April 17, 2025 • 51 mins
The Atlantic’s Anne Applebaum examines how our authoritarian rise is actually happening faster than usual. The Apprentice producer Darryl Silver shares what we can learn from his experience working with Trump. Plus, we have a special bonus from our YouTube channel featuring The Lever’s David Sirota on what Democrats can learn from Trump’s tariffs.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds, and a CBS Yougo poll finds fifty
eight percent of Americans want Congress to block Trump's tariffs.
We have such a great choke for you today the
(00:21):
Atlantics and Applebaum stops by to explain that our authoritarian
rise is actually happening faster than normal. Then we'll talk
to former The Apprentice producer Darryl Silver about what we
can learn from what he saw working with Trump. Plus,
we have a special bonus from our YouTube channel with
(00:43):
the Levers Dave Sarota on how Democrats can use Trump's
tariffs to win. But first the news Smike.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
We have Dave Serota from The Lever on this podcast
a little later and on our YouTube channel today and
his news organization as a blockbuster story that Trump's irs
pick was just enriched by tech schemers and that they
paid down one hundred and thirty thousand dollars of his
personal debt.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Yeah, I mean, look, this is happening all over the
Trump administration, so none of us should be surprised. But
this is a new document show that Billy Long. He
was a member of Congress or Republican member of Congress.
One hundred and thirty thousand dollars in personal debt was
suddenly paid off by donors at a firm policed by
the tax agency he lead. By the way, this Trump
(01:32):
administration has been through a ton of different You'll be
shocked to know this. IRS directors, this is the acting
head of the IRS is stepping down and retiring. It's
just been like a cascade of resignations IRS chief Information
Officer and by the way, twenty thousand IRS employees offered
(01:53):
to resign because Trump has been trying to streamline the
IRS and make it very tiny. So you should not
be surprised. And look, this is like low key cleptocracy here.
Paying off the loans of the government agency that is
(02:15):
supposed to monitor you political contributions is one of the
many ways in which Trump's people grift off this administration.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Governor Gavin Newsom's California is now the first state to
suit Trump on tariffs.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Yeah, let's talk about this Governor Gavin Newsom. He is
a bad podcaster, but he is in some way as
a good governor.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Have you ever heard of somebody starting a podcast and
having their polls fall because of it.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Yes, it's so stupid. And again, I just want to
just for one second, let's just go over this again
with Newsom Gavin. If you're listening, I want to say
one thing. You want to go on their podcasts. You
don't want them to come on your podcast. You need
to get in front of the audience that listens to
Steve Bannon, not get Steve Bannon in front of your audience.
(03:11):
You see what I'm saying. Go on Steve Bannon's podcast,
don't have Steve Bannon go on your podcast. This is
how this works. This is the siloed media industrial complex.
Go to them, don't bring them to you. Thank you,
and good night. But yes, this is good. California is
the fifth largest economy in the world. They will be absolutely,
(03:35):
like all of us, completely fucked over by tariffs. I'm
glad they're doing this. By the way, tariff's are a
really good example of how stupid and bad this administration is.
Right Like, they don't work, nobody wants them. They make
everything more expensive. They're not going to onshore manufacturing by
making things more expensive. There does not like one plus
(03:57):
two dozen equal seven thousand. So I am glad to
see this. I wish that we would see, you know,
the rage that people are having about the tariffs, about
the like grad student disappearing right, that grad student is
still in the Louisiana detention facility after having written it
opinion piece, right, So that stuff I would rather. I
(04:21):
wish people would be a little more upset about that
than the tariffs. But good for California. And you know,
I think more importantly, I think there's a real chance
that none of this, you know, this is going to
stop the tariffs. Between this and the Supreme Court case,
I actually think that will actually work, so good for them.
And like with so many things Trump is trying to do,
(04:43):
there is no legal standing for it.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Speaking of no legal standing, we used to have this
bipartisan consensus that no one would ever ever contend that
the sole due process thing is one of the things
that makes America great. Well that's gone now because jad
Vince says he's fine with the inevitable errors of due process.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Jd Vance has been shopping this all day on Twitter.
He is like, we shouldn't have to process for illegals
or for people who are non American citizens. By the way,
I want to point out that this administration and these
Republicans have for a while been saying that that people
(05:23):
who are not in this country legally are not entitled
to due process. And what we saw very clearly from
the Supreme Court nine zero is that, in fact, no,
that's not true. So it is so JD Vance by
the way, to have JD Vance being like, no, you know,
(05:43):
the Supreme Court already said you can't do this, JD.
So like, here's the deal. You don't get to do it,
Like that's it. And again I think it's worth remembering
like they are trying to do a lot of illegal
stuff because they want to, and we need to push
back and say n because no, no, no, no, this
(06:07):
is not okay. This is not what any of us
should be doing. And he's wrong. The Supreme Court won't
go along with this, and he's going to try because
he's super sketchy, but just ignore it. He's wrong. It's
not going to happen. Thank god we have the courts.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
So, speaking of we have seen a very very big
tide shift in the Democratic base, and there's a new
poll from Harvard Center for American Political studies that shows
that Democrats want the party to abandon this centrist approach.
No more Liz Cheney being trot out. Yeah, they're going left.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
So this is Harvard Center for American Political Studies. We
have to caveat this because this makes you too happy.
So I'm worried it's not totally legit. Anytime anything confirms
our priors, we have to be a little suspicious.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Yes, But also anytime you see crowds that size all
of a sudden, you start to wonder, right.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
And the crowds that sis you're talking about are the
Bernie aoc rallies. A survey taken by Harvard Center for
American Political Studies and Harris between April ninth and tenth
found that seventy two percent of Democratic voters support politicians
like Sanders and AOC who are calling on Democrats to
(07:27):
adapt a more aggressive stance towards Trump and his administration,
fight harder rather than leaders who are willing to compromise
with President Trump. So that's I think pretty important. I
wouldn't say I think, Look, Jesse's very lefty, and I
am leftyer than I was for a long time. But
(07:50):
I do think this is really important. It is about
taking a stand and pushing back. I would also add
that this is AOC and Chris Murphy and all the
politicians who have been standing up have raised millions of dollars.
They've had like the best quarter ever. So clearly voters
(08:12):
like this, and they want this, and they want pushback
and they want standing up, and they don't want you
to bring Charlie Kirk on your podcast. That's for you,
Governor Musing. And Applebaum is the author of Autocracy, Inc.
(08:35):
The Dictators who want to run the world. Welcome back
and Applebaum, thanks for having me. I'm so glad to
have you because you predicted everything that was going to happen.
I'm sorry to telling you love everything. You wrote. This
really brilliant book about cryptocracy and what that looks like
in authoritarianism, and you just had a really smart op
(08:58):
at about it. And so we've spent a lot of
time thinking about what this presidency would look like. In
some ways, it's worse. In some ways, it's not as bad.
I mean, there are certain parts of it which I
think are worse, but also there seems to be more
weiggle room, if.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
That makes sense, in the area of kleptocracy and corruption
and conflicts of interest. This is about as bad as
it could be. Yes, So I did write a book.
It's called Autocracy, Inc. And it was about this network
of dictators who don't share any ideology, but they have
common interests, and they often have common financial interests, and
(09:34):
they act out of their financial and political interests and
not in the interests of their own countries when they
make decisions. When the book was published, which was last summer,
a lot of people said, and will Trump be like that?
And I said, let's wait and see. But I think
that's a really precise description of what we're seeing. We're
seeing an administration which is acting not in the interests
(09:57):
of all Americans, but in the interest of very small
groups and in some cases in the president's personal financial interest.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
I just want you to tell us who those dictators are.
That's Orbon and Bud and right, Yeah, the book.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
The book was actually about Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela.
Leaders of countries who where there are no checks and balances,
where there's no rule of law, where the law is
whatever the person in charge or the party in charge
says it is right, and that's that was a that's
the big difference, the important difference between those countries and
(10:34):
liberal democracies. And I was also particularly interested in countries
that were fighting against narratives of democracy and we're trying
to create an authoritarian narrative instead. And actually you can
see ways in which this administration is also collaborating in
that project, so taking apart American soft power and institutions
and that promoted democracy and so on. But I think
(10:56):
the I think the shift in the direction of personalized
rule without rule of law, seeking to undermine or go
around the constitution, seeking to attacking the legal community, actually
attacking law firms, directly, seeking to undermine courts, ignoring or
(11:16):
mocking court decisions.
Speaker 4 (11:18):
That is stuff that.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
We know from the autocratic world. That's almost the definition
of autocracy. You know, these are countries where people rule
without any constraints. And it looks to me like this
administration also wants to rule without any constraints.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
Right, and things like for example, this is a bit neasy,
but they're kicking out the wire services of the White
House press pool.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
Seaking the wire services out of the White House press pool,
suing or using regulatory bodies to undermine the broadcast networks,
issuing executive orders against law firms seeking to literally take
over universities. I mean, the proposal for what they wanted
to do to Harvard was actually there's no way Harvard
could ever have accepted it. It was about giving the
(12:03):
administration control over a faculty, hiring, courses, students, eventually acceptances,
all kinds of things that no institution could tolerate. So
all those things are part of a project. And the
project is eliminate any source of information or knowledge or
expertise that can challenge the ruler, and eliminate any source
(12:27):
of possible descent, any institutions or organizations that could transmit
or communicate descent. These are tactics that we know from
the autocratic world. This is how many autocrats came to power,
or it's what they do once they have power. Here,
I have to say, I think maybe Americans don't realize
the shift has happened here much faster than I have
(12:47):
seen happen anywhere else. Usually it takes a long time.
Like there's an expression boiling the frog. You know, you
do a little, one little thing, and then another little thing,
and then before the frog knows that the frog is boiled.
This is much more aggressive, and of course it might
also therefore create a much more powerful counter reaction. The
aim and the goals are clear. It's attack institutions, it's
(13:09):
undermined the rule of law, eliminate sources of disagreement, and
do so also as a way of fighting culture wars.
So when the administration attacks Harvard or Columbia, the purpose
isn't just legal. It's also part of a narrative game.
We're pushing back against institutions that you don't like, or
that they think there are supporters don't like. There's an
(13:30):
argument being made as well as these legal changes happening.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
It's important to sort of mention that Columbia did the
wrong thing, and the billionaires and the law firms that
went along with that. You don't ever win by acquiescing.
Will you talk about that? I mean, except with Putin,
But you don't win Trump doing.
Speaker 4 (13:48):
That with Putin.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
Do so.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
Note what happened to Columbia is something that everyone should
pay attention to. Because Columbia tried to concede. Columbia tried
to go along with what the Straation wanted. It tried
to it abolished some departments or it announced some kind
of investigations and so on, and they thought that in
exchange for doing that, that the administration would give them
(14:11):
back their four hundred million dollars of federal scientific research funding,
which by the way, has nothing to do with, you know,
any of the political issues that Columbia was supposedly dealing with.
And then they didn't give it back. Instead they asked
for more and they still haven't given them the four
hundred million dollars. And the lesson is, you can you
can do what they want. You can concede to what
(14:31):
they want. They're going to demand more, you know, they
will not They're not going to leave you alone. And
I would say the same thing that these law firms
who have made concessions to Trump and you know are
trying to get along with them, and that that's going
to end badly too. Offering him some kind of deal
or paying money to his family is as you know,
as Amazon did when it when it invested forty million
dollars in a documentary about Millennia. All of that will
(14:54):
not build respect and safety. It will just make them
ask for more. They'll just want more money, They'll want
more payoffs, they'll want more concessions.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
And I think what I think is so interesting here
is that if you are a university, you can win
if you just take them to court, because none of
this is legal.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
It is not legal to withhold federal funding you in
exchange for unconstitutional requests to curve free speech. Note, as
long as we still have some independent judges in this country,
you know, Harvard will win that case.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
With the exception of this sort of very few corrupt judges,
the very few Eileen Cannons. Trump world has not had
the time to put in cronies in the legal system,
so they are rolling the dice and getting people like
Judge Boseburg, who was appointed by both Obama and Bush
and who does not believe he's in Hungary. So I
(15:51):
think that is an important sort of backstop there is
that you can be brave and know the courts will
have your back.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
Well, it's also the case that conservative judges for the
last several decades have all been originalists. They're people who
almost made a fetish of the Constitution. You know, I
think you know a lot of legal cases have been argued.
You know, what were the founders thinking in the eighteenth
century when they wrote this or that you know this
or that piece of it.
Speaker 4 (16:15):
You know, even the conservative judges.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
Are people who have, at least in their scholarship and
in their work, have not been partisans in the crudest sense,
but have been sticklers for an absolute orthdox interpretation of
the rule of law. So there is some hope that
conservative judges, when they see clear violations of the Constitution,
will reject it.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
Yeah, and I mean this nine zero response from the
Supreme Court. I don't want to get all rosy eyed,
because we are certainly in a lot of trouble here,
but this nine zero response from the Supreme Court on
that you can't get rid of due process, I think
is meaningful.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
I think it's meaningful too. It's also the very interesting
if you saw the exchange in the Oval office when
the bouqueta from El Salvador was there with President Trump,
there was a little weird commentary about the nine O decision.
And I think it was Stephen Miller, if I'm recollecting correctly,
who said, oh, the nine decision was in our favor.
In other words, they already feel the need to undermine
(17:19):
the decision and to lie about it and to tell
a completely different story about it. And you can see
Vance doing this as well in some of the propaganda
that he's been putting out. So they're trying to create
an alternate story. And it's really important that the courts,
the media, and of course Republican politicians as well as
democratic politicians hold them to reality. You know, they need
(17:42):
to listen to what the court says, and they need
to abide by what the court says.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
The reason that it's been able to go so fast
is because I think a lot of people in this
country have not had to ever be brave, and it's
a muscle that's sort of out of fashion right now.
Do you think that two? Or why do you think
that people have came in so many cases?
Speaker 3 (18:04):
Maybe partly that it's maybe that there's no cultural memory
of anything like this happening before, whereas there is in
other countries, for example, in Brazil and South Korea, who
both done a better job of pushing back against dictatorial
presidents or presidents who are usurping too much power. You know,
I also think there was a complacency here. You heard
(18:24):
it during the election campaign. There was a complacency about
what could happen. You know, there's an idea of American exceptionalism.
You know that we are a special country and we've
had democracy for such a long time that none of
this could happen to us, And I think people were
just not mentally prepared for, you know, what was actually
a very very well planned, you know, long thought about
(18:47):
attack on specific institutions. I mean, there were one or two,
there have to be said, there were one or two
pieces of this that were unique. I don't know of
a previous case when an equivalent of DOGE went into
a government and you know, a set of engineers went
into a you know, a finance ministry or a treasury
department and just shut off programs illegally and in such
(19:09):
a way that nobody knew how to turn them back
on again, which is a continuing problem. And all kinds
of spheres of you know, in all kinds of ways.
And so they did do some things that were new
in the world of you know, declining democracy. Yeah, but
you know, but a lot of it was predictable and
could have been predicted. I mean, the attacks on universities
were predictable, and actually presidents of universities, some of whom
(19:33):
I've spoken to, did know it was coming and have
been thinking about it for a long time. And certainly
the attacks on the media and the attempts to circumvent
the rule of law, and certainly once let me just
return again to the cryptocracy. These are These are people
who think that it's okay for the president to spend
a weekend, then a weekend when the stock market is crashing,
(19:57):
at his personal golf course and his Perersonal hotel where
a golf tournament is being played that is sponsored by
Saudi Arabia, and in attendance is the head of the
Saudi Sovereign Wealth Company and the Sovereign Wealth Fund and
aram Code are also sponsors. The Saudi Oil Company and
a series of other important Saudi business people are there,
(20:20):
and they are paying money to the president's golf course
and to the president's club, and nobody blinks an eye.
That's a conflict of interest. You know that Saudi Arabia
is a country that has a complex and relationship with
the United States. It cares very much what our foreign
policy is. And they are seeking to buy the president
in a way that's not even secret. It's not like
they're bribing him. The names of the sponsors of the
(20:42):
tournament are on billboards at Dorrall Golf Course and on websites.
The practice of this administration is now to openly flaunt
and enjoy conflicts of interests. I mean, Musk is another one.
Doje has attacked and fired people at regulatory agencies that
Musk's companies, and Musk now has to say in the
(21:03):
running of other agencies who subsidize his companies. In other words,
he is the beneficiary of the policies that he is
carrying out, the personal financial beneficiary. And that although you know,
there have been rich people involved in US politics for
a long time, and there have been lots of rich
people in the cabinet in the past, I am I
am unaware of anything this blatant. You know, where people
(21:25):
with an actual interest in a government decision get to
make that decision all by themselves.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
What is interesting about it, too, is that one of
the things that you talked about on that article was
that TikTok was one of the sponsors of that golf tournament.
TikTok is so conflicted, but also the person who will
decide TikTok's fate is Donald Trump, right yep.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
And TikTok is directly paying him. I mean they are
a sponsor of the tournament at his club. The club
is he makes money off of it. The actions of
TikTok or openly seeking to bribe are persuade the president
that they would like to stay in business. That a
website that collects vast amounts of data about Americans and
may well be sharing it with the Chinese Communist Party,
(22:09):
that website is seeking to win a regulatory decision through
influencing the president's personal financial decisions. Again, I can't state
enough how far out of line this is with certainly
the presidencies of the last century. Maybe if you go
back to the nineteenth century and the Gilded Age, you'll
find some similar level of conflict that I am not
(22:31):
aware of any president who's been personally courted by companies
and by foreign leaders who are also making financial contributions
to his businesses.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Yeah, it is absolutely just one of the kind of
most breson bits of self dealing that we've ever seen.
Tell Us, if we want to stop the cryptocracy and
the authoritarianism, what would you say are the mean things
this sort of call to action?
Speaker 3 (23:01):
Here two things in particular, Number one, the next elections
by which I mean the midterms are unbelievably important. It
is really important that the Democrats win both the House
and the Senate, and it's also really important that they
get they create a broad coalition to help them do it,
hopefully including some Republicans or people are Trump voters, and
(23:22):
it's very important that those elections be free and fair.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
You know.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
Again, in the list of things that Americans don't imagine,
they probably don't imagine that it's possible to corrupt an
American election.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
But it is.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
I mean, there are multiple, many scenarios you can imagine,
and it's good that everybody prepares to.
Speaker 4 (23:40):
Think about them.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
I mean, without being hysterical or creating anxiety. Just think
about whether there would be a you know, maybe they
are going to be protests, maybe there would be a crackdown,
maybe there would be a state of emergency, or maybe
there would be changes to electoral laws that would affect
who could vote. Just be prepared for that because it's
extremely important that, you know, in a democracy, power is
(24:02):
ultimately controlled in the by politicians in the political realm,
and we need some power. We need Congress to come
back to playing its role of checking the president. You know, Congress,
you know, Congress. Just to give one example, Congress could
end this the tariff policy immediately if they wanted to.
The tariff side. The tarts are also illegal. They're being
carried out in violation of treaties the United States has
(24:24):
signed on the basis of a kind of emergency law.
That's bullshit, and Congress could block that and take back
tariff power. Now, in our system, Congress has the power
of taxation and it controls the budget. They could take
that back. They could end the role of DOGE, which
is also acting illegally and ending programs and you know,
and departments that have been agreed to by Congress, and
(24:45):
you know, all those things could be brought to an end.
It's really really important that these elections go well. I
would also say, in the less political sphere, it's really
important to create broad coalitions. You know, it's so obvious
to me that all of the law firms in this
country need to be on the same side. I mean,
it cannot be the case that Trump can pick them
off one by one or do a special deal with
(25:07):
Paul Weiss and then you know, and then attack wilmer Hale. Ultimately,
it's not going to work for anybody. It has to
be okay for law firms to defend whoever they want
and to have whatever clients they want. That's our tradition
going back two centuries, and lawyers cannot allow that to
be undermined. But the same is true of universities. You know,
what would be really great would be not just for
Harvard and MIT and a few very wealthy universities on
(25:30):
the East Coast to be standing up, but for a
coalition of universities who see the threat to one as
a threat to all, to begin to speak in one voice.
There's been a little bit of that. There have been
some group lawsuits, particularly against the cuts in biomedical research
and healthcare spending, which have affected some universities disproportionately, but
(25:51):
not everybody has joined them. I mean, there's one interesting
exam University of Alabama. University of Alabama Medical School. At
least until recently, it was the largest employer in the
city Bingham. It's a really important institution. They will also
lose money from cuts to an age spending. So how
about hearing from them? How about hearing from other Red
state universities, from wider range of universities, All across the system.
(26:14):
You know, we need some solidarity from universities, from law firms,
from media. You know, the more they speak, you know, together,
the harder it's going to be to undermine this. So
I would start with those two things. You know, elections
are important and our system. Elections are the main thing.
Don't forget about them or dismiss them or think we
can solve this with lawsuits. You know, elections really matter.
(26:34):
And then I think solidarity matters and coalitions matter.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Anna.
Speaker 4 (26:41):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
Darryl Silver is an author and producer of over a
dozen television shows, including The Apprentice. Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 4 (26:52):
Daryl, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
So you produced The Apprentice. You were one of the
people who started tell us about your relationship with the Apprentices.
Speaker 4 (27:02):
So I came on at Concept. I was brought on
literally the day I came on. I had to sign
my contract before I could even told what the show was. Wow, Yeah,
what did you think it was?
Speaker 5 (27:12):
Well?
Speaker 4 (27:12):
I didn't know, but I was a big fan of
Survivor at the time. But Conrad Riggs, who is Mark
Burnett's number two, hired me and I signed my contract
and they said Okay, what's the show, and they said,
it's Survivor in the City and the winner gets to
be Donald Trump's prince for a year. I was then
ushered into a room of like twenty some odd people
who literally like signed the contract learned that walked into
(27:33):
a room, was introduced as one of the creative guys
on the show who will be developing the show for
Mark Burnett, and the line was Survivor in the City
winner gives me Donald Trump's apprentice for a year, and
you need to figure out the format of the show
before the network asks us. So I literally came on
at Concept and when I went into that first meeting,
I had just learned thirty seconds ago what the show
was about. So I took out my little read book
(27:55):
that I brought with me for notes and I still
have it today. I created like probably half a dozen
tasks that wound up getting in the show, in formats
that wanted getting the show, including lemonade stand. While we
were going around introducing ourselves in the room, I'm feverishly
writing because I'm about to be asked, like what my
ideas are that I just learned thirty seconds ago. So
that's literally where I came on and then I did
(28:17):
that for the first three seasons, and I was a
producer on the first three seasons of the show.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
Did anyone ever become an apprentice to him?
Speaker 4 (28:23):
For a year afterward, I was in La doing this,
and that was all kind of happening in New York.
Although in season two and three I was on the set.
In season one, there was a limited amount of us
that actually went to the set, and so like, after
all this happened, like we really weren't involved with that,
because the whole show took on a mind of its
own so quickly, it became such a big hit that
it was like we were rushed back into season two
(28:45):
and three, Like we weren't paying attention to what happened
to season one. So I guess they did work for him.
I mean, I think Bill worked in Chicago or something,
But like, we weren't involved in that. Really, we weren't
tracking that at all.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
In some ways, the Apprentice was as much a part
of the origin story of Donald Trump as Donald Trump was,
right well.
Speaker 4 (29:05):
It validated him. It took a guy who had, you know,
ruined a lot of businesses. You know, he had bankrupt
a lot of businesses and struggled in a lot of
his real estate career. And then we validated him. We
convinced America and the world that he was a business genius,
you know. And that's what it did. It gave him
some validation.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
True or not.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
You guys wrote it sort of without him. Was he
involved in the writing of it.
Speaker 4 (29:30):
It was not involved at all. What happened is is
like we developed the show. We would create the tasks,
the format and all that, and then he was brought in.
If you actually look at the show, he's not in
the show that much. So at the beginning he'll say
like here I am at Macy's, or here I am
at this place, or here I'm at home depot, and
then he disappears for the most of the show. And
on an occasion he would show up in the middle
of the show, but not every episode. And then he
(29:52):
would obviously come to the boardroom at the end. And
what would happen at the end of the show is
like we'd be sitting in the control room and there'd
be a lot of producers stand around him and we
would download him on what happened during the week. I
forget the other two people's name, but the people who
work for him, they would pop in here and there
and they would give him a download too, and then
based on that information, he would go into the boardroom
(30:13):
and he would you know, make his decisions.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
So did you get the sense when you were working
on it that he was good at business or now?
Speaker 4 (30:20):
I did not. I wasn't involved in his day to
day businesses. I didn't see it. But what surprised me,
which is like everybody talks about Trump's lies, is that
being in the middle of this, we would hear his
lies that didn't need to be lies. I remember once
he would he said like, we're the number one show
in the history of the network, and we were laughing.
We're like, we're an absolute hit show. We're doing fantastic,
(30:41):
like on all metrics or a smash hit. And he
would still have to get on camera and lie about it.
And we were constantly like laughing at it, like why
is he telling all these lies?
Speaker 1 (30:49):
Did you feel like you couldn't trust him?
Speaker 4 (30:51):
I mean, it wasn't matter trust and you remember he
wasn't around that much, so it wasn't like, you know,
Donald Trump wasn't giving us any direction. You know, Jay
Beanstalk was our showrunner and he was really in charge
of it, and Mark wasn't really there for the most part,
and so it was like, you know, we were just
We're just a TV show, you know, that's it. We're
just we're just making TV. And a lot of a
(31:11):
lot of people always ask me, They're like, you know,
why didn't you do something? Why why don't you say something?
And I'm always like, the guy was a real estate
guy who thought he would become a president.
Speaker 5 (31:20):
You know, did you feel like he was smart? No,
that's interesting. I mean, as simple as that, what led
you to think that. Let me break it out. There's
two different kinds of smarts. There's street smarts and then
there's smart. There's no question he's street smart. He proves
it every day.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4 (31:34):
His superpower is that he can convince whoever he's standing
in front of that he's going to do for them
what they want. Whatever your dream come true is. He
will promise you within an hour, he'll promise that there's
going to be clean coal to coal miners and then environmentalists,
that he's going to be the best environmental president ever,
and he'll do that. He'll do that without even thinking,
without even skipping a bee. Yeah, you know, And that's
(31:54):
his superpower, is that he's able to do that without
a conscience in my opinion.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, in your set and of like the
experience of making television like that, do you think it
helped him create the sort of skill set that he has.
Speaker 4 (32:07):
Now, No, I don't think he has a skill set.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
But you know, the skill set of like getting people
to believe stuff.
Speaker 4 (32:13):
No, he was doing that already if you spent any
time with him at all, Like he made the grips
feel good about themselves as well as the guy on
the street. He wanted to be liked. He had this
gift of gab. Again, I think it's his superpower, is
that he is. You know, people always asked me, would
you think of Donald Trump? He was a really nice
guy when we were there. I just, you know, I
just don't think he should be a dog catcher. But
he was charming and he was friendly, and he was
(32:34):
always he was nice to us. I didn't I didn't
have a bad thing to say about him. From a
personal standpoint.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
I think it's really important that when we talk about him,
we separate like how he is, how he is there's
a reason that a plurality of Americans voted for him twice.
And you know, he is a wildly successful politician. That's
part of how we got here again. And he's able
to do something that other Republicans are not. So I
(33:01):
think that learning this stuff is actually really relevant and important.
Speaker 4 (33:05):
You know, you compare it to like the people who
convince suicide bombers to kill themselves with seventy two virgins.
If you pound enough time into people's head and they
believe you, they'll do anything for you, including voting against
their best interests. I mean, look at farmers today, Look
at all the people losing jobs. Look at the immigrants
who voted for him. I mean, like they're all getting
shellacked right now. He convinced them against all their better judgment.
(33:27):
You look at cities right now that are losing education
funding and all the red states that they can't afford
to lose any of it, and they're losing all and
it's all because he convinced them that this was best
for him. That's his genius. I mean, that's his genius.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
And you saw that even in the boardroom.
Speaker 4 (33:42):
I'll tell you what I saw in the boardroom. That
was interesting, Like we would give him the download of
what happened during the episode, it'd be obvious, like Molly
did this and so and so did this, and like
it would be obvious he obviously made all the decisions
what he wanted to do and who he wanted to fire.
But every once in a while, somebody who was like
a tangential person in the task or whatever said something
he didn't like and he would just go, you're fired,
(34:02):
and you'd be like, and you'd hear the control room
everybody would freeze, because there was it was always like
a like an order with which things were supposed to
happen to lead up to the firing. And sometimes he
would go out of order and he would just fire
somebody way before we got all the bites that we needed,
and you would be like, what just happened? Why did
he fire that person? Like that person had nothing to
do with the downfall of the team or something like that,
(34:23):
And so you know, you look at somebody who's just
it's just not logical, and which is what we're seeing today,
is like he's doing all these things that aren't logical
and you're just like, why is.
Speaker 6 (34:31):
He doing them?
Speaker 4 (34:32):
And he's got his people who go on camera and
like he knows what he's doing. He's playing you know,
you know, four level chests and you're just like, he's not.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
But that's really an interesting thing you're talking about there,
because that is what we see today, right, We see
that kind of like unpredictable for the tariffs. I mean,
like he sort of gets is it. You think it's
emotional on some level or just.
Speaker 4 (34:57):
Angry if you want to go down to like the
most basic level. My opinion is that everything he does
is either to benefit Donald Trump or to protect Donald Trump,
and he really doesn't care about the rest. Had not
he been trying to stay out of jail, who knows
if he would have even run. If not that he
was getting actually shellacked in his businesses and losing money,
he wouldn't be pulling all these grifts that he's doing
(35:18):
now to raise money. Whether it's whether it's shoes, or
whether it's the coin, or whether it's all of these things.
It's really all Donald Trump's centric. It's not about the country,
it's not about really anything. It's about how he gets
what he needs.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
In my opinion, yeah, oh yeah, let's talk about this
bill Maher thing because Bill Maher went tomorrow Laga the
Winter White House to see Donald Trump. Can you explain
to us your take on that what you think happened there.
Speaker 4 (35:42):
Look, I've been watching Bill Maher for years, and I
think Bill Maher is a smart guy. It wasn't as
much that Bill Maher went there and met with him.
It's that when he came out, he was like, he's
not you know, basically his line is and I'd have
to look it up and the thing I wrote, but
he's like, he wasn't the crazy person that he saw
on TV every day. He was like a nice, normal person,
(36:02):
you know. He was charming, he was all these things.
And it's like, yeah, most dictators and tyrants historically when
you sit with them, were nice guys, but then they
went and did all this crazy shit that destroyed the world.
And basically Trump's inherent thing is he wants people to
love him. He really wants to be loved. He wants
people like him, he wants people love him. He wants
to feel like the big macher, you know, and and
(36:23):
if you give him that, he loves it. So Bill
Mark came to meet him at the White House and
like sat with him, and it was a nice meeting
and with Kid Rock and I believe the guy from
usc was.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
There a beautiful piece of chocolate cake.
Speaker 4 (36:35):
Maybe yeah, exactly, And so like he's gonna be charming,
just like he was charming with us, and he's charming
with everybody. And then you leave and you go like,
well he was a charming guy. This charming guy like
just sent all these people to a death camp in Salvador.
It's like, yeah, he was nice, but what does that mean?
And in since Bill Maher had that as like his
first line out to the public, it was like, are
(36:55):
you joking? Like are you just wiping all the things
that he's doing and you see he's doing just because
he was nice to you at a dinner. It's like
it's madness and it's what Trump does and it's how
he lulls people into this.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
But it's interesting because it's like, and you probably relate
to this too, Like I meet people sometimes a lot
of times they're very nice to me. Does that mean
they're going to be nice to everyone? Maybe not? Right,
Like Bill obviously has a real place in Donald Trump's mind,
so of course, like why would he be mean to Bill? Right?
Speaker 4 (37:28):
Why would Bill come out with the first line that
he say be complimentary towards Trump? That's the crazy thing.
It's like, tell us what you discussed, tell us how
he responds to all the things he's doing. Give us,
give us an insight into policy. That's what I want
to know, and not that he was nice to you
and you guys had a nice dinner. Like nobody gives
a shit that you guys had a nice dinner.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
Well, it's also just like, there are things that you
could find out about Trump that would be quite useful
for all of us, right, that would make sense?
Speaker 4 (37:59):
That would You've seen Trump being interviewed by a lot
of people. He gives very little true information when he's
doing when he's doing an interview, I mean, the guy,
if you ask him a direct question that he doesn't
like it just pretends is if that question was never
asks and starts talking about some other thing.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
By the way, that's a New York rich people thing,
because I've had other people do it to me before,
and I'll be like, am I going crazy because I
just asked you a question about something totally and they
just talk about something else. It's like brilliant gas lighting.
Speaker 4 (38:29):
Well, you know what he's been doing. I mean, if
you look what he's been doing in the White House meetings,
Like he had all the press in there the other
day and they asked him directly about kill mar Abrego Garcia,
and like he was like, that's a rude question, and
then he went off on some tangent. It's like, that's
the question we all want to know. So he's smart
enough not to answer the questions that he doesn't want
to answer, which is frankly as opposed to the very
(38:52):
very very friendly media every question.
Speaker 1 (38:55):
Right, right, No, that's a really good point. And I
think that, you know, that is instructive in a lot
of ways. So he's a creature of reality television. What
do you think it was in this show that made
him so appealing to the world.
Speaker 4 (39:14):
I think people look at Donald Trump and see him
as an everyman and think I could be that man,
Like I could that could be me, you know, and
then they like that he says things for a large
portion of our population. He's willing to say the things
that a lot of people aren't willing to say. And
he's like, oh my god, he'll say things that I
would like to say. He gives a certain portion of
(39:36):
our public the right to say things that normally you
wouldn't say out loud. And on the TV show, I mean,
he was likable, he was funny, he was friendly. You know,
he made big decisions. You saw him in you know,
this is how the rich live. You know, we love
to see behind the curtain of how rich people live.
And you saw it. And by the way, the show
was super entertaining. I mean, there's no doubt about it.
(39:58):
Like when we first developed the show and we'd be
sitting around talking about business tasks, we would say it
to ourselves, like, is anybody gonna want to watch this
at all? And they didn't watch it for the business tasks.
They watched it because Trump was so charismatic. And yeah,
there was great drama with the two teams and whatnot,
but like, you know, that's really what it was. So
when when the show became a massive hit, we sat
(40:19):
around and we were like, we're genius. Is like, we
never thought a million years it was going to be
this mashion it was. When we came back, were like,
we weren't just as surprised as everybody else that it
was like this big hit. But because of his personality.
That's what it was.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
So you think ultimately that sort of ability to make
everyone like him was what did it?
Speaker 4 (40:39):
Who's a politician who was a football.
Speaker 1 (40:41):
Coach, Tommy Tuberville.
Speaker 4 (40:43):
How is Tommy Tuberville like in government? You know what
I mean? But it's because people loved the guy. They
loved him for his coaching, they loved the things he
had to say, They love he was outspoken. And now
he's running a state. You know, he's one of the
heads of a state. I mean, it's no different when
you look at any celebrity who really, inherently you don't
think would be in government, has no experience in government,
(41:03):
doesn't understand clear, simple policies how they get to these positions.
The same thing with Trump. There's always a time in
our society where everybody wants an outsider. We don't want
an insider. We don't want somebody who actually knows how
to run the government. If we could just get this
genius businessman to run this business of America, like, everything
will be great, even though the two skill sets have
nothing to do with one another. And that's what he
(41:25):
convinced people, and that's what then people wanted. That twice
Thank you, Darren, thank you.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
And now we have a clip from our YouTube channel
with Dave Serota from The Lever, who also is the
creator of the podcast The master Plan and the screenplay
author of the movie Don't Look Up. Welcome Too Fast Politics.
Speaker 6 (41:46):
David, thank you, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
So you and I are like absolutely on the same
page today. We both wrote our columns. You wrote your
column in the Guardian. I wrote my common Vanity fair
about exactly the same thing, which is where I think
the smart money is in the Democratic Party right now.
So I want you to explain to our listeners why
(42:09):
you think that Trump's tariffs are a winner for deams.
Speaker 6 (42:14):
I think they're a winner for a particular kind of
dem I think obviously the tariffs creating chaos for the
economy is bad for the incumbent party and probably structurally,
I guess, politically good for the opposition party. I mean,
I think it's bad for really every unless you're a billionaire, and.
Speaker 1 (42:36):
Even then.
Speaker 4 (42:39):
A lot of ye billionaire.
Speaker 6 (42:41):
Yeah, good point. So I think there's a way for
Democrats to be criticizing the kinds of tariffs, the kinds
of trade policies Trump is putting into effect. Uh, there's
a very strong argument that they're so broad, they're so inconsistent,
they're so sort of hap has there's no indication to
(43:01):
suggest they're going to achieve anything that Trump says they
are right. If you're trying to reshore American jobs that
have been offshore, for example, you probably want to put
in tariffs that have a timetable for implementation to give
industries a chance to rebuild and make capital investments, rebuild
(43:23):
factories in the United States that really hasn't happened. If
you want to get companies to make giant capital investments
in the United States, you probably want to show that
the policies you're putting into place are permanent and stable,
rather than waking up every six hours and saying, oh,
we're going to do this exemption or that exemption. How
is any business supposed to invest in that. So the
(43:45):
point is that the Democrats have a really good argument
to make that these tariffs are going to harm the
working class and America in general. Now one caveat. I
think if the Democrats take that to its extreme and
say all industrial policy, all tariffs are bad, that the
(44:07):
NAFTA trade paradigm and the China free trade paradigm. All
of that is good, then I think they walk into
a trap that Trump wants them to walk into, and
I think there's evidence that parts of the party don't
really understand the trap that Trump is trying to lay
(44:27):
for them.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
First, I want to just go back to what you
were saying, seventy percent of Americans believe the tariffs are
going to be bad for the economy on the short term.
You don't get seventy percent of Americans who agree on anything.
Those are incredible numbers, and I think that that should
be sort of the foundation of all of this. But
the thing that I think will likely do the best
(44:48):
for the opposition party, which Democrats need to be, is
the haphazardous and the way that none of this has
been thought out, which is what we write so like
for example, and I want to get into this, the
reshoring reshoring manufacturing is like one of the goals here, right,
(45:09):
restoring manufacturing. But you can't reshore manufacturing just by making
things more expensive. Chips and Science had a goal of
reshoring manufacturing. Really like reshoring these high paying manufacturing jobs,
which are chips. A chips assembly line is a much
better job than a Sneaker's assembly line, and that was
the thinking here, but because they could not articulate it,
(45:33):
it got lost. And so now here we have Trump
trying to do the same thing, but because there's no
there's never any sort of thinking behind anything, we're here instead.
Speaker 6 (45:43):
That's a really good point. The Biden administration, it got
the policy actually right that Biden. That Biden used targeted
tariffs on specific industries as part of a coordinated industrial policy.
For instance, the Chips Act, as you mentioned, which which
invests actually uses money resources to invest the Inflation Reduction Act,
(46:06):
which uses tax credits and other investment tools along with
targeted tariffs. And we saw manufacturing jobs start to come
back in the United States and factory investments start to
be made by the way, many of which were made
in red states, in Republican states. The problem was, as
(46:26):
you allude to, the Biden administration never sold it. They
never made it part of their political pitch to the country.
Kamala Harris didn't, the Democratic Party didn't. And now you
have a situation where Trump is trying to take the
political themes of reshoring American jobs, brand it to himself,
(46:49):
but with a completely unacceptable, reckless and haphazard policy. And again,
I think the Democrats have a story to tell about
how the hap has ears of Trump's policy is imperiling
the country. But I think they could make a political
mistake by allowing Trump to brand them once again as
(47:11):
he did in twenty sixteen, to brand them as the
party of NAFTA style trade policy.
Speaker 2 (47:17):
Right.
Speaker 6 (47:17):
I think this has been forgotten. There are large swaths
of this country that used to be democratic regions, democratic strongholds,
that were hollowed out by so called free trade deals NAFTA, China,
p and tr And I think that is a very
real issue, that is a very authentic concern for those
(47:41):
communities that went through that and that continue to go
through that. And I think if the Democrats sort of
scoff at that grievance, they play into what Trump wants
them to do. And here's the other polling number that
I think has been forgotten that while the public is
opposed to Trump's tariff policy, on the actual policy merits
(48:04):
for the first time in generations, At the same time,
the Republicans have evened the playing field on the question
of who cares about you? That question in polling, who
most cares about you. For the first time really in
modern polling history, the Republican Party has now pulled even
(48:25):
with Democrats. So my theory here is, and I would
speculate that what's going on here is that large, you know,
majorities of the country are like, hey, Trump is not
handling the is not managing the economy, right, he doesn't
know what he's doing with these tariffs. The tariffs are
going to be bad for me. On the policy, it's clear,
but hey, you know, he's also talking about this issue
(48:46):
trade and tariffs and reshoring jobs and what happened to America.
And so even if we don't think he's right on
the policy, he's at least talking about this issue that
very few politicians have wanted to talk about, which shows
where the perception is is that he's on our side.
(49:06):
And I think that is that's the dichotomy that we're in.
Obviously I don't think he's on our side, but my
point is is that that's the tension here.
Speaker 1 (49:13):
To hear more of that segment, head over to our
YouTube channel No More Perfectly Jesse Cannon, Small.
Speaker 2 (49:26):
Junk fast Man. You know, when we started to hear
Trump years ago talk about which hunts against him. We
kind of knew if he got back into power, exactly
what he be doing and what he's doing James here
is exactly what we suspected.
Speaker 1 (49:41):
Yeah, so he is going to do a fake investigation
of her. So he basically, according to a letter obtained
by the euro Post, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch
and is Donald Trump's favorite outlet because he still lives
in the nineties, she launched a civil fraud case again
Trump and his business empire in twenty twenty two. So
(50:03):
now this US Attorney General Pam Bondi is alleging that
James falsified records in twenty twenty three to secure home
loans on a property in Norfolk, Virginia that she said
was her principal residence while still serving in her role
in New York. This is while James is announcing a
(50:24):
new investigation into the President over accusations of insider trading.
The accusations arose in the wake of his u turn
on the Reciprocal Theraists last week, after the program's unraveling
inspired a panic on Wall Street. Writing to Bondy and
her deputy Todd Blanche, who you will remember as Donald
(50:45):
Trump's defense lawyer. Miss James was the sitting Attorney General
of New York and is required by a low to
have her primary residents in the state of New York,
even though her mortgage application lists her intent to have
the Norfolk, Virginia property as her primary home. Is like
going after someone for a crime that includes not filing
(51:06):
a form. Right, but this is what they do. That's
it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday,
Thursday and Saturday to hear the best minds and politics
make sense of all this chaos. If you enjoy this podcast,
(51:27):
please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
Thanks for listening.
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds, and a CBS Yougo poll finds fifty
eight percent of Americans want Congress to block Trump's tariffs.
We have such a great choke for you today the
(00:21):
Atlantics and Applebaum stops by to explain that our authoritarian
rise is actually happening faster than normal. Then we'll talk
to former The Apprentice producer Darryl Silver about what we
can learn from what he saw working with Trump. Plus,
we have a special bonus from our YouTube channel with
(00:43):
the Levers Dave Sarota on how Democrats can use Trump's
tariffs to win. But first the news Smike.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
We have Dave Serota from The Lever on this podcast
a little later and on our YouTube channel today and
his news organization as a blockbuster story that Trump's irs
pick was just enriched by tech schemers and that they
paid down one hundred and thirty thousand dollars of his
personal debt.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Yeah, I mean, look, this is happening all over the
Trump administration, so none of us should be surprised. But
this is a new document show that Billy Long. He
was a member of Congress or Republican member of Congress.
One hundred and thirty thousand dollars in personal debt was
suddenly paid off by donors at a firm policed by
the tax agency he lead. By the way, this Trump
(01:32):
administration has been through a ton of different You'll be
shocked to know this. IRS directors, this is the acting
head of the IRS is stepping down and retiring. It's
just been like a cascade of resignations IRS chief Information
Officer and by the way, twenty thousand IRS employees offered
(01:53):
to resign because Trump has been trying to streamline the
IRS and make it very tiny. So you should not
be surprised. And look, this is like low key cleptocracy here.
Paying off the loans of the government agency that is
(02:15):
supposed to monitor you political contributions is one of the
many ways in which Trump's people grift off this administration.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Governor Gavin Newsom's California is now the first state to
suit Trump on tariffs.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Yeah, let's talk about this Governor Gavin Newsom. He is
a bad podcaster, but he is in some way as
a good governor.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Have you ever heard of somebody starting a podcast and
having their polls fall because of it.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Yes, it's so stupid. And again, I just want to
just for one second, let's just go over this again
with Newsom Gavin. If you're listening, I want to say
one thing. You want to go on their podcasts. You
don't want them to come on your podcast. You need
to get in front of the audience that listens to
Steve Bannon, not get Steve Bannon in front of your audience.
(03:11):
You see what I'm saying. Go on Steve Bannon's podcast,
don't have Steve Bannon go on your podcast. This is
how this works. This is the siloed media industrial complex.
Go to them, don't bring them to you. Thank you,
and good night. But yes, this is good. California is
the fifth largest economy in the world. They will be absolutely,
(03:35):
like all of us, completely fucked over by tariffs. I'm
glad they're doing this. By the way, tariff's are a
really good example of how stupid and bad this administration is.
Right Like, they don't work, nobody wants them. They make
everything more expensive. They're not going to onshore manufacturing by
making things more expensive. There does not like one plus
(03:57):
two dozen equal seven thousand. So I am glad to
see this. I wish that we would see, you know,
the rage that people are having about the tariffs, about
the like grad student disappearing right, that grad student is
still in the Louisiana detention facility after having written it
opinion piece, right, So that stuff I would rather. I
(04:21):
wish people would be a little more upset about that
than the tariffs. But good for California. And you know,
I think more importantly, I think there's a real chance
that none of this, you know, this is going to
stop the tariffs. Between this and the Supreme Court case,
I actually think that will actually work, so good for them.
And like with so many things Trump is trying to do,
(04:43):
there is no legal standing for it.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Speaking of no legal standing, we used to have this
bipartisan consensus that no one would ever ever contend that
the sole due process thing is one of the things
that makes America great. Well that's gone now because jad
Vince says he's fine with the inevitable errors of due process.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Jd Vance has been shopping this all day on Twitter.
He is like, we shouldn't have to process for illegals
or for people who are non American citizens. By the way,
I want to point out that this administration and these
Republicans have for a while been saying that that people
(05:23):
who are not in this country legally are not entitled
to due process. And what we saw very clearly from
the Supreme Court nine zero is that, in fact, no,
that's not true. So it is so JD Vance by
the way, to have JD Vance being like, no, you know,
(05:43):
the Supreme Court already said you can't do this, JD.
So like, here's the deal. You don't get to do it,
Like that's it. And again I think it's worth remembering
like they are trying to do a lot of illegal
stuff because they want to, and we need to push
back and say n because no, no, no, no, this
(06:07):
is not okay. This is not what any of us
should be doing. And he's wrong. The Supreme Court won't
go along with this, and he's going to try because
he's super sketchy, but just ignore it. He's wrong. It's
not going to happen. Thank god we have the courts.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
So, speaking of we have seen a very very big
tide shift in the Democratic base, and there's a new
poll from Harvard Center for American Political studies that shows
that Democrats want the party to abandon this centrist approach.
No more Liz Cheney being trot out. Yeah, they're going left.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
So this is Harvard Center for American Political Studies. We
have to caveat this because this makes you too happy.
So I'm worried it's not totally legit. Anytime anything confirms
our priors, we have to be a little suspicious.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Yes, But also anytime you see crowds that size all
of a sudden, you start to wonder, right.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
And the crowds that sis you're talking about are the
Bernie aoc rallies. A survey taken by Harvard Center for
American Political Studies and Harris between April ninth and tenth
found that seventy two percent of Democratic voters support politicians
like Sanders and AOC who are calling on Democrats to
(07:27):
adapt a more aggressive stance towards Trump and his administration,
fight harder rather than leaders who are willing to compromise
with President Trump. So that's I think pretty important. I
wouldn't say I think, Look, Jesse's very lefty, and I
am leftyer than I was for a long time. But
(07:50):
I do think this is really important. It is about
taking a stand and pushing back. I would also add
that this is AOC and Chris Murphy and all the
politicians who have been standing up have raised millions of dollars.
They've had like the best quarter ever. So clearly voters
(08:12):
like this, and they want this, and they want pushback
and they want standing up, and they don't want you
to bring Charlie Kirk on your podcast. That's for you,
Governor Musing. And Applebaum is the author of Autocracy, Inc.
(08:35):
The Dictators who want to run the world. Welcome back
and Applebaum, thanks for having me. I'm so glad to
have you because you predicted everything that was going to happen.
I'm sorry to telling you love everything. You wrote. This
really brilliant book about cryptocracy and what that looks like
in authoritarianism, and you just had a really smart op
(08:58):
at about it. And so we've spent a lot of
time thinking about what this presidency would look like. In
some ways, it's worse. In some ways, it's not as bad.
I mean, there are certain parts of it which I
think are worse, but also there seems to be more
weiggle room, if.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
That makes sense, in the area of kleptocracy and corruption
and conflicts of interest. This is about as bad as
it could be. Yes, So I did write a book.
It's called Autocracy, Inc. And it was about this network
of dictators who don't share any ideology, but they have
common interests, and they often have common financial interests, and
(09:34):
they act out of their financial and political interests and
not in the interests of their own countries when they
make decisions. When the book was published, which was last summer,
a lot of people said, and will Trump be like that?
And I said, let's wait and see. But I think
that's a really precise description of what we're seeing. We're
seeing an administration which is acting not in the interests
(09:57):
of all Americans, but in the interest of very small
groups and in some cases in the president's personal financial interest.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
I just want you to tell us who those dictators are.
That's Orbon and Bud and right, Yeah, the book.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
The book was actually about Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela.
Leaders of countries who where there are no checks and balances,
where there's no rule of law, where the law is
whatever the person in charge or the party in charge
says it is right, and that's that was a that's
the big difference, the important difference between those countries and
(10:34):
liberal democracies. And I was also particularly interested in countries
that were fighting against narratives of democracy and we're trying
to create an authoritarian narrative instead. And actually you can
see ways in which this administration is also collaborating in
that project, so taking apart American soft power and institutions
and that promoted democracy and so on. But I think
(10:56):
the I think the shift in the direction of personalized
rule without rule of law, seeking to undermine or go
around the constitution, seeking to attacking the legal community, actually
attacking law firms, directly, seeking to undermine courts, ignoring or
(11:16):
mocking court decisions.
Speaker 4 (11:18):
That is stuff that.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
We know from the autocratic world. That's almost the definition
of autocracy. You know, these are countries where people rule
without any constraints. And it looks to me like this
administration also wants to rule without any constraints.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
Right, and things like for example, this is a bit neasy,
but they're kicking out the wire services of the White
House press pool.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
Seaking the wire services out of the White House press pool,
suing or using regulatory bodies to undermine the broadcast networks,
issuing executive orders against law firms seeking to literally take
over universities. I mean, the proposal for what they wanted
to do to Harvard was actually there's no way Harvard
could ever have accepted it. It was about giving the
(12:03):
administration control over a faculty, hiring, courses, students, eventually acceptances,
all kinds of things that no institution could tolerate. So
all those things are part of a project. And the
project is eliminate any source of information or knowledge or
expertise that can challenge the ruler, and eliminate any source
(12:27):
of possible descent, any institutions or organizations that could transmit
or communicate descent. These are tactics that we know from
the autocratic world. This is how many autocrats came to power,
or it's what they do once they have power. Here,
I have to say, I think maybe Americans don't realize
the shift has happened here much faster than I have
(12:47):
seen happen anywhere else. Usually it takes a long time.
Like there's an expression boiling the frog. You know, you
do a little, one little thing, and then another little thing,
and then before the frog knows that the frog is boiled.
This is much more aggressive, and of course it might
also therefore create a much more powerful counter reaction. The
aim and the goals are clear. It's attack institutions, it's
(13:09):
undermined the rule of law, eliminate sources of disagreement, and
do so also as a way of fighting culture wars.
So when the administration attacks Harvard or Columbia, the purpose
isn't just legal. It's also part of a narrative game.
We're pushing back against institutions that you don't like, or
that they think there are supporters don't like. There's an
(13:30):
argument being made as well as these legal changes happening.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
It's important to sort of mention that Columbia did the
wrong thing, and the billionaires and the law firms that
went along with that. You don't ever win by acquiescing.
Will you talk about that? I mean, except with Putin,
But you don't win Trump doing.
Speaker 4 (13:48):
That with Putin.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
Do so.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
Note what happened to Columbia is something that everyone should
pay attention to. Because Columbia tried to concede. Columbia tried
to go along with what the Straation wanted. It tried
to it abolished some departments or it announced some kind
of investigations and so on, and they thought that in
exchange for doing that, that the administration would give them
(14:11):
back their four hundred million dollars of federal scientific research funding,
which by the way, has nothing to do with, you know,
any of the political issues that Columbia was supposedly dealing with.
And then they didn't give it back. Instead they asked
for more and they still haven't given them the four
hundred million dollars. And the lesson is, you can you
can do what they want. You can concede to what
(14:31):
they want. They're going to demand more, you know, they
will not They're not going to leave you alone. And
I would say the same thing that these law firms
who have made concessions to Trump and you know are
trying to get along with them, and that that's going
to end badly too. Offering him some kind of deal
or paying money to his family is as you know,
as Amazon did when it when it invested forty million
dollars in a documentary about Millennia. All of that will
(14:54):
not build respect and safety. It will just make them
ask for more. They'll just want more money, They'll want
more payoffs, they'll want more concessions.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
And I think what I think is so interesting here
is that if you are a university, you can win
if you just take them to court, because none of
this is legal.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
It is not legal to withhold federal funding you in
exchange for unconstitutional requests to curve free speech. Note, as
long as we still have some independent judges in this country,
you know, Harvard will win that case.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
With the exception of this sort of very few corrupt judges,
the very few Eileen Cannons. Trump world has not had
the time to put in cronies in the legal system,
so they are rolling the dice and getting people like
Judge Boseburg, who was appointed by both Obama and Bush
and who does not believe he's in Hungary. So I
(15:51):
think that is an important sort of backstop there is
that you can be brave and know the courts will
have your back.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
Well, it's also the case that conservative judges for the
last several decades have all been originalists. They're people who
almost made a fetish of the Constitution. You know, I
think you know a lot of legal cases have been argued.
You know, what were the founders thinking in the eighteenth
century when they wrote this or that you know this
or that piece of it.
Speaker 4 (16:15):
You know, even the conservative judges.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
Are people who have, at least in their scholarship and
in their work, have not been partisans in the crudest sense,
but have been sticklers for an absolute orthdox interpretation of
the rule of law. So there is some hope that
conservative judges, when they see clear violations of the Constitution,
will reject it.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
Yeah, and I mean this nine zero response from the
Supreme Court. I don't want to get all rosy eyed,
because we are certainly in a lot of trouble here,
but this nine zero response from the Supreme Court on
that you can't get rid of due process, I think
is meaningful.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
I think it's meaningful too. It's also the very interesting
if you saw the exchange in the Oval office when
the bouqueta from El Salvador was there with President Trump,
there was a little weird commentary about the nine O decision.
And I think it was Stephen Miller, if I'm recollecting correctly,
who said, oh, the nine decision was in our favor.
In other words, they already feel the need to undermine
(17:19):
the decision and to lie about it and to tell
a completely different story about it. And you can see
Vance doing this as well in some of the propaganda
that he's been putting out. So they're trying to create
an alternate story. And it's really important that the courts,
the media, and of course Republican politicians as well as
democratic politicians hold them to reality. You know, they need
(17:42):
to listen to what the court says, and they need
to abide by what the court says.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
The reason that it's been able to go so fast
is because I think a lot of people in this
country have not had to ever be brave, and it's
a muscle that's sort of out of fashion right now.
Do you think that two? Or why do you think
that people have came in so many cases?
Speaker 3 (18:04):
Maybe partly that it's maybe that there's no cultural memory
of anything like this happening before, whereas there is in
other countries, for example, in Brazil and South Korea, who
both done a better job of pushing back against dictatorial
presidents or presidents who are usurping too much power. You know,
I also think there was a complacency here. You heard
(18:24):
it during the election campaign. There was a complacency about
what could happen. You know, there's an idea of American exceptionalism.
You know that we are a special country and we've
had democracy for such a long time that none of
this could happen to us, And I think people were
just not mentally prepared for, you know, what was actually
a very very well planned, you know, long thought about
(18:47):
attack on specific institutions. I mean, there were one or two,
there have to be said, there were one or two
pieces of this that were unique. I don't know of
a previous case when an equivalent of DOGE went into
a government and you know, a set of engineers went
into a you know, a finance ministry or a treasury
department and just shut off programs illegally and in such
(19:09):
a way that nobody knew how to turn them back
on again, which is a continuing problem. And all kinds
of spheres of you know, in all kinds of ways.
And so they did do some things that were new
in the world of you know, declining democracy. Yeah, but
you know, but a lot of it was predictable and
could have been predicted. I mean, the attacks on universities
were predictable, and actually presidents of universities, some of whom
(19:33):
I've spoken to, did know it was coming and have
been thinking about it for a long time. And certainly
the attacks on the media and the attempts to circumvent
the rule of law, and certainly once let me just
return again to the cryptocracy. These are These are people
who think that it's okay for the president to spend
a weekend, then a weekend when the stock market is crashing,
(19:57):
at his personal golf course and his Perersonal hotel where
a golf tournament is being played that is sponsored by
Saudi Arabia, and in attendance is the head of the
Saudi Sovereign Wealth Company and the Sovereign Wealth Fund and
aram Code are also sponsors. The Saudi Oil Company and
a series of other important Saudi business people are there,
(20:20):
and they are paying money to the president's golf course
and to the president's club, and nobody blinks an eye.
That's a conflict of interest. You know that Saudi Arabia
is a country that has a complex and relationship with
the United States. It cares very much what our foreign
policy is. And they are seeking to buy the president
in a way that's not even secret. It's not like
they're bribing him. The names of the sponsors of the
(20:42):
tournament are on billboards at Dorrall Golf Course and on websites.
The practice of this administration is now to openly flaunt
and enjoy conflicts of interests. I mean, Musk is another one.
Doje has attacked and fired people at regulatory agencies that
Musk's companies, and Musk now has to say in the
(21:03):
running of other agencies who subsidize his companies. In other words,
he is the beneficiary of the policies that he is
carrying out, the personal financial beneficiary. And that although you know,
there have been rich people involved in US politics for
a long time, and there have been lots of rich
people in the cabinet in the past, I am I
am unaware of anything this blatant. You know, where people
(21:25):
with an actual interest in a government decision get to
make that decision all by themselves.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
What is interesting about it, too, is that one of
the things that you talked about on that article was
that TikTok was one of the sponsors of that golf tournament.
TikTok is so conflicted, but also the person who will
decide TikTok's fate is Donald Trump, right yep.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
And TikTok is directly paying him. I mean they are
a sponsor of the tournament at his club. The club
is he makes money off of it. The actions of
TikTok or openly seeking to bribe are persuade the president
that they would like to stay in business. That a
website that collects vast amounts of data about Americans and
may well be sharing it with the Chinese Communist Party,
(22:09):
that website is seeking to win a regulatory decision through
influencing the president's personal financial decisions. Again, I can't state
enough how far out of line this is with certainly
the presidencies of the last century. Maybe if you go
back to the nineteenth century and the Gilded Age, you'll
find some similar level of conflict that I am not
(22:31):
aware of any president who's been personally courted by companies
and by foreign leaders who are also making financial contributions
to his businesses.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Yeah, it is absolutely just one of the kind of
most breson bits of self dealing that we've ever seen.
Tell Us, if we want to stop the cryptocracy and
the authoritarianism, what would you say are the mean things
this sort of call to action?
Speaker 3 (23:01):
Here two things in particular, Number one, the next elections
by which I mean the midterms are unbelievably important. It
is really important that the Democrats win both the House
and the Senate, and it's also really important that they
get they create a broad coalition to help them do it,
hopefully including some Republicans or people are Trump voters, and
(23:22):
it's very important that those elections be free and fair.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
You know.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
Again, in the list of things that Americans don't imagine,
they probably don't imagine that it's possible to corrupt an
American election.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
But it is.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
I mean, there are multiple, many scenarios you can imagine,
and it's good that everybody prepares to.
Speaker 4 (23:40):
Think about them.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
I mean, without being hysterical or creating anxiety. Just think
about whether there would be a you know, maybe they
are going to be protests, maybe there would be a crackdown,
maybe there would be a state of emergency, or maybe
there would be changes to electoral laws that would affect
who could vote. Just be prepared for that because it's
extremely important that, you know, in a democracy, power is
(24:02):
ultimately controlled in the by politicians in the political realm,
and we need some power. We need Congress to come
back to playing its role of checking the president. You know, Congress,
you know, Congress. Just to give one example, Congress could
end this the tariff policy immediately if they wanted to.
The tariff side. The tarts are also illegal. They're being
carried out in violation of treaties the United States has
(24:24):
signed on the basis of a kind of emergency law.
That's bullshit, and Congress could block that and take back
tariff power. Now, in our system, Congress has the power
of taxation and it controls the budget. They could take
that back. They could end the role of DOGE, which
is also acting illegally and ending programs and you know,
and departments that have been agreed to by Congress, and
(24:45):
you know, all those things could be brought to an end.
It's really really important that these elections go well. I
would also say, in the less political sphere, it's really
important to create broad coalitions. You know, it's so obvious
to me that all of the law firms in this
country need to be on the same side. I mean,
it cannot be the case that Trump can pick them
off one by one or do a special deal with
(25:07):
Paul Weiss and then you know, and then attack wilmer Hale. Ultimately,
it's not going to work for anybody. It has to
be okay for law firms to defend whoever they want
and to have whatever clients they want. That's our tradition
going back two centuries, and lawyers cannot allow that to
be undermined. But the same is true of universities. You know,
what would be really great would be not just for
Harvard and MIT and a few very wealthy universities on
(25:30):
the East Coast to be standing up, but for a
coalition of universities who see the threat to one as
a threat to all, to begin to speak in one voice.
There's been a little bit of that. There have been
some group lawsuits, particularly against the cuts in biomedical research
and healthcare spending, which have affected some universities disproportionately, but
(25:51):
not everybody has joined them. I mean, there's one interesting
exam University of Alabama. University of Alabama Medical School. At
least until recently, it was the largest employer in the
city Bingham. It's a really important institution. They will also
lose money from cuts to an age spending. So how
about hearing from them? How about hearing from other Red
state universities, from wider range of universities, All across the system.
(26:14):
You know, we need some solidarity from universities, from law firms,
from media. You know, the more they speak, you know, together,
the harder it's going to be to undermine this. So
I would start with those two things. You know, elections
are important and our system. Elections are the main thing.
Don't forget about them or dismiss them or think we
can solve this with lawsuits. You know, elections really matter.
(26:34):
And then I think solidarity matters and coalitions matter.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Anna.
Speaker 4 (26:41):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
Darryl Silver is an author and producer of over a
dozen television shows, including The Apprentice. Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 4 (26:52):
Daryl, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
So you produced The Apprentice. You were one of the
people who started tell us about your relationship with the Apprentices.
Speaker 4 (27:02):
So I came on at Concept. I was brought on
literally the day I came on. I had to sign
my contract before I could even told what the show was. Wow, Yeah,
what did you think it was?
Speaker 5 (27:12):
Well?
Speaker 4 (27:12):
I didn't know, but I was a big fan of
Survivor at the time. But Conrad Riggs, who is Mark
Burnett's number two, hired me and I signed my contract
and they said Okay, what's the show, and they said,
it's Survivor in the City and the winner gets to
be Donald Trump's prince for a year. I was then
ushered into a room of like twenty some odd people
who literally like signed the contract learned that walked into
(27:33):
a room, was introduced as one of the creative guys
on the show who will be developing the show for
Mark Burnett, and the line was Survivor in the City
winner gives me Donald Trump's apprentice for a year, and
you need to figure out the format of the show
before the network asks us. So I literally came on
at Concept and when I went into that first meeting,
I had just learned thirty seconds ago what the show
was about. So I took out my little read book
(27:55):
that I brought with me for notes and I still
have it today. I created like probably half a dozen
tasks that wound up getting in the show, in formats
that wanted getting the show, including lemonade stand. While we
were going around introducing ourselves in the room, I'm feverishly
writing because I'm about to be asked, like what my
ideas are that I just learned thirty seconds ago. So
that's literally where I came on and then I did
(28:17):
that for the first three seasons, and I was a
producer on the first three seasons of the show.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
Did anyone ever become an apprentice to him?
Speaker 4 (28:23):
For a year afterward, I was in La doing this,
and that was all kind of happening in New York.
Although in season two and three I was on the set.
In season one, there was a limited amount of us
that actually went to the set, and so like, after
all this happened, like we really weren't involved with that,
because the whole show took on a mind of its
own so quickly, it became such a big hit that
it was like we were rushed back into season two
(28:45):
and three, Like we weren't paying attention to what happened
to season one. So I guess they did work for him.
I mean, I think Bill worked in Chicago or something,
But like, we weren't involved in that. Really, we weren't
tracking that at all.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
In some ways, the Apprentice was as much a part
of the origin story of Donald Trump as Donald Trump was,
right well.
Speaker 4 (29:05):
It validated him. It took a guy who had, you know,
ruined a lot of businesses. You know, he had bankrupt
a lot of businesses and struggled in a lot of
his real estate career. And then we validated him. We
convinced America and the world that he was a business genius,
you know. And that's what it did. It gave him
some validation.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
True or not.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
You guys wrote it sort of without him. Was he
involved in the writing of it.
Speaker 4 (29:30):
It was not involved at all. What happened is is
like we developed the show. We would create the tasks,
the format and all that, and then he was brought in.
If you actually look at the show, he's not in
the show that much. So at the beginning he'll say
like here I am at Macy's, or here I am
at this place, or here I'm at home depot, and
then he disappears for the most of the show. And
on an occasion he would show up in the middle
of the show, but not every episode. And then he
(29:52):
would obviously come to the boardroom at the end. And
what would happen at the end of the show is
like we'd be sitting in the control room and there'd
be a lot of producers stand around him and we
would download him on what happened during the week. I
forget the other two people's name, but the people who
work for him, they would pop in here and there
and they would give him a download too, and then
based on that information, he would go into the boardroom
(30:13):
and he would you know, make his decisions.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
So did you get the sense when you were working
on it that he was good at business or now?
Speaker 4 (30:20):
I did not. I wasn't involved in his day to
day businesses. I didn't see it. But what surprised me,
which is like everybody talks about Trump's lies, is that
being in the middle of this, we would hear his
lies that didn't need to be lies. I remember once
he would he said like, we're the number one show
in the history of the network, and we were laughing.
We're like, we're an absolute hit show. We're doing fantastic,
(30:41):
like on all metrics or a smash hit. And he
would still have to get on camera and lie about it.
And we were constantly like laughing at it, like why
is he telling all these lies?
Speaker 1 (30:49):
Did you feel like you couldn't trust him?
Speaker 4 (30:51):
I mean, it wasn't matter trust and you remember he
wasn't around that much, so it wasn't like, you know,
Donald Trump wasn't giving us any direction. You know, Jay
Beanstalk was our showrunner and he was really in charge
of it, and Mark wasn't really there for the most part,
and so it was like, you know, we were just
We're just a TV show, you know, that's it. We're
just we're just making TV. And a lot of a
(31:11):
lot of people always ask me, They're like, you know,
why didn't you do something? Why why don't you say something?
And I'm always like, the guy was a real estate
guy who thought he would become a president.
Speaker 5 (31:20):
You know, did you feel like he was smart? No,
that's interesting. I mean, as simple as that, what led
you to think that. Let me break it out. There's
two different kinds of smarts. There's street smarts and then
there's smart. There's no question he's street smart. He proves
it every day.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4 (31:34):
His superpower is that he can convince whoever he's standing
in front of that he's going to do for them
what they want. Whatever your dream come true is. He
will promise you within an hour, he'll promise that there's
going to be clean coal to coal miners and then environmentalists,
that he's going to be the best environmental president ever,
and he'll do that. He'll do that without even thinking,
without even skipping a bee. Yeah, you know, And that's
(31:54):
his superpower, is that he's able to do that without
a conscience in my opinion.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, in your set and of like the
experience of making television like that, do you think it
helped him create the sort of skill set that he has.
Speaker 4 (32:07):
Now, No, I don't think he has a skill set.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
But you know, the skill set of like getting people
to believe stuff.
Speaker 4 (32:13):
No, he was doing that already if you spent any
time with him at all, Like he made the grips
feel good about themselves as well as the guy on
the street. He wanted to be liked. He had this
gift of gab. Again, I think it's his superpower, is
that he is. You know, people always asked me, would
you think of Donald Trump? He was a really nice
guy when we were there. I just, you know, I
just don't think he should be a dog catcher. But
he was charming and he was friendly, and he was
(32:34):
always he was nice to us. I didn't I didn't
have a bad thing to say about him. From a
personal standpoint.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
I think it's really important that when we talk about him,
we separate like how he is, how he is there's
a reason that a plurality of Americans voted for him twice.
And you know, he is a wildly successful politician. That's
part of how we got here again. And he's able
to do something that other Republicans are not. So I
(33:01):
think that learning this stuff is actually really relevant and important.
Speaker 4 (33:05):
You know, you compare it to like the people who
convince suicide bombers to kill themselves with seventy two virgins.
If you pound enough time into people's head and they
believe you, they'll do anything for you, including voting against
their best interests. I mean, look at farmers today, Look
at all the people losing jobs. Look at the immigrants
who voted for him. I mean, like they're all getting
shellacked right now. He convinced them against all their better judgment.
(33:27):
You look at cities right now that are losing education
funding and all the red states that they can't afford
to lose any of it, and they're losing all and
it's all because he convinced them that this was best
for him. That's his genius. I mean, that's his genius.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
And you saw that even in the boardroom.
Speaker 4 (33:42):
I'll tell you what I saw in the boardroom. That
was interesting, Like we would give him the download of
what happened during the episode, it'd be obvious, like Molly
did this and so and so did this, and like
it would be obvious he obviously made all the decisions
what he wanted to do and who he wanted to fire.
But every once in a while, somebody who was like
a tangential person in the task or whatever said something
he didn't like and he would just go, you're fired,
(34:02):
and you'd be like, and you'd hear the control room
everybody would freeze, because there was it was always like
a like an order with which things were supposed to
happen to lead up to the firing. And sometimes he
would go out of order and he would just fire
somebody way before we got all the bites that we needed,
and you would be like, what just happened? Why did
he fire that person? Like that person had nothing to
do with the downfall of the team or something like that,
(34:23):
And so you know, you look at somebody who's just
it's just not logical, and which is what we're seeing today,
is like he's doing all these things that aren't logical
and you're just like, why is.
Speaker 6 (34:31):
He doing them?
Speaker 4 (34:32):
And he's got his people who go on camera and
like he knows what he's doing. He's playing you know,
you know, four level chests and you're just like, he's not.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
But that's really an interesting thing you're talking about there,
because that is what we see today, right, We see
that kind of like unpredictable for the tariffs. I mean,
like he sort of gets is it. You think it's
emotional on some level or just.
Speaker 4 (34:57):
Angry if you want to go down to like the
most basic level. My opinion is that everything he does
is either to benefit Donald Trump or to protect Donald Trump,
and he really doesn't care about the rest. Had not
he been trying to stay out of jail, who knows
if he would have even run. If not that he
was getting actually shellacked in his businesses and losing money,
he wouldn't be pulling all these grifts that he's doing
(35:18):
now to raise money. Whether it's whether it's shoes, or
whether it's the coin, or whether it's all of these things.
It's really all Donald Trump's centric. It's not about the country,
it's not about really anything. It's about how he gets
what he needs.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
In my opinion, yeah, oh yeah, let's talk about this
bill Maher thing because Bill Maher went tomorrow Laga the
Winter White House to see Donald Trump. Can you explain
to us your take on that what you think happened there.
Speaker 4 (35:42):
Look, I've been watching Bill Maher for years, and I
think Bill Maher is a smart guy. It wasn't as
much that Bill Maher went there and met with him.
It's that when he came out, he was like, he's
not you know, basically his line is and I'd have
to look it up and the thing I wrote, but
he's like, he wasn't the crazy person that he saw
on TV every day. He was like a nice, normal person,
(36:02):
you know. He was charming, he was all these things.
And it's like, yeah, most dictators and tyrants historically when
you sit with them, were nice guys, but then they
went and did all this crazy shit that destroyed the world.
And basically Trump's inherent thing is he wants people to
love him. He really wants to be loved. He wants
people like him, he wants people love him. He wants
to feel like the big macher, you know, and and
(36:23):
if you give him that, he loves it. So Bill
Mark came to meet him at the White House and
like sat with him, and it was a nice meeting
and with Kid Rock and I believe the guy from
usc was.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
There a beautiful piece of chocolate cake.
Speaker 4 (36:35):
Maybe yeah, exactly, And so like he's gonna be charming,
just like he was charming with us, and he's charming
with everybody. And then you leave and you go like,
well he was a charming guy. This charming guy like
just sent all these people to a death camp in Salvador.
It's like, yeah, he was nice, but what does that mean?
And in since Bill Maher had that as like his
first line out to the public, it was like, are
(36:55):
you joking? Like are you just wiping all the things
that he's doing and you see he's doing just because
he was nice to you at a dinner. It's like
it's madness and it's what Trump does and it's how
he lulls people into this.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
But it's interesting because it's like, and you probably relate
to this too, Like I meet people sometimes a lot
of times they're very nice to me. Does that mean
they're going to be nice to everyone? Maybe not? Right,
Like Bill obviously has a real place in Donald Trump's mind,
so of course, like why would he be mean to Bill? Right?
Speaker 4 (37:28):
Why would Bill come out with the first line that
he say be complimentary towards Trump? That's the crazy thing.
It's like, tell us what you discussed, tell us how
he responds to all the things he's doing. Give us,
give us an insight into policy. That's what I want
to know, and not that he was nice to you
and you guys had a nice dinner. Like nobody gives
a shit that you guys had a nice dinner.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
Well, it's also just like, there are things that you
could find out about Trump that would be quite useful
for all of us, right, that would make sense?
Speaker 4 (37:59):
That would You've seen Trump being interviewed by a lot
of people. He gives very little true information when he's
doing when he's doing an interview, I mean, the guy,
if you ask him a direct question that he doesn't
like it just pretends is if that question was never
asks and starts talking about some other thing.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
By the way, that's a New York rich people thing,
because I've had other people do it to me before,
and I'll be like, am I going crazy because I
just asked you a question about something totally and they
just talk about something else. It's like brilliant gas lighting.
Speaker 4 (38:29):
Well, you know what he's been doing. I mean, if
you look what he's been doing in the White House meetings,
Like he had all the press in there the other
day and they asked him directly about kill mar Abrego Garcia,
and like he was like, that's a rude question, and
then he went off on some tangent. It's like, that's
the question we all want to know. So he's smart
enough not to answer the questions that he doesn't want
to answer, which is frankly as opposed to the very
(38:52):
very very friendly media every question.
Speaker 1 (38:55):
Right, right, No, that's a really good point. And I
think that, you know, that is instructive in a lot
of ways. So he's a creature of reality television. What
do you think it was in this show that made
him so appealing to the world.
Speaker 4 (39:14):
I think people look at Donald Trump and see him
as an everyman and think I could be that man,
Like I could that could be me, you know, and
then they like that he says things for a large
portion of our population. He's willing to say the things
that a lot of people aren't willing to say. And
he's like, oh my god, he'll say things that I
would like to say. He gives a certain portion of
(39:36):
our public the right to say things that normally you
wouldn't say out loud. And on the TV show, I mean,
he was likable, he was funny, he was friendly. You know,
he made big decisions. You saw him in you know,
this is how the rich live. You know, we love
to see behind the curtain of how rich people live.
And you saw it. And by the way, the show
was super entertaining. I mean, there's no doubt about it.
(39:58):
Like when we first developed the show and we'd be
sitting around talking about business tasks, we would say it
to ourselves, like, is anybody gonna want to watch this
at all? And they didn't watch it for the business tasks.
They watched it because Trump was so charismatic. And yeah,
there was great drama with the two teams and whatnot,
but like, you know, that's really what it was. So
when when the show became a massive hit, we sat
(40:19):
around and we were like, we're genius. Is like, we
never thought a million years it was going to be
this mashion it was. When we came back, were like,
we weren't just as surprised as everybody else that it
was like this big hit. But because of his personality.
That's what it was.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
So you think ultimately that sort of ability to make
everyone like him was what did it?
Speaker 4 (40:39):
Who's a politician who was a football.
Speaker 1 (40:41):
Coach, Tommy Tuberville.
Speaker 4 (40:43):
How is Tommy Tuberville like in government? You know what
I mean? But it's because people loved the guy. They
loved him for his coaching, they loved the things he
had to say, They love he was outspoken. And now
he's running a state. You know, he's one of the
heads of a state. I mean, it's no different when
you look at any celebrity who really, inherently you don't
think would be in government, has no experience in government,
(41:03):
doesn't understand clear, simple policies how they get to these positions.
The same thing with Trump. There's always a time in
our society where everybody wants an outsider. We don't want
an insider. We don't want somebody who actually knows how
to run the government. If we could just get this
genius businessman to run this business of America, like, everything
will be great, even though the two skill sets have
nothing to do with one another. And that's what he
(41:25):
convinced people, and that's what then people wanted. That twice
Thank you, Darren, thank you.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
And now we have a clip from our YouTube channel
with Dave Serota from The Lever, who also is the
creator of the podcast The master Plan and the screenplay
author of the movie Don't Look Up. Welcome Too Fast Politics.
Speaker 6 (41:46):
David, thank you, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
So you and I are like absolutely on the same
page today. We both wrote our columns. You wrote your
column in the Guardian. I wrote my common Vanity fair
about exactly the same thing, which is where I think
the smart money is in the Democratic Party right now.
So I want you to explain to our listeners why
(42:09):
you think that Trump's tariffs are a winner for deams.
Speaker 6 (42:14):
I think they're a winner for a particular kind of
dem I think obviously the tariffs creating chaos for the
economy is bad for the incumbent party and probably structurally,
I guess, politically good for the opposition party. I mean,
I think it's bad for really every unless you're a billionaire, and.
Speaker 1 (42:36):
Even then.
Speaker 4 (42:39):
A lot of ye billionaire.
Speaker 6 (42:41):
Yeah, good point. So I think there's a way for
Democrats to be criticizing the kinds of tariffs, the kinds
of trade policies Trump is putting into effect. Uh, there's
a very strong argument that they're so broad, they're so inconsistent,
they're so sort of hap has there's no indication to
(43:01):
suggest they're going to achieve anything that Trump says they
are right. If you're trying to reshore American jobs that
have been offshore, for example, you probably want to put
in tariffs that have a timetable for implementation to give
industries a chance to rebuild and make capital investments, rebuild
(43:23):
factories in the United States that really hasn't happened. If
you want to get companies to make giant capital investments
in the United States, you probably want to show that
the policies you're putting into place are permanent and stable,
rather than waking up every six hours and saying, oh,
we're going to do this exemption or that exemption. How
is any business supposed to invest in that. So the
(43:45):
point is that the Democrats have a really good argument
to make that these tariffs are going to harm the
working class and America in general. Now one caveat. I
think if the Democrats take that to its extreme and
say all industrial policy, all tariffs are bad, that the
(44:07):
NAFTA trade paradigm and the China free trade paradigm. All
of that is good, then I think they walk into
a trap that Trump wants them to walk into, and
I think there's evidence that parts of the party don't
really understand the trap that Trump is trying to lay
(44:27):
for them.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
First, I want to just go back to what you
were saying, seventy percent of Americans believe the tariffs are
going to be bad for the economy on the short term.
You don't get seventy percent of Americans who agree on anything.
Those are incredible numbers, and I think that that should
be sort of the foundation of all of this. But
the thing that I think will likely do the best
(44:48):
for the opposition party, which Democrats need to be, is
the haphazardous and the way that none of this has
been thought out, which is what we write so like
for example, and I want to get into this, the
reshoring reshoring manufacturing is like one of the goals here, right,
(45:09):
restoring manufacturing. But you can't reshore manufacturing just by making
things more expensive. Chips and Science had a goal of
reshoring manufacturing. Really like reshoring these high paying manufacturing jobs,
which are chips. A chips assembly line is a much
better job than a Sneaker's assembly line, and that was
the thinking here, but because they could not articulate it,
(45:33):
it got lost. And so now here we have Trump
trying to do the same thing, but because there's no
there's never any sort of thinking behind anything, we're here instead.
Speaker 6 (45:43):
That's a really good point. The Biden administration, it got
the policy actually right that Biden. That Biden used targeted
tariffs on specific industries as part of a coordinated industrial policy.
For instance, the Chips Act, as you mentioned, which which
invests actually uses money resources to invest the Inflation Reduction Act,
(46:06):
which uses tax credits and other investment tools along with
targeted tariffs. And we saw manufacturing jobs start to come
back in the United States and factory investments start to
be made by the way, many of which were made
in red states, in Republican states. The problem was, as
(46:26):
you allude to, the Biden administration never sold it. They
never made it part of their political pitch to the country.
Kamala Harris didn't, the Democratic Party didn't. And now you
have a situation where Trump is trying to take the
political themes of reshoring American jobs, brand it to himself,
(46:49):
but with a completely unacceptable, reckless and haphazard policy. And again,
I think the Democrats have a story to tell about
how the hap has ears of Trump's policy is imperiling
the country. But I think they could make a political
mistake by allowing Trump to brand them once again as
(47:11):
he did in twenty sixteen, to brand them as the
party of NAFTA style trade policy.
Speaker 2 (47:17):
Right.
Speaker 6 (47:17):
I think this has been forgotten. There are large swaths
of this country that used to be democratic regions, democratic strongholds,
that were hollowed out by so called free trade deals NAFTA, China,
p and tr And I think that is a very
real issue, that is a very authentic concern for those
(47:41):
communities that went through that and that continue to go
through that. And I think if the Democrats sort of
scoff at that grievance, they play into what Trump wants
them to do. And here's the other polling number that
I think has been forgotten that while the public is
opposed to Trump's tariff policy, on the actual policy merits
(48:04):
for the first time in generations, At the same time,
the Republicans have evened the playing field on the question
of who cares about you? That question in polling, who
most cares about you. For the first time really in
modern polling history, the Republican Party has now pulled even
(48:25):
with Democrats. So my theory here is, and I would
speculate that what's going on here is that large, you know,
majorities of the country are like, hey, Trump is not
handling the is not managing the economy, right, he doesn't
know what he's doing with these tariffs. The tariffs are
going to be bad for me. On the policy, it's clear,
but hey, you know, he's also talking about this issue
(48:46):
trade and tariffs and reshoring jobs and what happened to America.
And so even if we don't think he's right on
the policy, he's at least talking about this issue that
very few politicians have wanted to talk about, which shows
where the perception is is that he's on our side.
(49:06):
And I think that is that's the dichotomy that we're in.
Obviously I don't think he's on our side, but my
point is is that that's the tension here.
Speaker 1 (49:13):
To hear more of that segment, head over to our
YouTube channel No More Perfectly Jesse Cannon, Small.
Speaker 2 (49:26):
Junk fast Man. You know, when we started to hear
Trump years ago talk about which hunts against him. We
kind of knew if he got back into power, exactly
what he be doing and what he's doing James here
is exactly what we suspected.
Speaker 1 (49:41):
Yeah, so he is going to do a fake investigation
of her. So he basically, according to a letter obtained
by the euro Post, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch
and is Donald Trump's favorite outlet because he still lives
in the nineties, she launched a civil fraud case again
Trump and his business empire in twenty twenty two. So
(50:03):
now this US Attorney General Pam Bondi is alleging that
James falsified records in twenty twenty three to secure home
loans on a property in Norfolk, Virginia that she said
was her principal residence while still serving in her role
in New York. This is while James is announcing a
(50:24):
new investigation into the President over accusations of insider trading.
The accusations arose in the wake of his u turn
on the Reciprocal Theraists last week, after the program's unraveling
inspired a panic on Wall Street. Writing to Bondy and
her deputy Todd Blanche, who you will remember as Donald
(50:45):
Trump's defense lawyer. Miss James was the sitting Attorney General
of New York and is required by a low to
have her primary residents in the state of New York,
even though her mortgage application lists her intent to have
the Norfolk, Virginia property as her primary home. Is like
going after someone for a crime that includes not filing
(51:06):
a form. Right, but this is what they do. That's
it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday,
Thursday and Saturday to hear the best minds and politics
make sense of all this chaos. If you enjoy this podcast,
(51:27):
please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
Thanks for listening.
Host
Molly Jong-Fast
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