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 five year old Liam Ramos and
Speaker 1: his father have been released from an ice detention center.
Speaker 2: We have such a great show for you today.
Speaker 1: The Lincoln Project's owner Rick Wilson joins us to discuss.
Speaker 2: The fallout of the Epstein.
Speaker 1: Files and what Democrats winning in deep red Texas means.
Speaker 2: For their mid term chances.
Speaker 1: Then we'll talk to a reporter, Christopher Matteas about his
Speaker 1: new book, To Catch a Fascist, the fight to expose
Speaker 1: the radical right.
Speaker 2: But first the.
Speaker 3: News Smiley Keem Jeffries has told Mike Johnson that he
Speaker 3: should not count on DEM's votes to end the government
Speaker 3: partial shutdown.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so Democrats in leadership get a lot of static
Speaker 1: and some of it is very much deserved. But I
Speaker 1: do think they are deeply trying to tow the line
Speaker 1: on all of this. And let me just talk about
Speaker 1: what's happening right now. The Senate basically set it up
Speaker 1: so that the government would shut down over the weekend
Speaker 1: but reopen starting on Monday.
Speaker 2: And they did this.
Speaker 1: They passed all of the minibus bills and then they
Speaker 1: just did a two week.
Speaker 2: Patch on the homeland security.
Speaker 1: Why did they do this because most people are pretty
Speaker 1: horrified by what ICE is doing and they want Democrats
Speaker 1: to get something on these, you know, before they write
Speaker 1: a blank.
Speaker 2: Check for billions of dollars. What are the things people want?
Speaker 1: Well, a lot of state houses and a lot of
Speaker 1: state legislators are trying to change the rules so that
Speaker 1: if you are abducted by ICE, you can sue them
Speaker 1: if they do something to you. They're trying to sort
Speaker 1: of change the immunity the way the immunity looks. Look,
Speaker 1: this administration likes to lie and say that these border
Speaker 1: patrol agents or ICE has absolute immunity.
Speaker 2: They do not.
Speaker 1: They have forms of immunity, but they do not have
Speaker 1: absolute immunity. And so, in fact, there is some way
Speaker 1: to be made whole.
Speaker 2: By some of this.
Speaker 1: But the idea here is to make it so that
Speaker 1: there's more civil protect so you can sue these people
Speaker 1: if they bash up your car, so you have some
Speaker 1: you know, when you're marched out of your house in
Speaker 1: your bathrobe, when your ninety year old father is marched
Speaker 1: out of the house in his bathrobe, that you can
Speaker 1: in fact sue the government. Part of what people want, though,
Speaker 1: really is they want them to stop being masks. They
Speaker 1: want accountability, they want you know, checks and balances. We'll
Speaker 1: see if they can get it. This is a two
Speaker 1: week funding patch. But I think what is important here,
Speaker 1: what he Keem is saying is that Mike Johnson may
Speaker 1: not get those Democratic votes, and if he doesn't get
Speaker 1: those Democratic votes, he can't end the shutdown.
Speaker 2: This is good.
Speaker 1: What we need democrats in power to do is hold
Speaker 1: Republicans accountable. Historically you haven't been able to do that
Speaker 1: when you don't control the House. But because the margins
Speaker 1: are so small and because Mike Johnson is so incompetent,
Speaker 1: we've really seen Democrats be able to do a lot
Speaker 1: more than you would think.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you don't have a Senator like John Fetterman
Speaker 3: there to say that ice are good boys who deserve
Speaker 3: a pat of the head.
Speaker 4: So it could happen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean you have Democrats who vote for shitty crap,
Speaker 1: I mean shared golden Yeah.
Speaker 3: We saw Congressman Tom Swazi face the wrath of his
Speaker 3: constituents with it this week, and.
Speaker 2: Man, let's see what happens.
Speaker 3: So Mammy, Usually if I heard the saying bye Chic.
Speaker 3: I'd think I was watching Austin Powers or something, but
Speaker 3: instead we're in another nightmare of Trump conflicts of interest,
Speaker 3: where the whole economy is being rigged for him to grift.
Speaker 3: This story for the Wall Street Journal is fucking bananas.
Speaker 1: I think it's important to just take a minute here.
Speaker 1: The Wall Street Journal has done some incredible reporting.
Speaker 4: I have to bow down as a hater.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, and you're a hater, and I am
Speaker 1: very conflicted about their ed page. But the reporting they've
Speaker 1: done has been great, and so kudos to them. Remember,
Speaker 1: reporting is expensive. You need lawyers, you need fact checkers.
Speaker 1: It's much harder than just like a substack. That's your opinion,
Speaker 1: which is not to say sebstack isn't great. So here's
Speaker 1: the deal. Five hundred million dollar investment for forty nine
Speaker 1: percent of world liberty came before the United Arab Emirates
Speaker 1: one access to the tightly guarded American AI chips. So
Speaker 1: here's the deal. There's a lot of controversy about selling
Speaker 1: these advanced AI chips to countries like China, just selling
Speaker 1: them internationally. Then this spy chic not chic that he
Speaker 1: might be Also she bought half of a tightly a
Speaker 1: very trumpy owned company which at least thirty one million
Speaker 1: dollars of that was slated to flow into entities affiliated
Speaker 1: with the family of Steve Woodcoff. You'll remember Steve Woodcoff
Speaker 1: as being a random rich guy who's friends with Trump,
Speaker 1: who also is negotiating peace in the Middle East as
Speaker 1: one does. This is just like exactly the kind of
Speaker 1: shit that we see. And it's a catocracy, right. This
Speaker 1: is a president who is unchecked, who is unmoored, and
Speaker 1: who has basically treated the presidency like piggy bank, like
Speaker 1: just trying to make as much money as humanly possible.
Speaker 2: And that's what we're seeing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and truly this really as you go through this report,
Speaker 3: it just gets uglier, all the implications speaking of very
Speaker 3: ugly firing chemical munitions at peaceful protesters, including children, which
Speaker 3: I did in Portland this weekend.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so again, these guys are out of control, and
Speaker 1: like they think this is good because Trumpers like it.
Speaker 1: They think this is good because they are so online
Speaker 1: that a lot of Steven Miller's people, you know, they're
Speaker 1: in the echo chamber, just like Biden people would always
Speaker 1: say Biden was in the echo chamber.
Speaker 2: That's the same thing. So you got Steven Miller goes on.
Speaker 1: Twitter like, yeah, it's cool the gas kids, I mean,
Speaker 1: to your gas and then we have situations like this.
Speaker 1: The problem for Republicans is like Indies hate this crowd.
Speaker 1: Indie voters, the people you need to win elections, don't
Speaker 1: like to see their democracy, to see the government gasing children.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine why they don't like it. It's a mystery.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and particularly too, no one wants this in their city. Like,
Speaker 3: no one wants to see people who were just staging
Speaker 3: as sit in get chemicals. It's strange city budgets because
Speaker 3: we have to treat people for these things, like it's crazy,
Speaker 3: Like our tax dollars going to this is ridiculous.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, first of all, it's a couple things. One
Speaker 1: it's bad for them politically. Two it's expensive. Three it's
Speaker 1: dangerous for It's not what we do in this country.
Speaker 1: Like the First Amendment is the first one. Our freedom
Speaker 1: of speech, our freedom of protest. It's the first cause
Speaker 1: of the First Amendment. I mean, this is not even
Speaker 1: like we're talking about some amendment that was added, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is number one. This was the first
Speaker 1: thing they said was the right to protest. And that's
Speaker 1: because these people came from a mad king. They had
Speaker 1: lived under a mad British king. The founders, you know,
Speaker 1: they wanted to have accountability. They wanted a democracy where
Speaker 1: people could protest things they didn't like, like the Tea Party.
Speaker 1: And so the fact that this administration is so obsessed
Speaker 1: with hurting protesters, I think is like one of the many,
Speaker 1: many red flags.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So, speaking of horrible implications of Republican policy, the ACDA
Speaker 3: subsidies are set to expire, and right as that happens,
Speaker 3: there's an economic survey where voters site health costs as
Speaker 3: the top economic worry for them.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So look, well, Donald Trump is busy building a
Speaker 1: giant arch, redoing the east wing right so that he
Speaker 1: can have a big, beautiful ballroom that can fit nine
Speaker 1: nine nine, one hundred people. God knows why he wants
Speaker 1: that number.
Speaker 4: It's not first friend Herman kan to remember him?
Speaker 1: Oh the nine nine nine for Herman Kane. He killed
Speaker 1: Herman Kin?
Speaker 2: Did hermon Caan di have COVID?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 4: Yeah? At a Trump probay, Yeah.
Speaker 1: I remember that from season one two out of three
Speaker 1: American survey at sixty six percent, or worry about paying
Speaker 1: for healthcare more than other household necessities which have also
Speaker 1: grown up utilities, food and groceries, housing and rent, gasoline,
Speaker 1: and transportation. But they can also add to their list
Speaker 1: of worry is getting deported to a country they did
Speaker 1: not come from, even if they're United States citizen. Look,
Speaker 1: it's thirty billion dollars to pay to keep these subsidies
Speaker 1: from expiring. Donald Trump is suing the Irs for ten
Speaker 1: billion dollars. So if he can just do that three times,
Speaker 1: he could donate the money to paying for ACA subsidies.
Speaker 2: Something to do.
Speaker 1: Rick Wilson is the founder of the Lincoln Project. In
Speaker 1: the host of the Enemy's List, Rick Wilson, Well.
Speaker 5: Junk fast, how are you this fine day?
Speaker 6: Oh?
Speaker 2: I'm just living the dream.
Speaker 5: It is a dream, isn't it.
Speaker 1: So Ebstein files they can only ever released them on
Speaker 1: a Friday.
Speaker 6: Of course, it's the news dump of all news dumps,
Speaker 6: three million pages. And folks, I mean we've already talked through.
Speaker 6: Everybody's already talked through many of the revelations. There will
Speaker 6: be many more.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about what's happened now we have Elon Musk
Speaker 1: tweeting through it.
Speaker 2: So we emails that said things like are you going
Speaker 2: to have a party? We had it.
Speaker 1: The most embarrassing email was Galaine trying to tell Elon
Speaker 1: that they weren't at the place anymore, so he shouldn't
Speaker 1: bother comes.
Speaker 6: Somebody said, oh, I bet they turned off the lights
Speaker 6: when his helicopter flew by, right.
Speaker 1: I mean it did feel like but he and he
Speaker 1: and it was like an absolute Everything he had said
Speaker 1: about Epstein was a lie, just like it.
Speaker 6: Looked, just like Howard Nutlck and all these other people,
Speaker 6: all these thirsty bastards who now are like Jeffrey who
Speaker 6: what No. Their emails are like Geezer, may I come
Speaker 6: to your party? May I watch the nude women? May
Speaker 6: I have another girl?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 6: I mean I've been thinking about this a lot. I
Speaker 6: wrote about it over the weekend. This guy was evil,
Speaker 6: and this Department of Justice came out a few months
Speaker 6: ago and said there's nothing there no victims in the
Speaker 6: Epstein files. Pam Bondi said those words, there are no
Speaker 6: victims in the in the Epstein files.
Speaker 5: Oh really?
Speaker 2: He said that Epstein had not trapped to anyone, but himself.
Speaker 6: Yes, that is correct, and that was a gigantic lie.
Speaker 6: Todd Blanch said something on Friday that I thought was
Speaker 6: the most disturbing question. These images include death and sexual abuse.
Speaker 1: So there are three million more files.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that this was bad.
Speaker 6: If this was bad, it'll be the weekend he nukes
Speaker 6: Greenland or something that they released the next three million,
Speaker 6: because the the recursive irony of this is they release
Speaker 6: Epstein foul material to take away the fact that they're
Speaker 6: murdering Americans in this street and what's next? How bad
Speaker 6: does it get? Well, look, let me talk about consequences
Speaker 6: though for a minute, because I think, yeah, I think
Speaker 6: we've we've seen a.
Speaker 1: Very I just want to pause for one second just
Speaker 1: to go back to that. So Todd Blanche was on
Speaker 1: ABC today telling George Stefanoppos the review is over, that
Speaker 1: they're not releasing anymore because they have death and violence
Speaker 1: in them.
Speaker 6: Three million files with death and violence? Are you fucking
Speaker 6: kidding me? In my mind see a serial killer as
Speaker 6: well as a fucking child trafficker. I mean, it's it's outrageous.
Speaker 1: Like in a point a special Master do hearings like
Speaker 1: explain the emails which they should have done with this
Speaker 1: stuff too.
Speaker 6: Go on what has happened here as ironically and bizarrely
Speaker 6: proven that QAnon was right. The world has a power
Speaker 6: elite who are who are degenerate. Some of them are pedophiles.
Speaker 6: They abuse women, they abuse people, they abuse children. But
Speaker 6: those degenerate elites turned out to a lot of being
Speaker 6: the Trump administration.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot.
Speaker 6: We're friends of Trump. You see why that You can
Speaker 6: now see why. And I think even the MAGA audience
Speaker 6: and there's a reason they've been kind of muted until
Speaker 6: late Sunday when they started to get their act together
Speaker 6: on the pushback, because the indefensible nature of this is
Speaker 6: something they've been called to defend now for years. They've
Speaker 6: built a mythology and a legacy around around this idea
Speaker 6: that we're gonna these files are gonna be chock full
Speaker 6: of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and George Soros sacrificing.
Speaker 6: And it turns out it's Jeffrey Epstein and this incredible
Speaker 6: circle of powerful people who have faced no accountability for this,
Speaker 6: face no judgment for this, who aren't even shamed, right
Speaker 6: Musk Elon Musk, Leon Black, all these Howard Luttene. Kevin
Speaker 6: worsh the new head of the FED. Turns out he's
Speaker 6: in bed with Jeff Well, he's.
Speaker 2: At he's at somebody's house in St.
Speaker 5: Bar's.
Speaker 2: I mean, and you've gotten the reason.
Speaker 1: Can I just say one thing about this One of
Speaker 1: the things that I think is unconscionable about how this
Speaker 1: stuff was released is that it has totally unproven allegations
Speaker 1: next to real emails of Elon and Epstein. So it
Speaker 1: creates a world where you almost question things which you
Speaker 1: know are legit can take correct.
Speaker 6: I think some of the most disturbing stuff in here
Speaker 6: is about Steve Bannon. You we have a multi hour
Speaker 6: Steve Bannon media training Jeffrey Epstein's so Jeffreys, you can
Speaker 6: come back into society in some way. We have cozy
Speaker 6: emails of Bannon and Epstein talking about how they're going
Speaker 6: to use all these right wing groups that are funded
Speaker 6: by Russia, which we now know from their contemporaries emails
Speaker 6: across Europe to impose this nationalist populism. We've got Epstein
Speaker 6: writing that he's going to help putin establish a new
Speaker 6: world economic order that is definitionally by the way of
Speaker 6: folks pro Putin and not pro American. You've got the
Speaker 6: deep involvement of the Russians in Epstein's operations. You've got
Speaker 6: Ahood Barak, the Israeli for former Prime Minister Ahod Barock,
Speaker 6: former Israeli intelligence official. This whole thing shows us that
Speaker 6: this world that they projected of power elites out there
Speaker 6: with no accountability for abuse.
Speaker 5: It's true.
Speaker 1: What makes me so upset about this whole job is
Speaker 1: that it was meant to be. The administration felt they
Speaker 1: had to do it, and they hoped that there was
Speaker 1: enough part to send stuff to make it a partisan
Speaker 1: food fight, because the truth is a lot of these
Speaker 1: people were Democrats originally. I mean, Lutnik invites Epstein to
Speaker 1: a fundraiser for Hillary. Correct, this is not a partisan exercise,
Speaker 1: and I think that's.
Speaker 6: Most of their credit. The Democrats have been like, oh,
Speaker 6: Bill Clinton's done there, well, he should face the face
Speaker 6: the music. Plaskin, Kathy, Kathy Rumler. You know, I think
Speaker 6: some of the most bizarre stuff that we're seeing here
Speaker 6: is this network of people in this loose ban in orbit.
Speaker 6: But this nationalist, populist, woke, rejectionist movement, whatever you want
Speaker 6: to call it. I don't have a name for it.
Speaker 6: Right now, You've got Nelly Bowles, who is Barry Weiss's
Speaker 6: wife because Epstein got.
Speaker 5: I mean she interviewing Barry Weiss just hired.
Speaker 2: Right, that's worse for you, doctor Peter, who.
Speaker 6: Has over a thousand emails back and forth with Epstein,
Speaker 6: including one that was very disturbing that something like like
Speaker 6: you know, being your friend, but I can't tell a
Speaker 6: soul about the details.
Speaker 5: Of your life, right, all right?
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I mean that's the kind of thing that
Speaker 1: should theoretically ruin someone's career. And I think this is
Speaker 1: going to be the real question of Epstein is does
Speaker 1: this stuff matter? Do these people get the kind of
Speaker 1: pass that Donald Trump has gone?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 6: I think legally a lot of this would have to
Speaker 6: come from the DOJ at this point, and it's not
Speaker 6: coming from this DOJ.
Speaker 1: But it's certainly clear that like CBS should not have
Speaker 1: a person working for them who is a doctor who
Speaker 1: has a thousand emails with Jeffrey Epstein.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 6: Look, the accountability here can come in a couple of forms,
Speaker 6: and say more legal accountability is one thing that's the
Speaker 6: most difficult, because this DOJ will not do it. We
Speaker 6: know why they've been holding this back because these are people.
Speaker 5: That Trump likes. That is orbit.
Speaker 6: The second layer is financial and business level accountability. Do
Speaker 6: not do business with Leon Black. If your company is
Speaker 6: working with Leon Black, you should not be doing that.
Speaker 6: And then that goes for a lot of these other
Speaker 6: people too. Cultural and social accountability is the third, and
Speaker 6: that's like, you know why Seve Bannon is popular still,
Speaker 6: It's because he's a great source for a million mainstream reporters.
Speaker 6: He talks, He talks inside Baseball with a million mainstream
Speaker 6: reporters every week. Is this the guy you really want
Speaker 6: to trust? A guy who was who had formed an
Speaker 6: alliance and was in business with Jeffrey Epstein. As a culture,
Speaker 6: we try to hold people accountable with shame, but shame
Speaker 6: doesn't work with everybody. You've got to cost them money.
Speaker 6: You know, you got to cost them, these people money,
Speaker 6: You got to cut them off. I mean, I think
Speaker 6: the war Room is on Serious XM or whatever podcasting
Speaker 6: network is carrying Steve Bannon.
Speaker 5: Are you kidding me?
Speaker 6: You're okay with this guy who was a business partner
Speaker 6: and a buddy and strategizing with a with a known
Speaker 6: pedophile and sex trafficker after he was already convicted of
Speaker 6: being a known pedophile and sex trafficker.
Speaker 5: Come on, yeh yeah.
Speaker 2: I think that's a really good point.
Speaker 1: And that's what we need to start talking about, is
Speaker 1: what does accountability look like and what you know? Trump
Speaker 1: got away with it, but most Republicans don't. Right, Matt
Speaker 1: Gates no longer in office, yep.
Speaker 6: And there's an interesting thing. It's like the transitive nature
Speaker 6: of Republicans believing, Okay, if you knew, if you knew
Speaker 6: a pedophile, you therefore are a pedophile. If Hillary Clinton
Speaker 6: knew George Soros and George Soros knew Jeffrey Epstein, therefore
Speaker 6: they are all in the same mix. But Trump gets
Speaker 6: an exception. A lot of these other people don't. A
Speaker 6: lot of Republicans live a life that is very fake,
Speaker 6: very closeted. There are a lot of married Republican members
Speaker 6: of Congress who are gay as the day is long,
Speaker 6: and a lot of same thing in the influencer space,
Speaker 6: in the podcasting space. Of these right wing macho manly men,
Speaker 6: they have never been held to account for lying to
Speaker 6: their people about who they are. I think this is
Speaker 6: in a weird way, so pervasive. It's so widespread, it's
Speaker 6: so disgustingly distributed across our culture of the people. He
Speaker 6: drew into this terrible orbit, you know. And it's like,
Speaker 6: not everybody who emailed with Jeffrey Epstein was a pedophile,
Speaker 6: but in these emails that have been released, they all
Speaker 6: came after the point that Jeffrey Epstein had been convicted
Speaker 6: in in Palm Beach and been given a sweetheart deal
Speaker 6: for mysterious reasons, when he's already known to be a
Speaker 6: sex trafficker and a pedophile. These people knew this. This
Speaker 6: wasn't a secret.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about something really important, which I
Speaker 1: think relates to all of this, but is really the
Speaker 1: fundamental reason why we're probably going to I want to
Speaker 1: talk about John Burns Murdoch. Did you read this piece
Speaker 1: today in the Financial Times? No?
Speaker 5: I have not seen it.
Speaker 2: So basically talks.
Speaker 1: About democratic backsliding and the kind of situation we're in
Speaker 1: right now. But it says the democratic backsliding has moved
Speaker 1: at such a rapid pace because Trump is unfettered and
Speaker 1: doesn't care. And it's just what it says is that
Speaker 1: the one thing that is probably going to save us
Speaker 1: knock on Wood is the courts, and I want you
Speaker 1: to talk about the lower level courts that have done
Speaker 1: some good checks and bout. I mean, also, if Democrats
Speaker 1: lose the midterms, we're all fucked. But if Democrats win
Speaker 1: the midterms, they'll be accountability.
Speaker 6: I'll be looking for I'll be looking for a cave
Speaker 6: somewhere in a foreign country.
Speaker 2: Talk to us about accountability.
Speaker 6: Look the courts right now, And interestingly, the lower you
Speaker 6: go in the federal court system, the more even Trump
Speaker 6: nominees in the federal courts, and certainly many Bush and
Speaker 6: Reagan nominees in the federal courts, have said no, absolutely not.
Speaker 6: Trump has relied on the DC Circuit and the Supreme
Speaker 6: Court to bail them out over and over again. But
Speaker 6: that doesn't work universally. Right now, that is a very
Speaker 6: thin line between autocracy and the rule of law. The
Speaker 6: unwillingness of this administration to obey that law. As we've
Speaker 6: seen in Minnesota with multiple federal court rulings against the
Speaker 6: ICE and DHS where they have completely ignored them and
Speaker 6: run rough shot over them. That is a little more
Speaker 6: problematic because there's yet to have been a sanction or
Speaker 6: a penalty or a punishment for the administration from these
Speaker 6: courts that has caused them any actual legitimate level of
Speaker 6: hesitation or pain.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but there is the political calculus, like they are.
Speaker 1: They did return the five year old in the blue
Speaker 1: fluffy hat, so they do see that they.
Speaker 2: Will have to still have elections. I mean, they're going
Speaker 2: to try to do that.
Speaker 5: They're going to.
Speaker 6: Try to play screw around with it, but they the
Speaker 6: states still run their elections. And the problem for Trump
Speaker 6: canceling the elections, which a lot of people kind of
Speaker 6: breathlessly talk.
Speaker 2: About, yeah, which is by can you just talk about
Speaker 2: cancels the elections?
Speaker 6: It's not just pick and choose. It's all these Republican
Speaker 6: members of Congress, all these republic and office holders across
Speaker 6: the board are delegitimized as well. And then special elections
Speaker 6: are going to have to be held once this thing
Speaker 6: goes through the courts, and that's going to be at
Speaker 6: a point where the voters are freaking furious and they're
Speaker 6: livid about this, and they know they will get blown
Speaker 6: out even worse than they're going to get blown out
Speaker 6: in twenty six right now, and I am never a
Speaker 6: guy who goes one special election.
Speaker 5: Is the whole pattern.
Speaker 6: But now we've seen about forty races across the country
Speaker 6: in twenty five and twenty six, from local stuff down
Speaker 6: to state wide stuff. Texas fly this weekend, Texas, you
Speaker 6: saw a state Senate district overperform seventeen points by seventeen points,
Speaker 6: a twenty one point net swing, which is crazy town.
Speaker 6: And by the way, the type of Democrat who won,
Speaker 6: he's like a machinist union official.
Speaker 5: He's a blue.
Speaker 6: Collar kind of guy. He wasn't out there like my
Speaker 6: eight hundred page plan on tech reform. No, he was
Speaker 6: out there like these people are crazy. I'm not going
Speaker 6: to let it keep going. We're going to fix it.
Speaker 6: We're going to make your jobs better. We're going to
Speaker 6: stop this insanity. If that scales up. If I was
Speaker 6: a Republican right now, we've even seen seats like like
Speaker 6: cook political moving Florida from from solid Republican to.
Speaker 2: Likely and then that makes you so happy, Florida.
Speaker 6: Movie even a notch like that crazy.
Speaker 2: I just want to take a minute here, because you
Speaker 2: know you and I are friends.
Speaker 1: You're so happy about the David Jolly talk us through
Speaker 1: like Florida, because I mean, look, there is a democratic
Speaker 1: mayor in Miami.
Speaker 5: For the first time in a jillion years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, twenty one years, I think. So talk us through
Speaker 1: how excited you are about Florida because it's cute.
Speaker 6: Look, I'm still I'm still a jaded skeptic about my
Speaker 6: home state because I helped build a machine that ran
Speaker 6: it now for the last five years. Sorry, folks, but
Speaker 6: right now Hispanics in Florida, who went overwhelmingly for Trump
Speaker 6: have broken back the other way. The Cubans, who have
Speaker 6: been the loyal, most loyal Maga voters there are Trump
Speaker 6: is in the absolutely at this moment preparing to deport
Speaker 6: three hundred and fifty thousand Cubans back to Cuba. These
Speaker 6: aren't voters, but they are family members of voters, and
Speaker 6: those people are panicking. You got a member of Congress
Speaker 6: down there, Alvira Maria Salazar, Republican, who is now one
Speaker 6: of the only Republicans like attacking Trump.
Speaker 5: You must stop this. This is wrong. You were insane, sir.
Speaker 2: Latinos for Trump, right, isn't she the head.
Speaker 5: Of No Yeah?
Speaker 6: Yeah, but actually, by the way, the Latinos for Trump guy,
Speaker 6: the executive director, was just deported this week. What ironies
Speaker 6: abound but Florida is starting to slip with in the South,
Speaker 6: with Hispanics, middle class. Florida is taking an absolute beat
Speaker 6: down economically. The housing market here is collapsing. In North Florida,
Speaker 6: You've got farmers, soybeans, cotton, hogs, everything else. They're not
Speaker 6: selling their products overseas anymore, and they're finally figuring out
Speaker 6: who's to blame. Does that mean Florida's going to go blue?
Speaker 5: No? Does it mean they have to spend money and
Speaker 5: do work. Yes.
Speaker 6: The Republican primary for governor has now got like five
Speaker 6: people in it, and they're all tearing each other limb
Speaker 6: from limb. The front runner who is endorsed by Trump
Speaker 6: Byron degenerate, Byron Donalds is a degenerate, and that story
Speaker 6: will come out will people will go, oh, of course,
Speaker 6: And I will tell you something about the Republican base
Speaker 6: because I know these people. Even though the guys endorsed
Speaker 6: by Trump Byron Donalds is an African American and north
Speaker 6: of by four is basically Alabama, and I see how
Speaker 6: that works out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think it's important also to mention that
Speaker 1: in Florida and in a lot of red states, you
Speaker 1: do see blue governors sometimes make it.
Speaker 2: You know, we've seen in Louisiana. We've seen it.
Speaker 1: I mean not right now, but we've seen in Kentucky,
Speaker 1: North Carolina. Red states will elect blue governors.
Speaker 6: It does happen, and statewide officials in red states. Florida
Speaker 6: is a rare exception in a lot of ways because
Speaker 6: we haven't had a Democratic statewide official for twenty years.
Speaker 6: But the machine that was built down here, built under
Speaker 6: in the Bush era, that was built down here. DeSantis
Speaker 6: has been a spectacularly bad governor for Republican morale. He
Speaker 6: and Trump are at war still to this day. He
Speaker 6: and his wife are being investigated for a forty million
Speaker 6: dollar fraud that's going to trickle down to other Republicans
Speaker 6: as well. The battle to replace him is turning into,
Speaker 6: as I mentioned to a six or seven way food fight.
Speaker 6: All these things do not make it inevitable for a
Speaker 6: blue candidate to win. But if you're David Jolly or
Speaker 6: you're alex Vinman running state wide, you know what, roll
Speaker 6: the dice. Roll the damn dice. This is your year
Speaker 6: to roll the dice. If you think you're a long
Speaker 6: shot and the state is generically R plus eight, which
Speaker 6: it is this year, You've got a chance. And that's
Speaker 6: what's happening in Texas. I mean, look, tall Rico has
Speaker 6: a real chance to win in Texas if they have
Speaker 6: named Keim Paxson's the nominee, and I think Maxon will
Speaker 6: be the nominee. I don't think Tallarico could beat Corny,
Speaker 6: but I think you can sure as hell beat Packson.
Speaker 6: If you see a statewide Democra to emerge in any
Speaker 6: big red state, any red state for that matter, or
Speaker 6: a medium sized North Carolina is gonna elect a Democratic
Speaker 6: senator this year. If you see that start to happen,
Speaker 6: there is an inevitable process that begins where the money
Speaker 6: flow in terms of campaign donations starts to change. Where
Speaker 6: suddenly the lobbyist who would have gotten his people together
Speaker 6: to write a million dollars worth of checks for somebody goes, hey, listen,
Speaker 6: I know I love you, man. Trump's a great guy,
Speaker 6: but you know, John Smith is the Democratic senator from
Speaker 6: here now, and I got to I gotta make sure
Speaker 6: he's good with us so he doesn't do anything to.
Speaker 5: Us in the in the what cheated process.
Speaker 6: And if Democrats start to win these seats, by the way,
Speaker 6: play hardball.
Speaker 2: Say more.
Speaker 5: Let's put this way.
Speaker 6: When Kevin McCarthy was Speaker, he went to lobbyists all
Speaker 6: over d Seed and like, you give the need Democrats money,
Speaker 6: I'm gonna fuck you over. I'm gonna take away your appropriations.
Speaker 6: That is the kind of hardball that needs to be
Speaker 6: played here. That is the kind of like you come
Speaker 6: to me with some maga maga. You know, lobbyists, you're
Speaker 6: not coming to mind office. Come to me with some
Speaker 6: with some I find out you've donated to to you know,
Speaker 6: Democratic congressional districts in my Republican congressional competitors in my state.
Speaker 6: We're gonna have an issue. Hardball is real. It exists
Speaker 6: behind the behind the nice cities of DC, and Democrats
Speaker 6: when they take back the House are going to have
Speaker 6: to learn to play it quickly. And that is going
Speaker 6: to in part be choking off the money that feeds
Speaker 6: the maga machine from these corporate interests around the country.
Speaker 6: I mean, they need to call Jeff Bezos and Mark
Speaker 6: Zuckerberg and Elon and the rest of them are like,
Speaker 6: all right, motherfuckers, here's how it's going to go from
Speaker 6: now on.
Speaker 5: Your appropriations are going to grind to a hall.
Speaker 6: None of the ship you want is going to happen,
Speaker 6: and we're going to pass a National Data center ban.
Speaker 5: How about that? They got to play.
Speaker 2: Hardball, Rick Wilson.
Speaker 5: I'm here to advise as always.
Speaker 2: National Data center ban. I like it.
Speaker 1: Christopher Mattatos is a reporter of for outlets like The
Speaker 1: Huffington Post, The Guardian and ms now. He is also
Speaker 1: the author of To Catch a Fascist, The Fight to
Speaker 1: Expose the Radical Right.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Fast Politics, Christopher.
Speaker 7: Thank you so much for having me, Molly.
Speaker 5: How you doing.
Speaker 2: You know, I remember the days of you at.
Speaker 1: The huff Post. We're just all getting older and older,
Speaker 1: I know. So talk us through To Catch a Fascist?
Speaker 1: How you got involved in this and sort of what
Speaker 1: this looks like the shadow war waged to defend what's
Speaker 1: left of democracy.
Speaker 7: Back in twenty seventeen, like you said, when I was
Speaker 7: a reporter at huff Post, I found myself in Charlottesville,
Speaker 7: Virginia for the United the Right rally, which obviously was
Speaker 7: you know, the largest white supremacist gathering in generation, and
Speaker 7: died with the neo Nazi killing a counter protester driving
Speaker 7: his car into a crowd, killing heather Higher. When I
Speaker 7: got back to New York, my editor at the time,
Speaker 7: Woudio Paulgreen, told me that this was my beat now,
Speaker 7: that I was going to be covering the far right,
Speaker 7: and that kind of started this decade long journey to
Speaker 7: figure out who was in this kind of insurgent fascist movement,
Speaker 7: this kind of like resurrected invisible Empire, like trying to
Speaker 7: recreate the clans invisible Empire. There were so many secretive
Speaker 7: white supremacist groups and I was trying to figure out
Speaker 7: who was in them. Very quickly I learned that the
Speaker 7: people doing the best research into these groups was Antifa.
Speaker 7: It was, you know, this kind of radical underground network
Speaker 7: of anarchists and socialists and communists who often deployed spies
Speaker 7: into white supremacist groups, into Nazi groups to gather intelligence.
Speaker 7: And over the course of the last ten years, these
Speaker 7: anti fascists identified thousands of pseudonymous American Nazis, revealing them
Speaker 7: to be you know, people in positions of power, politicians, pastors,
Speaker 7: police officers, professors, teachers, and in the process, these anti
Speaker 7: fascist spies ended up destroying multiple fascist groups that belonged
Speaker 7: to the so called al right.
Speaker 1: It's interesting we talk about out antifa because the right
Speaker 1: is obsessed and the Trump administration obsessed with Antifa. They
Speaker 1: believe it's like a huge organization with the headquarters and
Speaker 1: of this and of that.
Speaker 2: So I'd love you to define what is antifa.
Speaker 7: Yes, So there's so many misapprehensions about antifa, and no
Speaker 7: one can really tell you what it is, and no
Speaker 7: one in America really knew what it was before twenty seventeen.
Speaker 7: You know, at the end of twenty seventeen, Webster Dictionary
Speaker 7: added antifa into his dictionary. Oxford Dictionary shortlisted it for
Speaker 7: word of the Year, and the reason for that was
Speaker 7: because this like in bold and far right kept showing
Speaker 7: up on the streets of America and we're getting punched.
Speaker 7: And most people associate antifa with Nazi punching, which is
Speaker 7: a part of it. So the way I define antifa
Speaker 7: is basically, it is a underground, decentralized subculture or network
Speaker 7: of radical leftists dedicated to destroying the far right by
Speaker 7: any means necessary. And they subscribe to a few basic tenants,
Speaker 7: which is that the far right fascists need to be
Speaker 7: confronted in the streets, sometimes violently, that fascists should have
Speaker 7: no platform to speak or organize, so that means, you know,
Speaker 7: trying to get their permits revoked, to hold a rally,
Speaker 7: trying to get them deplatform from social media for violating
Speaker 7: terms of service. And then finally, the like final really
Speaker 7: important tenet of kind of militant anti fascism or antifa
Speaker 7: is that the state and law enforcement cannot be trusted
Speaker 7: in this fight. So they do not believe that cops
Speaker 7: can be trusted to fight fascists. They see police kind
Speaker 7: of invested, inherently invested in like a white supremacist project.
Speaker 7: And you know, I think antifa the word itself is
Speaker 7: obviously just a shortening of anti fascists, and obviously I
Speaker 7: think we all hopefully listening to this would consider ourselves
Speaker 7: anti fascist. But antifa itself, I think refers to this
Speaker 7: very specific kind of militant tradition that grew out of
Speaker 7: the punk scene essentially in the eighties and nineties in America.
Speaker 1: But there's also a research component, and that is what
Speaker 1: you're talking about here, is the sort of anti fascist research.
Speaker 1: What did you find that was surprising to you when
Speaker 1: you looked into this world?
Speaker 7: Basically, you have of this network of activists doing some
Speaker 7: of the most remarkable journalism in the country, even though
Speaker 7: it's not called journalism, you know, not recognized as journalism
Speaker 7: by the mainstream press. These are anonymous activists and they
Speaker 7: stay anonymous to prevent reprisals from the far right, to
Speaker 7: protect themselves from violence. But they started doing this work
Speaker 7: mostly because they had brushes with fascists in their communities.
Speaker 7: There was an anti fascist activist I talked to whose
Speaker 7: good friend lost a family member in the massacre at
Speaker 7: the l Pass and Walmart, and that's what started her
Speaker 7: doing this work. But you know, the MAGA and Trump
Speaker 7: have created this hysterical caricature like you mentioned of antifa, right,
Speaker 7: this kind of like highly regimented army of black clad
Speaker 7: radicals that are going to like bombshit and like you know,
Speaker 7: are anti Christian and want to turn your kids tran
Speaker 7: and on all this stuff. You know, in reality, they
Speaker 7: are everyday Americans. They are soccer moms, they are rednecks.
Speaker 1: They're researchers largely right, They're largely researchers.
Speaker 7: And what they do is they do open source intelligence investigations.
Speaker 7: It's basically the digital equivalent of ripping the wide hood
Speaker 7: off of a Klansman. They look at all of these
Speaker 7: fascists that hide behind user names and avatars online and
Speaker 7: figure out who they are. A big part of what
Speaker 7: they did was use spies, and this is the main
Speaker 7: characters in my book are anti fascist spies that go
Speaker 7: undercover into this new generation of fascist groups in the
Speaker 7: Trump era and gather all of this intelligence. They you know,
Speaker 7: secret they record secret audio, they take covert photos, they
Speaker 7: take photos of license plates. But one of the most
Speaker 7: important things they do is that they acquire hundreds and
Speaker 7: thousands of gigabytes of data of private messages that these
Speaker 7: Nazi groups send to each other, and then they post
Speaker 7: those messages in an open source database on why on
Speaker 7: a website called unicorn Riot, which is doing fantastic job
Speaker 7: on the ground in Minneapolis right now, by the way.
Speaker 7: And then anti fascist researchers go through these messages to
Speaker 7: look for clues and morsels that can be used to
Speaker 7: identify these Nazis. And what they end up finding is
Speaker 7: that a lot of these Nazis are in positions of power.
Speaker 7: A lot of these Nazis are involved with the Republican Party,
Speaker 7: you know. Essentially, I think what antifa and anti fascists
Speaker 7: find out before anyone, or you know, I think raise
Speaker 7: alarm about before anyone, is that America is headed in
Speaker 7: a very dark trajectory.
Speaker 2: What are they doing in Minnesota?
Speaker 7: So anti fascists activists across the country right now are
Speaker 7: monitoring what's happening in Minnesota, and for a long time,
Speaker 7: like I said, for the past decade, have been involved
Speaker 7: in identifying this new generation of fascists. Right now, they've
Speaker 7: repurposed their investigative skills to identify ICE agents. So they
Speaker 7: are involved, actively involved in figuring out, you know, taking
Speaker 7: the masks off Trump's secret police that are terrorizing places
Speaker 7: like Minneapolis. I have a story coming out this week
Speaker 7: that identifies an ICE agent seeing Pepper spraying a protester
Speaker 7: at point blank range while he's on the ground. That
Speaker 7: identity came through anti fascist research. And they're doing this
Speaker 7: to create accountability for being an ICE. They want to
Speaker 7: create a social cost for being an ICE agent and
Speaker 7: basically tell ICE agents that if you don't leave this
Speaker 7: secret police force now, you will never be able to
Speaker 7: like wash away this shame like you will be name
Speaker 7: and chained for the rest of your life for having been.
Speaker 2: A part of this, it doesn't work.
Speaker 7: I think it works. Basically. Antifa, you know, destroyed multiple
Speaker 7: fascist groups by depriving them of the anonymity, depriving them
Speaker 7: of the ability to work in the dark. Of course,
Speaker 7: like we are in this mask off moment in fascism
Speaker 7: right right now, where what supremacists are in power, so
Speaker 7: in a way, like the ability to dock someone to
Speaker 7: create a consequence for being a Nazi is diminished. But
Speaker 7: you know, it's important to create that social came and
Speaker 7: preserve that's social costs, and to warn your neighbors about
Speaker 7: who in your community is a fascist and might want
Speaker 7: to harm them. So I think the work is still
Speaker 7: very important. And I think especially right now with identifying
Speaker 7: ICE agents and figuring out who this secret police force
Speaker 7: is coming to your cippy's, there's already growing opposition to
Speaker 7: ICE and support for the phrase abolish Ice. You know,
Speaker 7: that's reaching record highs. So I think anti fascist work
Speaker 7: that leverages that growing on popularity is important, and I
Speaker 7: think it's good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, it's obviously very good, and it's very necessary.
Speaker 2: Am I dumb?
Speaker 1: But wouldn't this be the job of the FBI and
Speaker 1: a normal America?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I mean because isn't this what.
Speaker 1: The FBI is supposed to be doing, like people do
Speaker 1: crimes figuring out, Yeah.
Speaker 7: I mean totally. I mean, you know, there's plenty of
Speaker 7: examples of the FBI going undercover into white supremacist groups.
Speaker 7: You know, I think for from the military anti fascist perspective,
Speaker 7: the FBI is you know, never going to do enough,
Speaker 7: you know, especially under the second Trump administration. You know,
Speaker 7: they are certainly not prioritizing going after white supremacist groups,
Speaker 7: and there's been reporting to that effect. What the FBI
Speaker 7: is being directed to do with the DOJ is being
Speaker 7: directed to do is to go after Antifa, to go
Speaker 7: after anti fascists. You know, in September, the Trump administration
Speaker 7: claimed to designate Antifa a quote domestic terrorist organization, which
Speaker 7: is absurd. There is no federal statute by which to
Speaker 7: declare any group of domestic terrorist organization. And moreover, Antifa
Speaker 7: isn't even an organization, like you said earlier, there's no headquarters,
Speaker 7: there's no leaders, there's no like rich benefactors giving it money.
Speaker 7: So yeah, you know, like on a normal timeline, sure, yeah,
Speaker 7: maybe the FBI should be in charge of this. The
Speaker 7: argument my book makes is that over the last ten years,
Speaker 7: even under the Biden administration, I think the work that
Speaker 7: Antifa is doing, going under cover into what supremacist groups
Speaker 7: and doxing its members did more to destabilize those groups
Speaker 7: than law enforcement.
Speaker 2: Right, No, for sure, for sure.
Speaker 1: And there's like is the government incompetent or is the
Speaker 1: government corrupt?
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 5: Right? Right?
Speaker 7: Or in this case, you know, is are these white
Speaker 7: supremacist groups do they share the same mission as the
Speaker 7: Trump administration?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Which they do for sure?
Speaker 7: And this question they do.
Speaker 1: So I don't want you to docs anyone, but I
Speaker 1: want you to give us sort of a character, either
Speaker 1: who is out of the game or who.
Speaker 2: You feel comfortable talking about.
Speaker 7: One of the main characters of the book is an
Speaker 7: anti fascist named Vincent who goes undercover into the Nazi
Speaker 7: group Patriot Front, and he spends about six months in
Speaker 7: Patriot Front basically doing method acting, you know, pretends to
Speaker 7: be a Nazi, and he goes on their pikes. He
Speaker 7: goes on their missions, the vandalists omissions, He is their meetings.
Speaker 7: He gains enough trust of this group that they name
Speaker 7: him the official photographer, so he is taking photos for
Speaker 7: their propaganda and kind of you know, stealing away those
Speaker 7: photos and photos of their faces, and then you know,
Speaker 7: after about five or six months, his infiltration leads to
Speaker 7: anti fascists acquiring four hundred and forty gigabytes worth of
Speaker 7: messages that Patriot Front members are sending to each other.
Speaker 7: These messages end up being put online and anti fascist
Speaker 7: researchers across the country use them to ultimately identify about
Speaker 7: eighty members of Patriot Front. Ultimately there is an effort,
Speaker 7: you know, Vincent, I call him Vincent the character. He
Speaker 7: remains anonymous, but Patriot Front ends up figuring out who
Speaker 7: he is and files a lawsuit against him, which was
Speaker 7: just dismissed last week. But I think stories like Vincent,
Speaker 7: there are many stories like Vincent's, many stories of people
Speaker 7: that very bravely were confronting the far right in their communities,
Speaker 7: kind of operating under this axiom of we protect us
Speaker 7: right that like the government ote that law enforcement isn't
Speaker 7: going to protect us, it is up to us to
Speaker 7: stop this. And I think that ethos is exactly what
Speaker 7: we're seeing on the streets of Minneapolis right now, where
Speaker 7: the community came together and realized that these masked police
Speaker 7: being deployed. I would argue for a fascist project, for
Speaker 7: a project of ethnic cleansing. You know, no one's going
Speaker 7: to stop them. The police Department's not going to stop them.
Speaker 7: The Democratic Party is not doing anything to stop them.
Speaker 7: So it's up to the community to stop them. And
Speaker 7: you know, what they did, what Minneapolis was doing, bears
Speaker 7: a striking resemblance to what anti fascists were doing in
Speaker 7: the first Trump administration with fascist groups on the streets.
Speaker 7: They were monitoring them, they were you know, identifying them.
Speaker 7: They were pressuring venues and hotels not to host them,
Speaker 7: they were doing noise demos. They're basically creating it, like
Speaker 7: I said, creating a social cost for being a part
Speaker 7: of this and saying you are not welcome here. You
Speaker 7: are terrorizing this community, and there needs to be shame
Speaker 7: for what you're a part of.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think that's a really good point, and
Speaker 1: I think like that is ultimately the goal here, especially
Speaker 1: one it comes to what's happened? What are you seeing
Speaker 1: with these groups right now? Because there's been such a
Speaker 1: sea change even from when you started in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1: They are now the mainstream. So are they more hidden
Speaker 1: less hidden? Interacting with the government like what do you
Speaker 1: think the trajectory is for these sort of people who
Speaker 1: have been under the radar for a long time.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean there was like this explosion, you know,
Speaker 7: obviously of fascist groups at the beginning of the first
Speaker 7: Trump administration, you know, secretive groups, and you know, in retrospect,
Speaker 7: I think those groups kind of acted like a vanguard,
Speaker 7: like shock troops of the for the Magro project. They
Speaker 7: were they were pushing the Overton window open wider and
Speaker 7: wider for the GOP to accept more and more vile
Speaker 7: ideas and like explicit white nationalists ideas. You know, it's
Speaker 7: interesting when you look back at the stolen chats that
Speaker 7: Antifa obtained from these Nazi groups, you see them using
Speaker 7: all these terms that the Trump administration is using now.
Speaker 7: For example, well you can see the moment the word
Speaker 7: remigration arrives from Europe to America in Nazi chats. Now,
Speaker 7: remigration is a term you hear all the time from
Speaker 7: Stephen Miller and the Trump administration. Remigration is just a
Speaker 7: European euphemism for ethnic cleansing. It's very explicit. You also
Speaker 7: see the arrival of the Great Replacement conspiracy theory in
Speaker 7: Nazi chats. In twenty seventeen and twenty eighteen, you know,
Speaker 7: chats obtained by Antifa, and then a few years later
Speaker 7: you're seeing the rights talk about the Great Replacement all
Speaker 7: the time. So a lot of these fascist groups that
Speaker 7: were involved in this project in popularizing these terms, you know,
Speaker 7: have since disbanded in a way, you know, they're no
Speaker 7: longer useful. And I draw this comparison to the First
Speaker 7: and Second Clan. You know, the first plan was created
Speaker 7: to destroy Reconstruction, and when Reconstruction was abandoned, they kind
Speaker 7: of disbanded, you know, they exchanged the anonymity of the
Speaker 7: hood for the anonymity of the lynch mob. I think
Speaker 7: there's a similar dynamic at play right now. When fascists
Speaker 7: wear they want to create a world in which they
Speaker 7: won't need to wear masks at all, and we are
Speaker 7: kind of living in that mask off moment, and I
Speaker 7: think it's important for us to consider a world in
Speaker 7: which ICE agents are comfortable not wearing masks. Part of
Speaker 7: the anti fascist project right now is stopping that world
Speaker 7: from being created. So that's a very long winded explanation
Speaker 7: of saying a lot of the fascist groups that I
Speaker 7: document in my book aren't as active anymore as because
Speaker 7: they don't need.
Speaker 2: To be Christopher. That was so upset.
Speaker 1: Even Booboo doesn't like it. Thank you, thank you for
Speaker 1: joining us.
Speaker 7: Thanks so much for having me by.
Speaker 5: No moment, Rick Wilson, is it that time?
Speaker 2: It's that time?
Speaker 5: I love that time.
Speaker 2: What is your moment of fuckery?
Speaker 6: My moment of fuckery is that Donald Trump's pillaging of
Speaker 6: the American treasury continues unabated this week, with him suing
Speaker 6: the IRS for ten billion dollars because an IRS official
Speaker 6: leaked to tax information at some point. Yeah, look, the
Speaker 6: IRS should not leak tax information. Now, it's a crime.
Speaker 6: The guy that did it has already been punished for it.
Speaker 6: But Trump suing the IRS for ten billion dollars, which
Speaker 6: the IRS will give him. They will settle and say, yes, sir,
Speaker 6: here's your money. Yeah, that is just flat fricking robbing
Speaker 6: the US taxpayer. What harm was done by that leak
Speaker 6: to Trump?
Speaker 5: Nothing? He's in office, then something for being in office.
Speaker 1: They may have actually, he may have missed the statute
Speaker 1: of limitations on it.
Speaker 6: Maybe maybe I'm I'm not a lawyer, so I'm not
Speaker 6: positive on that. But here's the thing. Trump is going
Speaker 6: to threaten to sue a lot of people in the
Speaker 6: coming weeks and months.
Speaker 2: Are you listening, ABC?
Speaker 5: Yeah? Are you listening? And Michael Wolfe again.
Speaker 6: You know in ninety nine point nine nine percent of
Speaker 6: all Trump lawsuits are meant these days to make money
Speaker 6: for him.
Speaker 5: This IRS lawsuit is no exception.
Speaker 6: It's a pure corrupt ca robbery of the American taxpayer.
Speaker 2: Correct, Rick Wilson.
Speaker 6: Molly Drug Fast as always, I'll see you next week.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in Monday, Wednesday,
Speaker 1: Thursday and Saturday to hear the best minds and politics
Speaker 1: make sense of.
Speaker 2: All this chaos.
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Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.