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 the Biden administration has banned unpaid
Speaker 1: medical bills from appearing on credit reports. We have such
Speaker 1: a great show for you today, The Mary Trump Shows
Speaker 1: Own Mary Trump stops by to talk about what Trump
Speaker 1: tool point OH may look like. Then we'll talk to
Speaker 1: the Shadow Docket author Steven Gladock about the Supreme Court's
Speaker 1: upcoming decision on corporate transparency.
Speaker 2: But first the.
Speaker 3: News Smili, Happy new year to you and the listeners.
Speaker 3: We're back in full force again.
Speaker 2: Yes, and we're back and not a moment too soon.
Speaker 3: So let's talk about I would say my least favorite
Speaker 3: social network, Meta and the Facebook. I'm going to shock
Speaker 3: you here. When wearing nine hundred thousand dollars watches to
Speaker 3: press conferences, Mark Zuckerberg continues as a cent into doing
Speaker 3: bad things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it turns out that if you don't regulate
Speaker 1: tech companies, they do not regulate themselves.
Speaker 2: Who could have seen this coming? Who could have.
Speaker 1: Seen absolutely not regulating companies and then them just doing
Speaker 1: whatever the fuck they want?
Speaker 3: Definitely not numerous segments we taped on this podcast.
Speaker 1: Yes, Meta is embracing trump Ism. And while the poor
Speaker 1: Man's Elon Mark Zuckerberg was often pretended to be a Democrat,
Speaker 1: it turns out that being a billionaire is its own
Speaker 1: special religion, its own political party, and so basically Met
Speaker 1: has gone all in on Trump. They have added Dana
Speaker 1: White to their board because it was easier than adding Eric.
Speaker 1: They are no longer going to fact check in fact,
Speaker 1: they're just going to have community notes. And the reason
Speaker 1: they're going to do this is because it's cheaper and
Speaker 1: also because it's what Republicans want. And also they're going
Speaker 1: to move their jurisdictions. Shockingly, you'll be shocked to hear
Speaker 1: from the state of California to the state where all
Speaker 1: Republicans love love to be where you and I know
Speaker 1: it well, the state of Texas, where Elon is a
Speaker 1: special VIP and the judges do a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: that the right really loves.
Speaker 3: I think one of the things that really full under
Speaker 3: the radar is that former UK Conservative Nick Craig left
Speaker 3: Meta and then they replaced him with Republican Joel Kaplan,
Speaker 3: who I'm sure is going to just help that fever
Speaker 3: swamp of misinformation to just brewin brew and brew over
Speaker 3: on Facebook.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, Nick Laid, let's get too high on
Speaker 1: our own supply here. All these people care only about
Speaker 1: one thing, which is meta making more money for zuck
Speaker 1: You know however that works. But I would like to
Speaker 1: say that Zuckerberg since he's become red pill, and by redpilled,
Speaker 1: I mean whatever, who the fuck cares?
Speaker 2: This guy sucks.
Speaker 1: Zuckerberg cited the recent election as a driving force in
Speaker 1: his company's decision, slamming government. Yeah, the government that didn't
Speaker 1: regulate him at all. With that government, very mad at them,
Speaker 1: and Legacy media, which he killed as pushing the company
Speaker 1: to censor more and more. Yeah, sure, sure, good stuff,
Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg. You'll remember Facebook had some involvement in the
Speaker 1: Rhingen genocide. Looking forward to see what other crimes of
Speaker 1: humanity they are able to help with during the Trump
Speaker 1: two point zero.
Speaker 3: Speaking of the hells Gate, Molly, we're back to someone.
Speaker 3: I thank god. I bear no relationship to District Judge
Speaker 3: Aileen Kennon and her latest decision to help mister Trump.
Speaker 4: What are you seeing here, Aileen?
Speaker 1: She is auditioning for a job on the Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: Because every time she has a minute, she does whatever
Speaker 1: she can to help her man, Donald Trump. You'll remember
Speaker 1: she was the judge for the document's case, and what
Speaker 1: did you do? She just was like, my guys, okay,
Speaker 1: and now here we are. She has an order to
Speaker 1: prevent Smith and the Justice Department from moving forward with
Speaker 1: releasing the report until the Twelfth Circuit Court of Appeals
Speaker 1: has time to review the emergency motion by Trump's co
Speaker 1: defendants to block the reports released. So probably a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff has been seen, maybe some of it hasn't. Again,
Speaker 1: Trump has successfully used lawyers to punt all of his
Speaker 1: legal travails. Now he's going to be president again, it's
Speaker 1: hard to think of. You know, this is what happens
Speaker 1: when you're affluent and you're white and you can afford
Speaker 1: endless lawyers, is that you can put off punishment indefinitely.
Speaker 2: And that is where we are.
Speaker 1: So Judge jay Leen has her you know, she may
Speaker 1: have her own motive for this, for her own career,
Speaker 1: but this is certainly not how any of this is supposed.
Speaker 3: To work, So Molly. One of the more weird sense
Speaker 3: of Trump's recent thoughts since the election has been that
Speaker 3: he's going to control of the Panama Canal and annex Greenland. Today,
Speaker 3: in an interview, he said he would not rule out
Speaker 3: using military force for it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean I was elected to make things cheaper, right,
Speaker 1: that was what the voters wanted him to make things cheaper.
Speaker 1: They wanted him to curb inflation. Here's how not to
Speaker 1: do that. Invade Greenland. I try to annex Canada. Look,
Speaker 1: I think this is in troll. Trump really loves to
Speaker 1: get libs angry, wants them to seem hysterical, wants them
Speaker 1: to see you know, this is this Steve Bannon flood.
Speaker 1: The zone was shit thing where you have so many
Speaker 1: things going on and so many dangers from Trump that
Speaker 1: you can't tell the forest from the tree. Is I
Speaker 1: truly believe that Donald Trump is not going to go
Speaker 1: to war with Canada. And I think that it's more
Speaker 1: important that people focus on his nominees, you know, and
Speaker 1: pressuring members of the Senate to use their Article to
Speaker 1: duty to really hold good hearings about people like Cash Battel,
Speaker 1: and not worry about Trump invading Greenland because nobody wants that.
Speaker 1: He was not elected to do that, and the whole
Speaker 1: idea that he would change the name to the Gulf
Speaker 1: of America from the Gulf of Mexico. It's a troll.
Speaker 1: I really think it's worth not falling for it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, in fun, you and I are the biggest
Speaker 3: fans of Palace intrigue. But I do have to say
Speaker 3: I'm popping the popcorn for a thing that we all
Speaker 3: inevitably knew would happened, which is Maggie Haberman saying that
Speaker 3: Trump is quite sick of Elon being around.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, we've seen this reported everywhere, but mag he
Speaker 1: is the person who really does know what's going on
Speaker 1: in Morlago, unfortunately for her, because I don't know how
Speaker 1: great it is to know that kind of stuff. But
Speaker 1: there has never been room and Trump one point h
Speaker 1: for a co president, and it's hard for me to
Speaker 1: imagine that Trump will start now.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Elon is very distracted by trying to manage elections in
Speaker 1: other countries. I think he feels that his success with
Speaker 1: Trump has given him a kind of Perhaps he's really
Speaker 1: good at politics, and he can get far right parties
Speaker 1: installed in all of the major countries. I think that
Speaker 1: if you watch his Twitter is what he's trying to do.
Speaker 1: I wonder how much any of that will work for him.
Speaker 1: But I do think if Trump, I think Trump is
Speaker 1: going to get sick of him and he has you know,
Speaker 1: he's the richest guy in the world, controls all these satellites,
Speaker 1: controls all of these government contractors.
Speaker 2: Something's got to give.
Speaker 3: Let us.
Speaker 1: Mary Trump is the host of The Mary Trump Show
Speaker 1: the author of Who Could Ever Love You?
Speaker 2: A family memoir. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Mary.
Speaker 5: Trump, Hello, Molly dog Fast.
Speaker 1: I'm glad to have you here because we laugh to
Speaker 1: keep from crying.
Speaker 6: Yes, indeed, we're doing it already.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're doing it already.
Speaker 1: And it's not because we don't see the seriousness of
Speaker 1: this moment. In fact, we absolutely do see the seriousness
Speaker 1: of this moment, which is why I honestly I love
Speaker 1: you and we're friends, and I know how much you
Speaker 1: hate doing the media stuff that I make you do here.
Speaker 5: Well hate is a strong word, but you know.
Speaker 1: I mean this is like I think of you as
Speaker 1: understanding the States and also being here because you feel
Speaker 1: that you must.
Speaker 5: Yes, I think that's fair.
Speaker 1: First, I want to talk about how we feel we've
Speaker 1: been failed, because I have done a lot of talking
Speaker 1: about the ways in which I have failed people. You know,
Speaker 1: I feel that I was wrong about the election. I
Speaker 1: feel that I was overly optimistic. I had a lot
Speaker 1: of priors that I used information to confirm. Now I
Speaker 1: would like you to talk, because I think of you
Speaker 1: as thoughtful and also courageous about the ways in which
Speaker 1: we feel we've been failed, first by the mainstream media,
Speaker 1: of which there are numerous ways, and then by Democrats
Speaker 1: more broadly. So talk to me about how the media
Speaker 1: has failed us.
Speaker 5: I want to start with yesterday one because it's top
Speaker 5: of mind for obvious reasons.
Speaker 7: It was yesterday, so we've got a recncy bias going on,
Speaker 7: but also because it was, up until four years ago,
Speaker 7: the anniversary of a completely mundane ceremonial process that most
Speaker 7: Americans didn't even.
Speaker 5: Know existed, which was simply the certification of the Electoral
Speaker 5: College votes to make official whoever was the winner of
Speaker 5: the presidential election. Now it's a different anniversary.
Speaker 7: It is the anniversary of, you know, Donald's attempt to
Speaker 7: overturn the results of a free and fair election, which
Speaker 7: resulted in a mob attacking the capital. And I think
Speaker 7: what we've learned in large part because of media complacency,
Speaker 7: because of media corporate media's compulsion.
Speaker 5: I guess to.
Speaker 7: Normalize the abnormal as long as it benefits Republicans.
Speaker 5: We learned the answer to a very.
Speaker 7: Important question that practically nobody was asking, which is, was
Speaker 7: the insurrection Donald incited on January sixth, twenty twenty one successful?
Speaker 7: And yesterday, as his electoral College victory was certified without
Speaker 7: incident with the usual ceremony and banality.
Speaker 5: We learned that the answer to that question is yes,
Speaker 5: it did.
Speaker 7: So I do not think there is enough condemnation to
Speaker 7: go around for the fact that this magic, monumentally history
Speaker 7: altering incident on January sixth was memory hold, was made benign,
Speaker 7: was turned into a pro Republican talking point in what
Speaker 7: universe is that possible?
Speaker 5: So I lay that mostly at the.
Speaker 7: Feet of the Republican Party, of course, because they actually
Speaker 7: had the power to do something about it.
Speaker 5: I lay it at the feet of Merrick Garland.
Speaker 7: Again, for those of you listening, if you've forgotten who
Speaker 7: Merrick Garland was, it's completely unoffendable. As far as I understand,
Speaker 7: he was Attorney General of the United States, who still
Speaker 7: has two weeks to score us over.
Speaker 5: But we'll get to that later. But also the media
Speaker 5: who just lost interest, like.
Speaker 7: The idea that Donald was presented as a normal, reasonable
Speaker 7: candidate for the presidency without every single opening, you know,
Speaker 7: lead paragraph and every article about him mentioning that he's
Speaker 7: a perpetrate or the big lie, a man who incited
Speaker 7: an insurrection against his own government is an adjudicated rapist,
Speaker 7: on and on and on and on. Is one of
Speaker 7: the greatest, gravest failures I've ever witnessed. Yeah, so that's
Speaker 7: one big way the media has failed. It's not new,
Speaker 7: but it's also hasn't always been this way. The focusing
Speaker 7: on the horse race and ignoring the stakes of things,
Speaker 7: just the failure to fact check, as if that were
Speaker 7: some onerous task that's not the business of journalists right right, again,
Speaker 7: all of which redounds to the benefit of the party
Speaker 7: that's trying to get away with a line all the time.
Speaker 1: I Mean, what I am struck by is the way
Speaker 1: in which billionaires are not good stewards for the mainstream media.
Speaker 1: Is that weird shocked in which that is really amazing.
Speaker 1: You know, we were told in early years Trump one point,
Speaker 1: oh that billionaires would save the media because they were
Speaker 1: deeply patriotic and in fact they just completely suck. And also,
Speaker 1: I might add, with the exception of Mark Cuban, who
Speaker 1: I think has done some good stuff, but is also
Speaker 1: not willing to buy the Washington Post.
Speaker 2: And you know, like you think.
Speaker 1: About Catherine Graham during the period known as Watergate, Trump
Speaker 1: one point oh made Watergate look like Lincoln. Trump two
Speaker 1: point oh will make Watergate right. Look, you know, like
Speaker 1: the teapot dome scandal. I'm going to get somebody writing
Speaker 1: into me about the true horribleness of the teapot dome.
Speaker 2: Probably right. But the point here.
Speaker 1: Is that the grand family provided the kind of moral
Speaker 1: compass that the Washington Post needed in order to bring
Speaker 1: down the Nixon administration. The Bezos owned Washington Post, in fact,
Speaker 1: is largely against that kind of journalism, with some exceptions
Speaker 1: we'll see what happens. But they have been, you know,
Speaker 1: largely very much for supporting Trump and his machinations and voluntarily.
Speaker 5: I think you could argue that.
Speaker 7: The million dollars that Bezos, Zuckerberg, Tim Cook and others
Speaker 7: have given to Donald's inauguration is kind of a ransom,
Speaker 7: you know, yes, exactly, because none of them gave money
Speaker 7: to Joe Biden or you who did gave much less, right,
Speaker 7: So why because they.
Speaker 5: Knew that Biden, no matter what they did, Biden wasn't.
Speaker 7: Going to go after them. But they know that Donald will.
Speaker 7: But they're going beyond and above and beyond the call.
Speaker 7: Because if we talk about media, we also have to
Speaker 7: talk about social media.
Speaker 5: Bezos's Amazon is throwing forty million, setting forty million dollars
Speaker 5: on fire to promote a Milania Trump documentary, which I
Speaker 5: don't think there's a big audience for that, but I
Speaker 5: mean I could be wrong.
Speaker 2: It hard for me to imagine. I mean, what are
Speaker 2: they doing?
Speaker 5: It'd be lucky if they could fill the movie theater
Speaker 5: at mar A Lago for that one.
Speaker 2: Who wants it? Does even Mlani want that?
Speaker 5: Well, she probably wants the forty million bucks?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, come on, yeah exactly. It's a good point.
Speaker 7: We've got Musk now saying on Twitter he's they're going
Speaker 7: to be promoting quote unquote positive posts and suppressing negative posts.
Speaker 5: We know what that means, and now meta isn't good
Speaker 5: to fact check anymore. Right Again, all of which were
Speaker 5: downs to uh, the person and the party that means
Speaker 5: to do us the most hard.
Speaker 1: Right, But I want to point out here we are
Speaker 1: at this moment where government regulation like government said we're
Speaker 1: not going to regulate tech companies for any number of
Speaker 1: reasons they did. They said, we're not going to regulate tech,
Speaker 1: We're going to let tech regulate itself. And Tech decided
Speaker 1: not to regulate itself because why the fuck would they.
Speaker 1: Now we have Meta saying that they're going to put
Speaker 1: they're not going to fact check, and they're going to
Speaker 1: put Dana White on the board of Meta because Dana
Speaker 1: White is why why do you put Dana White on
Speaker 1: the board of Meta? Because you love wrestling or boxing
Speaker 1: or whatever sport it is. He does what sport is it?
Speaker 5: It's not wrestling, It's it's like MMA, but it's.
Speaker 2: Not Yes UFC.
Speaker 1: You put Daana White and which the two of us
Speaker 1: are like, I'm like, it's boxing, it's wrestling. You put
Speaker 1: Data White board of Meta because you love fighting, and
Speaker 1: that is why No, you put Dana White on the
Speaker 1: board of Meta because Dana White is a Trump or
Speaker 1: and you want Trump to love you, and you think
Speaker 1: that if you put Dana White on your board, it's
Speaker 1: a little less obvious than putting Junior on the board,
Speaker 1: But you probably should have just put Junior on the
Speaker 1: board discussing on well.
Speaker 5: He's in Greenland, so he's busy.
Speaker 1: I'm having a real serious conversation about this idea that
Speaker 1: you have to cover Trump and you shouldn't sainwash Trump. Yes,
Speaker 1: but also you should not swing at every punch, and
Speaker 1: so the Gulf of America is never going to happen,
Speaker 1: and it's better to just say Trump is saying, like,
Speaker 1: if you think about that press conference that Trump had yesterday,
Speaker 1: because you're listening to this today and today is Wednesday
Speaker 1: when this podcast comes out. If you are listening to
Speaker 1: this podcast and you're thinking about that unhinged presser, the
Speaker 1: first of many of the Trump two point zero unhinged pressers,
Speaker 1: if you're thinking about it, think about focus on the
Speaker 1: part where he said he wasn't going to be able
Speaker 1: to bring prices down because it was really hard, versus
Speaker 1: the fact that he was going to make it the
Speaker 1: Gulf of America versus the Golf of Mexico.
Speaker 2: Agree, disagree, and discuss.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I completely agree with you that we cannot let
Speaker 7: everything get our it hooks into us. We should know
Speaker 7: by now that all of his rantings and ramblings do
Speaker 7: not equally matter, and that much of the strategy is
Speaker 7: to overwhelm us, is to exhaust us and demoralize us.
Speaker 7: And you know, we don't do ourselves any favors. And
Speaker 7: you know, sometimes like there are things that he might
Speaker 7: be serious about and that might actually have serious implications,
Speaker 7: but you know, we can't do anything about that. We
Speaker 7: can't do anything about the fact that cash Pttel might
Speaker 7: be director of the FBI. I mean, Democrats good have
Speaker 7: but they decided it wasn't worth their while. I guess
Speaker 7: I don't know.
Speaker 1: And they can't. They still can't. Right, Well, let's.
Speaker 2: Go back to that, but continue and then we'll go
Speaker 2: back to that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so he's ranting about the Gulf of America.
Speaker 7: If I you're one more person post one of his
Speaker 7: posts and say, oh, he's really losing it now.
Speaker 5: Well he's been losing for seventy years, Okay, so what
Speaker 5: Oh he's really unhinged, like it's a day ending and
Speaker 5: why Yeah, Like, we can't do that anymore, right, we can't.
Speaker 7: Analyze everything like because you know, the main reason, besides
Speaker 7: the fact that it's a waste of our energy, what
Speaker 7: I learned they're at this selection is nobody cares Nobody
Speaker 7: cares if he's mentally ill. Nobody cares if he is
Speaker 7: neurologically impaired. Nobody cares how many times he lies or
Speaker 7: how many times he got convicted of crimes or what
Speaker 7: he got away with.
Speaker 5: Nobody cares. This is what enough people in America wanted,
Speaker 5: So here we are.
Speaker 1: And I would also add, for example, people don't necessarily
Speaker 1: care that he's a narcissist, like he's a narcissist, but
Speaker 1: you know, I want to point out like a lot
Speaker 1: of people are narciss a lot of politicians are narcissists,
Speaker 1: and a lot.
Speaker 6: Of most yeah, eactly, and a lot.
Speaker 2: Of celebrities are a narcissists. Why Trump, I think got.
Speaker 1: Reelected was because people for a number of reasons, but
Speaker 1: part of it was that the anti Trump coalition did
Speaker 1: not come out for Harris. Now I'm not sure that's
Speaker 1: Harris's fault as much as it's the fault of a
Speaker 1: coalition that has very specific ideas of what a president
Speaker 1: should look like or what they want a president to
Speaker 1: look like. But I want to point out here that
Speaker 1: as we're looking at this, what I think is really
Speaker 1: relevant and important is that they said things were too expensive.
Speaker 1: A lot of voters said they didn't like that things
Speaker 1: were more expensive. They didn't like that three hundred dollars
Speaker 1: worth of groceries didn't.
Speaker 2: Look the way it did four years ago. They didn't
Speaker 2: like that.
Speaker 1: They wanted more groceries for three hundred dollars, two hundred dollars,
Speaker 1: whatever the amount of money you pay weekly for groceries.
Speaker 1: They wanted more. This, in my head, is the mandate
Speaker 1: that he was given. Not a huge mandate, but he
Speaker 1: did win the popular vote. So here he is at
Speaker 1: this press conference saying what all of us knew when
Speaker 1: he was running for office, which is you can't really
Speaker 1: make things less expensive.
Speaker 7: Well, and kind of what's worse is that corporate media
Speaker 7: knew that too. Corporate media now telling us how brilliant
Speaker 7: the binding economy was. They did not bother to tell
Speaker 7: us that in the run up to the election. And also, yeah,
Speaker 7: so again it's all based on smoke and mirrors.
Speaker 5: And the problem really is that not only.
Speaker 7: Will the people who voted for him not get what
Speaker 7: they wanted, they and all of us are going to
Speaker 7: get a lot.
Speaker 5: Of things that they did not.
Speaker 7: Want, exactly with Greenland, for example.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so let's talk about Democrats, because I think you
Speaker 1: have a really good point before when you were talking
Speaker 1: about how are Democrats going to oppose the really scary
Speaker 1: nominees and who are the scariest of the nominees. So,
Speaker 1: for example, Donald Trump has decided that he would like
Speaker 1: Cash Pattel to be the head of the FBI. Cash Pattel,
Speaker 1: author of the famous nuna's memo, has been around national
Speaker 1: security on the Republican House side, written a lot of
Speaker 1: really crazy stuff. Is in my mind, the scariest of
Speaker 1: the picks.
Speaker 7: Discuss let's narrow down to the four obvious ones Tulsa
Speaker 7: gottwerd As A d and I peteg Seth a DoD
Speaker 7: Bob Kennedy.
Speaker 5: And Health and Human Services Cashpitel. F In the context
Speaker 5: of Cash Battel, he's dangerous because he will.
Speaker 7: Absolutely be the guy going down the enemy's list and
Speaker 7: wreaking advetage.
Speaker 5: He has no other qualifications for this job.
Speaker 7: In fact, he is a purveyor of the conspiracy theory
Speaker 7: that the FBI was behind.
Speaker 5: January sixth, which suggests to me.
Speaker 7: That he's going to use that totally insane lie as
Speaker 7: an excuse to clean out the FBI.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's a scary historical president for the FBI
Speaker 1: hunting enemies of the president, which we saw in Nixon,
Speaker 1: and it could be a Hoover Redox.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Plus, of course, the FBI under him will ignore the
Speaker 7: greatest threat internally to America, which is domestic terrorism perpetrated
Speaker 7: by mostly white men.
Speaker 2: And that is a real worry too.
Speaker 7: Yes, so whether again, I think they're uniquely dangerous in
Speaker 7: their capacities. You put Tulsea Gabbart as in his Director
Speaker 7: of National Intelligence, our allies stop sharing classified information with US.
Speaker 2: Right for sure? Oh, no question, no question.
Speaker 7: You know, you put Kennedy in Health and Human Services,
Speaker 7: you know, buy stock and Ireland's right.
Speaker 5: We're going to make polio great again.
Speaker 7: And Haig Seth, well, jeez, you know, there's so many
Speaker 7: problems with heys, but honestly, the biggest one considering the
Speaker 7: job is he is abjectly unqualified to one organization of
Speaker 7: what three.
Speaker 5: Million employees or something like that. Got can't even you know,
Speaker 5: stays Ober.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of nominees, and I do think
Speaker 1: that if Democrats are smart, they will focus on In
Speaker 1: my mind, the single most worrying candidate is a cash Battel.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think that's fair. But luckily for us, we
Speaker 5: don't have to choose right exactly.
Speaker 1: But you know, and the question is, Republicans can only
Speaker 1: afford to lose three votes. So can Murkowski, Collins, Langford
Speaker 1: or some group of the three be convinced that having
Speaker 1: Cash Battel is the head of the FBI will be
Speaker 1: as much a pain for you know, Republicans who are
Speaker 1: not as trumpest as a will be for the rest
Speaker 1: of us who just want to live our lives and
Speaker 1: not end up in jail for you know whatever.
Speaker 7: I think one of them doesn't get through as a
Speaker 7: sort of sacrificial lamb, which will make it easier for
Speaker 7: the rest of them to get through.
Speaker 2: Right, that's a big question.
Speaker 7: Yeah, So the question is which one of those. I
Speaker 7: don't know if it's Cash Battel. I really don't, because
Speaker 7: so many Republicans get their quote unquote news from the
Speaker 7: same source as Patel does, right, And I think at
Speaker 7: this point Republicans don't care about anything except the power play. Plus,
Speaker 7: of course we know that what's his name, Musk with
Speaker 7: his nearly half a trillion dollar fortune, and that should
Speaker 7: make all of us completely sick to our stomachs has
Speaker 7: threatened people with the primary challenges we know, like that's
Speaker 7: why Jody Ernz changed her mind about exeth she was
Speaker 7: reminded that she's up for reelection in twenty twenty six.
Speaker 7: Another huge problem, which can't be solved anymore because we're
Speaker 7: out of time, is that Denver crabs squandered seventy eight
Speaker 7: days of an opportunity to let the American people know
Speaker 7: who these nominees Donald Trump shows are. They could have
Speaker 7: held hearings every single day to expose how unqualified and
Speaker 7: dangerous and conspiracy minded and traitorous these people are. But no,
Speaker 7: they did nothing. That to me is one of the
Speaker 7: most unnerving things. It means that we do not know
Speaker 7: what democrats are going to do when these guys actually
Speaker 7: do have power.
Speaker 2: Mary Trump, thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 5: What a pleasure.
Speaker 1: Steve Bladdock is a CNN contributor and the author of
Speaker 1: the Shadow docet.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to Fast Politics.
Speaker 6: Steven, Thanks thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: I'm always so interested in what you're doing and what
Speaker 1: you're writing about and what you're thinking about, because you
Speaker 1: spend a lot of time writing about the law and
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court, and that is in some ways all
Speaker 1: we have left discussed.
Speaker 6: Well, I mean, I don't know if it's all we
Speaker 6: have left, but certainly I think it is the institution
Speaker 6: that is in the best position in the short term
Speaker 6: to act as even a little bit of a speed
Speaker 6: break on a second Trump administration. You know, I don't
Speaker 6: think Molly will act as a speed break as often
Speaker 6: as you or I want it to. But I actually
Speaker 6: do think we will act as a speed break more
Speaker 6: than Trump wants it to, and so that will be
Speaker 6: the awkward equipoise we find ourselves in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's a really good point. Biden still
Speaker 1: has a few I'm not saying he's going to do this,
Speaker 1: but there are people behind the scenes and in front
Speaker 1: of the scenes. I'm thinking of New York Senator Kirsten
Speaker 1: Gillibrand who are trying to get Biden to do a
Speaker 1: few things before on his way out. And something you
Speaker 1: wrote about is sort of in that vein. Can you
Speaker 1: talk about it?
Speaker 6: Sure? I mean, so, there are two sort of big,
Speaker 6: very different cases. They're actually kind of before the Supreme
Speaker 6: Court right now. One is the TikTok case, where the
Speaker 6: Court's can hear oral argument on a very expedited basis
Speaker 6: on Friday, January tenth. But there's also a case has
Speaker 6: gotten a lot less attention, at least outside of lawyer land,
Speaker 6: which is about something called the Corporate Transparency Act. And
Speaker 6: this is a statute Congress enacted a couple of years
Speaker 6: ago that's basically designed to make it easier for the
Speaker 6: federal government to investigate and prosecute a whole slew of
Speaker 6: financial crimes, whether it's money laundering, tax fraud, finance, and
Speaker 6: terrorism by basically requiring every business in the United States
Speaker 6: to report to the Treasury Department who its real owners are.
Speaker 6: Because you might imagine this has pissed off many of
Speaker 6: those businesses anyway. But so that law was blocked in
Speaker 6: December by a federal judge in Texas, and the Biden
Speaker 6: administration is basically asking the Supreme Court this week not
Speaker 6: just to unblock that law and to put it back
Speaker 6: into effect, but actually to take up on a broader
Speaker 6: basis the power of federal courts in general to do
Speaker 6: what the district court did in this case, to issue
Speaker 6: what's called a nationwide injunction. So that's where you know,
Speaker 6: a court blocks a policy nationwide as opposed to just
Speaker 6: as applied to those plaintiffs. And you know, Molly, that's
Speaker 6: a pretty remarkable thing for the binding administration to do,
Speaker 6: especially on its way out the door.
Speaker 1: So I need like more plain common language about what
Speaker 1: that would mean.
Speaker 6: Let's start at the beginning. So the typical injunction is
Speaker 6: an order from a court that says, hey, defendant, stop
Speaker 6: doing whatever you were doing to the plaintiff to Molly,
Speaker 6: or start giving Molly something you weren't giving her right.
Speaker 6: And so the idea is that the injunction is a
Speaker 6: coercive court order that requires the defendant to comply by
Speaker 6: acting or not acting in a particular way against the
Speaker 6: person who sued them. The so called nationwide injunction, it's
Speaker 6: a bit of a misnomer because it's not really about
Speaker 6: the geography. A nationwide injunction is a similarly coercive court
Speaker 6: order that says, hey, defendant, and usually it's either a
Speaker 6: state or the federal government, Hey defendant, stop doing this
Speaker 6: period right, stop doing this as applied to everybody. And
Speaker 6: so I might sue the federal government for a nationwide injunction,
Speaker 6: and if I get one, it means they can't enforce
Speaker 6: the law, not just against me, but against anybody, and
Speaker 6: that's become a much bigger deal in recent years as
Speaker 6: these have proliferated. We saw them, for example, in a
Speaker 6: bunch of challenges to first Trump administration immigration policies. I
Speaker 6: think a lot of folks became familiar with in the
Speaker 6: context of MIFA pristone, where there was, you know, a
Speaker 6: nationwide injunction by a district judge in Texas that would
Speaker 6: have effectively taken MIFA pristone off the shelves even in
Speaker 6: states in which abortion is legal, and so Malli. The
Speaker 6: sort of what the Biden administration is basically doing is
Speaker 6: it saying, hey, Supreme Court, we the federal government don't
Speaker 6: like these very much, and so in addition to getting
Speaker 6: rid of the nationwide injunction in this particular case, we'd
Speaker 6: actually likely to get rid of all of them, you know, Molly.
Speaker 6: On the one hand, it's understandable that any justice apartment,
Speaker 6: you know, a Trump Justice department, a Biden Justice department,
Speaker 6: you know, you name it, justice department is not going
Speaker 6: to like nationwide injunctions because the federal government is usually
Speaker 6: on the wrong end of them. What I'm struck by
Speaker 6: is that the Biden administration's picking this fight at this
Speaker 6: moment where you know it's about to be not Biden
Speaker 6: administration policies that are being challenged in federal court, but
Speaker 6: Trump administration policies, and if they're actually successful, it will
Speaker 6: make it much harder to block any executive branch action.
Speaker 6: But in the short term, Trump actions on a nationwide
Speaker 6: as opposed to an individual basis.
Speaker 2: So why are they doing it?
Speaker 6: Then it's a good question. I can't answer it. My
Speaker 6: best guess is that that's actually, you know, the sort
Speaker 6: of the timing is a feature, not a bug that
Speaker 6: by asking now the request looks especially nonpartisan and looks
Speaker 6: institutional in ways that it might not have come across
Speaker 6: in the prior cases where the Justice Department has asked
Speaker 6: the court to reign in these kinds of orders. But
Speaker 6: I mean, if anything, that underscores exactly why I find
Speaker 6: it surprising. If you're doing it entirely because you're trying
Speaker 6: to send a message that like, we want to hamsterring
Speaker 6: federal judges when Trump comes to office too, that seems
Speaker 6: like a very odd thing to have. The last, you know,
Speaker 6: big move of the Biden administration's Solicener General.
Speaker 2: Pe something that will help Trump.
Speaker 6: Will help Trump, and frankly, I think we'll make it
Speaker 6: much harder to litigate challenges to its politican So consider,
Speaker 6: for example, if you know Trump really does try to
Speaker 6: act against birthright citizenships, so you could have a lawsuit
Speaker 6: buy individual citizens who are jeopardized by that policy. But
Speaker 6: unless you actually obtain some kind of universal relief or
Speaker 6: unless you've got you know, to the Supreme Court, and
Speaker 6: the Supreme Court said, hey, yes, we're going to totally
Speaker 6: strike us all down until unless that happens, right, the
Speaker 6: policy would still apply to everybody else. And so it means,
Speaker 6: you know, it's going to be harder to challenge Trump
Speaker 6: administration policies. It's going to take more litigation, it's going
Speaker 6: to put more pressure on the courts if they succeed.
Speaker 6: Now you know, the Supreme Court has not responded yet
Speaker 6: to this request by the Biden administration.
Speaker 2: Oh so they may not even take it up.
Speaker 6: They may not. I mean, so to sort of to
Speaker 6: be a little bit of a legal nerd for a second,
Speaker 6: something new and different for me. I know, the Biden
Speaker 6: administration has asked the Supreme Court to do two different things.
Speaker 6: So the first thing that's asking for is what we
Speaker 6: call a stay. They're asking the Supreme Court to freeze
Speaker 6: the District court order from December, the effect of which
Speaker 6: would be to put this law, the Corporate Transparency Act,
Speaker 6: back into effect. That's like the small ask, and then
Speaker 6: the big ask is, you know, but also we want
Speaker 6: you to actually take this case up for full review,
Speaker 6: not on whether the Corporate Transparency Acts constitutional, but on
Speaker 6: whether the District Court had the power to issue the
Speaker 6: injunction at issued in the first place. So, you know, Molly,
Speaker 6: the Supreme Court could sort of say no to everything.
Speaker 6: The Court could grant the stay right and sort of
Speaker 6: give the Biden administration the small relief it wants and
Speaker 6: not take up the bigger question. The Court could grant
Speaker 6: this day and tick up the bigger question, in which
Speaker 6: case we'd have full brief in an oral argument you know,
Speaker 6: later this term. All of those are possible, and I
Speaker 6: think it's you know, it's a good example of a
Speaker 6: sort of Supreme Court case that's not getting a lot
Speaker 6: of public attention, but that could be very important if
Speaker 6: the Biden administration gets what it wants.
Speaker 1: One of the many ways in which I feel that
Speaker 1: we in the mainstream media have fucked up is by
Speaker 1: not sort of talking enough about the historical precedent with
Speaker 1: everything Trump has done and everything Trump does and how
Speaker 1: you can and set the table for this and you know,
Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera. That said, so, I was about
Speaker 1: to say that the judge shopping happening in this country
Speaker 1: is new. It is very much not new, but it
Speaker 1: is very much in the news because of the Mark
Speaker 1: Zuckerberg Facebook. He's moving Facebook from California to Texas where
Speaker 1: people are less. Hello, talk us through exactly what this
Speaker 1: is and what does mean, et cetera.
Speaker 6: I mean, there's a lot going on with the developments
Speaker 6: at Meta. The California to Texas move is probably like
Speaker 6: the eighth most important piece of it. But this is
Speaker 6: sort of taking a page from Elon Musk's playbook. I mean,
Speaker 6: Musk relocated SpaceX first and then Twitter slash X to
Speaker 6: Texas for tax reasons, for political reasons, and for liability reasons,
Speaker 6: because I mean, this is sort of back into sort
Speaker 6: of law school for a second. It is difficult to
Speaker 6: sue big corporations where they are not unless you are
Speaker 6: suing them for stuff they did where you're suing them, right,
Speaker 6: So if you're challenging big corporate decisions or you know,
Speaker 6: senior leadership decisions by corporation. Usually you have to sue
Speaker 6: them where they are, and that means either where they're incorporated,
Speaker 6: which is you know, technical legal mumbo jumbo, but it's
Speaker 6: usually Delaware or where their headquarters is. And so moving
Speaker 6: from California to Texas means those lawsuits go into Texas
Speaker 6: instead of California. And that's you know, that's a matter
Speaker 6: of convenience, Molly. But it also those are very different,
Speaker 6: both state courts and federal courts, where you know, the
Speaker 6: California state courts are very left of center, the California
Speaker 6: federal courts are left of center, but not as much
Speaker 6: as they used to be. And in Texas you've got
Speaker 6: you know, the most right ling in courts in the country,
Speaker 6: at both the state and federal level. So it is,
Speaker 6: it is, you know, it's sort of a transparent effort
Speaker 6: to basically find more sympathetic judges.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it seems to me, and again I am
Speaker 1: not a lawyer, i am but an outside observer, it
Speaker 1: strikes me that the government in Texas, the state government
Speaker 1: is way more aggressive at protecting its billionaires it's conservative billionaires.
Speaker 1: We've seen the governor and the attorney's General try to
Speaker 1: pander to its billionaires. Now, whether or not that is
Speaker 1: the optics of pandering or actual pandering, it does seem
Speaker 1: like there's more flexibility there.
Speaker 6: I think it's important, Molly to sort of separate out
Speaker 6: what strikes me as the normal politics of big business
Speaker 6: and what strikes me as.
Speaker 2: Shady good point. Good point, good point.
Speaker 6: I think it is inevitable that states will try to
Speaker 6: attract particular types of large business concerns with exactly what
Speaker 6: their policy priorities are. You know, come to our state
Speaker 6: because we are pro this or we're anti that. We're
Speaker 6: a right to work state. Don't you want to be here?
Speaker 6: And so I guess I will just say I don't
Speaker 6: find that sort of inherently problematic. I think it's sort
Speaker 6: of baked into our system of federalism. What I'm more
Speaker 6: cynical about is the courts, right that, like, it's inevitable
Speaker 6: that you're going to have states that have different laws,
Speaker 6: and that those different laws are going to be reasons
Speaker 6: why businesses either gravitate toward that state or away from
Speaker 6: that state. What I've got worried about is when the
Speaker 6: courts are part of that conversation, because at least when
Speaker 6: it comes to the federal laws, right, that should at
Speaker 6: least in theory, be uniform throughout the country. Like the
Speaker 6: federal antitrust law should mean the same thing in California
Speaker 6: that it means in Texas. The constitutional rights should mean
Speaker 6: the same thing in California that they mean in Texas.
Speaker 6: And so I don't get nervous about state politics being
Speaker 6: what state politics have always been. I get nervous about
Speaker 6: the state and federal courts in a state becoming such
Speaker 6: an obvious part of the political conversation because it just
Speaker 6: reinforces the perception not just that the courts of political institutions,
Speaker 6: but that the courts are partisan institutions that are part
Speaker 6: of why you're seeing these kinds of decisions by corporations
Speaker 6: like meta.
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: And I think that's a really good point, and that
Speaker 1: is to use the courts as arms of corporate malfeasans ultimately, right,
Speaker 1: I mean that's the goal.
Speaker 6: Yeah, or at least to use the courts if not
Speaker 6: corporate malthfeasans are at the very least sort of corporate unaccountability. Right,
Speaker 6: It's one thing to say, Oh, we're moving to Texas
Speaker 6: over California because of the taxes, to say we're moving
Speaker 6: to Texas over California because of the courts. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 6: And I think, you know, one of those is sort
Speaker 6: of a long running political conversation that I guess doesn't
Speaker 6: bother me as much as the latter one does, because
Speaker 6: you know, we should not be surprised the political actors
Speaker 6: make political decisions. I get nervous when those decisions are
Speaker 6: influenced by which judges are going to be supervising them.
Speaker 2: M hmmm.
Speaker 1: That's a really good point, and I think very much
Speaker 1: sort of what we should be thinking about right now.
Speaker 2: I wonder if you.
Speaker 1: Could sort of talk a little bit about where we
Speaker 1: are in this Supreme Court. You know, we're they're going
Speaker 1: to start hearing arguments where we are, and sort of what's.
Speaker 2: On the docket and what's it going to look like.
Speaker 6: Sure, I mean, so we're really probably a little bit
Speaker 6: right around the halfway point, I guess for the current term,
Speaker 6: the October twenty twenty four term. And one of the
Speaker 6: strange things about this term, Molly, is it's actually been
Speaker 6: a relatively quiet one so far. I mean, we have
Speaker 6: just had these back to back to back block uster
Speaker 6: terms with dozens of major, massively both politically and legally
Speaker 6: important rulings, and at least so far, this term is
Speaker 6: not that. I mean, you know, the Court has a
Speaker 6: couple of very important cases that have already been argued. Skurmeti,
Speaker 6: which is the big case about you know, gender affirming
Speaker 6: medical care for adolescence that was argued back in December.
Speaker 6: You know, there's a big gun case about ghost guns,
Speaker 6: those argued back in October. But you know, Molly, this
Speaker 6: is at least not so far a term that's going
Speaker 6: to end with cases like Dobbs on abortion or the
Speaker 6: affirmative action cases from two years ago. And I actually
Speaker 6: think what's really going to be the story come the
Speaker 6: spring is not any of these merits cases, but rather
Speaker 6: exactly what we were talking about earlier, which is Trump
Speaker 6: does something crazy, lower Court blocks him, and Trump runs
Speaker 6: back up to the Supreme Court for some kind of
Speaker 6: emergency relief, where you know, I think by the time
Speaker 6: we're done in June this term, that the real headlines
Speaker 6: of this term are going to be how the Court
Speaker 6: is dealing with the most controversial Trump policies, most of
Speaker 6: which will get there if at all, this term right,
Speaker 6: not through the normal full nine yards of litigation, but
Speaker 6: on this sort of truncated, expedited emergency basis.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm wondering you wrote this brilliant book about the
Speaker 1: shadow docket and sort of the kind of danger there.
Speaker 1: I mean, do you think we're going to see more
Speaker 1: stuff taken on the shadow docket? And can you talk
Speaker 1: about the shadow docket in Trump one point zero?
Speaker 6: I mean, Trump one point zero is exactly I think
Speaker 6: the comparator here. So you know, the shadow docket just
Speaker 6: it's a descriptive term that's meant to cover everything that
Speaker 6: the Supreme Court does other than it's big fancy merit
Speaker 6: rulings the sixty or so you know, rulings the Court
Speaker 6: hands down every year after full briefing in argument. Turns
Speaker 6: out there are thousands of rulings the Court hands down
Speaker 6: not with full briefing in argument, and we just don't
Speaker 6: care about most of them. So during during Trump one
Speaker 6: point zero, Trump's Justice Department really sort of took advantage
Speaker 6: of something called emergency relief. This is basically, hey, Supreme Court,
Speaker 6: this case is going to get to you eventually. But
Speaker 6: in the two or three years it takes to get there.
Speaker 6: What should the status quo be. Should the status quobe
Speaker 6: be that the district court ruling that blocked this policy
Speaker 6: remains an effect or should the status quod be that
Speaker 6: the policy goes into effect while we appeal the ruling
Speaker 6: that says it's unlawful. And you know, Molly, what was
Speaker 6: striking about the first Trump administration. The Justice Department historically
Speaker 6: had been very shy about using the shadow docket that way.
Speaker 6: I mean, across the George W. Bush and Obama presidencies,
Speaker 6: so two very different, two term presidencies, the Justice Department
Speaker 6: had gone to the court for that kind of relief
Speaker 6: a total of eight times in sixteen years. Even I
Speaker 6: can do that math, right. The Trump administration, in contrast,
Speaker 6: went forty one time in the first four years, right,
Speaker 6: so between twenty seventeen and twenty twenty one. And this
Speaker 6: was on pretty big stuff. This was on the travel
Speaker 6: ban and the ban on transgender individuals serving in the military,
Speaker 6: and you know, the put in a citizenship question on
Speaker 6: the census and all kinds of other like really important stuff.
Speaker 6: And I think we're in for more of that. Whatever
Speaker 6: Trump does, whether it's birthright citizenship or crazy tariffs or
Speaker 6: Schedule F or other things that are going to be
Speaker 6: subject to legal challenge. You know, folks are going to
Speaker 6: be strategic about where they bring in those lawsuits. They're
Speaker 6: going to find, you know, courts that they think are
Speaker 6: going to be most sympathetic to those claims. Those courts
Speaker 6: are probably going to agree with at least some of
Speaker 6: those challenges. And the question is going to be, like,
Speaker 6: what does the Supreme Court do then? Will the Supreme
Speaker 6: Court have learned its lesson from Trump one point zero
Speaker 6: or is it just going to do exactly what it
Speaker 6: did the first time around, which was green light a
Speaker 6: bunch of these policies even though every federal court to
Speaker 6: consider them said they were unlawful. And that's you know
Speaker 6: when you ask sort of what's what's on the docket
Speaker 6: for this term? You know, none of that is yet,
Speaker 6: but man, I think it's coming.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: There's a world in which the Supreme Court goes like
Speaker 1: John Roberts is like, yeah, I've actually totally done the
Speaker 1: court and I want to like roll back my yeah, okay.
Speaker 2: The laughter says it all right.
Speaker 6: I would love for the Supreme Court to have that
Speaker 6: kind of come to Jesus moment. But Molly, I do think,
Speaker 6: I mean, just to put this as quickly as possible,
Speaker 6: I do think that the middle of the court, so
Speaker 6: Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Brett Cavanaugh, justs Acony Barrett, is
Speaker 6: not worth the middle.
Speaker 2: By the way. That's the middle, which in its should
Speaker 2: say a lot.
Speaker 6: It speaks multitudes, but it's also just a descriptive fact,
Speaker 6: right that in the cases that are going to come
Speaker 6: out of Trump two point zero, how those three justices
Speaker 6: vote is going to be how the Court goes. And
Speaker 6: you know, they're going to endorse a lot more than
Speaker 6: they should, but they're not going to endorse everything Trump wants.
Speaker 6: I don't think that's going to because the court sort
Speaker 6: of sees the light. I think it's just going to
Speaker 6: because in John Roberts and Brett Cavanaugh, Abcony Barrett, you
Speaker 6: have really fairly conventional, you know, Bush era movement conservatives,
Speaker 6: legal conservatives as opposed to the more populous, trumpy conservatives
Speaker 6: that we have today.
Speaker 1: Right, all right, that's a really good point. Thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you. I hope you will come back
Speaker 1: any time.
Speaker 6: Ali, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 4: No more peckly Jesse Cannon, Mollie, you know, seeing that
Speaker 4: Merrick Garland is facing some pressure as he did for
Speaker 4: the last four years, and all I could think is, well,
Speaker 4: there's one nice thing.
Speaker 3: Maybe we'll never have to hear about Merrick Garland getting
Speaker 3: pressure again in just a few weeks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, talk about someone who was the wrong person for
Speaker 1: the job. Actually, I thought that Jensaki had a pretty
Speaker 1: good monologue about how Merrick Garland was probably not the
Speaker 1: right person for this job, and that does seem very likely.
Speaker 1: There were a lot of things he could have done,
Speaker 1: and he moved very slowly, and at every point he
Speaker 1: was unwilling to do the brave thing and instead did
Speaker 1: what was the cautious thing. And in a situation like
Speaker 1: that leaves us with Donald Trump humming president again. This activist,
Speaker 1: the president of Social Security Works Pack said Merrick Garland
Speaker 1: has exactly one more chance to show any smattering of spine.
Speaker 1: He has two weeks to release Jack Smith's report. This
Speaker 1: is the last chance to do something right again. Aileen
Speaker 1: Cannon trying to have the eleventh Circuit roll in on it.
Speaker 1: This thing could go up to the Supreme Court. We
Speaker 1: know that we have a very maga Supreme Court so
Speaker 1: we'll see if the Supreme Court allows it. Look, Merrick
Speaker 1: Garland has had lots of opportunities to circumvent trump Ism,
Speaker 1: to hold Trump accountable. He has taken none of them.
Speaker 1: So it's hard for me to imagine that he will
Speaker 1: somehow act differently, but I hope he does.
Speaker 2: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics.
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