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 Trump's White House has taken more
Speaker 1: than eighty percent of Trump's transcribed remarks off the White
Speaker 1: House website. We have such a great show for you
Speaker 1: today as the world journs. Andy Levy stops by to
Speaker 1: talk about all the chaos and corruption in Trump world.
Speaker 1: Then we'll talk to Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont about how
Speaker 1: he's navigating Trump's aggression towards the Blue States. But first
Speaker 1: the news, BALI.
Speaker 2: Many people are saying last night was the most corrupt
Speaker 2: night in our history as a nation. That was because
Speaker 2: Trump posted a one hundred and forty eight million dollar
Speaker 2: allegedly fundraised US crypto dinner, and some people are calling
Speaker 2: it the orgy of corruption. I don't want to picture
Speaker 2: those people anywhere near that word, but make of it
Speaker 2: what you will.
Speaker 1: The of this crypto dinner is someone who is called
Speaker 1: Justin Son. Son who saw a twenty twenty three fraud
Speaker 1: case brought by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. He
Speaker 1: saw that dropped in February in the new Trump administration. Also,
Speaker 1: he is one of the biggest buyers of Trump's crypto coin.
Speaker 1: In fact, he won the first place in the dinner
Speaker 1: contest with an eighteen point five million dollar US wallet.
Speaker 1: So he also advises this sketchy, trumpy bank called World
Speaker 1: Liberty Financial, which, by the way, I remember World Liberty
Speaker 1: Financial from going to Seapack. That was one of the
Speaker 1: major sort of funders of Seapack.
Speaker 2: It's really one of those names that rings grift.
Speaker 1: Yeah, everyone in this dinner has just paid to try
Speaker 1: to get Trump's influence. We're going to have next week
Speaker 1: and we've had before, but we're gonna have more talk
Speaker 1: about crypto. There are a couple people will cover really well,
Speaker 1: and everyone you talk to in the end, you know,
Speaker 1: they're sort of like, it's it's really just a kind
Speaker 1: of grift. It's really just not a real thing. And
Speaker 1: it's also, by the way, a currency that is terrible
Speaker 1: for the environment because it has to be mined. So
Speaker 1: there are so many different reasons why crypto is a skin.
Speaker 1: But crypto has this bill that is working its way
Speaker 1: through the Senate, which is a you know, a non
Speaker 1: regulation of crypto bill, and crypto spends this industry spends
Speaker 1: you know, they're sort of the if anything, they're kind
Speaker 1: of the big oil of this century.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: They are spending on senators and congress people, and they
Speaker 1: are spending on their advertising for them. They are creating
Speaker 1: super packs. They are doing you know, just what Exxon
Speaker 1: or just what camel cigarettes used to do in previous decades.
Speaker 1: And it is really they just have a vice grip
Speaker 1: already on our elected And it didn't take very long
Speaker 1: at all, No.
Speaker 2: It sure did not. So in addition to this, then
Speaker 2: after this big old festival of corruption, because I'm not
Speaker 2: using that word again, what we saw as Trump started
Speaker 2: re escalating his trade war again. Some people said, maybe
Speaker 2: this is because these people didn't come to the dinner
Speaker 2: and bribe them enough. Maybe some people say, you just
Speaker 2: woke up on the wrong side of the bed. What
Speaker 2: are you thinking to hear Bally, he's attacking Europe, He's
Speaker 2: attacking Apple. What's your thought here?
Speaker 1: So this is like real mad king kind of stuff. Yes,
Speaker 1: you know that was when I thought. So basically he
Speaker 1: got up and look, you know, with Trump, it could
Speaker 1: be he's mad at someone. It could be he's trying
Speaker 1: to distract from something. It could be he wants Tim
Speaker 1: Cook I mean, it could be as simple as that
Speaker 1: he just wants Tim Cook to open a factory and
Speaker 1: deluse You know, it doesn't necessarily. One of the things
Speaker 1: I think people do wrong about covering Trump is describing
Speaker 1: more meaning than is to the things he does. So
Speaker 1: I'm just going to read you a little bit of
Speaker 1: the truth. But the net net of it is the
Speaker 1: truth quote unquote, The net net of it is twenty
Speaker 1: five percent tariff on Apple. If the tech trient does
Speaker 1: not shift manufacturing in the US, I don't know how
Speaker 1: they would do that. And by the way, is want
Speaker 1: pull back from it. And remember that there was all
Speaker 1: this reporting that if they were to make Apple iPhones
Speaker 1: in the United States, it says if an iPhone, this
Speaker 1: is from grac Who's always right, an iPhone We're made
Speaker 1: entirely in the US. Analyst estimates the cost could be
Speaker 1: significantly higher, reaching between thirty five hundred and even thirty
Speaker 1: thousand to one hundred thousand, due to factors like higher
Speaker 1: labor costs, logistics, and a need to rebuild the supplydget.
Speaker 1: So the point is a tariff cannot fix this problem.
Speaker 1: Like so many moments in Trump world, we have this
Speaker 1: problem which is you cannot rewrite history that anyway, that
Speaker 1: is the story with that. And then also to tariff
Speaker 1: the EU. Who knows why he's mad at the EU.
Speaker 1: But the point is a fifty percent tariff would damage
Speaker 1: the EU, but it would also damage us because we
Speaker 1: get a lot of stuff from the EU. And remember
Speaker 1: he's still fighting with Canada and Mexico. So we have
Speaker 1: this situation where we have this president who is just
Speaker 1: out of control and that's where we are.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So another one of the nice features of this
Speaker 2: presidency is hiring all the really really qualified people, by
Speaker 2: which I mean really unqualified people. We have some of
Speaker 2: the best evidence of that we've seen so far a
Speaker 2: report from Will Staken that says where they got tape
Speaker 2: of the Social Security chief talking about how they learned
Speaker 2: about their job.
Speaker 4: It's about social security and I'm really I'm really not
Speaker 4: I'm swear I'm not living for God, and I'm like, well,
Speaker 4: what am I going to do? So I'm googling social Security,
Speaker 4: you know, one of my great skills on my great
Speaker 4: Googlers on the East Coast. But that is the headline
Speaker 4: for the post. Great Google Google are in Chief Chief
Speaker 4: and Google or whatever. Uh So by the way, I
Speaker 4: definitely at work, you know, we're allowed to lap. We're
Speaker 4: all out of that fun. We're out to know each
Speaker 4: other's families are not to be normal of that. I'm like, okay,
Speaker 4: it's a commissioner Social Security. First, it wouldn't nobody said
Speaker 4: we're calling you a bit. It was about some of
Speaker 4: those securities. I'm trying to figure it out.
Speaker 2: Great stuff. He's really good at googling.
Speaker 1: I don't know, you know. And this is the thing
Speaker 1: about this administration that will hopefully save us but also
Speaker 1: probably end us, is that I really don't know how
Speaker 1: anything works. And a lot of these people got these
Speaker 1: jobs because who knows. So not great.
Speaker 2: Speaking of not great, Christy Nome probably tweeted one of
Speaker 2: the upidest things I've ever seen, tweeted a policy. Some
Speaker 2: people are saying they long for the days of Sarah
Speaker 2: Palin's stupidity after seeing it. She's tweeting and threatening Harvard
Speaker 2: because she wants them to turn over academic records of
Speaker 2: who has been taken in for reprimendments around protesting, and
Speaker 2: Harvard is refusing. But luckily Harvard just got temporary relief
Speaker 2: from the courts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Christine Nome is the Sarah Pillon of this administration,
Speaker 1: though Sarah Palin number one, because we used to be
Speaker 1: less insipid. These people are so over their head. This
Speaker 1: morning they banned Harvard from taking we had I think
Speaker 1: it was Christy Nome who said that they revoked Harvard's
Speaker 1: whatever charter to allow foreign students to court immediately Harvard
Speaker 1: one temporary relief. I do think this kind of stuff
Speaker 1: is ultimately I understand that it's for the base, but
Speaker 1: you already have the base right. The play here is
Speaker 1: get the base excited to go after Harvard. But what
Speaker 1: I think is really stupid about this is you've made
Speaker 1: things more expensive for the base. They're getting hurt by taffs,
Speaker 1: You're you know, back and forth, you're killing consumer confidence.
Speaker 1: These are the things that if you want to get
Speaker 1: the base excited. But it's like there's so much self
Speaker 1: destruction in this administration, which thank god for that. But
Speaker 1: you know, this is going to play out and they're
Speaker 1: going to fundraise off it, and I think they think
Speaker 1: it's good optics for them. But I do really wonder
Speaker 1: if anyone, I mean it's they think it's good optics
Speaker 1: for them. It's certainly terrible for the rest of us,
Speaker 1: and it hurts research, and you know, there's so much research.
Speaker 1: These people are coming to this country to get educated.
Speaker 1: The other thing is that it's like it hurts the world,
Speaker 1: but it also showed, you know, we're not going to
Speaker 1: be the leader in the world. This stuff where they
Speaker 1: harass people and keep them from wanting to come here.
Speaker 1: It's going to hurt all of our institutions. It's going
Speaker 1: to hurt all of our research, and ultimately they're going
Speaker 1: to lose because business. Andy Levy is a ghost of
Speaker 1: as the world churns. Welcome to fast politics, Andy Levy.
Speaker 3: Th best, Thank you?
Speaker 1: How are you? You're welcome here?
Speaker 4: Good?
Speaker 1: How heavy is American democracy right now? I mean that,
Speaker 1: you know, I know that these people are super incompetent.
Speaker 1: I get it, but it's still so just watching them
Speaker 1: just screw over every institution. I have no connection to Harvard.
Speaker 1: I am not you know, nothing that didn't go there,
Speaker 1: didn't visit there, you know, I'm no no degrees from there,
Speaker 1: nothing didn't never got in there, and in any way
Speaker 1: I never even applied there. And I actually I once
Speaker 1: spoke at the Kennedy School. That's it. And let me
Speaker 1: tell you those that made me so upset? What is
Speaker 1: wrong with us? Why is it so depressing to watch this?
Speaker 5: I don't know, but I feel you've got a lot
Speaker 5: of psychological baggage about not going to Harvard. After hearing
Speaker 5: that long litany of things, it's like, you know, you
Speaker 5: could just say, yeah, didn't go to Harvard, but you
Speaker 5: know you felt it necessary to uh to enumerate the
Speaker 5: various goings on.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 5: Look, we've known this for a while that everything that
Speaker 5: they have been using, you know, to try to claim
Speaker 5: that they're fighting anti Semitism, which is the last thing
Speaker 5: in the world they care about. When they're not promoting it,
Speaker 5: they don't care about it. That's the only two options there.
Speaker 5: But this has always been aimed at, you know, the
Speaker 5: quote unquote elite institutions like Harvard, like Columbia.
Speaker 3: It's all more of the same.
Speaker 5: And if the thing is like, they don't care that
Speaker 5: they're losing in court, and I think their attitude seems
Speaker 5: to be we're gonna we're gonna keep doing this and
Speaker 5: sometimes the university or the law firm or whatever is
Speaker 5: going to roll over and that's a win for us.
Speaker 5: And sometimes they're going to fight back, and if we
Speaker 5: lose that we're back where we're started. But we've got
Speaker 5: these other wins, so it really is kind of win
Speaker 5: win for them because even when they lose, you know,
Speaker 5: all it does is keep the status quo. But when
Speaker 5: they win, it changes everything.
Speaker 1: Judge Box of Wine, you're a friend of mine. She
Speaker 1: is now the acting head. What the fuck? What the
Speaker 1: actual fuck discussion?
Speaker 5: Yeah, when New York Gorsearch was nominated to the Supreme Court,
Speaker 5: I was good friends with Neil and college and we
Speaker 5: the two of us and a couple other people, started
Speaker 5: an alternative newspaper at Columbia, and so people found this
Speaker 5: out about me, and I was at the time, I
Speaker 5: was working at Fox, so people assumed I was a conservative,
Speaker 5: which I wasn't, but I got so I got a
Speaker 5: lot of press calls, and I think it might have
Speaker 5: been New York Magazine. I was talking to a reporter
Speaker 5: and he didn't use this line, and it's pissed me
Speaker 5: off to this day because it's now very relevant. And
Speaker 5: I basically said at the end of the interview, I said, look,
Speaker 5: Neil Gorswitch is sort of the best you could hope
Speaker 5: for from Trump in the sense that he's at least intelligent.
Speaker 5: And then I said, you know, what did you want instead?
Speaker 5: Justice Puro? And here we are. Was it seven eight
Speaker 5: years later and we've got acting US Attorney Puro. And
Speaker 5: it's incredible because whatever jokes you make, or however much
Speaker 5: you think you are exaggerating or you know, being a hyperbolic.
Speaker 3: It comes true. It all comes true in the end.
Speaker 5: And I think about the fact that I left Fox
Speaker 5: and I could have had an.
Speaker 3: Amazing career in government, Molly.
Speaker 5: I could have been the head of Homeland Security, I
Speaker 5: could have been the Secretary of State or Defense, and
Speaker 5: I blew it.
Speaker 3: Then that's all I take from this, Molly, is that
Speaker 3: I blew it.
Speaker 1: I'm an idiot, yes, And also yes, you probably would
Speaker 1: have been. I don't know. I feel like you wouldn't
Speaker 1: have been able to do the kind of sycovancy that
Speaker 1: was needed, right, So I feel like since you would
Speaker 1: be bad at the sycophancy, he would give you like
Speaker 1: a job to punish you, like, you know, like you'd
Speaker 1: get something that he thinks of as like not a
Speaker 1: good job, because it's like, yeah, like I think a
Speaker 1: lot about where you know, Linda McMahon and Howard Lutnik
Speaker 1: were in this power struggle over who got to be
Speaker 1: Commerce secretary, right, right, And even though because nobody knew
Speaker 1: what any of these jobs were, clearly right they were like,
Speaker 1: commerce secretary sounds better because it deals with money, whereas
Speaker 1: Secretary of Education is kids and nobody likes kids. And
Speaker 1: then Linda McMahon got Secretary of Education. So the star
Speaker 1: contrast to Trumpell one point zero, where they did actually
Speaker 1: have someone in there who actually knew a tiny bit
Speaker 1: about education, which so it is so I think that
Speaker 1: if you had been able to stay at Pox a
Speaker 1: little longer, you probably would be Secretary of Education.
Speaker 5: Now, I mean all I ever wanted is really to
Speaker 5: be the first Jewish ambassador to the Vatican.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I could have pulled that off.
Speaker 1: Trump's first administration. He put Newt Gingrich his wife, not
Speaker 1: even new the wife, as ambassador to Holy See.
Speaker 3: And I think his twelfth wife, right, that's his twelfth wife.
Speaker 1: He stepped on my joke there, baby.
Speaker 3: Oh, I'm so sorry.
Speaker 1: No, No, I think I think you hit the right
Speaker 1: notes there. And also I don't think I should be
Speaker 1: talking too much. But but yeah, that is a really
Speaker 1: great example of how in many ways this administration has
Speaker 1: just gone on from strength to strength.
Speaker 5: As we say, yeah, I think some of us at
Speaker 5: least thought that the people he named in his second
Speaker 5: term would they'd be awful and they'd be evil, but
Speaker 5: they might actually be competent to No, Nope, And it
Speaker 5: turns out no, and that they're like just as incompetent
Speaker 5: as they were in Trump one point, oh if not
Speaker 5: more so, if not more so.
Speaker 1: Now we're going to talk about one of the things
Speaker 1: that Trump has actually learned how to do really well,
Speaker 1: which is he is incredibly good at whipping the vote.
Speaker 1: He has become the Nancy Pelosi of the House Republican Caucus.
Speaker 1: You know, he is out there with his puppet Mike Johnson,
Speaker 1: and he is whipping the vote. He got the big,
Speaker 1: beautiful Buxom billionaire.
Speaker 3: Bill, blonde blonde.
Speaker 1: Billionaire bill, which is going to bankrupt our economy discuss.
Speaker 5: I never thought I would long for the days of
Speaker 5: Kevin McCarthy.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Kevin looks like Lincoln, right, I know.
Speaker 5: He looks like a veritable statesman compared to Mike Johnson.
Speaker 5: And the thing is, at least with Kevin McCarthy, he
Speaker 5: had no real core beliefs, so you could push them around,
Speaker 5: whereas Johnson, Yeah, Mike Johnson does have.
Speaker 3: Core beliefs, and they're they're awful. I mean, they are
Speaker 3: wor pretty scary.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So he's a true believer and so he's out
Speaker 5: there doing this stuff. And I do think it was
Speaker 5: funny though, because I guess there was a meeting he
Speaker 5: had with people on the Senate side, GOP members of
Speaker 5: the Senate, and he told them, don't change this bill.
Speaker 3: You know, if you're going to make changes, keep them
Speaker 3: very minimal.
Speaker 5: And my understanding is I don't know if anyone actually
Speaker 5: laughed in his face, but the senators pretty much said,
Speaker 5: you know, I know, John Thune was quoted afterwards that no,
Speaker 5: we're going to put our imprint on this bill. So
Speaker 5: it's going to be interesting to see what the Senate
Speaker 5: does to this bill and how well Trump can whip them.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 5: It feels like in the Senate there's a chance for
Speaker 5: maybe some of the awful things to be made less awful,
Speaker 5: but it also feels like there's a chance for things
Speaker 5: to be made even worse. I mean, you got people
Speaker 5: like Ron Johnson and Mike Lee out there saying oh no, oh,
Speaker 5: we need to put more spending cuts in these in
Speaker 5: this bill. And so, you know, I would like to
Speaker 5: think that maybe there are some saner heads in the Senate,
Speaker 5: but then I remember that there are people like Ron
Speaker 5: Johnson and Mike Lee in the Senate, and I just think,
Speaker 5: oh my god, this could be even fucking worse than
Speaker 5: it is now.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about this bill because I think
Speaker 1: of it as like the purest distillation of trump Ism, right,
Speaker 1: like a lot of this shit he said on the
Speaker 1: campaign trail where people are like, you can't actually do
Speaker 1: that is in that bill. So for example, no tax
Speaker 1: on tips that is in that bill. How the fuck
Speaker 1: are you gonna do? No tax on deps? What's the tip?
Speaker 1: What is in everything a tip? Maybe everything's a tip?
Speaker 5: I have absolutely no idea. And then you're in a
Speaker 5: situation where and look, I'm all for servers and bartenders
Speaker 5: making more money.
Speaker 1: That's not what this is though. I mean, it's just
Speaker 1: like I'm a hedgephone manager? Is my you know, if
Speaker 1: I make over a twenty percent return, can my you know,
Speaker 1: can I carried interest be considered a tip? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I don't. Unlike you, Molly I am not an economist,
Speaker 3: so I guess.
Speaker 1: As an economist, I can tell you.
Speaker 3: So I don't understand.
Speaker 1: This is some shit. That's what we're in, Isn't you
Speaker 1: know when I got my degree from Harvard, my economics
Speaker 1: degree from Harboro. Yes, the big beautiful boxom Byzantheum of
Speaker 1: billionaire Bellicost. That bill has in it a lot of
Speaker 1: cuts and the way it gets the cuts to medicaid.
Speaker 1: So remember the top line. I'm going to go back
Speaker 1: to Mike Johnson's when he managed to pass the Sea
Speaker 1: are and not shut down the federal government, which for
Speaker 1: him was like consider you know they they're going to
Speaker 1: pass like three things. Okay, so the cr this and
Speaker 1: maybe they'll name some post offices. When he passed this
Speaker 1: film with the top lines on the on the budget
Speaker 1: were eight hundred and eighty billion from medicaid. Eight hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty billion dollars for medicaid. So the way they're
Speaker 1: going to get there is it going to make it
Speaker 1: harder to get medicaid, so like you're not going to
Speaker 1: be able to call you just like this is elon Musks,
Speaker 1: Like wait, what you know they're going to get rid
Speaker 1: of waste fraud and abuse by making it impossible to
Speaker 1: get the government service.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's been there.
Speaker 5: Their sort of mo like you said, since the beginning
Speaker 5: of Trump two point zero, is you know, we're going
Speaker 5: to completely get rid of anything we can, and if
Speaker 5: there are things that we can't completely get rid of,
Speaker 5: we're just going to make them. Like like you said,
Speaker 5: we're going to make the process to get those benefits
Speaker 5: so arduous that a lot.
Speaker 3: Of people won't be able to do it.
Speaker 5: And what do you know, it'll be the people probably
Speaker 5: who need it the most. It'll be the elderly, It'll
Speaker 5: be you know, the people who maybe can't afford super
Speaker 5: high speed internet to go online, to try to go
Speaker 5: to you know, SSA, dot gov and places like that.
Speaker 5: This is absolutely what they want to do. It's just
Speaker 5: wild to see that side by side with things like
Speaker 5: raising the no tax floor on the on estate taxes
Speaker 5: to like fifteen I think it's fifteen million for single people,
Speaker 5: thirty million for couples, so you can you can leave,
Speaker 5: if you're a couple and you want to leave money
Speaker 5: to your kids, you can leave thirty million dollars to
Speaker 5: them tax free. And you know, I know for for
Speaker 5: people like you, Molly, the one percent. You know, this
Speaker 5: is the kind of thing that you have been calling
Speaker 5: for for years, if not tickets, but for ordinary for
Speaker 5: hard working Americans like me and the listeners of fast Politics.
Speaker 5: You know, this is a real slap in the face.
Speaker 1: I love you and think you're funny again. Trump had
Speaker 1: this coalition of working glass voters.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: Supposely he had gotten these working glass voters to come
Speaker 1: to him because he said to them that he was
Speaker 1: going to fight for them, he was going to get
Speaker 1: them stuff. Those are not people who have parents leaving
Speaker 1: them thirty million dollars. You know, they are not. So
Speaker 1: he is fucking the very people who put him in office.
Speaker 1: Part of the story makes me so upset because I
Speaker 1: think of here are Democrats who maybe there's some level
Speaker 1: of incompetence, maybe there's some level of whatever, but you know,
Speaker 1: ultimately and maybe they're being too much good guys. They
Speaker 1: don't want to fuck over working people. Like it's just
Speaker 1: so simple. One party wants to fuck over working people
Speaker 1: to help crypto people and wealthy people benefit from tax cuts,
Speaker 1: and the other party wants to you know, grow the
Speaker 1: social safety net, give you know, I mean, I just
Speaker 1: remember Bernie Sanders, you know, saying like just wants to
Speaker 1: make it so that glasses are covered by you know
Speaker 1: that kind of thing, the dentist is covered by the things.
Speaker 1: And then you have Donald Trump being like, no, What
Speaker 1: I thought was the sort of single most interesting moment
Speaker 1: the last couple of weeks was Donald Trump said, you know,
Speaker 1: we should have a bracket for people who make over
Speaker 1: two wait five million dollars a year. Okay, so two
Speaker 1: point five million dollars a year. It's one thing to
Speaker 1: be like poor rich two point five million dollars a year.
Speaker 1: Once you make over that you're in a completely different world. Right,
Speaker 1: You're fine, you can pay more fucking tax.
Speaker 3: Right, And he says, you.
Speaker 1: Know, that's a great idea. Again, did there was there
Speaker 1: any world where that was going to happen. No, there
Speaker 1: was zero fucking chance that was ever going to happen.
Speaker 1: But I do think it's worth realizing, like that is
Speaker 1: the winning message. That is the fucking winning message. Tax
Speaker 1: very rich people. People should not you know, you don't
Speaker 1: have to tag them at eighty percent, you can tag
Speaker 1: them at sixty percent, but you should people shod not
Speaker 1: be making one hundred million dollars a year. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's a that's a country, not a person.
Speaker 5: I mean, look, you've even got you know, in the
Speaker 5: last couple of weeks or a month or so, you've
Speaker 5: got people like Steve Bannon going out there and saying
Speaker 5: we should probably tax the rich more. But the point
Speaker 5: is he's you know, an awful human being, right, and
Speaker 5: but he's not stupid, and he sees that just a yeah,
Speaker 5: just from a pure you know, political standpoint, and from
Speaker 5: an electoral standpoint, you don't want to be the party
Speaker 5: of the millionaires and the billionaires. And that is what
Speaker 5: the Republican Party is. Trump has been able, as you noted,
Speaker 5: Trump has been able to fool a lot of people
Speaker 5: who are not willionaires or billionaires twice twice and you
Speaker 5: still hear. You know, we've talked about this on the
Speaker 5: podcast I co host As the World Churns, available wherever
Speaker 5: podcasts are sold and also on YouTube. But we've talked
Speaker 5: about what is it going to take for the people
Speaker 5: who are out there, the working class people, the people
Speaker 5: who are not you know, the one percent or even
Speaker 5: the ten percent, but who continually say things like he
Speaker 5: fights for me. What is it going to take to
Speaker 5: make them realize that he has never fought for you
Speaker 5: a day in your life, and he could not give.
Speaker 3: Less of a shit about you. And I don't know,
Speaker 3: Like I don't.
Speaker 5: I'm not one of those people that thinks it's you know, well,
Speaker 5: Trump is going to crash the economy. He's going to
Speaker 5: do all this, and it's unfortunate. You No, it's necessary.
Speaker 5: We need to happen so that people wake up. I
Speaker 5: don't want that to happen because a lot of people
Speaker 5: who didn't vote for Trump are going to get hurt
Speaker 5: in what's coming, what's already started, and what's going to
Speaker 5: continue to grow. But you do sit there and you think,
Speaker 5: how is this not where everyone realizes Trump doesn't fight
Speaker 5: for them? But I have said that so many times
Speaker 5: in the last you know, eight nine years that I
Speaker 5: have no idea where that line is. I have no
Speaker 5: idea what Trump has to.
Speaker 6: Do for the majority of the people who voted for
Speaker 6: him to realize that not only does he not fight
Speaker 6: for them, he is actively working against them and always
Speaker 6: has been.
Speaker 1: Correct Andy Levy, maybe someday you will come back when
Speaker 1: I can talk.
Speaker 2: I would like that.
Speaker 3: I'm also willing to come back when you can't talk.
Speaker 1: Ned Lamont is the governor of Connecticut. Welcome to fast politics,
Speaker 1: Governor of Lamont, Hey Roley, Governor of Connecticut. You've got
Speaker 1: a federal government that is out of control in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways. We've seen some really amazing pushback from
Speaker 1: there are Blue states governors. I'm thinking about Janet Mills.
Speaker 1: How do you threaut this need all of being a big,
Speaker 1: important state with a lot of people and a lot
Speaker 1: of bonds, but having to sort of work with this
Speaker 1: federal government.
Speaker 3: First. While I love Janet Mills from Maine, I was
Speaker 3: sitting next to her at the White House that day
Speaker 3: mining your own business, seventy years old, ready to retire.
Speaker 3: President Trump looked around, where's that governor Maine and let
Speaker 3: her have it. Said I'm going to see you. She said,
Speaker 3: I'll see you in court. And they paid a price
Speaker 3: for it. The White House has tried to jack they're
Speaker 3: funding a couple of times. So here's how it works
Speaker 3: for a state of Connecticut. I've got a Senator Chris Murphy.
Speaker 3: Every day he's letting the president have it and say
Speaker 3: this is what's in state America. I have an aury
Speaker 3: General William Tongue who every other day brings suit and
Speaker 3: tries to protect some of the resources we're supposed to
Speaker 3: have from the federal government. I, as a governor, maya
Speaker 3: I sort of pick my battles. Let's say I think
Speaker 3: Medicaid is incredibly at risk. If I make it all
Speaker 3: about Trump, I won't get any red steak governors to
Speaker 3: help us out on this. But if I go to
Speaker 3: the red state governors and I say, you're more at
Speaker 3: risk than we are because you're rural hospitals, of which
Speaker 3: there are many more, this is someplace maybe we can
Speaker 3: work together. This is we all worked in our own
Speaker 3: different ways.
Speaker 1: Do governors really work together in a nonpartisan.
Speaker 3: Way in private?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 3: And public no. I'll be a little less facetious so being.
Speaker 1: It's not fanciass accurate prey true.
Speaker 3: Actually, we work together a lot on a regional basis,
Speaker 3: publicly and privately. But even you know, if you go
Speaker 3: around the country a little more, where you tend to
Speaker 3: break in the different casts privately, there are a lot
Speaker 3: of positive conversations. The governors are pretty good. They know
Speaker 3: what's the right thing to do. But if look, if
Speaker 3: you're a red state, you know republican governor, you got
Speaker 3: to watch out. If you can't risk a primary, they're scared,
Speaker 3: but privately they can fight for their own residents, just
Speaker 3: like we do it all to re aligned.
Speaker 1: What are the things that are really affecting your day
Speaker 1: to day sort of running your state? Like I think
Speaker 1: of Trump's war on fema, like, is that something that's
Speaker 1: affecting you? Is that something that you're watching and what
Speaker 1: are the parts of it that are affecting you.
Speaker 3: First of all, Dose says they're going to get rid
Speaker 3: of waste, fraud and abuse. I think those was a fraud.
Speaker 3: I really they're going to go after sort of medicaid
Speaker 3: abuses and upcoting in a lot of ways that they
Speaker 3: should go after these. They didn't do that. They just
Speaker 3: want to shove costs down to the state and that
Speaker 3: in terms of Medicaid you mentioned that. In terms of FEMA,
Speaker 3: snap benefits very much. You know, look at the Republican bill.
Speaker 3: They're not saving anybody any money. They're not doing anything
Speaker 3: more efficiently. All they're doing is saying, govers, you figure
Speaker 3: out how to pay for it.
Speaker 1: Do you think it's it's funny because I think I
Speaker 1: think of you and Annie as coming from VC world,
Speaker 1: right Bench capital World and my father in law came
Speaker 1: from VC world, and my father in law was one
Speaker 1: of the first bench capitalists, right, I mean very early.
Speaker 1: And one of the things they did was they wanted
Speaker 1: to grow the country. They wanted to grow businesses, they
Speaker 1: wanted to go to the country, and they were very
Speaker 1: philanthropic and involved in sort of being on the right
Speaker 1: side of things. There are a new crop of vcs
Speaker 1: and Elon is very much aligned with this where it's
Speaker 1: a completely different value system. What do you make of that?
Speaker 3: Look, I'm a pro growth democrat, and I think that
Speaker 3: we were an economy here at Connecticut that was slow
Speaker 3: growth for a long time. We paid a price for that.
Speaker 3: Now we're growing. I don't do it by recruiting great,
Speaker 3: big companies. I do it by starting hundreds of small businesses,
Speaker 3: even smaller than the businesses your father in law was
Speaker 3: involved in. But I think you're right. Everybody who's gotten
Speaker 3: a lot more transactional and mercenary started with the tech
Speaker 3: bros out there in Silicon Valley. Their maunder used to
Speaker 3: be doing no harm. Now it seems to be how
Speaker 3: can I get a little bit richer? And they're all
Speaker 3: suing each other and claiming monopoly and it's not the
Speaker 3: innovative economy that has made America special for the last
Speaker 3: fifty years. Little credit. Elon mu is an amazing entrepreneur.
Speaker 3: I mean, look what he's done in space and evs
Speaker 3: and as such. But you got to focus on what
Speaker 3: you do, right. I think him getting in trying to
Speaker 3: say God is really simple to cut two trillion dollars
Speaker 3: out of our federal budget. Look where we are today.
Speaker 3: I mean they're about to pass a reconciliation build the
Speaker 3: Republicans that make, you know, through their drivers into bankruptcy
Speaker 3: as a country. They're worried about Woke. I'm worried about
Speaker 3: his going broke. That's what they're doing.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about your smartphone legislation. Because I have a
Speaker 1: lot of children. You know, everybody's got something going on.
Speaker 1: But one of my kids went on to the student
Speaker 1: council and he started trying to legislate against cell phones
Speaker 1: because he thinks that it's turning people into zombies. Now,
Speaker 1: they did try to impeach him, but he did survive
Speaker 1: the impeachment. I'm just telling the story to show the
Speaker 1: headwinds that you see when you try to legislate technology.
Speaker 1: Talk to me about this.
Speaker 3: I got into this two years ago. I said, a
Speaker 3: smart our phones make you stupid, especially if in the classroom,
Speaker 3: an incredible distraction, creating a lot of performance fighting and
Speaker 3: things in the hallways. And I said, get them out
Speaker 3: of the classroom. I'd say they're out of ninety plus
Speaker 3: percent of our K through eight classrooms right now. Then
Speaker 3: I had anxious generation come and they said, not good enough.
Speaker 3: Out of the classroom. You want them out of the schools.
Speaker 3: You want to have at least eight hours a day
Speaker 3: where the kids are with each other and focused on
Speaker 3: each other. And we're making real progress there as well.
Speaker 4: And mother.
Speaker 3: Look, there was a lot of pushback. The parents were upset, Hey,
Speaker 3: I won't be able to stay in contact with booboo
Speaker 3: all day long. And that's okay. We worked it out
Speaker 3: so they can call the central office. Some of the students,
Speaker 3: as your older students, said, look, you've got to respect us.
Speaker 3: We've got to know how to manage this ourselves. But
Speaker 3: certainly in K through eight it's working in After a week,
Speaker 3: the students say, I kind of like it.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about pre K because that's another thing
Speaker 1: really important for any number of reasons, mostly because it
Speaker 1: gets people to school on out of poverty and families.
Speaker 1: What are you doing for pre K. It's expensive, it's
Speaker 1: hard to manage in a big state. So explain to
Speaker 1: us what you're doing there.
Speaker 3: So we're doing the biggest expansion of our early childhood ever.
Speaker 3: We're going to make sure it's free for all families
Speaker 3: earning less thane hundred thousand dollars. We're not going to
Speaker 3: do it tomorrow, but we'll get there over the next
Speaker 3: three or four years. Really hopeful about that. Look, there
Speaker 3: are very few things I do may like virtually nothing
Speaker 3: where business, labor, young families, liberals all are aligned. Early
Speaker 3: childhood is one of those places business licen because it
Speaker 3: helps mom and dad get back to work. I love
Speaker 3: it because it gives kids the very best head start
Speaker 3: in life. Every kindergarten teacher I talk to says, I
Speaker 3: can tell that kid became from a early quality early
Speaker 3: childhood program. Parents honestly love it because they can't afford it.
Speaker 3: So it's one place where we actually have consensus.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wonder if you can sort of talk us
Speaker 1: through this idea that sort of doing more for education
Speaker 1: helps the state it's probably.
Speaker 3: Our best calling card. I'll just give you an example.
Speaker 3: I mean when I visit India, which I just did
Speaker 3: on a trade mission, and I boast about our location
Speaker 3: and housing, and you know, they say, I understand you
Speaker 3: have a really good education system. That's very important for us.
Speaker 3: That's the reason why perhaps we want to relocate some
Speaker 3: people here. It's one of our calling cards. When a
Speaker 3: business comes there, they often talk about the schools. You
Speaker 3: think they're talking about taxes or labor or something like that.
Speaker 3: You often talk about the schools because we have some
Speaker 3: of the best in the country, and that's one of
Speaker 3: our calling cards. Makes a big difference.
Speaker 1: Trade. We have these tariffs. They're coming down the pike again.
Speaker 1: We were in a moment with China where it was
Speaker 1: really like a mutual destruction. Now he's brought the tariffs down,
Speaker 1: but it's still going to have big effects. You know.
Speaker 1: We have all these stories about the trade was way
Speaker 1: down in the Port of Long Beach and I feel
Speaker 1: a lot of anxiety. And maybe it's because I've just
Speaker 1: heard Paul Voker speak too many times about this idea
Speaker 1: that we may get caught in this stuyflation moment. Are
Speaker 1: you seeing that on the ground in Connecticut. Are you
Speaker 1: not and can you do anything to protect these small businesses?
Speaker 3: The rollout of the Trump tariff strategy was an absolute,
Speaker 3: unmitigated disaster. The one thing we need is coming out
Speaker 3: of the business world, there's a little bit of certainty.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to invest one hundred million dollars a
Speaker 3: twenty year investment. Why don't they know what the world's
Speaker 3: going to look like in twenty days? And that's what
Speaker 3: hurky jerky tariff proposal did. I will say we've done
Speaker 3: sort of a round tripper, and after we lose two
Speaker 3: trillion dollars of market value, the markets are coming back
Speaker 3: as Donald Trump brings down the tariffs more or less
Speaker 3: to where they were before and more focused on China,
Speaker 3: less focused on our allies. First state of Connecticut. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it was a bit of a hiccup. Our sales tax
Speaker 3: r not as much as we hope before. We'll see
Speaker 3: whether things that stabilize now, Bratt Whitney, they make gen engines.
Speaker 3: Let's say they bring in five billion dollars apart from Canada.
Speaker 3: Are they going to be subject to the terroriffs? Yes
Speaker 3: they are, No, they're not. That uncertainty is hell for
Speaker 3: economic growth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's a real question. And I wonder too,
Speaker 1: is the administration working on cutouts with Canada for stuff
Speaker 1: like parts and manufacturing?
Speaker 3: Yes, this is a great time to be a lobbyist
Speaker 3: down there. And why should you see the swamp? There
Speaker 3: must be thousands of them just doing carve outs just
Speaker 3: for tariffs right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's true when it comes to some of
Speaker 1: the regulation of other instruments like bitcoin too.
Speaker 3: Right, absolutely, don't you think it's shocking. I'm going to
Speaker 3: set up the Lamont Bitcoin and if you spend a
Speaker 3: million dollars, you can come and have a dinner with
Speaker 3: me and I won't tell anybody who it is. I mean,
Speaker 3: it just shocking the way they're playing this game.
Speaker 1: Shocking, but it is also this is who they are. Right.
Speaker 1: How worried are you about ice has been popping up
Speaker 1: in Massachusetts disappearing grad students. We haven't seen that in Connecticut.
Speaker 1: How worried are you about that? And what can you
Speaker 1: do to prevent it?
Speaker 3: Am terrified? Be my hispanic students talk about schools again?
Speaker 3: Are terrified? Many fewer of them to school today than
Speaker 3: they were even a year ago. And that's when we
Speaker 3: were coming out of COVID, so it's terrible. They're really
Speaker 3: going after Massa. Juss particular, Boston very loud. Sex City
Speaker 3: just a little louder about where they are. I think
Speaker 3: on the issues Connecticut we're a little dull. We're a
Speaker 3: little quieter, our heads down a bit. I don't go
Speaker 3: out of my way to pick a fight. Like I said,
Speaker 3: I have a DEI officer, but if you want me
Speaker 3: to call her the opportunity officer, I'll do that if
Speaker 3: it makes you feel better. But she's going to keep
Speaker 3: doing exactly what she's doing, even more diligently. They're coming
Speaker 3: in here too. They just hauled away a young guy
Speaker 3: going through the normal process that immigration court. The other day,
Speaker 3: Free Ice guys came in taser them. You were the
Speaker 3: shouts coming in from the courthouse. And how much you
Speaker 3: can do about that? We're at risk because this is
Speaker 3: federal buildings. I will. But how I play it though,
Speaker 3: which is we're getting criminals off the street. I work
Speaker 3: with DAFBI ice whoever it is to get criminals off
Speaker 3: the street, whatever their documentation. But I don't sit around
Speaker 3: when I have guys who are jaywalking, is shoplifting or
Speaker 3: speeding things like that. We're just trying to keep the
Speaker 3: place safe. I'm not getting in the immigration there, so
Speaker 3: there's no way we can play with ICE on that.
Speaker 3: We just don't have that information, nor are we going
Speaker 3: to get it.
Speaker 1: You have one of the greatest universities in your state
Speaker 1: when my husband went, one of the great and it
Speaker 1: has one of the great hospitals. Yale New Haven Hospital
Speaker 1: is one of where I participated in the COVID vaccine trial.
Speaker 1: But it's also the major major employer in the state.
Speaker 1: So I'm wondering if you could talk about these NIH
Speaker 1: grant whatever is happening there with the administration trying to
Speaker 1: take money away from the university. I know it's complicated
Speaker 1: and multi layered, but there certainly are capping. There's capping
Speaker 1: on indirect grants. There's a lot of sort of financial
Speaker 1: fuckery going on with the federal government trying to punish
Speaker 1: these institutions for whatever crime's real but mostly imagined. Talk
Speaker 1: to me about where the university is and the hospital
Speaker 1: and the research facilities are in the federal government and
Speaker 1: sort of what that looks like.
Speaker 3: I thought probably that Republicans opposed big government and supported
Speaker 3: freedom of speech and academic independence. Instead, we have big
Speaker 3: government coming in putting a boot on the throat of
Speaker 3: some of our best research universities. Again, Harvard up in Massachusetts,
Speaker 3: part of Boston. We're going after them a lot harder
Speaker 3: than they are Yale and some of our research universities
Speaker 3: here at Connecticut. What is the dumbest thing you can do?
Speaker 3: France and other countries have created a research funds. They're
Speaker 3: going after the very best from the brightest of our researchers,
Speaker 3: saying you don't have the freedom to do it at Yale.
Speaker 3: If you don't have the freedom to do it at Yukon,
Speaker 3: come to Canada, come to Europe, come to China. Think
Speaker 3: of the AI smart people that are going to China.
Speaker 3: You know, we're fighting, we're widget factories here in Connecticut
Speaker 3: or America, and we're losing the next generation of AI
Speaker 3: talent to our enemies.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Do you think that ultimately some of that money
Speaker 1: is going to be unfrozen and it will go back
Speaker 1: to the way it was supposed to be or do
Speaker 1: you not have insight yet?
Speaker 3: I think only because they pull all the funding for
Speaker 3: public health clinics, then the money comes back. But there's
Speaker 3: something a little more cultural about going after the Ivy League.
Speaker 3: It's not about the money. I just think they want
Speaker 3: to pop the elites in the nose.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of drama in the bond market right now.
Speaker 1: Right there, we're at this moment where there's a real
Speaker 1: question about the level of debt that the federal government
Speaker 1: has and servicing that debt, and what it is doing
Speaker 1: to the larger financial picture of the country. Among the
Speaker 1: things that you worry about personally, you know, I go
Speaker 1: to sleep, bring about democracy, but I also worry about
Speaker 1: five other things. Where is dollar flight on your level
Speaker 1: of anxiety?
Speaker 3: Well, I'm a Connecticut governor, so I probably are a
Speaker 3: little more potholes oriented here in my state.
Speaker 1: Yes, it is really dangerous, Molly.
Speaker 3: I mean day China can say I'm gonna stop buying
Speaker 3: American bonds and then you have a flight on the dollar,
Speaker 3: and then you see not only as their credit rating collapse,
Speaker 3: but we have no way to refund what we've got
Speaker 3: to do to keep our government going. They've made us
Speaker 3: much weaker and much more vulnerable by playing these games
Speaker 3: with the deficit. Is if deficits don't matter, they do matter.
Speaker 3: This Republican build these so called physical conservatives. You're about
Speaker 3: to pass a bill that's going to create another three
Speaker 3: trillion dollars in deficit over the next years. Moodys is
Speaker 3: looking at that. Investors all over the world are looking
Speaker 3: at that and putting America much more risk. That's part
Speaker 3: of what stagflation is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, tell us sort of what you're excited about that's
Speaker 1: happening in your state.
Speaker 3: Here's what I'm excited about, Malli. All that noise for
Speaker 3: why intends to dominate the conversation and well with us.
Speaker 3: But fundamentally, I think, as I just told the Trinity
Speaker 3: graduate spoke there the other day, this is not the
Speaker 3: Middle Ages. You're graduating into the Renaissance. The same way
Speaker 3: that I was transformed for my generation, artificial intelligence will
Speaker 3: be TRANSFORMEDI for you. It's a great time to be graduating.
Speaker 3: And by the way, you're going to know more about
Speaker 3: AI than your boss, so you hit the grave running.
Speaker 3: That's a good place to be. My old businesses like
Speaker 3: insurance we have here with life sciences at Yale, and fintech,
Speaker 3: they're all going to be transformed by AI. That's what
Speaker 3: I'm excited about. That's the old private sector guy in
Speaker 3: me talking.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you, thank you, Governor lamont I. Hope
Speaker 1: you'll come back.
Speaker 3: See you so min like great to see you again.
Speaker 2: No, no moment, Jesse Canon Smiley. Right as we were
Speaker 2: making our last episode, Trump did this absolutely Banana's press
Speaker 2: conference with South African President Ramafosa. And you'll be shocked
Speaker 2: to hear that when he showed this ridiculous movie that
Speaker 2: promoted white genocide, that there is a whole bunch of bullshit.
Speaker 1: In Yeah, I'm shocked the images of the white farmers,
Speaker 1: which is so he played this video of like all
Speaker 1: of the sort of fevered swamp of right wing fantasy
Speaker 1: about what was happening in South Africa, and the images
Speaker 1: of dead white farmers actually came from not South Africa. Yep,
Speaker 1: that's right. It came from the Congo, which is not
Speaker 1: in South Africa. You will be shocked to hear that
Speaker 1: the Congo is not The video was taken from the
Speaker 1: Democratic Republic of Congo as part of what Reuters and
Speaker 1: then these were Routers videos from Congo, and then he
Speaker 1: presented them as evidence of mass killings of white South
Speaker 1: Africans in South Africa. So again, this is a president
Speaker 1: of the United States bringing another president to the Oval
Speaker 1: office and showing them things that aren't through and being
Speaker 1: mad at them for things he thinks are happening in
Speaker 1: their country that aren't. Again, I understand that a lot
Speaker 1: of Trump World operates in a post truth environment, but
Speaker 1: the rest of the world does not. So the rest
Speaker 1: of the world understands that we are being held osage
Speaker 1: by a madman. And I think it's worth remembering that
Speaker 1: the rest of the world sees what's going on and
Speaker 1: they are not involved in whatever weirdness we have gotten
Speaker 1: stuck in. So it's something. That's it for this episode
Speaker 1: of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and
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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.