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: A priipolls as eight and ten Americans prefer the US
Speaker 2: be made up of people all over the world. That's
Speaker 2: eighty percent of all Americans. We have such a great
Speaker 2: show for you today. The Lincoln Project's owner, Rick Wilson
Speaker 2: joins us to talk about the Big Beautiful Bills, raw
Speaker 2: deal for the American people. Then we'll talk to New
Speaker 2: York City Councilmen Justin Brannan about his run for New
Speaker 2: York City Comptroller and how the job can change citizens' lives.
Speaker 2: But first the.
Speaker 3: News Molly, so raden up seems like he's not so
Speaker 3: hot on the budget and a lot of these cuts
Speaker 3: that are happening in the Big Beautiful Bill.
Speaker 2: So I always think we should pause because a lot
Speaker 2: of these Republicans want you to think one thing and
Speaker 2: then end up voting with Trump. So as much as look,
Speaker 2: am I glad that Ron and On thinks that the
Speaker 2: bill poses major consequences for taxes and more and warns
Speaker 2: there enough to you, peace Centator is to block it. Yes,
Speaker 2: do I wonder if they're just trying to push a
Speaker 2: few things they want and then they'll support it. Probably. No,
Speaker 2: I don't think you should give these Republicans the benefit
Speaker 2: of the doubt. Also, remember, I just think it's so
Speaker 2: interesting how Jake Tapper is now getting the Republicans he
Speaker 2: wants on the show. It's just such a coincidence. And
Speaker 2: dut Johnson, what are the odds that you'd write a
Speaker 2: book and then all of a sudden you'd get more
Speaker 2: Republicans on your show. Interesting, Look, there are other Republicans
Speaker 2: who are blocking this legislation, and for now we'll see
Speaker 2: what happens. Like this bill, they think they're going to
Speaker 2: get a pass by July fourth, Maybe they will. Maybe
Speaker 2: the Senate is filled with the same level of cowardice
Speaker 2: as the House is. Certainly you would not go broke voting,
Speaker 2: you would not go broke betting on Republican cowardice. But
Speaker 2: you got people like Grand Paul who really want to
Speaker 2: cut social programs and hurt people in order to save money,
Speaker 2: which again that is a Republican trope. And you have
Speaker 2: people the party, you have a lot. It's a big
Speaker 2: tent of it's actually not a big tent, but there
Speaker 2: are real, very conservative conservatives who care only about the deficits,
Speaker 2: and we'll see what happens. But I don't have a
Speaker 2: ton of faith in any of these Republicans.
Speaker 3: So, as always, one of Republicans' favorite things to do
Speaker 3: is pretend they didn't see the suite, pretend they didn't
Speaker 3: hear about the thing, when we all know that they've
Speaker 3: heard about it. But they know how to play the
Speaker 3: media because they'll be let off the hook and they're
Speaker 3: not going to follow up a week later because there'll
Speaker 3: be a storm more there. We have storm more of
Speaker 3: corrupt things Trump has done. But Mike Johnson is pretending
Speaker 3: he's too busy to care about Trump's crypto grift dinner.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Look, Mike Johnson serves at the pleasure of Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: He was installed to be Donald Trump's lackey. He serves
Speaker 2: as Donald Trump's lackey. He makes Paul Ryan look like Lincoln.
Speaker 2: I'm right, So again, he didn't see it. He doesn't.
Speaker 2: It's good because it's out in the open. I mean,
Speaker 2: there's like think about saying that about any other crime.
Speaker 2: It's good that it's out in the open. It's good
Speaker 2: she shoplifts so we all can see it's an insane
Speaker 2: It is an insane thing to say.
Speaker 3: Yeah, speaking of insane, the Republicans snuck a provision into
Speaker 3: their megabill that would let Trump defy the courts.
Speaker 2: Yes, look, this bill is filled with pork. And this
Speaker 2: is another one. They've snuck all sorts of shit in here.
Speaker 2: Here's one that says it is a This is from Dahlia.
Speaker 2: Let's everyone's favorite. And they talk about this friend of
Speaker 2: the pods, I think Dhalia. They talk about this bill
Speaker 2: that would really has all sorts of stuff in there
Speaker 2: about not preventing judges from being able to be I mean, look,
Speaker 2: the whole goal of Trumpism right now is to defy
Speaker 2: the judiciary because the judiciary isn't doing what they want,
Speaker 2: so they've targeted them. And again, this is a provision
Speaker 2: this Republican bill. Here's an article from the New York Times.
Speaker 2: Republican bill would limit judges contempt power. So a sprawling
Speaker 2: domestic policy bill Republicans are pushing through on Tuesday would
Speaker 2: limit the power of federal judges to hold people in contempt.
Speaker 2: This would shield Trump and members of the administration from
Speaker 2: the consequence of violating court orders. If you ever needed
Speaker 2: to they're showing you what they're going to do, just
Speaker 2: like Mike Johnson says out in the open.
Speaker 3: YEP, So the Supreme Court is going to help Doze
Speaker 3: avoid turning over records in this lawsuit from Crew and
Speaker 3: I think as usual we're seeing everybody's like, oh good,
Speaker 3: the court's pushing back, but we're seeing where those limits are,
Speaker 3: and those limits, as usual are corruption.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, look, there's been some pushback from the
Speaker 2: courts and that is good. But Judge Roberts, John Roberts
Speaker 2: is still very much a maga judge. Right at the
Speaker 2: end of the day. Well, you may not let Trump
Speaker 2: completely disembowel the federal government. It's pretty close. So you know,
Speaker 2: this is where we are. So it's good that they're
Speaker 2: doing some things. They're certainly not going to do what
Speaker 2: is needed in this situation.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And friend of the pod David Sirota, who's been on head,
Speaker 3: did that podcast The Master Plan that showed that John
Speaker 3: Roberts actually wrote lots of papers on why things like
Speaker 3: this would be good and was very into the style
Speaker 3: of corruption correct.
Speaker 2: Rick Wilson is the founder of the Lincoln Project and
Speaker 2: the host of the Enemy's List. Welcome to past politics.
Speaker 4: Rick Wilson, Molly John Fast, how are you this fine day?
Speaker 2: I am cycling through a pretty severe gaze of laryngitis,
Speaker 2: but I'm still moving.
Speaker 4: But you know, you're a damn professional, so you're going
Speaker 4: to do the work and make it happen.
Speaker 2: Not It's at least I'm not at Seacott yet.
Speaker 4: You know, I do think the idea of the cut
Speaker 4: would probably not be salutary for your health, and your
Speaker 4: voice would probably not work out as well as as
Speaker 4: some might think.
Speaker 2: So let's talk about what this weekend has brought. The
Speaker 2: big beautiful bell of buxom billionaires bankrupting benevolent, seemingly benevolent
Speaker 2: federal institutions goes on.
Speaker 4: Look at the big beautiful bill. It's gonna turn out,
Speaker 4: I think, in a weird way, the fiscal impacts are
Speaker 4: going to be catastrophic for the country. We're having all
Speaker 4: this new debt, the deficit. The bond market's already going whoa,
Speaker 4: whoaoa eas up, what's this about? But the stuff we're
Speaker 4: finding inside the big beautiful bill that's even crazier, like
Speaker 4: no regulation on AI for ten years and all these
Speaker 4: special carve outs for different companies and different people and
Speaker 4: bitcoin and all this other stuff. It's just underneath the
Speaker 4: surface in this thing. I think it's going to turn
Speaker 4: out to be an even uglier and more catastrophic and
Speaker 4: shittier outcome even than the skeptics. And I certainly count
Speaker 4: myself among them, even among what the skeptics of this
Speaker 4: bill thought would happen. It's looking much worse than it
Speaker 4: did in the in the early going. And I think
Speaker 4: we're going to end up, you know, with the Senate,
Speaker 4: because Thune is saying to people basically, you know, we're
Speaker 4: gonna we're gonna we're gonna juice this thing through there,
Speaker 4: and it's going to happen. And and look all the
Speaker 4: all the brave people in the Senate, you know, and
Speaker 4: we know how that's going to end there. Every Republican
Speaker 4: is going to vote for the damn thing, and a
Speaker 4: half a dozen Democrats are going to vote for the
Speaker 4: damn thing. And I think it's.
Speaker 2: Just really I don't think I have a dozen Democrats
Speaker 2: are going to vote for it, fetterman. I mean, I
Speaker 2: think I think that it's going to get changed. I mean,
Speaker 2: whether or not it gets worse or best.
Speaker 4: See Okay, I will, I will take that. I don't
Speaker 4: think they're necessarily going to vote for the bill in
Speaker 4: its House form, but they're going to have. The Senate's
Speaker 4: going to have input on this. But I don't think
Speaker 4: it's going to be something that really revises the worst
Speaker 4: aspects of it. I think it's going to end up
Speaker 4: still being a giveaway, you know, a tax cut for
Speaker 4: Elon Musk and a and even And I've beaten my
Speaker 4: head against the wall on this until I'm until I'm migrained.
Speaker 4: All of you Republicans who think you're getting a tax
Speaker 4: cut out of this bill, who do not happen to
Speaker 4: make over about two million dollars a year, all of
Speaker 4: you think you're getting a tax cut. Some of you
Speaker 4: will be getting a tiny little taste that expires in
Speaker 4: two years. The costs at the top of the ticket
Speaker 4: are forever. Y'all's middle class tax cut is sunset, it.
Speaker 2: Enjoy So I'm not sure what's going to happen next.
Speaker 2: But I wonder how much pushback would work on this,
Speaker 2: like people going out there, because what we've seen in
Speaker 2: this administration is there's a real reason Elon Musk is
Speaker 2: no longer running the federal government, and you couldn't say
Speaker 2: he got what he wanted. But I think he wanted
Speaker 2: to stay forever and ever I say so too. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so now he is gone, and there was a reason
Speaker 2: because he pulled more poorly than the bubonic. So the question.
Speaker 4: Is, Molly, that's one hundred percent right. Elon wanted to
Speaker 4: keep playing with the levers of government. It's the perfect
Speaker 4: nerd toy, right. He wanted to keep like tweaking things
Speaker 4: and playing with doge and getting people's data, all this stuff.
Speaker 4: He reached the end of his runway. They were getting
Speaker 4: intolerant of him. You're right, he was as popular as
Speaker 4: the plague. People in Washington who who were willing to
Speaker 4: wait him out finally lost patience and they and you know,
Speaker 4: accommodation of Susie Wiles and Scott Beston and a bunch
Speaker 4: of other folks at the cabinet level, you know, none
Speaker 4: of whom singularly were as powerful as Elon Musk, but
Speaker 4: collectively they managed to change the public environment. And when
Speaker 4: they started leaking those stories that said Elon's on the
Speaker 4: way out, Elon is doomed. Must did not understand what
Speaker 4: was happening to him in the DC world. Now, look,
Speaker 4: he's going to try to come back in. He's going
Speaker 4: to try to stay in the orbit. He's going to
Speaker 4: try to you know, stay his best buddy to the president,
Speaker 4: all those things that he kind of really enjoyed in
Speaker 4: this process so that he can continue with his fuckery.
Speaker 4: And I think he will have some marginal success with that.
Speaker 4: But look, he did get one set of things he wanted.
Speaker 4: He got rid of regulators who look at Tesla, right,
Speaker 4: he got rid of regulations about self driving cars. He
Speaker 4: got rid of regulations about the rocket, you know, right.
Speaker 2: But again, like all of this, none of this is
Speaker 2: a facto company. All of this could change. All of this,
Speaker 2: can you know? The more that people push back, I mean,
Speaker 2: it really does work, and that's what we see. And
Speaker 2: an example I think is the tariffs, right, I mean
Speaker 2: the tariffs. Obviously Trump is completely crazy about tariffs, but
Speaker 2: ultimately I think the market thinks and maybe they're wrong,
Speaker 2: maybe they're right that they can that they can eventually
Speaker 2: wear him down to not do that. That they are
Speaker 2: threats but not actual levers.
Speaker 4: I didn't make this up, but I love it. The
Speaker 4: phrase that was floating around on Friday after Trump made
Speaker 4: more crazy tariffs, talk about Apple paying more in Europe
Speaker 4: paying more? Is taco? Trump always chickens out yeah on
Speaker 4: the tearffs, And that has been the pattern so far,
Speaker 4: which is why the markets have kept playing the roller
Speaker 4: coaster game where he says something crazy, the market reacts badly,
Speaker 4: he shuts up for two days, market comes back, He
Speaker 4: waits a little bit, says something crazy. This roller coaster.
Speaker 4: But if the taco rule actually works, and if the
Speaker 4: taco rule holds up, then the markets are anticipating we
Speaker 4: will be out of this tariff window in some reasonably
Speaker 4: short period of time. I don't think that's true. I
Speaker 4: think it's crap. I think he's going to absolutely keep
Speaker 4: playing with the terarift stuff because he's obsessive about it,
Speaker 4: and it's like one of the only things I talked
Speaker 4: to you, and I talked about this before. It's one
Speaker 4: of the only things he believes in. He doesn't believe
Speaker 4: it a lot, but for whatever reason in his weird,
Speaker 4: fucked up history, he believes in terrorists.
Speaker 2: I am not going to try to predict the future,
Speaker 2: but I will say that you have accurately predicted the
Speaker 2: future with one thing very well, So I'm gonna read
Speaker 2: you aheadline from Fortune, and I think you're going to
Speaker 2: appreciate it. Okay, influencer, excuse me, I run a dog
Speaker 2: kennel for those of you who hear little booboo in
Speaker 2: the background. Influencer who attended Trump's mean Coin dinner says
Speaker 2: he got a quote Walmart steak and no access to
Speaker 2: the president discuss.
Speaker 4: Look, I've seen the photos. It is a It is
Speaker 4: a piece of meat that if it was being rated
Speaker 4: by the FDA would have been substandard, but edible with
Speaker 4: a piece of fish and some mashed potatoes and a carrot.
Speaker 4: If you're paying a million plus bucks for that dinner,
Speaker 4: you I can recommend any number of Michelin restaurants that
Speaker 4: would do a lot better for you, with many fewer
Speaker 4: zeros involved in the bill.
Speaker 2: Trump organic field green salad an entre duet of Philet
Speaker 2: Mignon and Pansy or to Ali. But everyone on my
Speaker 2: table was saying the food was some of the worst
Speaker 2: food they'd ever had.
Speaker 4: It looked like dorm food. It looked like dorm food.
Speaker 4: It looked like it wasn't quite prison food, but it
Speaker 4: looked like dorm food. And and this is the classic
Speaker 4: thing about Trump. When you go to one of his
Speaker 4: clubs or his golf courses, they have like the like
Speaker 4: them from a mile away. They look like what Trump
Speaker 4: believed classy things look like. And Trump's the only person
Speaker 4: the word who would use where it's like CLESSI without
Speaker 4: run right, But when you get up close, it's garbage.
Speaker 4: It's all. It's all, you know, it's all a very
Speaker 4: thin sheen of t mouse style ornamentation and decoration. You know,
Speaker 4: the Oval Office is in the Oval Office. Came from
Speaker 4: fucking hobby lobby, you know, just it's not So it
Speaker 4: shouldn't surprise these crypto guys that that they are now
Speaker 4: on the on the next generation of suckers, that Donald
Speaker 4: Trump has suckered and look his the scope of his
Speaker 4: corruption is increasing. It is certainly vastly wider than it
Speaker 4: was in twenty sixteen, back in twenty seventeen, in the
Speaker 4: first term. Back then he was like, yeah, you're gonna
Speaker 4: have to stay in my hotel and pay ten thousand
Speaker 4: dollars a night.
Speaker 2: It's gone a little more sophisticated.
Speaker 4: Now there's some more zeros on the end, and this
Speaker 4: they are the Trump boys are absolutely using the perceived
Speaker 4: threat of Trump's anger and sanction against folks at the
Speaker 4: companies in Vietnam. If here had the Times this morning,
Speaker 4: Vietnam has fast tracked a Trump golf resort and through
Speaker 4: this environmentally since that area because they want to keep
Speaker 4: Donald Trump happy and they want to have wanted to
Speaker 4: undo the trade sanction, so they're buying a ship ton
Speaker 4: of starlinks and letting Trump build a golf course. The
Speaker 4: corruption is kind of crude and clownish, but it is
Speaker 4: it is. This is the best business Trump has ever run,
Speaker 4: This big scam, this grift of rama is the best
Speaker 4: business Trump has ever run.
Speaker 2: So let's talk a little bit about what what's happening
Speaker 2: now with Trump and this grift he I mean, I
Speaker 2: just want to do one more question about this dinner
Speaker 2: because at this dinner people complained that they didn't actually
Speaker 2: like So the complaints from sort of ethics watchdogs, whatever
Speaker 2: few are left, was like, they're buying access to the president.
Speaker 2: But because this is Trump and everything Trump touches die,
Speaker 2: they actually didn't even get to meet him or elon.
Speaker 2: So he was selling axes and they didn't even get
Speaker 2: the ax Look, what.
Speaker 4: Are they going to do? Sue him? No, complain he
Speaker 4: might regulate them then, because look, we all know Trump
Speaker 4: can turn on a dime on any issue. He used
Speaker 4: to be anti crypto and now he's pro crypto. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and so these guys are going to pretend this was
Speaker 4: you know, this was you know, this an error or
Speaker 4: a mistake, and they they'll shake his hand next time.
Speaker 4: But this is another part of this that I think
Speaker 4: is really important. And and Trump loves to look down
Speaker 4: on people who buy into his stick. You know, let's
Speaker 4: remember that he said to his staff during the last administration,
Speaker 4: his own follows, they're crazy. These people are crazy. Trump
Speaker 4: has always looked down on the suckers who buy into
Speaker 4: the Trump myth. This guy's are these crypto guys, They
Speaker 4: are tech folks. But essentially he's relying on the fact
Speaker 4: that they are at a certain level fundamentally unsophisticated people
Speaker 4: that comes to understanding that he will screw them. It's
Speaker 4: it's it's only that we can look at a fifty
Speaker 4: year history of Donald Trump's business dealings and see that
Speaker 4: in every single case, he has fucked his business partners,
Speaker 4: he has screwed his vendors, he has screwed people that
Speaker 4: that that built these projects of his and it never stops.
Speaker 4: It has never once stopped. And so these these new
Speaker 4: crypto folks who are like, oh, we're gonna buych trump
Speaker 4: coin at all, But why does how much you're just
Speaker 4: buying him to bribe them? It's just for the bribe.
Speaker 2: Why has everyone forgotten what Trump one point zero was, like,
Speaker 2: I mean like it wasn't even that long ago, but
Speaker 2: it seems like like, let's look back as people who
Speaker 2: were in that administration, like Rudy Giuliani was his central tenant. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean that guy, what even a hamane.
Speaker 4: Look, Rudy is Rudy is now, you know, out sending
Speaker 4: desperate emails to conservative email lists. The Deep States still
Speaker 4: trying to put me in jail. All right, well maybe
Speaker 4: you shouldn't be a fucking them idiot. But look, everybody
Speaker 4: who's gone through Trump's the cycle of Trump, learns lessons.
Speaker 4: I mean, think about Sarah Hockey Standers, one of the
Speaker 4: most loyal, obsequious Trump people during and after, and is
Speaker 4: he's sending Arkansas any federal aid for these for the
Speaker 4: hurricanes and stuff? No, or her tornadoes and stuff. No,
Speaker 4: Look at Tennessee, a loyal Trump state, do they get
Speaker 4: any help.
Speaker 5: No.
Speaker 4: Look at North Carolina, state that voted for Trump repeatedly,
Speaker 4: he cut off the rest of the FEMA aid for
Speaker 4: Hurricane Helen cleanup, and it's and western North Carolina is
Speaker 4: still a real mess. Roads are still out, bridges are
Speaker 4: still out. And Trump she said, no, no more for you.
Speaker 4: Everybody who who he builds a bond of trust with,
Speaker 4: he is contemptuous of them. He hates them because they
Speaker 4: trust him. He knows who he is more than they
Speaker 4: know who he is. I guess how i'd put it.
Speaker 2: So, Yeah, it's a really important point. And I think
Speaker 2: so does that make you less despairing about the state
Speaker 2: of American democracy?
Speaker 4: No, I still think we're in some deep water. I
Speaker 4: really do, because like it or not, like it or not,
Speaker 4: he still has three years left. And while I'm concerned
Speaker 4: about the systemic kinds of things, the Project twenty twenty
Speaker 4: five kind of stuff, that's that should concern all of us,
Speaker 4: by the way, I'm also concerned that he is so
Speaker 4: random and his brain is so broken. And again, no
Speaker 4: one was earlier on this than George Conway back in
Speaker 4: twenty sixteen, and a lot of those folks who were
Speaker 4: saying this guy's unstable. This guy's unstable, this guy's brain
Speaker 4: is rot And I in writing a piece last week
Speaker 4: about you know, or preparing for a video piece I
Speaker 4: did on Friday. You know, can we stop lying about
Speaker 4: Trump's dementia? Can we stop? Can we stop lying to
Speaker 4: ourselves about it? I watched a couple of hours of
Speaker 4: speeches and remarks for the last three week, and I
Speaker 4: came out of that writing leg I thought. I thought
Speaker 4: I was going to write something, you know, pretty harsh,
Speaker 4: but maybe you know, with a little bit of a flourish.
Speaker 4: I didn't have to actually had to back it down
Speaker 4: because he's so incoherent. I mean, yesterday at west Over
Speaker 4: the weekend, rather at West Point, he's out there talking
Speaker 4: about trophy wives and rambling about.
Speaker 2: How it was the same speech. It was the same
Speaker 2: speech he gave at the boy Scout chamber, right right.
Speaker 4: I mean, his brain does not it's not firing, so
Speaker 4: that's when he's going to do random shitty things. But
Speaker 4: those could be pretty bad for the country too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but there, but in some ways that's actually a
Speaker 2: little bit better than and or you know, this sort
Speaker 2: of heritage foundation super organized. None of this is three
Speaker 2: dimensional chests. It's always just him meeting the checkers. But
Speaker 2: I do, I do want to go back to the
Speaker 2: idea of his incoherence, because he was actually quite incoherent
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty sixteen. And one of the things that
Speaker 2: I remember writing about him his speaking so much was
Speaker 2: that when you started looking at the text of the speech,
Speaker 2: it was just chalking. And that's why this White House,
Speaker 2: i think, has stopped published in transcripts.
Speaker 4: Right and taking the prior transcripts offline. Yeah, and I'm
Speaker 4: going to have a guy next week who we did
Speaker 4: cap that they've all been captured there out there on
Speaker 4: the internet archive in other places. I'm gonna have a
Speaker 4: guy next week do an AI analysis of Trump's public
Speaker 4: speeches and statements that aren't prepared remarks and compare them
Speaker 4: to twenty twenty and twenty and twenty sixteen. Because I I,
Speaker 4: as a guy who's you know, sadly, had so much
Speaker 4: of Trump in my brain for the last ten years.
Speaker 4: I can see the diminishment and the drop off. I
Speaker 4: can see the chaos level of his thought process is
Speaker 4: getting more and more stochastic, and more and more more
Speaker 4: and more you know, shambolic. He's really a mess, and
Speaker 4: no one wants to admit it, and no one wants to.
Speaker 4: No one wants to. You know, look, the Trump world
Speaker 4: has always had this, this powerful illusion in maga that
Speaker 4: Trump is the smartest, most you know, experienced negotiator. You're
Speaker 4: the best deal maker, the best of businessman, the richest guy. Oh,
Speaker 4: it's all been bullshit. But when he comes out and
Speaker 4: starts herbal verbal mumble bumble, it doesn't. It's harder for
Speaker 4: them to say, oh, that's the genius. Somebody told me
Speaker 4: that getting an hour out of an interview with Hannity
Speaker 4: with Trump took them like six hours to try to
Speaker 4: get an interview that wasn't bonkers. It wasn't like Trump,
Speaker 4: you know, going off on ten minute tangents about his
Speaker 4: friend Jim in Paris or whatever it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, look, his inability of focus has always
Speaker 2: been a real issue. Rick Wilson, I'm going to keep
Speaker 2: you around it only will you come back.
Speaker 4: Of course I'll come back. You know me, I'm your huckleberry.
Speaker 2: Justin Brannan is a New York City Council member for
Speaker 2: the forty seventh District and a candidate from New York
Speaker 2: Comtroller welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 5: Councilman Tsin Bran, thank you thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: First, Hell us running for and what the race looks?
Speaker 5: Sure, I'm running for Controller of the City of New York.
Speaker 5: The easiest way I guess to put it is if
Speaker 5: the Mayor of the city is the CEO, then the
Speaker 5: Controller is the CFO. Right, It's your job to oversee
Speaker 5: how the budget gets spent, how the pension funds are invested.
Speaker 5: The seat is open because Brad Lander, the current Controller,
Speaker 5: is running for mayor. You know, there's a lot of
Speaker 5: moving pieces and a whole bunch of people running from mayor,
Speaker 5: And obviously the mayor's race in the city is sucking
Speaker 5: up all the oxygen. But where the second thing on
Speaker 5: the ballot the controllers race, and the election is in
Speaker 5: like thirty two days or something like that very soon.
Speaker 2: The way it works in New York is that the
Speaker 2: primary election really decides because there aren't there isn't a
Speaker 2: really competitive general. I wonder if you could talk to
Speaker 2: me a little bit about what it means to be
Speaker 2: comptroller and sort of how you feel that you can
Speaker 2: do that job.
Speaker 5: I guess I'll first say I would not be running
Speaker 5: for Controller if I wasn't already chair of the City
Speaker 5: council Finance Committee. So the New York City Council is
Speaker 5: the coequal branch of city government, and the Mayor's on
Speaker 5: the executive side and where the legislative side. Some days
Speaker 5: we actually feel like the coegal branch. Most days we don't,
Speaker 5: because this mayor would prefer a monarchy then to actually
Speaker 5: have to deal with the fifty one members of the
Speaker 5: City Council. But I'm chair of the Finance Committee, where
Speaker 5: I oversee the city budget and I negotiate the budget
Speaker 5: every year for the past almost four years. Now, you know,
Speaker 5: we've been fighting like hell against Eric Adams and his
Speaker 5: false austerity cuts to our budget. And you know, I
Speaker 5: really fell in love with the process, and I fell
Speaker 5: in love with the ability to make regular people, working
Speaker 5: people's lives better by how we spend our tax dollars.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 5: So, I've always been a big believer in getting a
Speaker 5: good return on your investment as a tax payer. The
Speaker 5: reason why people hate paying taxes is because they don't
Speaker 5: feel like they're getting anything for it.
Speaker 4: You know, if you're paying a.
Speaker 5: Lot of taxes and you live in the City of
Speaker 5: New York, and the garbage isn't getting picked up, and
Speaker 5: your kids, you know, the ceiling in your kids classroom
Speaker 5: is falling down, and the grass in the park is
Speaker 5: growing taller than your dog. You feel a certain way
Speaker 5: that they're taking all these taxes out of your paycheck,
Speaker 5: whereas if you saw a return on that investment, you'd say,
Speaker 5: I'll pay more taxes. The streets are clean, everything feels great.
Speaker 5: So the controller's job is really three main things. You
Speaker 5: have to audit the city agencies and hold every tax
Speaker 5: dollar accountable. You have to ensure you know, you serve
Speaker 5: as a fiduciary to the city's almost three hundred billion
Speaker 5: dollar pension system, five very unique pension funds. So your
Speaker 5: main responsibility is delivering strong returns for retirees and investing
Speaker 5: in their future and the future of the city and
Speaker 5: all you know, people like me who are a future
Speaker 5: city worker retirees. And I think the main thing now
Speaker 5: over the next four years, under the constant daily fresh
Speaker 5: hell from Donald Trump, is building a fiscal firewall to
Speaker 5: protect New York City and our future and our most vulnerable.
Speaker 5: And I think, you know, most people have no idea
Speaker 5: what a controller does. But I think over the next
Speaker 5: four years, people are going to learn pretty quickly what
Speaker 5: their local treasurers and controllers do because it's going to
Speaker 5: be it's going to be an even more important job
Speaker 5: over the next four years if we continue seeing you know,
Speaker 5: these cuts coming from Washington.
Speaker 2: Tell us like how you push back against Adams, and
Speaker 2: how right now it looks like Cuomo very likely will
Speaker 2: be the mayor. Again, nothing is a fed of Compley,
Speaker 2: but he's certainly pulling farry ahead. I wonder if you
Speaker 2: could talk about Adams created a slate of problems with
Speaker 2: his corruption. Cuomo, if he becomes mayor, will create a
Speaker 2: different slate of problems with his Cuomo ness. Talk to
Speaker 2: me about what you did with the last mayor and
Speaker 2: what you would be able to do with Cuomo to
Speaker 2: keep them in check.
Speaker 5: Sure, So, I mean, look, the job of the controller
Speaker 5: is ultimately to serve as an independent watchdog for taxpayers.
Speaker 5: So it doesn't matter if the mayor is your best
Speaker 5: friend or your worst enemy, and your job is not
Speaker 5: to be great to it us. You know, your job
Speaker 5: is to stand up for the people, stand up for
Speaker 5: the taxpayers whose money is being spent on all these
Speaker 5: city services. So you know, the past three and a
Speaker 5: half years. What we dealt with with the Adams administration
Speaker 5: was really from day one was this this shadow of
Speaker 5: false austerity where in the richest city in the world,
Speaker 5: we were being painted into this corner where we thought
Speaker 5: we had to choose between keeping the libraries open seven
Speaker 5: days a week or you know, funding early childhood education,
Speaker 5: you know, and our argument was always, well, that's a
Speaker 5: false choice because in a city with at the time
Speaker 5: it was one hundred and ten billion dollar budget, now
Speaker 5: our budget is going to be north of one hundred
Speaker 5: and fifteen billion dollars and in richest city in the world,
Speaker 5: number one, people should not be struggling so hard to
Speaker 5: get by in the richest city in the world, we
Speaker 5: should not be, you know, having to choose between funding
Speaker 5: CuNi and building a new playground that needs to be renovated.
Speaker 5: Ye why is that? Well, I think early on someone
Speaker 5: must have got in the mayor's ear and told them
Speaker 5: that the way to look tough, you know, to look
Speaker 5: like a budget hawk is you know, it makes you
Speaker 5: look tough and responsible. And I think I think the
Speaker 5: Adams administration confused from the get go, confused fiscal responsibility
Speaker 5: with austerity. Right, Like the mayor likes to talk a
Speaker 5: lot about the city's bond ratings. Well, the city's bond
Speaker 5: ratings are strong, not because you're cutting funds to the
Speaker 5: Parks Department. The city bond rate strong because the economy
Speaker 5: is strong. So we fought back. I mean the first
Speaker 5: year it was, you know, they were crying poverty over
Speaker 5: the expiration of COVID stimulus funds, which was a problem
Speaker 5: because what happened there was they used the prior the
Speaker 5: Lazio administration leveraged a lot of COVID stimulus funds, which
Speaker 5: were temporary funds. They leveraged temporary funds to fund permanent programs.
Speaker 5: Why I don't know, but they did, and the money
Speaker 5: started really expiring. We were like, well, now we have
Speaker 5: these programs that New Yorkers rely on and they were
Speaker 5: propped up with money that we knew was expiring.
Speaker 4: So what do we do now.
Speaker 5: So that was the first year. Then you had the
Speaker 5: middle two years were the migrant crisis, where the mayor
Speaker 5: came out right away and said, a migrant crisis is
Speaker 5: going to bankrupt the city. We called bullshit on that
Speaker 5: from day one. I said, the only thing that's going
Speaker 5: to bankrupt the city would be mass deportations, a migrant
Speaker 5: crisis going to bankrupt the city. Sure enough, two years later,
Speaker 5: migrant crisis did not bankrupt the city. All the cuts
Speaker 5: that the mayor tried to make were not necessary in
Speaker 5: the first place. And you know, people were calling me
Speaker 5: the budget no shra damis not because I was great
Speaker 5: in math class, but because I was willing to call
Speaker 5: out his bullshit and say, look, I know what's there.
Speaker 5: Like the information that I have is the same information
Speaker 5: that you have. I see the tax receipts. The economy
Speaker 5: is strong and durable and resilient, and we don't have to,
Speaker 5: you know, make these tough decisions because we're not going bankrupt.
Speaker 5: So fast forward. Now you've got the threats of cuts
Speaker 5: from Washington. So this budget looks a little bit better.
Speaker 5: This administration now, you know, obviously it's an election year
Speaker 5: and they want to make people happy, which is fine.
Speaker 5: I'm happy to take advantage of that. But you know,
Speaker 5: they are acknowledging a lot of the council's priorities. So
Speaker 5: I think we'll be in a better place with this budget.
Speaker 5: But for the past three and a half years, I've
Speaker 5: fought like hell against Mayor Adams and everybody else that's
Speaker 5: in the race never said a word, you know, until
Speaker 5: the coast was clear. They never stood up to Eric Adams.
Speaker 5: And I think you need someone in the Controller's office
Speaker 5: who knows how to hire smart people but also is
Speaker 5: going to stand up and stand in that breach between
Speaker 5: the federal government and are most vulnerable in this moment,
Speaker 5: and you need a fighter that in that role.
Speaker 2: Why do you speak like a normal person and not
Speaker 2: like you've been trained at McKenzie.
Speaker 5: Because I am a normal person. I mean, you know,
Speaker 5: I'm not going to tell you I was four years
Speaker 5: old dreaming of being the Controller. Yeah, I'm just a
Speaker 5: regular guy. I mean, I didn't get into politics until
Speaker 5: much later in life. I see things through I think
Speaker 5: a unique lens of just, you know, a person who
Speaker 5: is very disengaged with the political process. And you know,
Speaker 5: I always felt like what happened in Washington, you know,
Speaker 5: it was a bunch of old white guys with white hair,
Speaker 5: and what they were, the decisions they were making, had
Speaker 5: no real immediate impact on my life, at least as
Speaker 5: a teenager or young twenty something. It wasn't until I
Speaker 5: really fell in love with local government. That really opened
Speaker 5: my eyes because the pace of local government was way
Speaker 5: more my style, where little old lady could walk into
Speaker 5: your office with a problem, You'd take an hour, a
Speaker 5: half hour, two hours to undo her not and send
Speaker 5: her on her way, and it was magic. It felt amazing.
Speaker 5: It just feels great to help people, and local government
Speaker 5: was the place that I could do it, you know.
Speaker 5: And I had a very unconventional background. I played in
Speaker 5: a punk rock band for you know, for ten years
Speaker 5: of my life, and never in a million years thought
Speaker 5: I'd become a politician. And now I'm on my eighth
Speaker 5: year of you know, two terms as a city council person,
Speaker 5: and I've been able to accomplish a whole lot, passed
Speaker 5: a lot of legislation I'm really proud of, and brought
Speaker 5: back hundreds of millions of dollars back into the community
Speaker 5: where I grew up.
Speaker 4: And it's a great job.
Speaker 5: This is a time now where you know, a lot
Speaker 5: has changed, obviously, and I think the biggest change is
Speaker 5: that local politics at one time were sort of immune
Speaker 5: from global politics, and now as things have gotten just
Speaker 5: increasingly tribal, and we're just we're right now, we're in
Speaker 5: the Yankees Red Sox era of politics where it just
Speaker 5: doesn't matter, like where everyone just goes to their tribal corner.
Speaker 5: And unfortunately that has bled into local politics too. So
Speaker 5: it's an interesting time. I did an interview with someone
Speaker 5: yesterday about this, you know, Trump's big beautiful bill, whatever
Speaker 5: the fuck it is about. Like, look like, you know,
Speaker 5: even if you voted for Donald Trump, you are also
Speaker 5: going to be negatively impacted by this insanity. His policies
Speaker 5: don't discriminate that if you voted for him, you're still
Speaker 5: going to be impacted by it. And it's hard to
Speaker 5: get that message through, but it's the truth.
Speaker 2: Right, Let's talk about Universal pre K. I think it
Speaker 2: was like the one thing that de Blasio ever did
Speaker 2: right or tried to do. And by the way, can
Speaker 2: you also talk about universal Brique and then talk about
Speaker 2: who was a worst mayor of Dublasio or Adams Go?
Speaker 5: I would say I work for the Deblasio administration, and
Speaker 5: I worked for the Department of Education under Deblasio and
Speaker 5: helped roll out UPK. Even if you hate de Blasio,
Speaker 5: clearly I'm a fan, as you could tell, right, But
Speaker 5: if you would, even if you hate him, you admit
Speaker 5: that what he did for UPK was just an absolute
Speaker 5: game changer for working families. UPK says working families easily
Speaker 5: ten to twenty thousand dollars a year. That's money that
Speaker 5: goes back into the economy. It's amazing what he did
Speaker 5: with UPK. It's amazing. I think we need to create
Speaker 5: a universal childcare system because the days of the eight
Speaker 5: am to two pm leave it to beaver. You know,
Speaker 5: school schedule is just not reality. And frankly, it was
Speaker 5: never reality for families of color. It might have been
Speaker 5: reality for white families, but that's you know, that's something
Speaker 5: that I think right now, Raising a family in New
Speaker 5: York City feels impossibly hard and every day and this
Speaker 5: is part of why I'm running every day. I hear
Speaker 5: from someone saying, while I'm considering moving to X lesser
Speaker 5: city because it's easier to start a family, It's easier
Speaker 5: to buy a house, it's easier to start a business,
Speaker 5: easy to put my kid into school. And we're hemorrhaging
Speaker 5: working families. And you know, Fox News or the tabloids
Speaker 5: will have you thinking that, you know, billionaires are fleeing
Speaker 5: New York City. Number one, it's not true. Number two,
Speaker 5: we can afford to lose a couple of billionaires. What
Speaker 5: we can't afford to lose is more working families because
Speaker 5: they are the bedrock of our economy and universal child
Speaker 5: There's two pillars right now. I think of our affordability crisis,
Speaker 5: and number one, it's lack of access to truly affordable housing,
Speaker 5: and it's lack of access to universe to childcare where
Speaker 5: parents have to decide am I going to work or
Speaker 5: am I staying home with my kids. So I've figured out,
Speaker 5: as controller, there's a way where we can create a
Speaker 5: universal childcare system. You're working to, you know, identify the
Speaker 5: necessary funding to ensure that every family has access to
Speaker 5: high quality childcare. And I put out a plan where
Speaker 5: we would actually invest five hundred million dollars from the
Speaker 5: pension system, which would get us a great return on
Speaker 5: our investment. Audit the hell out of all the agencies
Speaker 5: that are involved in early childcare to create a universal
Speaker 5: early childcare system in the city of New York. And
Speaker 5: you've seen the studies that show every dollar that's invested
Speaker 5: in early childcare education yields like eight to fifteen dollars
Speaker 5: in economic returns like it's just a win win. It's
Speaker 5: good for the city, it's good for families, it's good
Speaker 5: for the economy. It's a smart economic development strategy. And
Speaker 5: so the idea I have is the pension funds in
Speaker 5: the city allow thirty five percent in alternative investments. So
Speaker 5: I put out a plan to commit five hundred million
Speaker 5: dollars over eight years of childcare focused investments that would
Speaker 5: generate strong returns lasting infrastructure. And you'd use social impact
Speaker 5: bonds and CDFIs and infrastructure funds where we could do this.
Speaker 5: It's a real estate play. Basic we buy a bunch
Speaker 5: of buildings and we prop up a childcare system. It
Speaker 5: can be done. This is another thing I talk about
Speaker 5: a lot I think in the campaign is because of
Speaker 5: the last couple of years where we've been, you know,
Speaker 5: sort of gas lit into thinking we've got to do less,
Speaker 5: you know, little with even less. We're not dreaming biginning
Speaker 5: you know, we're not this This is the city that
Speaker 5: you know brought to life Mitchell Lama and Union housing
Speaker 5: like a Lectchester and housing for performing artists, artists like
Speaker 5: Manhattan Plaza. Like we're not dreaming big anymore. We're not
Speaker 5: We're not getting the smartest minds around a table to
Speaker 5: figure out how to solve our city's biggest problems. We're
Speaker 5: just sort of trying to live to fight another day.
Speaker 5: And I'm worried that over the next four years we
Speaker 5: can't just hide under the bed and wait for Trump
Speaker 5: to be gone.
Speaker 4: Like.
Speaker 5: We have to keep the laboratory moving forward, Otherwise four
Speaker 5: years from now we're going to be even further behind
Speaker 5: the eight ball. And I think the city needs to
Speaker 5: be that laboratory to keep pushing policy forward, and you
Speaker 5: need leaders who are willing to do that.
Speaker 2: Do you think that if Democrats could talk like real
Speaker 2: people that they could win elections?
Speaker 5: I mean, I don't know how else to be. This
Speaker 5: is just how I am.
Speaker 2: But like this is not as a compliment to you,
Speaker 2: but just as a theory of the case.
Speaker 4: I think there's two things.
Speaker 5: Number One, Democrats for a long time are in the
Speaker 5: business of denying people's reality. When someone would come to
Speaker 5: them and say, I'm scared, you know, I feel like
Speaker 5: crime is through the roof. My neighborhood doesn't feel safe anymore.
Speaker 5: Instead of us responding with empathy and understanding, and instead
Speaker 5: of us saying, well, you know, why do you feel
Speaker 5: that way, Let's have a conversation about why you feel
Speaker 5: that way. We would say, you're an idiot. The data
Speaker 5: and statistics show that crime is lower than ever. You
Speaker 5: have nothing to be afraid of. And we did that
Speaker 5: in a lot of ways where we were just denying
Speaker 5: people's reality. And if there's one thing I've learned in
Speaker 5: politics is that if someone tells you they're experiencing something,
Speaker 5: you can't tell them that they're not experiencing that. You
Speaker 5: have to lean into the demagoguery and lean in to
Speaker 5: the you know all that, but you can't just deny
Speaker 5: someone's reality. If they tell us that they're scared, you
Speaker 5: have to talk to them in a real way. No
Speaker 5: victim or witness to a crime wants to be you know,
Speaker 5: wants to hear about data and statistics. So that's one thing.
Speaker 5: And I think also Democrats we just lack that killer instinct,
Speaker 5: you know. I think that Republicans when they have the ball,
Speaker 5: they they stab us in the neck, right, And when
Speaker 5: we have the ball, we worry about decorum and optics
Speaker 5: and lawyers and all this bullshit. It's like, look the
Speaker 5: Republicans ps when they have the ball and they have
Speaker 5: that killer instinct. They're fighting on behalf of themselves and
Speaker 5: on behalf of billionaires. When we have the ball, we
Speaker 5: have to have the killer instinct for working people. We
Speaker 5: have to say, look, we're in power right now. We
Speaker 5: have to do as much good as we possibly can
Speaker 5: because we might not be holding the ball in two
Speaker 5: or four years. And we didn't do that, you know,
Speaker 5: and we don't do that, and I'm worried that we're
Speaker 5: we still haven't learned that when people tell you who
Speaker 5: there are they are, you got to believe, right, And
Speaker 5: we just don't have that killer instinct. We wonder why
Speaker 5: they're eating our lunch. And this is why.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of good points. Thank you for coming on.
Speaker 4: Oh, thank you so much for having me. No moment
Speaker 4: o fuck.
Speaker 2: Rick Wilson, Molly Jung Fast, what is your moment of fuck?
Speaker 4: Right? You know? My moment of fuckery this week are
Speaker 4: all these corporate CEOs, particularly in the tech world, who
Speaker 4: stood there with Trump on Inauguration Day and showed up
Speaker 4: at the White House for these meetings and have written
Speaker 4: checks over and over and over again to make nice
Speaker 4: and look. Tim Cook is considered by all sorts of
Speaker 4: people a very smart considered businessman a good leader of Apple.
Speaker 4: But none of these guys have any goddamn excuse. This week,
Speaker 4: Trump came out and said he's going to put a
Speaker 4: twenty five percent tariff on all Apple products not manufactured
Speaker 4: in the United States. So he was angry because Tim
Speaker 4: Cook moved a lot of Apple iPhone production from China
Speaker 4: to India. There are no American iPhone factories for a reason, people,
Speaker 4: because nobody's gonna pay five thousand dollars for an iPhone.
Speaker 4: But Tim Cook and Mark Zuckerberg and Sam Altman and
Speaker 4: all these people who are in bed with Trump, they
Speaker 4: keep forgetting that when you make a deal with the devil,
Speaker 4: the devil always cheats, the devil always breaks the deal,
Speaker 4: the devil always lies about the terms and conditions. So,
Speaker 4: you know, I want to feel bad for Apple. I'm
Speaker 4: an Apple user, but this should not come as a
Speaker 4: shock to Tim Cook and to Apple and to the
Speaker 4: rest of the tech world that investing in Donald Trump
Speaker 4: is investing in your future humiliation and destruction.
Speaker 2: I think that's a good call. It is. I think
Speaker 2: our moment of fuckery is really everything Trump touches.
Speaker 4: It continues to die, never fails. You know, I hope
Speaker 4: to have at least a couple of like Newtonian level
Speaker 4: rules that I could come up with. Unfortunately I've only
Speaker 4: reached two so far. Everything touch everything Trump touches dies.
Speaker 4: And of course that there are two types of people
Speaker 4: in the world, Ted Cruz and people who hate Ted Cruz.
Speaker 4: So with that, good to be with you, seeing too. Bye.
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