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.
Speaker 2: Nearly every major player at the Democratic Party has endorsed
Speaker 2: Vice President Kamala Harris for the top of the ticket.
Speaker 2: We have such a great show for you today. The
Speaker 2: Lincoln Projects Rick Wilson recaps the Arts Convention with us.
Speaker 2: Then we'll talk to Somemaphore's Dave Weigel, who will tell
Speaker 2: us what he saw at the Arts Sea. But first
Speaker 2: we have legendary campaign manager, the author of the Conspiracy
Speaker 2: to in America Five ways my old party is driving
Speaker 2: our democracy to autocracy. The Lincoln Projects owned Stuart Stevens
Speaker 2: to react to President Biden withdrawing from the Democratic nomination
Speaker 2: for president.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Fast Politics Stuart Stevens for an emergency podcast.
Speaker 3: Ah, great and great to be here. What do you
Speaker 3: want to talk about?
Speaker 4: Nothing? There's no news.
Speaker 1: We do these emergency podcasts when there's no news, because
Speaker 1: why not. It's Sunday. Joe Biden has just dropped out
Speaker 1: of the race. He has endorsed Kamala Harre. We are
Speaker 1: now in a very precarious but very exciting moment in
Speaker 1: American democracy.
Speaker 4: You're a campaign guy, what do you do next?
Speaker 5: The key thing here is that the Harris campaign, and
Speaker 5: I think it's pretty clear she's going to be the nominee.
Speaker 3: Just since this.
Speaker 5: Dropped, she's been endorsed by the Black Caucus, endorsed by
Speaker 5: Clinton's I can't imagine she's not going to be endorsed
Speaker 5: shortly by President Obama. I think the key is that
Speaker 5: there'll be as seamless as possible transition from the Biden
Speaker 5: Harris campaign to the Harris campaign. On staff and organizational level,
Speaker 5: they say they have twelve hundred staffers out there, hundreds
Speaker 5: of offices. It's really important that that be handed off.
Speaker 5: I would be really focused on trying to put together
Speaker 5: a call with the president and the Vice president and
Speaker 5: all twelve hundred staffers who wanted to join, talking about
Speaker 5: the same mission, continuing asking everybody to stay owned because
Speaker 5: you just can't replicate this. I mean, a presidential campaign
Speaker 5: is now a two billion dollar startup that's opened for
Speaker 5: a few weeks. You can't launch that because of Harris
Speaker 5: should be able to keep the same money.
Speaker 4: But she's got to catch up.
Speaker 1: You know, every evil and the various billionaire in the
Speaker 1: world has pledged Donald Trump as much as he wants
Speaker 1: because Trump is play pay for play, So Harris is
Speaker 1: going to have to catch up.
Speaker 3: Right, Well, we'll see about that.
Speaker 5: People like Elon Musk make a lot of promises they
Speaker 5: don't keep about money. I think I think when they're
Speaker 5: looking at it's going to be perceived that Harris has
Speaker 5: better odds to win. I think that's going to change
Speaker 5: their calculations. We'll see. You know, we went to the
Speaker 5: same thing in the primary when Allison said that he
Speaker 5: was going to give forty million dollars to Tim Scott,
Speaker 5: and my response to that was that not enough. I
Speaker 5: don't think this campaign will be decided by money. And
Speaker 5: you have this huge inefficiencies of the Trump campaign because
Speaker 5: it has always been a sort of large criminal enterprise, right,
Speaker 5: that's right, a lot falling off the truck. I think
Speaker 5: that there's going to be an interesting moment here that
Speaker 5: the two people running a Trump campaign, Chris Losovita and
Speaker 5: Susy Wilde, what have they been telling their candidate? Have
Speaker 5: they been telling their candidate they're going to run against
Speaker 5: President Biden? They are in the position for the first
Speaker 5: time in American history they held a convention attacking someone
Speaker 5: who's not in the race. So I expect, if you
Speaker 5: read that Atlantic article, which I thought was extraordinary, lots
Speaker 5: of Vida's out there. I think that lots of Vida
Speaker 5: has sort of become like Trump's doctor. You know, he'll
Speaker 5: be the fittest president ever. He'll win, They'll win by
Speaker 5: large numbers, and this will shake his confidence in them.
Speaker 5: This is going to be a probable dump. Be your moment.
Speaker 5: I would suspect within the Trump campaign that inside what
Speaker 5: will quickly become the Harris campaign. You know, you look
Speaker 5: at the kind of campaign that they want to run.
Speaker 5: That was in the prepared remarks in that speech, Trump's
Speaker 5: convention speech. But then you look at the kind of
Speaker 5: campaign they're going to have to run, and that's what
Speaker 5: Donald Trump gave.
Speaker 3: Because Donald Trump is not going to change right.
Speaker 1: Like, I feel like there are two different things I've
Speaker 1: seen here that have made people anxious. One is that
Speaker 1: Americans are racist and sexist, and they won't vote even
Speaker 1: though she's the most qualified. They will somehow act out
Speaker 1: against her because of that. The other positive I've heard
Speaker 1: about that is that Trump will not be able to
Speaker 1: hide how racist and sexist he is, and it'll make
Speaker 1: people want to vote for her.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Look, you know, these things are always true until they're
Speaker 5: not true. Like, you know, we've never elected a black woman.
Speaker 5: We've never had a black vice president either. You know,
Speaker 5: there's this rap out there that Harris isn't a very
Speaker 5: good politician, which I just find to be a head scratcher.
Speaker 5: So let's just kind of look at it. So, she
Speaker 5: defeated incumbent DA in a party primary, which is.
Speaker 4: Right, that's right, a primary, which is not.
Speaker 3: Not easy to do.
Speaker 5: Ever, she was seen as strong. That so strong she
Speaker 5: wasn't challenged. Then she ran for Attorney General against this
Speaker 5: guy who was the golden boy of California politics, Republican politics,
Speaker 5: not named Schwarzenegger, who was a very popular Republican DA
Speaker 5: in heavily democratic La County, and she him, and then
Speaker 5: she got elected to the US Senate. And now she's
Speaker 5: Vice President of the United States. So how far would
Speaker 5: she have gone? And she was a good politician, you know,
Speaker 5: I mean, it just seems to me to be an absurdity.
Speaker 5: More people have voted for her than any woman in American.
Speaker 4: History, right, exactly.
Speaker 1: Well, and also she's been a DA and ag Yeah,
Speaker 1: the second black female senator ever. I mean she has
Speaker 1: way more qualifications than Trump or Vans or even really
Speaker 1: Secretary Clinton, right because she came.
Speaker 4: Up through the AGDA route.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and you know, she doesn't have the difficulties that
Speaker 5: Clinton had of sort of putting someone back in the
Speaker 5: White House who was sort of in the White House
Speaker 5: for eight years. No one is going to attack her husband.
Speaker 5: It's a cleaner, a much cleaner race. You know, you
Speaker 5: have to assume. I think it's reasonable that the one
Speaker 5: hundred day agenda that President rolled out in Michigan last
Speaker 5: Friday is going to stay the same. So that's about
Speaker 5: eighty twenty to the positive. You look at what they
Speaker 5: rolled out in the convention and the Project twenty twenty five,
Speaker 5: that's about twenty eighty to the negative. Right away, is
Speaker 5: very simple. I'd take the eighty twenty and run it
Speaker 5: against the twenty eighty.
Speaker 4: And she can run on his on his accomplishments.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, And you know, you have a real generational contrast.
Speaker 5: Now there is this odd reality you know that when
Speaker 5: the White House changed his hands and change its parties,
Speaker 5: it tends, you know, the candidate who is least experience
Speaker 5: tends to win, which is sort of interesting.
Speaker 3: And Trump has been president.
Speaker 5: He has full responsibility for everything that happened to him
Speaker 5: as president. Look, I've always thought that Trump was going
Speaker 5: to lose. I've always thought that it's not going to
Speaker 5: be particularly close.
Speaker 3: I still think that.
Speaker 5: I just don't think America is going to the majority
Speaker 5: of Americans are comfortable with someone at their convention who's
Speaker 5: a wife beater, introduced a guy who has been found
Speaker 5: lively sexual assault to Judge Carl Rape, who's a convicted villain.
Speaker 5: I just don't think that that's where most Americans are.
Speaker 5: And there's this weird thing that happened in the Republican Party.
Speaker 5: Trump won one race for forty six point two percent
Speaker 5: of the vote, Romney lost for forty seven point two
Speaker 5: and all of a sudden, Republicans decided that everything we
Speaker 5: knew about politics was wrong. And I don't think that's true.
Speaker 5: And when you look at these Trump like candidates that
Speaker 5: run like Mastrian, they lose. I think it's always an
Speaker 5: interesting question to ask about a presidential candidate. Can you
Speaker 5: imagine them getting elected governor in a certain state? And
Speaker 5: I think you could imagine her being elected governor in
Speaker 5: Pennsylvania more than you could imagine Donald Trump certainly can
Speaker 5: imagine her. In Michigan, they already have a woman governor.
Speaker 5: I think that's true. In Wisconsin, Arizona they have a
Speaker 5: woman governor who ran against another woman for governor. Right Nevada,
Speaker 5: they've elected women. You know, in New Hampshire they seemed
Speaker 5: to only elect women.
Speaker 4: That's a good point.
Speaker 1: If a swing state will elect a female governor, why
Speaker 1: wouldn't they elect a female president.
Speaker 4: And it's true in Michigan.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Pennsylvania never has. But I think that's just a
Speaker 5: quirk of candidacy. I don't think there's anything that's different
Speaker 5: about Michigan. Look, you know, one of my favorite clients
Speaker 5: and old friends of mine's Haley Barber from Mississippi, and
Speaker 5: he had to sing that. I always thought it was
Speaker 5: both funny and sort of profound. He says for the future,
Speaker 5: it's going to happen anyway, and clearly has the future.
Speaker 5: And Trump wants to go back to this America. I mean,
Speaker 5: this is the guy who is against mandatory vaccines and schools,
Speaker 5: so like he's going to get the procolio and whooping.
Speaker 3: Cof roath, oh measles Roate.
Speaker 5: You know, he wants to go back to back alley abortions,
Speaker 5: and a lot of states just don't think that's where
Speaker 5: the country is. I think their whole notion of where
Speaker 5: the country is culturally is off. So I mean, look
Speaker 5: at what happens they get in a culture war with
Speaker 5: Nike over Colin Kaepernack.
Speaker 3: What happens Nike makes nine billion.
Speaker 5: Dollars, gets in a cultural war with Disney, Like, how
Speaker 5: do you get to fight with the happiness country?
Speaker 3: How do you do that? It just isn't where the
Speaker 3: country is, you know.
Speaker 5: I thought there was that moment in twenty toward the
Speaker 5: end of the campaign when Trump made a run at
Speaker 5: trying to scare people in the suburbs that someone next
Speaker 5: door might move in who wasn't white or wasn't Christian,
Speaker 5: And it didn't work because you know, everybody that we
Speaker 5: know lives in the suburbs. If somebody moved in next
Speaker 5: door for a different religion or different race, they would
Speaker 5: go out of their way to show their kids to
Speaker 5: be welcoming. I don't want to be that person, you know.
Speaker 5: It's the kind of thing you would expect when an
Speaker 5: old guy from Queens who's always had problems with racial issues.
Speaker 5: Would think I think it's going to be a very
Speaker 5: very simple race, pretty straightforward.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: I've interviewed her a bunch of times, and what I've
Speaker 1: found when I've interviewed her is that she is when
Speaker 1: you get to know her, you love her like she's
Speaker 1: very charming and person of all. And so I wonder
Speaker 1: if it's just a question of getting her out there
Speaker 1: every day, all day and because she's only fifty five.
Speaker 1: Like one of the things that you didn't notice in
Speaker 1: the debate because it was all about Biden, was how
Speaker 1: much Trump is much less energetic than he was four
Speaker 1: years ago or eight years ago.
Speaker 3: I think Trump had a terrible debate.
Speaker 5: He went out there and set up a lot of
Speaker 5: stuff that people just don't agree with.
Speaker 3: It's like we're dying to get rid of Roe V. Wade.
Speaker 5: He said that America is a third world country, that
Speaker 5: we're an uncivilized country. I just don't think most Americans.
Speaker 5: I mean, you say that stuff in you know a
Speaker 5: bar where I grew up in Mississippi and somebody asked
Speaker 5: you to step outside. It's it's a very negative view.
Speaker 5: Usually the most optimistic candidate wins presidential races, and it
Speaker 5: was just a huge lost opportunity if Donald Trump had
Speaker 5: walked out of that debate and says, look, I never
Speaker 5: run for office. Before I got elected president, I learned
Speaker 5: a lot. I'm going to be a better president next time.
Speaker 5: It was a turbulent presidency and I'll take responsibility for that.
Speaker 3: And that's not what we need now.
Speaker 5: That guy would have walked off stage a more formidable candidate,
Speaker 5: but he's capable of being that. I always think it's
Speaker 5: important to look at the structure of races. You know,
Speaker 5: Boden Harris won by seven million votes. So Trump needs
Speaker 5: new customers and where is he getting them?
Speaker 1: That I think is the big question is where is
Speaker 1: he getting them? And when you watch the when you
Speaker 1: watch the convention, what I was truck by was he
Speaker 1: hadn't chose a woman candidate. He hadn't chose a softer,
Speaker 1: gentler revision. He had, in fact chose like super divorced Dad,
Speaker 1: angry energy.
Speaker 5: And you have JD. Vance, who's a weird little guy.
Speaker 5: If it was in his best interest, she'd be a Trotsky,
Speaker 5: you know, I mean he's just here. He is international
Speaker 5: investment banker running you know, the creature of Peter Thiel. Really, right,
Speaker 5: it's just something about the guy that is off. I
Speaker 5: don't think he's a very good candidate. He trailed the
Speaker 5: top of the ticket last time he was on the ballot,
Speaker 5: the only time he's been on the ballot in Ohio,
Speaker 5: by four hundred thousand votes.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: No, No, I mean if you look at what he
Speaker 1: lost by, he won by six and the Wine won
Speaker 1: by twenty six, So he did twenty points below.
Speaker 4: The Wine, who was not a super trumpy guy.
Speaker 5: Right, No, So I mean what does that mean. That
Speaker 5: means that people went in there. He can't say they
Speaker 5: didn't turn out to vote for Republicans, but they didn't
Speaker 5: vote for him. You know, that is a huge what
Speaker 5: we would call undervote. To me, it was a very
Speaker 5: unconfident pick because it's a pick in your base, and
Speaker 5: you don't make a pick like that if you really
Speaker 5: think you have your base secured. But you know, I
Speaker 5: don't really think that it was political. I think that
Speaker 5: you had a bunch of people like Elon Musk and
Speaker 5: Tucker Carls and they were all pushing this weird little
Speaker 5: guy and John Junior and Trump said okay, fine, I'll
Speaker 5: do it.
Speaker 1: Because also he doesn't believe that anyone cares about the
Speaker 1: vice president.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which I mean, it is true.
Speaker 5: It's very difficult to point to any race where vice
Speaker 5: presidential candidates made a difference ever.
Speaker 1: I mean except maybe Obama. That Biden helped Obama by
Speaker 1: being Can we.
Speaker 3: Pause there for a minute. I guess here.
Speaker 5: The thing that bothers me the most about this little
Speaker 5: period we've gone through is how this group of former
Speaker 5: Obama staffers have gone out after Joe Biden. Now, these
Speaker 5: are people whose careers were made because they worked for
Speaker 5: it in this amazing campaign and a successful presidency. I
Speaker 5: think you have to say, but had none of those guys,
Speaker 5: and they seem to be mostly guys not worked for Biden,
Speaker 5: for Obama Biden Obama, Biden would have won without Biden.
Speaker 5: You have a very interesting question that you just rake
Speaker 5: what Obama have won?
Speaker 3: Maybe? Probably, but it's you know, to me, this is like.
Speaker 5: They have opinions about this fine, people that work in
Speaker 5: Buckingham Palace have opinions.
Speaker 3: About the royals. But is it ever a good.
Speaker 5: Moment when you pick up the Daily Mail and you
Speaker 5: have a butler talking about the royals? Why couldn't they
Speaker 5: go through this period and keep their opinions to themselves.
Speaker 5: They weren't going to matter. I just find that something
Speaker 5: about it is offensive. You know, you ought to be
Speaker 5: a quiet professional, and you ought to have respect for
Speaker 5: your former bosses. And yeah, you know you had that
Speaker 5: great at campaign. But do you want to be the
Speaker 5: guy showing up at your thirty year high school reunion
Speaker 5: in a letter jacket?
Speaker 4: Right right, right, No, it's true.
Speaker 5: Don't reduce the importance of a moment because you're not
Speaker 5: part of it. I don't know something about it, just
Speaker 5: culturally and political culture just really bothered me. And I
Speaker 5: like all these guys, they're all super smart, they were
Speaker 5: in brilliant campaigns, but they're staffers, your.
Speaker 1: Staff right, and staffords Historically staffers don't speak, right, I
Speaker 1: mean that's almost never.
Speaker 5: Well, it's just it's classless. And what good did they
Speaker 5: think it was going to do? They think that they
Speaker 5: think that the president, I says, was going to say, well,
Speaker 5: I saw this guy in the meetings, and wow, he
Speaker 5: wants me to get out. I guess I'll get out,
Speaker 5: you know, I mean, you know, it's silly anyway. I
Speaker 5: think this is as on track to be as seamless
Speaker 5: as transitions you could have.
Speaker 3: I think Joe Biden would have defeated Donald Trump.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I do too.
Speaker 3: There is this thing about campaigns, kind of like life.
Speaker 3: Those who think they can't win or sell them disappointed.
Speaker 4: Right, right, right, right, And no, it's true.
Speaker 3: You know, there has just been this moment where he
Speaker 3: lost the party.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I don't know what you do about that.
Speaker 5: And I think, you know, in a historical sense, had
Speaker 5: he lost, he would have been very possibly unfairly blamed
Speaker 5: for the end of the American experiment.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: No, I mean the stakes were just so impossibly high.
Speaker 1: I mean I really love him and hoped he'd stay in,
Speaker 1: but I think he was having trouble making the case
Speaker 1: against Trump, and ultimately that was the job, right, Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean it is interesting. I mean, it is
Speaker 5: a true statement that he had the best first debate
Speaker 5: as an incumbent president since Clinton, Doe. I mean, as
Speaker 5: far as going down numerically, Bush went down about six
Speaker 5: and a half points when he debated Carry the first time.
Speaker 5: Obama went down about the same and Biden didn't. So
Speaker 5: one of the sort of oddities about this It was
Speaker 5: a terrible debate, horrible, but at a certain time, you know,
Speaker 5: a certain point, you kind of can't just keep pressing.
Speaker 5: And I think he's done the right thing the right
Speaker 5: timing and people will rally around I hope.
Speaker 1: So thank you, Stuart Stevens. You are the best, all.
Speaker 3: Right, Molly, great, great to talk, great to talk.
Speaker 1: Are you concerned with Project twenty twenty five and how
Speaker 1: awful Trump's second term could be? Well, so are we,
Speaker 1: And by the way, we really are, I have to say,
Speaker 1: which is why we teamed with iHeart to make a
Speaker 1: limited series with the experts, a lot of academics, really
Speaker 1: smart people about what a disaster Trump's second term would
Speaker 1: be for America's future.
Speaker 4: Right now, you can.
Speaker 1: Find the first two episodes by looking up Molly Jong Fast,
Speaker 1: That's me, Project twenty twenty five on YouTube. And if
Speaker 1: you're thinking that you're more of a podcast person and
Speaker 1: not a YouTube you can, and now I'm going to explain.
Speaker 4: To you something very complicated.
Speaker 1: Hit play on YouTube, then put your phone in the
Speaker 1: lock screen and it will play back so you can listen.
Speaker 4: To it like a podcast. New episodes are dropping in
Speaker 4: the next few weeks.
Speaker 1: We need to educate Americans on what Trump's second term
Speaker 1: would look like and exactly what his plans are for
Speaker 1: this country.
Speaker 4: Watch and help us spread the word.
Speaker 2: Rick Wilson is the founder of the Lincoln Project and
Speaker 2: the host of.
Speaker 1: The Enemies Listen Welcome Back, Too Fast Politics.
Speaker 4: Rick Wilson New Tone. The tone is new. It's all
Speaker 4: about unity.
Speaker 6: It's a brand new tone involving hannibal lecture, sharks, batteries,
Speaker 6: and of course that fed the aliens crawling across the
Speaker 6: border seeking to mudor every American white woman in her bed. Yes,
Speaker 6: it's the brand new tone of the same old shit.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I loved about this Republican
Speaker 1: National Convention was it's fact freeness.
Speaker 4: No facts.
Speaker 6: Honestly, there's a part of me that kind of admires
Speaker 6: it in a sick way, right right, there's kind of
Speaker 6: like a part of me that's just like these fuckers
Speaker 6: just they have zero fucks to give. They're just gonna
Speaker 6: go out there and say what they want to say.
Speaker 6: I mean, and the fact that they had a guy
Speaker 6: who beat a woman introducing a man who raped a
Speaker 6: woman as the Republican nominee. I just find the whole
Speaker 6: thing so so astounding, so astounding.
Speaker 4: Do you want my take on this for a minute.
Speaker 1: Of course, So this RNC, if you were going into
Speaker 1: this and you wanted to pivot to a general you
Speaker 1: would have Picnicky Haley as a vice.
Speaker 4: Presidentialve hundred percent right.
Speaker 1: You would have had speakers that were moms, you know,
Speaker 1: moms for liberty or women who were happy that they
Speaker 1: had made abortion illegal in their state, or you would have,
Speaker 1: you know, But what you did instead, and I think
Speaker 1: this is the quote unquote genius and it's actually not
Speaker 1: genius of Trump and Don Junior is instead of trying
Speaker 1: to pivot to appealing to anyone who is not an
Speaker 1: angry divorced man, they went harder on angry divorced men.
Speaker 6: The look of having JD. Vance as their standard bearer, who,
Speaker 6: especially with the beard, gives us the strongest possible Handmaid's vibes.
Speaker 4: Right, it's true.
Speaker 6: And I've always been one who like try to suppress
Speaker 6: the Handmaid's over exaggeration, but honestly, it's not exaggerated, right,
Speaker 6: It's kind of creepy. But look, they had a chance,
Speaker 6: and you and I both know you and I both
Speaker 6: talked to a dozen reporters yesterday, I'm sure who were
Speaker 6: like the new tone will be so much more elevated,
Speaker 6: and it will show that Trump his life has changed
Speaker 6: after the traumatic events of Joe Biden attempting to have
Speaker 6: him assassinated, all the frocking bullshit. He can't change his tone.
Speaker 6: Trump is the frog or is a scorpion being bitten
Speaker 6: by the frog? For the hundredth time. Trump is the
Speaker 6: snake in his own obsessive piece of poetry he reads.
Speaker 6: He will always do what he does, brand new tone,
Speaker 6: same old shit, over and over again. There's and here's
Speaker 6: the thing. A lot of our friends in the media
Speaker 6: are very credulous about this stuff, and they need to
Speaker 6: be less credulous. He will lie to you every time.
Speaker 6: He's always full of shit, and I just find it
Speaker 6: fascinating that they bought it. And he then he gets up.
Speaker 6: You know, a three thousand words speech should clock in
Speaker 6: somewhere around thirty five minutes. I've written enough speech is
Speaker 6: to know these little little fun facts ninety three minutes
Speaker 6: in and everyone's thinking, oh, sweet Jesus, O angel of death,
Speaker 6: come to me swiftly and relieve me from this misery.
Speaker 4: Right all right? No, I mean we you and I
Speaker 4: you know.
Speaker 3: We've said we were talking last night about it.
Speaker 1: Like, but one of the things Trump was able to
Speaker 1: do in twenty sixteen, which is what I think he's
Speaker 1: trying to do now, is he was able to get
Speaker 1: an electorate that tends to not be a high propensity
Speaker 1: voter electorate.
Speaker 6: Yeah, low propensity voters, yeah, right.
Speaker 1: And so what he's his calculate is that he can
Speaker 1: get enough angry white guys to turn out for him
Speaker 1: and divorce.
Speaker 4: There are enough divorced dads in America that he can win.
Speaker 1: And again that may or may not be true, but
Speaker 1: that's the that's the play.
Speaker 4: I think.
Speaker 6: Look, you put wrestlers and UFC people up there and
Speaker 6: all these other these, all these other signifiers to that group.
Speaker 6: I mean, why not just have Andrew Tait on the
Speaker 6: stage at this point?
Speaker 4: Right? Well, no, I mean that's where this is going.
Speaker 6: The matrix has Trump, and I will free him with
Speaker 6: my masculine testoster run.
Speaker 2: But the answer is that the US has extradition to Romania.
Speaker 3: That's the problem.
Speaker 1: Why do we think that the mainstream media keeps trying
Speaker 1: to normalize Trump? And I think it's because they don't
Speaker 1: want to look partisan, so they feel they can't talk
Speaker 1: about what Trump.
Speaker 6: Really is I have a darker vision of that.
Speaker 4: Okay, let's do it.
Speaker 6: Tell me Caesar Konda at MSN, he's got mergers and
Speaker 6: acquisition questions ahead. That was an article about that the
Speaker 6: other day. I think CNN, with its current management, has
Speaker 6: decided that Trump is good for business.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: Well, also CNN, they've worked the ref so hard with
Speaker 1: CNN that it doesn't write so right. Right, I mean
Speaker 1: like CNN has become they're just scared of their own
Speaker 1: chadow at this point.
Speaker 6: They are, they are so terrified of anything from Trump world.
Speaker 6: They are petrified. Yes, you're correct. The refs have been
Speaker 6: worked so long and so assiduously that you know, they
Speaker 6: don't take a dump without worrying like, oh am I
Speaker 6: going to offend Donald Trump?
Speaker 4: Oh yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: But it's also I think there is a certain feeling
Speaker 1: that people have that there should be a narrative about Trump,
Speaker 1: and after so many years, perhaps this narrative.
Speaker 4: Can now be He's normal and.
Speaker 1: So but again, what people it was so it was
Speaker 1: covered so incredulously, and for example, like make America Affordable again?
Speaker 4: Right, that was a whole.
Speaker 1: Night of speeches, right, And then here's a person who
Speaker 1: wants to do one hundred percent tariff.
Speaker 6: I'm Chinese, gu I mean I find that true, truly,
Speaker 6: like beyond comprehension. Tell me how one hundred percent tariffs
Speaker 6: works to make American lives better? It doesn't.
Speaker 4: How does it make things cheaper?
Speaker 6: And they say all the time, like everything good American
Speaker 6: goods made in America. Okay, that's a lovely sentiment. It
Speaker 6: really is.
Speaker 3: We do.
Speaker 6: However, sorry to tell them live in a global economy.
Speaker 6: That global economy is a complex monster, and if you're
Speaker 6: not in it, you lose. You can't exist in the world. Look,
Speaker 6: America cannot get workers who will work for the wages
Speaker 6: and folks, and this may be right or wrong, but
Speaker 6: you can't get American workers to work for the wages
Speaker 6: of somebody who's making shoes in a factory in Vietnam.
Speaker 6: A lot of the stuff that's happening now is you
Speaker 6: can't even get some of the materials in this country anymore.
Speaker 6: We don't make computer chips in this country now. Joe
Speaker 6: Biden's trying to fix that. But we don't make the
Speaker 6: chips that go into every one of your iPhones, folks,
Speaker 6: we don't make them here. They're all made in Taiwan,
Speaker 6: every single fucking one of them. It's made in Taiwan
Speaker 6: or South Korea. We don't have the manufacturing base to
Speaker 6: provide all the things that we need. And this is
Speaker 6: a fucking fantasy. It's an eighteenth century, nineteenth century fantasy
Speaker 6: about what trade and the economy really looks like. And
Speaker 6: I got to be honest, it's tiresome. It's tiresome as shit.
Speaker 6: I mean, it's just it's boringly tiresome.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's just a lie, right, Like for example,
Speaker 1: a lot of that stuff was like, you know, mass
Speaker 1: deportations will look like those people will be put in camps. Right,
Speaker 1: you can't deport you can't put twenty five million people
Speaker 1: on an airplane or even ten or five, So they'll
Speaker 1: go into camps. And mass deportation will make America more
Speaker 1: expensive because it won't be labor, right, and you won't
Speaker 1: have people coming here. You'll have these camps that will
Speaker 1: be expensive. You'll have deporting people, which will be expensive,
Speaker 1: which will make the economy shrink. And I mean it's
Speaker 1: just this is this is easy to play this out,
Speaker 1: but no one is. Like finishing the sentence, The.
Speaker 3: Biggest part of vast deportation is that they have said.
Speaker 6: They said the actual words, reporters, Let's focus on this.
Speaker 6: They said the actual words getting rid of birthright citizenship.
Speaker 6: So on top of the people who are here illegally,
Speaker 6: you are going to take tens of millions of Americans
Speaker 6: and turn them overnight into illegal aliens.
Speaker 3: Yeah, overnight.
Speaker 6: Now, you tell me what happens when that. When that occurs,
Speaker 6: you are going to have fathers shipped away. You're going
Speaker 6: to have mothers shipped away. You're going to have children
Speaker 6: who are who are who are deprived of their parents.
Speaker 6: You're going to have an economic impact on this that
Speaker 6: none of these morons is calculating at all.
Speaker 3: This would be the.
Speaker 6: Single most destructive decision that you could make about the
Speaker 6: state of the American economy. It will wreck this economy.
Speaker 6: It is not even a debate about what happens. It
Speaker 6: will cause untold economic and personal and societal suffering. No
Speaker 6: serious person would would believe that this is a good
Speaker 6: idea except the people around you know who.
Speaker 1: Well, it's also they don't care, right, because they there's
Speaker 1: some amount of people who just think that maybe it
Speaker 1: won't necessarily matter, right, There's some amount of people who
Speaker 1: think he won't do it, or they'll just get the
Speaker 1: tax cuts and he won't actually do the crazy stuff.
Speaker 1: But we know from the four years of Trump that
Speaker 1: he actually will do the crazy stuff.
Speaker 6: Here's the thing, there's a mental construct among a lot
Speaker 6: of softer Republican voters that they can do what I
Speaker 6: call the buffet approach to Trump. Oh, I can take
Speaker 6: just the things I want out of the buffet, and
Speaker 6: I'll skip the mass deportations, the racism, the craziness, the bullshit,
Speaker 6: and I don't have to accept or take responsibility of
Speaker 6: any of those things. But the rest of it. I
Speaker 6: want my tax cuts, I want my regulation cuts, those things.
Speaker 6: I love those things. Yes, I'll do those things and
Speaker 6: not have the people, you know, trying to overthrow the
Speaker 6: election in the Capitol of those things and not Steven
Speaker 6: Miller and Seb Gorka and Rich Grennell running immigration in
Speaker 6: this country. It's a fallacy that they really believe they
Speaker 6: can just say I want I only want one part
Speaker 6: of this pie. I only want a little slice of
Speaker 6: this pie, because you're eating the whole pie or you
Speaker 6: ain't having pie.
Speaker 1: I want to talk to you about the billionaires who
Speaker 1: have decided that Trump is their guy. So there are
Speaker 1: a couple of different groups that have decided that Trump
Speaker 1: is their guy, and they.
Speaker 4: Mostly are people who either like love crypto. Talk to
Speaker 4: me about what the crypto situation is here.
Speaker 6: Well, a lot of the crypto bros are all in
Speaker 6: ha ha ha.
Speaker 3: I'm making a joke.
Speaker 4: That's a joke about their dumb podcast.
Speaker 3: About their stupid podcast. Yes, I made a funny.
Speaker 1: Can we have two seconds on how bad David Sachs was?
Speaker 6: I was just about to bring him up.
Speaker 1: Actually, So he has rebranded as a here's a This
Speaker 1: is one of the many reasons why I love billionaires.
Speaker 4: He's so rich, but he really just wants to be famous, so.
Speaker 1: He just wants to be Dana bash, right, And so
Speaker 1: he's rebranded with this podcast where he and other fascists
Speaker 1: talk about how great they are.
Speaker 4: So he gets to speak.
Speaker 1: He's probably given millions of dollars at the Republican National Convention,
Speaker 1: and he is just so bad.
Speaker 6: He's so bad that he had in his speech. As
Speaker 6: I was listening to it, because again, remember speech writer writer, Yes,
Speaker 6: I do this a lot, he had eleven separate places
Speaker 6: in the speech that I counted. There might have been
Speaker 6: a couple more where he expected applause, and to say
Speaker 6: the applause was tepid is like saying that five day
Speaker 6: old bathwater is tepid clean. Yeah, this was a historically
Speaker 6: poorly received speech. Why because even among the faithful at
Speaker 6: the RNC convention.
Speaker 4: Right, these are your people.
Speaker 3: I know these people.
Speaker 4: They're wearing cheese hats, as.
Speaker 6: One does, but they still don't believe that Vladimir Putin
Speaker 6: is the good guy. Okay, And even during Jade Vance's speech,
Speaker 6: the awkwardness when he touches on that subject was palpable.
Speaker 6: People are like, yeah, yeah, can you not mention that
Speaker 6: because you no, Yeah, that was not good.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, he had an applause line that
Speaker 1: was basically Putin wouldn't have I don't know, was something
Speaker 1: to the effect of, like we should love Putin have Ukraine,
Speaker 1: which the signs say, right, they're holding up signs that
Speaker 1: say stop giving Ukraine money, right right in the.
Speaker 6: War in Ukraine, and the only end of that war
Speaker 6: is with Daddy Vladdie killing everyone in tanks in the
Speaker 6: streets of Kiev.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So that was, you know, before he rolls into Poland.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's where this goes. But yeah, I thought
Speaker 1: that was.
Speaker 6: To give back to your question here about the billionaires. Yes,
Speaker 6: the crypto bros are a sub set, and a lot
Speaker 6: of them have a lot of money from this, from
Speaker 6: this ludicrous Ponzi scheme of theirs, and a lot of
Speaker 6: them have a desire to do what other industries in
Speaker 6: America have traditionally done, which is to engage in regulatory capture, right,
Speaker 6: And they would just like to They'd like to get
Speaker 6: the money. They'd like to get their scam protected by
Speaker 6: the federal government. If that's your baby and you're going
Speaker 6: to go spend the money on it, I mean, I
Speaker 6: get it.
Speaker 3: But it's also really gross.
Speaker 4: It's pretty transparent too.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 6: And they bought they bought the vice president. Okay, they
Speaker 6: bought the VP. They bought the VP. They said, how
Speaker 6: much does it cost us to get JD on the thing?
Speaker 6: Because JD is part of this like weird, weird, weird
Speaker 6: weird ass Silicon Valley cult around this guy named Curtis Yarvin,
Speaker 6: who is the intellectual dark web, deep in dark enlightenment.
Speaker 6: He's a guy who believes in monarchy, monarchy, molly monarchy.
Speaker 4: No, I listen, I love it. Yeah, who among us?
Speaker 2: Who among us hasn't blogged under the name meniscus moldbug
Speaker 2: mniscous moldbug.
Speaker 6: And I actually actually one time, a couple of years ago,
Speaker 6: went on a deep dive. I spent about a week
Speaker 6: in a rabbit hole. And that guy's writing is the
Speaker 6: most discursive hot garbage. I mean, I mean, somebody gets
Speaker 6: at me. I'm a fucking editor.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well that was last night too. Everybody went on
Speaker 1: and on and on. I mean Eric's speech.
Speaker 6: Eric speech is a pregame for Eric's campaign.
Speaker 1: No, really, what's he running for daddy's fancy lad?
Speaker 6: What's he running for daddy's large adult son.
Speaker 1: I mean, my dad and I, both of whom had
Speaker 1: famous parents, were both like we were watching it together
Speaker 1: and I was like, you know, he just makes me sad,
Speaker 1: and my dad was like me too, it's so relatable
Speaker 1: to be the kid that dad doesn't like.
Speaker 3: Sorry, and I tweeted it last night. He will never love.
Speaker 1: You, Eric, He really won't. I mean, I just he
Speaker 1: will never cry. I feel I actually always feel really
Speaker 1: sad for him. I know, obviously that's not the appropriate
Speaker 1: response to have, but I do always because he looks
Speaker 1: like he's gonna cry.
Speaker 3: He always looks like he's gonna weep, right there.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I have no real sense of pity, mercy or
Speaker 6: kindness about them. But you have to say, this is
Speaker 6: a guy who was obviously raised in a very abusive,
Speaker 6: very abusive.
Speaker 4: Very weird knows, but certainly very weird.
Speaker 6: Well mentally abusive at the least. Let's not pretend that
Speaker 6: this was a normal childhood.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, who knows. But there's less than ideal
Speaker 1: I think is fair.
Speaker 3: It would not surprise.
Speaker 6: Yeah, but if you look at this whole thing, you
Speaker 6: learned one key thing. No matter how much they spend
Speaker 6: the media, there's no better version of them. There's no
Speaker 6: better version of him, There's no better version of them,
Speaker 6: There's no better version of the policy stuff. I mean,
Speaker 6: even had Mike Johnson last night saying why Yes, our
Speaker 6: project twenty twenty five was written by many of my
Speaker 6: good friends, and I will agree with many of the
Speaker 6: things they wrote there subtle.
Speaker 4: You can't.
Speaker 1: I mean, the problem with this is, you know, they
Speaker 1: published what they want to do.
Speaker 4: I mean, the good news for them is that almost
Speaker 4: no one is.
Speaker 6: Covering Yeah, I mean, they really have had a very
Speaker 6: fortunate kind of run on it. But once people do
Speaker 6: cover it, as both the Trump campaign found out and
Speaker 6: we found out, WHOA, you start asking people about this.
Speaker 3: And they hate it. Oh they don't, just don't. They
Speaker 3: just dislike it. They hate it. It's bad. Yeah, it's bad.
Speaker 6: So but look like I said, you saw who they are,
Speaker 6: and you saw that none of them change.
Speaker 3: They can't.
Speaker 6: They're mentally, cognitively, philosophically and capable of being anything except
Speaker 6: exactly what they are.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Rick Wilson, my.
Speaker 3: Pleasure as always.
Speaker 2: Dave Wigel is a reporter at smerfore.
Speaker 4: Welcome back to Fast Politics. Dave.
Speaker 7: It's good to be here. Thank you.
Speaker 1: I'm so excited to have you because again, and I've
Speaker 1: said this before, I was like, we have to have
Speaker 1: them back because I just need to know what the
Speaker 1: fuck is going on in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And again I
Speaker 1: wasn't there. You were there, so tell me if I'm right.
Speaker 1: It feels like it started out as a different convention
Speaker 1: and then sort of pivoted back to what Trump conventions are.
Speaker 7: Like, Yeah, I think it'd be fair to saying that
Speaker 7: Trump was the low light and the convention not his
Speaker 7: first twenty minutes. And this is where trait gets you
Speaker 7: in trouble because I think people who were writing off
Speaker 7: the beginning of his speech said that this was a
Speaker 7: different tone. Who was describing in detail what it was
Speaker 7: like in butler pencil, They did it. That was all true.
Speaker 7: And then he for really for the first time, because
Speaker 7: you look at how tight his speeches were in sixteen twenty,
Speaker 7: he turned into more of a rally speech, and obviously
Speaker 7: there's this gigantic binding cloud over everything. Without that, this
Speaker 7: is the sort of thing Democrats wanted. They wanted some
Speaker 7: evidence that the Trump peoplehood it for in the past
Speaker 7: is not still running. This is somebody with a lot
Speaker 7: more resentments who's less on message. The rest of the convention, though,
Speaker 7: was I think, having gone over in two thousand and eight,
Speaker 7: the tightest they've ever had. Nothing that was off script.
Speaker 7: And the first one I covered in two I was
Speaker 7: a day. There was a day that was sort of
Speaker 7: half canceled by Hurricane twenty twelve. There's day this again
Speaker 7: by the hurricane sixteen. There were some chaos twenty with
Speaker 7: COVID that they got the package they want, said in
Speaker 7: the speakers they wanted, and even because of Butler, they
Speaker 7: got NIGGI Ailey delivering kurse Stump speech and enhorsing Trump.
Speaker 7: They had a great message out unified in a party
Speaker 7: that has purged maybe five percent of people because they're
Speaker 7: Trump positions, but very effective in saying this party is
Speaker 7: unchaotic and ready to govern, and everything was better when
Speaker 7: Trump was president. So just put it back in back ower.
Speaker 4: Right, And then the problem was you had.
Speaker 7: Trump, Yes, that's why I would put it. Yeah, if you.
Speaker 1: Hadn't had Trump, or you even had had just sort
Speaker 1: of jade Evans. I mean what I saw was, and
Speaker 1: I watched all the speeches or listen to them, at
Speaker 1: least the first two days, they really did try to
Speaker 1: tamp down on the rhetoric. I mean you still had
Speaker 1: Marjorie Taylor Green the first day saying that, you know,
Speaker 1: illegals were poisoned. I don't know if she said poisoning
Speaker 1: the blood, but there was certainly talk of illegals, which
Speaker 1: is not very unifying.
Speaker 4: But they did.
Speaker 1: Try to stay away from some of the insindiatory language,
Speaker 1: which is the brand now.
Speaker 3: Some of it.
Speaker 7: So there were a lot of photos I should sell,
Speaker 7: but I saw professionals look better, people saying mass deportation
Speaker 7: on their signs, and that's something that Romcos wouldn't have
Speaker 7: said twelve years ago. The premise is that that is
Speaker 7: now popular. The idea of saying to white voters and
Speaker 7: working glass, black and Hispanic voters that we're going to
Speaker 7: do a massive deportation of a certain come over the
Speaker 7: border in the last three years, that polls very well.
Speaker 7: Is that unifying to the whole country. No, but it's
Speaker 7: unifying to sixty percent of the country and that's good enough.
Speaker 7: A lot of mentions of gender, not in great detail,
Speaker 7: really just things like keith men out of women's sports.
Speaker 4: They seem to back down on that a little bit.
Speaker 7: I thought, well, yeah, there are conservatives who when they
Speaker 7: talk about that, get into more detail. But that's also
Speaker 7: that's not that an issue that makes everybody happy. No,
Speaker 7: is an issue that's popular for them. It is. So
Speaker 7: they were more conservative in ways that are more popular
Speaker 7: than they were when Trump was running in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 7: and they dropped some stuff. But I really thought was
Speaker 7: significing that if you look at jd Vance's speech and
Speaker 7: the way he talked about America's economic problems, what's holding
Speaker 7: people back that has been done before for that? If
Speaker 7: you look at that Ooran did that in twenty twelve,
Speaker 7: or I gave the speech about the national debt and
Speaker 7: overregulation and Obamacare, things like that, whereas the advance argument
Speaker 7: was more about protections and the manufacturing and stopping jobs
Speaker 7: from going overseas, stopping drug addiction. It was just different.
Speaker 7: The way they talked was different. And populism is just
Speaker 7: such a flexible word, so everyone claims to be a
Speaker 7: populist unless they're unless they want to lose, but more
Speaker 7: populists in that they really did discard a lot of
Speaker 7: the fiscally conservative ideas that just aren't very popular. But
Speaker 7: Republicans realize, when we get in power we talk about
Speaker 7: cutting SEB security or work tax cuts, we just don't win.
Speaker 7: So I could do it. Fewer mentions of tax cuts,
Speaker 7: a few mentions of Biden raising taxes if he's reelected,
Speaker 7: but very little about tax cuts, less than I've ever
Speaker 7: heard of convention. Just the economic issue were different.
Speaker 1: Right, But there was no talk about any of the stuff.
Speaker 1: That is someone who's just done a large YouTube series
Speaker 1: on Project twenty twenty five, like, there's no talk about
Speaker 1: any of the stuff that they're planning. I mean, maybe
Speaker 1: they've stopped planning all that stuff. But like if Project
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five is allowed to get implemented, which that
Speaker 1: is certainly the plan the Heritage Foundation, which is written
Speaker 1: by the same guy who wrote the RNC platform, Right,
Speaker 1: So that makes me think that there's some right Russ void.
Speaker 1: So there's clearly a lot Vought a lot. There's clearly
Speaker 1: a lot of synchronicity between the Republican Party today, the
Speaker 1: people who work in the Trump admin and Project twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five.
Speaker 4: But none of that was mentioned.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and the Trump campaign not at the convention with
Speaker 7: Chrystal Zivida talking to Jonathan Martin at Politico's event, sitting
Speaker 7: there paying for the campaign to really shorten that story.
Speaker 7: When the Trump campaign was very small and reported writing
Speaker 7: about what would Trump's seond term agend to be, they
Speaker 7: would point people to Heritage, to Steven Miller, people like that.
Speaker 7: Once they staffed up and they realized those stories are unpopular,
Speaker 7: they said, that's not us anymore. But after preface everything
Speaker 7: by how little Democrats to get their best and get now,
Speaker 7: they were pretty happy with the Van's choice because Vance
Speaker 7: is a big ally of a lot of people who wrote,
Speaker 7: first of all, a lot of people in the Project
Speaker 7: Pitt twenty five papers works for Trump administration. Second, a
Speaker 7: lot of friends with Vance Vance. Advance wrote the four
Speaker 7: to the upcoming policy book by Herring Try Nation's President
Speaker 7: Kevin Roberts. So they can keep connecting them if they
Speaker 7: ever get back to a normal campaign. They're argument saying
Speaker 7: what these guys are running on is not the real agenda.
Speaker 7: They can still do that. They kind of did that.
Speaker 7: They did that at the convention Democrats off site, out
Speaker 7: of the perimeter when they argue they said, he is
Speaker 7: this party is going to highlight the ideas that sound
Speaker 7: good because it's hiding its real agenda. So that they
Speaker 7: got to do that. But there have been conventions where
Speaker 7: they it's harder for Republicans to conceal the least popular
Speaker 7: ideas from the floor.
Speaker 1: Well, and I think ultimately Republicans are in a very
Speaker 1: good spot right now. It's really hard to deny that
Speaker 1: they have had a really good streak and that, you know,
Speaker 1: they are sort of controlling the narrative right now because
Speaker 1: people are you know, there's this huge news cycle about
Speaker 1: Biden dropping out, and so there's no news cycle about
Speaker 1: how very sleepy Donald Trump sounds.
Speaker 7: Yeah, That's that's one thing I heard from I'd say
Speaker 7: Democrats were the Republicans today, really, but you could tell
Speaker 7: in the room I had to walk out where the
Speaker 7: trust seed was over, but you tell me were checking
Speaker 7: their phones and they were excited to see Trump and
Speaker 7: they started to walk out. I remember, Alibi, I don't care.
Speaker 7: I went to CNN's offsite, Grill, and I walked in
Speaker 7: behind Byron Donald's who was in the Trump box for
Speaker 7: a while, and the speech was not over, and the
Speaker 7: people did not feel the need to sit for all
Speaker 7: ninety minutes of the Trump's speech. Is he going to
Speaker 7: lose votes because his speech was longed? I don't necessarily
Speaker 7: think so. That did him the least favors I think
Speaker 7: in anything at the event, because coming into it on Monday,
Speaker 7: Republicans were I don't want to be glib about it,
Speaker 7: and they were happy because it survived something horrible. But
Speaker 7: they were happy because even before that he was leading
Speaker 7: in the polls. They were in a better position they'd
Speaker 7: been since the year two thousand. There were Republicans who
Speaker 7: were in politics who were not alive the last time
Speaker 7: they were this stronggoing the election. Ged Evance wasn't voting
Speaker 7: in two thousand and it wasn't all that to vote yet,
Speaker 7: so they felt incredible. And then the way they talked
Speaker 7: about I we all wrote about this a little bit.
Speaker 7: I kind of focused on this on Tuesday. The way
Speaker 7: they were talking about Trump was that not just was
Speaker 7: he a lucky politician, but he was he had the
Speaker 7: hand of God on him, and that God, Gods had
Speaker 7: a do from tragedy. It wasn't just optimism. It was
Speaker 7: a sense that the campaign is ordained. Almost their marching
Speaker 7: on Jerusalem with the blessing, the blessing of the Pope.
Speaker 7: It was very different than we're even four years ago,
Speaker 7: where they said, Okay, we're kind of in a mess
Speaker 7: and maybe we can exploit some of the weaknesses and Democrats,
Speaker 7: but we're behind different mood right yeah, No.
Speaker 1: I mean they have every reason. They are certainly winning
Speaker 1: right now. It was a long speech and I wondered
Speaker 1: about JD. Vance, How did that speech go over?
Speaker 7: That went over very well. So Advance is not a
Speaker 7: Pence style table pounding political speaker. It's a way of
Speaker 7: political speed he does not do. He's a much more
Speaker 7: conversational People still watch Ted talks he's more of a
Speaker 7: ted talk speaker, and you're doing this for years. He
Speaker 7: started doing this. I'm counting they went seven seven years ago,
Speaker 7: eight years ago for rehabiliology. He is I'm comfortable calling
Speaker 7: him an intellectual the way he talks about politics and
Speaker 7: is much more based on his deep reading of things
Speaker 7: mentioned Saint Augustine, I'll mentioned conservative fakers. He did that
Speaker 7: and presented himself as a fairly ordinary guy who got
Speaker 7: lucky in in America and wants other people to do
Speaker 7: that and then't bastually invites me. When he attacked Biden,
Speaker 7: it was for or for Biden's voting record as a
Speaker 7: senator supporting Knapp in the Iraq war. That is one
Speaker 7: thing that one think aprilization. It's complicated, but as weak
Speaker 7: as Biden means. They did not spend a lot of
Speaker 7: time attacking him. They did not feel that they needed
Speaker 7: to as they did when Barack Obama was the nominee.
Speaker 7: They needed they need to spend a lot of time
Speaker 7: damaging image because they felt like they they're right right now.
Speaker 7: Image is so negative. They need to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so explain to us what you were sort of
Speaker 1: surprised by. Besides the fact that so many people got
Speaker 1: rolled by the new tone narrative.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I'm almost why they didn't have the same top
Speaker 7: sources of people think they're wrong.
Speaker 1: There's got to be a human nature thing where people
Speaker 1: just feel like they want him to be normal and
Speaker 1: hope that he will be normal. And that's why they
Speaker 1: keep Lucy in the foot and the football with them, right.
Speaker 7: Yes, And there's a little bit of reality based recording
Speaker 7: on those works. He did interviews with fairly friendly people
Speaker 7: outlets Sleeve a Zito and people like that after the
Speaker 7: shooting and was speaking much more conciliatory. And he doesn't
Speaker 7: talk that much about religion and ways that sound credible
Speaker 7: to people, and he did after this when he was
Speaker 7: talking about the shooting of anything else.
Speaker 3: He wasn't.
Speaker 7: But I do think this led a little bit into
Speaker 7: the convention because one but yeah, bid was popular too.
Speaker 7: They didn't want to make it look like a typical slashing,
Speaker 7: burning convention. Three, there was a sense, especially the last day,
Speaker 7: that they might have to run against Kamala Ritz and
Speaker 7: how do they do that. She's also on poppular look
Speaker 7: kind of case to make against her, and they just
Speaker 7: didn't make much of one. I was talking to double
Speaker 7: Conservatives on the floor on Wednesday, and they were telling
Speaker 7: me we need to make sure Trump does some attacks
Speaker 7: on Kamala Harris because he might need to make the
Speaker 7: case against So anything is didn't do that does come
Speaker 7: from confidence, which can backfire. There can be people who
Speaker 7: they think they don't need to do it. And what's happened. Frankly,
Speaker 7: twenty eight Democrats missed a lot of shots at their
Speaker 7: convention and focused too much on celebrity guests who are
Speaker 7: good at hoasting, and too little on issues. You can
Speaker 7: win the election. Yet we have a convention that doesn't
Speaker 7: hit everything. But I'll do too much stage manage. It's
Speaker 7: gotta shoot back. But the toe mad onceed from those
Speaker 7: Sunday interviews. They didn't get it. It was it was
Speaker 7: more as sorry and English, and except for a couple
Speaker 7: of red meetings like kid Rocket all oapin coming out
Speaker 7: and just being meancy alphas, I'm fristing breathing drunk, that
Speaker 7: was not on the same script. But I think it worked.
Speaker 7: It definitely worked in the ring.
Speaker 4: No, I mean it did work in the room.
Speaker 1: It's interesting explain to me about sort of like we
Speaker 1: had Ted Cruz, we had Marco. We had some senate people.
Speaker 1: We had one you're watching in the box. I saw
Speaker 1: Marjorie Taylor Green and a Paulina Luna. I didn't see
Speaker 1: a ton of like traditional Republicans, people who are not trumpy.
Speaker 1: Were there's people there still.
Speaker 4: They didn't get to speak at the convention.
Speaker 7: Huh they did this not he It's primetime who got
Speaker 7: the prime time splots? That was interesting. Lard Trump is
Speaker 7: not anybody out Their speech is that well received. He
Speaker 7: is the vice chair of the RNC because we see
Speaker 7: the best person to put in prime time. Maybe not
Speaker 7: was Martin would be a better person in primetime because
Speaker 7: he got some face. Yes, every maga Republican who wanted
Speaker 7: to speak not to speak. I mean one of the
Speaker 7: only switches is that Ronnie Jackson who has opined vote
Speaker 7: that Joe Biden's and dementia or is on drugs. And
Speaker 7: Tamala Ayris is a low iq I think because of Biden.
Speaker 7: But we diagnosis. He was a little more mellow with
Speaker 7: his speech. But everyone that you're used to seeing on
Speaker 7: newsmat box not time. They just weren't necessarily when every
Speaker 7: network was fill moving, it's only a couple hours.
Speaker 1: Lay do you think that there's any part of this
Speaker 1: Republican Party that isn't Trump now.
Speaker 7: Not fully separate. It's either people who base their identity
Speaker 7: around him and what he says, and people who agree
Speaker 7: with him and appreciate. And he is a popular figure.
Speaker 7: He gets elected one party and gat the right, and
Speaker 7: so that Bob Good, for example, who's the only republic
Speaker 7: denotal seat in a primary. He's a pure Trump guy,
Speaker 7: but he'd retruned the tankers. He thought the banks were
Speaker 7: more electable, munt conservative in some ways, and he is
Speaker 7: the Sampluses want more direct about a couple of things
Speaker 7: like Trump reversed. I've talked about done Moore in Florida
Speaker 7: and four conserving being trumping, willing to do Trump one
Speaker 7: after him, people abortion and things like that. And so
Speaker 7: he was sweep out of a pardon. But that's the
Speaker 7: It's not a Gulf like sixteen where there are God winner.
Speaker 7: He used to go, I noticed that Christian Union being
Speaker 7: to show up people being so peremonial interviews. And he's retiring.
Speaker 7: He's going to be replaced as the nominee here by
Speaker 7: Anny Trumping Poles who are daddy very pro prounat Gananta.
Speaker 7: So it's really like you have to look at it,
Speaker 7: like how many anti Reaguan Republicans the party in ap
Speaker 7: and eighty eight not really anywhere here, some moderacy, but
Speaker 7: they all supported Reagan and some capacity, and that's some
Speaker 7: of what they voped. The shooting we knew was convinced
Speaker 7: people outside the convention we're not Republicans since they were
Speaker 7: wrong about Trump, but also a normalized and say, look,
Speaker 7: stop thinking this guy in crazy admiration just the leader
Speaker 7: of our party and liked things republican study at to
Speaker 7: support it. You can't just run for Larry Ogan, little bump.
Speaker 7: I don't think they've got that far. Again mentioned Pensulia
Speaker 7: marks they want, but all I think it's going to
Speaker 7: be that bad flu.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so interesting, but I mean even Spencer Cox, right,
Speaker 1: you know he did actually say that he wasn't going
Speaker 1: to vote for Trump and now he's endorsing him.
Speaker 7: Yes, that happened. I think the most significant endorsements for
Speaker 7: people a E. One Moss after who were clearly pro
Speaker 7: Drumps but didn't want to say so. I find that
Speaker 7: old dance Bettsini, because these are people who really want
Speaker 7: Frem's politics went out idea an integration, censorship, et cetera.
Speaker 7: But they felt a little bit offward supporting him. What
Speaker 7: they tried to say or actively shooting was that this
Speaker 7: normalized though, this made it and so you didn't have
Speaker 7: to apologize for suppliting Prout anymore.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, but it's still super embarrassing. One last question.
Speaker 1: I saw that the ratings were down twenty percent for
Speaker 1: this convention.
Speaker 4: Did it seem like a.
Speaker 1: Smaller crowd or did it seem like the same kind
Speaker 1: of that what you're used to.
Speaker 7: It's hard to compare to. It's out pretty normal. I
Speaker 7: think there were more of pub hopens in twenty sixteen
Speaker 7: because there was a tank perfection. Every people wanted to
Speaker 7: wanting to change the nominee at the convention, but not
Speaker 7: much Ill.
Speaker 4: Right, but you think that it's just found the same
Speaker 4: as usual.
Speaker 7: There might be low ratings PK people have been heard
Speaker 7: in JD Vansley so both the presidential end by threadline
Speaker 7: plot near Bradley page Submready.
Speaker 4: It all feels like the same material, right.
Speaker 7: Same again if you listen concerned to meeting enough Pride,
Speaker 7: I mean Chucky cross seams and was in prime top
Speaker 7: Dave thank you, thank you.
Speaker 4: I hope you'll come back.
Speaker 7: Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 3: No moment, Oh fuck on.
Speaker 1: Rick Wilson, Yes, ma'am, we're here to discuss the moment
Speaker 1: of fuckery.
Speaker 6: The Moment of Fuckery a feature of the Wilson jong
Speaker 6: Fast Enterprise, and each week we feature a moment of fuckery.
Speaker 6: Last night, I think my moment of fuckery came from
Speaker 6: the fact that it took my researchers approximately fifteen seconds
Speaker 6: to find the clip of that guy, Dana White slapping
Speaker 6: the shit out of a woman in the course of
Speaker 6: some sort of bar fight. And this is a man
Speaker 6: introducing the rapist as the nominee.
Speaker 4: Can you just explain to me who he is.
Speaker 6: He's apparently the president of the UFC, which is a
Speaker 6: some sort of thing where where men were grown, men
Speaker 6: don tight outfits and kick each other.
Speaker 4: Do you want my moment of fuckery?
Speaker 3: I always want your moment of fuckery, Molly.
Speaker 6: That sounded dirtier than I intended to tell you.
Speaker 7: I really did.
Speaker 6: I was like, all right, Molly, I always want your
Speaker 6: moment of fuckery.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I was struck by was
Speaker 1: this was a convention where almost no one believed what they.
Speaker 4: Were saying from Donald's no one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I mean there probably was someone who actually
Speaker 1: like believed what they were saying. But maybe but like
Speaker 1: from Donald Trump who was a Democrat and doesn't believe
Speaker 1: anything of any of this. Right, Oh god, No to
Speaker 1: jd Vance who called Trump Hitler, right, but only as
Speaker 1: a compliment.
Speaker 6: Right, it was also a Democrat, right to you know,
Speaker 6: the Hulk who.
Speaker 1: Was doing it because Peter Tiel had paid for his
Speaker 1: legal I mean, we don't know that that was why
Speaker 1: he was doing it, but remember he does owe Peter
Speaker 1: til for paying his legal bills against Cocker. And we
Speaker 1: had seen that the Hulk had said negative things about
Speaker 1: Trump as recently as twenty twenty or something like that.
Speaker 1: So there really were a great number of speakers on
Speaker 1: that stage who did not believe at all anything they
Speaker 1: were saying, And that, for me is really impressive.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Look, if you don't let yourself or make yourself live
Speaker 6: in the deception, you can't exist in that world.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 6: You must agree to have the consensual hallucination about all
Speaker 6: this garbage or you can't survive in it. There's no
Speaker 6: possible world where you wake up in the morning and go,
Speaker 6: I have an intellectually consistent view of the universe. And
Speaker 6: here's how, and yet I also believe the following things.
Speaker 6: By the way, I have to have one other moment
Speaker 6: of microfuckery. Why he's still wearing the ear tampon after
Speaker 6: five days?
Speaker 4: All right, I have to jet you guys are the best.
Speaker 4: Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1: See Uh that's it for this episode of Fast Politics.
Speaker 1: Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to hear the
Speaker 1: best minds in politics makes sense of all this chaos.
Speaker 1: If you enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to
Speaker 1: a friend and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks
Speaker 1: for listening.