April 28, 2025 • 44 mins
To The Contrary newsletter author Charlie Sykes examines Trump’s first 100 days of changing America.The Up and Up founder Rachel Janfaza details the divide in Gen Z’s voting and the complicated landscape of their support for Trump.
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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 House Minority Leader Jeffries and Senator
Booker have begun a sit in protest on the capital steps.
We have such a great show for you today to
(00:21):
the Contrary Newsletter author Charlie Seike stops by to talk
about Trump's first one hundred days changing America. Then we'll
talk to the Up and Up founder Rachel Jafonza about
the divide in gen Z voting and the complicated landscape
of their support and criticism of Trump. But first the news.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
My mister Trump makes big claims about deals. He loves deals,
and he claims he's made two hundred deals on tariffs,
but his cabinet members can't name a single one.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Yeah, yet another moment of scott Essen embarrassing himself for Trump.
Both scott Essen and Agriculture Secretary of Brook Rollins were
asked what these trade agreements were, What these trade deals were.
You'll remember that Peter Navarro said during this ninety day
(01:16):
pause he would make ninety trade deals. Guess how many
trade deals he's made? Not ninety? In fact, they announced
they were doing one with Japan, and then Japan said no,
they weren't. They announced they were doing one with India.
Maybe maybe not, we don't know. But you know, we
don't have ninety of them. We don't even have twenty
(01:39):
of them, and we certainly don't have two hundred of them.
So watching yet another member of Trump's administration try to
defend what is clearly a mistruth, an alternative fact.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Yes, yes, fake news. So DOGE is claiming it saved
one hundred and sixty billion dollars in the wall receipts.
But those cuts of cost taxpayers one hundred and thirty
five billion, one analysis says.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
So they're tallying the costs for federal employees placed on leave, rehired,
mistakenly fired federal employees, and lost productivity. So you'll remember
that Doage went in and it fired many people, including
like people like the remember when they fired all the
(02:28):
air traffic controllers. They sent that email, the form email
that was like what do you even do here? And
then they had to rehire a lot of people. My favorite, though,
is still his say five things you did this week? Email?
Remember that? And then some people were told they couldn't
respond because you know, if you're in the State Department
(02:51):
slash CIA, you're really not supposed to send an email
saying the five things you did.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Me say these five classified fact Well, espionage cross borders
things like that.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Even if you're like working on a sort of prosecutorial
thing and you you know, you're talking about cases or
things that are sensitive or that you know, and you're
putting that in a mass email to a guy called
big Balls, who's going to maybe read it. They said, well,
it's going to get read by AI. I mean, there's
a lot to support that this is all completely insane.
(03:26):
So Doe turns out the savings is greatly reduced by
the fact that it's so expensive.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Yeah, I'm so shocked to hear that this incompetent loser
messed something up. Anyway, I got a question from a
friend this week. He said, who is the person who's
the most crazed and Trump's administration? I said, are we
just qualifying Trump? And I how is forced to stay
Stephen Miller And this quote right here, it kind of
is evidence of my theory.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
Stephen Miller unveils bizarre new attack on birthright citizenship. They
really hate birth right citizenship. They really want to get
rid of it. It's going to the Supreme Court. This
is not the brain child of Steven Miller. This is
like one of these conservative cooked up in a sea
pack like thought community experiment. So here's the quote, though,
(04:16):
the biggest financial ripoff of Americans in history, not to
mention the fact that it is one magnet for I
legal immigration and invasion. So his idea is that people
come to this country have children so that they can
get whatever the little bit of money you get for
(04:36):
having children who are citizens. I mean, the whole idea
here is like I mean, I just want to pull
back for a second and talk about immigration, because part
of what we've benefited from so much in the last
couple of years, and the underlying efficiency of our market,
has been that we have had a lot of immigrants
(04:57):
because they have provided labor and a tight labor market.
We are getting many fewer immigrants now because people don't
want to come here. There are these horror stories of
the French scientists where the ice agents read her phone
and they detain her, you know, all sorts of stories
like that, you know, And then we also have this
weird power struggle with Canada, where there's a lot of
(05:20):
people are not coming here, they don't want to move here,
they don't even necessarily want to visit he or in fact,
are the numbers on our tourism are way way way down.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
I was talking to restaurant employees this week at places
that like a lot of tourists travel to, and they're like,
we are dying.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Yes, So tourism, immigration, all this stuff helps the economy.
I think it's pretty interesting Steven Miller is still attacking immigrants. Meanwhile,
there was an article in the New York Times this
weekend about how the Trump administration is trying to get
people have babies, but they don't want to have babies
because you know, and this has been something that's been
(05:58):
going on for decades. In a decades, more people realize
how expensive it is to have children, and because housing
is so unaffordable and lifestyle is so unaffordable, they don't
want to have more kids, or any kids. The way
to fix this is to build out headstart right, spend
more money on public education, public health, more like a
(06:19):
public option for healthcare. So these are all things that
run completely contrary to what Republicans want to do, so
they're saying, like, how about we pay you five thousand
dollars of a baby. So that's where we are right now.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Speaking of where we are right now, if we head
down to Florida, which I'm glad we're not in right now,
we have some serious political chaos going on as Ron
and Casey Disantis seem to have really dropped the ball
on their political future.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Yeah, it's really sad.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
I would like to point out, I'm crying.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
The political future was largely speculative. Casey DeSantis, There's long
been talk that she would run for governor. I think
a lot of that talk was maybe spun by her.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
I think that's what many people say right that.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
She was some kind of powerhouse. The Democratic Party in Florida,
as we have heard many times on this podcast from
Rick Wilson, has really imploded, and so Republicans have had
a real opening here and a lot of Republicans have
moved to Florida for the lower tax base and because
it's got a very maga like a static right now.
But this scandal, again, if they were Trumpers, I don't
(07:32):
know that this scandal would weigh them down the same way.
But it's a funding scandal involving her signature initiative a
state assistant program known as Hope Florida, which you'll be
shocked to know that ten million dollars from a state
Medicare sentiment settlement was routed to a charity connected with
Hope Florida. Now everyone knows, you're only allowed to do
(07:55):
Medicare fraud if you're running for Senate in Florida.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
I was going to say say, if your name is
Rick Scott, if.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
You're running for Senate, that's fine, But if you're running
for governor, not allowed to do.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Medica fron Technically he was governor after that.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Right, It's true he was governor, but then he was
running for Salon and that was open. But the couple
have stood by their work fiercely and denied any wrongdoing
as long as they denied it obviously and lobbyist because
why wouldn't they. So we'll see if they get through this. Look,
Ron DeSantis did run against Trump, and you know, maybe
(08:34):
this is it. Maybe this is the blow we'll say.
Charlie Sykes is the author of the To the Contrary
newsletter and the book How the Right Lost His Mind
Welcome Back Too Fast? Politics, Charlie Sykes.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
Are we in one hundred days yet? Are we there yet?
Speaker 1 (08:58):
We're at a himer Is countings. Yeah, yeah, it's like
one hundred years in dog years.
Speaker 4 (09:06):
You know.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
I was looking at that, you know Aled Lennon quote,
you know, sometimes decades happened in weeks, that sort of thing.
Apparently it's one of those apocryphal quotes. But we know
what he means, right, And we're coming to the end
of this period. And I think some people are going
to have a hard time hearing that Donald Trump is
the most consequential president of the last century. It's not
a positive thing to say, but it's true. I mean,
(09:27):
this has been You do feel that the tectonic plates
of democracy are shifting. The country's tested and will be
changed one way or another by what Trump is doing
and how we respond to it.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
So my friend, who's an academic, was saying, it's the
end of the American century.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
Well, it may be, it may be. However, what's being
tested is the resilience of the American idea. And I
think for a few months people's heads have been down.
There's been a sense that Okay, that's it.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
It was a good run.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
What was your best memory of the rule of law.
That may be somewhat premature. One hundred days is a
long time. Lots happened, But if you take a longer view,
one hundred days is just one hundred days. And so
some of these polls that are out, which I'm guessing
Molly you've seen, would suggest that everything that Trump is
selling is not necessarily being bought by the American people.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
Yes, but it's like in July. I'm going to bring
you back to July, which is a million years ago.
For that it is keeping drag at home. We said, well,
Donald Trump is going to do Project twenty twenty five,
and everyone said no, no, no, he says he's not.
But when we talked about Project twenty twenty five, when
people looked at it, it was wildly unpopular, right because
(10:39):
nobody wanted that. So now Trump is doing it.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
Yeah, he's doing it with a considerable amount of zeal
and yes, people are finding out that maybe this is
not that popular. Look, what's happened is that we sometimes
confuse the Trump base with the electorate as a whole,
and there's a maga base that frankly does not care
what he does. He could aboord babies in the Oval
office and they would not care. There's nothing he will do.
(11:02):
But that is not the whole electorate. It's not even
the whole Republican electorate. Who knows, you know how many
people voted for Trump simply because they thought that they
would be good for their four oh one k or
that he would be the most pro business president ever,
or because they were just sick of Democrats. And then
suddenly they're confronted with the mad King who is intent
(11:22):
on retribution, you know, defying courts, raising tariffs, trashing the economy,
and yeah, maybe this is not what they signed up for.
But again, we're going to have to see how that
plays out. Because I look, as bad as the polls are,
Republicans are still lined up behind him, and there's no
indication that Republicans in Congress have any inclination to be
(11:47):
anything more than pottered plants.
Speaker 5 (11:48):
Right, So you've.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Opened the door to something I actually really wanted to
talk about, think about, meditate on. So there is a
number that Donald Trump gets to where he's as unpopular
as he's you know, he's still got the magabase, But
there is eventually a number if he gets to it
Republicans who are up for reelection in a year and
(12:12):
change are like, like, let's talk about Elon Musk. Well,
let's go for Elon Musk for a minute. So Elon
Musk came in. Everyone was excited. He got a special
make America great hat. It turns out now he has,
according to the Wall Street Journal, more than forty children,
perhaps or a number closer to forty. He DMS women
(12:34):
to send them sperm, and he is now, you know,
and he spent thirty million dollars in judicial race in
your state, lost, unpopular, wildly and popular now at least
saying again, I don't know that you can trust what
he's saying here, but saying that he's going to step.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
Back, well he can put more time to being father
of his country, right I mean, or at least sperm
donor to his country. Actually, I was thinking about that
today as I was a drive around the east side
of Milwaukee behind to Tesla, thinking about the change in
fortune of Tesla ownership, but also the pivot point of
the Wisconsin Supreme Court race. You know, if you really
sort of trace it back, his complete face plant here
(13:12):
in Wisconsin was really the beginning of his decline and
his politically irrelevance. But again, Elon Musk is not Donald Trump,
and so I don't know whether there's a number that
Republicans in Congress will ever get to. However, I do
think that it's now it's now easier to resist and
(13:32):
push back against trump Ism when clearly he has not
found some magic formula of power, this magic formula that
the public has decided that it's fallen in love with everything,
And can I make it? Can I confess something, Molly
that I'm probably going to regret. I am really really
bored of talking about when are Republicans going to do X?
(13:54):
And I'm really bored talking about Democrats. I'm actually talking,
really bored talking about both of them, because I think
what's actually more important is what the rest of us do,
the rest of civil society, you know, all the other institutions,
and say it's the Look, it is not up to
Chuck Schumer to save America. You know, it's upbout quite
(14:15):
And I'm serious about this. It's you're talking about the
private sector of the universities, the churches, the law firms,
the courts, everyone else has to decide what it means
to be an America. And it's something that I think
because the challenge is so great, it actually transcends electoral politics.
And so if anybody expects that congressional Republicans are going
to figure out I mean, congressional Democrats are going to
(14:36):
figure out some magic form, I may need to be
much more aggressive. Don't get me wrong. I want to
think more about what Americans out there in the actual
real world who have to live in this society think
about all this. What what do average Americans? What do judges?
What do police officers think about? The mass deportations, the
the you know, scoffing at court orders. Because I think
(14:58):
that's the challenges. Well, and if Americans say, you know what,
this is not what we want from America, I think
the electoral politics flows from that. And so I don't
think the answer is going to come from Washington. I'm
not saying that there's not a lot of responsibility. I'm
just you know, we keep saying, well, win, are Democrats
going to do this?
Speaker 4 (15:16):
Win?
Speaker 3 (15:16):
Are Democrats going to do that? I'm want to win.
Are the American people going to do something?
Speaker 1 (15:21):
Yeah? It's really relevant, certainly, but it is easier to
push back against things I mean, if you look back
at Trump one point, how the thing that prevented a
lot of this stuff from happening was corporations people. I mean,
you know, there was a certain sort of combination of
factors that what we see in this time is a
(15:42):
lot of corporations are all over, which is, you know,
because they thought it was better for business or whatever.
But what they've seen is that none of this is popular.
Like it wasn't popular the first time, it's not popular
the second time, which there's a reason that very famous
people try to stay out of politics. And it is
like what happened to Elon Mosk right right.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
Quite frankly, yes, you're right, it's not popular. But I
don't care whether it's popular or not. I mean, this
country was actually founded on the principle that there are
certain fundamentally inalienable rights, and whether it's popular to illegally
rendition someone to All Salvadory or not is really kind
of a secondary point. But I think that what's happening
is is that that's settling in. I'm hoping that we
(16:25):
can sort of get back to first principles here is
that people look around and go, Okay, this actually is
dangerous this offense are innate sense of fairness and that
he's violating all of that. So I think also there
was and I'm glad you brought up the project twenty
twenty five because no one should really have been that
surprised by what Trump was going to do. Trump's campaign
(16:47):
was Trump in full. He made it very very clear
who he was, what he was, what he was going
to do. And you and I and others spent months
hair on fire saying, do you know how bad this
is going to be? You know what he's going to do.
It's not going to be like Trump point zero. And
we were accused of being hysterical, we were accused of
having Trump derangement syndrome. And then he comes in and
does exactly what he said he was going to do.
(17:11):
They wrote it in a book, and so a part
of me is like, how could you possibly be surprised
by this? But it's right there, it's in front of you. Now,
what is America going to do? How are they going
to respond to all of it? Now, I'm gonna contradict
myself having said that it's not important whether it's popular,
It certainly should change the sort of the Eori ish,
(17:31):
Oh my god, everything has gone to see that huge
majorities of the public are seeing this, are watching this
and going, no, we weren't reject I mean, I think
part of the problem is that we watched this. Wee
go how come American people are not seeing what we're saying?
And what's wrong with them if they don't see it?
Now at least there's an alignment where you have huge
(17:52):
majorities that go, yeah, you know, tariffs actually are big taxes,
they are inflationary, They're not good. Maybe ignoring the Supreme
Court is a bad thing for the Louisville.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
So there was this Siena College poll from April twenty fourth,
and percentage of voters who said the following words described
Trump's second term in office, well, sixty six percent said chaotic,
fifty nine percent said scary it's hard to imagine chaotic.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
But forty two percent said exciting.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
Yes they did, they did. So.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
Do understand that there's a large portion in the American
public that's kind of kind of getting too messent over this.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
Yeah, but his approval rating is negative twelve. I mean,
everything is down right, I mean, even on the economy,
which was like the reason that theoretically, at least some
of the people voted for him. They're not happy with him.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
He's not ten feet tall. He is not unstoppable. I
think a lot of his power in that first hundred
days was this belief that resistance is futile and that
everybody had to capitulate in advance. When you look at
a first his margin in the Senate is very very small,
his margin in the House is infinitesimal. And he's Donald
fucking Trump who won by a sliver and who is
(19:09):
now engaging in the classic political hubris of overreading his
victory and his mandate. And so but you think about
all of the his initiatives and all of the surrenders,
and all of the surrenders, I think we're done. Because
people thought he was unstoppable and that there were no guardrails. Well, okay,
we're coming up to one hundred day point. He's not unstoppable,
(19:32):
resistance is possible, and there are still some guard rails.
I mean, we can take this back and forth.
Speaker 5 (19:39):
How about that.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
You have to agree that behind the scenes there's Roberts
trying to get the numbers. There's just no way otherwise.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
Well, and Trump is you know, This is one of
those those things where I know there's an entire cottage
industry of people who assure us that he's playing four
dimensional chess, but his lack of respect and his defiance
the judiciary is Backfron. You're seeing more and more conservative lawyers,
conservative judges pushing back hard his decision to arrest a
(20:10):
Milwaukee judge at the Coarehouse and the FBI am Trust me,
I don't think you have to be a a woke
progressive judge to be appalled by that. So I'm saying
he's alienating the judiciary at a moment when they actually
do pose a significant threat to his authoritarian agenda.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
Yeah. I also think that the thing that is kind
of amazing is that you know, you have all of
these people like Ken Griffin, largest Republican donor to this cycle,
though not a Trump donor, but to every other Republican
running for office in the world. I mean, he is
(20:54):
like one of the very few people who's saying that
Trump is ruining the American brand.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
Well, there's been a lot of delusion about Trump on
the part of these guys that they have you told
themselves a story that he was going to be their
champion that he was going to deregulate and cut their
taxes and don't worry, he was bluffing about everything else,
and we can control him. And now they're finding out no,
he's not, and he's making decisions that have injected a
massive amount of uncertainty into their decision making, into the economy,
(21:23):
and investors hate uncertainty, they really do. Now, on the
other hand, there's going to be this group of people
who are think, hey, you know what, as long as
we stay close to the throne, we can benefit from
the corruption, we can benefit from the insider trading, we
can benefit from the fear and favor. But yeah, I
think that you've had a lot of illusion shattered, right.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
I mean, if you look at the people around Trump,
it's not like I mean, Elon obviously is a specialized case,
but there are certainly people on Trump's inner circle who
are getting read to on lobbying or whatever. But if
you're just you know, a bill men or someone who
relies on the markets, the tariffs are.
Speaker 3 (22:06):
Rushing, well they are. And it's also again the relationships
that have been destroyed, the fact that you don't know
what he's going to do from day to day, and
it's hard to make investment decisions. So there's a sense
of does this guy actually know what he's doing, is
he irrational? Is he dangerous? And that's where that number
in that New York Times Senapol you said it is
(22:26):
so important that you have more than the sixty What
was the number four chaos?
Speaker 1 (22:30):
Sixty six percent?
Speaker 3 (22:31):
Okay, so sixty six I mean, can we just sit
on that for a moment. You have two thirds of
Americans that are looking at the President of the United
States and seeing him as an agent of chaos. Now
there are there's going to be a segment of the
electorate that likes that, that loves chaos. Not in the
business community though, but also the other thing is that
like this is the second Trump administration, this is the
(22:53):
one that's better organized, Like and sixty.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
Center saying chaos, I mean, we don't know what's going
to happen, but we are open to so many possible
catastrophic events because of the combination of the deregulation and
the stripping the federal government that like between the measles
pandemic that is sort of or pandemic is the wrong word,
(23:20):
I think, but it certainly the measles outbreaks at this
moment in different parts of the country among unvaccinated children.
That's going and that, I mean, They're just a number
of things that are bubbling under the surface that could
derail us even further.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
I'm really glad you brought that up, because the return
of measles and other diseases that have been eradicated by
vaccines would be one of the great tragedies of history
and completely preventable and avoidable and completely man made. And
this administration could actually usher that. I mean, this is
a real danger. And I think a lot of things
(23:58):
are still like clouds on the horizons, so we don't
know all the dangers out there. I mean, America first
turned out to be America alone, but also the rollback
of public health. No, you're you're right, and I think
that these are all danger signs for Trump going forward.
We haven't seen the full impact on the economy. You've
probably seen these stories about the empty cargo ships coming
(24:20):
from China. We haven't even seen all of this. We
don't know, I mean, and by the way, measles pandemic,
measles epidemic would and I don't want to just see
this in political terms, but it would be a catastrophe.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
Yeah, the trade war is a really good example of
how none of this was three dimensional chests, Like, if
you were going to go to war with China, you
would make sure that Mexico and Canada had your back,
right if you were going to go to trade war
with them in Europe. And instead what he did was
he made everybody really mad and then made China really mad.
(24:53):
So I do think it's worth remembering that none of
this Again, as you said earlier, you know, we.
Speaker 3 (24:59):
Go through these poll numbers which are really historically unprecedented.
I mean, no president has ever been this low this
early in his term. The fall has happened very very quickly.
And it's not just on never Trump type or democratic
or progressive issues. It's on immigration. Immigration was his thing,
This was his signature issue. He's underwater on this. He's
(25:21):
underwater on the Abrago Garcia case. I think he's minus
twenty one on that case. He's tied for its least popular.
Remember all the smart kids who were telling us that
you know, well, you guys should stop talking about that,
because that's what Trump wants you to talk about. This
is a winning issue for Donald Trump. Donald Trump wants
to focus on this because the American people like the
(25:41):
brutality and the cruelty and the lawlessness of his immigration policies. Well, Molly,
it turns out and in fact, if you do talk
about it and people do think about it, that they
don't approve of it. So this is again one of
those There are all of those voices and including Gavin
Newsom out there saying no, no, that's a distraction. We should
be talking about table issues. Fun Let's talk about the
(26:01):
kitchen table issues. But also it's not necessarily a loser
to be talking about the rule of law issues, or
the humanitarian issues, or.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
The deported children with cancer, the United States Citizens Supported
with Cancer. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
Charlie Sikes anytime. By the way, cannot wait for your book,
Molly cannot wait.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
Rachel Trafonza is the founder of the Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 5 (26:30):
Rachel, thank you so much for having me. Mollie.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
All right, so let's talk about what is happening with
gen Z, because you wrote this very interesting piece about
how gen Z is split, and I'd love for you
to explain to us how gen Z is split, Why
gen Z is split, and what's it look like totally.
Speaker 4 (26:50):
So I have been holding listening sessions, which really are
just informal conversations with young people across the country for
the past really like two and a half years, and
since after the twenty twenty two midterms, I started seeing
a major split in how the youngest members of gen
Z who were eligible to vote and the older members
(27:11):
of gen Z who were eligible to vote vote not
just politics but life in general. And I started to
develop this theory that I called the two gen zs,
where there's gen Z one point zero and gen Z
two point zero, and gen Z one point zero includes
anyone who graduated high school before the start of the
COVID nineteen pandemic, and gen Z two point zero accounts
(27:32):
for anyone who graduated high school during or after.
Speaker 5 (27:36):
The start of the pandemic. And the reason why I
think that the pandemic was such a formative split between
these two subgenerations of gen Z is that it really
changed how members of this generation were growing up. And
when you think about the fifteen year span of time
that accounts for gen Z when they were born, there
(28:00):
really were very different lived adolescent experiences depending on if
you had grown up before or after the start of COVID.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
Right, COVID is the break. If you grew up before COVID,
you have more normal liberal policies right for your age. Explain.
Speaker 4 (28:17):
This is still very much unfolding, but the more data
points we get, the more clear this picture seems to
become where the gen Z one point zero had more
idealistic liberal tendencies. For example, I'm in gen Z one
point zero. I was born in nineteen ninety seven, and
when I was in college, my four years of college
(28:38):
were the four years of President Donald Trump's first term
in office, and there was a lot of resistance to
that time period, and there was this sort of liberal
ideology that by demonstrating by protesting, perhaps you know, people's
message would be heard, and politically, this cohort was considered
(29:00):
at the time very left leaning and perhaps you know,
there was some language around gen Z could save us
all things like that.
Speaker 5 (29:06):
What we're seeing.
Speaker 4 (29:07):
Now is that gen Z on the whole is shifting right,
in large part being driven by these younger gen Zers
who grew up amid COVID lockdowns and restrictive policies and
really grew to resent authority and the time frame in
which they were growing up. When they were, you know,
(29:28):
in late high school or maybe starting college, after the
start of the pandemic. During the pandemic, or even after
the pandemic, Biden was in office, and they were looking
for someone to blame during this time period when it
felt like life wasn't normal, life wasn't getting back to normal,
And the people who were in charge and who were
(29:50):
associated with the more social distancing policies or masking policies
things like that were Democrats, and so I think that
contributed to some of this shift as well. But then
the the key piece, and this is related but not
exactly the same, is that we really saw the evolution
of TikTok during and after COVID, and there's been a
(30:13):
just change in how younger gen Zers consume media and
how all of us consume media. But this is how
these younger gen Zers grew up. This is all that
they knew. They never had the previous forms of social media.
They only know a world where TikTok is the place
for public discourse. And there's been some data coming out
(30:35):
that starts to show that TikTok has more republican content
on it, or more conservative content on it, and perhaps
that's part of this puzzle as well, But I think
it's just important to point out that we don't exactly
know the causality. What we do know is that this
generation is split into two and that the younger gen
(30:56):
zers account for more of that conservative viewpoint. And there
was a new pool that came out last week from
the Yale Youth Goal that showed this.
Speaker 5 (31:04):
Divide pretty starkly.
Speaker 4 (31:05):
So it showed that they asked respondents who they would
in a generic ballot who they would vote for in
twenty twenty six midterms, and for ages eighteen to twenty
one the generic ballot Republicans we were plus twelve and
for ages twenty two to twenty nine, Democrats were plus six.
(31:26):
So you do see that split playing out, even thinking
towards twenty twenty six as well.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
So let's do two seconds on what this split means.
For example, does this mean that TikTok is making young
people more conservative?
Speaker 4 (31:43):
I don't know if we can say it as clear
cut as that, but I think what it means is
that older gen Zers and younger gen Zers are just
consuming content, news and information totally differently, and that is
changing their politics, and I think that it also one
of the things that is both related to some of
this anti authority sentiment that came out of the pandemic
(32:05):
and also might be related to the type of content
that's consumed on TikTok.
Speaker 5 (32:08):
The type of content that does well on TikTok is
very off the cuff, very pithy, not highly filtered or
edited content, but it feels more raw and perhaps more organic.
And that is sort of similar to the way in
which President Trump talks right like, he speaks in sound
(32:31):
bites most of the time. He is very punchy.
Speaker 4 (32:34):
He is perceived as being unfiltered, and so there's sort
of a correlation there in the type of content that
does well on TikTok and the way that Trump and
members of the MAGA movement communicate.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
Yeah, So one of the things I think when I
think about this election is Trump right before the election,
he did all of these podcasts, He did Joe Rogan,
he did theovonn did all of this new media, and
he also introduced a lot of ideas that he probably
wasn't going to actually put into play, things like you know,
(33:09):
he was going to make bitcoin great again, he was
going to sell sneakers he was going to. He sort
of obfuscated a lot of stuff. Did that work? Is
that what you're saying that it worked? And did it
work with younger people and not older people? Did COVID
set this up? Like, tell me kind of where we
go with this information?
Speaker 5 (33:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (33:25):
So one of the things that I think Republicans did
really well in the lead up to the twenty twenty
four election, and Trump in particular did well, was that
he politically coded culture, whereas Democrats were culturally coding politics.
Speaker 5 (33:38):
So what I mean by that is that.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
Yeah, you got to say it two more times too.
Speaker 4 (33:42):
So Trump and Republicans in the lead up to the
twenty twenty four election politically coded culture, while Democrats and
Vice President Kamala Harris culturally coded politics.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
Okay, politics is downstream of culture, right.
Speaker 4 (34:00):
Yes, So what I mean by this political coding of
culture is that Trump and his allies would go into
cultural places, whether that meant going to UFC fights or
showing on these podcasts in this menosphere as it's been dubbed.
When he would go to these locations, he wasn't off
(34:22):
the bat talking about politics. He was just showing up
as himself as Trump, the former president who was running
for reelection, and he would have conversations, especially on these podcasts,
that had nothing to do with politics. He would talk
about his children, he would talk about his experience as
a businessman, he would talk about sports. Sometimes he would
(34:45):
just talk about things that were organic to whatever the
podcast conversation would typically be about. And same thing when
he would go to a UFC fight, he would go
there as Donald Trump, but he wouldn't make a campaign
rally out of it necessarily, whereas on the flip side,
you look at something like the rally that former Vice
(35:07):
President Kamala Harris held in Texas with Beyonce, and Beyonce
was there. Beyonce was talking about being a mother, and
the theme of the rally was about abortion access, but
Beyonce didn't singing. Beyonce didn't you know? It wasn't it
was a political event, and that I think was similar
to how Democrats would show up on some of these
(35:29):
podcasts as well. For example, when Kamala Harris went on
Alex Cooper's Call Her Daddy, the conversation was very political, right.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
And it should have been just her schmoozing and talking
about cooking exactly.
Speaker 4 (35:41):
So you know, we're starting to see some examples of
Democrats changing their strategy with this. I think a great
example is today this episode with peepoota judge on the
Flagrant podcast came out and that's a podcast that Trump
actually went on before the twenty twenty four election, and
I just started watching the episode. It literally just came out,
and at the start of the episode, boota judge is
talking about the White Lotus and how he thinks that
(36:03):
Lachlan should have died on the White Lotus, and so
it's a very relatable conversation that has nothing to do
with politics, and then they get into some of the
more political conversation about tariffs and taxes and immigration and
things like that. So you can see that Democrats are
starting to take note of this. But I think that
when you're looking at how young people are consuming content,
the strategy that Trump deployed ahead of the election was
(36:26):
super successful because it felt relatable to young people. And
one of the biggest things I hear from young people
is that they want a politician who they feel like
is just normal, who looks like, sounds like, talks like them.
And while you know there are definitely things that Trump
does not have in common with young people. He was
(36:46):
able to show up in the places that they're authentically
consuming in the podcast and reach them that way.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
I want to go back to the Flagrant podcast from
it because Jesse just sent me a producer's note the
host of the Flagrant Podcast. I think we're getting at
something really important here. Andrew Schultz. He said that youth
voted for Trump cause he has three baby mothers. I'm
cleaning this up and gets a lot of action, so
(37:16):
romantic action. I can't believe I've become this person who
is saying romantic action instead of what is actually a
lot of cleaning. But I actually think what you're saying
is more correct, which is actually correct, which is Donald
Trump sold them a person, and Democrats tried to sell
them policy.
Speaker 4 (37:36):
Yeah, And to be fair, like, I do think young
voters and I actually I know that young voters care
about issues that affect their daily lives. For sure, they
care way more about issues than they do about partisan politics.
They're prioritizing issues over party. But they wanted a candidate
who felt authentic, who felt like they were unscripted and
(37:59):
were saying what they meant and I think a lot
of this, and I write about this in that Washington
Post op ed as well, is that this is for
GenZ two point I'm in particular, they grew up at
the peak of cancel culture, where they had to be
very careful about what they said. And I've had a
lot of young people tell me it felt like they
were walking on eggshells, and they didn't want to walk
(38:19):
on eggshells anymore. And so what they appreciate about Trump
is that he doesn't walk on eggshells. He says what
he wants. He is able to get away with whatever
and say whatever, and it really flies in the face
of that pervasive cancel culture or political correctness that this
generation grew up with and is resentful of. And they
(38:41):
felt that Democrats were the party that was policing that language,
and that was largely responsible for that cancel culture. And
so you know, when you looked at Trump and this
quote from the podcast, I think the through line is
just that whether or not they agree with every single
one of his policy is views or every single thing
(39:01):
that he says, they do like the fact that he
does say what he means and is able to get
away with sometimes being controversial, oftentimes being controversial.
Speaker 1 (39:11):
Some of this is COVID, some of this is canceled culture.
Some of this is just a rebellion to cancel culture
and COVID.
Speaker 4 (39:21):
Yes, And I think that the cancel culture and COVID
peace are related because I think that while we started
to see cancel culture before COVID, it really took a
turn during COVID because we were all living our lives
online and so sort of and then there were these
restrictions that were in place where that were meant to
stop the spread of the virus and keep people safe,
and so if you went against that or refuse the
(39:45):
vaccine or things like that, there was this moral high
ground kind of associated with that, and so there was
a lot of judgment in shade being thrown at people.
And I think that when students started to go back
to school, they saw this plan out in their classrooms,
on their campuses. I'm the oldest of four, and I've
seen this with my younger siblings where they'll tell me
(40:06):
about certain situations where people are called out on social
media because they either did or did not post about
some sort of social issue or in the day, in
the earliest days when kids were going back to school,
if someone wasn't wearing their masks correctly, or if you know,
if they broke some sort of rule at school, there
was judgment and there was and everyone kind of got involved.
(40:29):
And so I think the cancel culture that sort of
started as this online conversation started to seep into the
real world lives of young people and it just is
exhausting for them, and it and you know, then I
think this is also a part of the right word shift,
is that they think about their life before COVID and
if they were eighteen in the twenty twenty for election,
(40:52):
you know, they were really really young when Trump was
in office the first time, and so they don't really
remember that time period. They might not know about the
politics of it, but they you know, if they were
let's say they're in fourth grade at the time, like
life was probably pretty good.
Speaker 5 (41:05):
And so they think back to, oh, when Trump.
Speaker 4 (41:07):
Was in office and they were in elementary school and
like had no worry in the world, and so why
not want Trump to be back in office again?
Speaker 5 (41:15):
If that's the association, right.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
And I think that is insane, but it's certainly something
we've seen the tracks and historically this is what happened
after the nineteen eighteen flu pandemic too, This idea that
the real world is too painful and so we'll go
back to a time when things don't seem as scary,
totally don't seem as well.
Speaker 4 (41:38):
And Trump taps into that too, of course, because his
whole message is about making America great again, and so
it taps into that nostalgia that is really present within
gen Z. And I've written about this where I've said
that the nostalgia's for a time period that they never experienced.
A lot of the never existed, right exactly, but it
is something that they've grown up a mid constant crisis,
(42:00):
and so it's kind of like a reprieve from reality.
Speaker 5 (42:02):
To envision that type of a world.
Speaker 1 (42:05):
I would like a reprieve from reality.
Speaker 5 (42:07):
Thank you, Rachel, Thank you so much, Molly. I loved
our conversation.
Speaker 6 (42:13):
No mofectly Jesse Cannon so bally, We've well known that
the elites have these private clubs, but usually the price
tag to get into the like you know, a soho
houses a measly few thousand dollars in an application, but
a half a million dollars to get into a private
(42:34):
club with exclusive access to Trump's cabinet.
Speaker 2 (42:37):
Now that's something.
Speaker 1 (42:38):
Sure, there are private clubs that are that expensive, but
you have to be willing to pay it to hang
out with Don Junior. I mean, all of this seems
ridiculous to me. Launch of the executive branch comes as
Trump World looks to remake Washington. Good luck, guys, a
new club. So this is Donald Trump's mega donor. I'm
sure that a lot of people this club will have tattoos.
(43:01):
It's involved with Trump's seventeen eighty nine conservative venture funder.
I guess it's a hedge fund. Seventeen eighty nine capital
referral requirements are that you paint yourself orange and married
to someone with very white blonde hair, and have had
(43:21):
multiple rounds of plastic surgery so that these c suite
crowd can mingle with Trump advisors and cabinet members without
the prying eyes of the press, and want to be insiders.
This is what happens when you don't have any writers
in your inner circle want to be insiders. The price
tag won't be a problem for Trump's cabinet, given it
(43:43):
is by far the wealthiest in history, and the club
already has a waitlist. Oh well, another heartbreak. But if
you do get into this club, you can hang out
with David Socks, I mean Sacks and Donald Trump Junior.
And it's such a good club that they had their
party at the Willard Hotel, which is not the club.
(44:06):
So we'll see how this goes, and good luck to
all we celebrate. I'm sure this is going to be great.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
Oh yeah, I can't wait.
Speaker 1 (44:16):
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, 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 House Minority Leader Jeffries and Senator
Booker have begun a sit in protest on the capital steps.
We have such a great show for you today to
(00:21):
the Contrary Newsletter author Charlie Seike stops by to talk
about Trump's first one hundred days changing America. Then we'll
talk to the Up and Up founder Rachel Jafonza about
the divide in gen Z voting and the complicated landscape
of their support and criticism of Trump. But first the news.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
My mister Trump makes big claims about deals. He loves deals,
and he claims he's made two hundred deals on tariffs,
but his cabinet members can't name a single one.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Yeah, yet another moment of scott Essen embarrassing himself for Trump.
Both scott Essen and Agriculture Secretary of Brook Rollins were
asked what these trade agreements were, What these trade deals were.
You'll remember that Peter Navarro said during this ninety day
(01:16):
pause he would make ninety trade deals. Guess how many
trade deals he's made? Not ninety? In fact, they announced
they were doing one with Japan, and then Japan said no,
they weren't. They announced they were doing one with India.
Maybe maybe not, we don't know. But you know, we
don't have ninety of them. We don't even have twenty
(01:39):
of them, and we certainly don't have two hundred of them.
So watching yet another member of Trump's administration try to
defend what is clearly a mistruth, an alternative fact.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Yes, yes, fake news. So DOGE is claiming it saved
one hundred and sixty billion dollars in the wall receipts.
But those cuts of cost taxpayers one hundred and thirty
five billion, one analysis says.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
So they're tallying the costs for federal employees placed on leave, rehired,
mistakenly fired federal employees, and lost productivity. So you'll remember
that Doage went in and it fired many people, including
like people like the remember when they fired all the
(02:28):
air traffic controllers. They sent that email, the form email
that was like what do you even do here? And
then they had to rehire a lot of people. My favorite, though,
is still his say five things you did this week? Email?
Remember that? And then some people were told they couldn't
respond because you know, if you're in the State Department
(02:51):
slash CIA, you're really not supposed to send an email
saying the five things you did.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Me say these five classified fact Well, espionage cross borders
things like that.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Even if you're like working on a sort of prosecutorial
thing and you you know, you're talking about cases or
things that are sensitive or that you know, and you're
putting that in a mass email to a guy called
big Balls, who's going to maybe read it. They said, well,
it's going to get read by AI. I mean, there's
a lot to support that this is all completely insane.
(03:26):
So Doe turns out the savings is greatly reduced by
the fact that it's so expensive.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Yeah, I'm so shocked to hear that this incompetent loser
messed something up. Anyway, I got a question from a
friend this week. He said, who is the person who's
the most crazed and Trump's administration? I said, are we
just qualifying Trump? And I how is forced to stay
Stephen Miller And this quote right here, it kind of
is evidence of my theory.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
Stephen Miller unveils bizarre new attack on birthright citizenship. They
really hate birth right citizenship. They really want to get
rid of it. It's going to the Supreme Court. This
is not the brain child of Steven Miller. This is
like one of these conservative cooked up in a sea
pack like thought community experiment. So here's the quote, though,
(04:16):
the biggest financial ripoff of Americans in history, not to
mention the fact that it is one magnet for I
legal immigration and invasion. So his idea is that people
come to this country have children so that they can
get whatever the little bit of money you get for
(04:36):
having children who are citizens. I mean, the whole idea
here is like I mean, I just want to pull
back for a second and talk about immigration, because part
of what we've benefited from so much in the last
couple of years, and the underlying efficiency of our market,
has been that we have had a lot of immigrants
(04:57):
because they have provided labor and a tight labor market.
We are getting many fewer immigrants now because people don't
want to come here. There are these horror stories of
the French scientists where the ice agents read her phone
and they detain her, you know, all sorts of stories
like that, you know, And then we also have this
weird power struggle with Canada, where there's a lot of
(05:20):
people are not coming here, they don't want to move here,
they don't even necessarily want to visit he or in fact,
are the numbers on our tourism are way way way down.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
I was talking to restaurant employees this week at places
that like a lot of tourists travel to, and they're like,
we are dying.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Yes, So tourism, immigration, all this stuff helps the economy.
I think it's pretty interesting Steven Miller is still attacking immigrants. Meanwhile,
there was an article in the New York Times this
weekend about how the Trump administration is trying to get
people have babies, but they don't want to have babies
because you know, and this has been something that's been
(05:58):
going on for decades. In a decades, more people realize
how expensive it is to have children, and because housing
is so unaffordable and lifestyle is so unaffordable, they don't
want to have more kids, or any kids. The way
to fix this is to build out headstart right, spend
more money on public education, public health, more like a
(06:19):
public option for healthcare. So these are all things that
run completely contrary to what Republicans want to do, so
they're saying, like, how about we pay you five thousand
dollars of a baby. So that's where we are right now.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Speaking of where we are right now, if we head
down to Florida, which I'm glad we're not in right now,
we have some serious political chaos going on as Ron
and Casey Disantis seem to have really dropped the ball
on their political future.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Yeah, it's really sad.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
I would like to point out, I'm crying.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
The political future was largely speculative. Casey DeSantis, There's long
been talk that she would run for governor. I think
a lot of that talk was maybe spun by her.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
I think that's what many people say right that.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
She was some kind of powerhouse. The Democratic Party in Florida,
as we have heard many times on this podcast from
Rick Wilson, has really imploded, and so Republicans have had
a real opening here and a lot of Republicans have
moved to Florida for the lower tax base and because
it's got a very maga like a static right now.
But this scandal, again, if they were Trumpers, I don't
(07:32):
know that this scandal would weigh them down the same way.
But it's a funding scandal involving her signature initiative a
state assistant program known as Hope Florida, which you'll be
shocked to know that ten million dollars from a state
Medicare sentiment settlement was routed to a charity connected with
Hope Florida. Now everyone knows, you're only allowed to do
(07:55):
Medicare fraud if you're running for Senate in Florida.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
I was going to say say, if your name is
Rick Scott, if.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
You're running for Senate, that's fine, But if you're running
for governor, not allowed to do.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Medica fron Technically he was governor after that.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Right, It's true he was governor, but then he was
running for Salon and that was open. But the couple
have stood by their work fiercely and denied any wrongdoing
as long as they denied it obviously and lobbyist because
why wouldn't they. So we'll see if they get through this. Look,
Ron DeSantis did run against Trump, and you know, maybe
(08:34):
this is it. Maybe this is the blow we'll say.
Charlie Sykes is the author of the To the Contrary
newsletter and the book How the Right Lost His Mind
Welcome Back Too Fast? Politics, Charlie Sykes.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
Are we in one hundred days yet? Are we there yet?
Speaker 1 (08:58):
We're at a himer Is countings. Yeah, yeah, it's like
one hundred years in dog years.
Speaker 4 (09:06):
You know.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
I was looking at that, you know Aled Lennon quote,
you know, sometimes decades happened in weeks, that sort of thing.
Apparently it's one of those apocryphal quotes. But we know
what he means, right, And we're coming to the end
of this period. And I think some people are going
to have a hard time hearing that Donald Trump is
the most consequential president of the last century. It's not
a positive thing to say, but it's true. I mean,
(09:27):
this has been You do feel that the tectonic plates
of democracy are shifting. The country's tested and will be
changed one way or another by what Trump is doing
and how we respond to it.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
So my friend, who's an academic, was saying, it's the
end of the American century.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
Well, it may be, it may be. However, what's being
tested is the resilience of the American idea. And I
think for a few months people's heads have been down.
There's been a sense that Okay, that's it.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
It was a good run.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
What was your best memory of the rule of law.
That may be somewhat premature. One hundred days is a
long time. Lots happened, But if you take a longer view,
one hundred days is just one hundred days. And so
some of these polls that are out, which I'm guessing
Molly you've seen, would suggest that everything that Trump is
selling is not necessarily being bought by the American people.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
Yes, but it's like in July. I'm going to bring
you back to July, which is a million years ago.
For that it is keeping drag at home. We said, well,
Donald Trump is going to do Project twenty twenty five,
and everyone said no, no, no, he says he's not.
But when we talked about Project twenty twenty five, when
people looked at it, it was wildly unpopular, right because
(10:39):
nobody wanted that. So now Trump is doing it.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
Yeah, he's doing it with a considerable amount of zeal
and yes, people are finding out that maybe this is
not that popular. Look, what's happened is that we sometimes
confuse the Trump base with the electorate as a whole,
and there's a maga base that frankly does not care
what he does. He could aboord babies in the Oval
office and they would not care. There's nothing he will do.
(11:02):
But that is not the whole electorate. It's not even
the whole Republican electorate. Who knows, you know how many
people voted for Trump simply because they thought that they
would be good for their four oh one k or
that he would be the most pro business president ever,
or because they were just sick of Democrats. And then
suddenly they're confronted with the mad King who is intent
(11:22):
on retribution, you know, defying courts, raising tariffs, trashing the economy,
and yeah, maybe this is not what they signed up for.
But again, we're going to have to see how that
plays out. Because I look, as bad as the polls are,
Republicans are still lined up behind him, and there's no
indication that Republicans in Congress have any inclination to be
(11:47):
anything more than pottered plants.
Speaker 5 (11:48):
Right, So you've.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Opened the door to something I actually really wanted to
talk about, think about, meditate on. So there is a
number that Donald Trump gets to where he's as unpopular
as he's you know, he's still got the magabase, But
there is eventually a number if he gets to it
Republicans who are up for reelection in a year and
(12:12):
change are like, like, let's talk about Elon Musk. Well,
let's go for Elon Musk for a minute. So Elon
Musk came in. Everyone was excited. He got a special
make America great hat. It turns out now he has,
according to the Wall Street Journal, more than forty children,
perhaps or a number closer to forty. He DMS women
(12:34):
to send them sperm, and he is now, you know,
and he spent thirty million dollars in judicial race in
your state, lost, unpopular, wildly and popular now at least
saying again, I don't know that you can trust what
he's saying here, but saying that he's going to step.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
Back, well he can put more time to being father
of his country, right I mean, or at least sperm
donor to his country. Actually, I was thinking about that
today as I was a drive around the east side
of Milwaukee behind to Tesla, thinking about the change in
fortune of Tesla ownership, but also the pivot point of
the Wisconsin Supreme Court race. You know, if you really
sort of trace it back, his complete face plant here
(13:12):
in Wisconsin was really the beginning of his decline and
his politically irrelevance. But again, Elon Musk is not Donald Trump,
and so I don't know whether there's a number that
Republicans in Congress will ever get to. However, I do
think that it's now it's now easier to resist and
(13:32):
push back against trump Ism when clearly he has not
found some magic formula of power, this magic formula that
the public has decided that it's fallen in love with everything,
And can I make it? Can I confess something, Molly
that I'm probably going to regret. I am really really
bored of talking about when are Republicans going to do X?
(13:54):
And I'm really bored talking about Democrats. I'm actually talking,
really bored talking about both of them, because I think
what's actually more important is what the rest of us do,
the rest of civil society, you know, all the other institutions,
and say it's the Look, it is not up to
Chuck Schumer to save America. You know, it's upbout quite
(14:15):
And I'm serious about this. It's you're talking about the
private sector of the universities, the churches, the law firms,
the courts, everyone else has to decide what it means
to be an America. And it's something that I think
because the challenge is so great, it actually transcends electoral politics.
And so if anybody expects that congressional Republicans are going
to figure out I mean, congressional Democrats are going to
(14:36):
figure out some magic form, I may need to be
much more aggressive. Don't get me wrong. I want to
think more about what Americans out there in the actual
real world who have to live in this society think
about all this. What what do average Americans? What do judges?
What do police officers think about? The mass deportations, the
the you know, scoffing at court orders. Because I think
(14:58):
that's the challenges. Well, and if Americans say, you know what,
this is not what we want from America, I think
the electoral politics flows from that. And so I don't
think the answer is going to come from Washington. I'm
not saying that there's not a lot of responsibility. I'm
just you know, we keep saying, well, win, are Democrats
going to do this?
Speaker 4 (15:16):
Win?
Speaker 3 (15:16):
Are Democrats going to do that? I'm want to win.
Are the American people going to do something?
Speaker 1 (15:21):
Yeah? It's really relevant, certainly, but it is easier to
push back against things I mean, if you look back
at Trump one point, how the thing that prevented a
lot of this stuff from happening was corporations people. I mean,
you know, there was a certain sort of combination of
factors that what we see in this time is a
(15:42):
lot of corporations are all over, which is, you know,
because they thought it was better for business or whatever.
But what they've seen is that none of this is popular.
Like it wasn't popular the first time, it's not popular
the second time, which there's a reason that very famous
people try to stay out of politics. And it is
like what happened to Elon Mosk right right.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
Quite frankly, yes, you're right, it's not popular. But I
don't care whether it's popular or not. I mean, this
country was actually founded on the principle that there are
certain fundamentally inalienable rights, and whether it's popular to illegally
rendition someone to All Salvadory or not is really kind
of a secondary point. But I think that what's happening
is is that that's settling in. I'm hoping that we
(16:25):
can sort of get back to first principles here is
that people look around and go, Okay, this actually is
dangerous this offense are innate sense of fairness and that
he's violating all of that. So I think also there
was and I'm glad you brought up the project twenty
twenty five because no one should really have been that
surprised by what Trump was going to do. Trump's campaign
(16:47):
was Trump in full. He made it very very clear
who he was, what he was, what he was going
to do. And you and I and others spent months
hair on fire saying, do you know how bad this
is going to be? You know what he's going to do.
It's not going to be like Trump point zero. And
we were accused of being hysterical, we were accused of
having Trump derangement syndrome. And then he comes in and
does exactly what he said he was going to do.
(17:11):
They wrote it in a book, and so a part
of me is like, how could you possibly be surprised
by this? But it's right there, it's in front of you. Now,
what is America going to do? How are they going
to respond to all of it? Now, I'm gonna contradict
myself having said that it's not important whether it's popular,
It certainly should change the sort of the Eori ish,
(17:31):
Oh my god, everything has gone to see that huge
majorities of the public are seeing this, are watching this
and going, no, we weren't reject I mean, I think
part of the problem is that we watched this. Wee
go how come American people are not seeing what we're saying?
And what's wrong with them if they don't see it?
Now at least there's an alignment where you have huge
(17:52):
majorities that go, yeah, you know, tariffs actually are big taxes,
they are inflationary, They're not good. Maybe ignoring the Supreme
Court is a bad thing for the Louisville.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
So there was this Siena College poll from April twenty fourth,
and percentage of voters who said the following words described
Trump's second term in office, well, sixty six percent said chaotic,
fifty nine percent said scary it's hard to imagine chaotic.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
But forty two percent said exciting.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
Yes they did, they did. So.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
Do understand that there's a large portion in the American
public that's kind of kind of getting too messent over this.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
Yeah, but his approval rating is negative twelve. I mean,
everything is down right, I mean, even on the economy,
which was like the reason that theoretically, at least some
of the people voted for him. They're not happy with him.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
He's not ten feet tall. He is not unstoppable. I
think a lot of his power in that first hundred
days was this belief that resistance is futile and that
everybody had to capitulate in advance. When you look at
a first his margin in the Senate is very very small,
his margin in the House is infinitesimal. And he's Donald
fucking Trump who won by a sliver and who is
(19:09):
now engaging in the classic political hubris of overreading his
victory and his mandate. And so but you think about
all of the his initiatives and all of the surrenders,
and all of the surrenders, I think we're done. Because
people thought he was unstoppable and that there were no guardrails. Well, okay,
we're coming up to one hundred day point. He's not unstoppable,
(19:32):
resistance is possible, and there are still some guard rails.
I mean, we can take this back and forth.
Speaker 5 (19:39):
How about that.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
You have to agree that behind the scenes there's Roberts
trying to get the numbers. There's just no way otherwise.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
Well, and Trump is you know, This is one of
those those things where I know there's an entire cottage
industry of people who assure us that he's playing four
dimensional chess, but his lack of respect and his defiance
the judiciary is Backfron. You're seeing more and more conservative lawyers,
conservative judges pushing back hard his decision to arrest a
(20:10):
Milwaukee judge at the Coarehouse and the FBI am Trust me,
I don't think you have to be a a woke
progressive judge to be appalled by that. So I'm saying
he's alienating the judiciary at a moment when they actually
do pose a significant threat to his authoritarian agenda.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
Yeah. I also think that the thing that is kind
of amazing is that you know, you have all of
these people like Ken Griffin, largest Republican donor to this cycle,
though not a Trump donor, but to every other Republican
running for office in the world. I mean, he is
(20:54):
like one of the very few people who's saying that
Trump is ruining the American brand.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
Well, there's been a lot of delusion about Trump on
the part of these guys that they have you told
themselves a story that he was going to be their
champion that he was going to deregulate and cut their
taxes and don't worry, he was bluffing about everything else,
and we can control him. And now they're finding out no,
he's not, and he's making decisions that have injected a
massive amount of uncertainty into their decision making, into the economy,
(21:23):
and investors hate uncertainty, they really do. Now, on the
other hand, there's going to be this group of people
who are think, hey, you know what, as long as
we stay close to the throne, we can benefit from
the corruption, we can benefit from the insider trading, we
can benefit from the fear and favor. But yeah, I
think that you've had a lot of illusion shattered, right.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
I mean, if you look at the people around Trump,
it's not like I mean, Elon obviously is a specialized case,
but there are certainly people on Trump's inner circle who
are getting read to on lobbying or whatever. But if
you're just you know, a bill men or someone who
relies on the markets, the tariffs are.
Speaker 3 (22:06):
Rushing, well they are. And it's also again the relationships
that have been destroyed, the fact that you don't know
what he's going to do from day to day, and
it's hard to make investment decisions. So there's a sense
of does this guy actually know what he's doing, is
he irrational? Is he dangerous? And that's where that number
in that New York Times Senapol you said it is
(22:26):
so important that you have more than the sixty What
was the number four chaos?
Speaker 1 (22:30):
Sixty six percent?
Speaker 3 (22:31):
Okay, so sixty six I mean, can we just sit
on that for a moment. You have two thirds of
Americans that are looking at the President of the United
States and seeing him as an agent of chaos. Now
there are there's going to be a segment of the
electorate that likes that, that loves chaos. Not in the
business community though, but also the other thing is that
like this is the second Trump administration, this is the
(22:53):
one that's better organized, Like and sixty.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
Center saying chaos, I mean, we don't know what's going
to happen, but we are open to so many possible
catastrophic events because of the combination of the deregulation and
the stripping the federal government that like between the measles
pandemic that is sort of or pandemic is the wrong word,
(23:20):
I think, but it certainly the measles outbreaks at this
moment in different parts of the country among unvaccinated children.
That's going and that, I mean, They're just a number
of things that are bubbling under the surface that could
derail us even further.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
I'm really glad you brought that up, because the return
of measles and other diseases that have been eradicated by
vaccines would be one of the great tragedies of history
and completely preventable and avoidable and completely man made. And
this administration could actually usher that. I mean, this is
a real danger. And I think a lot of things
(23:58):
are still like clouds on the horizons, so we don't
know all the dangers out there. I mean, America first
turned out to be America alone, but also the rollback
of public health. No, you're you're right, and I think
that these are all danger signs for Trump going forward.
We haven't seen the full impact on the economy. You've
probably seen these stories about the empty cargo ships coming
(24:20):
from China. We haven't even seen all of this. We
don't know, I mean, and by the way, measles pandemic,
measles epidemic would and I don't want to just see
this in political terms, but it would be a catastrophe.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
Yeah, the trade war is a really good example of
how none of this was three dimensional chests, Like, if
you were going to go to war with China, you
would make sure that Mexico and Canada had your back,
right if you were going to go to trade war
with them in Europe. And instead what he did was
he made everybody really mad and then made China really mad.
(24:53):
So I do think it's worth remembering that none of
this Again, as you said earlier, you know, we.
Speaker 3 (24:59):
Go through these poll numbers which are really historically unprecedented.
I mean, no president has ever been this low this
early in his term. The fall has happened very very quickly.
And it's not just on never Trump type or democratic
or progressive issues. It's on immigration. Immigration was his thing,
This was his signature issue. He's underwater on this. He's
(25:21):
underwater on the Abrago Garcia case. I think he's minus
twenty one on that case. He's tied for its least popular.
Remember all the smart kids who were telling us that
you know, well, you guys should stop talking about that,
because that's what Trump wants you to talk about. This
is a winning issue for Donald Trump. Donald Trump wants
to focus on this because the American people like the
(25:41):
brutality and the cruelty and the lawlessness of his immigration policies. Well, Molly,
it turns out and in fact, if you do talk
about it and people do think about it, that they
don't approve of it. So this is again one of
those There are all of those voices and including Gavin
Newsom out there saying no, no, that's a distraction. We should
be talking about table issues. Fun Let's talk about the
(26:01):
kitchen table issues. But also it's not necessarily a loser
to be talking about the rule of law issues, or
the humanitarian issues, or.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
The deported children with cancer, the United States Citizens Supported
with Cancer. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
Charlie Sikes anytime. By the way, cannot wait for your book,
Molly cannot wait.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
Rachel Trafonza is the founder of the Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 5 (26:30):
Rachel, thank you so much for having me. Mollie.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
All right, so let's talk about what is happening with
gen Z, because you wrote this very interesting piece about
how gen Z is split, and I'd love for you
to explain to us how gen Z is split, Why
gen Z is split, and what's it look like totally.
Speaker 4 (26:50):
So I have been holding listening sessions, which really are
just informal conversations with young people across the country for
the past really like two and a half years, and
since after the twenty twenty two midterms, I started seeing
a major split in how the youngest members of gen
Z who were eligible to vote and the older members
(27:11):
of gen Z who were eligible to vote vote not
just politics but life in general. And I started to
develop this theory that I called the two gen zs,
where there's gen Z one point zero and gen Z
two point zero, and gen Z one point zero includes
anyone who graduated high school before the start of the
COVID nineteen pandemic, and gen Z two point zero accounts
(27:32):
for anyone who graduated high school during or after.
Speaker 5 (27:36):
The start of the pandemic. And the reason why I
think that the pandemic was such a formative split between
these two subgenerations of gen Z is that it really
changed how members of this generation were growing up. And
when you think about the fifteen year span of time
that accounts for gen Z when they were born, there
(28:00):
really were very different lived adolescent experiences depending on if
you had grown up before or after the start of COVID.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
Right, COVID is the break. If you grew up before COVID,
you have more normal liberal policies right for your age. Explain.
Speaker 4 (28:17):
This is still very much unfolding, but the more data
points we get, the more clear this picture seems to
become where the gen Z one point zero had more
idealistic liberal tendencies. For example, I'm in gen Z one
point zero. I was born in nineteen ninety seven, and
when I was in college, my four years of college
(28:38):
were the four years of President Donald Trump's first term
in office, and there was a lot of resistance to
that time period, and there was this sort of liberal
ideology that by demonstrating by protesting, perhaps you know, people's
message would be heard, and politically, this cohort was considered
(29:00):
at the time very left leaning and perhaps you know,
there was some language around gen Z could save us
all things like that.
Speaker 5 (29:06):
What we're seeing.
Speaker 4 (29:07):
Now is that gen Z on the whole is shifting right,
in large part being driven by these younger gen Zers
who grew up amid COVID lockdowns and restrictive policies and
really grew to resent authority and the time frame in
which they were growing up. When they were, you know,
(29:28):
in late high school or maybe starting college, after the
start of the pandemic. During the pandemic, or even after
the pandemic, Biden was in office, and they were looking
for someone to blame during this time period when it
felt like life wasn't normal, life wasn't getting back to normal,
And the people who were in charge and who were
(29:50):
associated with the more social distancing policies or masking policies
things like that were Democrats, and so I think that
contributed to some of this shift as well. But then
the the key piece, and this is related but not
exactly the same, is that we really saw the evolution
of TikTok during and after COVID, and there's been a
(30:13):
just change in how younger gen Zers consume media and
how all of us consume media. But this is how
these younger gen Zers grew up. This is all that
they knew. They never had the previous forms of social media.
They only know a world where TikTok is the place
for public discourse. And there's been some data coming out
(30:35):
that starts to show that TikTok has more republican content
on it, or more conservative content on it, and perhaps
that's part of this puzzle as well, But I think
it's just important to point out that we don't exactly
know the causality. What we do know is that this
generation is split into two and that the younger gen
(30:56):
zers account for more of that conservative viewpoint. And there
was a new pool that came out last week from
the Yale Youth Goal that showed this.
Speaker 5 (31:04):
Divide pretty starkly.
Speaker 4 (31:05):
So it showed that they asked respondents who they would
in a generic ballot who they would vote for in
twenty twenty six midterms, and for ages eighteen to twenty
one the generic ballot Republicans we were plus twelve and
for ages twenty two to twenty nine, Democrats were plus six.
(31:26):
So you do see that split playing out, even thinking
towards twenty twenty six as well.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
So let's do two seconds on what this split means.
For example, does this mean that TikTok is making young
people more conservative?
Speaker 4 (31:43):
I don't know if we can say it as clear
cut as that, but I think what it means is
that older gen Zers and younger gen Zers are just
consuming content, news and information totally differently, and that is
changing their politics, and I think that it also one
of the things that is both related to some of
this anti authority sentiment that came out of the pandemic
(32:05):
and also might be related to the type of content
that's consumed on TikTok.
Speaker 5 (32:08):
The type of content that does well on TikTok is
very off the cuff, very pithy, not highly filtered or
edited content, but it feels more raw and perhaps more organic.
And that is sort of similar to the way in
which President Trump talks right like, he speaks in sound
(32:31):
bites most of the time. He is very punchy.
Speaker 4 (32:34):
He is perceived as being unfiltered, and so there's sort
of a correlation there in the type of content that
does well on TikTok and the way that Trump and
members of the MAGA movement communicate.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
Yeah, So one of the things I think when I
think about this election is Trump right before the election,
he did all of these podcasts, He did Joe Rogan,
he did theovonn did all of this new media, and
he also introduced a lot of ideas that he probably
wasn't going to actually put into play, things like you know,
(33:09):
he was going to make bitcoin great again, he was
going to sell sneakers he was going to. He sort
of obfuscated a lot of stuff. Did that work? Is
that what you're saying that it worked? And did it
work with younger people and not older people? Did COVID
set this up? Like, tell me kind of where we
go with this information?
Speaker 5 (33:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (33:25):
So one of the things that I think Republicans did
really well in the lead up to the twenty twenty
four election, and Trump in particular did well, was that
he politically coded culture, whereas Democrats were culturally coding politics.
Speaker 5 (33:38):
So what I mean by that is that.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
Yeah, you got to say it two more times too.
Speaker 4 (33:42):
So Trump and Republicans in the lead up to the
twenty twenty four election politically coded culture, while Democrats and
Vice President Kamala Harris culturally coded politics.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
Okay, politics is downstream of culture, right.
Speaker 4 (34:00):
Yes, So what I mean by this political coding of
culture is that Trump and his allies would go into
cultural places, whether that meant going to UFC fights or
showing on these podcasts in this menosphere as it's been dubbed.
When he would go to these locations, he wasn't off
(34:22):
the bat talking about politics. He was just showing up
as himself as Trump, the former president who was running
for reelection, and he would have conversations, especially on these podcasts,
that had nothing to do with politics. He would talk
about his children, he would talk about his experience as
a businessman, he would talk about sports. Sometimes he would
(34:45):
just talk about things that were organic to whatever the
podcast conversation would typically be about. And same thing when
he would go to a UFC fight, he would go
there as Donald Trump, but he wouldn't make a campaign
rally out of it necessarily, whereas on the flip side,
you look at something like the rally that former Vice
(35:07):
President Kamala Harris held in Texas with Beyonce, and Beyonce
was there. Beyonce was talking about being a mother, and
the theme of the rally was about abortion access, but
Beyonce didn't singing. Beyonce didn't you know? It wasn't it
was a political event, and that I think was similar
to how Democrats would show up on some of these
(35:29):
podcasts as well. For example, when Kamala Harris went on
Alex Cooper's Call Her Daddy, the conversation was very political, right.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
And it should have been just her schmoozing and talking
about cooking exactly.
Speaker 4 (35:41):
So you know, we're starting to see some examples of
Democrats changing their strategy with this. I think a great
example is today this episode with peepoota judge on the
Flagrant podcast came out and that's a podcast that Trump
actually went on before the twenty twenty four election, and
I just started watching the episode. It literally just came out,
and at the start of the episode, boota judge is
talking about the White Lotus and how he thinks that
(36:03):
Lachlan should have died on the White Lotus, and so
it's a very relatable conversation that has nothing to do
with politics, and then they get into some of the
more political conversation about tariffs and taxes and immigration and
things like that. So you can see that Democrats are
starting to take note of this. But I think that
when you're looking at how young people are consuming content,
the strategy that Trump deployed ahead of the election was
(36:26):
super successful because it felt relatable to young people. And
one of the biggest things I hear from young people
is that they want a politician who they feel like
is just normal, who looks like, sounds like, talks like them.
And while you know there are definitely things that Trump
does not have in common with young people. He was
(36:46):
able to show up in the places that they're authentically
consuming in the podcast and reach them that way.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
I want to go back to the Flagrant podcast from
it because Jesse just sent me a producer's note the
host of the Flagrant Podcast. I think we're getting at
something really important here. Andrew Schultz. He said that youth
voted for Trump cause he has three baby mothers. I'm
cleaning this up and gets a lot of action, so
(37:16):
romantic action. I can't believe I've become this person who
is saying romantic action instead of what is actually a
lot of cleaning. But I actually think what you're saying
is more correct, which is actually correct, which is Donald
Trump sold them a person, and Democrats tried to sell
them policy.
Speaker 4 (37:36):
Yeah, And to be fair, like, I do think young
voters and I actually I know that young voters care
about issues that affect their daily lives. For sure, they
care way more about issues than they do about partisan politics.
They're prioritizing issues over party. But they wanted a candidate
who felt authentic, who felt like they were unscripted and
(37:59):
were saying what they meant and I think a lot
of this, and I write about this in that Washington
Post op ed as well, is that this is for
GenZ two point I'm in particular, they grew up at
the peak of cancel culture, where they had to be
very careful about what they said. And I've had a
lot of young people tell me it felt like they
were walking on eggshells, and they didn't want to walk
(38:19):
on eggshells anymore. And so what they appreciate about Trump
is that he doesn't walk on eggshells. He says what
he wants. He is able to get away with whatever
and say whatever, and it really flies in the face
of that pervasive cancel culture or political correctness that this
generation grew up with and is resentful of. And they
(38:41):
felt that Democrats were the party that was policing that language,
and that was largely responsible for that cancel culture. And
so you know, when you looked at Trump and this
quote from the podcast, I think the through line is
just that whether or not they agree with every single
one of his policy is views or every single thing
(39:01):
that he says, they do like the fact that he
does say what he means and is able to get
away with sometimes being controversial, oftentimes being controversial.
Speaker 1 (39:11):
Some of this is COVID, some of this is canceled culture.
Some of this is just a rebellion to cancel culture
and COVID.
Speaker 4 (39:21):
Yes, And I think that the cancel culture and COVID
peace are related because I think that while we started
to see cancel culture before COVID, it really took a
turn during COVID because we were all living our lives
online and so sort of and then there were these
restrictions that were in place where that were meant to
stop the spread of the virus and keep people safe,
and so if you went against that or refuse the
(39:45):
vaccine or things like that, there was this moral high
ground kind of associated with that, and so there was
a lot of judgment in shade being thrown at people.
And I think that when students started to go back
to school, they saw this plan out in their classrooms,
on their campuses. I'm the oldest of four, and I've
seen this with my younger siblings where they'll tell me
(40:06):
about certain situations where people are called out on social
media because they either did or did not post about
some sort of social issue or in the day, in
the earliest days when kids were going back to school,
if someone wasn't wearing their masks correctly, or if you know,
if they broke some sort of rule at school, there
was judgment and there was and everyone kind of got involved.
(40:29):
And so I think the cancel culture that sort of
started as this online conversation started to seep into the
real world lives of young people and it just is
exhausting for them, and it and you know, then I
think this is also a part of the right word shift,
is that they think about their life before COVID and
if they were eighteen in the twenty twenty for election,
(40:52):
you know, they were really really young when Trump was
in office the first time, and so they don't really
remember that time period. They might not know about the
politics of it, but they you know, if they were
let's say they're in fourth grade at the time, like
life was probably pretty good.
Speaker 5 (41:05):
And so they think back to, oh, when Trump.
Speaker 4 (41:07):
Was in office and they were in elementary school and
like had no worry in the world, and so why
not want Trump to be back in office again?
Speaker 5 (41:15):
If that's the association, right.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
And I think that is insane, but it's certainly something
we've seen the tracks and historically this is what happened
after the nineteen eighteen flu pandemic too, This idea that
the real world is too painful and so we'll go
back to a time when things don't seem as scary,
totally don't seem as well.
Speaker 4 (41:38):
And Trump taps into that too, of course, because his
whole message is about making America great again, and so
it taps into that nostalgia that is really present within
gen Z. And I've written about this where I've said
that the nostalgia's for a time period that they never experienced.
A lot of the never existed, right exactly, but it
is something that they've grown up a mid constant crisis,
(42:00):
and so it's kind of like a reprieve from reality.
Speaker 5 (42:02):
To envision that type of a world.
Speaker 1 (42:05):
I would like a reprieve from reality.
Speaker 5 (42:07):
Thank you, Rachel, Thank you so much, Molly. I loved
our conversation.
Speaker 6 (42:13):
No mofectly Jesse Cannon so bally, We've well known that
the elites have these private clubs, but usually the price
tag to get into the like you know, a soho
houses a measly few thousand dollars in an application, but
a half a million dollars to get into a private
(42:34):
club with exclusive access to Trump's cabinet.
Speaker 2 (42:37):
Now that's something.
Speaker 1 (42:38):
Sure, there are private clubs that are that expensive, but
you have to be willing to pay it to hang
out with Don Junior. I mean, all of this seems
ridiculous to me. Launch of the executive branch comes as
Trump World looks to remake Washington. Good luck, guys, a
new club. So this is Donald Trump's mega donor. I'm
sure that a lot of people this club will have tattoos.
(43:01):
It's involved with Trump's seventeen eighty nine conservative venture funder.
I guess it's a hedge fund. Seventeen eighty nine capital
referral requirements are that you paint yourself orange and married
to someone with very white blonde hair, and have had
(43:21):
multiple rounds of plastic surgery so that these c suite
crowd can mingle with Trump advisors and cabinet members without
the prying eyes of the press, and want to be insiders.
This is what happens when you don't have any writers
in your inner circle want to be insiders. The price
tag won't be a problem for Trump's cabinet, given it
(43:43):
is by far the wealthiest in history, and the club
already has a waitlist. Oh well, another heartbreak. But if
you do get into this club, you can hang out
with David Socks, I mean Sacks and Donald Trump Junior.
And it's such a good club that they had their
party at the Willard Hotel, which is not the club.
(44:06):
So we'll see how this goes, and good luck to
all we celebrate. I'm sure this is going to be great.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
Oh yeah, I can't wait.
Speaker 1 (44:16):
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, please send it to a friend
and keep the conversation going. Thanks for listening.
Host
Molly Jong-Fast
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