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 Ukraine and European leaders are urging
Speaker 1: Trump not to strike a piece deal in Alaska. Without them,
Speaker 1: we have such a great show for you today. The
Speaker 1: great New Republic editor in chief Mike Tamaski stops by
Speaker 1: to talk about what a perilous position we find ourselves in.
Speaker 1: Then we will talk to former Trump administration official Miles
Speaker 1: Taylor about what is making Trump tick during this second
Speaker 1: term and his takeover of the District of Columbia. But
Speaker 1: first the news Somali.
Speaker 2: Something that I have observed and I always like when
Speaker 2: data backs up the things that I pretty much assume
Speaker 2: to be true no matter what, because it makes me
Speaker 2: feel real smart, which is that spending is climbing among
Speaker 2: the rich as everyone else's debt is rising and their
Speaker 2: spending is lowering.
Speaker 1: It's important to remember that the CBO said of the
Speaker 1: BBB that it would hurt the people in the lowest
Speaker 1: twenty percent the most, it would help the people in
Speaker 1: the highest ten percent the most. So you make sense, right,
Speaker 1: The people who have the least are going to be
Speaker 1: hurt the most by this and reduction in hospitals. We're
Speaker 1: going to see Medicare insurance premiums are going to go up.
Speaker 1: Plus we have these tariffs. You know, the Yale Budget
Speaker 1: Lab estimates that the tariffs will be twenty four one
Speaker 1: hundred dollars a year extra for American families. That is inflationary.
Speaker 1: It just seems very clear. Now. The good news is
Speaker 1: Donald Trump has fired all of the statisticians. So even
Speaker 1: though people are not spending money, and the rich people
Speaker 1: are spending in a way that does not actually support
Speaker 1: the rest of us, the good news is we won't
Speaker 1: know because all of the statisticians will be either fired
Speaker 1: or attacked by Donald Trump. I'm thinking about the Goldman
Speaker 1: Sachs analysis. They talked about how tariffs are actually being
Speaker 1: paid for by the consumers and not the companies. I
Speaker 1: know who Donald Trump then attacked is how dare you
Speaker 1: say that the tariffs that are And by the way,
Speaker 1: I think this is a great moment to remember that
Speaker 1: this is basically the same as a flat tax, right,
Speaker 1: It's a big sales tax that people who have less
Speaker 1: it will mean it will be more of their incomes.
Speaker 2: Every time I hear about this, and I think about this.
Speaker 3: I just hear that.
Speaker 2: Time he yelled, we have to slow it down about
Speaker 2: testing COVID because it's the same energy.
Speaker 1: That's a really good point. Yeah, if you don't test,
Speaker 1: you won't know. If you don't I mean, it's like
Speaker 1: with the climate change stuff, right, if you shoot the
Speaker 1: satellites or I don't know what they take the satellites down,
Speaker 1: you won't know about the climate change. You know, if
Speaker 1: you don't fund Noah, you won't know about the bad weather.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is really really, really stupid. And the
Speaker 1: medical research. I mean, we're just literally in the dumbest,
Speaker 1: I think, dumbest possible timeline.
Speaker 2: Yep. Speaking of the Appeals Court has let the White
Speaker 2: House to spend or end billions in farn eate, which,
Speaker 2: for those who are not versed and with this is
Speaker 2: shorthand for a whole lot of death.
Speaker 1: So I think there's two important points to the foreign
Speaker 1: aid question. One is, morally, it's a reprehensible, right. These
Speaker 1: are these kind of investments that are pretty small in
Speaker 1: the grand scheme of spending, you know, not as much
Speaker 1: as blowing up the moon or something that the Trump
Speaker 1: administration might be interested in doing or money to elon
Speaker 1: for whatever. These are really, you know, pretty small investments,
Speaker 1: and there's two reasons why we do them, right. One
Speaker 1: is because it's morally correct, But the other reason is
Speaker 1: because people hate us. Right as a country, we are hated,
Speaker 1: and one of the reasons we're hated is because we've
Speaker 1: tried to, you know, bring democracy the world and they
Speaker 1: haven't loved us for it. So one of the reasons
Speaker 1: why we do this is big return on investment. You
Speaker 1: stop a pandemic in sub Saharan Africa, you a protect yourself,
Speaker 1: you be saved some people, and you see you prevent
Speaker 1: a group of terrorists from emerging from there too. You know,
Speaker 1: there's just a lot of reasons why America got involved
Speaker 1: in soft power, and none of it was because they're
Speaker 1: good people. It was mainly because of the ROI. So
Speaker 1: now Trump has been like, yeah, that's a waste, right,
Speaker 1: four billion dollars on global health. By the way, four
Speaker 1: billion dollars on global health. We spend that on like
Speaker 1: whatever we spend. You know, Trump is going to spend
Speaker 1: that on like four planes. Yeah, exactly, six billion for
Speaker 1: HIV and AIDS programs. He thinks that the foreign aid
Speaker 1: spending is wasteful versus like Jadie Vance's vacation budget, which
Speaker 1: is just muney well spent to raise in Ohio and
Speaker 1: find out what the people in the Cots world think
Speaker 1: of shady bands.
Speaker 2: I was personally told, they hate us for our freedom.
Speaker 2: But whatever you say with this revision in history, So Molly,
Speaker 2: there's always these things now where you know, Trump is
Speaker 2: finding himself between a rock and a hard place with
Speaker 2: the base and the influencers are in the base, because
Speaker 2: the influencers in the bass always have to do this
Speaker 2: thing where they're waging a class word and they're like,
Speaker 2: you liberal potheads are so awful. But Trump really keeps
Speaker 2: thinking about how he keeps himself preserved, and he's like,
Speaker 2: maybe some weed reform will make me a little more popular.
Speaker 2: What do you see in here?
Speaker 1: Marijuana reform is super popular. There are a lot of
Speaker 1: people who are getting older and older, including baby boomers
Speaker 1: right who are probably in need of like meddicinal marijuana.
Speaker 1: It's legal in a lot of states. So the idea
Speaker 1: that they're not going to reclassify it. I think that
Speaker 1: the reason why Trump will classify this is because he
Speaker 1: thinks it will help him electorally. But the reason to
Speaker 1: reclassify it is because it's ridiculous. It's already not illegal
Speaker 1: in many places. So I think it's like one of
Speaker 1: these things where you know, the worst person you know
Speaker 1: has good ideas, right, the worst person you know meme.
Speaker 2: Yes, Yes, I'm very, very very familiar. And I think
Speaker 2: that this is the thing, is that marijuana reform is
Speaker 2: a very smart thing that will also lessen the burden
Speaker 2: on our country of people being in jail who shouldn't
Speaker 2: be there, which is also ruining lives.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'd be shocked if Trump world is going to
Speaker 1: be releasing people from jail. Sure, but I do love that.
Speaker 1: Matt Walsh from The Daily Wire very mad. No country
Speaker 1: of podheads has ever thrived or ever achieved anything at all.
Speaker 1: Every city that legalized is it becomes a bigger shitthole.
Speaker 1: Basically overnight. America deserves better, Our kids deserve better. I
Speaker 1: don't want to be smelling weed anytime I take my
Speaker 1: kids to a city or national park. That's Maga podcaster
Speaker 1: Jack Pasobiac.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I got bad news for them. A lot of
Speaker 2: our American innovation has been fueled by someone smoking pot
Speaker 2: and having a great idea.
Speaker 1: I totally disagree with that, and I think that pot
Speaker 1: makes you really stupid, and I'm sober.
Speaker 2: You know, obviously, yes, but there's also scientific evidence that
Speaker 2: that's not correct.
Speaker 1: Oh No, pot definitely makes you stupider.
Speaker 2: Pot makes you stupider, but it also inspires better ideas
Speaker 2: than the present that's scientifically proven.
Speaker 1: No, it's not. You sound like Joe Row.
Speaker 3: Yes it is.
Speaker 1: We'll get a scientist on here and we'll talk about it.
Speaker 2: I wrote a book on creativity and science. If you
Speaker 2: were called, I actually am an expert on this subject.
Speaker 2: There's countless universities that cite this that don't want to
Speaker 2: smoke pot and brag about it. They reluctantly admit this.
Speaker 1: If you're listening to this podcast and you think Jesse
Speaker 1: is wrong, please send me a DM. I have open
Speaker 1: dms on all the platforms.
Speaker 2: He's going to pull out this textbook from University of
Speaker 2: Chicago's Creativity program that shows this study.
Speaker 1: Jesse is going to get schooled, so please text me.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: So debs are claiming victory at Texas redistricting and they
Speaker 2: say that they killed this corrupt special session. I feel
Speaker 2: like there's a lot of battles left to go here, Molly,
Speaker 2: what are you thinking?
Speaker 1: So again, we've been covering this because it is really Look,
Speaker 1: if they redistrict, they corruptly can keep the house, and
Speaker 1: it's the beginning of possibly the I mean, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I feel like every day is the beginning of the
Speaker 1: end of American democracy. But this seems really, really, really
Speaker 1: really bad. And the good news here is that he's
Speaker 1: going to adjourn this session and he'll probably call another session.
Speaker 1: But their Democrats are going to keep fighting. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is something that really fucking matters if you want,
Speaker 1: like you know they talk about like sliding into its oraitarianism,
Speaker 1: it's everything right, It's like them getting the house. It's this,
Speaker 1: it's that. So if you care about this, like find
Speaker 1: out what METO is doing to raise money here, because
Speaker 1: this is like actually a smart thing to spend your
Speaker 1: money on. I don't know how you support these guys,
Speaker 1: but they're going to basically have to be out of
Speaker 1: the state until November in order to keep this from happening.
Speaker 1: And Trump is going to try it in other places.
Speaker 1: But the hope is that Republicans there will be enough
Speaker 1: Republicans who don't have brainworms and that this won't get through.
Speaker 1: We'll see it is really just absolute nightmare fuel. Mike
Speaker 1: Tamaski is the editor of the New Republic and the
Speaker 1: author of The Middle Out, The Rise of Progressive Economics,
Speaker 1: Welcome Too Fast Politics. Mike Tamaski, Hey, hi, hi, I
Speaker 1: feel like everything is getting worse every week, every week. Right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there might have been one week in June where
Speaker 4: you took a little bit of a break, but I've
Speaker 4: kind of been tracking it week by week, and except
Speaker 4: for that one week, I can't remember where it was.
Speaker 3: Things have gotten worse every single week, and they certainly
Speaker 3: got worse this week.
Speaker 1: I want to start with it what's happening in DC,
Speaker 1: because I don't know that everyone understands why it's bad.
Speaker 1: I think there are smart people who don't understand what
Speaker 1: it means, why it's meaningful. I was on a panel
Speaker 1: with some one today who was saying, well, you know,
Speaker 1: crime is a problem, which again, and the Democrats shouldn't
Speaker 1: say crime isn't a problem. I agree that it's not
Speaker 1: good to not talk about what's happening, you know, like
Speaker 1: saying inflation isn't a problem. But I also think you'll
Speaker 1: notice something Donald Trump does. But I think that when
Speaker 1: you look at what's happening with these government occupiers in DC,
Speaker 1: they can't actually prevent crime or homelessness. Right, What is
Speaker 1: their job these people?
Speaker 3: Yeah, their job is to go arrest some black kids
Speaker 3: and get footage for Fox News of them them putting
Speaker 3: handcuffs on black kids.
Speaker 1: But they can't actually arrest people. The DC police are
Speaker 1: the only people can arrest.
Speaker 3: They can do what they want. Donald Trump does what
Speaker 3: he wants, and people who are under his orders can
Speaker 3: do what they want until the courts demonstrate otherwise. Look,
Speaker 3: first of all, yeah, the numbers are real, the crime
Speaker 3: members are real. They're down. It's down. I live a
Speaker 3: few miles from the district up in Maryland since the pandemic,
Speaker 3: and we don't have an office down there anymore. Even
Speaker 3: I don't go down there that much, but sometimes I
Speaker 3: do go take like long bike rides on a Saturday
Speaker 3: or Sunday afternoon. I go through all parts of the city.
Speaker 3: I mean all parts. I go through Southeast Anacostia, you know,
Speaker 3: where some people would have got to go. I've never
Speaker 3: felt anything. I've just never felt anything. Now that's not
Speaker 3: to say that other people might not. And they're apparently
Speaker 3: carjackings specifically are approblem and that's a scary thing. You know,
Speaker 3: you're sitting at a red light at ten o'clock at
Speaker 3: night and all of a sudden these people come and
Speaker 3: smash their car windows and take care. That's terrifying. So
Speaker 3: if that happens to people, you don't care. They don't
Speaker 3: care about the statistics. I get all that, But like,
Speaker 3: if Donald Trump wanted to come in and say, gee,
Speaker 3: I'm concerned about these car jaggings. I want to give
Speaker 3: the DC Police Department some help in addressing this problem,
Speaker 3: then they'd work with the police department, they'd work with
Speaker 3: the mayor, they'd work with the police commissioner, who they've
Speaker 3: been making fun of for the last two days. And
Speaker 3: you know, they'd say, where do we need to be? Well,
Speaker 3: you need to be at the intersection of Rhode Island
Speaker 3: Avenue and you know, seventeenth Street northeast or wherever. I
Speaker 3: just made that up, but that's the kind of part
Speaker 3: of town where these things might be happening, and they'd
Speaker 3: deployed people there and they'd do that. But instead, currently
Speaker 3: they've got people standing outside the Lincoln Memorial and the
Speaker 3: Jefferson Memorial. Yeah, I bet you there hasn't been anything
Speaker 3: more than a pickpocket at the Lincoln Memorial or Jefferson
Speaker 3: Memorial in years. You know, he's not trying to He's
Speaker 3: just trying to do divert from Epstein and do some
Speaker 3: kind of bullshit racist thing of the sort that he
Speaker 3: always does. And you know, all you had to do
Speaker 3: was listen to that press conference Monday and just the
Speaker 3: way he talked about not only Washington but cities in general.
Speaker 3: It's Archie Bunker all the way.
Speaker 1: No. Absolutely, And so the question then becomes, he had
Speaker 1: the force in Los Angeles they laughed, right, because there
Speaker 1: wasn't really anything for them to do. He's going to
Speaker 1: have it in DC. The question is he can only,
Speaker 1: by the way, legally, he can only do it for
Speaker 1: thirty days. Not that legality matters to any of these people,
Speaker 1: but if you were technically that is I think relevant.
Speaker 1: But I just am curious, like, what do you think?
Speaker 1: What's the goal here?
Speaker 3: Is?
Speaker 1: The goal is for footage for Fox News and to
Speaker 1: just draft. The goal is I think to scare people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's all those things. Yeah, I suppose in his
Speaker 3: mind these are trulydangerous hellholes, and he's saving people. But
Speaker 3: I'm sorry. I live near the District of Columbia. It's
Speaker 3: not a hell New York City's not a hell hole.
Speaker 3: You know, there are certain neighborhoods of all cities. Of course,
Speaker 3: there are more dangerous than other neighborhoods. But if you
Speaker 3: want to do something about that, it takes commitment, it
Speaker 3: takes time, it takes money. I think I know the route.
Speaker 3: I've plotted it out anyway on Google Maps, from the
Speaker 3: White House to Trump National Golf Course, and I know
Speaker 3: that he goes past this thing on this place called
Speaker 3: the street called the East Street Expressway, and there's where
Speaker 3: it broadens into the thing that connects you to Interstate
Speaker 3: sixty six. There's this little green sward and there are
Speaker 3: some tents. There are four or five eight tenths there.
Speaker 3: I guess they're gone now, but he drove past those
Speaker 3: handful of tents, and that's probably the whole thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's probably what it is. And you know, these
Speaker 1: people will not necessarily fix homelessness at all.
Speaker 3: No, that a lot of money. I mean, you know
Speaker 3: that takes a lot of money. So he says these
Speaker 3: people are going to be given a place to stay
Speaker 3: but far from the capitol. Well, let's see what that
Speaker 3: is and let's see how long that is. You know,
Speaker 3: they're probably going to put them in some hotel in
Speaker 3: Prince George's county for two weeks or something like that.
Speaker 1: It reminds me of New York mayors putting homeless people
Speaker 1: on the bus to Florida.
Speaker 3: Yeah, or the southern governors, you know, putting migrants on
Speaker 3: the bus to New York and then took it. And
Speaker 3: of course we know that they took a billion dollars
Speaker 3: and a big beautiful bill. They took a billion dollars
Speaker 3: out of District of Columbia fund. So it's an abomination
Speaker 3: and it's police state stuff. And you know, it's getting
Speaker 3: edging us closer and closer to the point where the
Speaker 3: military of the United States can arrest citizens. You know,
Speaker 3: we're not there quite yet, but we're getting to the
Speaker 3: point where the military of the United States, which is
Speaker 3: supposed to go out and fight wars, will be arresting
Speaker 3: the citizens of the United States. And that's fascism. Where
Speaker 3: the capital is.
Speaker 1: You and I have been doing this for a while,
Speaker 1: you slightly longer.
Speaker 3: Than I have, with great results.
Speaker 1: Right because I'm much younger than you are much It
Speaker 1: seems like even in twenty sixteen, there were people who
Speaker 1: were poised to at least look like they might get
Speaker 1: us out of this mess. It didn't happen to be true.
Speaker 1: But there was a Bob Maler, there was this.
Speaker 5: It was that.
Speaker 1: It doesn't strike me that there's anyone like that at
Speaker 1: this time. And the redistricting stuff seems pretty ominous, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, Texas is really interested in redistricting, which giving
Speaker 1: the Trump five more seats, So maybe that happens. If
Speaker 1: it happens, California goes down that road, and then you know,
Speaker 1: that's five seats in California. I mean, it really negates
Speaker 1: the entire democratic system. You know, we're starting then there's
Speaker 1: a seat here and a seat there, and Republicans can
Speaker 1: probably make it so that they keep the House by redistricting.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not impossib but it's certainly possible. It
Speaker 1: strikes me as really bad, So talk us through that.
Speaker 3: It's totally possible that they could keep the House. And
Speaker 3: you know, first of all, let's just back up and
Speaker 3: say this is insane that this is happening in twenty
Speaker 3: twenty five I don't know the history well enough to
Speaker 3: say definitively that there's no precedent for it. Somebody probably
Speaker 3: tried this somewhere along line, I guess, but it's in
Speaker 3: the Constitution. They discussed it at the Constitutional Convention at length.
Speaker 3: I read James Madison's notes. They decided to do it
Speaker 3: every ten years. That was a big compromise. After they
Speaker 3: debated about a lot of stuff. They decided to do
Speaker 3: it every ten years. They decided a congressional district was
Speaker 3: thirty thousand seats I think it was, and then on
Speaker 3: the very last day of the Constitutional Convention they changed
Speaker 3: that to forty thousand. My point being, it was a
Speaker 3: subject of heated conversation the court Supreme Court cases in
Speaker 3: the early nineteen sixties that gave us what we call
Speaker 3: now one man, one person, one vote, used to be
Speaker 3: one man, one vote. Those were hotly, hotly contested. So
Speaker 3: this has been a very controversial thing redistricting for our
Speaker 3: entire history. But no president that I'm aware of, has
Speaker 3: ever said, in the middle of the ten year period,
Speaker 3: I want you to do this now, and the governor,
Speaker 3: any governor so approached, should say, mister President, I'm sorry
Speaker 3: Constitution says every ten years, I can't do that. It's
Speaker 3: so that alone is just an absolute abomination against the Constitution.
Speaker 3: The fact that they're considering and now I see Abbot's
Speaker 3: talking about maybe eight seats instead of five. This came
Speaker 3: up just today, I think so. And is he really
Speaker 3: good to arrest? Is he going to send troops?
Speaker 1: He can't arrest people because what happens is it's not illegal,
Speaker 1: so you can try to or I mean, this is
Speaker 1: the thing. It's like Trump World has gotten so removed
Speaker 1: from what is legal and what is illegal that they've
Speaker 1: sort of just started making stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, if Donald Trump tells Texas Rangers, I say,
Speaker 3: you go arrest them, what are they going to do?
Speaker 1: The good news, if there is good news here, is
Speaker 1: that if members of the Texas House stay out August nineteenth,
Speaker 1: the session ends, and so Abbott will call another session
Speaker 1: and then he can call another session. But November is
Speaker 1: meant to be when it's over. So I don't know
Speaker 1: that they don't try to push a pass November. But
Speaker 1: November is the filing deadline, so you could theoretically right
Speaker 1: out the clock on this.
Speaker 3: We could and I go, I know, works Packice like
Speaker 3: curarently paying their hotel bills. Hope, I hope Richie Liberals
Speaker 3: get it together. It said, you know, pay for these
Speaker 3: people to stay out of the state for as long
Speaker 3: as it takes.
Speaker 1: I mean, the hero of this story, if I'm correct,
Speaker 1: is bad All Rourke, who has fundraised this money for
Speaker 1: these guys. Because as much as Pritzker can be helped,
Speaker 1: he's had to really be careful about the money situation,
Speaker 1: because there's all sorts of ethical I mean, this is
Speaker 1: like the joke. We got Trump doing bitcoin and selling
Speaker 1: sneakers and financing this with that and doing every extra
Speaker 1: legal maneuver in the book, and then we have Democrats
Speaker 1: worried that they're going to do something that's going to
Speaker 1: run a foul.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, they care about the law, they have consciences.
Speaker 1: Well, and they'll also go to jail if anything goes
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, it's just a totally different standard, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, completely different standard. Who's going to prosecute Donald Trump?
Speaker 1: Let's talk about that. You know, I spend so much
Speaker 1: time thinking about this, like scenario of say Trump isn't
Speaker 1: able to do this redistricting thing. You really do see
Speaker 1: how much he believes that if Republicans lose the midterm,
Speaker 1: it's like he knows what he's doing is unpopular.
Speaker 3: Yeah he does, and his agenda is dead, and you
Speaker 3: know he's going to be investigated like crazy. Jamie Raskin
Speaker 3: is going to be running the Judiciary late, which has
Speaker 3: the power of holding impeachment earings and doing other kinds
Speaker 3: of sect and it rains to be seen. I guess
Speaker 3: we might run House oversight. But I hope they give
Speaker 3: to somebody aggressive.
Speaker 1: I hope they'd made right now it's Robert Garcia.
Speaker 3: Garcia. Yeah, it's been really good, really good. So you know,
Speaker 3: that's two aggressive people with subpoenas. Now they'll like or
Speaker 3: subpoenas and they'll just as they did last time, you
Speaker 3: know mcgahann and all those people, So they'll like nor
Speaker 3: subpoenas again, and the Supreme Court will probably say, who knows,
Speaker 3: you know, they don't have to I don't know, So
Speaker 3: it'll just be a stalemate. But at least they'll be
Speaker 3: able to adduce evidence of a lot of wrongdoing, I think,
Speaker 3: and show the American people what this administration has been
Speaker 3: up to. So yeah, Trump's got to be.
Speaker 1: Terrified of how we got here, Like, if we were
Speaker 1: just to have a minute about how we got here
Speaker 1: to this place where democracy feels so tenuous, it strikes
Speaker 1: me that the Supreme Court is the original send here.
Speaker 1: To have a legal body that does not believe in
Speaker 1: the legality of certain things feels like the original sin.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, the immunity ruling is absolutely shocking, and
Speaker 3: we have yet to see that play out fully because
Speaker 3: Trump hasn't really done anything that just utterly. He's done
Speaker 3: a lot of very shocking things, but he hasn't quite
Speaker 3: yet done anything that just makes your average person go, wait,
Speaker 3: what was that? But he'll do that, and the Supreme
Speaker 3: Court said, okay, and then where will we be? So yeah,
Speaker 3: the Supreme Court, for sure, But the Republicans in Congress,
Speaker 3: you know who, are taking no institutional responsibility. And I
Speaker 3: don't know, the Democrats aren't blameless. I mean, if you
Speaker 3: look at it another way, the problem is that Joe
Speaker 3: Biden decided to run again. The Democrats had had a
Speaker 3: normal process and had come up with a strong candidate
Speaker 3: through a who was tested in a process. There's a
Speaker 3: better chance that that person might be the president today.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's true, but some of this was unstoppable. I mean,
Speaker 1: certainly Biden got us here, for sure, but even someone
Speaker 1: who wasn't Biden, I mean, the stuff that the Republicans
Speaker 1: have done, Like I thought for sure there would be
Speaker 1: a moment where Republicans would say, like this is too much,
Speaker 1: And that has not happened.
Speaker 3: No, I don't know if that moment will come. I mean,
Speaker 3: if a woman who was at the time a girl
Speaker 3: comes forward with a certain set of allegations, maybe, but
Speaker 3: even then, only maybe, even then, only maybe. I mean,
Speaker 3: there is such a person. Katie Johnson is the name
Speaker 3: that she has gone by, and I've read her testimony
Speaker 3: about what supposedly allegedly happened. I'm sure you've read it.
Speaker 3: If Katie Johnson or some other Katie Johnson came forward,
Speaker 3: well that would be a whole other thing to grapple with.
Speaker 3: But even then, unless there's like pictures video.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So there's a theory going around, And by going around,
Speaker 1: I mean Jesse and I and a couple of other
Speaker 1: people have talked about this idea that maybe the centrism
Speaker 1: that we have for so long been told is the
Speaker 1: only way to win elections is actually not the only
Speaker 1: way to win elections. And in fact that what voters
Speaker 1: want is more of a sort of working class vision,
Speaker 1: and that even though we've had people on this podcast
Speaker 1: who've said, well, Mondannie can only win in New York
Speaker 1: and it's not the same. But you know, in Nebraska
Speaker 1: we saw Dan Osborne had a message it was very
Speaker 1: close to Bernie Sanders and Mondannie, and it was pretty popular.
Speaker 1: And Sanders has had a pretty popular message. So I'm
Speaker 1: curious what you think about this sort of divide in
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party, since you are actually a Democrat. Usually
Speaker 1: asked never Trump Republicans and they say, pooh, pooh, that's
Speaker 1: totally wrong. Corporatism is the way. But what do you think.
Speaker 3: I think that we tend to be a little too
Speaker 3: focused on this center versus left thing. I think Mondani
Speaker 3: has other things going for him. He speaks plain English.
Speaker 3: He doesn't sound like he's been handed a script by handlers.
Speaker 3: That's number one. That's really too many Democrats sound like
Speaker 3: they're just afraid they're walking on eggshells. So he just
Speaker 3: talks like a normal human being. He's talking about things
Speaker 3: that people care about in their everyday lives. City run
Speaker 3: grocery stores. I think that's a really cool idea.
Speaker 1: Right, we actually have a city run grocery store. Believe
Speaker 1: it or not.
Speaker 3: Oh really, where is it?
Speaker 1: Yeah? It exists. I mean the thing is when the
Speaker 1: government incentivizes things, it works, and when the government descentive
Speaker 1: you know, it's like the difference between oil companies and
Speaker 1: flavored vape company is. But anyways to go on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, got he's got personality, he's got style, he's
Speaker 3: got swear. He seems cool. Nothing about the Democrats seems cools.
Speaker 3: The brand is like so, you know, and they're their
Speaker 3: lowest popularity. That's not because they're true left wing. That's
Speaker 3: because they're just as a party. There are many good ones.
Speaker 3: We just named some Jamie and Garcia, and there are
Speaker 3: many others. Just overall, they're just kind ofly They're just
Speaker 3: like not the kind of people you'd invite to a party,
Speaker 3: And they don't take enough chances. They don't they're afraid
Speaker 3: to make any enemies. That is a huge problem. I
Speaker 3: could talk about that for another half hour next time
Speaker 3: I'm on. Maybe they're afraid to make enemies. They're afraid
Speaker 3: and Donald Trump has a version of swagger, you know,
Speaker 3: no wonder young people kind of said, oh, he's interesting.
Speaker 3: Democrats just aren't interesting. So Mandani at least is interesting
Speaker 3: and has some Panash.
Speaker 1: Mike TAMASKI, will you come back, Lui Ta. Miles Taylor
Speaker 1: is a former national security official and the author of
Speaker 1: the Substack Treason. Welcome to Fast Politics, Miles Taylor.
Speaker 5: Great to be with you always, Mile, It's great to
Speaker 5: be with you.
Speaker 1: I actually want to talk to you because, I mean,
Speaker 1: you published an anonymous book during the first Trump admin.
Speaker 1: You know, you had this op ed, this incredible op
Speaker 1: ed that you wrote about taking a piece of paper
Speaker 1: off his desk and how important you know, how much
Speaker 1: the people around him were able to prevent the unthinkable
Speaker 1: from happening. I want you to talk about what it's
Speaker 1: like this time to watch it happened without those things
Speaker 1: going on.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, you know, I think both you and I
Speaker 5: would agree that this all was very foreseeable. And yeah,
Speaker 5: you know, I think a lot of folks felt this way.
Speaker 5: I mean, there's never been a slow motion brain wreck
Speaker 5: like this in the history of American politics. I mean,
Speaker 5: it was so noble that he was going to come
Speaker 5: in so a second term that was focused on revenge,
Speaker 5: and that was noble, and he said it. He said it,
Speaker 5: but it was noble even years before that, because during
Speaker 5: that first administration, that was the bulk of a lot
Speaker 5: of his orders that our lawyers determined were in many
Speaker 5: cases illegal or unconstitutional, as he wanted to use government
Speaker 5: agencies to go after his enemies to reward his allies.
Speaker 5: I mean, this was a very familiar pattern of behavior.
Speaker 5: And look, you know, Molly, I get anyone who would say, yeah,
Speaker 5: but you know, you know, it's not your job to
Speaker 5: fill in and sell the president of what he can
Speaker 5: and can't do. And it is Interactually.
Speaker 1: Isn't it actually your job as staffers.
Speaker 5: Well, here's here's what I would coveyat is when I
Speaker 5: talked about an internal resistance within the Trump administration, I
Speaker 5: wasn't talking about a group of people that were saying
Speaker 5: no to the things that he, as president, was allowed
Speaker 5: to do. What's a group of people saying no to things?
Speaker 5: They're just not legal? And I have to reemphasize that
Speaker 5: every time, because you know, there's this popular narrative that's
Speaker 5: a president and his allies of popularize that his deep
Speaker 5: state was preventing him from doing from implementing his agenda.
Speaker 5: That is untrue. There was a group of people preventing
Speaker 5: him from doing things that are illegal, and you swear
Speaker 5: an oath to the Constitution and to not break the law,
Speaker 5: and you don't swear an oath to a man. And so,
Speaker 5: you know, a lot of those things that we blocked
Speaker 5: in term one, of course, have become his priorities in
Speaker 5: term two. And that includes, as we're seeing now, these
Speaker 5: very very disturbing uses of the United States military that
Speaker 5: we now have coast to coast initial deployments of troops
Speaker 5: from LA to Washington VC. But these are things he
Speaker 5: fantasized about in the first terms. And make no mistake,
Speaker 5: you know, in his mind, the ostensible reason for doing
Speaker 5: these things was something like immigration or law in order.
Speaker 5: But he relished the possibility of having a standing presidence
Speaker 5: of US forces in cities that didn't agree with him,
Speaker 5: in democratic cities, and that was something that the time
Speaker 5: kind of rolled their eyes and said, yeah, but he
Speaker 5: probably really doesn't think that, right, He doesn't really want
Speaker 5: to put these in democratics. So they said, no, that's
Speaker 5: absolutely what the president wants to do. And true to form,
Speaker 5: as he always does, he has now spelled that out
Speaker 5: in black and white there's that truth so post from
Speaker 5: like six weeks ago where he says I want to
Speaker 5: go into Democrat cities. I mean he has said the
Speaker 5: quiet part out loud and we need to take them seriously.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, So talk to me about like this
Speaker 1: idea of sending he sent the national California National Guard.
Speaker 1: He federalized the Guard and sent them in to Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: You know, they had no place to sleep, they had
Speaker 1: nothing to eat, they were there, nothing really happened. Now
Speaker 1: they're gone. Now he's doing it in d C. Explained
Speaker 1: us as someone who worked in the administration why he
Speaker 1: wants to do this, because I think it's important. I
Speaker 1: think it's lost on some of us why he wants
Speaker 1: to do it.
Speaker 5: Well, first, I'll say it's pretty remarkable that Donald Trump
Speaker 5: can deploy the National Guard to stop petty theft in Washington, DC,
Speaker 5: but seemed unable to do it to stop an insurrection.
Speaker 5: On January sixth, I mean everyone should be talking about that.
Speaker 5: There was an incident involving one of his political appointees,
Speaker 5: one of the DOSE staffers I think known as big Balls,
Speaker 5: and you know big Ball all gets punched in the
Speaker 5: face and Donald Trump deploys the National Guard into Washington, DC,
Speaker 5: Yet hundreds thousands of rioters storm the United States Capital
Speaker 5: and he sits on his hands and watches from the
Speaker 5: outer oval. That's really disgusting to me as an American.
Speaker 5: Look putting that aside for a moment, what I think
Speaker 5: happened in la is I genuinely think Donald Trump and
Speaker 5: Stephen Miller were disappointed that the people of Los Angeles
Speaker 5: showed so much restraint, and I didn't even think that
Speaker 5: was going to happen. I was very worried that the
Speaker 5: presence of troops was going to lead to molotov cocktails
Speaker 5: and really serious attacks on folks, which is I think
Speaker 5: what the White House was hoping for, so they could
Speaker 5: induce a further craft down on the region and on
Speaker 5: the state. But people really really really held back, and
Speaker 5: I think that that's very important, and so ultimately they
Speaker 5: rolled back that presence. But now you're seeing this being
Speaker 5: done in Washington, d C. I don't imagine this is
Speaker 5: going to be like Los Angeles. I would bet that
Speaker 5: for the rest of the Trump presidency, at least, either
Speaker 5: the National Guard or other federal agents des floyd on
Speaker 5: those streets because Donald Trump is saying right now, it's
Speaker 5: just because there's been a spike in theft in Washington
Speaker 5: which turns out not to be tearor there's been to
Speaker 5: define in Prime and Washington, DC over the past two years.
Speaker 5: But in reality, he's been talking for years and years
Speaker 5: about federalizing Washington, DC. And that's what you always have
Speaker 5: to look at with Donald Trump is you have to
Speaker 5: look away from the proximate cause he says, this is
Speaker 5: why I'm doing this thing right now, it's because of
Speaker 5: a caravan that's coming forwards the US border. No no, no, no, no,
Speaker 5: You've got to go back in time and see what
Speaker 5: he's been talking about. Take picture, and he has been
Speaker 5: talking about reclaiming that city, not only staying away from
Speaker 5: DC statement, but taking Washington, d C and putting it
Speaker 5: fully under federal control once again. That is I think
Speaker 5: his endgame here, and you're going to see it likely
Speaker 5: happen in gradiations starting with this crackdown on street crime
Speaker 5: right their number.
Speaker 1: It never is really about what he says it is.
Speaker 1: It's always about something weird and also some kind of
Speaker 1: weird history. He has one of the things that there
Speaker 1: are like small things that I think are worrying and problematic,
Speaker 1: like his Mara lagoing of the White House. Can you
Speaker 1: explain why things like that which seem very stupid actually
Speaker 1: are very important, because I think they actually are. But
Speaker 1: I'd love you to explain why.
Speaker 5: Some people hate this author. Some people love this author.
Speaker 5: But I'm a cider in this instance because she has
Speaker 5: a really good essay along these lines from a half
Speaker 5: century ago. Heinrand wrote this essay sometime during the Cold War,
Speaker 5: and I think it's all you know, something like the
Speaker 5: monument Men, And it's an essay about why autocrafts build monuments,
Speaker 5: and especially monuments to themselves. And the crux of it
Speaker 5: is that, you know, people who have such a high
Speaker 5: opinion of themselves in positions of government want to centralized control,
Speaker 5: make themselves dictators for life. They have an insecurity, they
Speaker 5: know that that legacy will not last forever, and deep
Speaker 5: inside they know the faulty logic that has led them
Speaker 5: to demand centralized control, and as sort of a projection
Speaker 5: to cover up for that, they go build monuments to themselves.
Speaker 5: And not only is this a disgusting sort of thing,
Speaker 5: to witness its total misuse of taxpayer dollars and resources
Speaker 5: is to build up the image of one man who's
Speaker 5: in charge. And we see this all over autocratic countries
Speaker 5: throughout the twentieth century. It looks back. I mean, go
Speaker 5: through Hell. You just travel today through Eastern Europe and
Speaker 5: you can find still relics of Stalin's reign statues to
Speaker 5: Joseph Stalin that he himself had put up. This is
Speaker 5: a hallmark of autocrat is could go build these government
Speaker 5: structures for themselves. Now, Donald Trump claims that, for instance,
Speaker 5: this new ballroom he's building at the White House to
Speaker 5: leave his imprint on that property, is not going to
Speaker 5: be funded by taxpayers. It's going to be privately funded,
Speaker 5: and he says he himself is going to fund it.
Speaker 5: We know that not to be true. Many times throughout
Speaker 5: Donald Trump's career he said he's going to pay for something,
Speaker 5: you know, including checks to charities that he's pledged money to,
Speaker 5: and he ends up trying to find someone else to
Speaker 5: put the bill in the endgame. So I wouldn't be
Speaker 5: surprised at all if the taxpayers do end up putting
Speaker 5: a good chunk of this bill, or he crowdsources it
Speaker 5: to his supporters. And if that sounds incendiary looked no
Speaker 5: further than Donald Trump when he was crowdsourcing payment for
Speaker 5: a new debt for himself to his supporters back during
Speaker 5: the early days of the twenty twenty four presidential campaign.
Speaker 5: So I can see that happening. But the bigger thing here, Molly,
Speaker 5: as you allude to, is just what this symbolizes. And
Speaker 5: it symbolizes a man wanting to create monuments to himself,
Speaker 5: which is also just scratches the surface of all of
Speaker 5: these other autocratic tendencies. Seeing in the second term of Donald's.
Speaker 1: Brump, one of the things that I'm struck by, and
Speaker 1: I'm curious what you think, is it feels like there's
Speaker 1: just not a ton of resistance to him. I think
Speaker 1: people are actually really mad at him and are resisting him.
Speaker 1: But it feels like the institutions, like the billionaires, the
Speaker 1: people were supposed to be sort of stalwarts of whatever,
Speaker 1: seem to have really caved. Why do you think that is?
Speaker 1: And also what do you think that sort of where
Speaker 1: do you think that gets us? Right now?
Speaker 5: I've been sort of toggling back and forth the past
Speaker 5: few weeks, from little moments of optimism to a great
Speaker 5: deal of cynicism. About what's happening. And you know, No
Speaker 5: King's Day when that happened, that was sort of the
Speaker 5: apex of my optimism. There's actually a lot more people
Speaker 5: that came out and mobilized than I spect especially for
Speaker 5: what was a hot day and a lot of cities
Speaker 5: across the country. That was encouraging to see. However, as
Speaker 5: you point to the elites, the institutions that are under
Speaker 5: fire are largely capitulating. And this is really, really, really
Speaker 5: worrisome to me. And you know, I'll take an examples
Speaker 5: Tim Cook. People who know Tim Cook, CEO of Apple,
Speaker 5: know him to be deeply in his core opposed to
Speaker 5: Donald Trump and everything he stands to. And yet you
Speaker 5: had a Tim Cook last week who went into the
Speaker 5: Oval Office, gave Donald Trump this twenty four carrot gold
Speaker 5: gifts and allotted him rhetorically right there in the Oval Office,
Speaker 5: and then stood by as Trump verbally attacked his enemies
Speaker 5: and sort of flaunted his abuses of power. These sort
Speaker 5: of things are happening every single day where major organizations
Speaker 5: and institutions that he has threatened are demonstrating very clear fealty.
Speaker 5: And what I've been saying the past few days is
Speaker 5: we need people to wake up to the fact that
Speaker 5: it's not just the elites that are under threats. Yes,
Speaker 5: people like New York Attorney General Letitia James and Senator
Speaker 5: Adam Schiff all the way to myself are under investigations
Speaker 5: by Trump's administration has pure and clear retaliation for having
Speaker 5: opposed him, or investigated him, or spoke out against him.
Speaker 5: It would be easy enough to be a listener at
Speaker 5: home and say, I mean that sucks. I like those people.
Speaker 5: I don't want to see that happen. But how does
Speaker 5: that affect me? Well, the answer is one, it's made
Speaker 5: it easier, just from the strophe of a pen for
Speaker 5: the President of the United States to investigate whoever he wants.
Speaker 5: But the bigger picture is the legal institutions in our society,
Speaker 5: the schools that we go to, the businesses that we
Speaker 5: buy products from, the media that we consume, all of
Speaker 5: it is very slowly being warped because of his decisions,
Speaker 5: because of his intimidation. I mean major news outlets. There
Speaker 5: are people who are avoiding covering stories because they just
Speaker 5: don't want to folk the bear. Now, they themselves wouldn't
Speaker 5: think they're avoiding covering those stories because of a lack
Speaker 5: of courage. But it's just a path of least resistance. Okay,
Speaker 5: maybe not poke the bear, Maybe not cover that story.
Speaker 5: Because journalists are getting fired and people like Stephen Polder
Speaker 5: are getting fired. Educational institutions are capitulating and giving the
Speaker 5: administration what they want because they're launching these sham investigations
Speaker 5: and with folding federal aids to force those institutions to
Speaker 5: change their policies. It's actually changing what people are going
Speaker 5: to learn in the classroom. It's going to change the
Speaker 5: people they are surrounded with. And this is resulting in
Speaker 5: real numbers. Foreign students start coming to the United States.
Speaker 5: People are starting to boycott American products. He could go
Speaker 5: on and on and on. Prom's revenge is changing the
Speaker 5: world that we live in. And not long ago, I
Speaker 5: sat down with a friend whose family escaped Putin's Russia
Speaker 5: early when Putin was president, and he said, look, this
Speaker 5: is very similar to how it felt in those early
Speaker 5: days of Putin as the country had been very optimistic,
Speaker 5: Russia was democratizing, and then all of a sudden, this
Speaker 5: guy came in and started to intimidate every sector of
Speaker 5: society to demonstrate loyalty to him and his administration, and
Speaker 5: it started to have these really really perverse effects. You
Speaker 5: couldn't get good legal representation, you were worried about people
Speaker 5: ratting you out. It got really weird, and we're seeing that.
Speaker 5: I mean, Laura Lumber, one of the presidents closest outside allies,
Speaker 5: now has a tip line to allow people to phone
Speaker 5: in tips about disloyal government employees. You never had anything
Speaker 5: like that in the history of the United States, even
Speaker 5: with Parthyism, didn't have a one eight hundred number or
Speaker 5: email address that you could send in a tip about
Speaker 5: someone who was being disloyal to the presidents. This is
Speaker 5: really scary stuff, and it causes changes in behavior that
Speaker 5: are hard to see from the surface that have enormous
Speaker 5: secondary and tertiary consequences as people start to self censor,
Speaker 5: from the billionaire CEOs all the way down to people
Speaker 5: in the classroom. That's what we're talking about. Here is
Speaker 5: a full nationwide in past from this revenge campaign. I mean,
Speaker 5: this is something I think about all the time. How
Speaker 5: do you get back from something like this. You've worked
Speaker 5: in the federal government, you know obviously this is a
Speaker 5: real problem. You know, there's all sorts of stuff happening
Speaker 5: that's like, you know the kind of stuff that Nicks,
Speaker 5: I mean, making Nixon look like Lincoln, right, yep, just.
Speaker 1: At every stage. So I wonder, like, what do you
Speaker 1: think a sort of I mean, clearly Democrats have to
Speaker 1: win back power and this cherrymandering. I mean like like
Speaker 1: let's talk about Texas adding five seats. If Texas adds
Speaker 1: five seats, like right, so so talk us through kind
Speaker 1: of like I mean, is there a way to push
Speaker 1: back on you know, I mean clearly what's happened here
Speaker 1: is Texas has sort of I mean, I feel like
Speaker 1: overturning SBA, then the repeal of Roe, like you can
Speaker 1: see a straight line from you know, how we got
Speaker 1: to a place where now Texas is really a state
Speaker 1: that has is become a sort of a cunt of
Speaker 1: its own that is going to influence everything.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I think that you are seen right now
Speaker 5: in other states, especially democratic states, so far a very
Speaker 5: interesting kind of restraint. I thought what Gavin Newsome did
Speaker 5: the past couple days was extraordinarily clever, which is he
Speaker 5: proposed poessentially to tack any action that happens in California
Speaker 5: to what's happening in Texas. In other words, rather than
Speaker 5: just come back out and say California, you're going to
Speaker 5: retaliate by Jerry Manderin and doing the same thing to
Speaker 5: balance out the seats, he instead said that if Texas
Speaker 5: does go forward with this, it can potentially trigger it
Speaker 5: happening in California, which might change the incentives in Texas,
Speaker 5: because if you're a legislator in Texas and you know
Speaker 5: that essentially what California does is going to nullify what
Speaker 5: you do, then you may not want to go forward
Speaker 5: with it. But also importantly, it's newsome showing we're not
Speaker 5: just going to engage in tit for tat revenge and
Speaker 5: just go forward with it no matter what happens. We're
Speaker 5: going to wait and see and give them an offering.
Speaker 5: And I think that's what's important and interesting here is
Speaker 5: we've got to figure out an off ramp from getting
Speaker 5: into the twenty first century Jerrymanderin wars, because this could
Speaker 5: get very very ugly, very quick. And if we think
Speaker 5: our politics is broken right now, just wait until every
Speaker 5: single state in the Union we're trying to carve up
Speaker 5: every locality in awkward ways to win more seats. I
Speaker 5: mean we will be an endless legal and political warfare
Speaker 5: if that ends up happening. So I'm glad that Newsom
Speaker 5: has shown that restraint, but it is overall, I think,
Speaker 5: a very very bad signal about where things are headed.
Speaker 5: And make no mistake, this comes from the top. I mean,
Speaker 5: Donald Trump is so worried about the back two years
Speaker 5: of his administration that there's no telling to what lengths
Speaker 5: they will go to try to rig the system to
Speaker 5: get the right number of seats to prevent it from falling,
Speaker 5: saying the Democratic cans. And I want to say one
Speaker 5: more thing about Molly your point on how do we
Speaker 5: get these institutions to push back? And there's a really
Speaker 5: simple answer here, and it's what you see when individuals
Speaker 5: need to push back against something. I call it a
Speaker 5: bystander phenomenon. And I always use the example of you know,
Speaker 5: if you got a crowded subway and you see someone
Speaker 5: getting eaten nuts. We read these stories in the news
Speaker 5: and we're appalled when a whole subway car full of
Speaker 5: people fails to save someone from getting attacked. The scenarios
Speaker 5: that turn out differently are usually because one person in
Speaker 5: that crowd said, you know, and it's going to be
Speaker 5: scary to dive into that mess, but I'm going to
Speaker 5: do it knowing that it's they breaks this deal. A
Speaker 5: second person, a third person, a FOURD person will do it.
Speaker 5: But it's really scary to be that first person. And
Speaker 5: I'm not saying I've been that first person in my life,
Speaker 5: but I've been in the early waves of people.
Speaker 1: You've been the first person. You wrote the anonymous op
Speaker 1: ed from the admin.
Speaker 5: Well, and I'll say this, I want people to think
Speaker 5: that somehow, I, you know, felt like I was Superman
Speaker 5: behind the scenes. It was scary. It was scary, and
Speaker 5: I knew when I came forward it was going to
Speaker 5: rock my life, and it did. But in doing that,
Speaker 5: in coming forward, it made it a lot easier to
Speaker 5: recruit friends of mine from the administration, cabinet secretaries who
Speaker 5: had spoken out in private but not public, to get
Speaker 5: them to come forward. And I spent years after that
Speaker 5: really trying to get more of those people to come out,
Speaker 5: and the more that did, it made it easier and
Speaker 5: easier and easier for the next person. This applies to
Speaker 5: the big institutions in our society, and we've already kind
Speaker 5: of seen it with the law firms. Thank god, some
Speaker 5: of the big law firms pushed back, fought these unlawful
Speaker 5: executive orders from Trump to punish them, fought them in
Speaker 5: court and got a good outcome, and it started to
Speaker 5: make the others that capitulated looked very, very bad, and
Speaker 5: that I think prevented it from getting a lot worse.
Speaker 5: With the law firms. We need to see the same
Speaker 5: thing with universities in this country, with news organizations, with
Speaker 5: other institutions that are under fire. Some of them are
Speaker 5: going to have to step up and show courage, and
Speaker 5: that's going to cost a lot of pain for them
Speaker 5: in the short run. But you know, there are glimmers
Speaker 5: of hope with some of those institutions that this will happen.
Speaker 5: The place I have less hope is with businesses. I've
Speaker 5: seen none of the Silicon Valley tech executives say that
Speaker 5: Donald Trump's economic policies are terrible for tech and terrible
Speaker 5: for the United States, because immigration policies are terrible teching
Speaker 5: terrible for the United States. None of these people who
Speaker 5: know better and think differently in their personal lives actually
Speaker 5: showing it back down. Now that could change, especially if
Speaker 5: there's an economic downturn. There's an economic downturn, you're going
Speaker 5: to see CEOs jump off the Trump bandwagon and start
Speaker 5: criticizing the administration. But that's not what it should take.
Speaker 5: So you know, look, we're still early in this administration.
Speaker 5: But I have been, like you, very alarmed that a
Speaker 5: lot of these institutions that are under fire have capitulated
Speaker 5: and not wanted to be the first to fight back.
Speaker 1: Miles Taylor, thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 5: This was great, Molly. It's always wonderful to be with you.
Speaker 5: Thank you for your voice and for shining a light.
Speaker 3: No moment.
Speaker 1: Jesse Cannon.
Speaker 2: So, Molly, Gavin some is out here tweeting in the
Speaker 2: style of Donald Trump. It's really hard to read, even
Speaker 2: when you're making fun of him and you're cleaning up
Speaker 2: some of the language. But it seems he's going through
Speaker 2: with this mid decade district redrawing.
Speaker 3: What are you seeing.
Speaker 1: Good for Gavin? I mean that's the thing, Like, I
Speaker 1: don't care why you're brave, as long as you're brave.
Speaker 1: I don't care if you're brave because you want to
Speaker 1: be president? Fine, right, I mean, like, what are the
Speaker 1: other choices? Nothing so good for him? You know, do it,
Speaker 1: redraw the maps, fight fire with fire. You know, the
Speaker 1: way we got here was Democrats saying like they're the
Speaker 1: good guys. They're not going to do the bad stuff.
Speaker 1: Only they're going to let Trump just waffle over them.
Speaker 1: So good for Gavin. Redraw the maps, get going. This
Speaker 1: is like really really scary and bad and this is
Speaker 1: the only possible way that we keep our norms and institutions.
Speaker 1: So again I say, good job, Gavin, do it. Just
Speaker 1: don't have Charlie Kirk on your pod cast. That's it
Speaker 1: for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday,
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