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 Justin Trudeau has a message to
Speaker 1: the American people that your government has chosen to do
Speaker 1: this to you, not just the government Donald Trump. We
Speaker 1: have such a great show for you today. The Washington
Speaker 1: Posts owned Dana Milbank talks us through Trump's trade wars
Speaker 1: and how badly they're going.
Speaker 2: Emali, I have a real surprise for our listeners. We're
Speaker 2: going to play a whole segment from our YouTube channel
Speaker 2: where you and the Wicked Projects Rick Wilson react to
Speaker 2: Trump's address to Congress.
Speaker 1: Then we'll talk to Justice Alison Riggs about the continued
Speaker 1: fuckery with the North Carolina Supreme Court denying her her
Speaker 1: seat on the court. But first the news.
Speaker 2: So, Mollie, one of my favorite moments of hell that
Speaker 2: I've had to sit through yesterday was watching the Curb
Speaker 2: Your Enthusiasm theme play while Donald Trump spoke on tariffs
Speaker 2: at the stocks on Fox News is Ticker and Yeah,
Speaker 2: these tariffs are going great.
Speaker 1: I was told by Donald Trump twenty seventeen the trade
Speaker 1: wars were good and easy to win.
Speaker 2: Remember that I was told by him that any president
Speaker 2: that was a thousand points in the stock market of
Speaker 2: a day should resign.
Speaker 1: Is he going to resign?
Speaker 3: Hell?
Speaker 1: No, Trade wars are good and easy to win. Let's
Speaker 1: talk about what's happening right now. Donald Trump really really,
Speaker 1: really wanted to do these tariffs, and everybody who was
Speaker 1: a rich business guy who loved him and wanted the
Speaker 1: tax cut told themselves that he wasn't actually going to
Speaker 1: do it. This is this cognitive dissonance of trump Ism, right, So,
Speaker 1: this is this idea that Trump says, I'm going to
Speaker 1: be your retribution. People say, yeah, but he means that
Speaker 1: metaphysically and not literally. He means that technically but not
Speaker 1: remember that whole thing that reporter uote unquote from Pittsburgh
Speaker 1: Gazette Selena zto take him seriously but not literally literally
Speaker 1: but not technically, technologically but not faustianly. Well, he's gonna
Speaker 1: do it. So all of you wealthy people who voted
Speaker 1: for Trump because of the stock market, the stock market
Speaker 1: would like a word. He's opposed a swath of tariffs
Speaker 1: because remember, he doesn't know how tariffs work on Canada, Mexico, China,
Speaker 1: sparking You'll be shocked to hear retaliation because what happens
Speaker 1: in trade wars is that a war happens. So Beijing
Speaker 1: has sent stocks lower as there's fear of a trade
Speaker 1: war because markets hate instability. And Donald Trump is presidenting
Speaker 1: very unstably, so he had had these tariffs twenty five
Speaker 1: percent on Canada Mexico. You'll remember there are pieces of
Speaker 1: equipment like car parts that go back and forth between
Speaker 1: Canada and Mexico five times. So will they be tariffed
Speaker 1: in and now will they be tariffed once? Twice, three times.
Speaker 1: There's all sorts of like minutia that can be wildly
Speaker 1: expensive and kill small businesses. They're also imposing an extra
Speaker 1: ten percent. This is a white house tariff on Chinese
Speaker 1: imports on top of a ten percent levy imposed last month,
Speaker 1: so that all get to twenty percent. Trump is accused
Speaker 1: of the three countries, by the way their crimes, are
Speaker 1: failing to clamp down on the trafficking of fentanol. Almost
Speaker 1: no fentinyl right the Canada. Fentanyl it's pretty tenuous.
Speaker 2: Right, It's enough weight that a child could lift it
Speaker 2: a bench press it, right.
Speaker 1: And also, and I think this is a really important
Speaker 1: thing to remember. Mexico gets most of its weapons. I
Speaker 1: know you're going to be shocked to hear this, but
Speaker 1: you know what country sends most of its weapons to Mexico?
Speaker 3: The country that makes all the weapons.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know where that is.
Speaker 3: I think it's called America.
Speaker 1: I mean, like eighty percent of the weapons are made
Speaker 1: by Rick Wilson, but the other two twenty percent made
Speaker 1: by other people in America.
Speaker 2: Yes, do we have to remind the listeners of the
Speaker 2: time you and I had to stop taping with him
Speaker 2: because he was filing one of his weapons.
Speaker 1: Jesus, I was like, what are you doing, Rereck, He's
Speaker 1: like the silencer.
Speaker 3: Do we have to remind listeners that this has happened
Speaker 3: more than once.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's got a real weapon problem. So Mexico they
Speaker 1: have stuff on us too, is what I'm saying. Claudia
Speaker 1: schean Baum said on Tuesday, the government will wait until
Speaker 1: Sunday We're going to go into a trade war. This
Speaker 1: is so stupid, This is so stupid. I just want
Speaker 1: to say, this is so stupid. Warren Buffett, who's very
Speaker 1: heavy in cash right now, do I need to explain
Speaker 1: who Warren Buffett is?
Speaker 2: I think people know that he's not particularly the most
Speaker 2: woke economist.
Speaker 3: He's just considered one of the realists.
Speaker 1: Okay, he's said He offered a sharp rebuke on the
Speaker 1: stupid saying a twenty five percent tariff on goods from
Speaker 1: Mexico and Canada is very stupid. And he said I
Speaker 1: think he didn't say it's very stupid, but we all
Speaker 1: know it is very stupid. He told CBS. Woke CBS,
Speaker 1: this is an active war to some degree. Over time,
Speaker 1: they are tax on goods. I mean, the truth fairy
Speaker 1: doesn't pay them. And then what you have to ask
Speaker 1: that question in economics, and then what well, there's not
Speaker 1: a lot of it. And then what in Trump world? Okay,
Speaker 1: well Trump plans to create an external revenue service.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, that's going to be yeah, existed forever, so BALI.
Speaker 2: In addition to that, Trump is set to whack the
Speaker 2: US working class with his stork three thousand dollars tax hike.
Speaker 1: Listen, those rich people need their tax cut, and if
Speaker 1: you and your family have to forego whatever to do it, so,
Speaker 1: this will be the largest tax increase that they have
Speaker 1: ever seen. I mean, the idea here is that these
Speaker 1: tariffs are actually a huge tax hike for the consumers.
Speaker 3: That is correct.
Speaker 2: And if you have to sell an organ since you
Speaker 2: refer to that whatever, that's what you're gonna have to
Speaker 2: do to pay those taxes.
Speaker 1: So that's right, organs for everyone. So that'll be fun.
Speaker 1: And by the way, you know, Trump has a real problem,
Speaker 1: which is Trump loves to talk about how terrible the
Speaker 1: border is, but there are not a lot of people
Speaker 1: trying to come over the border. So now Trump has
Speaker 1: no one to go to war with because he was
Speaker 1: planning on doing horrible you know, camps and deportation squads,
Speaker 1: and you know that borders sounding pretty quiet, So that's
Speaker 1: a real problem.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Somali.
Speaker 2: One of the other fun things that always is going
Speaker 2: on in Trump world is them saying something that is
Speaker 2: a little bit toeing in jd vance. He sat down
Speaker 2: with Fox News is Sean Hannity, and well, the stupid
Speaker 2: came out.
Speaker 1: He said that there's a crazy idea in the Democratic
Speaker 1: Party that if you repeat insane ideas enough, eventually the
Speaker 1: American people are going to believe them because every accusation
Speaker 1: is really a confession. Right. I have to say this
Speaker 1: may be part of the interview, but the part that
Speaker 1: everyone in the world is talking about. Is jd Vance
Speaker 1: implying that England and France haven't fought any wars recently,
Speaker 1: when in fact, George W. Bush got these poor European
Speaker 1: countries involved in his war against the Access of Evil Iran, Iraq,
Speaker 1: and North Korea, and they also were involved in beyond
Speaker 1: the Access of Evil Cuba, Libya, and Syria. Poor Europe
Speaker 1: was also involved in this. And the phrase, of course,
Speaker 1: has been attributed to friend of the pod David from
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I love that. One of the
Speaker 1: commentators said, isn't that Trump's whole business model? Yes, of
Speaker 1: course Trump is always sort of work in the reps,
Speaker 1: coming up with insane ideas and they're trying to sell
Speaker 1: them to his supporters. And now we have a special
Speaker 1: reaction to Trump's address to Congress with the Lincoln Project's
Speaker 1: own rip that we've pulled from our brand new YouTube channel.
Speaker 1: You can get cool stuff like this, but only by
Speaker 1: following us on YouTube by looking for fast Politics with
Speaker 1: Molly John fast Rick Wilson.
Speaker 4: Dear God, that took a long fucking time.
Speaker 1: It was the longest one of those ever. It's not
Speaker 1: we're not calling it a state of the Union because
Speaker 1: why aren't we calling it that, because it's it's too
Speaker 1: close to He's only been president for six weeks, so
Speaker 1: you're not allowed to call it a State of the Union.
Speaker 4: It's like the Joint Session of Congress.
Speaker 1: Right, we'll just call it our crashed economy.
Speaker 4: You know, it really is. I don't know if you've
Speaker 4: heard about these things. It's called tariffs. They're they're his
Speaker 4: favorite word. It's a big, beautiful word. And and they're
Speaker 4: already doing so great. They're making us so rich, and
Speaker 4: it's insane.
Speaker 1: Trump hit one hour thirty minutes, making it the longest
Speaker 1: State of the Union address in Joint Address of Congress
Speaker 1: in history, Longer than people who are better orators.
Speaker 4: You know, here's the thing. It was castro Esque in length,
Speaker 4: it was von Munchausen in content. And I think people
Speaker 4: are going to walk away from it going the fuck
Speaker 4: that I just listened to because I look an awful
Speaker 4: lot of it was like k Tell's Greatest Lies of
Speaker 4: the nineteen nineties and two thousands. It's like all the
Speaker 4: culture War stuff, the all the you know there are
Speaker 4: Social Security recipients were three hundred years old.
Speaker 1: It's right, a lot of stuff that had been debunked.
Speaker 4: Bucket of bullshit. And look, nobody, nobody walked out of
Speaker 4: that speech tonight. Nobody walked out of that speech tonight
Speaker 4: and said, Wow, that was a brilliant rhetorical construction. And
Speaker 4: I totally changed my mind about Donald Trump. No, most
Speaker 4: people watching that speech tonight were thinking, it's the same shit.
Speaker 4: And by the way, fuck, oh, Joe Biden's not president
Speaker 4: anymore and hasn't been for a few months now, and
Speaker 4: so you know it's on you now, Chief, You're not
Speaker 4: you know, he's up. I think he mentioned Biden. I
Speaker 4: was initially keeping track of it. I think he talked
Speaker 4: about Biden six or seven times at least during the speech,
Speaker 4: maybe more, I don't know. But it struck me how
Speaker 4: weirdly defensive it was. In a lot of places.
Speaker 1: I thought that sometimes with his speeches, I've thought, wow,
Speaker 1: this is really like remember the Fire and Fury speech
Speaker 1: of twenty sixteen, where I thought, oh, wow, this is
Speaker 1: really is to quote George W. Bush, some weird shites.
Speaker 4: Weird shit.
Speaker 1: With this, it was like the construction was very showman, right.
Speaker 1: So you'd have a person and you'd bring them out,
Speaker 1: He'd say this, child, this orchid has childhood cancer. Okay,
Speaker 1: and had been treated by the way at at that
Speaker 1: famous childhood cancer hospital that doesn't charge you, that takes.
Speaker 4: Money from the NIH or whatever it.
Speaker 1: Was, Saint Judes. So I've been Saint Judes will be
Speaker 1: cut under the new Elon Musk efficiency budget, so okay,
Speaker 1: and they're gonna work on childhood cancer, but they're cutting
Speaker 1: all the environmental regulations because they have to cut regulation
Speaker 1: because of capitalism. So here's a So the idea here
Speaker 1: is that this kid has cancer, but we're going to
Speaker 1: cut the funding for research for cancer, and we're going
Speaker 1: to cut the funding for environmental regulations, and we're are
Speaker 1: going but please look at this kid, because we got him.
Speaker 1: He's gonna you know. I mean, it just was like
Speaker 1: there was so many instances of like, this is the
Speaker 1: freest speechiest free speechy speechified freely us.
Speaker 4: He felt very free after.
Speaker 1: Right, But then it was like, but don't look up
Speaker 1: any of this stuff about what we do when you
Speaker 1: say stuff we don't like, right, don't.
Speaker 4: Don't don't conceive for a moment that we won't have
Speaker 4: you thrown out of the chamber if you if you
Speaker 4: act to very don't for a moment speech that he's
Speaker 4: not naughty, and winking several times to Cash Betel and
Speaker 4: Pam Bondy of you know you're gonna have you go
Speaker 4: get him, you know you You can see a lot
Speaker 4: of this entire structure tonight, I think came down to, look,
Speaker 4: this was not a speech writer speech. This is a
Speaker 4: Trump speech. He wrote this speech, or or at least
Speaker 4: told he when mellow in the speech, I don't but
Speaker 4: let me let me rephrase. I don't think he wrote it.
Speaker 4: I think he told people what he wanted and and
Speaker 4: it it was a mess. The whole thing was just
Speaker 4: a mess.
Speaker 1: But it was very, very.
Speaker 4: Densely packed lies. If lies were like nuclear material, they
Speaker 4: would have been compressed so densely that they would have
Speaker 4: reached a criticality and exploded. It just it was I mean, look,
Speaker 4: saying it was Trump's most mendacious speech ever is a
Speaker 4: high bar. But it was up there.
Speaker 1: Well, they're all, I mean, they're all like that the
Speaker 1: thing that I mean, you know, the real democracy, true democracy.
Speaker 1: I mean, there were a lot of like we're gonna,
Speaker 1: you know, redefine words, what do they mean? Real nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty four kind of stuff. I mean that's to be expected.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, the guy feels very emboldened. But
Speaker 1: I what I was thought, what I sort of was
Speaker 1: surprised by, was he also seemed kind of tired.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he was not super high energy tonight. He was
Speaker 4: not super high energy. And I think we've talked about
Speaker 4: this in the past. There is as certain cadence Trump
Speaker 4: gets when he's reading off the prompter. And we will
Speaker 4: pass a tax cut that will make millions of Americans
Speaker 4: so much more money, more money than you've ever seen before.
Speaker 4: It will be nothing, nothing anyone's ever seen ever because
Speaker 4: we will make so much, so much money, And it
Speaker 4: just was sort.
Speaker 1: Of a get sort of bored.
Speaker 4: I do think even for some of the Republicans in
Speaker 4: the audience who who were doing what I call the
Speaker 4: Saddam rule, which is, never be the first guy in
Speaker 4: the audience to stop clapping, Never be the first guy
Speaker 4: to stopped clapping. They were doing the Saddam rule. But
Speaker 4: there was also a there were some of the things
Speaker 4: he was saying that that that no one in that
Speaker 4: audience believe were true. Oh, the markets are doing great,
Speaker 4: and intro streets are plunging, and everything's going fine. And
Speaker 4: we've done so much in such a small amount of time.
Speaker 4: That's so good. Any of these went for a town
Speaker 4: hall meeting, they were buying that ship. Any of these
Speaker 4: read a newspaper, they weren't buying any of it.
Speaker 1: Well, if anyone who looks at the Dow Jones, which
Speaker 1: is Trump too right, knows that it's it's given back
Speaker 1: all its gains. So the I think the question really
Speaker 1: is sort of how long he can keep this kind
Speaker 1: of I don't know, is it Mussil? I mean, who
Speaker 1: is the who is the autocrat who says everything is
Speaker 1: it's sunny when it's raining?
Speaker 4: I mean, who is the I mean like I mean
Speaker 4: I jokingly said this earlier. A lot of it was
Speaker 4: sort of Baron von Munchhausen. He was almost testing people
Speaker 4: to see how many lies they would believe tonight because
Speaker 4: the speech was piled so hot, and my my staff
Speaker 4: folks were were following it and they're like, you know,
Speaker 4: we know you wanted us to fact check this, but
Speaker 4: we're all like one hundred and fifty lies an hour
Speaker 4: in to the seventeen hour speech, and it just it
Speaker 4: just it just struck me as even his own people, Yeah,
Speaker 4: they're clapping in the room, But the cognitive dissonance is
Speaker 4: a pretty far gap. In this speech. There was a
Speaker 4: lot of a lot of I'm the best, time, the greatest.
Speaker 4: They all expect that from Trump. But there was also
Speaker 4: a lot of like outright lies, and they knew it
Speaker 4: and they couldn't. They know they can't sell.
Speaker 1: A lot of these things, right, No, No, I mean
Speaker 1: they can't. And quite frankly, you know, I mean what
Speaker 1: is interesting is that he's sort of like he knows
Speaker 1: what he's supposed to pretend to care about, right, So
Speaker 1: clean air veterans, right, So as he's cutting these things,
Speaker 1: he's pretending he cares about them. And I would say
Speaker 1: that is in a way the most interesting part. Also
Speaker 1: the kind of showmanship we saw. So we had MTG
Speaker 1: in a maga hat. This is now her thing. She
Speaker 1: wears a maga hat. We had the sort of the
Speaker 1: crew of you know, the Trump children, every sort of Melania.
Speaker 1: I mean, we had the whole sort of.
Speaker 4: A different color. Tonight.
Speaker 1: She has been tanning with him, or they've been bronzing together.
Speaker 4: You know. The family that bronzes together stays together, is
Speaker 4: what they said.
Speaker 1: That's right, it's they share a bronzer. They share one bronzer.
Speaker 4: There, I will now use the tanning bed.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't think any of that is occurring naturally.
Speaker 1: I think that's just all orange powder caked up. And
Speaker 1: actually one of my kids, who I was watching it
Speaker 1: was was we were like trying. He was like, maybe
Speaker 1: it is real, And I was like, if your skin
Speaker 1: in your scalp is one color and your face is
Speaker 1: radically different than it is not real.
Speaker 4: That is not real. No, definitely not a real thing.
Speaker 4: But look, I mean I think I think you saw
Speaker 4: a lot of the performative as I said, like the
Speaker 4: Saddam rule, the clapping, the yelling, the you know, the
Speaker 4: raw rawer. Trump he he's watching. He expects all that.
Speaker 4: They know he expects all that. But I you know,
Speaker 4: even Trump was admitting tonight with things like the terrorists, like, oh,
Speaker 4: there'll be some dislocation, there'll be some brief rob. I
Speaker 4: think those clips are going to come back to bite
Speaker 4: him so hard, because unless, as Howard Lutnik was hitting
Speaker 4: hitting today, he's going to bail on tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Do you think that's possible? I mean, that was some
Speaker 1: Howard Lutnik is doing some three dimensional chests here we
Speaker 1: may do it, we may not do it, we might
Speaker 1: not do it at all.
Speaker 4: Yeah, here's the thing. I think Trump doesn't give a
Speaker 4: shit about public opinion, but I think he cares a
Speaker 4: lot about what the market does. And the market has
Speaker 4: been crippling for the last two days. It's been punishing
Speaker 4: him for the last two days, rightly so. And I
Speaker 4: kind of thought like some of the speech tonight might
Speaker 4: have been calibrated a bit, like like threw in more
Speaker 4: like raw, raw, optimistic bullshit that you know, you and
Speaker 4: I both know was crap. It's like things like, oh,
Speaker 4: so many new car factories are already being built, right?
Speaker 1: No, I know there was tons of new car factories.
Speaker 1: That was pretty amazing. So I want you to sort
Speaker 1: of do a second or two on the Democratic pushback.
Speaker 1: Was it the right stuff that Democrats did? You had
Speaker 1: a couple of different things, you had Al Green? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to. I want to remind everyone al Green
Speaker 1: tried to impeach Donald Trump on like I think it
Speaker 1: was like January thirty first, twenty seventeen, right, so he
Speaker 1: was remember Nancy was like no, and he was like yes,
Speaker 1: I think maybe February third, he was already doing impeachment,
Speaker 1: so it's been hot to try for a long time.
Speaker 4: I always have this memory of of MTG and uh
Speaker 4: and Bobert screaming like a pair of hyaenas at Joe Biden,
Speaker 4: and I'm just like, so, like, if the decorum thing
Speaker 4: is the thing, then you don't wear a baseball hat
Speaker 4: on the floor of the house. You don't. You don't
Speaker 4: get to, you know, sit there as a screamer and
Speaker 4: a ranter once upon a time and now be sort
Speaker 4: of the picture of propriety. All those things are.
Speaker 1: Let's just pause for a second. What worked? So al
Speaker 1: green didn't really work. People wearing pink didn't really work.
Speaker 1: What worked? I thought the little signs where they they
Speaker 1: held it up when he was lying yes, And then
Speaker 1: I thought.
Speaker 4: I thought that was a really interesting message. But I
Speaker 4: think it actually works. Given some of the polling we're seeing,
Speaker 4: people do not like that guy. No people are showing
Speaker 4: happy about it.
Speaker 1: The nefarious billionaire who models himself on a bond villain
Speaker 1: is not and is not even from here, is not
Speaker 1: more popular.
Speaker 4: Imagine how imagine a South African bond villain who you know,
Speaker 4: uses his who.
Speaker 1: Uses his schest man in the world.
Speaker 4: Super powers to fire weathermen and veterans, suicide counselors, and.
Speaker 1: Take money from children's cancer right. Yeah, so here, So
Speaker 1: the question is I also thought maybe Bernie just looking
Speaker 1: on and very displeased was a good I mean, I
Speaker 1: thought he did well. I mean the question is like
Speaker 1: do you go? Do you not go? Ultimately it was
Speaker 1: it better just not to go?
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, my my, I think sitting through the
Speaker 4: show was probably an yeah. And a lot of Trump's
Speaker 4: speech was built around like, oh, you won't cheer for America, right,
Speaker 4: A lot of that, yes, you know. So I think
Speaker 4: I think if I'd been counseling the Democrats, I think
Speaker 4: I would have sent a delegation of people. But but
Speaker 4: you know, look, I don't think the stunt stuff works anymore.
Speaker 1: So Manu Raju White signs, I mean, Manu Raju, who
Speaker 1: works for CNN, said, I've been in the House chamber
Speaker 1: for speech, you know, for a lot of speeches. Have
Speaker 1: not seen an opposition party mount of protests like tonight,
Speaker 1: House and Senate Democratic leaders and I think we couldn't
Speaker 1: see this because we weren't in it. Didn't join the
Speaker 1: escort committee for the President. They turned their backs on
Speaker 1: him when he entered the chamber. They didn't shake his hand,
Speaker 1: they didn't applaud virtually anything. Several walked out in the
Speaker 1: middle of the speech, lots of signs in the back
Speaker 1: being held up. DEMN members repeated shots of lies and
Speaker 1: your law lying. A DAMN member, Al Green was exported out.
Speaker 1: DEMN leaders endorsed the no applause strategy, but Jeffries and
Speaker 1: his deputies urged members against signs, props and loud outbursts.
Speaker 4: Well, look, I think turning your back on someone as
Speaker 4: they entered the room is one of the oldest pieces
Speaker 4: of political symbolism you can engage in in a public forum,
Speaker 4: and that is that. I think that was a good move.
Speaker 4: I think it says something, and I think it also
Speaker 4: it may have actually rattled Trump. He was trying to
Speaker 4: work the Democrats.
Speaker 1: Do you notice the same thing. Well, I just know
Speaker 1: what it's like to give a speech, and when you
Speaker 1: feel like they're not with you, even if you know
Speaker 1: it's a friendly group, it gets really rattling. So I wondered,
Speaker 1: and you and it makes more sense now all of
Speaker 1: his stuff where he kept being like, they're not gonna chap,
Speaker 1: They're not gonna applaud They're not gonna like I kept
Speaker 1: wondering why he was so stuck on that, and that
Speaker 1: would make a lot of sense.
Speaker 4: I think that. I think I think we've sort of
Speaker 4: I think yeah, and I think that idea of Trump
Speaker 4: in his head of I'm president, They're gonna clap for me,
Speaker 4: no matter what. I deserve it. I own this, I'm
Speaker 4: the boss. I think all of that has a sort
Speaker 4: of for him. Not getting what he wants in that
Speaker 4: space is really hurtful to him. He's gonna stew on this.
Speaker 4: He's gonna hate this, he's gonna be mad about it.
Speaker 4: He's gonna be thinking to himself, you know, they disrespected me.
Speaker 4: I deserve better. I'm gonna punish them, you know. But
Speaker 4: I do think that the best night of the moment
Speaker 4: mess moment of the night was I can't I don't
Speaker 4: know which member it was, but as Trump was walking
Speaker 4: down the aisle, someone held up aside and said, this
Speaker 4: is not normal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know who that was.
Speaker 4: And I thought that was really I liked that seeing
Speaker 4: that moment because it really this guy went in there
Speaker 4: with no intention of of of unification or communication with
Speaker 4: with the rest of America. It was just about he's
Speaker 4: gonna he was gonna go in there and and own
Speaker 4: the Libs, and he was gonna be a clown. He
Speaker 4: was gonna do his thing. And he did and and
Speaker 4: and some of it went on so long, like like like,
Speaker 4: this is not normal. Really spoke to me about this
Speaker 4: whole event.
Speaker 1: So the woman who did who held up the this
Speaker 1: is not normal sign, is a woman called Melanie Stansbury.
Speaker 1: She is from New Mexico. She is the the ranking
Speaker 1: member on DOGE, which you'll remember the chair of DOGE
Speaker 1: is one maga hat wearing Marjorie Taylor Green. So one
Speaker 1: of the things that Stansbury has had to do, when
Speaker 1: I think she's done it actually quite well has she's
Speaker 1: had to sort of be the sane one on that
Speaker 1: committee while still and so I did. I did think
Speaker 1: that was absolutely the right tone to hit because it
Speaker 1: was like trot, it was not. It was somewhat disrespectful,
Speaker 1: but it was not. It's still. I thought it struck
Speaker 1: me as more appropriate than a lot of the other stuff.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I think I think that was That was
Speaker 4: my favorite moment. And look, I think I think that
Speaker 4: the temptation in all this is to overprocess it and
Speaker 4: overthink it, because very few people remember any response to
Speaker 4: a State of the Union or a joint address. Yeah,
Speaker 4: you remember the performance of the of the president, Republican
Speaker 4: or Democrat. And I think Trump's performance was I don't
Speaker 4: think it was a great When Trump has the ability
Speaker 4: to perform at a different level.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and this was not that level. But you
Speaker 1: saw the P. T. Barnum, you saw the showman. But
Speaker 1: the most important thing about this is that we have
Speaker 1: now lost another hour and a half of our lives
Speaker 1: watching Donald Trump give a speech. And as I've said
Speaker 1: to so many of these speeches, I immediately thought to myself,
Speaker 1: here we go again.
Speaker 4: Another Yes, another fucking death march through Donald Trump's weird brain.
Speaker 4: And it was I mean. And by the way, my
Speaker 4: favorite tweet of the night was a scientist who was
Speaker 4: involved in this study. He said, I wish I could
Speaker 4: explain to them that transgenic mice are not transsexual mice.
Speaker 4: But how could you?
Speaker 1: Rick Wilson, transgenet Always, those are not transsexual mice.
Speaker 4: These are transgenic, not transsexual.
Speaker 1: Dana Milbank is a columnist at The Washington Post and
Speaker 1: the author of Fools on the Hill, The hooligans, saboteurs,
Speaker 1: conspiracy theorists, and duncis who burned down the House. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to Fast Politics. Your friend, my friend, Datambank.
Speaker 5: Molly, it is always great to be with you, even
Speaker 5: as the world is falling apart.
Speaker 1: Listen, he just as a constituent of mine, because I
Speaker 1: am a member of Congress now, so listen. It does
Speaker 1: seem as if and I don't live in the district
Speaker 1: of Columbia, so I'm allowed to vote in presidential campaigns, right,
Speaker 1: But it feels like things are quite leak in the
Speaker 1: federal government.
Speaker 5: Discuss well, Congresswoman, I would be delighted to discuss this
Speaker 5: with you. Things are bleak in the federal government, but
Speaker 5: I think things have taken such a turn here that
Speaker 5: things are now bleak for the country as a whole,
Speaker 5: if not the world. I mean what we're seeing with
Speaker 5: this trade war, and make no mistake, this is the
Speaker 5: biggest trade war we've had in a century. We're about
Speaker 5: to see the consequences. You know, elections have consequences, and yes,
Speaker 5: they've already had tremendous consequences for federal workers that will
Speaker 5: reverberate through the country in terms of services of America's
Speaker 5: expecting will no longer receive. We've seen the shock through
Speaker 5: the loss of freedom to liberties, but this is where
Speaker 5: Americans are really going to see it most. I mean,
Speaker 5: prices are now going to go up within a matter
Speaker 5: of days. And even if Trump comes to his senses
Speaker 5: and withdraws these actions, it sort of story started us
Speaker 5: on a cycle of protectionism. And in history shows once
Speaker 5: you go down this road, there's almost no way back history.
Speaker 1: Wait, what you bringing up history? Where the United States
Speaker 1: of amnesia? We know nothing, we remember nothing.
Speaker 5: But even people who watch Ferris Bueller know about Smoot Hawley, right.
Speaker 1: Smooth Halley. Well, actually only people will watch Fueler now
Speaker 1: about Smooth Holly. It does seem like the predictions. You know,
Speaker 1: we had this widen soft landing economy where everyone was like, yes,
Speaker 1: the economy is good, but voters don't feel it. They
Speaker 1: want cheaper eggs, so they voted for Donald Trump or
Speaker 1: eggs cheaper danam Bank.
Speaker 5: I've been surveying the groceries and markets for you, and
Speaker 5: I can report that no egg prices are up substantially.
Speaker 5: And that's the thing. I mean, you know, and prices
Speaker 5: are up substantially across the board. We've seen various indicators
Speaker 5: and even out today, predictions of yet higher rates of
Speaker 5: inflation increase. We've seen forecasts for economic growth in this
Speaker 5: first in the first quarter which we're currently in, have
Speaker 5: gone from substantially positive to recession and a.
Speaker 1: Half percent up to two and a half percent down.
Speaker 5: That's quite a swing in GDP. And that's you know,
Speaker 5: by definition, that would mean that we are in or
Speaker 5: are entering a recession.
Speaker 1: Is that a woke math?
Speaker 4: Though?
Speaker 1: Could that be woke math?
Speaker 5: There's the Atlanta Fed practicing woke math?
Speaker 1: Is the Atlanta Fed practicing wont math? Because it feels
Speaker 1: like woke math to may.
Speaker 5: I guess so, And that's why it should be investigated
Speaker 5: by the FCC and possibly by the acting US Attorney
Speaker 5: for the District of Columbia.
Speaker 1: He's pretty busy. You saw that piece of news that
Speaker 1: perhaps he was trying to panel a grand jury to
Speaker 1: go after Chuck for his Bello Coast language. In twenty twenty, Chuck.
Speaker 5: Schuma right the Bello Cooast language, for which he immediately
Speaker 5: clarified going after a couple of other members of Congress
Speaker 5: threatening to go after reporters who break news and expose
Speaker 5: facts in the public domain about Doge.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's not okay.
Speaker 5: I'm working on a larger piece about this, but just
Speaker 5: the wholesale fuselage of assaults on freedom of the press.
Speaker 5: I was going to, you know, include them in the
Speaker 5: current column I'm working on. They are just too many.
Speaker 5: I did I need more column inches to keep track
Speaker 5: of it. It is just it is just breathaking.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're in a pretty insane moment.
Speaker 6: We have no more aid to Ukraine, no more USA
Speaker 6: I D no more of a lot of the congressionally
Speaker 6: allocated funds because Trump thinks they're not going the way
Speaker 6: they should.
Speaker 1: What happened now, Like courts have already ruled a lot
Speaker 1: of courts of rule this is illegal or we're in
Speaker 1: a constitutional crisis. Who stands up for the rule of law?
Speaker 1: That shouldn't be a trick question, by the way.
Speaker 5: I mean, we're facing a series of slow moving the
Speaker 5: crises here. The Trump administration has been sort of slow
Speaker 5: walking its responses. You know, I don't think we can
Speaker 5: really say that they've flagrantly overtly violated a court order yet.
Speaker 5: I mean, it seems to be just a matter of
Speaker 5: time until that's coming you know, a lot of this
Speaker 5: is going to as we saw from the Chief Justice
Speaker 5: just recently, a lot of this is going to make
Speaker 5: its way to the Supreme Court. The administration will almost
Speaker 5: certainly lose on most of these things, but they may
Speaker 5: win on some of them and be able to redefine
Speaker 5: the powers of the executive. But you know, so I
Speaker 5: don't want to minimize constitutional crises. I think what's going
Speaker 5: to happen in the very short term, though, is the
Speaker 5: stuff we've been talking about with the trade war. I mean,
Speaker 5: the government is supposed to shut down in ten days.
Speaker 5: Republicans seem to have no clue as to how to
Speaker 5: keep it functioning, so they're relying on the minority Democrats
Speaker 5: to do it. But they've not given the minority Democrats anything.
Speaker 5: And why would the Democrats just vote to continue government
Speaker 5: funding the way it is, knowing that Donald Trump and
Speaker 5: Elon Musk are just going to spend money on the
Speaker 5: programs they want and kill the funding for all other programs.
Speaker 1: I read the playbook today that the cr it's not
Speaker 1: going to be available until this weekend or next week,
Speaker 1: so it's not like they even have it right.
Speaker 5: Well, no, I mean, you can guess what's in it.
Speaker 5: They have been by definition, we're talking about, you know,
Speaker 5: probably a clean cr as they call it, that continues
Speaker 5: the current levels of funding. Democrats have insisted on, and
Speaker 5: rightly so, some sort of assurance that the money that
Speaker 5: co Congress is approving is actually going to be spent
Speaker 5: by the executive branch.
Speaker 1: Crazy talk, Yeah.
Speaker 5: What a crazy idea. And of course the executive would
Speaker 5: probably ignore that language anyway, since he's not shown himself
Speaker 5: to be bound by the laws. But the Congressional Republicans
Speaker 5: are saying, no, we're not even going to put the
Speaker 5: language in there because we like what he's doing. So
Speaker 5: I just I'm having a hard time seeing what the
Speaker 5: incentive is for the Democrats to participate in this charade,
Speaker 5: to give their blessing to this charade. So we may
Speaker 5: be looking at a government shutdown. We're looking at a
Speaker 5: rapidly accelerating the trade war with all kinds of recaliations underway.
Speaker 5: We're looking at an already overheating inflation environment and very
Speaker 5: shaken markets, the prospects for hitting a serious recession now.
Speaker 5: So that's what's happening right now in the short term,
Speaker 5: and then we can all sit back from our shantytowns
Speaker 5: and Hooverville's and watch these constitutional crises unfold.
Speaker 1: Shanty towns and hoover rebels. I'm laughing to keep from
Speaker 1: crying here. So Trump has only been in office for
Speaker 1: six weeks.
Speaker 5: Okay, isn't that incredible. I can't remember life before this.
Speaker 1: This person has done so much to happened in such
Speaker 1: a short period of time. Democrats, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: the Great James Carvill said that he feels the Democrats
Speaker 1: should just bow out of the public forum and take
Speaker 1: a break, perhaps go to Aspen. Do you think this
Speaker 1: is something that the constituents who are getting arrested in
Speaker 1: front of Tesla? Do you think they want a Democratic
Speaker 1: party that is think tanking and perhaps doing a little scheme.
Speaker 5: No, I don't think that's what they want. But I
Speaker 5: also don't sort of buy into this criticism that the
Speaker 5: Democrats have been silent. I mean, okay, they.
Speaker 4: Have no power.
Speaker 1: No, I don't think they have been either. But I'm
Speaker 1: just I want to talk about the carvel yet another anyway,
Speaker 1: continue right, So.
Speaker 5: I mean, yes, there's a school of thought that says
Speaker 5: they should be, you know, setting their hair on fire
Speaker 5: over everything. Trump does. I'm kind of inclined to agree
Speaker 5: with that. There are others who say they should be
Speaker 5: picking their battles or I guess maybe going to Aspen.
Speaker 5: I think that's kind of a sideshow, because you know,
Speaker 5: the Democrats are not in control of their own destiny
Speaker 5: right here. They don't have a leader or you know,
Speaker 5: any obvious one, and they won't for a couple of years.
Speaker 5: Their fortunes, the fortune of the party and I think
Speaker 5: of the country are going to rise and fall based
Speaker 5: on how Trump does. And if there is a backlash,
Speaker 5: and I think a very powerful one is already building
Speaker 5: and it's only going to get more powerful as people
Speaker 5: realize that it's actually affecting their lives and their pocketbooks.
Speaker 5: There's going to be a huge backlash, just as there was,
Speaker 5: you know, with the Tea Party in two thousand and
Speaker 5: nine and twenty ten. You know that's where the Democrats
Speaker 5: will find their voice. Yeah, okay, so there, you know
Speaker 5: they managed to hold together a filibuster on trans rights
Speaker 5: in the Senate. Okay, well, that's well great, but that's
Speaker 5: not you know, I don't think that's where the Democrats
Speaker 5: need to be defined. They're going to be defined by
Speaker 5: the backlash to what Trump is is now doing, and
Speaker 5: it is unfortunately worth the country, but perhaps fortunately for
Speaker 5: the opposition, disastrous.
Speaker 1: For the Democrats. Yeah, are you worried about like democratic
Speaker 1: forms and institutions aka like our ability to vote?
Speaker 5: I am very worried, molly about the weekend of the institutions.
Speaker 5: I don't think anything like that drastic happens overnight. You know,
Speaker 5: we're going to have an election next year, We're going
Speaker 5: to have an election in three years. But the same
Speaker 5: thing I've been writing about, the attacks on the free press,
Speaker 5: it's not going to disappear overnight, although my employer seems
Speaker 5: to be doing its best to make it do that.
Speaker 1: But day now hear the curd.
Speaker 5: Oh, but it's going to take a long time to
Speaker 5: undermine freedoms that have been building up over decades. But
Speaker 5: you know, of course it's a danger and a threat.
Speaker 5: You know, we don't have to get up and say
Speaker 5: every single action is the end of free expression in America,
Speaker 5: but to know that combined, we are definitely chipping away
Speaker 5: and it's going to take a long time to fix
Speaker 5: and reverse these things.
Speaker 1: Yes, correct, It's funny because it's like we did have
Speaker 1: Trump one blown out. So as much as all of
Speaker 1: this feels unprecedented, it's actually very much. You know, in
Speaker 1: some ways it rhymes, in some ways, it's a lot worse.
Speaker 1: But the reason why Trump wasn't able to permanently end
Speaker 1: a lot of our norms and institutions was because of
Speaker 1: democratic pushback. Is that correct and talk to me?
Speaker 5: Well, yes, of course it's correct, But you know, I'm
Speaker 5: not sure that it was necessarily know what was happening
Speaker 5: in twenty seventeen. All signs indicate that Democrats will finally
Speaker 5: retake the House as they should have last time, and
Speaker 5: that'll be a bullwork. Part of the reason why Trump
Speaker 5: is destroying so many things so quickly is because he
Speaker 5: doesn't have a lot of time. Next year, the midterm
Speaker 5: campaign is in earnest. This is the year when he
Speaker 5: has to get everything done in terms of reconciliation bills
Speaker 5: through Congress and also all these extra legal and unconstitutional
Speaker 5: executive actions and orders that he can do at a
Speaker 5: time when he's not getting oversight or scrutiny from Congress.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wonder if we could just spend minute or
Speaker 1: two talking about Elon mush Or as I like to
Speaker 1: think of him, Leon. He is the richest man in
Speaker 1: the world. He is meme. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: know that, but I'm not sure you saw him at Seaback,
Speaker 1: but he is meme. He is so powerful he no
Speaker 1: longer needs verbs. What do you make of this? Verbalis
Speaker 1: South African billionaire who has decided that his newest hobby
Speaker 1: is cutting the federal government. And just as a student
Speaker 1: of history, has this ever worked well? Jesse has a
Speaker 1: fact check. He says that actually, and you know, we
Speaker 1: are very committed to the facts here. Jesse has an
Speaker 1: important fact check. He technically said, I become meme. Thank you, Jesse. Okay,
Speaker 1: he become meme. He become booner of the federal government.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Maybe I missed this during the campaign, but you know,
Speaker 5: I thought the president was coming into reduce prices and
Speaker 5: grow the economy, and instead we have a trade war
Speaker 5: that is increasing prices and trashing the economy. And we
Speaker 5: have the world's wealthiest man running the government, which is
Speaker 5: not at all contemplated during the campaign. But so no,
Speaker 5: it was not on my bingo card to have unelected megabillionaire,
Speaker 5: unaccountable to anybody, making decisions that will affect all of
Speaker 5: our lives. I don't think that what Elon Musk is
Speaker 5: doing will endure.
Speaker 1: Because it's not constitutional, right, I mean, this is a
Speaker 1: model will be undone.
Speaker 5: But what he's doing but that will endure, is it's
Speaker 5: just sabotage, pure and simple. He's done the same sort
Speaker 5: of thing that his business to, you know, sort of
Speaker 5: burn things down for creative rebuilding. But the government doesn't
Speaker 5: work that way for good reason. It's not a competitive enterprise.
Speaker 5: It's providing services and protecting Americans. It's not a business.
Speaker 5: The damage to the brain drain, the loss morale, turning
Speaker 5: away really a generation of civic minded people who care
Speaker 5: about government service and love their country. That stuff it's
Speaker 5: going to take a long long time, even if we're
Speaker 5: inclined to fix it, to fix it. So that's where
Speaker 5: his damage is. Do I think he's actually ending foreign
Speaker 5: aid for all time? No, of course not. That's going
Speaker 5: to need to be fixed in some way. But he
Speaker 5: sure is destroying our reputation around the world and hamstringing
Speaker 5: our government, and not to mention, making millions of people's
Speaker 5: lives miserable in the short term.
Speaker 1: The most important part is he's doing it for a
Speaker 1: tax cut and So who among us would not ruin
Speaker 1: into our federal government to save a couple billion dollars?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Maybe, but I don't know what Tesla stock is down
Speaker 5: what thirty percent?
Speaker 1: Yeah, they had the worst month in like five years.
Speaker 5: I wonder how they're going to do now that they
Speaker 5: can't import any of their car parts. I mean, you know,
Speaker 5: we're looking at all automakers are about to take a
Speaker 5: big hit because of this trade war. So yeah, I
Speaker 5: can't imagine the trade war is good for Elon Musk,
Speaker 5: although he probably won't notice it less than your average
Speaker 5: mom and pop.
Speaker 1: Yeah, those poor moms and pops. At the state level,
Speaker 1: we're seeing governors stand up more. Heally Chanet Mills from Maine,
Speaker 1: seventy seven year old very Spry did a really excellent
Speaker 1: job of speaking truth to power. Do you think about
Speaker 1: Democrats and should they embrace federalism?
Speaker 5: Well, if by that you mean use the federal system
Speaker 5: to resist what's going on in Washington, well of course
Speaker 5: they should's that is one of the checks and balances
Speaker 5: that you know, that is one of the ways we
Speaker 5: preserve the republic and protect democracy. I mean, you know,
Speaker 5: the courts are one, the free press is one. And
Speaker 5: certainly our federal system is one, and it was used
Speaker 5: quite successfully to counter Biden at every term, and that
Speaker 5: was without an actual constitutional crisis. So yeah, by all means,
Speaker 5: I mean this is the moment for state governors and
Speaker 5: state attorneys general to lead the fight exactly.
Speaker 1: Data Mailbank, please come back soon.
Speaker 5: Well, if we still have a country, I will be
Speaker 5: back with you anytime.
Speaker 1: Justice Allison Riggs is a judge on the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: in North Carolina. Welcome back to fast Politics, Justice Riggs.
Speaker 7: Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: Okay, what is happening.
Speaker 7: So we are in the midst of an extended state
Speaker 7: court fight.
Speaker 1: I'm going to get people up to speed here at
Speaker 1: North Carolina State Supreme Court. You won your seat. Republicans
Speaker 1: have decided that they don't want to give it to
Speaker 1: you despite the fact that you won. That's right.
Speaker 7: I won in November. It was confirmed by a statewide
Speaker 7: count that the exact number that I won by seven
Speaker 7: hundred and thirty four. It was confirmed by a sample
Speaker 7: hand eye recount in late November early December, and then
Speaker 7: my opponent's challenges were rejected by the state Board of
Speaker 7: Elections in December.
Speaker 1: So why won't they see you.
Speaker 7: The North Carolina State Supreme Court after a highly unusual
Speaker 7: motion from my opponent, my opponent asks the state Supreme Court,
Speaker 7: on which I serve, but I'm recused in this matter.
Speaker 7: He asked them to stay the certification of my election.
Speaker 7: And your listeners will know that folks storms the capitol
Speaker 7: on January sixth to stay the certification of the twenty
Speaker 7: twenty presidential election. So I like to give that as
Speaker 7: analogy so people understand that these aren't just wonky terms.
Speaker 7: Stay a certification of an election.
Speaker 1: So they're not letting you take your seat even though
Speaker 1: you want, because they don't want to. Right.
Speaker 7: So I am in my seat and I keep it.
Speaker 7: I was the incumbent, and in North Carolina, the incumbent
Speaker 7: it's called holds over until the election is settled and thirtified.
Speaker 7: I sit in my seat. The opponent won't concede. The
Speaker 7: State Supreme Court granted his request to put a hold
Speaker 7: on the certification of my election.
Speaker 1: That's insane. For no reason.
Speaker 7: Well they didn't really give a reason except their order
Speaker 7: said so that he can pursue his challenges throughout the
Speaker 7: state court proceeding. And so we went to federal courts
Speaker 7: because we think federal courts should decide these issues because
Speaker 7: they are questions of federal law and federal voting rights.
Speaker 7: The federal court said, yes, we will eventually hear this,
Speaker 7: but we're going to let the state courts go through
Speaker 7: the process of answering any questions of state law. And
Speaker 7: so when the Federal court said that, it effectively meant
Speaker 7: that this whole thing was going to drag out six
Speaker 7: to twelve months. They said that at the beginning of February.
Speaker 7: We have five to eleven more months, I think, and
Speaker 7: obviously it's just a guess because court stuff is slow.
Speaker 7: And then in the state courts, you know, you go,
Speaker 7: you start at the trial court, then there's the Court
Speaker 7: of Appeals, and then there's the North Carolina Supreme Court.
Speaker 7: So we've been to the trial court, We've won at
Speaker 7: the trial court. We have now just finished briefing at
Speaker 7: the North Carolina Court of Appeals. I think we'll have
Speaker 7: argument later this month and a decision maybe in April.
Speaker 7: Then it will go to the North Carolina Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: The timing, you know, I'm not.
Speaker 7: Certain of, but I think it's very realistic that it
Speaker 7: could be May or June before that's resolved, and if
Speaker 7: the state Supreme Court says toss any of these ballots
Speaker 7: that we believe are protected under federal law, because as
Speaker 7: a reminder, these are all eligible voters who cast lawful ballots.
Speaker 7: And my opponent has not been able to point to
Speaker 7: one single ineligible voter or a voter that he can
Speaker 7: prove or point out by name is actually an ineligible voter.
Speaker 7: And my parents are on the list of the sixty
Speaker 7: eight thousand voters he's challenging, So I know these are
Speaker 7: eligible voters. And so we're already looking at you know,
Speaker 7: possibly June before we even move back to federal court
Speaker 7: if we need to, and then federal court processes take
Speaker 7: time too. So why I so appreciate you lifting up
Speaker 7: this story is because when election litigation or voting rights
Speaker 7: cases take a long time, it's very hard to maintain
Speaker 7: awareness of them because the legal stuff is wonky. Sometimes
Speaker 7: people aren't as interested in it. But what's happening here
Speaker 7: in North Carolina is absolutely critical to the soul of
Speaker 7: democracy across this country because molly people in power can
Speaker 7: decide whether or not they acknowledge the results of an election,
Speaker 7: whether they can whether they respect the will of the
Speaker 7: voters based on if they like who won, then democracy dies.
Speaker 7: And so I need everyone across the country to understand
Speaker 7: that what's happening here, this fight is a continuation of
Speaker 7: what failed in twenty twenty and twenty twenty two. They're
Speaker 7: still trying it. My guess is they figure, Hey, no
Speaker 7: one really follows state Supreme Court races, so this one
Speaker 7: will fly under the radar. And I refuse to allow
Speaker 7: voters to be disenfranchised in the dark. I will shed
Speaker 7: light on it because I believe it's my duty as
Speaker 7: a constitutional officer. I put my hand on a Bible
Speaker 7: and swore and oath to God that I would defend
Speaker 7: the constitutional rights of everyone in North Carolina, and it
Speaker 7: certainly includes the sixty eight thousand voters whose votes are
Speaker 7: at stake here. But I need folks outside of North
Speaker 7: Carolina to understand just how insidious and threatening what is
Speaker 7: happening here is. Because I can't do this by myself.
Speaker 7: I need help from across the country.
Speaker 1: Yeah, explain to us why this is insidious. It's insidious
Speaker 1: because you won and they are fighting a real election result,
Speaker 1: and this is opening the door to disputing election results.
Speaker 1: They don't like right.
Speaker 7: That's right. So you can think of it as two
Speaker 7: different angles of thinking about why this is so inspidious.
Speaker 7: One is it creates the precedent or opens the door
Speaker 7: to people being able to anytime they don't like an
Speaker 7: election result, challenge it, say it was illegitimate, and overturn it.
Speaker 7: And you can also think of it as problematic from
Speaker 7: the perspective of all of these sixty eight thousand voters
Speaker 7: here in North Carolina followed the rules that were well
Speaker 7: publicized and set before the election. If you can come in,
Speaker 7: whether it's a disappointed candidate or a political party, if
Speaker 7: you can come in and after the election and change
Speaker 7: the rules of the game after the game has been played,
Speaker 7: it's very toxic to how our democracy is supposed to work.
Speaker 7: And it's a really intuitive problem. Right second graders on
Speaker 7: a playground know that in a game of kickball, you
Speaker 7: can't change the rules after the game's over because you
Speaker 7: don't like who won. And this is very problematic because
Speaker 7: there are fifty five hundred military voters, military and overseas
Speaker 7: voters who were told in advance to the election that
Speaker 7: they did not need to provide a photo ID to
Speaker 7: vote in part because military voters use an online portal,
Speaker 7: there's not a mechanism for submitting a copy of your
Speaker 7: picture ID. Also, if you think about folks serving on
Speaker 7: a submarine scanners an email, it's a little bit harder
Speaker 7: to come by. Regardless of whether you like that policy
Speaker 7: or not, that was the rule, It was approved of
Speaker 7: by a rules committee, a full of appointees from our
Speaker 7: Republican legislature. No one fussed about it in advance of
Speaker 7: the election, and now after the election they say no, no, no,
Speaker 7: These overseas and military voters should have provided their photo ID,
Speaker 7: even though they were explicitly told by North Carolina government,
Speaker 7: the US government, the DoD that they did not have
Speaker 7: to provide that ID. So this is a you know,
Speaker 7: it's a real question of fairness. You can't change the
Speaker 7: rules after the election because you think it will somehow help.
Speaker 7: And you know, these fifty five hundred military voters that
Speaker 7: my opponent is challenging, they're not statewide. They're in four
Speaker 7: of the most democratic counties in the state. There were
Speaker 7: thirty two thousand of these voters statewide, but he's only
Speaker 7: challenging those fifty five hundred, and those four heavily democratic counties,
Speaker 7: so you can't change the rules like this. I also
Speaker 7: say it this way. Look, voters, when they leave the
Speaker 7: voting booth, they should have certainty that they're vote counted
Speaker 7: if they follow the rules that were told to them
Speaker 7: before they went in there. They should feel comfortable that
Speaker 7: their vote counts. If this strategy wins, then no voter
Speaker 7: here in North Carolina, and really no voter in the
Speaker 7: country will ever leave a ballot box feeling confident that
Speaker 7: their vote counted. And I don't know how a participatory
Speaker 7: democracy ever works if that's the case.
Speaker 1: Right, And that's the point I think. Tell us what
Speaker 1: people can do with your story and how they can
Speaker 1: support you.
Speaker 7: If your listeners can, please visit my website. It's Rigs
Speaker 7: for our Courts dot Com. That's far not the number
Speaker 7: four Rigs for our Courts dot Com. You can sign
Speaker 7: up to get notifications so you can get emails that
Speaker 7: give you updates on what's happening, provide messaging on social media.
Speaker 7: It's actually really important that people share my updates on
Speaker 7: social media because we need to essentially go viral. We
Speaker 7: need folks to understand there's a lot of frustrating, terrifying
Speaker 7: scary things happening across this country and across the world.
Speaker 7: I understand that, and we still need to break through
Speaker 7: some of that noise so that folks understand the threat.
Speaker 7: So if you can follow me on social media, I'm
Speaker 7: on all the social media. It's either at Rigs for
Speaker 7: our Courts or at Alison j Riggs. It varies, but
Speaker 7: if you search Alison Riggs you'll find me.
Speaker 1: I'm on all the social.
Speaker 7: Media's providing regular updates because transparency is important. I believe
Speaker 7: that people in North Carolina and people across the country
Speaker 7: deserve to understand what's happening in this legal process, and
Speaker 7: deserve to understand the implications for each of us and
Speaker 7: our fundamental right to vote and our voice. Thank you,
Speaker 7: thank you, thank you, Justice Right, thank you, Mollie, thank
Speaker 7: you so much.
Speaker 8: And no more secretly, Jesse Cannon, So, my age, jug Fast,
Speaker 8: the Supreme Court has decided that your water doesn't actually
Speaker 8: need to be clean and the Clean Water Act is
Speaker 8: a bunch of bullshit.
Speaker 3: And I think this is very very very very very
Speaker 3: very very bad.
Speaker 1: Really tell me why, Jesse.
Speaker 2: Just this weekend, I was listening to Sarah Hoover, who
Speaker 2: has a celebrated book on the podcast How Long Gone,
Speaker 2: And she was discussing the time that she would surfing
Speaker 2: and actually got just a mouthful of water surfing that
Speaker 2: had sewage in it. And what did that do to her?
Speaker 2: It put her in the hospital for a month.
Speaker 1: What.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's what this law will enable, is that,
Speaker 2: you know, North Carolina has particularly been prone to dumping
Speaker 2: tons of things in the water because they fuck with
Speaker 2: this act all the time.
Speaker 3: And this is.
Speaker 2: Exactly the type of implications that happened when the Supreme
Speaker 2: Court overturned regulation because they think regulation is always bad.
Speaker 3: This is not good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, nobody wants to drink sewage water. Big bad mistake. No,
Speaker 1: thank you.
Speaker 3: Was shocking though. Who doesn't want to drink sewage water?
Speaker 1: Who?
Speaker 3: Justice Amy Cony Barrett really woke?
Speaker 1: Justice Amy Comy Barrett. Welcome to the resistance. What happened?
Speaker 3: She U said? The descent?
Speaker 4: Wow?
Speaker 1: So it was five to four mm hm, Yes, welcome
Speaker 1: to the resistance, Judge Amy too bad. Justice Roberts does
Speaker 1: not care. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics.
Speaker 1: Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear
Speaker 1: the best minds and politics make sense of all this chaos.
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