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.
Speaker 2: And Donald Trump said.
Speaker 1: Today, I suspect I won't be running again unless you
Speaker 1: say he's so good, we have to figure something else out.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I'm with that words.
Speaker 1: We have such a great show for you today on
Speaker 1: the tapes Dan Nathan who talked about inflation, the economy
Speaker 1: that Trump is about to inherit, and all that other
Speaker 1: good stuff. Then we'll talk to Georgetown Law Schools Stephen
Speaker 1: Vladik about how the courts can protect Americans if we
Speaker 1: use them that way.
Speaker 2: But first the news.
Speaker 3: So, Molly, we got a barrage, a veritable cornucopia of
Speaker 3: the weirdest political appointments in presidential history. What do you
Speaker 3: see here?
Speaker 2: Speak for yourself, man.
Speaker 3: What have you seen to the Nine blood Sjungger the
Speaker 3: b are Yes?
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: Center for Publicans just found out that Donald Trump is
Speaker 1: planning to nominate Representative Matt Gates of Florida for Attorney general.
Speaker 2: I just want to say one thing here. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Perhaps Republicans will grow a spine and do real confirmation hearings,
Speaker 1: and then we'll see if he can make it to
Speaker 1: ag I'll just tell you, Senator Jony Ernst told The
Speaker 1: New York Times He's really got his work cut out
Speaker 1: for him, chuckling as she spoke. Senator John Cornyn from
Speaker 1: the Great State of Texas raised his eyebrows when reporters
Speaker 1: informed him of mister Trump's choice, and then said, I'm
Speaker 1: still trying to absorb all this, adding I really don't
Speaker 1: know him other than his public persona.
Speaker 2: Now you'll remember Matt.
Speaker 1: Gates, who's just been re elected to his fifth term,
Speaker 1: remains under an ethics investigation. You'll remember that he went
Speaker 1: to war with Kevin McCarthy because he blamed Kevin McCarthy
Speaker 1: for that ethics investigation. Then he did a motion to vacate,
Speaker 1: and Kevin McCarthy lost the speakership this conduct. This ethics
Speaker 1: investigation included allegations of sexual misconduct, illicit drug use as
Speaker 1: opposed to non illistit drug use, sharing inappropriate images or
Speaker 1: videos on the House floor.
Speaker 2: Imagine how bad they have to be.
Speaker 1: To be deemed inappropriate on the House floor, mis Using
Speaker 1: state identification records okay, converting campaign funds to personal use,
Speaker 1: and accepting impermissible gifts under house rules. Mister Gates has
Speaker 1: denied the allegations as political payback and says they are
Speaker 1: built on lies. That is the person that Donald Trump
Speaker 1: wants to be the Attorney general.
Speaker 3: Fun stuff, and then what's great is it gets worse
Speaker 3: with Fox News host Pete Hegsith, who's going to be
Speaker 3: the Defense Secretary, which I know some people thought it
Speaker 3: was going to be Mike Roda, who Matt Gates almost
Speaker 3: had a fistfight with on the congressional flour So I'm
Speaker 3: glad to see maybe their fistfight won't spill it into
Speaker 3: the White House.
Speaker 1: Pete heg Sith hosts the weekend show on Fox Fronts Okay,
Speaker 1: Fox and Friends Weekend, not the first tier Fox and Friends,
Speaker 1: but the weekend show. It's a good friend of Donald Trump's,
Speaker 1: which is basically the main quality that's looked for in
Speaker 1: these government jobs. He is basically most famous for having
Speaker 1: been in the military. And also, and this is where
Speaker 1: it gets really interesting, he said that he has not
Speaker 1: washed his hands for ten years because quote, germs are
Speaker 1: not a real thing. Speaking of Fox and Friends, heg
Speaker 1: Sith said the infectious micro organisms do not exist because
Speaker 1: they could not be seen with the naked eye.
Speaker 2: I inoculate myself.
Speaker 1: This is a person who went to both Harvard and
Speaker 1: Princeton and ladies and gentlemen. He is now going theoretically
Speaker 1: to lead the Department of Defense.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of interesting reactions to this. I might
Speaker 3: add inside the.
Speaker 1: Pentagon, there is no serious experience in the business of
Speaker 1: running the Pentagon or the National Security staff process. But
Speaker 1: I'm trying to retain an open mind and hope that
Speaker 1: fresh ideas. There is no serious experience there's I think
Speaker 1: he means he has no serious experience in the business
Speaker 1: of running the Pentagon or the national security process. But
Speaker 1: I'm trying to retain an open mind and hope that
Speaker 1: fresh ideas could improve things that get pretty stale or retired.
Speaker 1: For star General told CNN that said the common denominator
Speaker 1: is clearly loyalty, and while some loyalty is essential, slavish
Speaker 1: fealty is dangerous.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: We should just be happy that Judge Piro is not
Speaker 1: the Attorney General.
Speaker 3: The thing we talked about last episode that's so baffling
Speaker 3: to me is they're going to have such a small
Speaker 3: congressional majority and yet Gates is another one that they're
Speaker 3: throwing away the numbers on and at least for a
Speaker 3: few months.
Speaker 1: Speak for yourself, man, I think they're going to have
Speaker 1: I think it'll be six members of Congress that they
Speaker 1: will put in the Trump admin. So either somebody can't
Speaker 1: do math, or they have some plan to fill those
Speaker 1: appointments very very quickly.
Speaker 3: I mean not happening with the least the Phonic seat.
Speaker 1: Lee Zelden is not in Congress anymore, but Stephonic.
Speaker 2: There are a bunch of backbenchers and then.
Speaker 3: Macate molly so also he has appointed Tulci Gabbert as
Speaker 3: head of D and I.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Tulsi Gabert.
Speaker 1: Tolsi Gabert is most famous for I don't know, it's
Speaker 1: hard to talk about this because it's so insane. And again,
Speaker 1: like I know, I've said this before, but this is
Speaker 1: none of this is normal, right, None of this is normal.
Speaker 1: Tulci Gabert, she was a member of Congress. She's basically
Speaker 1: most famous for supporting Trump.
Speaker 3: What are you talking about? She was Tucker Carlson's fill
Speaker 3: in for years, right.
Speaker 1: And I just want to to you a little bit
Speaker 1: from the New York Times The news of missus Gabbard's
Speaker 1: appointment was first revealed by Roger Stone on his ex account.
Speaker 1: Mister Stone, a longtime friend advisor to mister Trump who
Speaker 1: was pardoned by the president in toy twenty posted this
Speaker 1: statement about miss Gabbard and said mister Trump had just
Speaker 1: sent it to him. None of this is normal. This
Speaker 1: is not how any of this is supposed to go.
Speaker 1: This is not how supposed to pick the Department of
Speaker 1: National Intelligence the head of that. There are many, many,
Speaker 1: many government agencies, hardworking, nonpartisan actors who are going to
Speaker 1: serve at the pleasure of missus Gabbard. She would oversee
Speaker 1: eighteen spy agencies and would be responsible for preparing the
Speaker 1: president's daily beef. The one good part about this is
Speaker 1: that there's no way.
Speaker 2: That Donald Trump drops the PDB, so you can put
Speaker 2: whatever you want in there and no one would care.
Speaker 1: Dan Nathan is the host of the On the Tape
Speaker 1: podcast and a c NBC Fast Money contributor. Welcome Back,
Speaker 1: Too Fast Politics, Dan Nathan.
Speaker 4: Molly John Fast. Great to be back with you.
Speaker 2: You know who's wrong about the election?
Speaker 4: Everyone?
Speaker 1: Me?
Speaker 2: Now me.
Speaker 1: I can't speak for everyone. I can only speak for me.
Speaker 1: And I was wrong.
Speaker 4: Listen, everyone was wrong about everything. And you know who
Speaker 4: else was I think wrong again? I think the Trump administrator,
Speaker 4: the Trump campaign was very surprised that they won again.
Speaker 4: And so if you think about your life over the
Speaker 4: last eight years or so, the one thing that you're
Speaker 4: routinely wrong about is Donald J. Trump. Let's just be
Speaker 4: very clear about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And actually I wrote this piece about everything I got
Speaker 1: wrong and the thing that I was struck because the
Speaker 1: polls were much closer than we thought. But what's interesting
Speaker 1: to me was that the polls were unable yet again,
Speaker 1: Donald Trump was underestimated by the polls.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but for one reason, And I know that's probably
Speaker 4: why you had me on to talk a little bit about,
Speaker 4: you know, the economy and the like. Here, I mean inflation, inflation, inflation,
Speaker 4: And I think you know, I said this on Stephanie
Speaker 4: Ruhl's show the other night. I mean, and I've been
Speaker 4: saying this for a year. I've said it on your show.
Speaker 4: The sarrogates that the Biden administration had about the economy
Speaker 4: were so bad. If you just think about the progress
Speaker 4: that has been made over the last couple of years
Speaker 4: as it relates to inflation. The CPI was above nine
Speaker 4: percent in the summer of twenty twenty two. It's now
Speaker 4: below three percent. Economic growth GDP is up near three percent.
Speaker 4: That's way above the pre pandemic highs. You know, unemployment
Speaker 4: is down near fifty year lows. You think about that
Speaker 4: combination here. They had a lot of really good things
Speaker 4: to talk about. They just could not break through. They
Speaker 4: did not have the right people discussing. And I'll just
Speaker 4: say one last thing, you know, I heard two weeks
Speaker 4: before the election, Mark Cuban was on a very widely
Speaker 4: listened to podcast, Sam Harris. I don't know if you
Speaker 4: listen to Making Sense, okay, And no one's brought up
Speaker 4: Sam Harris, as they've been spending a lot of time
Speaker 4: talking about out you know, Joe Rogan and what Trump
Speaker 4: did there. He gave a master class on the economy.
Speaker 4: He gave a master class on why inflation was, you know,
Speaker 4: elevated the way it was post one hundred year storm,
Speaker 4: which was the pandemic. You know, broken supply chains, you know,
Speaker 4: super like crazy demand for certain things. And it really
Speaker 4: wasn't in the administration's fault. It's happened globally, and so
Speaker 4: just their inability to articulate that. Why has Mark Cuban
Speaker 4: able to do it in forty five minutes on a
Speaker 4: podcast in a way that nobody in the administration or
Speaker 4: in the Harris campaign could do.
Speaker 1: No, I know, And they didn't even contact him until
Speaker 1: someone put them together with him, but I don't know who.
Speaker 2: And you know, before that, no one had even reached
Speaker 2: out to him.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't want to Monday Morning quarterback here,
Speaker 1: but I do think if Democrats are going to ever
Speaker 1: win another election, they have to go on everything all
Speaker 1: the time.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's what Trump did.
Speaker 4: This is a good example, though, Molly, and again, you know,
Speaker 4: going back and trying to figure it all out doesn't
Speaker 4: make a lot of sense because folks like you and me,
Speaker 4: we're super confident about what the likely outcome of this was,
Speaker 4: because if you just looked at all the momentum, if
Speaker 4: you looked at just the vibes, and again, I think
Speaker 4: the vibes are really hurting us, you know, in many
Speaker 4: many different ways here and the folks, you know, we're
Speaker 4: so focused on things that had nothing to do with
Speaker 4: the pocketbook of most Americans, and that's the problem. And
Speaker 4: so when I go back and I look at this,
Speaker 4: and you know, from an economic standpoint, I think about
Speaker 4: inflationary pressures and make no mistake about it. You know,
Speaker 4: the cumulative effects of inflation are really hard on working
Speaker 4: class people. I get that. But they never articulated away
Speaker 4: how they were going to prove that. And here's a
Speaker 4: great example. This was policy over politics. Okay, the politics
Speaker 4: of the Harris campaign just didn't get the message across.
Speaker 4: And the policy articulated by the Trump campaign was speaking
Speaker 4: to these people whether they're going to follow through on
Speaker 4: any of it or not. And there's a really great
Speaker 4: argument to be made that if they do follow us
Speaker 4: through on the policy, then it's just going to reignite inflation,
Speaker 4: and it's going to hurt the very people that migrated
Speaker 4: over towards voting for Trump because they wanted help on
Speaker 4: the economy.
Speaker 2: That's right. We don't know how long that'll take, right Well, I.
Speaker 4: Mean, listen, here's one thing that we do know. Like
Speaker 4: promises made, promises kept. That's what they kept on saying.
Speaker 4: All right, Well, they said they're going to hit China
Speaker 4: with some very very stiff tariffs. We already have some
Speaker 4: big tariffs on China right there. You put that on
Speaker 4: exports from China, that just makes it for consumers, for
Speaker 4: manufacturers here, it makes the cost of those goods go
Speaker 4: higher for us, and therefore it's money taken out of
Speaker 4: our pockets. It's not coming out of China and going
Speaker 4: right into our treasury. Right. They've also talked about extending
Speaker 4: the tax cuts you know, from twenty seventeen, that will
Speaker 4: basically go into the rest of this four year period,
Speaker 4: and that is also going to be inflationary, right. And
Speaker 4: then you think about the other thing about mass deportation.
Speaker 4: You take a lot of those workers right out of
Speaker 4: our economy, then you're going to see wages go higher.
Speaker 4: That's going to get embedded in the cost of things,
Speaker 4: the cost of doing business here if you're a manufacturer
Speaker 4: or anything like that, and therefore you're going to have
Speaker 4: major inflationary pressures from those three things.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And so the knock on effect is also that
Speaker 4: interest rates that started to go down because the economy
Speaker 4: was doing better and the Fed was going to be
Speaker 4: able to normalize interest rates, they're going to go back up.
Speaker 4: The US dollar is at fifty two week highs right now,
Speaker 4: so it's basically going higher because of the threat of
Speaker 4: future inflation. So all the sorts of things that you know,
Speaker 4: Trump ran on about how he was going to fix
Speaker 4: the economy. The economy was just fine. So what's going
Speaker 4: to happen is if he follows through on these policies,
Speaker 4: it's basically going to reignite inflation. It's going to be
Speaker 4: really hard on the working class people.
Speaker 2: Right, But I was told you would fix inflation.
Speaker 4: Well he told you that, right, and so he made
Speaker 4: a lot of promises over the course of his campaign.
Speaker 4: What really frustrates me, Molly, is that Republicans over the
Speaker 4: last twenty years have convinced working class people to routinely
Speaker 4: vote against their best interests. And it's not just economic, right. So, yeah,
Speaker 4: you could say that those those tax custs of twenty seventeen,
Speaker 4: you know, they basically borrowed a trillion a half dollars
Speaker 4: from the future. They gave it to corporations, they gave
Speaker 4: it to very wealthy people. And you know what happened
Speaker 4: with that, corporations bought back their own stock to the
Speaker 4: tune of one and a half trillion dollars over a
Speaker 4: couple of years after those tax cuts went in effect,
Speaker 4: and it's not just you know, economic stuff. I mean,
Speaker 4: just think of the fact that one of the first
Speaker 4: things that Trump wanted to do when he got an
Speaker 4: office in twenty seventeen, he wanted to repeal Obamacare. It
Speaker 4: was one of the most important legislations of the last
Speaker 4: fifty years as it relates to working class people and
Speaker 4: their access to healthcare. They wanted to kill that. Now
Speaker 4: they want to kill student debt relief. Right. They want
Speaker 4: to kill the Department of Education. How do you get
Speaker 4: ahead in the economy if you don't have a proper
Speaker 4: educational sort of structure, right, They want to cut Social Security.
Speaker 4: I mean, the list goes on and on here, and
Speaker 4: I just I don't see how if they follow through
Speaker 4: on any of those promises, how it's going to be
Speaker 4: better for working class people.
Speaker 1: Now, there's no world in which it's better for working
Speaker 1: class people at all.
Speaker 4: Right, And so you know what's going to be a
Speaker 4: voting machine on this is going to be the midterms. Right,
Speaker 4: So if inflation's d high, if middle class or working
Speaker 4: class people don't see the sort of benefits from some
Speaker 4: of the policies that he said he was going to do,
Speaker 4: they're going to have a tough time, especially with that
Speaker 4: narrow lead in the House. Obviously the Senate is increasingly difficult,
Speaker 4: you know, to take back. But again, I just think that,
Speaker 4: you know, the headline today is that the Republicans voted
Speaker 4: for fun to be the majority leader and against the
Speaker 4: will I guess of the Trump folks. And so maybe
Speaker 4: there is this kind of building sort of I don't
Speaker 4: know if you want to call it a firewall. We
Speaker 4: heard all about that in sixteen and seventeen, that there
Speaker 4: was going to be this firewall between you know, Trump
Speaker 4: and basically the means of you know, governing and the
Speaker 4: like here. So maybe that's a good sign. But then
Speaker 4: if you think about all these other people that are
Speaker 4: going to be nominated for these really important cabinet positions,
Speaker 4: it seems like these are a bunch of amateurs.
Speaker 2: Really a bunch of amateurs.
Speaker 4: Well let's call them hacks, right like, when you think
Speaker 4: about it that way, I mean, they're just kind of dangerous.
Speaker 4: When you look at some of the people that are
Speaker 4: being suggested for Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, Homeland Security,
Speaker 4: I mean, these people they just appear that they want
Speaker 4: to basically rule with grievance the way that he ran
Speaker 4: for office, and you think about, you know, just the
Speaker 4: level of cruelty that they want to kind of put
Speaker 4: in place when you think about mass deportations, you think
Speaker 4: about LGBT rights. I mean, the list goes on and on,
Speaker 4: and you know what, there's not a better example of
Speaker 4: this is like the hundreds of millions of dollars that
Speaker 4: the campaigns spent on this anti trans ad right.
Speaker 2: It worked well, it did work.
Speaker 4: But my point is like that's how I think they're
Speaker 4: going to rule. They're going to continue to kind of
Speaker 4: use these wedge sort of issues and they're going to
Speaker 4: keep dividing the voting blocks here, you know, the people
Speaker 4: in this country. And I just kind of really frustrating me.
Speaker 4: You can see I'm kind of fired up here. I
Speaker 4: haven't had the opportunity to do this on my podcast
Speaker 4: because our people don't want to hear it. They want
Speaker 4: to hear about the economy. They want to hear about markets,
Speaker 4: they want to hear about stocks and the like here.
Speaker 4: But this is something that you know, to me, I
Speaker 4: just think it's an accident waiting to happen again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh, no question.
Speaker 1: My biggest anxiety is that the FED will not stay independent.
Speaker 2: Here's a scenario.
Speaker 1: Trump puts in tariffs, Trump ends his tax Scott, it
Speaker 1: is wildly inflationary, Inflation goes up, the FED says We're
Speaker 1: not going to.
Speaker 2: Cut any more rates, and Trump's like, okay, you're fired.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, I think it's a very difficult thing for
Speaker 4: him to do that, by the way. I mean, he
Speaker 4: can fire a FED governor, a FED official for cause.
Speaker 4: You know, if you think about the way that Jerome Powell,
Speaker 4: who basically was also nominated by President Trump back in
Speaker 4: twenty and seventeen, he was his pick. Now, obviously he
Speaker 4: gave him a whole heck of a lot of pressure
Speaker 4: when he started normalizing interest rates by raising them in
Speaker 4: twenty and eighteen. But you just made the most important point,
Speaker 4: right when you think about what is likely to happen
Speaker 4: with tariffs and tax cuts and you know, mass deportation.
Speaker 4: If Trump fires Powell and they start pressuring whoever comes in.
Speaker 2: Place, I mean, can he do that?
Speaker 4: Well he probably could. I mean, like, let's think about it, right,
Speaker 4: Like the gloves are off here, I mean, the norms
Speaker 4: are out the window. I mean he's showed us that
Speaker 4: again and again and again, So he could certainly try
Speaker 4: to do it. And then it's up to the Federal
Speaker 4: Reserve or FED Chair Powell himself to kind of bring
Speaker 4: a suit and think about this. You bring any suits
Speaker 4: you want, the higher and higher they go, you get
Speaker 4: to the Supreme Court, which is loaded by Trump anyway.
Speaker 4: So like there's just you know, the guard rails are
Speaker 4: off here, and so I think we have to start
Speaker 4: thinking outside of those norms that we were, you know,
Speaker 4: very well accustomed to leading up to twenty seventeen, and
Speaker 4: they were just absolutely blown out. I think the other
Speaker 4: thing that, you know, there was this sense of inertia
Speaker 4: under the Biden administration. You know, we just didn't get
Speaker 4: a sense for like some of the accomplishments that they
Speaker 4: were doing, and it wasn't made you know, really clear
Speaker 4: to I think most Americans, and we just thought that
Speaker 4: they were just kind of governing, you know, governing in
Speaker 4: a sort of like very quiet way. And now all
Speaker 4: of a sudden, we have a guy back in office
Speaker 4: who's going to make noise every single morning. He's going
Speaker 4: to start to do the sort of chaos by tweet
Speaker 4: or by truth or whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 4: And that sort of uncertainty is really hard. I just
Speaker 4: want to say for businesses as they start.
Speaker 2: Thinking about market hate that right, Well.
Speaker 4: Yes, uncertainty about how they're going to deploy, uncertainly about
Speaker 4: the sort of countries that they're going to be able
Speaker 4: to kind of sell their goods end, where they're going
Speaker 4: to be able to manufacture their goods end, what the
Speaker 4: terrorists are going to look like, again and again. So
Speaker 4: the point about the independence of the central bank is
Speaker 4: that it just has a level of credibility that's away
Speaker 4: from politics. Right, So, the moment that you have a
Speaker 4: political figure like the executive branch, like a president, basically
Speaker 4: making decisions on interest rates, then you have a situation
Speaker 4: where you know there's going to be a lot of
Speaker 4: businesses that are not going to want to do business
Speaker 4: here in the United States because it just seems like
Speaker 4: it's going to be on its way to a Banana Republic.
Speaker 4: And that's not the sort of I think confidence that
Speaker 4: most business people want to have when they're doing business
Speaker 4: in a country.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but a lot of rich people did in fact
Speaker 1: vote for and support Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: So I mean, will they serve as a check on.
Speaker 4: M That's a great question. Okay, I wouldn't expect it
Speaker 4: from Silicon Valley. I wouldn't expect it from Elon Musk.
Speaker 4: I think all those folks you know in the tech
Speaker 4: community and the VC community, and then folks like Elon,
Speaker 4: I think they're in it. They know what they're in for,
Speaker 4: and they're going to let this guy do whatever he wants.
Speaker 4: I will say this about Elon Musk, it's a very
Speaker 4: unique situation. Like, yes, he is the most wealthy man
Speaker 4: in the planet. He's got three hundred billion dollars. He's
Speaker 4: got Tesla that relies on government subsidies, he's got SpaceX
Speaker 4: that relies on government contracts. He has you know, his
Speaker 4: ex you know Twitter sort of thing, which was obviously
Speaker 4: very instrumental in helping Trump get elected. But all of
Speaker 4: those they could have tremendous headwinds from any sort of
Speaker 4: government sort of action. It could be executive action, that
Speaker 4: sort of thing. So Musk on many levels has to
Speaker 4: say on the right side of Trump. And if you
Speaker 4: think about Trump's history with most people who get close
Speaker 4: to him from a governing perspective, it usually ends very bad.
Speaker 4: Now the same is true for Elon Musk, by the way,
Speaker 4: and most of his companies is TEFLA in particular, there's
Speaker 4: been massive, massive turnover. He's a notoriously difficult guy to
Speaker 4: deal with, So I think the tech community is kind
Speaker 4: of screwed. I mean, they know what they're in it for.
Speaker 4: The Wall Street folks. Is kind of interesting to me
Speaker 4: because you know, you look at like Howard Luck Okay,
Speaker 4: he's the head of Kennavic Sderyld. He's running this transition.
Speaker 4: He is like such a B or C player on
Speaker 4: Wall Street. The fact that he was able to work
Speaker 4: his way into this job is very interesting to me.
Speaker 4: That he gets to play kingmaker among Republican politics. You know,
Speaker 4: you won't see guys like Jamie Diamond, the CEO of
Speaker 4: JP Morgan. Yeah, he'll be on some council here and there.
Speaker 4: Might they have some influence on Trump as he thinks
Speaker 4: about tariffs, as he thinks about you know, dollar policy,
Speaker 4: as he thinks about regulation and the like. Maybe, But
Speaker 4: we also know from the first administration that he loved
Speaker 4: bringing those business leaders into the White House, getting the
Speaker 4: photo you know, ops, and then just kind of dismissing them,
Speaker 4: you know, one way or another. So to me, that
Speaker 4: level of kind of pressure from the business community is
Speaker 4: not something that's likely to work.
Speaker 2: Oh, I thought you were going to say it, maybe
Speaker 2: all we have.
Speaker 4: No, I don't think so. Listen, you know, think about this.
Speaker 4: If Jamie Diamond steps on the wrong side of Trump,
Speaker 4: if you, by accident says the wrong thing, there's a
Speaker 4: tweetstorm about the largest bank in the world. Now think
Speaker 4: about this. If you're a CEO of a company like that,
Speaker 4: you have lots of stakeholders that are really important. First
Speaker 4: and foremost you're employees, then your customers, and then your investors, right,
Speaker 4: and so you have a fiduciary responsibility to all of
Speaker 4: those groups there. And so the idea of getting involved
Speaker 4: in politics and being wrongside of one of the most
Speaker 4: vengeful sort of political figures we've ever seen in our life,
Speaker 4: besides like some of the worst authoritarian leaders we've seen
Speaker 4: over the last hundred years and developed countries. I mean,
Speaker 4: I think you have to be very careful. And it
Speaker 4: also goes back to Wednesday, the day after the election.
Speaker 4: Did you see that Satin Nadella Sundra, but Shi Tim Cook,
Speaker 4: all these CEOs of these major tech companies, these more
Speaker 4: co all those congratulates, they want to stay on the
Speaker 4: right side of this thing, and so again this goes
Speaker 4: back to norms. He can't run again. Supposedly he can
Speaker 4: do whatever the hell he wants. He was indicted a
Speaker 4: million times after his last administration. All of those fell
Speaker 4: by the wayside. Do you think he's going to be
Speaker 4: any more restrained right now?
Speaker 1: You're not making me feel better here, Yeah, tell me
Speaker 1: something that makes me feel a little better here.
Speaker 4: Okay, So one thing I'll just say. So. When Trump
Speaker 4: got elected in that big surprise back in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 4: overnight the stock market, they have these futures that trade
Speaker 4: on the stock market, they were down a lot. Okay,
Speaker 4: there were lockdown limit meaning that they put limits in
Speaker 4: place that it can only go down so much when
Speaker 4: it's down, you know a lot, right, And then at
Speaker 4: one point they just started rallying in the morning and
Speaker 4: they kept on going. And then a lot of folks
Speaker 4: just decided that all of these policies are going to
Speaker 4: be good for the stock market, it's going to be
Speaker 4: good for business, that sort of thing. So this time around,
Speaker 4: the stock market was very strong headed into this election.
Speaker 4: You could say that a bit of it had to
Speaker 4: do with the anticipation that he might win. But the
Speaker 4: economy how we started this conversation was also on pretty
Speaker 4: good footing, right, and so therefore that's why the stock
Speaker 4: market was going up. The FED did a nice job
Speaker 4: bringing down inflation. You know, corporate profits were good. You know,
Speaker 4: we are how I mean, the best growth of any
Speaker 4: major developed country in the world. So this time around,
Speaker 4: unless there's some huge geopolitical dust up, you know, something
Speaker 4: with Taiwan and China, that would be a devastating blow
Speaker 4: to the global economy.
Speaker 2: Right, But you feel like the economy is pretty solid.
Speaker 4: I think the economy is very solid. I think the
Speaker 4: biggest risk is that if the policies lead to greater inflation,
Speaker 4: if inflation becomes entrenched in this economy, then we're going
Speaker 4: to have lower growth and we're going to have something
Speaker 4: called stagflation. You and I talked about this a few
Speaker 4: months ago on the pod. That will be very bad
Speaker 4: for the stock market. It will be very bad for
Speaker 4: corporate profits.
Speaker 2: Right, stagflation.
Speaker 1: Just remind our listeners with stagflation is because I totally know,
Speaker 1: but I think they don't know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, higher price for goods and services is you know,
Speaker 4: well above let's say growth rates, and so you have
Speaker 4: slow in growth you have high prices, and you have
Speaker 4: economy that's kind of stuck in the mud. You have
Speaker 4: a consumer that is basically, you know, on the sidelines
Speaker 4: because they are basically worried about prices going higher, and
Speaker 4: they're worried about their and the like. Because when the
Speaker 4: economy slows down and businesses make less profits, they start
Speaker 4: cutting people. And that's the biggest fear. Right now, we
Speaker 4: have unemployment at like four point one four point two percent,
Speaker 4: up from about three and a half percent, which was
Speaker 4: a sixty year low. The worry would be that we
Speaker 4: have unemployment going up dramatically. That will slow consumer spending.
Speaker 4: Consumer spending is two thirds of our economy, and you
Speaker 4: can see how it can just go round and around.
Speaker 4: So if you throw inflation higher for longer, that's going
Speaker 4: to throw a huge monkey wrench into what is a
Speaker 4: pretty decent economy right now.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, that does not sound good. But luckily Trump
Speaker 2: is the best minds on it, so we should be fine.
Speaker 4: Yeah. The most brilliant people.
Speaker 1: The most brilliant people right out of Central casting. All right,
Speaker 1: Well that made me feel much better, thank you.
Speaker 4: Well, here's the deal, right, So we're at a position
Speaker 4: here where we know how to deal with this in
Speaker 4: some ways. And so if you think about the quality
Speaker 4: of a lot of these cabinet people, it seems much less,
Speaker 4: and maybe that ineptitude is the thing that doesn't allow
Speaker 4: them to get things done. Maybe we also see, you know,
Speaker 4: some sort of Maybe he's a dictator for a day.
Speaker 4: Maybe he exacts a bunch of vengeance on people who
Speaker 4: have podcasts that do it three times a day, and
Speaker 4: they go on MSNBC and they talk a lot of
Speaker 4: shit about him. But maybe after that it's kind of over,
Speaker 4: you know, and then we kind of get back to
Speaker 4: some sense of normalcy. Maybe he starts worrying about his legacy.
Speaker 4: If you think about the last four years, the guy's
Speaker 4: reputation was mud. He was in and out of courtrooms
Speaker 4: and that sort of thing. Maybe he says to himself,
Speaker 4: you know what, I want history to remember me truly
Speaker 4: as the best president, as the big uniter. You know,
Speaker 4: if you think about the demographics shifts that we saw
Speaker 4: just in this last election, I mean, maybe he does
Speaker 4: have the opportunity to kind of bring some stuff together.
Speaker 4: I'm not optimistic about it, but if you think about
Speaker 4: what he just pulled off, and he's thinking about his legacy.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's something we know he cares about how
Speaker 4: people think of him. Maybe this is a you know,
Speaker 4: the opportunity for a turn for a guy who's probably
Speaker 4: one of the most miserable people that exists on the planet.
Speaker 2: All Right, that don't feel better?
Speaker 4: Thank you, Dan Nathan, Thanks for having me, Mollie.
Speaker 1: Stephen Vladik is a CNN contribute to and the author
Speaker 1: of the Shadow Docket. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Steven.
Speaker 5: Thanks Molly. Great to be back with you.
Speaker 1: So I wanted to have you on as soon as
Speaker 1: Tuesday started to unfold the way that it started to unfold,
Speaker 1: I thought to myself, Okay, Donald Trump is going to
Speaker 1: be president again, and Republicans are going to win the Senate.
Speaker 1: We knew that was a fedocomplay, and I think it's
Speaker 1: almost one hundred percent that they're going to keep the House.
Speaker 1: So I'm wondering in my mind there is only one check.
Speaker 1: It is a wobbly one, which will be the courts.
Speaker 5: I mean, I agree with that, Molly, and I think
Speaker 5: you know, there are two things about that that are
Speaker 5: worth saying in a bit more detail. The first is
Speaker 5: Trump had a trifecta part of his first term too,
Speaker 5: but he never had the margin in the Senate that
Speaker 5: he's going to have, and so he could be thwarted
Speaker 5: right by John McKay and or Lisa Murkowski in a
Speaker 5: way that won't be true. Started in January. And then
Speaker 5: the second piece of that is, you know, so many
Speaker 5: folks like us are conditioned to think that the Supreme
Speaker 5: Court can do nothing right. But the Court actually pushed
Speaker 5: back a lot against Trump during his first term, more
Speaker 5: than we might have expected for Republican president. And I
Speaker 5: think it's not you know, it's not a given that
Speaker 5: is just going to roll over in a second term,
Speaker 5: especially if, as you say, it looks likely it's going
Speaker 5: to be all that's left.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think that is where we are. So
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why I wanted you to come
Speaker 1: on is because you're so smart. But also you've written
Speaker 1: so much about this court. I mean, you are basically
Speaker 1: the person who got people thinking about and talking about
Speaker 1: the shadow. I mean, first, the Supreme Court did it
Speaker 1: by essentially using it to overturn Roe v.
Speaker 2: Wade with SBA.
Speaker 1: I mean, they did other stuff with it, but that
Speaker 1: is I feel like the largest, most profound change they
Speaker 1: made on the shadow docket, but by allowing SBA to
Speaker 1: stay in Texas, they essentially overturned Row.
Speaker 2: A year book for Roe was overturned.
Speaker 5: That's right, I mean, Molly, I would say, from a
Speaker 5: political consequences perspective, I would one up you just with
Speaker 5: the Alabama redistrict in case in February twenty twenty two,
Speaker 5: because what was so significant about the court's unsigned, unexplained
Speaker 5: intervention in that case, which put back into effect Alabama's
Speaker 5: you know, unlawful congressional district map is it basically gave
Speaker 5: Republicans control of the House in the current Congress. You
Speaker 5: can tie a pretty straight line from that unexplained majority
Speaker 5: pit you know majority ruling to five Republican House seats
Speaker 5: that would otherwise be democratic, and that's, you know, that's
Speaker 5: the Republican margin right now. So the point, which I mean,
Speaker 5: it doesn't matter which case you used to make it
Speaker 5: is that, yeah, this is a court that has done
Speaker 5: more and more big stuff affecting all of us with
Speaker 5: less and less explanation, and that's not been great.
Speaker 1: I don't want to be a doomer about this Trump term.
Speaker 1: That's not to say that I want to normalize it.
Speaker 1: I think the guys that complete a democratic autocrat, But
Speaker 1: I do think that we still have checks and balances
Speaker 1: and that Dumerism is actually the enemy, and that it's
Speaker 1: much better to sort of talk through. And especially when
Speaker 1: you think about this court, which is filled with you know,
Speaker 1: Trump put in three Supreme Court justices, but I don't
Speaker 1: think they think they serve at the present pleasure of
Speaker 1: Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: I think Donald Trump thinks that, but I don't think
Speaker 2: they think that.
Speaker 5: I think that's really astute, and I think that's a
Speaker 5: really important point that just because the current you know,
Speaker 5: conservative majority on the Supreme Court rules in ways that
Speaker 5: a lot of us don't like in most of the
Speaker 5: cases we care about, doesn't mean that they're in the
Speaker 5: bag for Trump. The problem I think that we run
Speaker 5: into is a problem of the court's own making Molly right,
Speaker 5: which is, you know, the Court had a really good
Speaker 5: opportunity just this summer to show us just how not
Speaker 5: in the bag for Trump they are in the January
Speaker 5: Sex Community case, and you know, five of the Republican
Speaker 5: appointees flunked. Only just as Amy Cony Barrett seem to
Speaker 5: understand the implications of the decision, that the rest of
Speaker 5: the court signed on too, So I'm with you. I
Speaker 5: think numerism is counterproductive, and actually I think sort of
Speaker 5: feeds into the problem. And I also think that just
Speaker 5: as a matter of who they are, someone like a
Speaker 5: John Roberts or a Brett Kavanaugh or at Amy Cony Barrett,
Speaker 5: you know, they're gonna not do what I want them
Speaker 5: to do in almost all the cases that matter. But
Speaker 5: are they gonna let Trump dismantle birthright citizenship? I can't
Speaker 5: imagine they are. Are they gonna let Trump destroy the
Speaker 5: civil service in the executive branch? I can't imagine they are.
Speaker 5: And so the fact that they'll draw the line closer
Speaker 5: to Trump than you or I would doesn't mean that
Speaker 5: they're not gonna draw a line. That may be sort
Speaker 5: of small solace to folks who are you know, rightly
Speaker 5: concerned about a Republican trifecta for the next two or
Speaker 5: four years. But I think we should not give up
Speaker 5: the ghost that it's importantly more than nothing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I also think that it's more important to stay
Speaker 1: in this. And I mean, I also want you to
Speaker 1: talk because I was texting the sky Perryman yesterday. We
Speaker 1: were we were talking about like how the left needs
Speaker 1: to think about this next Trump term. And we were
Speaker 1: talking about like Donald Trump has lost in court a
Speaker 1: number of times.
Speaker 2: Will you expand on that?
Speaker 3: Sure?
Speaker 5: I mean, so, you know, Trump when he was president
Speaker 5: had about as poor a track record in the lower
Speaker 5: federal courts and in the Supreme Court as any president
Speaker 5: in a long time, molly, including democratic presidents right before
Speaker 5: a not very different court, you know, just to name
Speaker 5: a couple of cases. Right, So, with regard to the
Speaker 5: travel band, Trump had to do three versions of that
Speaker 5: because the first two got struck down by the courts,
Speaker 5: including the second one partly by the Supreme Court. Trump
Speaker 5: couldn't ask a citizenship question on the twenty twenty census
Speaker 5: because the Supreme Court stopped him. Right, Trump couldn't rescind DHAKA,
Speaker 5: the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals immigration program because the
Speaker 5: Supreme Court stopped him. And this is a different court,
Speaker 5: I mean, right, This is a court without Ruth Badergensberg
Speaker 5: and with Amy Cony Barrett. It is a court that,
Speaker 5: since Trump left office, has decided Dobbs and Bruin and
Speaker 5: you know, the Affirmative Action cases. But I still think
Speaker 5: that there really is daylight between where the median justices
Speaker 5: on the court are and a lot of what Trump
Speaker 5: is going to want to accomplish when it comes to
Speaker 5: the legality and the constitutionality of you know, his second
Speaker 5: term agenda.
Speaker 1: Right, and again this is back to Donald Trump as
Speaker 1: bad as bad at courts. It really seems so far,
Speaker 1: and we just have seen very few appointments, but we've
Speaker 1: seen two big appointments, two that strike me as kind
Speaker 1: of the headlines and what he wants to do next,
Speaker 1: and those are Tom Holman and Steven Miller. I mean,
Speaker 1: it seems like mass deportation is going to be the
Speaker 1: first move that seems to me like something that is
Speaker 1: going to run a fat home the Court's very quickly.
Speaker 5: I mean, I think that's right. And you know, Molly,
Speaker 5: I think we're going to see a lot of you know,
Speaker 5: blue states and more left winged groups taking pages from
Speaker 5: like Ken Paxton's playbook in the Trump administration.
Speaker 2: That's just what I was thinking.
Speaker 5: Go on, yeah, and they're going to find sympathetic lower courts,
Speaker 5: whether they're you know, in California or Maryland or Massachusetts
Speaker 5: or what have you, the same way that you know,
Speaker 5: the Republicans have kept going to Texas over the last
Speaker 5: four years. Again, right, that's going to put pressure on
Speaker 5: the Supreme Court. Right first on you know, the shadow docket,
Speaker 5: first with regard to what will surely be emergency requests
Speaker 5: from the Trump administration to get out from under those
Speaker 5: lower court rule ins. And then on the merits. And
Speaker 5: I guess I'll just say, like you know, I spend
Speaker 5: a lot of time criticizing the Supreme Court. There's a
Speaker 5: difference between the Supreme Court getting a particular legal issue,
Speaker 5: in my view, wrong, and a Supreme Court sort of
Speaker 5: giving up its institutional responsibility as a check on the
Speaker 5: elected branches. This is where the immunity case is a
Speaker 5: real problem. But it's not the end. And I don't
Speaker 5: take it as a sign that John Roberts and Brett
Speaker 5: Kavanaugh are done. I think it's just, you know why
Speaker 5: a lot of folks who are not inclined to give
Speaker 5: them the benefit of the doubt are not inclined to
Speaker 5: give them the benefit of the doubt.
Speaker 2: I do not want to wish cast here.
Speaker 1: I got in trouble in the twenty twenty four cycle
Speaker 1: for my sunny optimism if.
Speaker 2: You can believe it. But Roberts does come from Reagan world.
Speaker 1: These people had an idea they were trying to put
Speaker 1: on the country, which they have been able to do
Speaker 1: via Donald Trump. But it's not necessarily Donald Trump's idea
Speaker 1: of what he wants for the country.
Speaker 5: I think this is right, and I think this is
Speaker 5: why it's really helpful to separate out the six Republican appointees,
Speaker 5: not by which president appointed them, but by what their
Speaker 5: north stars are.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 5: So I think of a John Roberts and a Brett Kavanaugh,
Speaker 5: and I think even Amy Coni Barrett as folks whose
Speaker 5: north stars are legal principles molly that have long been
Speaker 5: part of the conservative legal establishment's agenda. And I don't
Speaker 5: like a lot of those principles. I have real problems
Speaker 5: with many of those principles, but they are principles versus
Speaker 5: I think you can more fairly level the charge at
Speaker 5: someone like a Justice Samuel Alito or Justice Clarence Thomas,
Speaker 5: or indeed Justice Neil Gorsic that increasingly their votes look
Speaker 5: like their only principle is who's winning and who's losing.
Speaker 5: And you know, in a second Trump term, I think
Speaker 5: the first trio is going to be much more important
Speaker 5: than the second trio, because that's going to be, you know,
Speaker 5: the thing to watch. Are they going to stand up
Speaker 5: for principles in cases in which you know, Trump runs
Speaker 5: about of them, which you know, I mean, Molly, we
Speaker 5: might not know exactly which cases they'll be, but they
Speaker 5: will be cases, right.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 1: No, I think it's fair to say his first plan,
Speaker 1: this idea of doing camps. Even if you use the
Speaker 1: Alien Insurrection Act of seventeen ninety eight or whatever it is,
Speaker 1: you would need to have a foreign war. I mean,
Speaker 1: the whole theory of the case here is pretty flimsy.
Speaker 5: I mean, folks may not remember, but you know, the
Speaker 5: first travel ban was like the first weekend of Trump's
Speaker 5: first term. The reason why that never got off the
Speaker 5: ground was because of federal judges, federal judges in Brooklyn
Speaker 5: and in California and Hawaii and Seattle. And you know,
Speaker 5: I think that's what we're in for again. And I
Speaker 5: totally understand why people are going to come into a
Speaker 5: second Trump term with less faith that the courts are
Speaker 5: going to save us. The courts are not going to
Speaker 5: save us, but the courts might at least save themselves.
Speaker 5: And I think that's you know that means standing up
Speaker 5: for the role of the courts in our system. It
Speaker 5: means pushing back when the president does thems that are
Speaker 5: flagrantly unconstitutional. And I think, you know, ironically, Molly, the
Speaker 5: faster Trump pushes, the more push back he will engender
Speaker 5: from the judiciary.
Speaker 2: Yes, I think that is for sure true.
Speaker 1: And you know what I'm struck by just from the
Speaker 1: early cabinet right now is just how it seems very
Speaker 1: focused on deportation, whereas I mean, again, obviously this was
Speaker 1: about Senate confirmation. Yes, but Marco Rubio does not see
Speaker 1: so you know, he's aligned with the George W. Bush
Speaker 1: or it's not like he put Tom Cotton in there.
Speaker 5: Indeed, although you know, the line between Rubio and Cotton
Speaker 5: may be elusive, but no, I mean, you know, I mean,
Speaker 5: I'll just say, like, if we're looking at someone like
Speaker 5: a Marco Rubio as Secretary of State as opposed to
Speaker 5: you know, someone who is an absolute lunatic right when
Speaker 5: it comes to foreign policy, right, if we're looking at
Speaker 5: you know, I saw a story this afternoon that Matthew
Speaker 5: Whittaker is back under consideration to be Attorney General. You know,
Speaker 5: I don't think Whittaker is going to go down in
Speaker 5: the pantheon of great attorneys general. But that's still not
Speaker 5: the same thing as you know, the former gorsicch clerk
Speaker 5: Mike Davis, who's on social media talking about how we're
Speaker 5: going to prosecute everyone who's ever criticized President Trump. It's
Speaker 5: going to be really important for folks to be nuanced
Speaker 5: in how we assess the threats to the rule of
Speaker 5: law that are coming.
Speaker 1: So there's only so much energy. And I also think
Speaker 1: that the really important it's going to be it cannot
Speaker 1: be a stylistic question. It needs to be a subpintive question,
Speaker 1: like Trump will do things that we won't like personally,
Speaker 1: but it's a question of when it does sort of
Speaker 1: mess up the rule of law or American democracy.
Speaker 2: I mean to protect institutions.
Speaker 1: Speaking of institutions, I want you to talk to us
Speaker 1: about the Alito Thomas retirement question.
Speaker 5: Will they go or won't they? So I mean, I
Speaker 5: think the first thing to say is November twelfth is
Speaker 5: not the time to have this conversation, not you and me,
Speaker 5: but the public discourse around this, right, even if they've
Speaker 5: both made up their minds to retire, and I suspect
Speaker 5: neither of them have now me too, right, They're not
Speaker 5: gonna say anything until at the earliest next summer and
Speaker 5: even then, right, So, you know, I think folks that
Speaker 5: just sort of take a little bit of a breath.
Speaker 5: I do think that both Alito and Thomas are invested
Speaker 5: in having President Trump at some point name their successors.
Speaker 5: But I also think that they both kind of like
Speaker 5: their jobs. You know, Thomas is just a couple of
Speaker 5: years away from being the longest serving justice in the
Speaker 5: Court's history. That you know, he might say publicly that
Speaker 5: doesn't matter to him. I don't believe that.
Speaker 2: I think he said that he wants to be the
Speaker 2: longest serving.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 5: One of the amazing things that if you've been on
Speaker 5: the core for thirty three years, people will find you
Speaker 5: saying everything.
Speaker 3: Right but true.
Speaker 5: I think the reality is that they will both likely,
Speaker 5: you know, sort of not worry about this until next summer,
Speaker 5: and then it becomes a live question only because you know,
Speaker 5: it will be interested in who the potential nominies are
Speaker 5: to succeed them. I was struck. There's a story in
Speaker 5: the Wall Street Journal, you know, as we're recording this
Speaker 5: about how quote sources close to Aledo unquote say he
Speaker 5: has no plans to retire. First of all, that's the
Speaker 5: exact story I would want out if I did have
Speaker 5: plans to retire. But second, it's just too early. I
Speaker 5: think there's almost no question that Trump will get to
Speaker 5: replace at least one of them. But whether that's next
Speaker 5: year or two years from now, well we're three or
Speaker 5: four years from now. I think it's going to depend
Speaker 5: on a lot of what happens between now and then.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it is incredible that he will have put
Speaker 1: in so many Supreme Court justices.
Speaker 5: The last president who got to appoint a majority of
Speaker 5: the Court was Eisenhower, and that was in a very
Speaker 5: different period. And Eisenhower's appointees included Earl Warren, who was
Speaker 5: the famous liberal Chief Justice Bill Brennan, who was like
Speaker 5: the leader of the left wing of the Court into
Speaker 5: the nineteen eighties. Right, So Eisenhower had the ability to
Speaker 5: do it, but he actually had a diverse slate of appointees.
Speaker 5: That hasn't been, of course, what we've seen from Trump.
Speaker 1: If you had to guess a Supreme Court justice who
Speaker 1: would not disappoint you in the profound way they tend to,
Speaker 1: who would it be?
Speaker 5: Who Trump might nominate because there are all people Trump
Speaker 5: wouldn't nominate this.
Speaker 1: No, no, I mean people on the Court right now
Speaker 1: who might possibly be less disappointing if it comes to,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of something you know, that might break
Speaker 1: with the majority.
Speaker 5: I don't think there's any question actually that of the
Speaker 5: six Republican appointees the first vote, who would join the
Speaker 5: three Democratic appointees in a big rule of law cases.
Speaker 5: Amy Cody Barrett, I think that became clear last term.
Speaker 5: I mean, I think she, you know, wrote separately in
Speaker 5: the Colorado disqualification case. She wrote separately in the January
Speaker 5: sixth community case. She you know, dissented in one of
Speaker 5: the biggest environmental cases of the term. She dissented in
Speaker 5: the January sixth obstruction case. I mean, I think Molly,
Speaker 5: she really has, I think, come out of her shell
Speaker 5: a bit. Not as a more moderate justice than we expected,
Speaker 5: but again, I mean back to what we were talking
Speaker 5: about a few minutes ago, as a justice for whom
Speaker 5: the principles come first and the politics come second. You know,
Speaker 5: that's who you're going to need in a big rule
Speaker 5: of law case. What I think is so striking about
Speaker 5: last term is that I had assumed the big cases
Speaker 5: would be the ones where she would join Roberts and
Speaker 5: the Demes, and it turned out the big cases were
Speaker 5: the ones in which, you know, she joined the Dems
Speaker 5: and descent because you couldn't get Roberts. And so, you know,
Speaker 5: that's why I actually think John Roberts would already have
Speaker 5: been massively important in a second Trump administration. But he really,
Speaker 5: I think, will be the median in any cases that
Speaker 5: have these massive rule of law implications where the justices
Speaker 5: are in any way ideologically divided.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1: There's a little bit to feel better about in there.
Speaker 5: I spend a lot of my time in front of
Speaker 5: classrooms full of students who I'm trying to convince at
Speaker 5: once both that the law matters and that we should
Speaker 5: be realistic about it, right. And you know, to me, Molly,
Speaker 5: the message is just that the Supreme Court might disappoint
Speaker 5: us a lot, but I'd rather a Supreme Court that's
Speaker 5: going to stand up for us some of the time,
Speaker 5: right than a complete tyranny of the majority, especially given
Speaker 5: the majority we're facing in the coming couple of years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you, Steven, Thanks Molly. No, moment, Jesse.
Speaker 3: Cannon, Molly John Fast, I'm so happy we're already getting
Speaker 3: new Trumps. We got the first buddy. Now, Elon Musk,
Speaker 3: what do you see it here?
Speaker 1: I am seeing that Elon Musk is calling himself the
Speaker 1: first Buddy's so fucking up. I am going to let
Speaker 1: that sink in for a minute, but I just want
Speaker 1: to say that Donald Trump is getting kind of sick
Speaker 1: of it already. When he was in the House talking
Speaker 1: to Republicans today, it was reported he thanked Musk for
Speaker 1: everything he did in the election, but added quote, now
Speaker 1: I can't get rid of him. Okay, I want to
Speaker 1: point out the election was eight days ago. Okay, now
Speaker 1: I can't get rid of him. It's been eight days
Speaker 1: of Trump having to deal with Elon and he's already saying.
Speaker 3: That, I mean, would you last any longer?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: And then he's behaving as if he's a co president
Speaker 1: and making sure everyone knows it. One of the people's
Speaker 1: said of Musk, and he's taking a lot of credit
Speaker 1: for the President's victory, bragging about America pack and X
Speaker 1: to anyone who will listen. He's trying to make President
Speaker 1: Trump feel indebted to him, and the president is indebted
Speaker 1: to no one. This person added, I'm sorry. This has
Speaker 1: long been my theory of the case. You know, we
Speaker 1: talk about Democrats being a big tent, but there is
Speaker 1: no tent big enough for anti Semites, Zionists, anti vaxers,
Speaker 1: Elon and Donald Trump's ego and Bill Ackman like I
Speaker 1: think that this is going to be a very very
Speaker 1: very short lived tent.
Speaker 3: I think the polls are already wobbling.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
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Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.