital,
Speaker 7: both financial and political, and so he would be really,
Speaker 7: really formidable. And so we could wind up in New
Speaker 7: York with something like the political equivalent of the Iran
Speaker 7: Iraq war with Eric Adams and Andrew Cuomo running against
Speaker 7: one another.
Speaker 2: So hard to pick aside.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it does seem as if there's a likely scenario,
Speaker 1: and in some way, and I'd love you to talk
Speaker 1: about this, it feels like the reelection of Donald Trump
Speaker 1: has somehow made this scenario are likely.
Speaker 7: Eric Adams would certainly say that's the case. And Eric
Speaker 7: Adams would, I think, note that there are large parts
Speaker 7: of the black and Hispanic communities of New York that
Speaker 7: are much less culturally liberal than white Democrats of New York,
Speaker 7: and that those people are going to support him, and
Speaker 7: that he is constantly railing on progressives and the left.
Speaker 7: He is trying to paint himself as somebody who can
Speaker 7: reach out to that, you know, thirty percent or so
Speaker 7: of New Yorkers who voted for Donald Trump. I just
Speaker 7: need to note that like this is still a overwhelmingly democratic,
Speaker 7: overwhelmingly left leaning town. Really, what he's hoping for is
Speaker 7: to hold on to a base of support in a
Speaker 7: very contested primary that has many many contenders.
Speaker 1: Let's talk for a minute about how when we look
Speaker 1: at this kind of like the now next year, if
Speaker 1: Trump two point zero is at all like Trump one
Speaker 1: point zero.
Speaker 2: There's going to be a lot of him fighting with governors. Already,
Speaker 2: a lot.
Speaker 1: Of ambitious governors have taken this as sort of like
Speaker 1: this is an opportunity to rise the public stage. Gavin,
Speaker 1: of course, is having meetings about how to push back
Speaker 1: against use federalism to protect its citizens of California. Talk
Speaker 1: to me about Kathy Hokel and how you see this
Speaker 1: playing there right?
Speaker 7: I would say the governor of New York, Kathy Okle,
Speaker 7: who's from Buffalo's from western New York, not from New
Speaker 7: York City, hasn't shown nearly the same appetite as some
Speaker 7: other governors to try to fight Trump or to take
Speaker 7: him on. Several progressive lawmakers here had asked for a
Speaker 7: special session of the state legislature to try to enact
Speaker 7: some measures to keep trump Ism at day. That didn't happen,
Speaker 7: as it is happening in some other states. I'd also say,
Speaker 7: perhaps more importantly, is that Eric Adams is showing no
Speaker 7: inclination to want to fight Trump. If anything, he is
Speaker 7: looking for ways to seek out common ground with Trump,
Speaker 7: especially on the migrant and immigration issue, and I believe
Speaker 7: he's set to meet with Trump's incoming borders or that
Speaker 7: guy home and on Thursday. And so he has shown
Speaker 7: a real willingness to want to work with Trump on this,
Speaker 7: where interestingly, some members of his own administration have been like,
Speaker 7: absolutely not, We're not going to cooperate. But Adams himself
Speaker 7: has shown himself to be really open to it. That
Speaker 7: could have a huge impact on tens, if not hundreds
Speaker 7: of thousands of New Yorkers lives. Look remember three million
Speaker 7: New Yorkers were born abroad, and of that three million,
Speaker 7: one million or not US citizens. So one out of
Speaker 7: every eight is not a US citizen.
Speaker 2: That is wild.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's true. It's I think the number is something
Speaker 7: like forty five percent or more of New Yorkers. English
Speaker 7: is not the first language spoken at home. Wow, We're
Speaker 7: not only a nation of immigrants, Molly where city of immigrants.
Speaker 7: And I'm not saying in the distant past, you know,
Speaker 7: when our relatives moved to Brooklyn to the Lower East Side,
Speaker 7: but you know it's happening right now. And I was
Speaker 7: talking to one state lawmaker in Queens and she was
Speaker 7: talking about how her you know a lot of her
Speaker 7: constituents are afraid to even meet her in her district
Speaker 7: office already for fear of ice coming to get them.
Speaker 7: And Trump isn't even in office yet. They're already scared.
Speaker 7: They're already staying at home. And I have grave concerns that,
Speaker 7: like the fear and the isolation is only going to
Speaker 7: increase come January twenty.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that sounds like a perfect storm. Do you think
Speaker 1: there's anyone who can protect like? So, the mayor is
Speaker 1: in the tank for Trump, the governor is, she's quite cowardly.
Speaker 2: So is there anyone who can protect this people of
Speaker 2: the city? I mean, will Tis James do it?
Speaker 7: I'm not as familiar with the mechanics of state and
Speaker 7: city government in that way, but I will say that, like,
Speaker 7: look in general, right, this is a city that has
Speaker 7: valued immigrants for you know, hundreds of years literally, and
Speaker 7: I think the prospect of breaking up families and mass
Speaker 7: is going to be much much more challenging than the
Speaker 7: Trump is portray it as. And honestly, I'm not one
Speaker 7: hundred percent sure that they're not just involved in some
Speaker 7: giant scare campaign and that they're trying to get people
Speaker 7: to you know, like to use the old Mitt Romney
Speaker 7: term self deport exactly what they're going to do, I
Speaker 7: think is very unclear. I mean, obviously there'll be some
Speaker 7: workplace raids and stuff like that after that. I think
Speaker 7: it's very unclear. And look, it's very unclear whether in
Speaker 7: New York's cops will cooperate. You know, our new police
Speaker 7: commissioner seems like a very rational person who's going to
Speaker 7: stick to the letter of the law, which is, you know, basically.
Speaker 2: Not just a good t ish yes.
Speaker 7: Yeah, And even the mayor has some of his most
Speaker 7: sendiary comments, like when he said that the Constitution was
Speaker 7: for Americans only.
Speaker 2: My favorite love that guy, I want to mess Yeah.
Speaker 7: Yeah, he walked that back a couple of days later.
Speaker 7: So I think there's gonna be a lot of political
Speaker 7: pressure for him to you know, stick to the letter
Speaker 7: of the law and not to assist in some mass deportation.
Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 5: Noah, Yeah, no problem, no moment, Jessy Canon, So Molly,
Speaker 5: you know when we have moments of fuckery now, I
Speaker 5: almost will say that at least for a temporary time,
Speaker 5: for as short lived as it may be.
Speaker 3: I think we're gonna have to have doze editions because
Speaker 3: we've talked in our opening segument about shit shows and
Speaker 3: collisions of egos and things that are going to go.
Speaker 3: Well this fuckery right here, My god, what are you seeing?
Speaker 1: Yeah, by the way, like, never in our lifetime have
Speaker 1: we known someone who has made so many bad jokes.
Speaker 1: But because no one's ever told that his jokes are bad,
Speaker 1: because he's the richest man in the world, he believes his.
Speaker 2: Jokes are good.
Speaker 1: Like, there's a real case here for keeping honest people
Speaker 1: around you who are like, oh, that joke, isn't that funny?
Speaker 2: Champ.
Speaker 1: So, Donald Trump has these two Vivik and Elon, and
Speaker 1: they basically so Will Trump knows that cutting social security
Speaker 1: of medicare, those are like the third rail of American politics.
Speaker 1: You will be very unsurprised to find out that the
Speaker 1: two billionaires, who are neither elected nor in the federal government.
Speaker 2: They want to do.
Speaker 1: They are very excited to target and cut social security
Speaker 1: of medicare. Look, this is wildly unpopular. They're going to
Speaker 1: have real trouble doing this, and we'll see, but they
Speaker 1: are signaling that they are super interested in trying. We'll
Speaker 1: see how the optics of the richest person in the world.
Speaker 1: You know, just one other thing, you know, there's been
Speaker 1: this hell Care shooter, Luigi who shot the CEO of
Speaker 1: United Healthcare, and well, all of us agree that nobody
Speaker 1: should have.
Speaker 2: You know, killing people is bad. I think that's fair
Speaker 2: to say.
Speaker 3: Other people who booed Jon Stewart on his show what
Speaker 3: he said that the other night don't agree.
Speaker 1: But the point here is that there is a lot
Speaker 1: of anger around health insurance and all the other ways
Speaker 1: that the American people are getting fucked. And you know,
Speaker 1: they voted for Trump because they thought Trump would make
Speaker 1: things cheaper, because I guess they didn't remember the last
Speaker 1: time he was president. But the point here is that
Speaker 1: you got a really angry group of people. The American
Speaker 1: people are fucking pissed. And I think that having the
Speaker 1: richest person in the world take away what little the
Speaker 1: government gives them, which they have paid into the system
Speaker 1: so they are actually entitled to it. I think that's
Speaker 1: going to be real unpopular. So we can tune back
Speaker 1: in for that.
Speaker 3: I think if people are worried about how much people
Speaker 3: hate rich people right now, I think that that's only
Speaker 3: going to encourage it more.
Speaker 2: Yeah, me too.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
Speaker 1: every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear the best
Speaker 1: minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If
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Speaker 1: and keep the conversation going.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.