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 Elon Musk warns that excessive spending
Speaker 1: will plunge the US into debt slavery. Yeah, now he's
Speaker 1: worried about it.
Speaker 2: We have such a great chill for you today.
Speaker 1: Risk Reversal's own Dan Nathan stops by to tell us
Speaker 1: about businesses reactions to.
Speaker 2: Trump's insane tariffs.
Speaker 1: Then we'll talk to Alan Alrod about his brilliant article
Speaker 1: You're not crazy, America has gone mad.
Speaker 3: But first of the news, so Molly, the CBO, which
Speaker 3: this weekend, Mike Johnson had to say, you know is
Speaker 3: a woke institution and you should believe it. But then
Speaker 3: they pointed out how often he cites it. He says
Speaker 3: that the trunk tax bill will add two point four
Speaker 3: trillion to the deficit a leave ten point nine million
Speaker 3: more on insured. Great work, great work, really serving the
Speaker 3: American people.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about this bill because I know
Speaker 1: that I keep talking about this bill, but I just
Speaker 1: want all of our listeners to just take a minute
Speaker 1: to realize how stupid this fucking thing is. Okay, first,
Speaker 1: of all all Republicans in the House signed off on it,
Speaker 1: everyone from Marjorie Taylor Green to Mike Lawler. So if
Speaker 1: you're Mike Lawler and you're in a D plus one
Speaker 1: or an R plus one, you know a very swingy district,
Speaker 1: which he is. Jesse is now going to look up
Speaker 1: what his district is, but it's a very tight district
Speaker 1: that is not supposed to elect a Marjorie Taylor Green.
Speaker 1: That guy also voted for this, so all of them
Speaker 1: have voted for this. In it, nearly a thousand pages,
Speaker 1: is a ton of pork, including crazy stuff like this
Speaker 1: crazy thing that limits judicial power and oversight of this administration.
Speaker 1: You're shocked to hear that, but I bet you're actually
Speaker 1: not shocked to hear that.
Speaker 2: And in it there's also a ton of other stuff.
Speaker 1: Work requirements for parents with children over seven for Medicaid
Speaker 1: and food stamps. That's right, if you have a child
Speaker 1: over seven, you need to be working. You need to
Speaker 1: be having a job, Okay, because children.
Speaker 2: Over seven are adults. I mean, this is what this
Speaker 2: bill does.
Speaker 1: And what this bill does is it saves a little
Speaker 1: bit of money clawing back Medicaid. That means rural hospitals
Speaker 1: and nursing homes, and then it spends a lot of
Speaker 1: money doing crazy tax stuff. And I want to have
Speaker 1: one second to talk about the crazy tax stuff because basically,
Speaker 1: this bill BBB, big beautiful bullshit is the purest distillation
Speaker 1: of MAGA. Right, it's a lot of Trump's campaign promises,
Speaker 1: no tax on tips.
Speaker 2: How will they do?
Speaker 1: No tax on tips? I feel like I'm going crazy, right,
Speaker 1: what's a tip? What's not a tip? There's no way
Speaker 1: to deliver this, And there's just a lot of more
Speaker 1: tax bullshit. And then there's also stuff in this big
Speaker 1: beautiful bullshit that is, you know, besides the judicial power stuff,
Speaker 1: there's other stuff in there that's just pork. So Elon
Speaker 1: Musk has said now that it's a bad bill. Now
Speaker 1: I want to redo something from Jake Sherman at Punchbowl News,
Speaker 1: who was a really really really sourced congressional reporter, and
Speaker 1: he said a Republican aid on Elon Musk opposing the
Speaker 1: Reconciliation bill, the guy was pro the package until he
Speaker 1: realized he wasn't going to get his way on the
Speaker 1: ev tax credits. Right, none of these people give a
Speaker 1: fuck about the deficit. Elon wanted the ev tax credits
Speaker 1: because he thinks it'll be good for TESLA. I want
Speaker 1: people to realize, like, nobody here is acting out of
Speaker 1: any interest but their own self interest.
Speaker 3: Yeah, strong agree. So we're going to have a real
Speaker 3: survey of stupidity today, and analysis finds the majority of
Speaker 3: Trump cabinet tied to Project twenty twenty five groups. What
Speaker 3: a shocker. It's almost like we said this a year.
Speaker 1: Ago, since you and I did this whole twenty twenty
Speaker 1: five thing, this YouTube series, and we kept at every point,
Speaker 1: we kept being like, I think you and I together
Speaker 1: would be like, oh my god, these people are just
Speaker 1: going to do twenty twenty five.
Speaker 3: And yeah, the last episode we did of the thing
Speaker 3: where like we point out Trump lying and showing all
Speaker 3: the evidence that he's going to put exactly who he
Speaker 3: put in, Well, we were right.
Speaker 1: It's like I definitely spend time in this election cycle
Speaker 1: thinking about the ways I was wrong. Well here's one
Speaker 1: where I was fucking right, And so we're you know,
Speaker 1: this was always the play.
Speaker 2: Project twenty twenty five was the ethos.
Speaker 1: Now there are things happening in this administration that are actually,
Speaker 1: I think scarier than Project twenty twenty five, and I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about like what RFK is is doing right now
Speaker 1: to research and science and health.
Speaker 2: But do not.
Speaker 1: Underestimate the damage that Ross Fought is doing at the
Speaker 1: Office of Management and Budget. And he was on the
Speaker 1: Sunday shows last week. He's doing that because they're trying
Speaker 1: to push this bills through the Senate and he's trying
Speaker 1: to get senators on board. On this show, Dana Bash asks,
Speaker 1: is it fair to say what you're doing now is
Speaker 1: in part enacting Project twenty twenty five, And of course Russvott.
Speaker 2: Says absolutely not.
Speaker 1: But this smart reporter pointed out that sixty to seventy
Speaker 1: percent of Project twenty twenty five's executive action proposals have
Speaker 1: been implemented or initiated, and those are things like environment education,
Speaker 1: and then thirty to forty percent of their proposals are
Speaker 1: being proposed as legislation, and those are Look, you and
Speaker 1: I both remember the goal of Project twenty twenty five
Speaker 1: expand presidential power, take power away from Congress. This Congress
Speaker 1: was really happy to give it to Trump and to
Speaker 1: sort of make the presidency an imperial presidency.
Speaker 2: And that's what we're watching happen in real time.
Speaker 3: Yep. Well, the good news is is what we often
Speaker 3: see is that the small elections in between the big
Speaker 3: mid terms and the of course every four years where
Speaker 3: we pick up president, that we're seeing a lot of
Speaker 3: really good news in districts that could spell good things
Speaker 3: for us pushing back against this administration. Since we had
Speaker 3: just achieved a landslide election when in South Carolina for
Speaker 3: the Democrats.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know this is like history rhymes right, Remember
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen, Democrats won every election, and there's a
Speaker 1: reason why. It's because the Republicans are doing something wildly unpopular.
Speaker 1: Work requirements for food stamps, for Medicaid, these are unpopular things.
Speaker 1: The reason Republicans are in such a hurry to get
Speaker 1: it past is a because they know that when people
Speaker 1: read the bills they.
Speaker 2: Won't like it, right like what happened with Marjorie Dale Green.
Speaker 1: And b because ultimately they know this is super unpopular.
Speaker 2: So I think we'll definitely see.
Speaker 1: More of these kind of amazing democratic landslides. You know,
Speaker 1: there are people listening to this podcast right now. A
Speaker 1: lot of people listen to this podcast, and you tend
Speaker 1: to be very civic minded, smart people.
Speaker 2: So here's my.
Speaker 1: Question for you. We see that there's going to be
Speaker 1: this grand swell, we see that Democrats are going to win.
Speaker 1: Why don't you run for office? If you're listening to
Speaker 1: this podcast you live in a red state or a
Speaker 1: blue state, or a city or a town, like, we
Speaker 1: cannot wait for these people to fix our problems. They
Speaker 1: are not motivated, they are not capable. So maybe you
Speaker 1: listeners are the ones that we've been waiting for.
Speaker 3: Yeah, especially when we see incompetence like this that the
Speaker 3: White House is being mocked after they admit that they
Speaker 3: sent letters to remind countries about trade deal deadlines and
Speaker 3: now we're begging for them to cut deals.
Speaker 2: Yes, well, you know who we haven't seen in a
Speaker 2: long time. Tell me Peter Navarro.
Speaker 3: Oh where is that? Follow?
Speaker 2: Where is Peter Navarro?
Speaker 1: Because Peter Navarro promised me ninety deals in ninety days.
Speaker 3: Mall, you're going to be in DC soon, you're going
Speaker 3: to put up missing signs.
Speaker 2: Yes, I'm going to be like Peter. I think Peter's
Speaker 2: definitely going.
Speaker 1: To come to my book reading.
Speaker 2: He's a known reader. Yeah, so where are those ninety
Speaker 2: deals in ninety days?
Speaker 1: You know how many deals. We have tell me one
Speaker 1: O one, we have one deal. And it's not even
Speaker 1: a deal, it's a framework of a deal. Dan Nathan
Speaker 1: is a c NBC contributor and the host of the
Speaker 1: Risk Reversal podcast.
Speaker 2: Dan Nathan, Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 4: Favorite podcast other than my own, Molly Dalnas. Great to
Speaker 4: be here. I have a book to read, by the way,
Speaker 4: I'm really excited about I'm excited for you.
Speaker 2: Thank you. How to was your mother out yesterday? Because
Speaker 2: you know, we got to self promote.
Speaker 1: I was on a television show interviewing someone who is
Speaker 1: a very smart money guy economists, not an economist, but
Speaker 1: someone who does does what you do, and he was expressing,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of anxiety about the fact that
Speaker 1: the market seemed to be behaving quite rationally at this moment.
Speaker 1: Is that still true and can you explain to us why.
Speaker 4: Yeah, A couple things here, So it depends which market
Speaker 4: you're talking about, right, So the stock market was the
Speaker 4: primary focus of most people, most citizens in this country
Speaker 4: when we were you know, post liberation day. I say
Speaker 4: that obviously in air quotes, because we saw the S
Speaker 4: and P koreem lower. That's the largest, you know, stock
Speaker 4: market in the US or at least indussy. And you know,
Speaker 4: but there's other markets, right. There's the US treasury market,
Speaker 4: which you know is basically one of the most important
Speaker 4: you know, interest rates that a lot of stuff is
Speaker 4: kind of quoted against. Right. And then there was the
Speaker 4: currency market, the US dollar.
Speaker 1: I want you to stop and talk about the treasury market,
Speaker 1: because that's been the really important indicator of this moment.
Speaker 2: This treasury market is bond people.
Speaker 1: Usually when the market goes down by bonds because it's
Speaker 1: a hedge against volatility.
Speaker 2: But that's not what's happening right now.
Speaker 4: Right, So Americans have been accustomed to buying US treasury
Speaker 4: bonds because the fact that the US Treasury is not
Speaker 4: going to default, right, And so you have this incidence
Speaker 4: where if you're pulling money, let's say, out of the
Speaker 4: stock market because you think it's risky for whatever reason,
Speaker 4: you can park money in the treasury market. Okay. But
Speaker 4: the problem is in this last couple months or so,
Speaker 4: is that some of the biggest holders of our debt
Speaker 4: of US treasuries are China, are Japan. And when you
Speaker 4: come at some of these countries with like really exorbitant
Speaker 4: tariff rates and they are getting ready to go into
Speaker 4: a protracted trade war because they don't want to be
Speaker 4: bullied right into basically eating this kind of a whole
Speaker 4: new world order as it relates to trade in such
Speaker 4: a short period of time. They have leverage, they own
Speaker 4: these treasuries, right, if they start selling them, that means
Speaker 4: interest rates go higher. And you know, when you think
Speaker 4: back to back in you know, March or so, when
Speaker 4: Treasury Secretary Besson started to kind of prepare investors for
Speaker 4: what might come right if they start, you know, kind
Speaker 4: of putting these big tariffs on, they said, we're more
Speaker 4: focused on the ten year treasure yield. They want that
Speaker 4: to go lower. They have to refinance a lot of debt.
Speaker 4: The higher the treasure yield is, the more expensive it
Speaker 4: is to refinance that debt. And they said, we're not
Speaker 4: worried about the stock market. Well, the stock market koreamed
Speaker 4: in early April, and the US ten year treasure yield
Speaker 4: went up. Why because there were foreign sellers of our debt.
Speaker 4: It did the exact opposite of what the Treasury and
Speaker 4: the White House wanted to happen. And that's why, that's
Speaker 4: why we had that first taco experience back on April ninth,
Speaker 4: which got the stock market going back higher. But the
Speaker 4: real problem is that the US ten year treasure yield
Speaker 4: is stuck at four point four or five percent, and
Speaker 4: it was where you know, it basically was in early April.
Speaker 4: And the US dollar has not rallied because those same
Speaker 4: sellers of treasuries have also been selling dollars and dollar
Speaker 4: denominated assets.
Speaker 1: So the dollar is down, the debt is more expensive, right.
Speaker 4: I would think about it this way. So the dollar
Speaker 4: is where it was in early April, and US treasury
Speaker 4: yields are basically in the ten year about the same spot.
Speaker 4: So to the point you were making about that market
Speaker 4: participant who says that the markets are not acting rationally,
Speaker 4: well that's the stock markets not acting rationally. Basically, investors
Speaker 4: are saying that the taco thing is going to happen.
Speaker 4: It's going to happen again. He's going to chick it
Speaker 4: out again because pretty soon we're going to get to
Speaker 4: that ninety day period where he pushed out reciprocal tariffs
Speaker 4: right on the Chinese. He tweeted out last night that
Speaker 4: g is going to be a hard guy to do
Speaker 4: a deal with. I think he's already lowering expectations there.
Speaker 4: So then the question is do they ratchet it back
Speaker 4: up right, because we know that Chinese are going to
Speaker 4: ratchet it back up. And it brings me back to
Speaker 4: the first Trump administration. They put tariffs on China in
Speaker 4: March of twenty eighteen. They did not have a framework
Speaker 4: for a Phase one deal until January of twenty twenty.
Speaker 4: If you think trade wars are easy to prosecute, well
Speaker 4: good luck with that. We've already seen that they're very difficult.
Speaker 4: And we also know that our major adversary is going
Speaker 4: to call our bluff. And it's also interesting to know
Speaker 4: that the first two countries that we came after, Mexico
Speaker 4: and Canada to where our biggest trading partners, have yet
Speaker 4: to come to the table. And I think that emboldens
Speaker 4: the Chinese. Also.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about Mexico and Canada because what
Speaker 1: happened there was such a self inflicted wound, right Mexico
Speaker 1: and Canada. You have to work really hard to make
Speaker 1: these people furious, and he did right, especially Canada, like
Speaker 1: they're run by a banker.
Speaker 2: At this point. He's a liberal.
Speaker 1: All he wants is to not have drama tried as
Speaker 1: hard as possible to keep Brexit from blowing up the
Speaker 1: UK economy. Now, Brexit fucking disaster. But Mark Carney is
Speaker 1: really like the leader you would want, Like, I mean,
Speaker 1: isn't he kind of your and mind too a little
Speaker 1: bit our dream president?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, here's a guy who actually has
Speaker 4: a strong fundamental knowledge of how markets work.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: He understands the inner complexities of what we just went through. Right,
Speaker 4: what does the treasury market mean? What are interest rates mean?
Speaker 4: What is FED policy, which is meant to be independent
Speaker 4: of politics? What does that mean? What does the stock
Speaker 4: market tell you at certain times? The stock market, you
Speaker 4: hear this expression all the time, is a discounting mechanism, right,
Speaker 4: It looks at all the available news, and then investors
Speaker 4: kind of put their money to work. And so you
Speaker 4: could say, right now, maybe that is what the stock
Speaker 4: market is telling you, that the worst case scenarios are
Speaker 4: off the table and maybe some like cooler heads like
Speaker 4: Mark Carney might prevail. If you think about Mexico, shine,
Speaker 4: they haven't really been engaging in a way that's particularly antagonistic.
Speaker 4: The EU has suggested that they will come to the table,
Speaker 4: but they don't know who they're negotiating with or what
Speaker 4: we want that sort of thing. The UK that deal
Speaker 4: was a bit of a fugazy They just said, let's
Speaker 4: just get this out.
Speaker 2: One works of a deal, right.
Speaker 4: So to your point, I think that there's like some
Speaker 4: definitely level headed folks. But then let's go to a
Speaker 4: topic us. Let's go to a topic that I know
Speaker 4: is near and dear to your heart. Somebody who's kind
Speaker 4: of off kilter a little bit. That would be Elon Musk,
Speaker 4: who just left the administration and now all of a
Speaker 4: sudden he's got some real big issues with the tax policy,
Speaker 4: the tax plan. And don't think for a second that
Speaker 4: these things are not kind of related, because they really
Speaker 4: are important if you think about it. If we're trying
Speaker 4: to reorient global trade, if we're trying to work on
Speaker 4: bringing down our national debt, I.
Speaker 2: Mean, to re orient global trade.
Speaker 1: In tariffs are that it's like taking a chainsaw, I mean,
Speaker 1: much better to give incentives to use a carrot rather
Speaker 1: than a step. I also wonder how much of Elon
Speaker 1: Musk's newfound frugality is his irritation that EV credits are
Speaker 1: no longer the I mean, this is a guy who
Speaker 1: democratic legislation created him, right, he became the richest man
Speaker 1: in the world, EV tax credits, all of this sort
Speaker 1: of you know, the help that his company's got.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, the one thing I just say about
Speaker 4: Elon and you know, I think he's a much more
Speaker 4: effective chaos agent than Donald Trump.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: But the one thing that's consistent between the two of
Speaker 4: them is they always say the quiet part out loud, right,
Speaker 4: And so Elon coming out this tax bill, he has
Speaker 4: not really mentioned, you know, these EV tax credits. He's
Speaker 4: gone back and forth on that. By the way, over
Speaker 4: the last few years, he's gone back and forth over
Speaker 4: you know, some sort of trade barriers as it relates
Speaker 4: to China and evs. We don't really know where he
Speaker 4: stands on this. I think one of the positions as
Speaker 4: it relates to Tesla in particular, has been that they're
Speaker 4: in a much better spot than not say GM and
Speaker 4: Ford to kind of have these credits go away. But
Speaker 4: that's actually not the case anymore. The fundamentals of their
Speaker 4: business could not be worse. Right now, the auto gross margins,
Speaker 4: the profit that they make on their evs is now
Speaker 4: in line with that of GM and Ford. GM and
Speaker 4: Ford are pulling back from the ev market and they're
Speaker 4: going more for these plug in hybrids. So when I
Speaker 4: think about the way that he has gone about kind of,
Speaker 4: you know, dealing with a price war, the Chinese are
Speaker 4: eating their lunch. He's expected to have the second consecutive
Speaker 4: decline in deliveries this year at a time where the
Speaker 4: price war is eating into their margin. So he needs
Speaker 4: these credits. It's very important. But they haven't said it yet,
Speaker 4: and Trump hasn't come out and said it yet, and
Speaker 4: this thing is going to be a bit worse. And
Speaker 4: I just think that the lobbing of the grenade at
Speaker 4: the tax bill is something that basically he's trying to
Speaker 4: maybe reorient the kind of what's going on with tax
Speaker 4: and the expectations about cuts to lower the taxes versus
Speaker 4: what's going on with trade and the fact that our
Speaker 4: government appears to be mired in problems with both of
Speaker 4: them at the same time. It goes back to the
Speaker 4: first administration. They went for tats Gary Khan came in.
Speaker 4: He wanted to get tax cuts through. They got them through.
Speaker 4: It was a tailwind for the economy, it was a
Speaker 4: tailwind for the stock market, and then they focused on
Speaker 4: terrafts and trade. And I'm not saying that was effective,
Speaker 4: but it was a much more effective way about it.
Speaker 2: Oh much more right.
Speaker 1: I mean, you choice the economy with the tax cuts
Speaker 1: and then you go in there with the tariffs and
Speaker 1: it ends up being actually quite good because it tamps
Speaker 1: down some of the inflationary you know.
Speaker 2: I mean that with Gary Cohen is not the same.
Speaker 1: As you know, the people who are in charge right now,
Speaker 1: which is Donald Trump's lizard brain. I want to talk
Speaker 1: about China for another minute, because there's so much anxiety
Speaker 1: about China right what the next step is here? What's
Speaker 1: happening with Taiwan? We are really vulnerable to them. Also,
Speaker 1: the other thing I want to ask you about selling
Speaker 1: the bonds. I didn't realize that this was actually China
Speaker 1: Japan selling bonds. So that is now that's indisputable. It's
Speaker 1: not like technical traders.
Speaker 4: No, I mean, like there's definitely market participants here and
Speaker 4: around the globe who basically have a trade on they
Speaker 4: called the carry trade. They kind of sell over there
Speaker 4: and they use the proceeds and they buy higher yielding
Speaker 4: assets over here. And one of the reasons why you
Speaker 4: saw that market volatility in most markets. You know, this
Speaker 4: is back in April, but we also saw it in
Speaker 4: late July in early August. When you see an unwind
Speaker 4: of that, that's when you see markets go haywire. And
Speaker 4: so when you think about who has the leverage right
Speaker 4: in a situation like this, the largest holders of your
Speaker 4: debt have the leverage right. We also had a situation
Speaker 4: a few weeks ago where moody is one of the
Speaker 4: big rating agencies, came out and lowered the rating on
Speaker 4: our debt, which also makes us vulnerable. Treasury Secretary Bessett
Speaker 4: said the other day that we will not default on
Speaker 4: our debt, but we almost did, you know, about twelve
Speaker 4: years ago. And so there's a lot of unknowns here.
Speaker 4: And so when you think about I'll just kind of
Speaker 4: bring it back to China, which you wanted to kind
Speaker 4: of talk about. You know, Okay, let's take the over
Speaker 4: on what they might do with Taiwan. You know, some
Speaker 4: of the easiest things they might do, or some sorts
Speaker 4: of blockades or some sort of trade sort of situations
Speaker 4: and that sort of thing. That is important because when
Speaker 4: you think about generative AI chips and this is the
Speaker 4: new world order that we live in. This is going
Speaker 4: to be the most important commodity going forward, especially as
Speaker 4: we deal with our adversaries going forward. They are made
Speaker 4: in Taiwan, Okay, so if the Chinese try to disrupt
Speaker 4: anything as it relates to Taiwanese production of those chips,
Speaker 4: that could be a real problem for the entire globe. Right,
Speaker 4: So I think about, you know, how this kind of
Speaker 4: new world order is going to be set, Well, we
Speaker 4: can't afford to have any disruption there. So when we
Speaker 4: think about China, you know, the national security as it
Speaker 4: relates to supply chains is really important. So how do
Speaker 4: the Chinese have leverage on our manufacturing? Okay? They are
Speaker 4: thirty percent of the global manufacturing, right, so we went
Speaker 4: through this with COVID that was a bit of a problem.
Speaker 4: They also own a lot of the rare earth materials
Speaker 4: that into EV batteries and magnets in this sort, and
Speaker 4: they also own the purchasing power of let's say Boeing planes, right.
Speaker 4: So a headline that hit today is that they're considering
Speaker 4: by hundreds of planes from Airbus, which is obviously you know,
Speaker 4: a European company, it's French, and that would be in
Speaker 4: place of Boeing planes. Boeing has been mired in problems
Speaker 4: for the last six or seven years. They had those
Speaker 4: plane crashes, these issues with the seven forty seven Max,
Speaker 4: and they've been missed you executing for a while. That
Speaker 4: could be a real big hit to our economy, not
Speaker 4: just from a manufacturing standpoint, but really from our stature,
Speaker 4: you know around the globe for American exceptionalism.
Speaker 2: American exceptionalism. Ha haha.
Speaker 1: It's so funny that you just said this thing about Boeing,
Speaker 1: because I really do think part of what happened with Boeing,
Speaker 1: right is a question of regulation, right. I mean, things
Speaker 1: got at a hand because the regulatory environment wasn't what
Speaker 1: it needed to be to make sure these planes were safe.
Speaker 1: And remember Trump was in fact president from twenty sixteen
Speaker 1: to twenty twenty. I just wonder how much like one
Speaker 1: of the things Trump loves to do is dismantle regulation,
Speaker 1: and we never ever see why that's bad, right, We
Speaker 1: only ever see him dismantling regulation and then a catastrophe
Speaker 1: like that trained derailment in Ohio. I feel like there
Speaker 1: is a straight line between deregulation and environmental fallout but
Speaker 1: also economic fallout.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean that's the story of the two thousands, right,
Speaker 4: and a lead up to the financial crisis. You know,
Speaker 4: we had some significant regulations as it really to our
Speaker 4: financial institutions, and you know it was the Clinton administration
Speaker 4: that actually rolled a puncture those back, right. And you know,
Speaker 4: as you think about folks who have incentives right to
Speaker 4: kind of take financial instruments and kind of repackage them
Speaker 4: and do them in a way where they can make
Speaker 4: a lot of money on them and they can get
Speaker 4: around regulations. I mean, that's really what happened in the
Speaker 4: financial crisis, and you have thought on the way out
Speaker 4: of that where so many individuals were really burned. They
Speaker 4: were the bag holders in that, and you had you know,
Speaker 4: Elizabeth Warren put in the CFPB and all that sort
Speaker 4: of stuff. And I think this is the point you're
Speaker 4: getting to, is that the administration comes in in this
Speaker 4: new administration, it's one of the first things they do
Speaker 4: they get rid of the Consumer Protection Organization that was
Speaker 4: meant to shield everyday citizens from that sort of you know,
Speaker 4: predatory behavior.
Speaker 2: And so here's because of two thousand and eight.
Speaker 4: Because of the financial crisis, and then you can look
Speaker 4: to twenty and eighteen. So the Trump administration rolled back
Speaker 4: some regulation about capital levels for smaller banks. Okay, so
Speaker 4: do you remember in March of twenty twenty three, Silicon
Speaker 4: Valley Bank went down. There was a handful of other
Speaker 4: banks that went down. You can draw a line back
Speaker 4: to these capital requirements that were rolled back in the
Speaker 4: twenty eighteen deregulation. And we lost some really important banks,
Speaker 4: and we also had some threats to the financial system
Speaker 4: at the time, different than two thousand and eight, but
Speaker 4: in some ways they could have had big not gun effects.
Speaker 4: And what did the government have to do And this
Speaker 4: was under obviously the biderministration. They had to go bail
Speaker 4: them out, right, And so we see this again and again.
Speaker 4: If you give these financiers, if you give these folks
Speaker 4: enough room or enough rope, they will ultimately hang themselves
Speaker 4: because the incentives are too great in the near term,
Speaker 4: and they know that they can socialize the losses if
Speaker 4: things go bad.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was just going to say, privatize the gain,
Speaker 1: socialize the losses. Speaking of socializing the losses, the BBB,
Speaker 1: big beautiful bullshit bell will in fact cut a lot
Speaker 1: of things right. It'll cut snap benefits, food for hungry children,
Speaker 1: it will cut Medicaid, which will cut rural hospitals, nursing homes,
Speaker 1: but it will also provide these insane tax cut no
Speaker 1: tax on tips. I mean, what is that even? Like,
Speaker 1: no tax on tips? How would that even be implemented?
Speaker 1: What does that look like? And what would the financial
Speaker 1: sort of fall out be? Right? I mean, clearly it'll
Speaker 1: juice the public markets, but what do you think it'll
Speaker 1: look like in six months?
Speaker 4: Well, it's funny that sun tips thing is obviously a
Speaker 4: populous sort of move. When he would go to Nevada
Speaker 4: during the campaign, he would talk about that and you know,
Speaker 4: and again this goes back to maybe some of his
Speaker 4: political genius, but his lack of acumen when it comes
Speaker 4: to policy and the likes. So to me, that is
Speaker 4: probably a bit of a rounding era if you think
Speaker 4: about all the folks that will benefit from that, however
Speaker 4: they implement it, versus the expected maybe ten thirteen million
Speaker 4: people in America. We're going to lose access to healthcare
Speaker 4: or to your point about snap or you know, free
Speaker 4: lunches and breakfast for you know, students of you know,
Speaker 4: lower income sort of families in the like, and I mean,
Speaker 4: those are the big things and ultimately, I think those
Speaker 4: are the things that are going to get felt right
Speaker 4: out of the gate. Do you feel them? How do
Speaker 4: these things get implemented? You know, who knows. But at
Speaker 4: the end of the day, I mean this sort of
Speaker 4: cuts in a lot of red states. And that's the
Speaker 4: other thing. If you think about some of these policies
Speaker 4: that were put in place during the Biden administration, you
Speaker 4: could say, well, the IRA and the Chips Acts and
Speaker 4: all this sort of stuff, they deliberately put them in
Speaker 4: some of these red states, so the folks would actually
Speaker 4: have all the benefits of this government spend if you
Speaker 4: think about it, right, and it goes back to really
Speaker 4: a social safety net. If Republicans want to push through
Speaker 4: a four and a half trillion dollar tax cut over
Speaker 4: the next ten years and throw three or four trillion
Speaker 4: dollars onto the national debt, which is the thing that
Speaker 4: they're supposed to care about, then they better be prepared
Speaker 4: for the repercussions because they lose the soul of the party. Right.
Speaker 4: If this is what and this is why Ran Paul
Speaker 4: and some of these folks, and even Elon Musk, we
Speaker 4: don't know Elon Mus's intention. I never knew him to
Speaker 4: be a fiscal hawk by any means, and you think
Speaker 4: of the beneficiaries he's been able to enjoy from government spending.
Speaker 4: But this is one where I don't think it gets
Speaker 4: fixed too quickly. I don't think President Trump, as his
Speaker 4: approval rating goes down over these economic issues, especially as
Speaker 4: the trade thing gets pushed out, is going to have
Speaker 4: this sort of leverage over the Senate as he did
Speaker 4: over the House in the last few weeks.
Speaker 2: That's the twenty four tillion dollar question. Danny. Then, thank you,
Speaker 2: thank you. I hope you'll come back.
Speaker 4: Thanks Bally. Great to be here.
Speaker 2: Allan L.
Speaker 1: Rod is the President and CEO of the Pulaski Institute
Speaker 1: and a contributor to Liberal Currents.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Fast Politics, Alan L. Rod.
Speaker 1: You write a bunch of stuff, very smart. You write
Speaker 1: for Liberal Currents, which I think of as a very
Speaker 1: very smart literary magazine in the tradition of the New Republic,
Speaker 1: a little more lefty. And I want to talk about
Speaker 1: this essay, which is why I knew we had to
Speaker 1: have you on, because I was like, Holy moly, this
Speaker 1: is how I feel this. Why didn't I write this piece?
Speaker 1: And the title is You're not crazy America has gone mad.
Speaker 2: So talk to me about sort of how you got here.
Speaker 5: I've only been doing the sort of writing commentary pieces
Speaker 5: for a few years, and really it kind of came
Speaker 5: out of I head also trying to get this policy
Speaker 5: type organization off the ground here in Arkansas called the
Speaker 5: Plaski Institution that I started in twenty twenty one, and
Speaker 5: it is focused on a lot of the problems I
Speaker 5: think I described in this piece and some other pieces,
Speaker 5: which is challenges that are happening with democracy and with popularism,
Speaker 5: not just in the US, but in really a lot
Speaker 5: of Western countries where there's a lot of breakdown in
Speaker 5: not just the electoral politics, but also just sort of
Speaker 5: broad cultural commitments to the important things that make a
Speaker 5: liberal democracy work. But I've tried to think about that
Speaker 5: in sort of heartland places, So that was sort of
Speaker 5: the idea I started writing to sort of try to
Speaker 5: get these ideas out there and bring attention to what
Speaker 5: I'm trying to do. And I've been really lucky. I
Speaker 5: think that that's turned into its own sort of separate
Speaker 5: and really rewarding journey. In terms of I started writing
Speaker 5: an arc digital back in twenty twenty two, and really
Speaker 5: clicked with Brady Belvite or there and Nicholas Grossman, and
Speaker 5: luckily got to do some pieces for other places. And
Speaker 5: Liberal Currents was a place I got connected with thanks
Speaker 5: to anac Manus, who's actually a fellow at the plast Constitution.
Speaker 5: He said, you know, reach out to Adam Gurry if
Speaker 5: you're just sting in pitching them, and I did, and
Speaker 5: it was one of those kind of we all just
Speaker 5: sort of clicked. I got in the little discord with
Speaker 5: the other editors and writers at Liberal Currents and there
Speaker 5: was a I think a very happy marriage of thought
Speaker 5: and opinion, and so lip O Currens became you know,
Speaker 5: I'm a contributing enditor.
Speaker 1: Now, yeah, that's so great. But let's talk about what
Speaker 1: this idea is. So you start with a passage from
Speaker 1: Hannah Rand's origins of totalitarianism. Never has our future been
Speaker 1: more unpredictable. Never have we depended so much on political
Speaker 1: forces that cannot be trusted to follow the rules. And
Speaker 1: I think this is the most important point here, of
Speaker 1: common sense and self interest forces that look like sheer
Speaker 1: insanity if judged by the standard of other centuries. So
Speaker 1: much of Trump administration at this moment. You know, from
Speaker 1: RFK Junior to Elon Musk, there's so many things that
Speaker 1: they are doing in this administration that strike me as
Speaker 1: just completely I mean, obviously there's often profit motives behind it,
Speaker 1: but I wonder if you could just talk us through
Speaker 1: some of these things that you see.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So, I think I'm really trying to do at
Speaker 5: this piece is to capture something that I think is
Speaker 5: happening that's observable at a few different levels. Right, So
Speaker 5: when I think about you know, I'm not being sort
Speaker 5: of literal, right and kind of madness. I understand mental
Speaker 5: illness and that language can sometimes be touchy for people.
Speaker 5: But what I am trying to capture is there are
Speaker 5: a lot of ways in which we are not behaving
Speaker 5: in ways that really makes sense. Right. You know, you
Speaker 5: mentioned profit motives, So there's clearly some self interest in
Speaker 5: the Trump administration, but there's a lot of things where
Speaker 5: the kind of even just rational principles of self preservation
Speaker 5: self interest don't feel like they're functioning. I mean, you know,
Speaker 5: what we're doing to our health system right now is crazy,
Speaker 5: and even since I wrote the piece, it's gotten crazier. Right.
Speaker 5: He said he wants to basically withdraw vaccines for most
Speaker 5: age groups. Right, there's all kinds of further downsizing of
Speaker 5: the FDA. They want to take fluoride, not just not
Speaker 5: you know, earlier they were talking about discouraging fluoride. Now
Speaker 5: there's talks about banning it in multiple states. It's really,
Speaker 5: I mean, this is just in the wealthiest country in
Speaker 5: the world, crazy, right, And he talks about fixing chronic disease,
Speaker 5: even and even if you wanted to take him at
Speaker 5: face value in that that's not being done right because
Speaker 5: they're defunding all of these research initiatives that have run
Speaker 5: for a year, some of them decades on the sorts
Speaker 5: of disease as he says are important. So I think
Speaker 5: the Health Science Fund is a good place to look
Speaker 5: at that because you have individual kind of madness, you
Speaker 5: have influencers or are sort of peddling this stuff, and
Speaker 5: you can see how it got into the groundwater over
Speaker 5: time in the US. But you also have the institutional
Speaker 5: problem of like, our institutions are not behaving the way
Speaker 5: they should behave they are fully at this point captured
Speaker 5: by this, I think completely. I kind of feel dystopian
Speaker 5: to me world view of yes, it's grift. But I
Speaker 5: always think that grift is a bad way to think
Speaker 5: about it sometimes because that implies it's just as simple
Speaker 5: as oh, they're just telling you a lie so they
Speaker 5: can get money. And I think that it's just far
Speaker 5: more irrational and sort of dysfunctional and chaotic than that.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I wonder what you think about MAHA Make
Speaker 1: America Healthy Again. I wonder how much of MAHA is
Speaker 1: an It seems to me there's a straight line between
Speaker 1: the pandemic, MAHA sort of the corruption of multi level
Speaker 1: marketing and MAGA.
Speaker 2: Do you think that's right? And how?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 5: I mean, I do think that that's correct. I think
Speaker 5: what you saw on the pandemic was something that was
Speaker 5: already starting, which was a lot of these sort of
Speaker 5: health influencers who have just deeply on scientific beliefs about
Speaker 5: a lot of different things. That was really the I
Speaker 5: think the convergence point with them in MAGA, because there
Speaker 5: was a huge amount of objection to just the various
Speaker 5: health precautions that were being sure. I think in the
Speaker 5: pandemic you saw I think a convergence. It had been
Speaker 5: building for a bit, but you saw this convergence between
Speaker 5: a lot of health influencers and people who were more
Speaker 5: I think you're sort of typical RFK type person, voter
Speaker 5: or just kind of interested in his stuff. That kind
Speaker 5: of person really get into the sort of maga world.
Speaker 5: And that's kind of what Maha is right. It is
Speaker 5: this convergence of those two things. And some of that
Speaker 5: was about vaccine hesititency, but I think a lot of
Speaker 5: it was just more broadly about you know, the sort
Speaker 5: of existential dread of the pandemic and a lot of
Speaker 5: very unscientific and emotional reactions right to the pandemic. And
Speaker 5: so I think what is troubling to me about like Maha,
Speaker 5: is some of it is absolutely grift, but some of
Speaker 5: it is belief, right, and I think we have to
Speaker 5: reckon with that.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 5: If I thought it was all just opportunism and grift,
Speaker 5: I don't think I would have written an essay called,
Speaker 5: you know, We've all Gone mad, because then it would
Speaker 5: just be sort of we're all cynical and we're all opportunists.
Speaker 5: But really, you know, for people to just kind of
Speaker 5: at once in large numbers reject these advancements we saw,
Speaker 5: I think the pandemic was just rocket fuel for this stuff.
Speaker 5: It pushed something that had been there for a long time,
Speaker 5: existing in a kind of particular corner of Instagram and YouTube,
Speaker 5: and it just propelled it into a collision with the
Speaker 5: maga stuff that had been coming really since since Trump
Speaker 5: came down the escalator, and that combination I think has
Speaker 5: been really quite powerful and dangerous.
Speaker 2: Oh for sure.
Speaker 1: And I do think like part of it is there
Speaker 1: is real anxiety in modern life about what all of
Speaker 1: the things around us do and what they cause and
Speaker 1: what the possible. You know, we have younger people getting
Speaker 1: cancer things like that, that is real.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know my own person.
Speaker 1: Pecadillo is why is RFK Junior, you know, not focusing
Speaker 1: on the stuff that he you know, there's some of
Speaker 1: this stuff is not as crazy, right, this stuff about
Speaker 1: organic food or whatever, But that's not what he's focused on, right,
Speaker 1: He's focused on the stuff that's really vaccines, the stuff
Speaker 1: that the stuff that we were really scared he was
Speaker 1: going to do he is in fact doing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there is a kind of I think fundamental disorder.
Speaker 5: And this is kind of what I do mean is
Speaker 5: like to his thinking and to a lot of this
Speaker 5: thinking where he'll talk about and I think what it
Speaker 5: means is that we misunderstand him when we just let
Speaker 5: him say, oh, chronic disease is a real problem. We
Speaker 5: take that at face value when we say, that's not
Speaker 5: so crazy. But that's not actually the sort of most
Speaker 5: front facing part of his belief system, Right, that's actually
Speaker 5: kind of a that's really a vestige of all this
Speaker 5: other stuff, right, and so, and I think that's made
Speaker 5: obvious in the fact that, like, when he actually says
Speaker 5: we're going to fix chronic disease, they're not doing that.
Speaker 5: And the things he seems to think count as chronic
Speaker 5: disease is also a bit strange. Right, So you already
Speaker 5: are in a weird place. Once you probe that language
Speaker 5: even a little bit, I think what I am kind
Speaker 5: of You're right, there's there's this anxiety. There's this huge
Speaker 5: amount of anxiety. And I find that really interesting in
Speaker 5: the way anxiety has the capacity to disrupt and disorder
Speaker 5: our thinking and get us to cling to sometimes very
Speaker 5: sometimes emotionally comforting or persuasive ideas that are also quite
Speaker 5: erratic and actually not very good for us. Right. I Mean,
Speaker 5: there's a sense in which a lot of this stuff
Speaker 5: I think got popular because people turn to things that
Speaker 5: made them feel better.
Speaker 2: They needed answer, so yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and provide answers they kind of I mean, there's
Speaker 5: a religious aspect to this right where it kind of
Speaker 5: is it's basically sort of like it's providing a kind
Speaker 5: of you know, compass or map for how the world
Speaker 5: works and where you stand in it, and a certain
Speaker 5: set of truths that can make you feel I guess comforted.
Speaker 5: But it's all I mean, it's very it's I think
Speaker 5: disaggregated from reality.
Speaker 4: And I do think.
Speaker 5: That that that mixture of anxiety and disorder or what's
Speaker 5: so troubling because it doesn't feel like people are following tradition,
Speaker 5: the idea that the American electorate would say somebody who
Speaker 5: wants to put this guy in power is trustworthy. I mean,
Speaker 5: I just you know, we talk all the time like
Speaker 5: Richard Nixon was a crook and a criminal and an opportunist,
Speaker 5: but Richard Nixon also helped, you know, enshrining the EPA
Speaker 5: and the Clean Air Act, because Richard Dixon wasn't actually
Speaker 5: a crazy person, right, And that's the distinction I think
Speaker 5: I'm kind of getting at is like Grift just to
Speaker 5: me does not feel like an explanation for what's happening here.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, a disintegration of ordered thinking feels like a
Speaker 5: better explanation. And it's happening at a cultural level, and
Speaker 5: it's also happening at an institutional level. Institutions that are
Speaker 5: supposed to mediate our thinking and our actions in rational
Speaker 5: ways are not doing that. If we think of them
Speaker 5: as communicative communicative sites, they're not functioning the way rational
Speaker 5: communication works anymore.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And I think I think that's a I think that
Speaker 1: irrationality is, you know, And I mean there's so many
Speaker 1: different hallmarks of it, from things like the tariffs, to
Speaker 1: things like the anti vax stuff, to the scientific stuff.
Speaker 1: Can we talk about something that I am a little
Speaker 1: bit obsessed with, which is this idea that Elon Musk
Speaker 1: is the richest man in the world, has made almost
Speaker 1: all of his money on technology, right, stuff that has
Speaker 1: been created from science done in labs like at Harvard, Right,
Speaker 1: the kind of stuff that's made possible by.
Speaker 2: Things like Ana.
Speaker 1: So why do you think, I mean that irrationality is
Speaker 1: so striking to me? What do you think the operating
Speaker 1: principle there is or do you think this is all
Speaker 1: just kind of like post printing press madness that America
Speaker 1: is engaging in.
Speaker 5: I'm glad you said the printing press, because I do
Speaker 5: think that, like a the the printing press challenge of
Speaker 5: our era, right, which is social media, it is invalant. Like, yeah,
Speaker 5: I mean, I think with Elon, it's this is a
Speaker 5: guy who you know, I can't speak to like how
Speaker 5: smart or insightful Elon might have been a decade ago,
Speaker 5: but I think it's pretty obvious that for the last
Speaker 5: few years he's spent his time. You know, he admits
Speaker 5: to taking inordinate amounts of ketamine.
Speaker 2: Right, and the New York Times just had a big
Speaker 2: piece on that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, go on, he spends like twenty hours a day
Speaker 5: just absolutely soaking in social media, and I mean, I
Speaker 5: think that is a place that just you know, it
Speaker 5: obliterates your sense of up and down. So you know,
Speaker 5: I mean, if he's just taking drugs and he's the
Speaker 5: richest man in the world, which itself can be kind
Speaker 5: of a narcotic, and he's spending more hours a day
Speaker 5: than many people are awake on his own social media platform, right,
Speaker 5: to me, that's just you're just swimming in a kind
Speaker 5: of sea of irrational and sort of disordered behavior. I mean,
Speaker 5: social media doesn't bring out our best in most of us.
Speaker 5: And then you also have places like what he's turned
Speaker 5: to accent to, which is just a full on cess pool.
Speaker 1: Let's go another minute on the printing press here, because
Speaker 1: I do really want to talk about that. I once
Speaker 1: was on a panel interviewing a very famous tech bro,
Speaker 1: you know, and he said everything.
Speaker 2: Very you know, a lot.
Speaker 1: Of that kind of stuff, the tech bro stuff. And
Speaker 1: then I said to you, do you think we're better off?
Speaker 1: And he said, well, we will eventually be better off,
Speaker 1: but it's like the printing press, we may have one
Speaker 1: hundred years of fuckeray.
Speaker 2: Do you think that it's a one to one there?
Speaker 5: No, because I think this is true of a lot
Speaker 5: of people who are in kind of the liberally you know.
Speaker 5: I came of age under the Obama years camp I
Speaker 5: was at one point fairly optimistic about this stuff, right.
Speaker 5: I was like, oh, Twitter in the Arab spring, and
Speaker 5: like look at Facebook and like this is pretty great.
Speaker 5: I say that as someone who did not start as
Speaker 5: a as a kind of lttite.
Speaker 4: Or anything like that.
Speaker 5: But no, because I think what we've seen is that
Speaker 5: one we know for a fact that the effect of
Speaker 5: screens is different. And I don't mean that in a
Speaker 5: kind of screen addiction way, which is its own thing.
Speaker 5: I mean we know psychologically that our capacity to recognize
Speaker 5: the humanity of a person we're interacting with on a
Speaker 5: phone screen is reduced, Like our brain just doesn't process
Speaker 5: it the way we process in person interaction. And when
Speaker 5: you read a text that someone wrote, that person is
Speaker 5: not there for you to scream at. Actually, right, you
Speaker 5: go and find other paper and write about them. Social
Speaker 5: media is combining these things, so it's taking like the
Speaker 5: text you know, if you're on Twitter, the text based
Speaker 5: aspects right of the printing past, and it's fusing them
Speaker 5: with a bunch of other stuff that we're not evolutionary
Speaker 5: equipped for at all, like just interacting with millions of
Speaker 5: anonymous people. And I think we've seen very clearly that
Speaker 5: the stuff we're willing to say and do there is
Speaker 5: just absolutely unhinged. And there's no you know, because of
Speaker 5: the whole debate over you know, we're not a publishing platform,
Speaker 5: et cetera. There's no editorial process right too. I stud
Speaker 5: wanted to try to write a book about how Molly
Speaker 5: is a terrible person.
Speaker 2: Right now, you can write it.
Speaker 5: I could self publish sure today, but like you know,
Speaker 5: at one point there'd be like a process somebody would
Speaker 5: have to be like agreed to run that and print
Speaker 5: that and like actually do it. And now I could
Speaker 5: just go onto these websites and say really anything I want.
Speaker 5: And so I just think the printing press analogy is
Speaker 5: it's seductive because what it says is don't worry. Look
Speaker 5: how great things are. Thinks to those advancements. That's how
Speaker 5: they'll be because of this. But I think it really
Speaker 5: obscures all the way is that they're just not the
Speaker 5: same at all.
Speaker 1: Oh so interesting, thank you saying you, saying you, saying
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 4: Now, Dan Nathan, Yes, Molly jonathast.
Speaker 2: You are a special moment of fuckery guest.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to set you up for a doozy Okay,
Speaker 1: are you ready?
Speaker 4: I'm ready.
Speaker 1: So it involves America's most I want to say something generous,
Speaker 1: but I'm not going to worst congress Woman Marjorie Taylor Green.
Speaker 2: So in the big.
Speaker 1: Beautiful whatever the fuck that thing is, there is an
Speaker 1: insane little bit of whatever that says.
Speaker 2: And I'm going to read it to you.
Speaker 1: It basically says that states cannot regulate AI. So it
Speaker 1: is the opposite of everything that Republicans have been saying
Speaker 1: for so long. And but you know, AI companies want
Speaker 1: it full transparency. I didn't know about this section on
Speaker 1: page two seventy eight to seventy nine of the obb
Speaker 1: B that strip states for the rights to make laws
Speaker 1: or regulate AI for a decade. I'm adamantly opposed all
Speaker 1: caps to this, and it is a violation of state laws.
Speaker 1: And I would have voted no had I known what
Speaker 1: was in there or AKA read the bill, thought Stan Nathan.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, let's read the bills here, people, and maybe
Speaker 4: you make these big, beautiful bills something that are digestible
Speaker 4: of all people opining on. This is probably not one
Speaker 4: that I'm going to take to the bank and listen
Speaker 4: to what she has to say here. But at the
Speaker 4: end of the day, I think you nailed it. It's like, okay,
Speaker 4: if Republican politics, okay, for the last call it, one
Speaker 4: hundred and fifty years have centered around whatever the party was,
Speaker 4: you know, prior to that have centered around you know
Speaker 4: what I mean, the states being able to kind of
Speaker 4: make their own laws. And put the power back in
Speaker 4: the people's hands as it relates to whatever the demographics
Speaker 4: or geographic issues specific to them. It just doesn't make
Speaker 4: a whole heck of a lot of sense. You want
Speaker 4: to turn this thing upside down, you know. And some
Speaker 4: of the folks that are these aisars or cryptosars that
Speaker 4: have come into the administration, you know, you would think
Speaker 4: that these people have a code, right, like they've kind
Speaker 4: of built things over amazing things and so it gote valid,
Speaker 4: you know, over the last thirty forty years, that sort
Speaker 4: of thing that have actually advanced the quality of life
Speaker 4: for so many you know, millions of not billions of
Speaker 4: people here, and that's some sort of conformity about this.
Speaker 4: They recognize what the stakes are with AI. That would
Speaker 4: make a whole heck of a lot of sense. So
Speaker 4: in some ways, you know, taking the power from the
Speaker 4: States and taking the power from folks like Marjorie Taylor
Speaker 4: Green who don't understand any of it makes some sense
Speaker 4: to me. But these people better get their act together
Speaker 4: because this technology is advancing at a pace that we've
Speaker 4: never seen right now, and it's really at the center
Speaker 4: of a lot of the sort of battles that are
Speaker 4: going to be fought over the next hundred years for
Speaker 4: like global supremacy. I know that sounds really dramatic. Backtion
Speaker 4: one hundred years and let's see how important this is
Speaker 4: right now that we get it right, because you know what,
Speaker 4: you know, who doesn't kind of mess around with this?
Speaker 4: I know is the moment fuckery, so I could say,
Speaker 4: is the Chinese. They're taking a fifty year view about
Speaker 4: this and we are taking an every two year view
Speaker 4: as it relates to our midterms.
Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you, thank you, Dan Nathan.
Speaker 4: All Right, Mollie, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
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Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.