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 Larry David Rose, Bill Maher's meeting
Speaker 1: with Trump as my dinner with Adolf.
Speaker 2: We have such a great show for you today.
Speaker 1: The New Republic's Mike Tamaski tries to make sense of
Speaker 1: where Trump's lawlessness is headed. Then we'll talk to the
Speaker 1: author of the Strength in Numbers newsletter, g Elliott Morris,
Speaker 1: about what polls can tell us about Trump's agenda.
Speaker 2: But first the news.
Speaker 3: So, Molly, there's a million reports out that Pete Haiksith
Speaker 3: is going to have to resign. I'm always skeptical of
Speaker 3: those in US, are you? But we do have the
Speaker 3: first Republican calling for him to resign, and it's the
Speaker 3: guy with the most Republican name of all time, Don Bacon.
Speaker 1: So Bacon has done this before. Bacon is sort of
Speaker 1: the Jeff Flake twenty twenty five. He calls Hegseth an
Speaker 1: amateur person, which for a weekend television hosts, that's not
Speaker 1: very nice. He stood up for things before. Now I
Speaker 1: want to just remind you that he is in Nebraska.
Speaker 1: He comes from Nebraska's second congressional district. Whenever you see
Speaker 1: a Republican standing up for something, and this is not
Speaker 1: always true, but it is often true, you should look
Speaker 1: at their district and find out if it's a red
Speaker 1: district or a purple district.
Speaker 3: A helpful thing is right on Wikipedia usually says their CPI,
Speaker 3: which a lot of people don't know, is the Cook
Speaker 3: Political Index, and I'll tell you how far it leans
Speaker 3: left or right.
Speaker 1: So Nebraska's second congressional district, which is where he comes from,
Speaker 1: it's an R plus three, so it is not a
Speaker 1: very Republican district. So Marjorie Taylor Green is in an
Speaker 1: R plus nineteen and Don Bacon is in an R
Speaker 1: plus three, and the difference between an R plus three
Speaker 1: and an R plus nineteen is Don Bacon says things
Speaker 1: like Donald Trump should be king. Marjorie Taylor Green says
Speaker 1: things like Donald Trump should be God king because there's
Speaker 1: seventeen percent more Republicans in her district. That is why
Speaker 1: I say to you, always be suspicious of Republicans who stand.
Speaker 2: Up, but not even that.
Speaker 1: I mean Bacon has done that, and I think it's good,
Speaker 1: and I think standing up to Trump is always good, and.
Speaker 2: There's a dearth of courage right now in America.
Speaker 1: But that said, just always be a little cynical because
Speaker 1: these people are cowards. That said, I do think we're
Speaker 1: going to see more standing up to Trump as his
Speaker 1: poll numbers creator and as they crash the economy. So
Speaker 1: I think it's very likely that you'll see more quote
Speaker 1: unquote bravery and well it is good and we do
Speaker 1: like it, and it may be the difference between authoritarianism
Speaker 1: and continuing as are you know, not perfect democracy. I
Speaker 1: do think it's worth remembering like public sentiment has changed.
Speaker 1: The people have different incentives, structures. They are not just
Speaker 1: doing this out of the goodness of their heart. That said,
Speaker 1: Bacon did say that he does not think texting sensitive
Speaker 1: or plans is something the Secretary of Defense should be doing.
Speaker 1: By the way, this man manages three million people. This
Speaker 1: is a humongous agency filled with a lot of important
Speaker 1: stuff that they're doing. Also, Elon wants to fire a
Speaker 1: huge swath of them because of Doge.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: In other bleak News, sixty Minutes, despite its weakening relevance,
Speaker 3: has long been one of the better journalists that out
Speaker 3: what our country has had and a long time producer
Speaker 3: is leaving because they feel the tide turning.
Speaker 1: On that So sixty Minutes has done some really really
Speaker 1: important journalism, especially right now. And this producer is a
Speaker 1: guy called Bill Owens. And every time someone does something
Speaker 1: like this, there are not a lot of great jobs
Speaker 1: in television journalisms. There are not a lot of jobs
Speaker 1: in journalism period. So the fact that this guy is
Speaker 1: leaving probably one of the best jobs in television. But
Speaker 1: he's been there for a long time, and he's a
Speaker 1: serious journalist. In fact, what he tells The New York
Speaker 1: Times is so having defended this show and what we
Speaker 1: stand for from every angle over time, with everything I could,
Speaker 1: I'm stepping aside so the show can move forward, he
Speaker 1: wrote in the memo, which was obtained by The Times.
Speaker 1: Sixty Minutes has faced mounting pressure in recent months from
Speaker 1: both President Trump, who sued CBS for ten billion dollars.
Speaker 1: You'll ten billion dollars to get you know what, CBS
Speaker 1: doesn't have ten billion dollars to give to Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: Some real Austin Powers stuff right there.
Speaker 2: Accused the program of unlawful.
Speaker 1: And illegal behavior. And this is because I don't know
Speaker 1: why he's mad at them.
Speaker 2: About this. Is this because of the Harris interview where
Speaker 2: they he felt that it was.
Speaker 1: Edited in a way that made her look better than
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just this is this thing with Trump.
Speaker 1: He's an Autocrat, and you know, not all of this
Speaker 1: makes sense or any of this, not even any of
Speaker 1: this makes sense. So this guy, bill Owens is really
Speaker 1: a hero to do this, to give up one of
Speaker 1: these really best jobs in media because you don't feel
Speaker 1: that CBS is doing what's right or that that's a
Speaker 1: big deal. And we really do applaud him in a
Speaker 1: world filled with cowards and a world filled with Paul Weiss's.
Speaker 1: Don't be a Paul Weiss, be a Mark Elias, be
Speaker 1: a Bill Owens, like, do the right thing, even if
Speaker 1: the short term looks bad. We got to stick up
Speaker 1: for what's right here some mind.
Speaker 3: Now we turn to the Handmaid's Tale like portion of
Speaker 3: our news unbelievable. The White House is presently a sessex apollo,
Speaker 3: such as baby bonuses, menstrual cycle classes, and some other
Speaker 3: questionable ideas to try to boost the birth rate.
Speaker 2: So here's the problem.
Speaker 1: For the economy to survive, we've got to keep having children,
Speaker 1: otherwise we're going to become Japan. But the problem is,
Speaker 1: I mean, we're probably going to become Japan anyway because
Speaker 1: of stiflation, but we won't have the cute outfits or
Speaker 1: any of the cool food. Will just be US with Japanese.
Speaker 1: But no, the problem here with this is that so
Speaker 1: Trump administration doesn't want immigrants. They hate immigration, they don't
Speaker 1: want immigration. But the problem is the only way for
Speaker 1: our economy to survive is to get immigrants. So instead
Speaker 1: of just welcoming immigrants and making a path to citizenship,
Speaker 1: which is what you would do if you were not
Speaker 1: completely insane, they're going to try to make the white
Speaker 1: people have babies.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 1: This is natalism, This is the whole idea is to
Speaker 1: get more white babies. And the problem is America is
Speaker 1: wildly expect and nobody has seen their way of life go, right.
Speaker 1: We all feel we have less than our parents, right,
Speaker 1: So how they're going to do this They have no
Speaker 1: idea because nobody wants have kids. So because the really
Speaker 1: we need old white guys to decide to get women
Speaker 1: to have babies. So here are some of their ideas.
Speaker 1: And I think that it's worth remembering that a lot
Speaker 1: of this stuff has been tried in Hungary by Victor
Speaker 1: orbon who Donald Trump wants to be. Most importantly, none
Speaker 1: of its work there still can't get people to have kids.
Speaker 1: And also Hungary is just disaster on every level. But
Speaker 1: here's where we're going, Donald Trump's. Here are some of
Speaker 1: Donald Trump's best ideas, and maybe not Donald Trump, maybe
Speaker 1: one of his creepy friends. Five thousand dollars baby bonuses
Speaker 1: to every woman after she delivers. That will cover about
Speaker 1: half of the tariffs for the first year.
Speaker 2: What else? They have?
Speaker 1: Menstrual psycho classes, because that is not creepy at all.
Speaker 2: There are calls on the government.
Speaker 1: To fund programs that educate women on their menstrual cycles.
Speaker 1: You're cutting headstart, okay, You're cutting free breakfast, You're cutting
Speaker 1: child's care, you're cutting early whatever medicine for kids. You're
Speaker 1: cutting food stamps, you're cutting snap, You're cutting all of
Speaker 1: these things. But you're going to start menstrual classes.
Speaker 2: Does anyone see how insane these are? These are insane ideas.
Speaker 1: But I'm excited to know that Vance and Musk are
Speaker 1: policy experts and advocates of boosting the birth rate have
Speaker 1: been meeting with White House AIDS. That's creepy people like
Speaker 1: Steven Miller, and they are boosting the birth rate. These
Speaker 1: are written proposals. I mean, this is their best mind
Speaker 1: sitting there trying, and they can just watch The Handmaid's Tail.
Speaker 1: They don't even need to spend so much time thinking.
Speaker 1: Just watch The Handmaid's Tale.
Speaker 3: All I'm gonna say is they don't bring us their best.
Speaker 1: They do not bring a service. By the way, I
Speaker 1: think Elon himself should be able to pretty much do it.
Speaker 3: He gets rejected a lot. I mean, you saw what
Speaker 3: happened with him in Tiffany Fong on Twitter.
Speaker 2: I mean, come on, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true. Doesn't
Speaker 2: she know the birthrate needs her?
Speaker 3: Okay, So, speaking of other bleak Handmaid's Tale like news,
Speaker 3: you know who I don't want having my health.
Speaker 4: Records speak for yourself.
Speaker 3: The guy who picks up road kill that testified that
Speaker 3: he had a braid wor RFK Juniors watching a disease
Speaker 3: registry to track autistic people, and he's going to use
Speaker 3: private medical records to make it happen.
Speaker 1: Oh, come on, it's too easy to remember that RFK
Speaker 1: Junior is planning to tell us. He's probably going to
Speaker 1: tell us the vaccines cause autism in the fall September
Speaker 1: yeh time, Yeah, September again, an autism registry. I just
Speaker 1: want to go back to this for a minute. RFK
Speaker 1: has a worm in his brain. It's dead. The worm
Speaker 1: is no longer eating his brain, but his brain is
Speaker 1: not fully recovered. No, some things the guy does are
Speaker 1: not terrible, like food coloring and organic food.
Speaker 3: We're going to talk about a really bad one in
Speaker 3: the moment of fuckery today.
Speaker 1: Right, this feels like Germany nineteen thirty three, like registry tracking.
Speaker 1: By the way, I just want to point out, like
Speaker 1: RFK is going to do this. He's ended all of
Speaker 1: these different programs like tracking all sorts of health stuff. Right,
Speaker 1: They're not tracking certain diseases like they're going to end
Speaker 1: all that tracking, but they are going to track people
Speaker 1: who have autism. So just explain to me how this
Speaker 1: makes any sense.
Speaker 2: No, don't, you can't.
Speaker 3: I was good to say it not to do with that.
Speaker 3: But what I will explain to you, which I'm sure
Speaker 3: you already know, is that Trump is now saying about
Speaker 3: his deportations that the reason they're going to start evading
Speaker 3: new processes, they cannot everyone a trial.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love it so much. Yeah, you can't give
Speaker 1: everyone a trial.
Speaker 2: Yeah you can.
Speaker 1: That's how we do it here. He said this during
Speaker 1: one of his truths. These truths we hold from his
Speaker 1: truth social America can't give everyone a trial. It's actually
Speaker 1: the bedrock of our constitution. He's very unhappy. He wants
Speaker 1: to ship hundreds of Venezuelan men to Seecott, the scary
Speaker 1: torture prison in Al Salvador. Funny, you know last week
Speaker 1: we had some Republicans go to Seacott to mug for
Speaker 1: the cameras in front of all the men in the
Speaker 1: shaved heads and the white pajamas, a little bit like
Speaker 1: Abu Grave right when we saw soldiers do that. Not
Speaker 1: another dark moment in American history. You know, It's funny
Speaker 1: because it's like, here we are Trump World trying to
Speaker 1: enact this Alien Enemies Act, which was every time it's
Speaker 1: been enacted, it's been during war, but it's also been
Speaker 1: sort of the darkest moments, Like nobody is like we
Speaker 1: need to go back to turning the Japanese, like that
Speaker 1: was one of our darkest moments, and that's where we
Speaker 1: are here more of the darkest moments. So not not surprising,
Speaker 1: but you know here we are.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I can't think of anything more American than our proud
Speaker 3: tradition of making people wait two years for trials, to
Speaker 3: the point that when we see somebody finally stayd trial
Speaker 3: for something, we all go I thought they were dead.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's what we do here.
Speaker 1: Mike Tamaski is the editor of The New Republic and
Speaker 1: the author of The Middle Out The Rise of Progressive Economics.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Fast Politics, Mike Tamaski.
Speaker 5: It's my favorite thing. Molly Jong Fast.
Speaker 2: We know each other forever. You taught me how to
Speaker 2: write opinion.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the moment we find ourselves in not great,
Speaker 1: not great great.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it gets weirder every week. This week's weirdness again
Speaker 5: with the fact that the Pope sized up jd Vance
Speaker 5: and decided it was time to go check out.
Speaker 1: I'm so bad, oh, the poor Pope.
Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely no. He was one of the great popes
Speaker 5: of my lifetime, which extended back much farther than I
Speaker 5: care to admit, includes briefly, although I wasn't sentient and
Speaker 5: wasn't aware of him, But it includes briefly John the
Speaker 5: twenty third who, from our point of view is the best,
Speaker 5: because you know, he was the liberal and he opened
Speaker 5: things up in the English mass of this and that.
Speaker 5: But then Pape Bendict never went as far as we
Speaker 5: would have hoped. But he did a lot of things
Speaker 5: and planted a lot of seeds that I hope will
Speaker 5: sprout in the future. Anyway, let's stop so.
Speaker 1: We know he was a good pope because Marjorie Taylor
Speaker 1: Green tweeted after he died today there were major shifts
Speaker 1: in global leaderships. Evil is being defeated by the hand
Speaker 1: of God.
Speaker 5: I did see that tweet. I didn't quite realize that
Speaker 5: this was what she was referring to.
Speaker 1: But of course I too did not realize that was
Speaker 1: what she was referring to. But later I realized that
Speaker 1: she was in fact referring to the death of the pope.
Speaker 1: Imagine if a Democrat did that. Imagine if a Democrat
Speaker 1: was like even just was like, I never liked him anyway.
Speaker 5: I mean, yeah, it's insanity, and it's reached an intolerable point.
Speaker 5: So what else do we have. We have a defense
Speaker 5: secretary who's obviously way it over his head. It's not
Speaker 5: as if we didn't know. Now, it's not as if
Speaker 5: we didn't know. When he was nominated, there were dozens
Speaker 5: hundreds of people who said, is he kidding? When Trump
Speaker 5: was talking last year about his beautiful tariffs, the most
Speaker 5: beautiful world word in the dictionary, there were dozens or
Speaker 5: hundreds of people saying, he's out of his mind. He's
Speaker 5: going to tank the markets, he's going to cause a
Speaker 5: global trade war, he's going to ruin the economy, and
Speaker 5: he just genuinely doesn't know what he's talking about when
Speaker 5: he says having an individual trade deficit with any particular
Speaker 5: country in the world is a horrible thing.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 5: Another aspect of that that is under discussed, in my view,
Speaker 5: is that he has said many times he wants to
Speaker 5: go back to like it was in the eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 5: when we didn't have an internal revenue service. The government
Speaker 5: just lived off tariff income. That is an insane thought.
Speaker 5: I could go into the numbers very well. Then, of
Speaker 5: course there's the jailing of innocent people. And Khalil, his
Speaker 5: son was born this week.
Speaker 2: Did you cactually miss the birth of his son.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because he's in a detention facility, but they moved
Speaker 1: him to New Jersey.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but he's a permanent resident.
Speaker 1: If I'm not mistaken, he's married to a citizen who's
Speaker 1: married to a citizen another citizen, and whose only supposed
Speaker 1: crime is having political opinion that this administration doesn't agree with.
Speaker 1: It's sick, and it's getting sicker. I think the good
Speaker 1: news here, if there is good news, and you know,
Speaker 1: you and I we talk about this all the time
Speaker 1: because we are friends and we tuk on the phone,
Speaker 1: is that my prior is that I'm a little bit optimistic,
Speaker 1: which is my worst quality and has proven me has
Speaker 1: proven to be my achilles heel again and again and again.
Speaker 1: But we're going to be a little optimistic here. It
Speaker 1: does feel as if this is still the gang that
Speaker 1: can't shoot straight. Like they may have had some help
Speaker 1: with the Heritage Foundation, with Project twenty twenty five, they
Speaker 1: may have had some more intellectual fortitude, or at least
Speaker 1: the appearance of, but ultimately, at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: this crew is still pretty incompetent.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and thank goodness for that, although you know, I
Speaker 5: also read that like they've executed x out of the
Speaker 5: total y number of ideas in Project twenty twenty five.
Speaker 5: And for a gang that can't shoot straight, that's only
Speaker 5: been in office ninety days. It was a surprisingly high percentage.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to talk about that today because I
Speaker 1: saw an academic writing about this.
Speaker 2: This morning, and I thought this was important.
Speaker 1: Executive orders are Trump World's favorite tool because they're really
Speaker 1: ultimately like he does them that are not legal, right,
Speaker 1: They're not thought out the way Democrats used to do.
Speaker 2: The more Republicans even.
Speaker 1: Like, you know, a lot of these are like I'm
Speaker 1: targeting Mark Elias for the Steel dossier and his lack
Speaker 1: of respect for how.
Speaker 2: Great I am.
Speaker 1: And they fall apart in court. And there's a reason
Speaker 1: they fall apart in court, because they're not legal, right.
Speaker 5: We have to hope they continue to fall apart in court,
Speaker 5: especially the one court that matters more than all the
Speaker 5: other courts. And we'll see what they have to say.
Speaker 5: You know, I think it's now obviously it's incumbent upon
Speaker 5: the Supreme Court to say something more forceful about returning
Speaker 5: Kilmar Abrado Garcia to the United States and getting him
Speaker 5: out of El Salvador, the one where he wasn't supposed
Speaker 5: to be sent. Yeah, what are there hundred and ninety
Speaker 5: five countries in the world they could have sent him
Speaker 5: to Lesotho. They could have sent him to Sri Lanka.
Speaker 5: They had any and they have a lot of people.
Speaker 5: This hasn't quite gotten through to a lot of people.
Speaker 5: But they can bring him back and then immediately that
Speaker 5: same day begin legal deportation procedures against him if they
Speaker 5: wish to do that. But they don't wish to do that.
Speaker 5: They're keeping him in the one place where they were
Speaker 5: told they can't keep him. So yeah, I hope the
Speaker 5: courts follow through. But then if the courts follow through
Speaker 5: and Trump says, you know, okay, enforce it, then where
Speaker 5: are we Look.
Speaker 1: The Supreme Court went nine to zero on the due process,
Speaker 1: and again I think the reason why the wording was
Speaker 1: so vague, at least what I've read, is that it
Speaker 1: was probably that Roberts was trying to get the two
Speaker 1: Fox News hosts to sign on, because when it was
Speaker 1: more specific, it was seven two. But even seven to
Speaker 1: two is humongous for this court. I mean, there's a
Speaker 1: court that overturned Road. This is a court that said
Speaker 1: Trump was a king a year ago. So you'll have
Speaker 1: to wonder if Roberts sort of understands how precarious this
Speaker 1: moment is.
Speaker 5: Well I think he does. I think he understands it.
Speaker 5: The question is whether he has the courage to act
Speaker 5: on that understanding. But I share your optimism to this extent,
Speaker 5: Molly More and more people are standing up. What Harvard
Speaker 5: is doing is very admirable because they didn't just say
Speaker 5: no to Trump. Now they've turned around and turned the
Speaker 5: tables on him and said we're suing you. And that's
Speaker 5: going out of their way and kind of asking for
Speaker 5: trouble in a good and admirable way. That should embolden people.
Speaker 5: The schools of the Big ten, I hope make this
Speaker 5: commitment of theirs. More firm does NATO Alliance affairs. I
Speaker 5: hope more law firms stand up, and you know, I
Speaker 5: think I do think. And finally, just to say what
Speaker 5: Rachel Maddow was showing every night for the first ten
Speaker 5: minutes of her show, all these demonstrations across the country
Speaker 5: over time, that's all going to matter.
Speaker 1: So let's just for a minute talk about Trump's Warren
Speaker 1: because I think it's important. This is straight out of
Speaker 1: the Hungary playbook, right, This is you go after because
Speaker 1: Hungary had these fine academic institutions. We saw orbon target
Speaker 1: academia it worked. He won, quote unquote, which means destroyed
Speaker 1: the academic institutions. Congratulations, and you no longer matter and
Speaker 1: the academics just move somewhere else. But this is a
Speaker 1: page from that, right, because as you and I both know,
Speaker 1: this is not this is not and in fact, this
Speaker 1: letter and I want to talk about this. So the
Speaker 1: letter that they sent, the task on Anti Semitism sent
Speaker 1: that had three different of these arts of the Trump
Speaker 1: government signed it.
Speaker 2: Right, major letter.
Speaker 1: Had all of these things that would basically put the
Speaker 1: university into receivership. We will supervise all your teaching, we
Speaker 1: will supervise all your admissions, we will supervise I mean,
Speaker 1: it was just like a you will know longer be Harvard,
Speaker 1: you will be Hillsdale. We're going to make Charlie Kirk
Speaker 1: your dean of admissions. That was basically what they were saying.
Speaker 1: What Harvard did right away was publish the letter and
Speaker 1: say there's no way we can fucking do this, and
Speaker 1: there's no way we will do this. The next day
Speaker 1: you had just donations, endless donations coming in, and then
Speaker 1: you had a groundswell of public support for Harvard. Contrast
Speaker 1: that with Columbia which acquiesced and now Trump wants more.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's the age old lesson people like this. You
Speaker 5: give them a little bit and they just keep taking more.
Speaker 5: But the bottom line question and all these kinds of things,
Speaker 5: Molly to me is always this, just like, how are
Speaker 5: you going to be judged by history? House? History going
Speaker 5: to see you. I think it's pretty clear History's going
Speaker 5: to judge Harvard very favorably when all this is over,
Speaker 5: and hope, hopefully we return to being a more or
Speaker 5: less normal democracy. Brad Karp, the head of SCAD and Arps,
Speaker 5: is not going to be judged so favorably. That's where
Speaker 5: people have to take their stands. And then you know
Speaker 5: it's going to include journalists someday too.
Speaker 1: You and me, baby, we're going to be this Selena Zito, No,
Speaker 1: I'm just kidding. When you look at this idea, right
Speaker 1: that history, it's partially that it's the right thing to do,
Speaker 1: but also even if you look at the law firms
Speaker 1: for example, so all of these law firms, right, they're
Speaker 1: scared about losing corporate clients. This is a money game.
Speaker 1: The corporate law firms. These guys make ten fifteen million
Speaker 1: dollars a year. I mean, this is like the really
Speaker 1: you know, these guys make a ton of money and
Speaker 1: they were worried about losing clients.
Speaker 2: This again goes back to these executive worders.
Speaker 1: None of these are you know, they say they're binding,
Speaker 1: they're fucking bullshit. It's all made up, right, You take
Speaker 1: Trump World to court and they lose. The law firms
Speaker 1: that said no way actually have been winning in court.
Speaker 1: So the idea here that any of this is, you know,
Speaker 1: it's all boogeymen.
Speaker 2: But the ones who made the deal, like scan now.
Speaker 1: Trump wants more because of course, and so I'm sure
Speaker 1: you read this or you saw him muse about how
Speaker 1: perhaps the pro bone of work that these law firms
Speaker 1: might do could be to help coal companies.
Speaker 5: I miss that, but I'm sure you know that's just
Speaker 5: for starters.
Speaker 1: But coal companies. Like, you're a young associate. You went
Speaker 1: to Harvard, then you went to Yale law school. You
Speaker 1: kill yourself working and working and working twenty hour days,
Speaker 1: and now you are going to represent a coal baron.
Speaker 5: Right, because they can't afford legal counsel after all.
Speaker 2: Also, yeah, exact, isn't that crazy?
Speaker 5: It's total craziness. We don't know what to be outraged at,
Speaker 5: because at eight in the morning, it's one thing, and
Speaker 5: by tenth thirty in the morning, it's another thing. At
Speaker 5: bout one o'clock in the afternoon, it's another thing. But
Speaker 5: we're outraged by all of them. And they're all authoritarian,
Speaker 5: they're all un American, and some of them are just well,
Speaker 5: they're not all. Some of them are just as you said,
Speaker 5: ignorance and stupidity and incompetence. So one I wrote about
Speaker 5: in my column this week was Vladimir Putin calling for
Speaker 5: a ceasefire and easter ceasefire and then breaking it right again, yeah, again,
Speaker 5: and then asking, well, you know, after what Marco Rubio
Speaker 5: said last Friday, what kind of thing do you expect
Speaker 5: Vladimir Putin to do? Of course, he's going to do
Speaker 5: whatever he wants. After the Secretary of State of the
Speaker 5: United States of America said, we're just going to check
Speaker 5: out on this unless we get something within days. It's
Speaker 5: not our problem. It's not our war. That's what he said.
Speaker 5: It's not our war. So you're sitting in the kremline
Speaker 5: and you just you high five the guy next to you.
Speaker 5: And now I take it back to Trump saying many
Speaker 5: many times on the campaign trail. I will solve that
Speaker 5: on my first day, in my first twenty four hours.
Speaker 5: As I wrote a lot of times, when people say
Speaker 5: use a phrase like day one, everybody understands they don't
Speaker 5: mean it literally. But he did mean this letter he
Speaker 5: said on the first day, in the first twenty four hours,
Speaker 5: and he said it over and over again. Who was
Speaker 5: idiot enough to believe that?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: But again, I wonder if you could speak to little
Speaker 1: Marco's incredible weakness here.
Speaker 2: He has his job. You've seen other Secretaries of State.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of Rex Tillerson, right, who have done this
Speaker 1: job and seemed weak, but not quite weak the same way.
Speaker 1: Why does Marco seem just so weak?
Speaker 5: I would say, because of what we know from his background. Okay,
Speaker 5: so he was running against Trump. He was originally appalled
Speaker 5: by Trump, and then he went through this short period
Speaker 5: before he dropped out of the race where he was
Speaker 5: an insult comic toward Trump. You know, he was like
Speaker 5: the Don Rickles of the Republican field of twenty sixteen
Speaker 5: for about a week and a half. And he cracks
Speaker 5: some very funny jokes. I must say, at Trump's expense,
Speaker 5: but then all that was gone and he became a sycophant,
Speaker 5: and he's been a ridiculous sycophant ever since. So of
Speaker 5: course he's been a sycophant. So I mean when Trump
Speaker 5: named him, I remember thinking to myself, Okay, that's actually
Speaker 5: a plausible choice for secretary of State for three reasons.
Speaker 5: One Rubio has been a sycophant for seven years. Number two,
Speaker 5: Rubio will pass unanimously because he's a senator and he's not,
Speaker 5: you know, a child bolister. And number three, he's a
Speaker 5: perfect choice because Rubio is a nothing. You know, Trump
Speaker 5: will be the real secretary of State. And I think
Speaker 5: that wasn't you know, that wasn't a particularly insightful reaction
Speaker 5: on my part. I'm sure it was your reaction. It
Speaker 5: was the reaction of hundreds of people. Those three things.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The other thing that Trump is doing this time, which
Speaker 1: he didn't do last time, which I'm wondering if you
Speaker 1: can speak to if you think it's going to work.
Speaker 1: Trump is this time not firing people, because last time
Speaker 1: he fired everyone and I think he thought that it whatever,
Speaker 1: it gave him less gravitas. So he's like knock, going
Speaker 1: to fire Hagsatz, despite the fact that heg sas is
Speaker 1: pretty fast and loose with a lot of that did
Speaker 1: the information that he probably shouldn't be fast and loose with.
Speaker 2: What do you think the play there is?
Speaker 5: I see, I'm firing he Sith. I mean based on
Speaker 5: what you said yesterday at the Easter Egg thing, but
Speaker 5: also just based on what we know about him. I mean,
Speaker 5: that's not their play. Their play is to turn everything
Speaker 5: around and make everything about the liberal media and the leftists.
Speaker 5: As Hexath said also at the Easter Egg hunt, nothing's
Speaker 5: their fault. Everything's the fault of the left wing media.
Speaker 5: And so you know that's that's really all they have
Speaker 5: to say. And that's that, and that Fox and Newsmax
Speaker 5: and Sinclair and the rest of them ate that, and
Speaker 5: that becomes the gospel. So if that's what you believe,
Speaker 5: then why on earth would you fire Hexith? You didn't
Speaker 5: do anything wrong because it's all the fault of the media.
Speaker 2: Right, So true, Mike TAMASKI, will you.
Speaker 5: Please come back anytime?
Speaker 2: My dear.
Speaker 1: G Elliott Morris is the author of these Strength in
Speaker 1: Numbers some stuff Welcome too fast polity ex Sally Morris.
Speaker 1: Thanks Wally This is very exciting for me because I
Speaker 1: had wanted to have you on for a million years
Speaker 1: when you were at five point thirty eight and you were.
Speaker 2: At a network, and network can be persnickety.
Speaker 1: So I'm very delighted to get to have you on
Speaker 1: because I think there's just a lot to learn from data.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I think, especially in this moment in politics,
Speaker 4: it's really good to ink ourselves two of the facts.
Speaker 4: I mean, this seems to be a problem that's getting
Speaker 4: even worse as the media fractures, and you have one
Speaker 4: party in power that is really in favor of that fracturing,
Speaker 4: seeming egging on some of the factlessness. So I think
Speaker 4: it's a good time for independent people to strike out
Speaker 4: and devote publications two facts. If I can be oral,
Speaker 4: self congratulatory here.
Speaker 1: And partisan too, a little bit partisan, and we like
Speaker 1: it here because I'm on the opinion side.
Speaker 2: So you have a bunch of things I want to
Speaker 2: talk to you about.
Speaker 1: The first thing I think we should talk about is
Speaker 1: Trump's popularity, because I do think there's this authoritarian push
Speaker 1: that the administration is doing. You could say it's dismantling
Speaker 1: the administrative state. You could say it's authoritarianism. I say
Speaker 1: it's authoritarianism, they say it's dismantling the administrative state. But
Speaker 1: whatever it is, I want you to talk about just
Speaker 1: sort of how popular he was when he came into
Speaker 1: office and sort of where he's gone since then, because
Speaker 1: it's almost one hundred days.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, whether or not it's authoritarianism or remaking
Speaker 4: the administrative state, it's kind of like calling a blackbird
Speaker 4: a grackle. That's the same thing. They're using the power
Speaker 4: of the state to their goals. To your question, that
Speaker 4: does seem to be having an effect on Donald Trump's popularity,
Speaker 4: on his approval rating in particular, but also his approval
Speaker 4: rating on handling certain issues. So on my stub stack
Speaker 4: at Strengthen Numbers, I have an average of Trump's approuval polls.
Speaker 4: It's sort of the intellectual follow of the average we
Speaker 4: had at five point thirty eight before it was shut down,
Speaker 4: and it has Donald Trump's net approval rating today at
Speaker 4: minus six. Okay, that's the difference between his approval rating
Speaker 4: at forty five percent and his disapproval rating at fifty
Speaker 4: one percent. So we find a majority of the country
Speaker 4: disapproves of the job he's doing today. And when he started,
Speaker 4: you know, his approval rating was at fifty and his
Speaker 4: disapproval rating was at forty. So this is a pretty
Speaker 4: big inversion of where he started as presidency.
Speaker 1: I want you to sort of track how this went.
Speaker 1: He was as popular as he'd ever been, won the
Speaker 1: popular vote.
Speaker 2: What were the sort of.
Speaker 1: Things that you can point to that change the trajectory.
Speaker 4: This is a hard problem to solve in social science
Speaker 4: because there's two things going on. One is just there's
Speaker 4: like a general trend down in your approval rating as
Speaker 4: time goes on. So you know Trump, twenty seventeen, Joe Biden,
Speaker 4: Barack Obama, all of those approval ratings just fell gradually
Speaker 4: as the presidency kicked off. The political scientists would say,
Speaker 4: this is because the party in power moves policy away
Speaker 4: from the average voter just by virtue of being the
Speaker 4: party in power, and you marginalize a small number of
Speaker 4: people with every policy change, and that just adds up.
Speaker 4: It certainly seems to be part of the explanation Trump's
Speaker 4: his net approval rating falling, you know, seventeen points is
Speaker 4: about how much it fell in twenty seventeen as well
Speaker 4: over this amount of time in his first term. But
Speaker 4: that's not to say that events don't matter. It's just
Speaker 4: that they kind of pile up on each other over time.
Speaker 1: Right, But there are certain For example, in Biden world,
Speaker 1: the Afghanistan withdrawal, say what you will about it, liked it,
Speaker 1: didn't like it. Most people didn't like it. I think
Speaker 1: pretty true, but it did not pull well. So and
Speaker 1: it really was a moment where his numbers started to
Speaker 1: just create. So I wonder, like it seems to me
Speaker 1: from what I understand, the tariffs are huge. That was
Speaker 1: a huge moment in Trump administration.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so on April second, Best Liberation Day, the day
Speaker 4: his tariffs go into due effect, he's at a minus
Speaker 4: two approval rating, and now now he's at minus six
Speaker 4: minus seven, And that's where most of the change in
Speaker 4: his apprewer rating has happened since April second. So you
Speaker 4: kind of have to use the other data to make
Speaker 4: the argument that these things are being noticed by people.
Speaker 4: But I think you have a strong argument there as well.
Speaker 4: It's the lead story on every news outlet, at least
Speaker 4: until last week. People say terrorists arey, you know, they
Speaker 4: don't like them by twenty points or nineteen points. So
Speaker 4: that's a compelling argument to me. I think that's probably
Speaker 4: the biggest political misstep for the administration so far.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the tariffs, and this gets to something you wrote
Speaker 1: about just recently on your Strength a numbers substaff. Should
Speaker 1: Democrats focus on immigration or the economy? So Gavin Newsom
Speaker 1: said this thing about how the tariffs were more detrimental
Speaker 1: than the disappearing people and that Democrats should focus on that.
Speaker 2: What what is the data say?
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, if you look at the answer to the
Speaker 4: question do you approve of the job the president is
Speaker 4: doing on X? Where X is like immigration, economy, trader,
Speaker 4: what have you, then you get about a four point
Speaker 4: approplarating for the president. So four percentage point more people
Speaker 4: say he approves than disapprove, you know. So you might
Speaker 4: see that numbers say like, oh, what he's doing is popular,
Speaker 4: But what's actually happening is this question is too broad
Speaker 4: to really capture the nuances of public opinion on immigration.
Speaker 4: That's my argument at least. So if you then ask people,
Speaker 4: you know, not do you approve of the job the
Speaker 4: president is doing on immigration, but do you think the
Speaker 4: president should obey federal court rulings even if he disagrees
Speaker 4: with them. For example, which is what's happening in the
Speaker 4: Abrego Garcia case. Eighty two percent of people say the
Speaker 4: president should obey the court ruling. If you ask, you
Speaker 4: should Trump keep deporting people just by the court order?
Speaker 4: Stop it? You know? Most Americans about sixty percent say
Speaker 4: he should stop. If you and sorry to list things,
Speaker 4: but if you ask people you know, should should the
Speaker 4: US government deport undocumented immigrants who have lived here for
Speaker 4: more than ten years? Than by thirty seven points people
Speaker 4: say no, don't do that. So my whole sort of
Speaker 4: project here at this immigration polling is just to get
Speaker 4: people to acknowledge that there's nuances, that there's some types
Speaker 4: of immigration policies that people like and don't like, and
Speaker 4: that the broad question do you approve of whatever the
Speaker 4: executive is doing is not super helpful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So let's just go another sort of minute on this,
Speaker 1: which is, and I think you're right when you write
Speaker 1: about this. You talk about the idea that in fact,
Speaker 1: parties can hold two things in their head, right, that
Speaker 1: you can focus on this sort of norms crushing of
Speaker 1: deporting people who have not faced through process, and then
Speaker 1: also the importance of not crashing the economy. So Trump's
Speaker 1: people seem and I think this is something I really
Speaker 1: want to dig into because today is yet another day
Speaker 1: that ends and why and so the markets are down
Speaker 1: and the bond anxiety gold is up. I mean, all
Speaker 1: the indicators that they that people are not happy with
Speaker 1: what the government is doing on the economy. Explain to
Speaker 1: me how it breaks down on Poland, because it's interesting
Speaker 1: and important.
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so maybe some relevant numbers here. About seventy percent
Speaker 4: of Americans say they don't like Trump's tariff policies.
Speaker 2: Seems pretty high.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's like a pretty negative signal with the incumbent
Speaker 4: White House.
Speaker 1: Since you're a data die, can you just explain to
Speaker 1: us how hard it is to get seventy percent of
Speaker 1: Americans to agree on anything.
Speaker 4: Seventy percent disapproval is pretty high. That's about the percent
Speaker 4: of people who said Joe Biden was doing poorly out
Speaker 4: inflation with seventy percent. And I think, and we acknowledge
Speaker 4: in hindsight that inflation was pretty bad in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 4: So it's it's getting to the point where it's like, oh,
Speaker 4: this is this is nearly an obvious and obvious truth,
Speaker 4: you know, something you can see with your eyes inside
Speaker 4: of with data.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the MAGA crew still has his back talk us
Speaker 1: through those numbers and sort of what they're thinking is.
Speaker 4: I mean, I think the White House is thinking here
Speaker 4: is that if they and shore up manufacturing in the
Speaker 4: long term, then that would be politically popular. If they
Speaker 4: can stick it to China, then those sort of victories
Speaker 4: are popular. But those are long term plays and in
Speaker 4: the short term you are like draining people's For one case,
Speaker 4: people are losing their jobs in manufacturing because businesses can't
Speaker 4: afford tariffs, and that is definitely showing up in the numbers.
Speaker 4: So by an eighteen point margin. For example, in the
Speaker 4: latest polling, people say they disapprove of Trump's trade and
Speaker 4: economic policy.
Speaker 2: Right, which is amazing for a Republican, Right.
Speaker 4: I mean, the Republicans had the advantage on this question
Speaker 4: for the last fifteen years, so he's really you know,
Speaker 4: one way of looking at this as Trump is sort
Speaker 4: of blowing probably the best asset Republicans had so the
Speaker 4: last five elections on his sponge that tariffs would work
Speaker 4: out right, completely uneminenced.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is something I think about a lot. What's
Speaker 1: the number of die hard magos. What's the number where
Speaker 1: you crash the economy and they're still like, my guy
Speaker 1: is great, he knows what he's doing.
Speaker 4: That's a great question. I think it's probably twenty five,
Speaker 4: maybe thirty percent. And the reason they say that number
Speaker 4: that that's the number of people who say you should
Speaker 4: deport immigrants who have been here for like two decades
Speaker 4: and have legal status. That is the number of people
Speaker 4: who say they support Trump's tariffs, who approve extending tax cuts,
Speaker 4: even if it means cutting Medicare, Like about thirty percent
Speaker 4: is what you get as the yes to all of
Speaker 4: the most extreme Trump policies let's call them extreme, the
Speaker 4: most trumpy policies. So I think it's probably about twenty
Speaker 4: five or thirty percent, But that would depend on the
Speaker 4: scale of the economic crisis, like great Depression level might
Speaker 4: be worst session level, Like I guess it depends on
Speaker 4: how many people are still paying for Fox News and
Speaker 4: X subscriptions. You know, there's a media influence going on
Speaker 4: here too.
Speaker 1: What percentage of America do you think is the group
Speaker 1: that went with Trump but has regrets.
Speaker 4: Well, if you ask people straight up, it's like five percent.
Speaker 4: If you ask people, Hey, who do you know, do
Speaker 4: you regret your vote? In twenty twenty four, low single
Speaker 4: digits of people say that they regret it, But that's
Speaker 4: a really hard thing to poll, Like people don't like
Speaker 4: to admit they were wrong. And if yeah, if you
Speaker 4: ask Kamala Harris supporters, do they regret their vote, it's
Speaker 4: also low single digits. So you know, these things can
Speaker 4: equal allow they can cancel each other out and have
Speaker 4: small effects on electro performance even if you're you know,
Speaker 4: even if there's some regret on either side.
Speaker 1: We talk a lot about sort of the middle of
Speaker 1: the country, like the ideological middle of the country, and
Speaker 1: I'm curious there's an added to the seventy percent of
Speaker 1: the country is the middle. They're all sort of ideologically
Speaker 1: much more centris. Do you think that number's right?
Speaker 4: What percentage of other country did you say you think
Speaker 4: was centrist?
Speaker 1: What we've sort of heard is that seventy percent of
Speaker 1: the country is sort of the is more centrist.
Speaker 4: I don't know, I'll just as some nuance here. So
Speaker 4: like usually people don't have moderate opinions on a bunch
Speaker 4: of different issues, and you call them moderates. That's really rare.
Speaker 4: Most people don't pay attention to politics, and they feel
Speaker 4: very intensely about a couple of issues, and then they
Speaker 4: pick countervailing opinions on a bunch of stuff. So they'll
Speaker 4: have a liberal, really liberal position on one thing, and
Speaker 4: I'll maybe trade in a really conservative position on the
Speaker 4: other thing, maybe immigration, let's say. And then we call
Speaker 4: those people moderates just because of the way that polsters
Speaker 4: and academics have combined all of those opinions together. But
Speaker 4: most people don't pay attention to politics enough to like
Speaker 4: be centrist. They're just kind of living their lives, and
Speaker 4: you can activate them on the left or the right,
Speaker 4: depending on what issues are most important to them. So
Speaker 4: one way to answer your question is, like, on immigration,
Speaker 4: maybe the country is more right leaning than the audience takes.
Speaker 4: But on economics, like what people want is stability, predictability.
Speaker 4: They want a president who's like committed mostly to fed independence,
Speaker 4: so the monetary policy is and politicized, and that like,
Speaker 4: you know, people also have this baseline expectation that politicians
Speaker 4: will react to data that shows they did something wrong.
Speaker 4: And I guess if you call that said all that
Speaker 4: stuff's centrist, I think it's at least rational, or that's
Speaker 4: how people should be behaving. Then definitely a lot more
Speaker 4: interests than the ones that are in the whitehounch So
Speaker 4: I guess.
Speaker 1: So interesting and also just you know, it's sort of
Speaker 1: not how I think about things, which I think is important.
Speaker 1: So I'm curious when you look at these protests, what
Speaker 1: do you see in the data on the protests?
Speaker 4: Yeah, the way that I analyze this is like what
Speaker 4: historical midterm cycles does this one look like? And the protests,
Speaker 4: like the number of people that are out protesting in
Speaker 4: the street, And that matters if it's like twenty million
Speaker 4: versus two, of course, but the real important thing is
Speaker 4: like are their protests at all? Are their mass protests?
Speaker 4: And then do those protests align with like popular positions
Speaker 4: from the opposition party that would indicate an opposition party
Speaker 4: doing well in the next election. Is the media responding
Speaker 4: to these protests, covering them, putting footage of people out there?
Speaker 4: It's like, yes, well then well then a lot of
Speaker 4: people are going to see the coverage of these protests.
Speaker 4: So this is sort of the data driven journalism in
Speaker 4: terms of like checking boxes empirically to try to match
Speaker 4: things up historically, rather than the data driven journalism that's like, oh, look,
Speaker 4: fifty million people turned out, Like I don't know how
Speaker 4: many people turned out the last weekend. That doesn't really
Speaker 4: matter because all the conditions for Democrats capturing the momentum
Speaker 4: from the protests are there.
Speaker 2: So interesting. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Elliott. I
Speaker 2: hope it'll come back.
Speaker 4: Okay, thank you, this is great.
Speaker 2: Moment. Jesse Cannon, Samali.
Speaker 3: The FDA under rfk's rule, it's suspending milk quality tests
Speaker 3: amid workforce cuts, which seems bad.
Speaker 1: I want to explain this to everyone here. Okay, they
Speaker 1: are cutting the workforce so that they can give very
Speaker 1: wealthy people a tax cut. There is no reason that
Speaker 1: this needs to happen. There is no like, all of
Speaker 1: this is like, well, we can't do this. We can't
Speaker 1: give very wealthy people a tax cut unless we cut
Speaker 1: what the government does for people. So let's cut workforce cuts.
Speaker 1: When it comes to food safety, because you know, again
Speaker 1: like this is the whole Trump thing. You don't understand
Speaker 1: why you have regulations until things go horribly wrong. So
Speaker 1: like that train that derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, you
Speaker 1: don't have those regulations until you have the train derail
Speaker 1: in East Palestine. Ohio, and everyone gets sick from the
Speaker 1: you know, the all the chemicals. That's what this is, right.
Speaker 1: So now they're not going to inspect milk quality. And
Speaker 1: here's what's going to happen. People are going to get
Speaker 1: sent for milk. This is why we have these quality inspectors.
Speaker 1: This is why we have regulation. Is because there was
Speaker 1: a reason. Like Donald Trump loves to talk about tariffs
Speaker 1: and how there was a time before the internal revenue system.
Speaker 2: I swear to God, like my man has he has
Speaker 2: like very few ideas and they are so stuck in
Speaker 2: his brain with like sticky tacky whatever. So he's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: there was a time when America is really great. You
Speaker 2: know during that time, like people would eat bad fish
Speaker 2: and die. This is the goal, right, It's like, you know,
Speaker 2: you drank that milk and it made you so sick.
Speaker 2: That's where we're going to folks, and you hear you
Speaker 2: heard it here first. And when that milk makes you sick,
Speaker 2: remember who told you this is all going to happen.
Speaker 2: And visit me in Seacott.
Speaker 3: I often think of discussions you and I have that
Speaker 3: a lot of people say, oh, this is all to
Speaker 3: benefit the rich, and this is one of those ones
Speaker 3: where it's like, no, this is just stupid.
Speaker 2: This is all to benefit the rich.
Speaker 1: I say, this is someone who was you know, who
Speaker 1: had a lot of advantages.
Speaker 3: Well, but this is also will affect the rich and
Speaker 3: is also just the stupid one that affects everybody.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I guess Elon has a food taster. If
Speaker 1: you don't have a food taster, this is going to
Speaker 1: be very annoying and perhaps you might die.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Trump's America. You probably won't die, but you
Speaker 2: might get a release it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune
Speaker 1: in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear the
Speaker 1: best minds and politics make sense of all this chaos.
Speaker 1: If you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a
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Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.