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 in a major upset, Democrats flipped
Speaker 1: a Pennsylvania State Senate seat that Trump won by fifteen points.
Speaker 1: We have such a great show for you today. The
Speaker 1: nation's own Jeet here stops by to talk about the
Speaker 1: group chat heard around the world, or as we call it,
Speaker 1: Signal Gazi group chat Gate. Then we'll talk to Michigan
Speaker 1: State Senator Mallory mcmarrow about her new book, Hey, Won't Win,
Speaker 1: Find your power and leave this place better than you've
Speaker 1: found it.
Speaker 2: But first the news Somali.
Speaker 3: You'll get into all the specifics of group chat Gate
Speaker 3: and Signal Gazi with Jeet when you talk to them.
Speaker 3: But one thing you guys didn't discuss is Tulci Gabbert
Speaker 3: really losing this moment since she seems to have amnesia.
Speaker 1: Who could have seen it? Practically everyone? Tulsi Gabbard. By
Speaker 1: the way, I want to remind people that Trump put
Speaker 1: Tulsi Gabbard in his cabinet because he loves a convert
Speaker 1: and because he felt that she was, you know, a
Speaker 1: Democrat for Trump is like his favorite thing. But she
Speaker 1: has always been not a great candidate, very weird. She
Speaker 1: was a Democrat from Hawaii in a cult, had a
Speaker 1: lot of pro assade of views. That's a very small
Speaker 1: wing of the Democratic Party that is both Democrat and
Speaker 1: pro asade. That's like no one. And she's just not
Speaker 1: a particularly talented politician.
Speaker 3: Now that's it, we should say, though some of the
Speaker 3: strategy was is that she does have a weird contingency
Speaker 3: of Joe Rogan fans who think that she's like this
Speaker 3: heterodox thinker, which will she's not.
Speaker 1: She's just dumb. But heterodox turns out to me just dumb.
Speaker 1: She was put in this administration. They had these hearings
Speaker 1: where happened to be poorly timed for them, and so
Speaker 1: you had these Democratic members able to ask Telsie about
Speaker 1: Signal Gazzi. And so we have Jim Hines Representative, Jim Hines,
Speaker 1: who's actually done really well and has been fighting trump
Speaker 1: Ism and not be clowning himself. And he says, so
Speaker 1: it's your testimony that two weeks ago you were on
Speaker 1: a signal chat that had all this information about F
Speaker 1: eighteen's and MQ nine reapers and targets on strike, and
Speaker 1: you in that two week period simply forgot that you
Speaker 1: were there. He asked. She said, my testimony is I
Speaker 1: don't recall the exact details, and then we got that
Speaker 1: sort of she then we saw Heinz from Connecticut comes
Speaker 1: back with your testimony was that you were not aware
Speaker 1: of anything related to weapons package, his targets and timing,
Speaker 1: and he basically just caught her in the line. He
Speaker 1: kept pushing and then on Tuesday, Mark Kelly followed up
Speaker 1: and he said, did the chat? He asked whether the
Speaker 1: chat had mentioned timing units, targets or weapons, and she said,
Speaker 1: I don't remember right there being a discussion around targets
Speaker 1: in general. By the way, Wednesday saw all of these
Speaker 1: chats released, and in fact they had all of these things.
Speaker 1: So she clearly either got hit in the head or
Speaker 1: is just pretending that she doesn't remember anything.
Speaker 3: Here we go, We should say that Congressman Nadler is
Speaker 3: calling for Gabbert and Rockcliffe to be prosecuted for perjury
Speaker 3: following this.
Speaker 1: Yes, good for Congressman Nadler for calling this out. Democrats
Speaker 1: need to be brave and be strong.
Speaker 3: So boy, though in unconstitutional dues Mike Johnson is making
Speaker 3: a I don't think outrageous is the right word.
Speaker 2: This is absolutely crazy.
Speaker 1: Well, it's just anti democratic. So Mike Johnson has floated
Speaker 1: this idea of eliminating the federal court right because they
Speaker 1: are not doing what Trump wants. This is so deeply
Speaker 1: problematic on so many levels. This is authoritarianism in action.
Speaker 1: Right Republican House speaker suggests potentially defunding, restructuring, or eliminating
Speaker 1: US federal courts as a means of pushing back against
Speaker 1: judicial decisions that Donald Trump doesn't like. This is so bad.
Speaker 1: This is the kind of stuff that is absolutely a
Speaker 1: no go. Like this is the stuff. This is victor
Speaker 1: Orbon in Hungary. This is how you end American democracy.
Speaker 1: The road to authoritarianism is paved with shit like this.
Speaker 1: This is just absolutely a no go. Democrats must push
Speaker 1: back on this if they have any business being in office,
Speaker 1: they must fucking push back again hard, because this is
Speaker 1: anti democratic. It's insane, it's a no go. This is
Speaker 1: the road to authoritarianism right here. This is actual authoritarianism,
Speaker 1: and it's really scary. It's really bad, and it needs
Speaker 1: to be stopped at this minute. Because this is the
Speaker 1: way we end American democracy right.
Speaker 3: Here, Somali DOJ's star and plointe one Big Balls. He
Speaker 3: reportedly ran a company that was used by a cyber
Speaker 3: criminal ring who also abused an FBI agent. And there's
Speaker 3: all sorts of crazy stuff in here. What do you
Speaker 3: see gear?
Speaker 1: So this is a guy who has all your data,
Speaker 1: right like Doge is in every single part of the
Speaker 1: federal government. They've put they're putting. You know, they know
Speaker 1: our socials, they know where we live, they know where
Speaker 1: we bank. I mean, this crew is in everything. And
Speaker 1: one of the guys, DOEG staffer Big Balls, provided technical
Speaker 1: support to a cyber crime ring. Okay, so a guy
Speaker 1: who worked with a cybercrime ring is in the Social
Speaker 1: Security computers, he's in the federal NIH Grant computers, he's
Speaker 1: in the this, he's in the that. This guy Big Balls.
Speaker 1: These people do not have clearance for a reason, right
Speaker 1: because they do stuff like this. Our entire federal government
Speaker 1: is set up to not have people like this have
Speaker 1: access to sensitive data. Here we have big Balls with
Speaker 1: access to sensitive data after having worked in a cybercrime ring.
Speaker 1: Do you think Elon Musk's Doge is doing good work?
Speaker 1: I do not. I do not want big Balls to
Speaker 1: be able to see my social security information. I do
Speaker 1: not want him to know what my identifications are where
Speaker 1: I live. I do not feel good about big Balls.
Speaker 1: You're lack.
Speaker 2: There's a quote for the age.
Speaker 1: Yes, I do not. Get here is a contributor to
Speaker 1: the nation and the host of the time of monsters.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to past politics. Get here.
Speaker 4: Always good to be on the program.
Speaker 1: Nothing going on, yeah.
Speaker 4: Full losey sull losing yeah, yeah yeah. Do you ever
Speaker 4: seen any good movies?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Nothing. So when you add the editor in chief
Speaker 1: of The Atlantic to your top secret signal chat and
Speaker 1: when you're talking about going to war, I mean, the
Speaker 1: level of incompetence here, I think is spectacular.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that. I mean, there's obviously incompetence, but
Speaker 4: I think that one thing that people aren't quite doing
Speaker 4: is like the incompetence came for about for a reason,
Speaker 4: which is like Trump himself does not like to keep records,
Speaker 4: and he's got into a lot of trouble in the
Speaker 4: past because as you're a president, the document your decisions
Speaker 4: and he's just like tears up papers, you know. But
Speaker 4: that's a typical you know, someone who's like, if not
Speaker 4: a mobster themselves, let's say mobbish, you know, like a
Speaker 4: mob friendly like you never like put everything anything in
Speaker 4: writing or work can be found. And it happens that
Speaker 4: this particular group chat was set to have like the
Speaker 4: messages deleted, which is again totally in violation.
Speaker 1: Of like presidential records.
Speaker 4: Yeah, presidential records orders. And I think that so it's
Speaker 4: not just I mean, obviously the screw up is putting
Speaker 4: Goldberg into the loop, but the actual practice, the actual
Speaker 4: practice was to try to evade scrutiny, to you know,
Speaker 4: evade like anything that people could find out, your information,
Speaker 4: that historians could find out, that Congress could find out.
Speaker 4: That's the other aspect now that now that we have
Speaker 4: the statements out there, I mean, this is old fashioned
Speaker 4: and Trump is not the only one guilty of it, right,
Speaker 4: But like, as I read the Constitution, it's pretty clear
Speaker 4: that the only Congress can authorize a war. Like it's
Speaker 4: like I think that now that's obviously the last time
Speaker 4: that happened was in World War Two. But having said that,
Speaker 4: even with all the powers that the president has, the
Speaker 4: normal procedure is that if you're going at bombing in
Speaker 4: their country. You you know, loop in the uh not
Speaker 4: THEAR the Atlantic, but the Senate for a relationsis committee, right,
Speaker 4: so this is the Congress you know, has some understanding
Speaker 4: that was not done. And also if you're going to
Speaker 4: be bombing in like you know, this highly sensitive area
Speaker 4: and allegedly doing it on behalf of Europe, one would
Speaker 4: think that you would be contacting the allies in Europe
Speaker 4: and then never the least you know, to let them know.
Speaker 4: And again that was not done. So I think that
Speaker 4: so I will all of which is to say, like,
Speaker 4: you know, like I understand the opp SEC thing, and
Speaker 4: like there's a lot of people that you know, like
Speaker 4: curly violations and rules and there's an easy thing to
Speaker 4: trip them on. But actually, like if you think about
Speaker 4: the contents of what's actually in those messages, like there's
Speaker 4: which are not getting the attention that they deserve. There's
Speaker 4: actually a lot of scandal there.
Speaker 1: A lot, and there's also trashing Europe. I don't want
Speaker 1: to those freeloaders anyway. And then I would also add
Speaker 1: that a week before they had gotten an email saying
Speaker 1: you got to watch out for signal it's not secure
Speaker 1: and the federal government has all sorts of safe ways
Speaker 1: to communicate with other like you don't have to put
Speaker 1: this in signal. There are special sort of army messaging
Speaker 1: apps that are more secure.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I said that those apps because their
Speaker 4: government apps would actually have record keeping procedures and it's
Speaker 4: literally done so that they could evade like having a
Speaker 4: record of us. I think that's interesting.
Speaker 1: I also think it's eighteen. This is a small group chat.
Speaker 1: It has eighteen people in it, including two that are
Speaker 1: just mal which I assume is mar A Lago.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's right, that's right. I think I think there's
Speaker 4: all sorts of weird misteries about that. There's like two
Speaker 4: separate ones for Rubio anyways. Yeah, there's a lot of
Speaker 4: people in that conversation, more than one would think is necessary.
Speaker 4: It's certainly done in a roundabout way. And yeah, I
Speaker 4: mean the thing that you mentioned about Europe is also
Speaker 4: I think the kind of big news which is this
Speaker 4: America first thing is not just for sure, this is
Speaker 4: something that like they talk about privately and it is
Speaker 4: and it was Vance that brought it up, like, well,
Speaker 4: we're trying to get the Europeans to pay for more stuff,
Speaker 4: and then why are we doing this bombing on their behalf,
Speaker 4: which I think is you know, like a fair question.
Speaker 4: I think, you know, if we're the other question one
Speaker 4: is asking that no one, you know, is generally not
Speaker 4: being asked, is the hoolies in Yemen where like they've
Speaker 4: been blocking the naturally we're blocking the SEUs Canal at
Speaker 4: the time, but they were threatening to block it if
Speaker 4: Israel resumed the bombing in Gaza, which they have done,
Speaker 4: which to my mind indicates that they the creverent administration
Speaker 4: knew ahead of time that the ceasefire was over and
Speaker 4: that issual is going to violate it, right, which I
Speaker 4: think is interesting in and of itself. But the second
Speaker 4: thing is if you just want to like keep this
Speaker 4: who has kind of open. The easiest way to do
Speaker 4: that is to tell Israel, you know, don't bomb Gotha
Speaker 4: like that you might e two months are doing this?
Speaker 1: But are you a leftist?
Speaker 4: Yeah? But I mean, I get this is a conversation
Speaker 4: that's not being had right, Like I don't I don't
Speaker 4: like your aphobia or whatever aspect of what he's saying.
Speaker 4: But he was actually raising an interesting question like why
Speaker 4: do you guys doing this like it? Actually this is
Speaker 4: not materially benefit the US. You just gets so little
Speaker 4: of it straight, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, Like are you
Speaker 4: getting stuff coming on this u US get out?
Speaker 1: No dvance? Is that worst person? You know meme?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 1: Yeah, when it comes up with stuff and you say, well,
Speaker 1: actually it's maybe not wrong, but he's obviously the way
Speaker 1: he's getting there is wrong. Right, I hate to help
Speaker 1: those free loading Europeans.
Speaker 4: Well no, no, but because he's in that world, and
Speaker 4: that's the way you can sell his caution. But I
Speaker 4: think his caution should be well taken, like if you actually,
Speaker 4: like before you bomb into the country, I think you know,
Speaker 4: like even if you're not a leftist, even if you're
Speaker 4: like a conservative yourself, does this benefit the United States?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 4: And I think that there's a pretty good argument that
Speaker 4: it does not benefit the United States. And we know,
Speaker 4: like a few people are raising this, but maybe not enough.
Speaker 4: And I'm the europe the hatred of Europe point, which
Speaker 4: is now we can tell since here that's we're thinking about,
Speaker 4: just because you know, like Trump is now like I
Speaker 4: know if you saw it, but it was just talking
Speaker 4: about you know, how we need greenland, you know we
Speaker 4: have to have right, well, we have to have it,
Speaker 4: and we have to have it. I thought this is
Speaker 4: very interesting, he says, for defensive reasons and maybe even
Speaker 4: offensive reasons. So like, yeah, I just look at a
Speaker 4: math right, what are you having a Greenland that could
Speaker 4: allow you to you know, lunch at a time who
Speaker 4: dot com? And you know I have to say, yeah,
Speaker 4: I'm a Canadian. I have sort of say like, okay,
Speaker 4: you know that's one country. Greenland is near is Canada,
Speaker 4: maybe Iceland or maybe Europe. Greenland is like nowhere near
Speaker 4: Russia or China.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 1: I think something though that I want to stop and
Speaker 1: go back on for a second is Jeff Goldberg in
Speaker 1: this group chat. He is mister military, my man loves
Speaker 1: a war, doesn't want to mess with any national security,
Speaker 1: very into military, so he just publishes a tiny bit
Speaker 1: of the chat right. He's probably more cautious than any
Speaker 1: other magazine writer, newspaper reporter. He'sn't made be never Trump
Speaker 1: in a certain way, but he's absolutely military industrial complex.
Speaker 4: That's why he was in the group chowb right.
Speaker 1: Exactly, and and Trump World says, no, he's lying. There
Speaker 1: is no war planning, none of it is, none of
Speaker 1: it is confidential, None of it is top secret. So
Speaker 1: he then releases a bunch more of it, which shows
Speaker 1: that they're all liars.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, absolutely, I know. I mean I mean Hexeth
Speaker 4: was like saying, like, after the White House has said yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: Goldberg was on the group, Chad, you know, like it
Speaker 4: was a mistake. Hexpt was calling it the hoax right
Speaker 4: after that, right, like I don't understand, Like I do understand,
Speaker 4: but like any other administration, everyone would be calling for
Speaker 4: his head, including Republicans. I mean having said that, I mean,
Speaker 4: you know, you and I are neither of us fans
Speaker 4: of the idea that you know, like they're Republicans who
Speaker 4: can be flipped.
Speaker 1: There are no Liz Cheney Democrats.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, but I think that on this particularly few
Speaker 4: because of the national security aspect. I mean, you are
Speaker 4: certainly seeing some interesting things from.
Speaker 1: Who are you seeing pushback from.
Speaker 4: This guy Bacon the Republican Congress ran and he was
Speaker 4: like you know, pre aswering pretty harsh words against heigstaff
Speaker 4: on the national security stuff. And frankly, I was very
Speaker 4: gratified to see on the insults to Europe. So some
Speaker 4: of these people in Congress in the Senate are you know,
Speaker 4: like obviously they're in hawk to Trump, but they're also
Speaker 4: very close to the military. I mean the military who
Speaker 4: take this stuff very seriously because you know, like their
Speaker 4: own careers depend on it. Like if they ever did
Speaker 4: anything like this, you know, they know they'd be they're
Speaker 4: not just real, they'd be court martialed, right, They'd be
Speaker 4: like in the dock, they'd be in jail. I'm kind
Speaker 4: of thinking, you know, this thing has legs. For that reason,
Speaker 4: the point you made have a Goldberg is totally on point.
Speaker 4: I mean, there's a way in which, like, you know,
Speaker 4: it's not an accident that he was a guy on
Speaker 4: the phone list that accidentally got put on. I mean,
Speaker 4: you know you can tell even though it's an anti
Speaker 4: Trump publication, they have a lot of ties with the
Speaker 4: national security state that doesn't like Trump or whatever. And
Speaker 4: so yeah, yeah, and he did what you would expect
Speaker 4: him to do. It rise a little bit of the
Speaker 4: you know, the New York Times before the Beya pigs.
Speaker 4: They knew the BA pigs was happening. They had reports,
Speaker 4: but they said, well, you know, this is the national
Speaker 4: security terrist.
Speaker 1: My man is in the signal chat for a reason.
Speaker 1: I think we can all agree all the national security
Speaker 1: people who wanted to go against Trump when to chaff
Speaker 1: So I also think that this like a never Trump
Speaker 1: Republican is meaningful right because he does understand the full
Speaker 1: implication of this, whereas someone like me who wants war
Speaker 1: to end, who actually is anti war and believes that
Speaker 1: it's bad and that we should not be going to
Speaker 1: war period, paragraph has a sort of different take on
Speaker 1: all of this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I mean I interesting. I mean the politics
Speaker 4: of this are such that it could cause a large
Speaker 4: trouble for the Republicans. I think that there might be
Speaker 4: people in the Republican Party who might not turn against
Speaker 4: Trump on like anything else, like ninety nine other things,
Speaker 4: but this one will actually like cause them to shift.
Speaker 4: And what they might end up doing, and what you
Speaker 4: kind of see the conservative the right wing people doing
Speaker 4: is like finding a scapegoat. And it looks like they're
Speaker 4: going to focus in on walt rather than just to
Speaker 4: save he Seth by going after Waltz, right, I think
Speaker 4: that they might have a private face a case like
Speaker 4: I think Waltz is probably the guy who like screwed
Speaker 4: up here. But having said that, I'd be like heg
Speaker 4: sas you know, he's the guy who was sharing the
Speaker 4: military secrets and he's like, I lied. I think for
Speaker 4: the Democrats or you know, the interesting thing is like
Speaker 4: not to let them have like just one escapecook like
Speaker 4: to actually like say honestly, like you know, like everyone
Speaker 4: you know, and it's the entire Trump like national security tea,
Speaker 4: everyone on that child signal, Yeah, has to resign.
Speaker 1: I mean what's so shocking is that nobody says, you know,
Speaker 1: this is crazy and unsecure, we should do this somewhere else.
Speaker 1: You know, this information could be read by Vladimir Putin
Speaker 1: or Chi or.
Speaker 4: I mean, like, yeah, I actually think like the Republican
Speaker 4: congressman I mentioned Vacan basically said that she said he's
Speaker 4: presearching that the Russians of Chinese were reading this because
Speaker 4: they would be wondering single which is an encryption thing.
Speaker 4: But it's not like fool proof by any means. But
Speaker 4: also the fact that no one raised that question, to
Speaker 4: my mind think means that like they're using signal and
Speaker 4: other things all the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And the hearings, and they had hearings between these
Speaker 1: two things, and in the hearings they just all lied.
Speaker 1: So Mike Wald said he had never met Jeffrey Goldberg.
Speaker 1: There's a picture of the two of them together. We
Speaker 1: heard Tolcy Gabbert just saying that she wasn't on the thing,
Speaker 1: when of course she was.
Speaker 4: I mean, just yeah, I mean the question I would
Speaker 4: have and if you had, I mean, this is the thing.
Speaker 4: I'll tell you got a Democratic Senate and Congress. You're
Speaker 4: not going to House. You're not going to get this.
Speaker 4: But you really should have an investigation because if they're
Speaker 4: doing this for this war, they're doing it for elsewhere.
Speaker 4: I don't want to read a situation where you know,
Speaker 4: they launch a nuclear war through WhatsApp, Right, you want.
Speaker 1: That's what's coming, is nuclear war through what'sapp. But I
Speaker 1: also think it's important to remember they are squandering what
Speaker 1: little credibility they have, and in fact, they maybe want
Speaker 1: Mike Walce to be the fall guy because he's lesser.
Speaker 1: But clearly this is a top down problem, Right you
Speaker 1: have your DoD.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, no, no, I have to say that's why
Speaker 4: at the beginning, if you want to understand, like, just
Speaker 4: think about Trump, who Trump is, how we handles records,
Speaker 4: how he trice to never use official channels. It's Trump.
Speaker 4: He sets a tone for for everything, you know, like,
Speaker 4: you know, let's just say, like you know, the fish
Speaker 4: rots for the head down, right, and it is exactly
Speaker 4: like sort of you know, it's the way that mafia communicates, right,
Speaker 4: it's like use peithes. You the only guys who are
Speaker 4: still using people, the wafiosos, and probably that maybe that's
Speaker 4: the next thing, maybe that they'll start like using peoples
Speaker 4: to communicate.
Speaker 1: We know they are trying an authoritarian takeover of the courts.
Speaker 1: We see Mike Johnson talking about wanting more power over
Speaker 1: the federal judiciary, willing to give away all of Congress's
Speaker 1: power to Trump except perhaps to do something to the
Speaker 1: judges to make their guy happy. I mean the fact
Speaker 1: that Mike Johnson is like basically at this point the
Speaker 1: valet at mar Lago, right, He's just about that he
Speaker 1: has that level of power and control. I just wonder,
Speaker 1: as we're looking at this, when things like this start
Speaker 1: to happen, at least in Trump one point zero, that
Speaker 1: was when they started to really undermine book trust. Now,
Speaker 1: since we're the United States and amnesia, no one remembers that,
Speaker 1: but I remember there being a moment where it was like, oh,
Speaker 1: everyone realizes these people are idiots. Is this that moment?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 4: I mean, I'd be curious to how much this resonates
Speaker 4: with the larger public. I kind of worry just on
Speaker 4: the political angle that this is, like, you know, it
Speaker 4: is an insider baseball thing that you have to be
Speaker 4: really invested in the national security state and to semby,
Speaker 4: I mean, has significance that they're you know, I honestly
Speaker 4: think Jeff Signed of the Washington Posts had like a
Speaker 4: really terrific report about how, you know, social Security system
Speaker 4: is falling apart. You know, like if I were doing
Speaker 4: the politics of this, I would like be talking about
Speaker 4: that because I have to you know, for every like
Speaker 4: one person that is really concerned about OPSAC, there's like
Speaker 4: going to be like fifty to eighty that they're like,
Speaker 4: you know, would freak out if they're bad do to
Speaker 4: get a Social Security check right, you know, like the
Speaker 4: social Security system. I have to say, like there's a
Speaker 4: lot a lot of the things the US coverent doesn't do right,
Speaker 4: but yes, actual social Security system, this is the crazy
Speaker 4: things like one of the great achievements of American civilization,
Speaker 4: Like you also set up that many checks that regularly
Speaker 4: with that level of security and then the fact that
Speaker 4: you know, like Musk has basically found nothing like against it,
Speaker 4: but it's still dismantling like this like magnificent system. That's
Speaker 4: a big thing, and that's you're already having people having
Speaker 4: trouble like you know, like being able to call into
Speaker 4: their Social Security office. I would emphasize that more than
Speaker 4: the op SEC stuff.
Speaker 1: To be honest, I think it's important that we talk
Speaker 1: for a second about my man, everyone's favorite, very very
Speaker 1: rich guy. You will know him. I will just read
Speaker 1: this out. He is the Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnik. He
Speaker 1: has this incredible quote. Let's say Social Security didn't send
Speaker 1: out there checks this month. My mother in law, who's
Speaker 1: ninety four, she wouldn't call and complain. She just wouldn't.
Speaker 1: She'd something got messed up and she'll get it next month.
Speaker 1: A fraud straw always makes the loudest noise, screaming and
Speaker 1: yelling and complaining. When your son in law is a billionaire, Yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, really sweat whether or not you get your
Speaker 1: Social Security check because you know you can call your
Speaker 1: billionaire son in law.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, no, absolutely, I yeah like that,
Speaker 4: you know, with the special elections and going to the returns,
Speaker 4: like you just have to like run that ad say, like,
Speaker 4: you know, this is a guy that Trump has put
Speaker 4: it tied to the economy. This is what they think.
Speaker 4: And I think you have like you know, tens of
Speaker 4: thousands of people are going to hear Bernie and EOC
Speaker 4: to hear about what are the proper channels for government
Speaker 4: communication rights. These are people that are freaking out of
Speaker 4: you know, the coming attacks on the ongoing attacks on
Speaker 4: Medicare and social Security. That's just where the juice is.
Speaker 4: I think, you know, like I think the inside washing,
Speaker 4: you you can do more than one thing at a time.
Speaker 4: Inside Washington, I think they have a lot of juice
Speaker 4: on this because I think Republicans are really rattle. And
Speaker 4: you notice one thing is interesting is they haven't been
Speaker 4: able to come up with a consistent story. Like usually
Speaker 4: if there is like, uh, you know, Republicans are being attacked,
Speaker 4: they come up with some sort of line and Fox
Speaker 4: goes with it, Everyone goes with it. They don't have
Speaker 4: a consistent story. They're kind of like fighting each other,
Speaker 4: contradicting each other. Like obviously, like the inside politics is
Speaker 4: great for the Democrats, you should use that, but like
Speaker 4: you know, stepping back, let's not forget what the real
Speaker 4: game here is. And the real game is that to
Speaker 4: point out that this is a party of oligarchs who
Speaker 4: are going to like steal the patriboni of the American
Speaker 4: people to make themselves to make like people who are
Speaker 4: billionaires into trillionaires.
Speaker 1: Correct, get here, Thank you for joining us.
Speaker 4: Okay, great to be on.
Speaker 1: Mallory McMorrow is a Michigan State Senator and the author
Speaker 1: of hate Won't When find your power and leave the
Speaker 1: place better than you found it. Welcome back, too fast politics,
Speaker 1: Mal I'm tomorrow so thrilled.
Speaker 6: Thanks for having me back.
Speaker 1: So you have a book. Let's talk about this book.
Speaker 1: But why did you write this book? Tell me everything?
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 6: I had a very strange year in twenty twenty two
Speaker 6: after a colleague accused me of being a groomer and
Speaker 6: sexualizing kindergarteners.
Speaker 1: Right, twenty twenty two was the year when they called
Speaker 1: everyone a groomer.
Speaker 6: That was That was the start of it, and a
Speaker 6: speech I gave went crazy viral, and that afforded me
Speaker 6: the opportunity to travel the country. I was raising money
Speaker 6: to help flip our states Senate. Here in Michigan, but
Speaker 6: I was in more than a dozen states, and no
Speaker 6: matter what group I was speaking to, thousands of people
Speaker 6: said a version of the same thing, which was, I'm
Speaker 6: so overwhelmed. I know I have to do something. I
Speaker 6: have no idea where to start. That's what this book is.
Speaker 6: It is half memoir that is about my very unlikely
Speaker 6: and unplanned journey into politics and everything I've learned along
Speaker 6: the way. And then the second part is a very
Speaker 6: practical step by step guide for anyone and everyone, based
Speaker 6: on what I've learned on how to get involved and
Speaker 6: make a real difference, because we're going to need every
Speaker 6: damn person in this country to participate to get out
Speaker 6: of this mess.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean you are in Michigan. You are on
Speaker 1: the ground where this is all happening. What are the
Speaker 1: vibes in Michigan. Because I know what the vibes in
Speaker 1: New York are, and they're not the same as the vibes,
Speaker 1: Like the vibes in DC are just cataclysmic. The vibes
Speaker 1: in New York are sort of like, it's all fine
Speaker 1: as long as we don't deal with politics. But what
Speaker 1: are the vibes in Michigan.
Speaker 6: I feel like, especially in the last two weeks, we
Speaker 6: have really, I think hit a turning point where the
Speaker 6: first month or so of the second Trump presidency, I
Speaker 6: still don't think everybody was in a state of shock
Speaker 6: and not entirely sure what to do or how to engage.
Speaker 6: And we are now seeing at every town hall and
Speaker 6: coffee hour an event that we do it is overflow capacity, crowds.
Speaker 6: Hundreds of people are showing up to all of these things,
Speaker 6: and they are very deeply engaged. They know what's going on,
Speaker 6: they know all of the chaos that this administration is unleashing,
Speaker 6: and they're not just demanding that Democrats do something about it,
Speaker 6: they're asking what they can do too. So I think
Speaker 6: this is a very unique moment where people are ready,
Speaker 6: they know they have to stand up and they have
Speaker 6: to do something, and they're looking for that guidance on
Speaker 6: what to do to fight all of this.
Speaker 1: So that I think is actually sort of hopeful, as
Speaker 1: much as anything can be helpful, this idea that there's
Speaker 1: a critical mass in this country who is not okay
Speaker 1: with losing their rights. I think there's so much anxiety
Speaker 1: in pundent world that this is going unnoticed. But your
Speaker 1: sense is that this is actually going quite noticed, very much.
Speaker 5: So.
Speaker 6: We had just at one of my town halls, and
Speaker 6: we've done numerous but just one a couple of weeks ago,
Speaker 6: we had three federal workers who had either been fired
Speaker 6: or fully expected to be fired kind of any moment.
Speaker 6: One who worked for NAH, one who she was so
Speaker 6: scared to even tell us what department she worked for,
Speaker 6: and one who worked for the VA. We had one
Speaker 6: woman who shared, She's like, look, I bring home sixty
Speaker 6: percent of our family's income and my kid's healthcare is
Speaker 6: on my job, and if we lose this, you know,
Speaker 6: I've always been really transparent about the fact that I
Speaker 6: had ADHD, And she said, my son does too. You know,
Speaker 6: the medication's expensive, This psychiatrist appointments are expensive. We will
Speaker 6: not survive if they just slash and burn and cut
Speaker 6: our jobs with no rhyme or reason.
Speaker 1: Right. Of course, some of this is in the courts
Speaker 1: coming back. Some of it is not. Do you have
Speaker 1: a sense that things are being fixed by the court
Speaker 1: or do you think that that's not really happening.
Speaker 6: No, And I think people recognize that too. People are
Speaker 6: keenly aware of the fact that the Trump administration is
Speaker 6: either directly defying court orders or that the courts are
Speaker 6: so overwhelmed at this point. I mean, the strategy from
Speaker 6: the administration seems to be an all out assault on
Speaker 6: every aspect of our government and our systems, from elections
Speaker 6: to the courts, to the pace of executive orders and
Speaker 6: the implementation of Project twenty twenty five. Mind you that
Speaker 6: they're not able to keep up, but I think what
Speaker 6: we're seeing is that hasn't led to people becoming apoplectic.
Speaker 6: It's led to them recognizing, you know, nobody's coming to
Speaker 6: save us. It's on us, and we have to show up.
Speaker 6: We have to show up in every one of these
Speaker 6: Republican districts because the only way that we fight back
Speaker 6: is by letting the people in office know that they
Speaker 6: have to do their jobs.
Speaker 1: You're in the Michigan State Center right now, and you
Speaker 1: are with these Michigan Republicans. It is some of them
Speaker 1: are are among the most craven. What are they saying publicly?
Speaker 1: What are they saying privately?
Speaker 6: So what's crazy right now is it's almost like public
Speaker 6: opinion doesn't matter. Matt All is the new Republican Speaker
Speaker 6: of the House, and he's modeling himself, as I called him,
Speaker 6: timu Trump this week where he's holding long, meandering press
Speaker 6: conferences an hour long, where it's he's just you know,
Speaker 6: he's doing everything Trump does, of just rambling incoherently and
Speaker 6: blaming everything on the Democrats. But I'll just add this, So,
Speaker 6: at a moment when Trump has just announced that he
Speaker 6: is going to eliminate the Department of Education, the state
Speaker 6: House Republicans introduced a budget that slashes five billion dollars
Speaker 6: from our state education budget, which is twenty five percent
Speaker 6: of the budget. And now they're trying to backtrack and say, oh,
Speaker 6: this is a stop gap spending measure, which is not
Speaker 6: something that we do here in Michigan.
Speaker 1: By the way, our.
Speaker 6: Budget is due October first or nowhere near the end,
Speaker 6: and they don't care. I think that people are going
Speaker 6: to have to push back. But it has been devastating
Speaker 6: to see that the lessons are just do what Trump does.
Speaker 6: This is Trump's Republican party all the way down to
Speaker 6: the state level.
Speaker 1: This is what we keep seeing, right, a Republican party
Speaker 1: that does not care about public opinion. Right, But what
Speaker 1: do they think is going to happen? Do they think
Speaker 1: there won't be elections anymore. I mean, what's the thinking
Speaker 1: here behind those craziness.
Speaker 6: So I think my sense is that there may have
Speaker 6: been some fear that Trump and trump Ism wasn't going
Speaker 6: to work, but that they've been emboldened by the fact
Speaker 6: that we're now in a second Trump presidency. So my
Speaker 6: sense is that the feeling on the Republican side of
Speaker 6: the aisle is if we go full speed ahead on
Speaker 6: the entire Trump agenda on. There have been talks of
Speaker 6: creating a state level Doge.
Speaker 5: There was a.
Speaker 6: Republican representative who wants to suggest that the Supreme Court
Speaker 6: overturn Obergefel to ban same sex marriage, and to ban pornography,
Speaker 6: you know, all of these things that are not about
Speaker 6: people's cost of living. And I think their hope is
Speaker 6: that if we just do it aggressively enough, that people
Speaker 6: will love us the same way that they love Donald Trump.
Speaker 6: But I think the mistake is that only one person
Speaker 6: is Donald Trump, and it's Donald Trump. And we've seen,
Speaker 6: you know, look at where Carrie Lake is right now.
Speaker 6: She just got fired effectively. Nobody's been able to replicate that.
Speaker 6: So I think that that's on Democrats. We can't just
Speaker 6: get caught up in talking about how bad Donald Trump
Speaker 6: is and how bad the Republicans are. We have to
Speaker 6: be aggressive and show people an alternative vision so that
Speaker 6: when we do have elections, because we will have elections again,
Speaker 6: people see themselves in a different way out of this mess.
Speaker 1: And it's with us for sure. This is a big question, right,
Speaker 1: And this is why Schumer got in so much trouble, right,
Speaker 1: is that these Republicans are focused on this idea that
Speaker 1: there's continuity, that his polls are much better than they
Speaker 1: were the first time, and so people like it better.
Speaker 1: And I'm not sure that it's true.
Speaker 6: No, that's not true at all. I think it's just
Speaker 6: trying to ride the momentum and the energy and the pace.
Speaker 6: And it's kind of a Jesus take the wheel attitude.
Speaker 6: And while while you're taking that attitude, you're burning everything
Speaker 6: down in your path. I don't even know that it's
Speaker 6: hoping that people won't notice. It's hoping that you've done
Speaker 6: it too fast for people to react, right, right, right, right.
Speaker 1: But you would think there'd be some like we need
Speaker 1: to keep the house kind of trying, right, You.
Speaker 6: Would think, I mean, we just haven't seen any Republican
Speaker 6: you know, say for maybe Lisa Markowski, who I can
Speaker 6: think of in the last kind of week or so,
Speaker 6: who's standing up. But at the end of the day,
Speaker 6: the votes are still the votes. So you can be
Speaker 6: brave in a town hall and you can say the
Speaker 6: right things, but until we see a version of the
Speaker 6: Republican Party that's willing to vote to get back to
Speaker 6: you know, not even vote with Democrats necessarily, but vote
Speaker 6: for normalcy, it's going to keep happening.
Speaker 1: Right exactly this twenty twenty four cycle, there were a
Speaker 1: lot of Democrats who bucked the trend. Right. There was
Speaker 1: Tammy Baldwin and Reuben Diego, and you know there were
Speaker 1: states that went to Trump. But also you know they
Speaker 1: they voted for Trump and left the bottom of the
Speaker 1: ticket blank, or they voted for Trump and Diego. Make
Speaker 1: sense of that to me as someone who does politics
Speaker 1: in Michigan, because I feel like Michigan's a great example
Speaker 1: of a state where you have everything. You have the
Speaker 1: Michigan Militia, you have ann Arbor.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, we are I tell everybody all the time.
Speaker 6: Michigan is the microcosm of the entire country, and we
Speaker 6: are the the coal mine. Michigan is one of those states.
Speaker 6: You know, at the top people voted for Trump, and
Speaker 6: we now have Senator Alissa Slatkin. The Democrats lost the
Speaker 6: state House, but it was only by five thousand, four
Speaker 6: hundred votes across four districts. It's a battleground state. It's
Speaker 6: a purple state, and we did see people, particularly young men,
Speaker 6: show up and vote for Donald Trump and nothing else.
Speaker 6: One of my colleagues was on Michigan State's campus on
Speaker 6: election day and he said that anecdotally, you know, he
Speaker 6: would watch young guys coming in maga hats. They were there, clearly,
Speaker 6: they bubbled in one thing and walked out. But Michiganders
Speaker 6: want to see themselves. This is a state where you
Speaker 6: do not have to register by party. We have open primaries.
Speaker 6: This is a state where people are fiercely independent. And
Speaker 6: if you look at people like Alyssa Slockin and Krista
Speaker 6: McDonald Rivett who won in a tough district in Congress
Speaker 6: and overperformed, it was about the economy and cost of
Speaker 6: living and frankly, just talking like a normal person and
Speaker 6: not taking any bullshit. And that is something that Michiganders
Speaker 6: can connect with. They see themselves in and are willing
Speaker 6: to vote for. And I hope the rest of the
Speaker 6: country takes notice.
Speaker 1: So in your book, you talk about the sort of
Speaker 1: how to make things better and that hate won't win.
Speaker 1: Explain to us how you got here and why you
Speaker 1: think this is the tact that leaders should take.
Speaker 6: So you know, I became known across the country for
Speaker 6: this speech that I gave that was a result of
Speaker 6: anti DEI, anti LGBTQ attacks on me, But I really
Speaker 6: reframed my response to talk about my own upbringing. I
Speaker 6: said multiple times throughout the speech, I'm a straight, white Christian,
Speaker 6: married suburban mom who knows that hate only wins when
Speaker 6: people like me stand by and let it happen. And
Speaker 6: throughout the book I talk about community. I talk about
Speaker 6: my mom raising me in a small town and a
Speaker 6: town wide yard sale that she hosted every year, and
Speaker 6: how we all got to know each other. And I
Speaker 6: firmly believe that rebuilding this country from our community on up,
Speaker 6: where you get to know your neighbors, where you share values,
Speaker 6: because at the end of the day, we all want
Speaker 6: safe communities and good schools and all these sorts of
Speaker 6: things that we will be able to with stay and
Speaker 6: defeat attacks that try to pit us against each other,
Speaker 6: attacks that try to say you are not doing as
Speaker 6: well as you imagined you would growing up, and it's
Speaker 6: somebody else's fault, whoever the person to be attacked is today,
Speaker 6: whether it's immigrants or the LGBTQ community, or women or
Speaker 6: you name the attack. But that requires all of us
Speaker 6: to put in the work, to get to know our neighbors,
Speaker 6: to get out of our bubbles, and to participate as
Speaker 6: a relationship with our country, not just as a vote.
Speaker 6: I am sick and tired of politicians saying this is
Speaker 6: the most important election of our lifetimes, because it implies
Speaker 6: that if we all just vote for this one person,
Speaker 6: then everything's going to be fixed. So what I try
Speaker 6: to do in the book is make the case for
Speaker 6: you know, this is about becoming an active participant in
Speaker 6: creating the future that we want to see. But it
Speaker 6: doesn't happen if you don't participate. Everything collapses.
Speaker 1: Yes, say more about that though, because one of the
Speaker 1: things that we talk a lot about is democratic messaging.
Speaker 1: What is the right message? And people use it to
Speaker 1: support their priors. So people on the far left, progressives,
Speaker 1: you know, want more progressive values. Conservatives want more conservative values.
Speaker 1: But I'm kind of obsessed with the chief of staff
Speaker 1: of the governor from Illinois, Pritzker, who talks about that
Speaker 1: it's you fight or you don't fight. So one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why that speech went viral was because you
Speaker 1: fought right, you didn't hide. So talk to me about
Speaker 1: you fight or you don't fight.
Speaker 6: It's absolutely right, and people want to see you fighting
Speaker 6: for them and fighting for their future. And I think
Speaker 6: where Democrats missed the mark in twenty twenty four as
Speaker 6: the campaign cycle went on was there was kind of
Speaker 6: the summer those guys are a weird line of attack,
Speaker 6: which I think was very effective, and then it ivotted
Speaker 6: towards the end of the campaign back to a very
Speaker 6: doom and gloom dark Donald Trump is a fascist and
Speaker 6: this is the end of democracy. And I actually Pluff
Speaker 6: is one of He followed me on Twitter. I guess
Speaker 6: I'm one of one thousand people that he followed. And
Speaker 6: sometime around October I recognized on the doors in Michigan
Speaker 6: this wasn't working, and I shot my shot and I
Speaker 6: DMed him. I don't know if he ever read it,
Speaker 6: but I tried to make the case. It cannot just
Speaker 6: be about all of the bad things that Donald Trump
Speaker 6: has done or who he is or what he's likely
Speaker 6: to do, because everybody already knows that, and people are exhausted.
Speaker 6: But if we don't give them a positive, if there's
Speaker 6: not an alternative vision for the future, and you know,
Speaker 6: I agree with pritz kerschief of Staff. I don't think
Speaker 6: it's between progressives or moderates or a type of policy.
Speaker 6: I think it's are you fighting for a future or not?
Speaker 6: And if we don't even talk about that future, people
Speaker 6: don't believe we're fighting for it. So, you know, I
Speaker 6: think about this in terms of I'm a member of
Speaker 6: the millennial generation. I'm an elder millennial, and I think
Speaker 6: for Gen X, millennials, gen Z, we are largely generation
Speaker 6: that are expected to do worse than our parents. That
Speaker 6: you can do everything right, you can play by the rules,
Speaker 6: you can work hard in school, you can go to
Speaker 6: college or go into a trade, and you still can't
Speaker 6: possibly fathom the American dream. You know, you can't afford
Speaker 6: to buy a house. We've seen house prices double from
Speaker 6: just twenty nineteen to now. And when people do not
Speaker 6: believe that systems work for them that the institution is
Speaker 6: working for them, and you have the Democrats are saying
Speaker 6: this is the end of democracy. People are not thinking
Speaker 6: about democracy as a system of government. They're thinking about
Speaker 6: it as the institution that's not working for them. And
Speaker 6: we have to lay out a clear vision and we
Speaker 6: have to fight for that vision, not just against Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: And I think that's where it's certainly very true. So
Speaker 1: what are your next steps?
Speaker 6: So I am haven't been shy beath. That's very seriously
Speaker 6: exploring running for the US Senate. Gary Peters are now
Speaker 6: senior senator announced that he will not seek reelection. So
Speaker 6: it's a big decision to make, you know, it's a
Speaker 6: big state. I do not take this decision likely, but
Speaker 6: will have an announcement very soon.
Speaker 1: All Right, we are waiting with Beta Brat. Thank you,
Speaker 1: Maler McMorrow.
Speaker 6: Thank you, Molly.
Speaker 2: No moment, Jesse Cannon, Molly.
Speaker 3: Trump is considering a compensation fund for pardoned January six ers.
Speaker 2: Let's listen to what he has to say here.
Speaker 5: I took care of him, I said I was going
Speaker 5: to and I did.
Speaker 7: Is there any talk of because they lost opportunity, they
Speaker 7: lost income, any kind of compensation.
Speaker 2: Fucker?
Speaker 5: Well, there's talk about that.
Speaker 7: There have a lot of people talk about a lot
Speaker 7: of the people that are in government now talk about
Speaker 7: it because they a lot of the people in government
Speaker 7: really liked that group of people. They were patriots as
Speaker 7: far as I was concerned, I talked about I talk
Speaker 7: about them a lot.
Speaker 5: They would treat it very unfairly.
Speaker 7: You know, the thing they show is they show a
Speaker 7: group of a thousand, what it may being fifteen hundred
Speaker 7: people down but they don't show you never see the
Speaker 7: crowd that day. It was the biggest crowd I've ever
Speaker 7: spoken before.
Speaker 5: It went all the way to the Washington Monument.
Speaker 7: It was so wide you couldn't you virtually couldn't see
Speaker 7: anything else but people.
Speaker 5: They never show that.
Speaker 7: Whether it was a million people or less than a me,
Speaker 7: I don't know what it was.
Speaker 5: But you know, I see Bertie.
Speaker 7: Sanders as a few people out there, they say, oh,
Speaker 7: the crowd is so big. They don't talk about the crowds.
Speaker 7: But a group of people went down there peacefully and patriotically.
Speaker 5: Remember that, all right?
Speaker 1: So I love that. You can't stop Trump from riffing
Speaker 1: on this just is like, you know, it was a riot,
Speaker 1: but it was my riot. My question for you is
Speaker 1: who is the reporter who's asking if they should compensate
Speaker 1: January sixth rioters.
Speaker 2: I could answer that for you real America voice.
Speaker 3: Nope, it is Greg Kelly over at Newsmax, of course.
Speaker 1: So yeah, should they be compensated? Yeah, if you do
Speaker 1: a crime might be entitled to compensation.
Speaker 2: Reparations for rioters is what I like to think of
Speaker 2: it as.
Speaker 1: By the way, again, this is like the Doge that
Speaker 1: you were going to get these Doge checks because of Doge,
Speaker 1: that they were going to get checked. They were going
Speaker 1: to make checks for you. You were going to get
Speaker 1: doged checks because they were saving you so much money,
Speaker 1: and every person was going to get five thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: That's not happening.
Speaker 2: I got mine with my Obama.
Speaker 1: Phone, that's right, that's right. You got it with your
Speaker 1: when you were on a death panel.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yeah.
Speaker 1: So anyway, they're going to say a lot of stuff.
Speaker 1: They're going to say a lot of lies. They're going
Speaker 1: to say it because they know they're incentivized to lie,
Speaker 1: and you're going to see more of this and it
Speaker 1: is going to every time be our moment of fuck.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
Speaker 1: every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday to hear the best
Speaker 1: minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If
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