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 Gallup has found that China taps
Speaker 1: America's approval rating for the first time ever, as our
Speaker 1: leadership saw its approval rating drop eight percent two thirty
Speaker 1: one percent. We have such a great show for you today.
Speaker 1: Lincoln Project's own Rick Wilson joins us to discuss the
Speaker 1: escalation in Iran and how it affects life in America.
Speaker 1: Then we'll talk to Peter s Canillos about his new book,
Speaker 1: Revenge for the Sixties, Samuel Alito, and the triumph of
Speaker 1: the conservative legal movement.
Speaker 2: But first the news, Molly, every time mister Trump talks
Speaker 2: about Christianity, we all can send see with those of
Speaker 2: us who are lifelig aestheist, that he has no idea
Speaker 2: what he's talking about. He's never bothered for one second
Speaker 2: even learn how to fake this. But then as well,
Speaker 2: he skipped church on Easter. But what does he tweet
Speaker 2: on Easter? Praise be to Allah?
Speaker 1: All right, So I woke up at seven point thirty
Speaker 1: and was like, I will pretend to sleep till eight o'clock.
Speaker 1: I get on my phone and I see Tuesday will
Speaker 1: be power plant Day and Bridge Day, all wrapped up
Speaker 1: in one comma. In around there will be nothing like it.
Speaker 1: Explanation point. Explanation point. Open the fucking comma straight, you
Speaker 1: crazy fox, or you'll be living in hell. Just watch
Speaker 1: explanation point. Praise be to Allah period. President Donald J.
Speaker 1: Trump at eight oh three on Easter. I swear to God,
Speaker 1: I thought it wasn't real, and so I went on
Speaker 1: true social to find it because I just couldn't believe it.
Speaker 1: Here's why I couldn't believe it because A it's very stupid.
Speaker 1: B he's clearly trying to like do the Holy war.
Speaker 1: Here's the here's the fundamental problem the Trump And we
Speaker 1: see this with Hegseth too, like they really want to
Speaker 1: be like you know, well, you know, Iran is this
Speaker 1: very religious country and they're controlled by these clerics who
Speaker 1: are very zealous. Well, here's the thing. Our country also
Speaker 1: seems to be trying to pretend that they are a
Speaker 1: country like that. But the truth is, and I think
Speaker 1: this is an important point here is that, well, Donald
Speaker 1: Trump thinks he wants a holy war because somehow that
Speaker 1: will be I think he thinks that'll be funny or
Speaker 1: I don't know what he thinks, but like, no one
Speaker 1: wants this. The reason that no one wanted this war
Speaker 1: to begin with was because it's huge country where they
Speaker 1: have a lot of money and they have a lot
Speaker 1: of people. And quite frankly, this has nothing to do
Speaker 1: with us, and the idea that somehow, you know, he's
Speaker 1: explored every which reason to go into this country, like
Speaker 1: he wants to free the protesters. Okay, the protesters, they're
Speaker 1: as mad at us as the clerics are. Okay, because
Speaker 1: we're bombing, you know, parts of the country that are
Speaker 1: or at least we're threatening to bomb desalization plans, power plans,
Speaker 1: parts of the country that technically it's a war crime
Speaker 1: to bomb, you know, civilian serving apparatuses. But the other
Speaker 1: thing is like this a huge country, and destabilizing this
Speaker 1: country will destabilize the region. We've already destabilized this country.
Speaker 1: We've closed the Straits. Even though the oil and gas
Speaker 1: that comes through the Straits doesn't largely go to us,
Speaker 1: it has still made oil and gas more expensive in
Speaker 1: the world. Because the world is all connected, and it's
Speaker 1: just like a crazy, crazy moment and the other thing
Speaker 1: is like when they were able to rescue the downed pilot,
Speaker 1: they did this thing where our military is obviously very
Speaker 1: skilled and they were able to get in there and
Speaker 1: get out of there without anyone getting lost, without anyone
Speaker 1: getting hard and people have been killed in this war.
Speaker 1: It's just in this incident they were able to get
Speaker 1: in and out in a really skilled way. So instead
Speaker 1: of taking the win and backing out and even just
Speaker 1: let a run charge a toll for the strades who cares,
Speaker 1: just get out because this is devolving into a complete disaster.
Speaker 1: Instead of doing all that, our leadership just seems insane.
Speaker 1: And there's no evidence that there is a negotiation going
Speaker 1: on except that Trump says there's negotiation, and like, we
Speaker 1: actually really need the Iranians to tell us if there
Speaker 1: isn't a negotiation, because you know, we can't trust our
Speaker 1: government and it is just a really fucked up moment
Speaker 1: in an American life. And like I just want to
Speaker 1: say one other thing, which is I you know, somebody
Speaker 1: who's just like a normal person came over to me
Speaker 1: the other day and was like this seems really bad,
Speaker 1: and I was like, it is really bad, and we
Speaker 1: kept saying it was going to be really bad, and
Speaker 1: we knew it was going to be really bad. And
Speaker 1: like the last time of its president, he had like
Speaker 1: more than a million people died that didn't need to
Speaker 1: die because of the pandemic. Like, this guy is not
Speaker 1: a guy who should be president. It's not like a
Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan where he's like a little domb or a
Speaker 1: George W. Bush where he's like not the best choice
Speaker 1: or a jab. It's like this guy is just really
Speaker 1: responsible and doesn't care that he's leading this enormous country.
Speaker 1: And so we are all just kind of at his
Speaker 1: whim and mercy right now, and it is just so jarring.
Speaker 1: And then we have a Congress that has absolutely no interest.
Speaker 1: You know, the Republicans are evil and the Democrats are
Speaker 1: a little bit factless team, Like, we need people running
Speaker 1: a check on this guy.
Speaker 2: So, speaking of things we need to check on, Trump
Speaker 2: has released his budget plan. Would you be shocked to
Speaker 2: hear this is just filled with some of the biggest
Speaker 2: bullshit you've ever seen, I am not.
Speaker 1: The savings are achieved by reducing or eliminating woke, weaponized,
Speaker 1: and wasteful programs and returning state and local responsibilities to
Speaker 1: their respective government.
Speaker 3: How much does woke cost?
Speaker 1: Woke it all no doctrum. Actually, there's like an insane
Speaker 1: clip of him going around where he says, we can't
Speaker 1: pay for daycare. We don't pay for daycare. The States
Speaker 1: must pay for daycare. That's what he's talking about. What
Speaker 1: he wants to do is he basically doesn't want to
Speaker 1: pay for stuff. So this proposal includes a fifty two
Speaker 1: million dollar cut for the TSA okay why nobody knows,
Speaker 1: but a huge decrease for ICE and the military because
Speaker 1: you want a paramilitary but you don't want the actual
Speaker 1: screening for people flying. And a golden dome because Donald
Speaker 1: Trump loves Israel. They have an iron dome. We need
Speaker 1: to have a golden dome. It's like an iron dome,
Speaker 1: but it's gold. It's so fucking stupid, And oh fyi,
Speaker 1: massive cuts to gut from an agency is and a
Speaker 1: lunar base camp for visiting the moon, and ten billion
Speaker 1: dollars into the President's Capital Steward Program in order to
Speaker 1: make DC safe, clean, and beautiful again, and also changes
Speaker 1: to housing k through twelve food assistance programs. If you
Speaker 1: get anything from the federal government, you're not getting it anymore,
Speaker 1: but you will get Donald Trump spending a lot of
Speaker 1: your tax dollars in renovating the White House where he
Speaker 1: plans to live forever.
Speaker 3: Great stuff.
Speaker 2: So, as usual, what we've seen is Trump's revenge spree
Speaker 2: where he tries to extort people and payback people for
Speaker 2: what he feels have been done wrong to him.
Speaker 3: Keeps being these trumped.
Speaker 2: Up charges, which you know the irony of that word,
Speaker 2: and one of them was against Jerome Powell, and that
Speaker 2: has now been blocked by a judge.
Speaker 1: The judges. Here's what happens. Donald Trump does crazy shit,
Speaker 1: the judges tell him he can't, and then he just
Speaker 1: tries to do it again. So here's a US judge.
Speaker 1: On Friday, I stood by the decision to cush Department
Speaker 1: of Justice subpoenas targeting FED Chair Jerome Palell. These are
Speaker 1: judge blocked wine specials. Here the government can appeal the decision,
Speaker 1: prolonging a standoffs that could delay the confirmation of Donald
Speaker 1: Trump's new FED chair. Okay, I'm good with that. The
Speaker 1: US District Court for Washington, d C. Denied the government's
Speaker 1: motion to reconsider an earlier decision to throw out the
Speaker 1: Grand Jury subpoenas directed at Powell. Judge Boseburg, you'll remember,
Speaker 1: Trump was really mad at him, and so was Elon.
Speaker 1: The court's chief judge quashed the spritest last week on
Speaker 1: the grounds that the brog was aimed at pressuring Powell
Speaker 1: and two yielding to Trump or resigning. By the way,
Speaker 1: anyone who has eyes can see this. In the aftermath
Speaker 1: of the decision, US Attorney for the District of Columbia
Speaker 1: and alcoholic Juanian Piro, otherwise known as Judge Box of Wine,
Speaker 1: said at a press conference that the investigation process had
Speaker 1: been arbitrarily undermined by an activist judge. You know what's
Speaker 1: arbitrary everything that Judge box of Wine does. Powell disclosed
Speaker 1: in January that he was if the subpoena is seeking
Speaker 1: records related to these Central banks multi billion dollar building renovations.
Speaker 1: The government was examining whether Palell had committed fraud and
Speaker 1: lied to Congress. Here's what Palell didn't do, commit fraud
Speaker 1: or lie to Congress. Well, here's who did commit fraud
Speaker 1: Trump in a million different ways, probably Judge box of Wine.
Speaker 1: You know who didn't this guy to Rome pal You know,
Speaker 1: this is just going to keep going up up to
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court, where Alito and Thomas will say that
Speaker 1: Donald Trump did nothing wrong, but probably the other justices
Speaker 1: will not go along with that.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, speaking of not going along with it, nearly two
Speaker 2: dozen Democratic states.
Speaker 3: Have hit Trump with the elections lawsuits. This is good news.
Speaker 3: After we saw this executive.
Speaker 2: Order about mail and balloting and we were wondering how
Speaker 2: big the pushback would be. It's seeming pretty big.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, this is totally a whoy. You know,
Speaker 1: this is the thing. Donald Trump will do any sketchy
Speaker 1: stuff he can.
Speaker 4: That's it.
Speaker 1: Like, that's period paragraph. My man do sketchy stuff. That's it.
Speaker 1: You know, that's who he is.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: Whether or not you let him do sketchy stuff, it's
Speaker 1: a real question. That's where it is. So twenty three
Speaker 1: different states and the District of Columbia taking Donald Trump
Speaker 1: to court. It is unconstitutional and he will lose. The
Speaker 1: President's latest attempt to interfere with the state's administrations of
Speaker 1: their elections is as unprecedented as it is unconstitutional. Under
Speaker 1: the Constitution, the president has no authority to restrict voter
Speaker 1: eligibility or mail in voting to lists of voters pre
Speaker 1: authorized by the federal government. Here's the one good thing
Speaker 1: is that at least the courts are doing something because
Speaker 1: the Congress is not. Rick Wilson is the founder of
Speaker 1: Lincoln Project and the host of the Lincoln Project podcast.
Speaker 5: Rick.
Speaker 6: Hello, Molly, how are you on this fine day?
Speaker 1: I'm good. So Donald Trump has gotten us into a war, which, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, does it when you start shooting down planes,
Speaker 1: that's when you have ground troops once you have, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, is that a fair definition? And explain to
Speaker 1: us what's going on now?
Speaker 6: So, look, the the inevitable has now happened, and the
Speaker 6: Iranians have shot down an American F fifteen E Strike Eagle.
Speaker 6: Two crew members in the plane, very very effective, very
Speaker 6: good strike bomber aircraft, but they shot it down with
Speaker 6: a relatively cheap heat seeking missile.
Speaker 3: From the ground.
Speaker 6: One of the one of the crew has been recovered,
Speaker 6: the other is still missing. If the Iranians captured that person,
Speaker 6: they're about to have a global spectacle. They also managed
Speaker 6: to shoot down an A ten war yesterday damage Inn
Speaker 6: F thirty five, which is supposedly impossible shoot down a
Speaker 6: HH sixty helicopter. We don't have a ton of those
Speaker 6: and two drones. So we have now entered the phase
Speaker 6: of the war where it's not all one sided, and
Speaker 6: eventually you're gonna have put more there. They've put a
Speaker 6: lot of search and rescue operations into Iran. Now that's
Speaker 6: a aerial and probably folks on the ground as well
Speaker 6: in terms of pj's pair of rescue jumpers.
Speaker 1: Right, you have to at that point and.
Speaker 6: Special operators to go and try to try to recover
Speaker 6: the other missing crew member.
Speaker 3: This will accelerate, these things always do.
Speaker 6: And so what's gonna happen is somebody who's been in
Speaker 6: there to send in there to retrieve the missing crew
Speaker 6: member from the F fifteen is going to get shot
Speaker 6: or captured or the anti firefight.
Speaker 3: It just escalates.
Speaker 6: And the problem is right now we see a line
Speaker 6: of C seventeen cargo planes flying from the US into
Speaker 6: the Middle East. We're ratching up and up and up.
Speaker 6: The fake semi Taco twenty minute speech on Thursday night
Speaker 6: did not make the markets feel better.
Speaker 1: No, in fact, it made the markets feel worse.
Speaker 4: Isn't real, That's right?
Speaker 1: And BONDI Dow at fifty thousand moment.
Speaker 6: You know, I think Molly, and I love to get
Speaker 6: what your thoughts on this is. It's like, have we
Speaker 6: reached the point where the taco trick only works if
Speaker 6: he actually tacos, you know, and he hasn't. He's still
Speaker 6: he's still going all in on this war. And I
Speaker 6: don't think, I don't think that the markets are going
Speaker 6: to recover until or unless they see him, the world's
Speaker 6: greatest negotiator, negotiate his way out of this box.
Speaker 1: Well, I think the problem is when you have the
Speaker 1: straits closed ostensibly for American oil, which by the way,
Speaker 1: there wasn't so much American oil going to there anyway,
Speaker 1: So it just created a sort of situation with the
Speaker 1: fungibowl oil and gas where you just there was less.
Speaker 1: Well that's closed. There's not anything Trump can do to
Speaker 1: increase the global supply of oil, which is what we
Speaker 1: just saw, right, And he took off sanctions on this
Speaker 1: Iranian oil, the Russian oil, which by the way, a
Speaker 1: is you know, diplomatically quite suspect, but also will not
Speaker 1: necessarily make oil cheaper. I mean, the thing is we're
Speaker 1: cruising into summer, which is oil and gas time, right,
Speaker 1: It's time for travel, It's time for airplanes.
Speaker 6: It's time for and high high energy bills for our
Speaker 6: high energy useful.
Speaker 1: Conditions global warming. Yeah, and so we're gonna have this
Speaker 1: very hot summer. We're gonna have very expensive gas and oil.
Speaker 1: And you know, I don't think that Trump. You know,
Speaker 1: just to think about like this in the historical reference
Speaker 1: for a minute. So this was what completely crashed Bush one. Right,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter what you do if you make oil
Speaker 1: and gas more expensive the American people, it's that's it.
Speaker 3: Like it's just you are gonna get.
Speaker 6: You were gonna get, You're gonna get. Right, Jimmy Carter
Speaker 6: was in a period where expensive oil and gas coming
Speaker 6: out of four going into Carter, we had expensive oil
Speaker 6: and gas. Horrible for you, for your numbers. George W.
Speaker 6: Bush in the second term, expensive oiling gas, horrible for
Speaker 6: your numbers. Even Barack Obama took some damage from it.
Speaker 4: For a little while.
Speaker 3: We had we had a spike.
Speaker 6: But with Trump, this was a decision that was made
Speaker 6: precipitously with nothing in the background to support it. And
Speaker 6: so now people are like directly connecting high price of
Speaker 6: the pump, Donald Trump's war on Iran.
Speaker 3: That's it.
Speaker 6: It's a it's a it's bound together. And look his
Speaker 6: numbers and we're seeing even more numbers over the weekend
Speaker 6: that have come out, especially on the price of gas.
Speaker 6: He is sixty sixty one percent disapproved his performance. And
Speaker 6: when it comes to the price of energy and gas,
Speaker 6: sixty one percent disapproval and that's forty five percent strong disapproval.
Speaker 6: That is a real five alarmed political fire for this,
Speaker 6: for the Republican Party and for Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I mean there are two things too that
Speaker 1: there are no as historical president for to have a
Speaker 1: president who runs on affordability, I'm going to make gas cheaper.
Speaker 1: I'm going to make eggs cheaper. I'm going to make
Speaker 1: fake and cheaper. Right, that was his message going into this.
Speaker 1: And also I'm going to end four and mores. And
Speaker 1: then what does he do priffs, you know, which make
Speaker 1: things more expensive for and more, which makes oil more expensive.
Speaker 1: Like just to have someone who immediately does exactly the
Speaker 1: opposite of what they say they're going to do, I mean, like,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure there's a president for that historically.
Speaker 3: No. Look, we have not seen a president.
Speaker 6: Look I'll tell you, like presidents have very frequently big
Speaker 6: externalities that hurt them. Okay, right, And look, while Bush,
Speaker 6: while the war was unpopular, what really knocked Bush's numbers
Speaker 6: out of the box was Katrina. Okay, what the largest
Speaker 6: percentage decline was at the post Katrina? When you had
Speaker 6: the financial crisis? Even though Barack Obama didn't directly cause
Speaker 6: it or wasn't there when it started, he was suffering
Speaker 6: through the worst of the financial crisis, a big externality,
Speaker 6: and it hurt his numbers, and that is in part
Speaker 6: what led to the political climate for the ten Yeah,
Speaker 6: so all these you know, every president faces some external thing.
Speaker 1: Usually they don't cause it, right and that.
Speaker 6: But the difference here between every other president and Trump
Speaker 6: is He's like, what can I do that's gonna absolutely
Speaker 6: completely train wreck my economy? And what can I do
Speaker 6: that's going to blow up my allies around the world?
Speaker 6: What can I do that's going to harm the global economy?
Speaker 6: And oh, by the way, what can I need to
Speaker 6: pretend that the that the global petro market isn't a
Speaker 6: global market. The reason gas is going up here, folks,
Speaker 6: is not because we buy gas from a run We don't.
Speaker 6: The reason is it's a global market and you can't
Speaker 6: just hand wave away the fact that it's a global market.
Speaker 6: I heard yesterday that there's a some discussions inside of
Speaker 6: the White House now of trying to if you just
Speaker 6: want to watch the if you want to really to
Speaker 6: watch the economic system meltdown to impose new price controls
Speaker 6: on oil and gas in America.
Speaker 1: Right right, which I was told communism. Yeah, I just
Speaker 1: getna say. I was like excited to watch that play out,
Speaker 1: and we were. But I do think, like, you know, what
Speaker 1: you see now is you see Donald Trump who sees
Speaker 1: bad poll numbers and is like, fucking, I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: start firing people, which is probably good for American democracy.
Speaker 1: Here follow my thinking here, So Trump two point out.
Speaker 1: The first year, you saw nothing out of that White House.
Speaker 1: It was not leaky. It was so tight. Mike Walls
Speaker 1: accidentally as the editor in chief of the Economist of
Speaker 1: the Economists of the Atlantic to group chat and does
Speaker 1: not get fired. He gets moved to a sort of
Speaker 1: slightly different job, right, And we saw, really, you know,
Speaker 1: it was just tight, and Trump was getting away with
Speaker 1: it and people were making mistakes, but we weren't hearing
Speaker 1: sort of what really happened. Now and this second year,
Speaker 1: Trump has just given up. He's firing people, he's moving
Speaker 1: them around. So we're seeing like a Pam Bondy now
Speaker 1: you know that story. There must be like fifteen people
Speaker 1: leaking with that story because we found out when they
Speaker 1: drove in the beast to the Supreme Court, we found
Speaker 1: out that she sat with him and then he moved.
Speaker 1: That he was there for an hour and a half.
Speaker 1: I mean just like literally every bit. You know that
Speaker 1: she had been begging to stay on till the summer,
Speaker 1: doug right, like we I mean, there was so much reporting.
Speaker 1: I mean, he probably was leaking. She was definitely leaking,
Speaker 1: and everyone she ever met was also leaking. And that
Speaker 1: kind of transparency is actually probably much better for American democracy.
Speaker 6: Mollie, you have had the first year of Trump two
Speaker 6: point zero a desire to not Trump didn't want to
Speaker 6: give the media a in by firing anybody, because he
Speaker 6: viewed firing people as letting the media win. And yet
Speaker 6: this is absolutely driven by the fact that the media
Speaker 6: was merciless about Pam Bondi's cover up of the Epstein files.
Speaker 6: That they kept calling the media too, but actually you
Speaker 6: were one hundred percent just getting there. Your You gotta
Speaker 6: have a hundred percent correct.
Speaker 4: No, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 6: But the horrific nature of her cover up of Epstein
Speaker 6: was so bad that even Fox couldn't ignore it, even
Speaker 6: a way in, and Newsmax and all the MAGA online
Speaker 6: garbage couldn't ignore it. And so we may have a
Speaker 6: moment right now where where the vulnerability of Trump's mental processes.
Speaker 6: He knows how bad Epstein is for him, and I
Speaker 6: think they made a giant mistake. Todd Blanche rolled out
Speaker 6: on Friday and said, We've really saw the Epstein files.
Speaker 6: It's over, it's done. Fuck you shut up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Black gonna say something.
Speaker 3: That ain't gonna that ain. I was texting with a
Speaker 3: member of the committee. I remember the committee last night.
Speaker 6: I said, you're gonna take this line down.
Speaker 3: He goes, oh, no, my friend, we are not.
Speaker 1: But it's also I mean. She also remembers she ran
Speaker 1: a foul of MAGA influencers who are Dominant's core constituency.
Speaker 1: She gave them those binders with the xeroxis of stuff
Speaker 1: you can find on the internet, and they were so
Speaker 1: embarrassed they posed for photos. Then they went home. They
Speaker 1: looked in the binders and they were like, what the
Speaker 1: actual fuck. And then those people committed the next seven
Speaker 1: months to getting her fired and like it's a cautionary
Speaker 1: tale for not being a complete moron.
Speaker 6: Well listen, she she didn't. She also didn't understand. I
Speaker 6: wrote a piece about this called Knives Out for Bondi yesterday.
Speaker 6: Blanch was going to do this to her no matter what.
Speaker 6: Blanche is the guy who's much smarter than Pam Bondy.
Speaker 6: And I will tell people that Pam is Pam is
Speaker 6: not dumb, Like she's not a moron, but she's also right, yeah, right,
Speaker 6: she's not Christine nom but neither is she you know,
Speaker 6: some sort of mad you know, high level strategic thinker.
Speaker 6: She's very obedient, she's very very good at being the
Speaker 6: at being the good girl, the good guy for the
Speaker 6: big boss. When she was in Florida, she was basically like,
Speaker 6: what does Jeb want? What does Rick Scott want? When
Speaker 6: when it's when it's Trump, it's what does Trump want?
Speaker 6: So but Blanche viewed her as a way to like
Speaker 6: take some of the air out of the Epstein balloon
Speaker 6: so he could step in. And I had heard from
Speaker 6: somebody very adjacent to the White House that Blanche was
Speaker 6: the guy who was rallying other people to go to
Speaker 6: Trump and to go to Susie and say, come on, man,
Speaker 6: she's embarrassing you. She's hurting you. And and her big
Speaker 6: performance that she gave in front of the committee, the
Speaker 6: Dow fifty thousand.
Speaker 4: Performance, that was great.
Speaker 6: I was told that Blanche said to him that was embarrassing.
Speaker 6: That was over the top. She could have been more subtle,
Speaker 6: She could have handled it better. She could have really
Speaker 6: embarrassed them. That was the Amateur Hour or something awards
Speaker 6: to that effect. Not wrong, not wrong, but I but I.
Speaker 3: I I.
Speaker 6: Think that the the knives out thing in the Justice Department.
Speaker 6: You've also gotten now Alina Habba and Judge box of Wine,
Speaker 6: and and and Lee Zelden on the outside, all wanting
Speaker 6: that job. Blanche.
Speaker 4: Blanche the arrogance has that job though, right, the.
Speaker 6: Arrogance of Blanche, though, I think it's gonna be the
Speaker 6: the UPNS is coming, as they say, for a time, Blanche,
Speaker 6: because he's now as Thomas Massey said, thanks glad you
Speaker 6: took the job. You now have thirty days to comply
Speaker 6: because that's the law, right And and the other part
Speaker 6: of this is Bondie doesn't go away. Remember that he
Speaker 6: issued the subpoena to her by name, not to her
Speaker 6: by title. She's still gonna be.
Speaker 1: Up two weeks.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I'm curious about I'm I am very curious about
Speaker 7: Bondi though, because it does seem like I would be
Speaker 7: really surprised if Bondi comes out against Trump.
Speaker 1: I mean, do you think there's a world where that
Speaker 1: happens that doesn't seem like the move to May It would.
Speaker 6: Be the most hilarious face turn ever. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 6: see it in the short term, but I will tell
Speaker 6: you I know someone extremely close to Bondi who who
Speaker 6: are like a lifetime long friend of Pam Bondy, who
Speaker 6: is not Susie Wile, not Susie Wiles. But the shock
Speaker 6: and and and embarrassment right now is through the roof.
Speaker 6: And look, if you are Pam Bondy, you're gonna have
Speaker 6: one of two things. One is and this happened a
Speaker 6: lot in the first administration. People will say to you, well,
Speaker 6: you've been fired, but you know you could still come back,
Speaker 6: you could still He forgives people, well, she's not coming
Speaker 6: back in the.
Speaker 3: Next two years. That's it.
Speaker 4: This is over for her.
Speaker 6: And so she's got to be thinking on one level.
Speaker 6: You know, I don't want to cross the president. I
Speaker 6: don't want to get Todd Blanche to pursue me because
Speaker 6: they're believe me, there is a world where the DJ
Speaker 6: starts investigating Pam BONDI.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, if.
Speaker 6: She does, If she if she plays ball, she's legally
Speaker 6: vulnerable and will never escape the families going after her,
Speaker 6: the congressional investigations that will last until she's dead.
Speaker 1: I think she's legally vulnerable.
Speaker 6: Yeah, gone, yeah, But if she does turn Pam BONDI
Speaker 6: has a chance again to do something nobody else does
Speaker 6: around Trump. She just pull the fucking whole curtain back
Speaker 6: and go I'm sorry, America. I bought into it. I
Speaker 6: was part of the most corrupt cover up and history.
Speaker 6: Here's what I know from the Epstein files. Here's what
Speaker 6: we're hiding. I think the chance of her doing.
Speaker 1: That is like point oh oh, yeah, I was gonna say,
Speaker 1: it seems very slim.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it would be very It would be very sort
Speaker 6: of Aaron Sorkin if she did. But you know, I
Speaker 6: have a little faith in the in the moral courage
Speaker 6: of body.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's a good move, but it is
Speaker 1: it is a really good question, right, the idea of
Speaker 1: what this sort of vulnerability here, And we saw this
Speaker 1: with CHRISTINEO, right, like Christineome is never coming back. You know,
Speaker 1: she has now gotten a fake job. The Shield of
Speaker 1: the America's right core.
Speaker 5: They you know, whoever had those photos of the husband
Speaker 5: with the balloons in the shirt, those probably have been
Speaker 5: going around blackmailing people forever, right, I mean, there's no
Speaker 5: way that that's the first she learned of those photos.
Speaker 4: Just us.
Speaker 6: I think somebody and it was probably either Joe Pounder
Speaker 6: or a guy like Joe Pounder is a big opposition
Speaker 6: research guy in the Republican Party and they used Joe
Speaker 6: a lot. He's one of their go tos. I'm told
Speaker 6: it probably had those pictures for a year. And look,
Speaker 6: when you see a guy that deep into whatever fetish
Speaker 6: thing he's into, or whatever whatever closeted behavior he's into,
Speaker 6: I can't even characterize the whole thing. That's not something
Speaker 6: that just sprang up five minutes ago. That's probably a
Speaker 6: paraphilia that he's had for a very long time.
Speaker 1: I wonder about that, like, do you think that that
Speaker 1: why that got released?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 1: Can you do you have any insight on that. Did
Speaker 1: she not do something someone wanted? I mean, because clearly
Speaker 1: that had been around for a long time.
Speaker 6: I think part of this might be trying to put
Speaker 6: a giant final spike into her as a credible political
Speaker 6: figure and any any maga dimension. Look, you are now
Speaker 6: seeing the early early going of the twenty twenty eight
Speaker 6: Republican primary. Okay, you've got jd Vance with a new
Speaker 6: book about how Christian he is. You've got you know,
Speaker 6: Marco being the jack of all trades and liberator of Cuba.
Speaker 6: You've got you know, You've got all these guys in
Speaker 6: Congress starting to play. And Corey Lewandowski before the Great Fall,
Speaker 6: was telling people she's going to do this immigration thing,
Speaker 6: that's what Republicans care about the most, that's going to
Speaker 6: put her in the front of the pack for twenty
Speaker 6: twenty eight.
Speaker 4: To repress Trump.
Speaker 1: That was just I think, go to prevent her from running.
Speaker 6: I think it was just oppo to stop her, to
Speaker 6: end her, and maybe a little bit of opo to
Speaker 6: say we could tell more stories if you'd like.
Speaker 1: Right to keep, and also to keep Corey in line.
Speaker 6: Well, Corey, I think I think they've turned on Corey
Speaker 6: pretty pretty aggressively. We've saw stories last week coming out
Speaker 6: about how Corey is now under an internal.
Speaker 3: Investigation at DHS.
Speaker 6: They don't investigate anybody at DHS internally unless they aggressively
Speaker 6: want to fuck them over. They stopped all that stuff
Speaker 6: until until they decided that she and Corey had to go.
Speaker 1: Clearly that two hundred and twenty million dollars for the videos,
Speaker 1: like that is sort of like a bridge too far.
Speaker 1: Do you think that that? Do you think like they
Speaker 1: will get charged with fraud? And do you because clearly
Speaker 1: like that, you know, like, do you think that was
Speaker 1: a sort of a decision that that's what's coming next?
Speaker 3: I think they will get charged.
Speaker 6: I think also there's a thing in a government called
Speaker 6: a key tam lawsuit, which is where whistle blower can
Speaker 6: bring a lawsuit about government fraud and collect a percentage
Speaker 6: of it.
Speaker 1: Oh so fortunity.
Speaker 6: Right, So, some some staff or O Minion at some
Speaker 6: point got an email or was on a on a call,
Speaker 6: or had a or and look, there's no way they
Speaker 6: spent two hundred and twenty million dollars without a essentially
Speaker 6: a cap table of who's going to make money off
Speaker 6: of the deal?
Speaker 1: Right, Right?
Speaker 6: And I promise you Corey has some side deal. Nobody
Speaker 6: else was Trump World makes a damn dime unless the
Speaker 6: family gets some big off.
Speaker 1: Of it, right, So this could end tied back to
Speaker 1: Trump too though.
Speaker 6: Right, or the Trump sons or God knows, or or
Speaker 6: or some other consultant around Maga world who would then
Speaker 6: launder it to the Trumps.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: Who knows?
Speaker 6: The byzantine nature of their corruption is why it's hard
Speaker 6: hard to figure it out.
Speaker 1: And it's so funny. We've been doing this for I
Speaker 1: stumbled on a picture of us from twenty eighteen. I'm
Speaker 1: going to send it to you, when you were sending
Speaker 1: so young and our young, that it was almost over,
Speaker 1: and that we were that this was just this was
Speaker 1: I seem to remember many a piece written this is not.
Speaker 3: Who we are, this is who the fuck we are.
Speaker 1: We turned America into Florida, and I'm glad to be
Speaker 1: able to narrate it with you. Likewise, my friend, Will
Speaker 1: I see you next Sunday?
Speaker 3: You sure will.
Speaker 4: Peter S.
Speaker 1: Canellos is an editor of Politico and the author of
Speaker 1: the Revenge of the Sixties, Samuel Alito and the Triumph
Speaker 1: of the Conservative Legal Movement. Welcome welcome, Peter.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much, Mollie. So we're talking about.
Speaker 1: Your book about justice. Alito, besides being the foil of
Speaker 1: all people who like good things, who like nice things,
Speaker 1: give us the importance of Alito.
Speaker 8: I think that Alito is emblematic of the conservative legal movement.
Speaker 8: The book is called Revenge for the Sixties, and it
Speaker 8: tries to look at the social and cultural roots of
Speaker 8: the conservative legal movement, which now dominates the Supreme Court.
Speaker 4: You know, this is how we got to this point
Speaker 4: in the American judiciary.
Speaker 8: And the reason Alito is emblematic of it is that
Speaker 8: he came from the same social and cultural background as
Speaker 8: many of the leaders of the Federalist Society, the founders
Speaker 8: of the Federal Society, other leaders of the movement, and
Speaker 8: that is he was the product of immigrant parents and
Speaker 8: grandparents from the twentieth century, people who taught him that,
Speaker 8: you know, America was the great hope for freedom, that
Speaker 8: this was the place where you make your fortune. He
Speaker 8: experienced prejudice, or the family experienced anti Italian prejudice, but
Speaker 8: felt like they overcame it.
Speaker 4: He was educated in the Cold War public.
Speaker 8: Schools and then he confronted at Princeton being in the
Speaker 8: last all male class, with women arriving the next year.
Speaker 8: Suddenly their dorm room discussions about sex and premarital sex,
Speaker 8: and people challenging.
Speaker 4: His conservative Catholic views. There's anti war protests, there are
Speaker 4: exams being canceled, and he feels suddenly that he's at
Speaker 4: odds with his entire generation. And I think that's in
Speaker 4: some sense where the conservative legal movement came from. From
Speaker 4: that place, that sense of very high achieving, meritocratic people
Speaker 4: with this real believer in American exception, belief in American exceptionalism.
Speaker 8: Who needed to create an alternative path to get ahead
Speaker 8: because they.
Speaker 4: Felt they were at odds with their own generation.
Speaker 1: Yeah. You know, it's so interesting because my father was
Speaker 1: a baby boomer who protests the war, went to Princeton,
Speaker 1: bristled against Princeton for a whole other sliver of reasons.
Speaker 1: And there's an op ed about which I think you wrote.
Speaker 1: Did you write that up there?
Speaker 4: I wrote, yeah, yeah, about that.
Speaker 1: There was another Supreme Court justice who went to Princeton
Speaker 1: and she had a very different experience there, so go, yeah.
Speaker 4: Well that was Sonya Sotomayor.
Speaker 8: And I think you look at this place in the
Speaker 8: nineteen seventies and late sixties, in the case of Alito,
Speaker 8: where Princeton was opening the doors to two separate communities.
Speaker 4: One was public school kids who you.
Speaker 8: Know, maybe first generation college students, who you know, came
Speaker 8: out of the immigration waves of the twentieth century. The
Speaker 8: other was women they never admitted women until nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 8: and people of color, whom they were encouraging to come
Speaker 8: for the first time, making real efforts to bring people in.
Speaker 8: And what's interesting is both groups felt very alienated. Both
Speaker 8: of them felt very out of sorts with the sort
Speaker 8: of eating clubs which represents like the wealthy Princeton elites.
Speaker 8: And yet over time Princeton evolved and Princeton became more
Speaker 8: the Sonya Soda Mayor University than the sam Alito University
Speaker 8: and Soda. My memories of her time at Princeton became
Speaker 8: more and more positive. It's like she says, her whole
Speaker 8: life's journey began when she the day she was accepted
Speaker 8: at Princeton. I mean this is Princeton is the source
Speaker 8: of all of her hope and energy.
Speaker 4: Alito, when he.
Speaker 8: Was being confirmed for the Supreme Court, said Princeton was
Speaker 8: the place where he saw some really privileged people doing
Speaker 8: some really irresponsible things. Talking about the anti war protests
Speaker 8: that your dad may have been involved in, and those
Speaker 8: are two radically different experiences. They come out of, you know,
Speaker 8: what it meant to be in the Ivy League schools
Speaker 8: in that era, And I think that's also very emblematic
Speaker 8: of the conservative legal movement. I mean, these are not
Speaker 8: maga working class kids. These are like Ivy League kids,
Speaker 8: but they feel very culturally and socially alienated from their
Speaker 8: peers who believed in the liberation movements of the sixties
Speaker 8: and believed in the ideals of the sixties, and believed
Speaker 8: in the anti war protests.
Speaker 1: It's funny because my father complains about Princeton were that
Speaker 1: it was very elite and that the people didn't care,
Speaker 1: and that they didn't care about what was happening. And
Speaker 1: he actually left Princeton to go to Sarah Lawrence because
Speaker 1: he thought they were horribly out of touch and the
Speaker 1: eating clubs and the legacy of conservative craziness.
Speaker 4: That's a common perception. Your dad wasn't honed.
Speaker 1: For sure, So Alito, you know, it's funny because it's
Speaker 1: like there's a lot of Catholicism on the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: on the conservative side. I don't think that's by accident.
Speaker 1: So I would love you to sort of thread this
Speaker 1: conservative legal movement to Catholicism.
Speaker 8: I think that it comes from several different strands of Catholicism.
Speaker 8: I think that in sam Alito's mind, Catholicism is conflated
Speaker 8: with his Italian American immigrant experience. The church was the
Speaker 8: place where his grandparents were accepted. It was where they
Speaker 8: could find a sense of community in a foreign land.
Speaker 4: It was part of their identity as Italians.
Speaker 8: You know, the Catholic Church is literally part of the
Speaker 8: national fabric of Italy and has special a special place
Speaker 8: in the Italian government and constitution.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 8: So he sees Catholicism as interwoven with the conservative beliefs
Speaker 8: that came out of his mid twentieth century childhood, you know,
Speaker 8: ward mobility, putting your nose to the grindstone, pulling yourself
Speaker 8: up by your bootstraps. And he sees, you know, Catholicism
Speaker 8: as a way of like following the rules step by step,
Speaker 8: living a virtuous life according to the precepts of the
Speaker 8: Catholic Church. During that same time, there was another strand,
Speaker 8: and people like Clarence Thomas might be more a part
Speaker 8: of this where a lot of people from very very
Speaker 8: different backgrounds, you know, some of them Jewish, some of
Speaker 8: them from mainline Protestant churches, some of them African became
Speaker 8: Catholic because they believed that Catholicism at the time was
Speaker 8: sort of hardcore. Protestant churches tended to be moving to
Speaker 8: the left, so did reform.
Speaker 4: Judaism was on the rise.
Speaker 8: You know, you had a lot of religion and liberalism combining,
Speaker 8: but the Catholics held firm. So it meant a lot
Speaker 8: in that era when people of the same age as
Speaker 8: Thomas and Alito converted to Catholicism, and a lot of
Speaker 8: that happened with some of the conservative kids at Princeton
Speaker 8: that I and my research went back and interviewed the
Speaker 8: one who was the leader of the Conservatives at Princeton,
Speaker 8: T Harding Jones, became a Catholic. He was a converted
Speaker 8: to Catholicism. So did the Meyer family. Jean Meyer was
Speaker 8: the longtime director of the Federal Society and his father
Speaker 8: had converted to Catholicism that to them represented hardcore.
Speaker 4: It was also William F.
Speaker 8: Buckley was a big influence, and you know, his Catholicism
Speaker 8: was seen as part of what made him a conservative.
Speaker 8: I think people were impressed.
Speaker 1: With that, yes, but also when it comes to abortion,
Speaker 1: Catholicism threatened to need all that otherwise sex of Christianity
Speaker 1: might not.
Speaker 4: But did, especially in that era.
Speaker 8: I mean, nowadays, when we think of the anti abortion movement,
Speaker 8: people will often think of evangelicals.
Speaker 4: But in that era, evangelicals were neutral. They were neutral
Speaker 4: on Roe v.
Speaker 3: Wade.
Speaker 8: They didn't have a position. It was a very different time.
Speaker 8: And that's sort of what was meant by the Catholics
Speaker 8: being hardcore. You know that they were willing to say
Speaker 8: full stop no on abortion, you know, full stop no
Speaker 8: on premarital sex. Premarital sex was a big issue at
Speaker 8: Princeton in that time. You know, contraception was still an
Speaker 8: issue and is, you know today at issue. One of
Speaker 8: the Lydio's most famous opinions, Hobby Lobby, dealt with contraception. Right,
Speaker 8: It's like so, and of course the big Supreme Court
Speaker 8: case they were all referencing was Griswold by Connecticut.
Speaker 4: This was before Roe v. Wade, and that was a
Speaker 4: contraception case. Catholic Church on all.
Speaker 8: These social issues, particularly relating to the bedroom where they
Speaker 8: were hardcore.
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah, Alito continues to be on the court.
Speaker 1: He is not the longest serving member of the court,
Speaker 1: that's Thomas, but he has left a real stamp on
Speaker 1: the courts in a number of different ways. So I'd
Speaker 1: love you talk about recent cases either coming or that
Speaker 1: have been ruled recently where there are Lito cases. You know,
Speaker 1: you see the Alito signature on them.
Speaker 8: The most obvious recent one was the Montgomery County, Maryland
Speaker 8: case where Montgomery County had a curriculum that included story
Speaker 8: books for children and books for classes that included gay characters.
Speaker 8: Just gay characters are sort of part of the normal
Speaker 8: fabric of the story characters who happened to be gay,
Speaker 8: And very initially when they started this curriculum, they included
Speaker 8: like warnings to parents in case parents wanted to pull
Speaker 8: kids out of class or something, because they were worried
Speaker 8: about this, but then quickly changed because they felt that
Speaker 8: it created a stigma for kids who came from families
Speaker 8: with gay parents or other gay gay relatives in there,
Speaker 8: that there was something weird about having some kids pulled
Speaker 8: out of class. So they felt this was not appropriate
Speaker 8: and they stopped doing it. Alito and the Supreme Court's
Speaker 8: conservative majority to say they had to reinstate the warnings
Speaker 8: to parents because it violated the freedom of religion, the
Speaker 8: free exercise of religion of the conservative parents. Now it's
Speaker 8: very much Alito who will say conservative parents are being
Speaker 8: discriminated against, just as you know, some people might contend
Speaker 8: that same sex couples and families led by same sex
Speaker 8: couples are being discriminated against, and this is a common thread.
Speaker 8: He has activated the free exercise of religion clause in
Speaker 8: the Constitution to an extent far greater than other justices
Speaker 8: have seen.
Speaker 4: He has really been the leader in that.
Speaker 8: You see it in cases like Catholic charities in Philadelphia
Speaker 8: excluding gay parents.
Speaker 4: You see it in his decisions even in a First
Speaker 4: Amendment case involving the harassment of soldiers by this Westborough church,
Speaker 4: this radical group or sort of a radical conservative group.
Speaker 8: They were protested military funerals. He sees the average American
Speaker 8: of conservative values as being discriminate in the same way
Speaker 8: that other people would see racial minorities and LGBTQ community
Speaker 8: and foreign born people to be discriminated against. You know,
Speaker 8: he's pulling up the other side of the ledger right.
Speaker 1: So he's trying to protect right wingers from discrimination. Keep
Speaker 1: going on that.
Speaker 8: Yeah, absolutely, I mean he believes that this is part
Speaker 8: of free exercise of religion. I think that it's more
Speaker 8: conservative traditional values that he imputes to religion. Now, not
Speaker 8: in every case, like the hobby lobby case, which was
Speaker 8: the contraception case. It was a real, you know, very
Speaker 8: conservative Christian family that owned the business. But I think
Speaker 8: that he feels like free exercise of religion should be
Speaker 8: every bit as active a clause of the Supreme Court
Speaker 8: and as a source for Supreme Court decision making as the.
Speaker 4: Equal protection clause.
Speaker 8: He would say, essentially, conservative traditional minded Americans deserve protection too.
Speaker 1: So I think of him as just a partisan hack.
Speaker 1: Am I wrong, and tell me why.
Speaker 4: I think that he has evolved over time.
Speaker 8: I think that he is very driven by the principles
Speaker 8: that he developed in his childhood growing up just outside
Speaker 8: of Trenton, New Jersey, in the middle twentieth century, that
Speaker 8: heightened sense of Americanism. I mean, that's where the loyalty
Speaker 8: to Americans who follow the rules, the traditional values and
Speaker 8: things like that come from.
Speaker 4: I think it also comes from.
Speaker 8: Like the Cold War era schools and culture that was
Speaker 8: preaching the greatness of American freedom and things like that.
Speaker 8: May I have to mention your grandfather's novels that I
Speaker 8: read when I was a kid, too, who wrote about American.
Speaker 4: History in a very positive way.
Speaker 8: I think sam Alito was influenced by those messages, very
Speaker 8: very sharply. I think that in recent years many people
Speaker 8: have noticed that his personality has changed, that he's become
Speaker 8: more outspoken.
Speaker 4: He was a shy person. Now he's an outspoken person.
Speaker 8: He's become a grim and bitter negative in a lot
Speaker 8: of his questions. You know, his descents have become more
Speaker 8: angry and frustrated. Even though he's winning right the majority
Speaker 8: on most cases a lot, yet he seems like the
Speaker 8: angry man on the court.
Speaker 4: That's not entirely uncommon for older justices. They just they
Speaker 4: sort of seem.
Speaker 8: To throw caution to the win when they get older
Speaker 8: and become grumpier in their own way.
Speaker 4: But I think that the charge that he is a
Speaker 4: partisan has some validity, especially when you look at the
Speaker 4: way that he responded to Joe Biden's executive decisions in
Speaker 4: areas like immigration and student loans, compared to the way
Speaker 4: he's responded to Trump's executive decisions in areas like USAID
Speaker 4: and immigration in other areas.
Speaker 1: I want you to talk about where this goes. We're
Speaker 1: coming up on court season every year, like May and June.
Speaker 1: I you know, beginning of May, I start to get
Speaker 1: like that dread because you know they're going to radically
Speaker 1: remake the country. There's a lot of anxiety about the
Speaker 1: Voting Rights Act John Roberts's you know favorite Pinota. Do
Speaker 1: you see that is where this is going? Like and
Speaker 1: make it make sense with Alito?
Speaker 8: Yeah, Well, I mean there are two different strands, and
Speaker 8: I think this is an ongoing thing. I mean we're
Speaker 8: going to see a lot this term. I mean, we
Speaker 8: have birthright citizenship just being argued.
Speaker 1: Right, but birthwaite citizenship seems like the case they put
Speaker 1: on the dock to make people.
Speaker 8: Find well, yes, I mean it seems easy, especially when
Speaker 8: you consider that the conservatives believe in the plain language
Speaker 8: of the amendment, and the plain language of the Amendment
Speaker 8: if you look to start with a playing language, like
Speaker 8: an originalist would say, does strongly suggest but then this
Speaker 8: is going to be a testinally of what you were
Speaker 8: saying about partisanship, especially for someone like Aledo. I mean,
Speaker 8: this is a real question Alito. Is he a principled
Speaker 8: originalist or is he a conservative who wants a conservative
Speaker 8: outcome and wants to give maximum discretion to a president
Speaker 8: although it seems like a Republican president more than a
Speaker 8: democratic president.
Speaker 1: I mean, we've seen this in like previous Supreme Court seasons,
Speaker 1: let's say, where they take a few cases that are
Speaker 1: so out of the mainstreams I guess, to show that
Speaker 1: they still do, theoretically at least believe in some norms.
Speaker 4: Well, I know, I.
Speaker 8: Think this is a real norm. I mean, birthright citizenship
Speaker 8: is going to matter to millions of people. This is
Speaker 8: a big, big deal, big big big Yeah.
Speaker 1: But I don't think I think this is one of
Speaker 1: those cases they take to show that they still can
Speaker 1: decide cases in a normal way.
Speaker 8: I think that it's going to be more serious than that,
Speaker 8: Especially is the next two years unfold because the conservative
Speaker 8: legal movement, Let's put it this way, the conservtive legal
Speaker 8: movement is the only four strong enough to reign in Trump.
Speaker 8: I'll go that far to say that even if the
Speaker 8: Democrats take over the US House, you will have Donald
Speaker 8: Trump stretching his executive authority and what he will claim
Speaker 8: is the full extent of his powers, but which Democrats
Speaker 8: and many others will claim are way exceeding his powers,
Speaker 8: way exceeding his powers. It will fall to the conservative
Speaker 8: dominated Supreme Court to renin him in It's not just
Speaker 8: the birthright citizens chipcase. How about the Federal Reserve case
Speaker 8: that hits on a very different level, but that's a
Speaker 8: very very important executive power case.
Speaker 1: What about the tariff's case. So he lost on the tariffs,
Speaker 1: all those companies sued, but he's still doing the tariffs. Well, yes,
Speaker 1: but he's backing down in some ways, right, Yeah.
Speaker 8: But it's putting the tariffs sort of a path to
Speaker 8: extinction a little bit because the law that he's operating
Speaker 8: under now has a time limit on it. That's why
Speaker 8: I would say that. But I think that the tariff's
Speaker 8: case was an important rebuke to Trump. And if you're
Speaker 8: one of these conservative justices who lives in this conservative ecosystem,
Speaker 8: who talks only to conservative media, who has become more
Speaker 8: insulated over time as many of them have breaking with
Speaker 8: Trump on something where Donald Trump is furious. He's out
Speaker 8: there screaming at them. You know, he's condemning them. They're
Speaker 8: terrible people, They're awful and all that. Once you've broken
Speaker 8: with him, once it becomes easier to break with him again.
Speaker 8: So then you have birthright citizenship, and then you have
Speaker 8: the Federal Reserve.
Speaker 1: But Alito did not break with Trump.
Speaker 8: Alito did not break with Trump. So yes, we're talking
Speaker 8: about Alito here. I would say this.
Speaker 4: Will be a test for leader.
Speaker 8: Look if come June, I mean, I know the case
Speaker 8: is being argued this week, we'll see all the different
Speaker 8: contours play out. But if you know, if the decision
Speaker 8: comes down and it's you know, six to three or
Speaker 8: five to four, and let's say Roberts and Barrett join
Speaker 8: with the liberals to assert birthright citizenship or something like that,
Speaker 8: you know you will say, wow, you know, Sam Alito
Speaker 8: really is sticking with a Republican.
Speaker 4: Side on these things. You know, he's.
Speaker 8: Looking hard for reasons to defend Trump's executive order. On
Speaker 8: the other hand, as you were suggesting, if it was
Speaker 8: a more sleeping decision, if it was like a nine
Speaker 8: to nothing decision, that's a powerful reduke to Trump. And
Speaker 8: it also is you know, more than a meaningless fig leaf.
Speaker 8: You know, as you were saying, the kind of case
Speaker 8: they take just to try to you know, the exception
Speaker 8: that proves the rule that they're with Trump most of
Speaker 8: the time, but once in a while they'll split with him.
Speaker 8: Trump isn't the kind of person who even tolerates people
Speaker 8: splitting with him once. So I think it would be
Speaker 8: a strong statement if they were nine to nothing on
Speaker 8: birthright citizenship.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, we will see, we will see. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much, Peter for coming on. This is totally fascinating.
Speaker 4: Excellent revenge for the sixties.
Speaker 8: Sam Alito on the triumph of the conservative legal movement
Speaker 8: at a bookstore near you. Thank you, no moment, slut
Speaker 8: Jesse Cannon.
Speaker 2: So may another case of judges doing the good work
Speaker 2: for us. Here a judge has paused Trump's demand for
Speaker 2: student race data in seventeen states.
Speaker 1: Why does Donald Trump want student race data?
Speaker 3: I believe it's because DEI and Woke.
Speaker 1: This administration's crusade against DEI is dangerous. Letitia James, New
Speaker 1: York's Attorney general, someone Donald Trump is also trying to
Speaker 1: prosecute for mortgage fraud. Student should not have to live
Speaker 1: in fear that their personal data would be handed over
Speaker 1: to the federal government, just as schools should not have
Speaker 1: to scramble to produce years of sensitive information to satisfy
Speaker 1: an arbitrary and unlawful demand. Linda McMahon, the Education Secretary,
Speaker 1: said that has previously said the policy, which was ordered
Speaker 1: by President Trump in August, was a way to ensure
Speaker 1: that colleges were not considering race and admissions. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is so insane. They're just trying to bully colleges
Speaker 1: into not doing di It's so craven. And it's also like,
Speaker 1: what's the opposite of anti anti racism? Guess uh?
Speaker 3: Is it woke?
Speaker 1: It's racism?
Speaker 3: Oh damn it.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
Speaker 1: every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear the best
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Speaker 1: you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend
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