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 fifteen votes later, we have a
Speaker 1: Speaker of the House. It's a Wild show today with
Speaker 1: Cerese Castle, host to the podcast, A Tradition of Violence.
Speaker 1: We'll talk to us about the Los Angeles County Sheriff's
Speaker 1: Gangs and the fucory surrounding them. Then we'll talk to
Speaker 1: director Blake Zef about his documentary Lone Wolves, which covers
Speaker 1: the student deck crisis. But first we have the host
Speaker 1: of the Enemy's List, the one the Only, Rick Wilson.
Speaker 1: Welcome too, Fast Politics. Rick Wilson, Molly John Fast, How
Speaker 1: are you goodad, How are you well. I'm here in
Speaker 1: beautiful Florida. The sun is shining. The airplane is waiting
Speaker 1: for you to go take it and push through the clear,
Speaker 1: beautiful skies of the great state of Florida for a
Speaker 1: couple of hoursternoon. But first I'm here with you, Kevin McCarthy.
Speaker 1: You know what they say, when at first you don't succeed,
Speaker 1: try sorrow yourself at the feet of horrible people. Humiliate
Speaker 1: yourself over and over again. Give up all the key
Speaker 1: powers of your job in order to achieve the illusory
Speaker 1: title of Speaker of the House while Matt Gates, Lauren Bobert,
Speaker 1: Andy Biggs, Paul Gostar, Margie Taylor Green, and the rest
Speaker 1: of the clown caucus take over. Yeah, that was what
Speaker 1: I was thinking. Did you get it on the fifteenth
Speaker 1: or the try day? And the Lord said, let me
Speaker 1: get the reason why this took so long and hurt
Speaker 1: so much. Kevin McCarthy is a hollow man. There's no
Speaker 1: real there there. He's just a vuncular kind of backslapping,
Speaker 1: you know, frat broke kind of guy who for years
Speaker 1: has kind of failed up and is not. He's not,
Speaker 1: as you may have picked up by now, he's not
Speaker 1: an exactly an intellectual, high horsepower guy. But he's been
Speaker 1: surrounded by a few people, including a guy that very
Speaker 1: few people know about named Jeff Miller. Jeff Miller is
Speaker 1: one of d cs like what they call a tollbooth
Speaker 1: lobbyist firm, where unless you hired Jeff's firm, you don't
Speaker 1: get a meeting with Kevin. They may not do any
Speaker 1: work for you, but you have to show that you're
Speaker 1: hiring Kev's guy and Jeff Miller and this small cadre
Speaker 1: around Kevin have wanted this for twelve thirteen years now,
Speaker 1: and they were not going to give it up. So
Speaker 1: they decided they made a what would have looked like
Speaker 1: a rational choice in Washington twenty years ago. They decided, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna bullshit these Freedom Caucus assholes. We're just gonna
Speaker 1: tell them we're gonna do this stuff, and then later
Speaker 1: on we'll just jerk him off and we won't do it.
Speaker 1: This is, unfortunately for them, a category error right at
Speaker 1: the peak of dumb idea mountain, because those aren't the
Speaker 1: rules anymore. It's part of the clown car mountain range.
Speaker 1: They don't understand that the world doesn't work that way anymore.
Speaker 1: These people now have extracted concessions on the rules and
Speaker 1: on people on committees, and those concessions make Kevin a
Speaker 1: speaker in name only. They have the ability now for
Speaker 1: one idiot, and believe me, the Republican Caucus, as you
Speaker 1: may be surprised to know, has more than one idiot.
Speaker 1: There's one idiot um for one idiot to call for
Speaker 1: no confidence voltus. Kevin was able to beat these people
Speaker 1: down by offering them everything under the sun. Okay, that
Speaker 1: he offered them everything you want a foot massage, Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: you gotta foot missage. You want me to come over
Speaker 1: and twork, I'll twork. Just imagine Kevin twets get Just
Speaker 1: get it out, get it into your mind, and so
Speaker 1: you can soon get it out of your mind. The
Speaker 1: idea that all these crazies got everything they wanted is
Speaker 1: the thing that will make the house ungovernable. And the
Speaker 1: key element here, the key element here is that they
Speaker 1: extracted a concession from him that they weren't going to
Speaker 1: do a debt ceiling. So okay, let's look back for
Speaker 1: a second to Jeff Miller and to Kevin's real constituency,
Speaker 1: which is not the people of Fresno, California, God forbid? Right,
Speaker 1: certainly not. Yeah, it's the American Bankers Association, It's the
Speaker 1: hedge fund Bros. It's a lot of Wall Street investment banks,
Speaker 1: a lot of private equity people. How much do you
Speaker 1: think they want to see the economy crash and burn
Speaker 1: when we decide we're not going to pay our debts,
Speaker 1: when we decide that we're going to um not pay
Speaker 1: Social Security medicare, medicaid and military salaries. How do you
Speaker 1: think that's gonna work out? It's not. And they recognized
Speaker 1: on the Freedom Caucus side, on the hyper Maga side,
Speaker 1: that we were going to have a world in which
Speaker 1: Kevin McCarthy was their hostage and will be forever. The
Speaker 1: irony here is it's like, Okay, the terrorists have taken
Speaker 1: the plane, they've killed the hostages, and they've blown it up.
Speaker 1: Now let's give them the money and the helicopter so
Speaker 1: they can escape. The fuck. I mean, it's ninth seen
Speaker 1: people right like you could find. I mean, if he
Speaker 1: had just never gone Tomorrow Lago, he could have gotten
Speaker 1: nineteen blue dogs. He could have made a deal with
Speaker 1: him and the American people like that kind of ship.
Speaker 1: If I had been Hackeim Jeffreys, I would have gone
Speaker 1: into Kevin's caucus and found a dozen people who were
Speaker 1: in Biden districts, and I would have said to them,
Speaker 1: you're gonna get a chairmanship, you're gonna get this committee.
Speaker 1: You're gonna be on ways and Means, you're gonna be
Speaker 1: on Armed Services. I would have handed out a tier
Speaker 1: committee assignments like they were fucking candy on Halloween to
Speaker 1: get the majority, and I'm a little disappointed they didn't
Speaker 1: take that seriously enough. And I was told by by
Speaker 1: two separate Democratic members that they didn't want to do
Speaker 1: that because they thought that that would break up the
Speaker 1: two twelve votes they were consistently getting. That there would
Speaker 1: be people on the left would say, oh, no, you
Speaker 1: can't do that. This is a Democratic caucus. That's better
Speaker 1: to be in the minority than the majority, which is
Speaker 1: a logic that I find somewhat lacking. I do think
Speaker 1: that they came out of last week Democrats looking really good, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, the speeches were really good. They all voted
Speaker 1: in lockstep. The speeches were great. They had a lot
Speaker 1: of unity. Because I always went for the fences, I
Speaker 1: would have gone for the majority if I was them. However,
Speaker 1: they did come out of it pretty cohesive, pretty solid,
Speaker 1: feeling like there's a degree of intentionality about this whole thing.
Speaker 1: I thought it was a big moment for Katherine Clark
Speaker 1: to her speeches were really good. She's seemed very smart.
Speaker 1: I mean, I thought also Hakim sounded really good. And
Speaker 1: it looked like a mess, like every which way Republicans
Speaker 1: tried to spin it it still looked like a mass. Yeah. Look,
Speaker 1: there was nothing in this week that didn't scream out
Speaker 1: ship show nothing. They were embarrassing, they were clumsy, and
Speaker 1: Kevin's desperation for the job was So there's a degree
Speaker 1: to which if you're the Speaker of the House you
Speaker 1: want to have a little bit of mr and dignity
Speaker 1: and power. Yeah, well that's that Chip is sailed. And
Speaker 1: this is a guy. This is a guy who's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you want to come and pee on me, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know what you're thinking, do you? Yeah, I know
Speaker 1: you know what I'm thinking. Sorry, as usual, Rixy's they
Speaker 1: described the line right, we don't need to open the
Speaker 1: door to but yes, I see what you're saying. I
Speaker 1: thought there was some pretty interesting reporting from the Washington
Speaker 1: Post about this idea that Mark Meadows was working with.
Speaker 1: These nineteen or so Freedom Caucus. By the way, they're
Speaker 1: not Freedom Caucus. Most of them are new The Freedom
Speaker 1: Caucus people are actually supporting Kevin because Kevin has been
Speaker 1: working really hard to get those Freedom Caucus votes for
Speaker 1: the LAB since two thousand fifteen. Yeah, let's be really
Speaker 1: clear about something, Molly. This is a great example of
Speaker 1: why the d C reporting culture is so fucking broken
Speaker 1: because they tried to turn this into a race where
Speaker 1: Kevin McCarthy and his moderate allies against these nineteen crazies
Speaker 1: get the funk out of here, right, I mean, get
Speaker 1: the hot funk out of here. The nineteen crazies were
Speaker 1: just outliers in a pack of crazies. A hundred and
Speaker 1: forty nine members of Kevin's moderate group voted against certifying
Speaker 1: the two thousand and twenty election. Their chock full of
Speaker 1: election deniers, anti factor's, conspiracy theorists, lunatics, the most ungodly
Speaker 1: post conservative, post Republican anarchists and nihilists and show voters
Speaker 1: that you've ever seen in your life. You know, we're
Speaker 1: not trying to bring back George Herbert Walker Bush or
Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan's party. God, thank God, excuse me, ma'am, but no,
Speaker 1: look at the Darwin's favorite president. Since I worked for him,
Speaker 1: since I worked for him, I have a soft spot. Yes,
Speaker 1: but your son is red pilled now clearly and pretty pretty,
Speaker 1: is gonna say, mom. You know, Mike Sernovich has some
Speaker 1: really good points. Jesus Christ. Anyway, let's get back to
Speaker 1: the case at hand here. But so we have these
Speaker 1: nineteen insurrectionists though they're all insurrectionists, but we have nineteen
Speaker 1: more insurrection insurrectionists. They're just a little more insurrection e.
Speaker 1: Right there, the congressional Kardashians of a Sword, the Chaos Caucus,
Speaker 1: the Chaos Caucus, and they now have everything they want.
Speaker 1: Some of them voted president like mcates, some of them
Speaker 1: went for Kevin. Now we have this motion to vacab
Speaker 1: which you only need one crazy for. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think what's important here is there's a democratic Senate,
Speaker 1: there's a democratic president. So they can't pass any bills.
Speaker 1: They have no intention molly of doing any kind of governing.
Speaker 1: This is going to be show trial after show trial
Speaker 1: after show trial after show trial. Right, it's been right.
Speaker 1: This has been Ghazi to electric Buggaloo. One of the
Speaker 1: things that was in the deal structure that they got
Speaker 1: from Kevin was our committee on Hunter Bud's Laptop needs
Speaker 1: a bigger budget than the one six committee. Can they
Speaker 1: control that? I mean, theoretically Congress controls the budget, but
Speaker 1: not really. Right, they will have everything they need for
Speaker 1: an endless, joyous, never ever for a moment breaking character
Speaker 1: political circus that they are so excited about They're harder
Speaker 1: than Jim Jordan outside of the locker room. They can't
Speaker 1: wait for this ship to go crazy. And they believe rightly,
Speaker 1: by the way, and this is where the Democrats need
Speaker 1: a little bit of tough love. They believe correctly that
Speaker 1: they can use all these hearings about everything the border
Speaker 1: and Afghanistan and loped Hope and ray Epps and the FBI.
Speaker 1: They believe they can use this to whip up their base,
Speaker 1: that they can whip up the crazies. They can make
Speaker 1: the crazies feel like that they found their secret sauce.
Speaker 1: It's the Twitter files. They believe that they can give
Speaker 1: the crazies a hook and that that hook will go
Speaker 1: into so that the election will be about this imaginary
Speaker 1: you know again, right, which is possible. I said that
Speaker 1: in that voice to be as offensive as possible to
Speaker 1: the people who believe in Hunter Biden's laptop. It's like
Speaker 1: with so many things in Trump world, like it's possible
Speaker 1: that this works for them. It's possible that it blows
Speaker 1: up for them. I mean like it could be Bill
Speaker 1: Clinton and the blow job, it could be Benghazi. It's
Speaker 1: too soon to tell. Ultimately, I think that's largely correct, Molly,
Speaker 1: and I think that there's a degree to which the
Speaker 1: show trial nature of it really comes down, as so
Speaker 1: many things in the Republican world do to Rupert Murdoch
Speaker 1: and and to Lachland increasingly, do they turn these hearings
Speaker 1: into you know, the Fox News daily programming memo, as
Speaker 1: they did for Benghazi? I don't know that answer. Now,
Speaker 1: all the alt media on the Republican you know ecosystem,
Speaker 1: now this will be the head of news Max at
Speaker 1: all times, every day. This will be the lead story
Speaker 1: on every conservative And I used this term advisedly thought
Speaker 1: this podcast, I think ironically. Yes, then Shapiro will declare
Speaker 1: that this has the most consequential moments nothing good, nothing good. Sorry,
Speaker 1: Did I just imitate Ben Shapiro when he was a
Speaker 1: chipmunk with a cattle brought up his ass? Yes? I did.
Speaker 1: He will always take the lowest possible road, but facts
Speaker 1: and logic tell me that this is right, and he
Speaker 1: will do it with fast talking. But the question of
Speaker 1: where this goes we don't quite know. But yes, I mean,
Speaker 1: definitely bad for Democrats. I know where it goes, Molly.
Speaker 1: It goes for months and months and months and months
Speaker 1: and months, and they try to use this to prepare
Speaker 1: the battlefield, to portray Joe Biden as corrupt or incompetent,
Speaker 1: or whatever else is in their brain. We're as bad
Speaker 1: as Trump, which is the goal, right, because they need
Speaker 1: him to be as bad as Donald Trump. They need
Speaker 1: him to be a danger to the country. They need
Speaker 1: this entire fantasy that that they're going to whip up
Speaker 1: for their base. You know, it's not going to come
Speaker 1: out of it criminal charges against you, It's not going
Speaker 1: to come out of it any real change. What will
Speaker 1: come out of it is they will impeach Joe Biden.
Speaker 1: They will impeach ma Orchist, they will impeach Harris, They'll
Speaker 1: probably impeach Pete Buddhagaz just for being just for just
Speaker 1: for owning the Fox people. They've said they won't, but
Speaker 1: that doesn't necessarily mean anything. Good luck. How dare you,
Speaker 1: Mr Speaker, not bring impeachment charges against the most corrupt
Speaker 1: president of our time? Screamed Matt Gates from the floor.
Speaker 1: I call for a vote of no confidence. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: seems likely. That's how it works. You don't think it
Speaker 1: just ends up that McCarthy just ends up getting kicked
Speaker 1: out before that even happens. Look, I think when the
Speaker 1: dead ceiling comes around, McCarthy has to make a deal.
Speaker 1: That's the ball game. It's over. They get rid of him,
Speaker 1: and then you have Steve Scalies, who's been waiting in
Speaker 1: the wings this all time. Well, here's the thing. Though
Speaker 1: Steve Scalise is a little too establishment for some people.
Speaker 1: He hasn't been as vocally constantly loyal. The real person
Speaker 1: to keep your eye on is Gretchen Wieners. Who's that
Speaker 1: at least depon. Yes, folks, I made a mean girl
Speaker 1: joke on Molly's podcast. Yeah yeah, yeah, Yeah, She's the
Speaker 1: one that you keep your eye on because A she's
Speaker 1: got a really strong whip operation. B. She was certainly
Speaker 1: out whispering people's ears this week. Like, well, if it
Speaker 1: doesn't work out for Steve, I'm certainly, you know, willing
Speaker 1: to serve. Uh huh. She really is got a lot
Speaker 1: of ambition. No, no, no, no, Molly. Her ambition is definitional.
Speaker 1: It towers over every other aspect of her character. If
Speaker 1: she can be said to have character other than ambition,
Speaker 1: you think she could be the kind of waiting in
Speaker 1: the wings. Oh, I absolutely know she's waiting in the wings.
Speaker 1: She's she's not even shy about it. She's not even
Speaker 1: pretending it's it's not the only thing she wants. It's
Speaker 1: the only thing she wants. But I just want to
Speaker 1: get back to his idea for second. But Kevin McCarthy
Speaker 1: painted this as a big victory for Donald Trump. I
Speaker 1: want to get to the final most important point here.
Speaker 1: Another thing that I that I you know, if you
Speaker 1: went through this week and we we actually Lincoln made
Speaker 1: a video compilation of reporters and analysts saying, well shows
Speaker 1: the end of Donald Trump's influence over the party, y'all.
Speaker 1: Donald Trump's guy won. Donald Trump's guy went out right
Speaker 1: right after the vote and said Donald Trump made this possible.
Speaker 1: I'm here because of Donald Trump. I serve and obey
Speaker 1: the Great Liege Lord of Mara Lago, Donald Trump. Donald
Speaker 1: Trump's asked smells like sunshine and honeysuckle not to push
Speaker 1: back too hard here because I think you're right. But
Speaker 1: if this reporting from the Washington Post is correct, mark
Speaker 1: Meadows was whipping these twenty insurgents against Kevin. So does
Speaker 1: this mean that Mark Meadows is no longer be in
Speaker 1: lockstep with Donald Trump, or that Donald Trump is no
Speaker 1: longer in lockstep with Mark Meadows, or that Donald Trump
Speaker 1: was whipping these insurgents with playing three dimensional chess, which
Speaker 1: seems impossible to me. I mean, what do you think
Speaker 1: that is a man? I think we've got a meaningful
Speaker 1: chance here. That Mark Meadows is is a cat's paw
Speaker 1: here for the chaos factor here. They like to play
Speaker 1: these things. Trump would have declared victory either way, right,
Speaker 1: But Meadows was whipping against McCarthy. Meadows has a narrow
Speaker 1: survival band now in his life. He has to be
Speaker 1: in that world. He's never coming back to be a
Speaker 1: you know, he's not a guy that's going to end
Speaker 1: up at Barbara Griffith and Rogers or some other DC
Speaker 1: consulting firm. As a former member of Congress and former
Speaker 1: wedolse you have stuff of council now to the firm,
Speaker 1: of value added to our serious corporate clients. That's never happening.
Speaker 1: He has to be in that ecosystem of cuckoo, right.
Speaker 1: But you would think Trump would be the conduit to that.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing. Trump made a decision that he
Speaker 1: looked at the overall whip count and even with all
Speaker 1: of the session in Washington that Kevin was the moderate candidate.
Speaker 1: Trump understood. Kevin will always bend for him. Kevin is predictable,
Speaker 1: he is explicable. He's the kind of Washington creature that
Speaker 1: Trump was able to suborne and manipulate and break over
Speaker 1: and over and over and over again in the last
Speaker 1: seven years. He gets it. He understands that those people
Speaker 1: are are what he wants. They are a patsy for him.
Speaker 1: He doesn't even have to sell that hard and they'll
Speaker 1: bend over and say yes, sir. Right. Thank you. Rick
Speaker 1: Wilson always always a pleasure. Thank you, thank you, Thank
Speaker 1: you for joining us. You are welcome. As always, I
Speaker 1: will talk to you so series. Castle is a reporter
Speaker 1: and host of the podcast A Tradition of Violence. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Vast Politics series. Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: This is such an interesting and important topic. I'm so
Speaker 1: glad you're here to talk about it. My first question
Speaker 1: for you is the police department in Los Angeles has
Speaker 1: a gang? Yes, it's the Sheriff's Department in Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: although I have heard reports of gangs in the l
Speaker 1: a p D as well. I've been covering the Sheriff's
Speaker 1: Department for about two years now, and in those two years,
Speaker 1: I have uncovered about twenty one different deputy gangs that
Speaker 1: are operating within the Sheriff's department. A deputy gang is
Speaker 1: just like a criminal street gang. The only real difference
Speaker 1: is that they have the backing of local government, the
Speaker 1: funding of local government, and the legal ability to kill
Speaker 1: people and get away with it with no consequences. So
Speaker 1: they're a little like the oath Keepers. Yes, and many
Speaker 1: members of these deputy gangs are members of white supremacist organizations,
Speaker 1: the youth Keepers. It's so funny because it's not funny,
Speaker 1: but the l a p D has been at the
Speaker 1: forefront of doing some of the worst crimes that we've
Speaker 1: ever seen police do, right, I mean, And it's so
Speaker 1: odd to me because it's like, you think about Los
Speaker 1: Angeles as a blue city in a blue state, and
Speaker 1: yet their police force is real sketchy. Can we talk
Speaker 1: about that, Yeah, most definitely. Yeah. And I just want
Speaker 1: to make sure that I'm being clear. Most of my
Speaker 1: work is in the Sheriff's Apartment, which is a different
Speaker 1: organization that the police, the County of Los Angeles U
Speaker 1: l A p D. Has the city and there is
Speaker 1: some overlap. The Sheriff's Department does come into the city
Speaker 1: of l A. Just explain that to people who are
Speaker 1: not as in it. So the Sheriff's Department is the
Speaker 1: larger organization. Yes, it's the largest law enforcement agency in
Speaker 1: the United States. It has about eighteen thousand employees, ten
Speaker 1: thousand of whom are sworn police officers with police officer abilities.
Speaker 1: Those are the ones out on the street that you
Speaker 1: see patrolling um in the sheriff uniform. In the sheriff
Speaker 1: car they now wear cowboy hats, which is kind of
Speaker 1: funny because Los Angeles is a metropolitan city, but something
Speaker 1: that they do and the l A p D is
Speaker 1: responsible for the city of Los Angeles just within city
Speaker 1: limits l A s D they patrol unincorporated Los Angeles County.
Speaker 1: They patrol cities within the County of Los Angeles that
Speaker 1: have contracted their law enforcement services to the Sheriff's Department.
Speaker 1: That's places like Compton, West Hollywood. Those are the main
Speaker 1: differences between the two. The Sheriff's Department does come into
Speaker 1: the City of Los Angeles sometimes because they do have
Speaker 1: contracts with l A City. Facilities like our community colleges
Speaker 1: here in the city of Los Angeles for a long time.
Speaker 1: They have the contract for a public transportation so you
Speaker 1: do see them. You see them in court. They are
Speaker 1: responsible for providing services to the court, so they're doing
Speaker 1: bailiff services things like that. But yeah, those are the
Speaker 1: main two differences between the two. Can you explain to
Speaker 1: me why this gang has been able to flourish. There
Speaker 1: are a couple of different reasons for that. I would
Speaker 1: say one the culture. The gang problem is a symptom
Speaker 1: of a much larger issue with l a s D culture.
Speaker 1: It's a violent culture. It's a culture that encourages, frankly,
Speaker 1: the assault of residents. It's a culture that encourages working
Speaker 1: backward is a term that I've heard a lot. That's
Speaker 1: when you, you know, find someone that is guilty of
Speaker 1: a crime, and you figure out how they're guilty of
Speaker 1: it later, you just worry about arresting them first and
Speaker 1: getting that arrested out And deputy gangs, that's just that's
Speaker 1: just a symptom of this larger culture. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of issues within the Sheriff's department. I think the
Speaker 1: deputy gangs exacerbate a lot of those issues, but they
Speaker 1: are really just one part of a really demented puzzle.
Speaker 1: So what are the political allegiances of these gangs? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so mostly from what I've been able to tell, these
Speaker 1: gangs have sympathies with white supremacist leaning groups um Fruently.
Speaker 1: At a special hearing into the Deputy Gangs UM that
Speaker 1: is being held for the first time in history by
Speaker 1: the Civilian Oversight Commission, they displayed some photos taken within
Speaker 1: a locker room at one of the stations, and among
Speaker 1: the deputy gang paraphernalia was the logo of the oath
Speaker 1: keepers UM right next to each other. That makes a
Speaker 1: lot of sense, right, Oh, most definitely. I mean these
Speaker 1: deputy gangs. You know, it's been alleged that in order
Speaker 1: to get into them, you need to kill someone. If
Speaker 1: you are a person of color, it's been alleged that
Speaker 1: you need to kill someone of your same ethnicity to
Speaker 1: get into the sang. One of these gangs was found
Speaker 1: by a federal judge to be a white supremacist neo
Speaker 1: Nazi gang. And many of these gangs are built on
Speaker 1: tenements of white supremacy. So it's not really surprising to
Speaker 1: me that they are outwardly aligning themselves with groups like that.
Speaker 1: So now we have the first time ever a black
Speaker 1: woman mayor in Los Angeles. I mean, can she do anything?
Speaker 1: I know that the way that the government in Los
Speaker 1: Angeles works is it's complicated, and mayors actually don't have
Speaker 1: that much power, right because there's a whole city council structure.
Speaker 1: But I mean, do you think that Karen Bass can
Speaker 1: get in there and uh, is she going to be
Speaker 1: able to break up this craziness? No? And Karen Bass
Speaker 1: actually has no power to do anything about the deputy
Speaker 1: gangs um since they are a county agency and she's
Speaker 1: mayor of the city. They don't touch each other um,
Speaker 1: so she has no no impact on the operation of
Speaker 1: these gangs. We did just elect a new sheriff. His
Speaker 1: name is Robert Luna. It's only the second time in
Speaker 1: a hundred years that an incumbent sheriff has been defeated,
Speaker 1: and we actually did that back to back in Los
Speaker 1: Angeles County. We defeated the incumbent in twenty eighteen when
Speaker 1: we elected Sheriff Alex Banueva, who went on to really
Speaker 1: protect and uplift the culture and practice of deputy gangs,
Speaker 1: and he was defeated as a result of that. In
Speaker 1: this past election by challenger Robert Luna. The first guy
Speaker 1: you elected was focused on getting rid of the gangs.
Speaker 1: Sheriff Alex Bienueva campaigned on being a progressive Democrat. He'd
Speaker 1: never really said much about deputy gangs, but a few
Speaker 1: quotes that I did find from when he was campaigning
Speaker 1: in twenty seventeen eighteen, he was essentially communicating that they
Speaker 1: weren't really that big of a deal. And when he
Speaker 1: was elected, we saw him rehiring deputies that are known
Speaker 1: to be deputy gang members who had been fired. We
Speaker 1: saw him placing a woman who is affiliated with a
Speaker 1: deputy gang called the Banditos. She is responsible for the
Speaker 1: deaths of two children, she ran over them in her car,
Speaker 1: and he immediately promoted her and made her his chief assistant,
Speaker 1: working right underneath him. And that was how the Sheriff's
Speaker 1: department operated for four years, just openly supporting these deputy
Speaker 1: gang members, going after people within the department and outside
Speaker 1: of the department who brought attention to the issue. Myself,
Speaker 1: I've been detained at press conferences as a result of
Speaker 1: my reporting the sheriff himself has held press conferences to
Speaker 1: tell people that I am a liar and that I
Speaker 1: should be sued in a court of law. He even
Speaker 1: held a radio show where for an hour he ranted
Speaker 1: about how I made everything about deputy gangs up in
Speaker 1: order to enrich myself, which couldn't be further from the truth.
Speaker 1: As a result of my reporting, I've received death threats,
Speaker 1: I've had to move, I've had to complete really changed
Speaker 1: the way I live my life. And it's it's not
Speaker 1: really a journalism is in a financial boon for anyone
Speaker 1: that's in the industry. You already know that, certainly true. Wait,
Speaker 1: so this new sheriff's deputy day, can you tell us
Speaker 1: about him? Yeah? Our new sheriff is Robert Luna. He
Speaker 1: worked at the Long Beach Police Department for about thirty
Speaker 1: six years before being elected our sheriff. I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people were really anxious to vote Vieneva out
Speaker 1: and he was able to capitalize on that and make
Speaker 1: his way to a victory. He came out very strong
Speaker 1: in the final weeks of the campaign and made a
Speaker 1: promise to eliminate deputy gangs from two stations that we
Speaker 1: know the stations are effectively controlled by this deputy gang
Speaker 1: and not you know, a captain or personnel. We'll see,
Speaker 1: he's been in office for about two and a half
Speaker 1: weeks now, we'll see. This isn't a problem that's going
Speaker 1: to be solved in four years. And I think Robert
Speaker 1: Luna would agree with that. But this is someone that
Speaker 1: you know, for the first time in four years, is
Speaker 1: saying we do have an issue here, and I, like
Speaker 1: many Los Angeles County residents, are curious to see what
Speaker 1: he's going to do to combat this issue. Do you
Speaker 1: feel a little bit hopeful? No, not really. This is
Speaker 1: an issue that has been going on in the department
Speaker 1: since at least the nineteen sixties. According to my research
Speaker 1: and my reporting, this deputy gang system has been entrenched
Speaker 1: so firmly, so many people in the upper echelons of
Speaker 1: management and the Sheriff's Department deputy gang members themselves. They
Speaker 1: have these tattoos, and it's been going on that way
Speaker 1: for over fifty years. I don't think that one man
Speaker 1: can get rid of the issue in four years. I
Speaker 1: don't think that the policies that are currently in place
Speaker 1: do enough to address this issue head on. I don't
Speaker 1: ink that the department and local government is at a
Speaker 1: place where they truly want to put a stop to this.
Speaker 1: Like for example, in one week, just a few months ago,
Speaker 1: the county Board of Supervisors approved forty seven million dollars
Speaker 1: in settlement payouts to people that have eive either been
Speaker 1: killed or brutally assaulted by the Sheriff's Department, resulting in
Speaker 1: long term damages. And when these settlement payments are approved,
Speaker 1: the Sheriff's Department needs to come up with something called
Speaker 1: a corrective action plan to address what went wrong and
Speaker 1: to make sure that something like this, you know, doesn't
Speaker 1: happen again, so we don't have community members getting hurt
Speaker 1: and we're not costing the county millions and millions of dollars.
Speaker 1: And in every corrective action plan that I reviewed this year,
Speaker 1: the Sheriff's Department admits no fault. They're saying there's nothing
Speaker 1: we did wrong, we did everything perfectly, and it's completely
Speaker 1: on the fault of the dead, unarmed person that we're
Speaker 1: now having to pay this much money. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of intervention that could be done before that. I mean,
Speaker 1: the board has a lot of power. The Sheriff's department.
Speaker 1: They don't enforce their own policies. I covered a shooting
Speaker 1: death this week. We just learned that the district attorney
Speaker 1: won't be charging the deputies who killed Frederick Holder, who
Speaker 1: was an unarmed twenty eight year old black man who
Speaker 1: was stopped at a freeway on ramp. They shot at
Speaker 1: him thirty three times. They hit him eleven times, completely
Speaker 1: destroying his body, and the district attorney will not be
Speaker 1: charging these people for doing that. In my reporting, I
Speaker 1: found that the deputies who killed Frederick violated no less
Speaker 1: than four direct policies, their own department policies, and there
Speaker 1: was no discipline for them. They killed Demand, they broke
Speaker 1: every policy in the process of doing it, and they
Speaker 1: will face no consequences. So no, I'm not really optimistic
Speaker 1: that any of this is going to change because we've seen,
Speaker 1: you know, the opportunity come and go to make these
Speaker 1: changes and nothing has been done. Who has jurisdiction here
Speaker 1: to make those changes? Yeah, well, I mean predominantly the
Speaker 1: sheriff's department. It's on the sheriff's department to enforce. Who
Speaker 1: has jurisdiction over the sheriff's department, Because I think the
Speaker 1: idea that the police are going to fix themselves seems
Speaker 1: more and more like, you know, like ludicrous. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I would say so. Well, the Sheriff's department does
Speaker 1: have an oversight body called the Civilian Oversight Commission. They
Speaker 1: were given the power to subpoena people by the voters
Speaker 1: a few years ago. But the thing about that is
Speaker 1: that even though the Civilian Oversight Commission has subpoenaed the
Speaker 1: sheriff and the under sheriff about six times, this is
Speaker 1: Sheriff Viennueva, they have defied those subpoenas and they have
Speaker 1: not come to answer questions. Now, me, as a citizen,
Speaker 1: if I were to defy subpoena, I would end up
Speaker 1: in jail. But Sheriff Viennueva is not in jail, and
Speaker 1: either's Under Sheriff Murakami there out, you know, living their
Speaker 1: lives to the fullest. And the police union, they are
Speaker 1: called the Association for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs. They've come
Speaker 1: out strong and said that we will also fight any
Speaker 1: subpoenas that you issue for our deputies. Um Civilian Oversight Commission,
Speaker 1: they are not going to respect your subpoenas. So you
Speaker 1: literally have the head of the law enforcement agency and
Speaker 1: all of the people that are supposed to be enforcing
Speaker 1: the law coming out and saying, we do not think
Speaker 1: the law applies to us, and we will not be
Speaker 1: following it. So while these bodies do have some some power,
Speaker 1: no one respects them. The agency itself does not respect
Speaker 1: the power that it has, so effectively they have none.
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ. It strikes me that it would be really
Speaker 1: scary to be targeted by the police. So yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: at first it was a little scary. When the series
Speaker 1: first published. I had to go into hiding because there
Speaker 1: were so many specific threats on my life. It's not
Speaker 1: a great failing to be warm earns by cops a
Speaker 1: lot of the time saying hey, you're talking about you.
Speaker 1: I'm worried about you. Do you own a gun? Oh God,
Speaker 1: that's really scary. But at this point I just take
Speaker 1: it as I'm doing something right. I must be onto
Speaker 1: something and I'm not going to stop. Yeah a man,
Speaker 1: good for you, man, thank you for your work, and
Speaker 1: thank you for doing this and this is what it's
Speaker 1: all about. So thank you for joining us. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for having me. I know you our dear
Speaker 1: listeners are very busy and you don't have time to
Speaker 1: sort through the hundreds of pieces of pundentry tweak. This
Speaker 1: is why every week I put together a newsletter of
Speaker 1: my five favorite articles on politics. If you enjoy the podcast,
Speaker 1: you will love having this in your inbox every Friday.
Speaker 1: So sign up at Fast Politics pod dot com and
Speaker 1: clip the tab to join our mailing list. That's Fast
Speaker 1: Politics pod dot com. Blake Zef is the director of
Speaker 1: Lone Wolves. Welcome too, Fast Politics. Blake z Hi, thanks
Speaker 1: for having me. I am thrilled to have you. I
Speaker 1: want to talk to you about this movie you just
Speaker 1: directed called Lone Wolves. They're not lone Wolves, right, they're
Speaker 1: lone Wolves. Discuss it's Lone Wolves l o A night,
Speaker 1: so you guys can be my pun. There's kind of
Speaker 1: two puns going on, so Lone Wolves l O A
Speaker 1: n because they're talking about student loans, although a lot
Speaker 1: more than that. But also there are a lot of
Speaker 1: people in the film who have been fighting this system
Speaker 1: and trying to expose this problem for a long time.
Speaker 1: But they've been doing it on their own, and they've
Speaker 1: been almost like shouting into the winds. So in a way,
Speaker 1: I think of them as lone wolves, but not lone
Speaker 1: wolves l O any l o a N Does that
Speaker 1: make anything? Yes? First, I want to know you worked
Speaker 1: in government before this so explained to us how you
Speaker 1: got here. Yeah. So, like you said, I worked in
Speaker 1: government and politics for ages. I was Cenator Humors communications director.
Speaker 1: I worked on President Obama's too as an eight campaign.
Speaker 1: I worked on a lot of things, and so I
Speaker 1: really have a sense of how the system works, and
Speaker 1: I think that's what I was able to bring to
Speaker 1: this process. And then, you know, after I worked in government,
Speaker 1: I was then on the media side, journalism, investigative journalism,
Speaker 1: did a lot of you know, on air commentary places
Speaker 1: like MSNBC. So I had both of those kind of backgrounds,
Speaker 1: being in the politics side and then also the media side.
Speaker 1: And then this problem with student debt I sort of
Speaker 1: saw up close because my wife had gone to grad
Speaker 1: school and she had two dollars in student debt. And
Speaker 1: it wasn't even just the numbers that kind of interested me,
Speaker 1: but I was seeing the fine print and the notices
Speaker 1: and the kind of the sketchy way in which the
Speaker 1: lending companies were dealing with her, and I kind of
Speaker 1: got curious because there's forty five million people in this
Speaker 1: country who have student loans, and I thought, this, this
Speaker 1: is crazy. Is this just happening to us? So I
Speaker 1: started to look into it and realized, oh my god,
Speaker 1: this system is so much crazier than I ever would
Speaker 1: have thought in a million years. There was so much
Speaker 1: predatory lending going on, corruption, lying, conniving. The government, I
Speaker 1: would find out, played a big hand in secretly causing
Speaker 1: this crisis, which we can talk about. And then in
Speaker 1: terms of getting the solution, I would find that there
Speaker 1: actually was a solution they were working on, but that
Speaker 1: was being stalled. This really turned into a crazy drama
Speaker 1: and who done it to the point where I realized
Speaker 1: this isn't just like an article or something like that,
Speaker 1: this is a movie. What is this solution? Great question?
Speaker 1: So I personally believe that you have to have a
Speaker 1: two pronged approach. So people talk about student debt cancelation, right,
Speaker 1: and that's fine, that's good, But that only takes care
Speaker 1: of people who already have the debt. Right, As someone
Speaker 1: in the movie says, yeah, you cancel all the debt today,
Speaker 1: We'll start having new debt tomorrow and you know, next semester,
Speaker 1: and you'll still have all the fundamental systemic problems will
Speaker 1: still exist. So canceling student debt, that's fine, that's a
Speaker 1: retroactive solution looking back. You also have to have a
Speaker 1: forward looking solution that fixes the structure. So to me,
Speaker 1: there's a couple of ways you can go. One is,
Speaker 1: you know, this is people talk about there's a lot
Speaker 1: free college. You know, our parents and grandparents generations. That
Speaker 1: was actually pretty common, it's common in other countries when
Speaker 1: European countries do that. There's obviously community college. But the
Speaker 1: other thing is, and this is gonna sound wonky, but
Speaker 1: I promise your viewers, I'm sorry your listeners, it's not. So.
Speaker 1: It turns out that two lines were added into a
Speaker 1: three d page bill at the last minute that made
Speaker 1: it set. Student debt was basically one of the only
Speaker 1: loans you can't get rid of through bankruptcy. So you
Speaker 1: and I could go gambling tonight in Vegas. We could
Speaker 1: rack up ten million dollars in debt, and then we
Speaker 1: could just charge that debt in bankruptcy. That's okay. But somehow,
Speaker 1: for some reason, in two lines were snuck in that
Speaker 1: said that you can't do that with student loans. And
Speaker 1: the problem with that is a obviously, if people want to,
Speaker 1: you know, file for bankruptcy and get out from like
Speaker 1: their hundred fifty dollar debt, they can't do it. But
Speaker 1: the second thing is if the lenders know that bankrupt
Speaker 1: there's not even a threat of bankruptcy, and they know
Speaker 1: that repayment is guaranteed no matter what, well they'll just
Speaker 1: lend out money to anyone for any amount. It's a
Speaker 1: little bit like the housing crisis when they were giving
Speaker 1: out mortgages to anyone whether they could handle it or not.
Speaker 1: And the colleges know this too, So the colleges will
Speaker 1: just jack up their prices at will because they know
Speaker 1: that the money is going to be repaid no matter what.
Speaker 1: And Molly, I don't know if you know, like maybe
Speaker 1: you're more than know than I was. Do you have
Speaker 1: any idea how much it costs for to pay for
Speaker 1: like a year of two Lane university right now? Seventy
Speaker 1: eight dollars you're pretty good, it's eighty five dollars. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have a kid in college, so yes, okay, do
Speaker 1: you know so I've been talking, I've been going around
Speaker 1: good to these colleges lately and they're like, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: five thousand bucks and a lot of these schools it's
Speaker 1: just gotten control. So the answer is, I think on
Speaker 1: one end, debt cancelation makes sense, but forward looking, we
Speaker 1: need to have more free college options, we need to
Speaker 1: have bankruptcy protections restored. And just one last thing on
Speaker 1: that note, because I know it sounds a little wonky,
Speaker 1: the two lines that were snuck into that bill in
Speaker 1: no one admitted that they were the one behind it.
Speaker 1: It was done totally anonymously, and our movie sets out
Speaker 1: to find who did it, and we ultimately do find
Speaker 1: that person and have a crazy confrontation with them. Wait stop,
Speaker 1: who was the person? Give us a hint. You don't
Speaker 1: have to tell us. I'll give you a hint. It's
Speaker 1: a Republican. Well it might not. It's a it might
Speaker 1: not be. So, Oh Jesus fucking Christ, this is very important.
Speaker 1: You know Steve Cornaki for this NBC. Yes, So he's
Speaker 1: an expert in politics and he's a friend of mine.
Speaker 1: So in the film, I sit down with him and
Speaker 1: I'm like, what was going on in the nineties And
Speaker 1: he's like, look, this happened right around the time of
Speaker 1: Montica Lewinsky stuff impeachment. Clinton was looking to get things done,
Speaker 1: and this bill actually passed unanimously to nothing because most
Speaker 1: of the things and it were good. But these two
Speaker 1: lines that were snuck in. We were looking at basically
Speaker 1: three Republican members of Congress. We're focusing in on those three,
Speaker 1: and then ultimately there's a total supper Eyes twist. And
Speaker 1: the only thing I'll say in terms of the twist is,
Speaker 1: We'll give you two hints. One is it was someone
Speaker 1: that I had never heard of before. And number two,
Speaker 1: that person is now a truck driver in Colorado. What
Speaker 1: you can't get up, Molly? It's crazy? And so I
Speaker 1: track them down in Colorado. We have a confrontation. I'm
Speaker 1: showing him, you know how bad the crisis has gotten now,
Speaker 1: and he basically at the end he's like, listen, if
Speaker 1: you've got bad student debt today, you are a damn fool.
Speaker 1: And so we have this crazy confrontation. Wow, that's amazing. Yeah, yeah, people,
Speaker 1: you gotta watch this. People. It's not if you don't
Speaker 1: even care about student debt, you should, But if you don't,
Speaker 1: that's okay. This movie is crazy. There's a who done it?
Speaker 1: It's funny in a lot of places. I think you
Speaker 1: guys will really get a kick out of it. That
Speaker 1: is amazing. So I just want to get back to
Speaker 1: this idea of student debt. There's people who are making
Speaker 1: money on this debt. Who are that So there is
Speaker 1: a student loan industry. There are student lenders, there are banks.
Speaker 1: You've probably heard of, Sally May. This is a major,
Speaker 1: more billion dollar industry, and this won't surprise you. One
Speaker 1: of the things they do is they give very generously
Speaker 1: in terms of campaign contributions to members of Congress to
Speaker 1: try to preserve the system that is enriching them. The
Speaker 1: other thing I want to mention though here is most
Speaker 1: people now, like roughly of the student loans that people
Speaker 1: have are now held by the government. President Obama saw
Speaker 1: that this system was really messed up, and so in
Speaker 1: sort of the middle of his tenure, they decided to
Speaker 1: take over the student lending system essentially. So it used
Speaker 1: to be a lot more private loans. Now you have
Speaker 1: a lot of them are federal loans that are held
Speaker 1: by the government. And so these huge amounts of money
Speaker 1: that people are owing are actually owed to their government.
Speaker 1: And so it's kind of a weird thing where the
Speaker 1: government is making money with interest off of the Herican
Speaker 1: people just for trying to get an education. There's no
Speaker 1: way to stop those. I mean, look, we're we tried
Speaker 1: to expose all this the film. You know, we really
Speaker 1: show a lot of craziness because I mean, there's one
Speaker 1: person named Vivian I think is really interesting. You know,
Speaker 1: a lot of people are like, I don't want to
Speaker 1: give death forgiveness to doctors and lawyers. That's like one
Speaker 1: of the big talking point, right is a doctor. But
Speaker 1: let me tell you about her. And this is what
Speaker 1: I think is so interesting. She grew up very, very
Speaker 1: poor in New York City and her parents didn't speak English.
Speaker 1: They had like an eighth grade education. Her mom died
Speaker 1: of cancer when she was really young, so she had
Speaker 1: a really tough childhood, and she decided at that young
Speaker 1: age that she wanted to become work really hard, become
Speaker 1: a doctor so she could serve at what they call
Speaker 1: low resource centers and clinics, which is for people don't
Speaker 1: have a lot of money. She trying to give back
Speaker 1: to the same people in the same way that people
Speaker 1: had helped her family when her mom was you know,
Speaker 1: experiencing cancer. So she works her butt off, gets into Cornell,
Speaker 1: gets into n y U Met School. Now she's a doctor,
Speaker 1: but she has two hundred fifty dollars in debt. She
Speaker 1: can't afford to work at that clinic that she wanted to.
Speaker 1: The whole reason she got into this, you know, field,
Speaker 1: was that she could give back, and now she can't
Speaker 1: even afford to do that. So there's a real cost
Speaker 1: of society. And what made me think of her when
Speaker 1: you were asking about this and we were talking about
Speaker 1: how the government holds a lot of these loans. She
Speaker 1: is paying her government and is in debt to her
Speaker 1: government while is trying to be u surface to people
Speaker 1: in this country. And then when COVID happened, Molly, she
Speaker 1: was working at Mount Sinai. She was one of the
Speaker 1: heroes saving people in this country from COVID, working around o'clock,
Speaker 1: twenty four hours a day, really a national hero. And
Speaker 1: meanwhile she owes hundreds of thousands of dollars to her
Speaker 1: government while she's being a hero and working so hard
Speaker 1: to do that. It's just so messed up. Is there
Speaker 1: any appetite with legislators to change this? There is? So
Speaker 1: there's student debt cancelation, which Biden is trying to do,
Speaker 1: but the Republicans immediately pounced on it and challenged him
Speaker 1: in court, and they eventually found a Republican judge who
Speaker 1: agreed with them. So it's being halted and now that's
Speaker 1: going to go to the Supreme Court next year. Molly,
Speaker 1: I don't have to tell you the composition to Supreme
Speaker 1: Court's life. So there's not a ton of optimism about
Speaker 1: what they're going to do there. So that is one
Speaker 1: avenue they could try to do that legislatively. But I
Speaker 1: speak to Sendra Schumer in the film and he says
Speaker 1: they don't have the votes for that because you know,
Speaker 1: don't have Republicans are for that, So that is very tenuous.
Speaker 1: What else should we know about this movie? Alley? There
Speaker 1: is a bill called s to Okay, S to five Nights,
Speaker 1: the Fresh Start the Bankruptcy Act. Dick Durban is a
Speaker 1: sponsor of this, of all people, his co sponsor is
Speaker 1: John Cornyn, and they've got Josh Holly on this. This
Speaker 1: is a truly bipartisan bill. Holy. It would make it
Speaker 1: so that you can discharge student debt through bankruptcy, which
Speaker 1: almost any other debt you can get rid of through
Speaker 1: bankruptcy doesn't make any sense that you can. And so
Speaker 1: Dick Durban in the movie tells me that he's going
Speaker 1: to do everything he can to push this through the
Speaker 1: committee this year. Well, there's only a couple of weeks
Speaker 1: left this year. So if people want to see this happen,
Speaker 1: call center Dick Durban's office this week. There's something that
Speaker 1: can actually be done without having to go to the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court, without having to go through you know, all
Speaker 1: these other methods. This is something that can be done,
Speaker 1: is very doable. We talked to Schumer in the movie,
Speaker 1: we talked to Durban about it. This is something that
Speaker 1: could really make a difference. So not all hope is lost.
Speaker 1: That's fantastic. So what's the bill called again, s like
Speaker 1: for Senate to nine eight. That's like the technical term him.
Speaker 1: But then the build like the fund name is the
Speaker 1: Fresh Start through Bankruptcy Act, and this would take get
Speaker 1: to the federal Student loans can be discharge through bankruptcy
Speaker 1: in the same way that almost any other debt can.
Speaker 1: I mentioned gambling debts can be discharged with bankruptcy, excessive shopping,
Speaker 1: credit card debt, pretty much anything. We have this scene
Speaker 1: in the movie where I have this bankruptcy lawyer, this
Speaker 1: like kind older gentleman, and I subject him to this
Speaker 1: really ridiculous thing where I put him in like a
Speaker 1: lightning round, like it's a game show, and I name
Speaker 1: two kind of debts and he has to say which
Speaker 1: one is harder to get rid of, and it's always
Speaker 1: something versus student loans. And in every case, student loans
Speaker 1: is harder to get rid of through bankruptcy than anything else.
Speaker 1: So it's ridiculous stuff. So this law would change that,
Speaker 1: and it would give people a chance to get out
Speaker 1: from under their debt. But also it would make the
Speaker 1: system more fair because then college lenders and colleges would
Speaker 1: no longer be able to just keep jacking up the
Speaker 1: prices without having any check on them. Very interesting. The
Speaker 1: movie is called Lone Wolves. You can stream it on
Speaker 1: peacock right now, and if you watch it, hit me
Speaker 1: up on Twitter at Blake Zeth and let me know
Speaker 1: what you thought. I'm interacting with everyone. There's tons of
Speaker 1: comments going on, and I love it interacting with viewers,
Speaker 1: so I hope people enjoy it. And thank you Molly
Speaker 1: so much for having me on. Thanks Blake, Take care
Speaker 1: that's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
Speaker 1: every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to hear the best minds
Speaker 1: and politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you
Speaker 1: enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend
Speaker 1: and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.