November 23, 2024 • 46 mins
To The Contrary newsletter author Charlie Sykes examines how to stay sane in this news cycle. Democracy Forward’s Skye Perryman discusses fighting back against Trump’s agenda through the courts.
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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 Donald Trump is mad at the
reports that he did not win in a landslide after
winning less than fifty percent of the popular vote. We
have a show of shows for you today. To the contrary,
(00:23):
author Charlie Sikes talks to us about staying sane in
in Saturday. Then we'll talk to Democracy Forward Sky Perriman
about fighting back against Trump's agenda using the courts.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
But first the news.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
So, Molly, one of the things we've been talking about
that I think is most important about Trump's incoming regime
is this mass deportation plan.
Speaker 4 (00:50):
What are you seeing here?
Speaker 1 (00:51):
I've been saying that we all need to keep our
powder dry for when Donald Trump starts rounding people up.
But our powder, I mean our outrage, you know, we
have to save it for things that are really outrageous,
like mass deportation. But before even Donald Trump has taken office,
it has become clear that this mass deportation plan is
(01:13):
going to be very expensive, not just the price of
separating people from their families and flying them to countries
that won't necessarily take them, but it will have enormous
effects on agriculture. So there's reporting that agricultural output will
fall between thirty and sixty billion dollars if Trump's flagshift
(01:38):
policy is carried out.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
That's quite a lot.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
And remember, farmers are already suffering because climate change has
made it harder to predict what crops are going to
look like, what this sort of farming landscape, if you'll
excuse the use of the word landscape, will look like.
And so now deportation of all of the farm we'll
add another wrinkle to an already very unpredictable business. And
(02:04):
you'll remember Donald Trump ran on making things more affordable.
Getting rid of the people who farm the farms will
mean that everything will be more expensive. Farmers will have
to pay more for labor, wildly inflationary, and restaurant owners
are already and agricultural leaders are already calling foul on
(02:27):
Donald Trump's plans, and he isn't even in office yet.
Speaker 4 (02:31):
Even Walmart is I mean, it's ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
No, this is the whole thing is completely insane.
Speaker 4 (02:37):
It's okay, we'll all be eating the dogs and the
cats soon.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
That's right, they're eating them.
Speaker 4 (02:41):
So speaking of other things, that seems like mister Trump
wasn't telling the whole truth about on the campaign trail.
So begetting to look a lot like something you and
I said as coming true, which is that this whole
thing is gonna be staffed by Project twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Yeah, you'll be shocked to know that everything Donald Trump said,
maybe not everything, but certainly this when he said he
knew nothing about Project twenty twenty five and that Project
twenty twenty five is not him. Well it turns out,
you guys, I know you're gonna be shocked, but Donald
Trump was saying a lie. In fact, Project twenty twenty
five is basically Trump's transition And in fact, now we
(03:19):
see what the campaign over. Trump's transition team is turning
to Project twenty twenty five, even though they said they.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Weren't going to.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
They're taking suggestions from for potential hires from their website,
which was called Project twenty twenty five, a website.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
To staff the next Trump administration.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
How ironic that they actually are using the thing they
said they would. It's a database, you know, it's been
set up for a couple of years, so it has
people have applied through it. Project's twenty twenty five massive
book of conservative I was going to say conspiratorial, but
it's sort of the same policy recommendations. It received the
most attention from Democrats. It was a wishless and by
(04:00):
the way, when people started googling it, they realized that
all of the things were pretty dystopian. Now we get
to see Trump try to enact them, we'll see what happens.
But again, it's really important to realize that in fact,
this is all Donald Trump's plan. And Russ Vatt is
likely going to return to the OMB director and he
(04:23):
was acting director, and he was deputy director before. He
comes directly from Heritage Action, which is a branch of
the Heritage Foundation. He wrote a chapter of Project twenty
twenty five. His chapter covers the Executive Office of the Presidency.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
And you'll remember that the whole idea with.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Project twenty twenty five is to expand the powers of
the presidency to ncap the federal government and to make
almost all aspects of the federal government arms of Trump's campaign.
So you know, the DOJ will be his personal criminal
prosecution arm. Every part of the federal government will be
(05:06):
in the service of Donald Trump, and you'll be shocked
to know that Russ Vott is in fact one of
those parts.
Speaker 5 (05:14):
So this is interesting. Oftentimes I think people would get
really excited around election, sees that we can get rid
of the Marjorie Taylor Greens, of the Matt Gates is
at the ballot box, and that didn't happen. But it
turns out we are actually getting rid of Matt Gates
and Congress. What are you seeing here?
Speaker 1 (05:30):
You'll remember that Matt Gates.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
I can't stop laughing.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
So last week Matt Gates resigned because the Congressional Ethics Committee.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Known to be highly toothless.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
Okay, like the Congressional Ethics Committee has many times investigated
people and found no need for anything here, they were
about to release this report.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Clearly there was some stuff in there that really worried
Matt Gates.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
So he was designed and Trump made him his pick
for Attorney general. Only in Trump world does such a
series of events happen. But Mark Gates spent the week
trying to avoid sort of the alleged story of him
having sex with an underage girl. He resigned right before
CNN ran another story about him allegedly having sex with
(06:22):
another girl who was underage. So again their witnesses, there's
just a ton you know, there's all of these VENMO payments.
I mean, where there's Venmo payments, there's usually fire.
Speaker 4 (06:35):
Really twenty four thousand dollars to one girl, right.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
I mean, so now there was a question because Gates
resigned before the next Congress, which he'd already won a seat,
and if he would stay in Congress in Florida's first
district or not. But yesterday, which was Thursday, because today
is Friday and tomorrow you will be listening to this
podcast on Saturday.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
I know how the days of the week work at.
Gates told some news outlet, I'm going to be fighting
for President Trump. I'm going to be doing whatever he
asks of me as I always have. Oh, not even
a news outlet. He told that to Charlie Kirk. But
I think that eight years is probably enough time in
the United States Congress. I think the rest of Congress agrees.
(07:19):
Hours after Gates ended his big Trump announced longtime loyalist
and former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondy as his new
pick to head the Justice Department.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
God help us all, Samali.
Speaker 6 (07:33):
We have to discuss one last Trump phenomenee, wrestling magnate
Linda McMahon. Turns out she's had some pretty bad things
when it comes to being around children. What are you
seeing here?
Speaker 1 (07:44):
So Linda McMahon helped co run Trump's transition team with
Howard Lutnik. Linda McMahon really wanted to be Commerce Secretary.
She's a big dop donor. She lost out on Commerce
Secretary to Howard Lutnan, who really wanted to be Treasury Secretary,
but lost to add to someone that Wall Street thinks
(08:06):
is sane. We still don't know who that is because
there's a lot of inviting about that one job. You
can tell what jobs they think are important from how
long it takes them to put together a nominee anyway.
So McMahon now has been given the door prize in
the Trump cabinet. She is the Secretary of Education if
she gets through congressional approval. The hilarious part of this
(08:28):
is that Donald Trump is planning, or at least thinks
he can shutter the Department of Education. So here's the
job that Trump is hoping won't exist. She has not
without her scandals. She's the former CEO of the WWE,
which is a wrestling federation. She found herself in a
lawsuit against her, her husband, the WWE, and TKO Group Holding,
(08:53):
it's the league's parent company, knowingly allowed employee Marvin Phillips
Junior to use his position as ringside announcer and essentially
exploit children again, you mean like QAnon. Charlie Sykes is
(09:14):
the author of the newsletter to the Contrary and the
book How the Right Lost Its Mind Welcome Back Too
Fast Politics.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
My friend, Charlie Sikes, I.
Speaker 7 (09:25):
Actually wanted to talk to you, even what's your podcast.
I want to talk to you about your about your
strategy to remain sane, because I do think that this
needs everybody has to have this on their agenda. How
are you going to get through the next four years?
What's your plan right now? Other than not doing the
same thing we've done over the last eight years, we
got got to mix it up, right, Bunnie.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
You should ask this because I actually wrote about this
this week, and I think it's a pretty smart plan,
if I do say so myself. My theory of the
case is this, there is no knock novelty here, right.
We know where this is going, and there are very
few guardrails. Right, we have Democrats control no levers of
(10:09):
the federal government, though the House is very very tight,
and the Supreme Court has gone it is no longer
the Roberts courts. It's the you know, it's basically it's
like the Alito Court. It's not quite the allital Court,
but it's the Kavanaugh Court for sure. So my theory
of the case is that this needs to be a
kind of triage. The focus needs to be norms and institutions,
(10:32):
things that really will be undoable, like things where Trump
really just structurally damaged the United States in ways that
cannot be undone, and that those norms and institutions have
to be job one, and that everything cannot be outrageous,
because then nothing is well.
Speaker 7 (10:52):
I think this is the hard part is you know
that we're about to go into this fire hose of
outrage that you know, starting on January twenty I actually
already started. Now it's going to be like twenty seventeen
every single day, and it is gonna be hard not
to set yourself on fire, particularly for the folks who
have to have opinions every single day. This is one
of the things I was thinking about earlier this year
(11:12):
when I said I was stepping off the daily hamster
wheel of crazy, which is not to you turn your
back on it, but if you basically keep your face
right up against that fire hose, it's going to make
you insane because every single day you will try to,
you know, fill space. You'll have the hot takes, and
you have to react to whatever outrage, and some of
(11:32):
those outre I mean, look, they're all outrages, but some
of those outrages will matter, and some of them are ephemeral.
So I think it's kind of separating out the big
stuff from the little stuff and not being obsessed by it.
I don't want to digress too much, but I don't
want to be chasing every single moment when Nancy Mace
is demagoguing something or the latest stupid thing that Marjorie
(11:53):
Taylor Green is, because at the end of every week,
we'll think, how did I get so stupid? And it's
because I spent all my time I'm talking about Nancy
Mace or Marjorie Taylor Green. Well, meanwhile, they're carting out
all the furniture from the Department of Justice and they're
dismantling the EPA I'd say, Okay, maybe we ought to
focus on the big stuff.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
And I think that's exactly right. And look, Nancy Mace
wants you to be outraged, right. I mean this is
like democracy dies in darkness.
Speaker 7 (12:21):
Right, democracy dies in bullshit right.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
And Nancy Mays only exists if she can dictate the
news cycle. Right, like she has learned at the knee
of Marjorie Taylor.
Speaker 7 (12:32):
Green, do not take the bait. Just don't take the bait.
That's at least one thing.
Speaker 5 (12:35):
Now.
Speaker 7 (12:36):
How long we're going to be able to stick with that,
I just don't know. So I was I was on
a Canadian show this morning and the host says, so, Charlie,
are people afraid? Are you afraid? And I had a
very inadequate answer. I said, well, you know, the day
after the election, someone suggested that I write a you know,
on my substack newsletter to the contrary that I write
the headline be not afraid. And I said, hell with that,
(12:57):
because people should be afraid. People should be afraid, but
they should not be frightened. And I think this is
the key thing. People ought to be very aware of
the danger, but not be so frightened that they cave
in or obey in advance. If you act out of fear,
I think it's one thing to be again on alert,
to be aware, but to act out of fear is
(13:20):
the dark place. That's what authoritarians want. They want us
to cower. They want us to think, how can I
not be noticed? How can I not make them mad?
And of course there's a lot of that going on.
And again that's not for me to say there's nothing
to worry about. There's a lot to worry about them.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
There is really a lot.
Speaker 7 (13:36):
You worry about it, but you stand and you face
it intelligently and effectively not run away. That's the key thing.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Yeah, And I think that's really really so important. And
that's what I think about a lot is like this
is the break glass in case of emergency, right, Like,
this is it. This is as dark as it's going
to get. And so we need to be very thoughtful
about how we proceed, right.
Speaker 7 (14:04):
And you can't break the glass every single day. The
other thing that I'm I'm really trying to commit myself
to is try to not chase every squirrel of outrage,
you know, not every every single shiny object. But also,
and this is really hard, and I think I'm going
to be misunderstood here. I think we do have to
keep a sense of humor.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Yeah, no, no, agreed, A grade agrade, because I.
Speaker 7 (14:23):
Listened to some of just the grim people, you know,
repeating the same talking points that they've been repeating and
using the same jargon and everything, and they're depressed and
they're all ere and everything, and as a fuck that.
I mean, honestly, these people are They're absurd and they're dangerous,
and I think that there's a balance there to say,
(14:44):
you people are absolutely ridiculous. I mean people like Peter
hegxitt yes, and An RFK and Matt Gaates. I mean
they're risibly absurd human beings. Now that's not to say
they're not also dangerous human beings.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Yes, many things can be true, which I think is
part of what we're experiencing here. These people can be dangerous,
and they can also be ridiculous and look, and they
can also more importantly be stopped. And that's what we
saw with Matt Gates this week, right, because Matt Gates
really did in the end, there were enough brave Republicans
(15:21):
and we had questions and worries and dowds about this
but there were enough brave Republicans, so Matt Gates will
not be Attorney General.
Speaker 7 (15:29):
I would say there were enough nauseator Republicans.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
Right, we'll take it.
Speaker 7 (15:33):
No, okay, I want to take this in a positive
point of view. I did write this morning that, you know,
the fall of Matt Gates, which was is a splendid
thing to watch, maybe more of a speed bump than
a guardrail. We don't know how many brave Republicans there
will be, but it is worth pointing out that Donald
Trump went all out to get Matt Gates, including this
(15:53):
report that they were going around telling senators, you know,
if you don't bow the knee to Donald Trump and
Matt Gates, we're going to primary you, and this guy
Elon Musk is going to bankroll it. So you had
basically this thuggish out in the open threat, and the
Republicans didn't caved. And it also didn't work because there
was a retreat they could have taken. They could have
you done that craven recess appointment, They could have surrendered
(16:16):
their power.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Mitch McConnell, hero of the resistance, told them they couldn't.
Speaker 7 (16:21):
No fucking way. Mitch McConnell said not this time. Maybe,
unlike Susan Collins, he has learned his lesson. I don't know.
I don't want to be the lucy in the football
again with these guys. But you do get the sense
that maybe Donald Trump has seriously overplayed his hand by
going to war with the Republican Senate as right out
of the box. He insulted them, he threatened them, he
(16:44):
tried to humiliate them, and he's still trying to humiliate
them by shoving these nominees down their throat. And at
least as you and I are speaking, they said, no,
we're not going to do it, which again ought to
be you know, let plant let's plant this, you know,
rare flag of success.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
Enjoy it.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
I mean, I also do think like remember as soon
as Trump won, Trump and Elon were like, we are
going to install Rick Scott, the president for Mars Attacks
as the majority leader.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
And that did not work either.
Speaker 7 (17:20):
No, Actually that that was really interesting. That was his
first big failure, right that he was He clearly didn't
want John Thune, you had, the Maga verse was all
on fire about that, and they lost badly. In fact,
that was the day you might remember, that was the
day that he began, you know, rolling out some of
the absurd original appointments. And it felt to me, having
(17:42):
watched Trump this long, that that was a way of
distracting attention from what otherwise would have been something that
Trump hates more than anything else. People pointing out that
you just lost, you just lost big on something that
that is going to have long term ramifications. But I
know that some people are really really surprised. I'm only
mildly surprised that the you know, rape mcfoorhead was a
(18:02):
bridge too far, or for this that it was such
a ridiculous I stole that from somebody. No, I think
I stole it from the guy who drops all the
F bombs even more than me. We'll see what they
do with Peter Hegsith.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Yeah, now that Matt Gates is out of the lineup
and Pam BONDI we actually know, is a lawyer, Matt
Gates is also a lawyer, though that seemed more a
little more circuitous.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Who is the cabinet appointment who keeps you up at night?
Speaker 4 (18:30):
Now you know.
Speaker 7 (18:31):
That that's a hard one to choose. And this, this,
I think is the and I'm doing air quotes here.
The flood the zone with shit. Genius of all of this,
because you know, the notion of putting Peter Hegsyth in
charge of the Department of Defense keeps me up at night.
The idea that we would put a Russian asset like
Tlsea Gabbard in charge of the US intelligence community keeps
(18:52):
me up at night. The fact that you have a complete, demented,
deranged conspiracy theory nut job like Roberda F. Kennedy Junior
dismantling the Department of Health and Human Services. I mean
that one is not just absurd and dangerous, it's potentially deadly.
If we go back to pre vaccination days. We have
(19:14):
opened We've opened a Pandora's Box of medieval horrors here,
so you pick your horrors. And also, as people have noticed,
things are becoming more and more dangerous in the world,
and I think they will become even more dangerous between
now and January. And so that delta between what we
would hope the kinds of people we would hope would
(19:34):
be in charge of our intelligence agencies and the Department
of Defense of the United States of America and the
people that Donald Trump has put there is becoming wider
and wider so great that you know, down goes Matt Gates.
But we have this parade of grotesqueries and horribles in waiting.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
And I think the one who really keeps me up
at night. I mean, I guess you're right, RFK Junior
has to be the one because we did just live
through a pandemic. By the way, we just lived through
a pandemic that Donald Trump, you know, clearly again it's
not fair to say that he killed people, but he
certainly was not good for public health. Right.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
I think we can all agree on that A.
Speaker 7 (20:14):
Million people died and it has been completely memory hold,
just completely memory hold.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Yeah, a million people died.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
So let's let's put RFK, who does not believe in
vaccines in charge of public health.
Speaker 7 (20:29):
Let's put a guy with literal brainworms in charge of
deciding how to keep Americans safe from the next pandemic.
And there will be a next pandemic. I mean, this
is going to happen.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
Oh, no question, because of the climate stuff.
Speaker 7 (20:41):
Right. And that's not Donald Trump's fault, That's not RFK,
that's just the nature of things. The question.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
It's Ronald Reagan's fault.
Speaker 7 (20:47):
Yes, go on is how we handle it, how we
respond to it, whether or not we will we will
actually be intelligent and serious and sober, or whether or
not we have put one of the most dement I mean,
where do you even start with him? The fact that
he actually is out there saying that the first one
was a pandemic obviously planned by the Trump administration. Who
(21:07):
the freak knows what he's talking about.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
By the way, though I shouldn't laugh, but I'm laughing
to keep keep from crying.
Speaker 7 (21:15):
Yeah, I mean, I love these quotes that are now
surfacing about how you're saying, you know that the Trump
is hitler and you know.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
Terrible, and that's good.
Speaker 7 (21:23):
This is this is I think the pre brainworm RFK,
which is like, okay, you got it at one time
before your brain turned to tapioca pudding whatever it was, before.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
The worm the brainworm had died. I think that was
part of it right there. I think the brainworm is
no longer a line.
Speaker 7 (21:41):
I think the brain worman was killed by what it
was eating. I mean, I all know.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
Yeah, I'm going to go out on Pete Hexth because
if this happens, he will direct the United States military
and he will be sending the message that it's okay
to have numor allegations at the very least of sexual
assaulted misconduct.
Speaker 7 (22:05):
Yeah, the details of that police reporter are interesting to dad. Yeah,
did you see my newsletter today? I did the WWD
question mark not this FS Yeah, what would Jesus do?
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Not this?
Speaker 7 (22:19):
For fuck's sake? Okay, So here's an interesting dynamic though
in the whatever mar A Lago Oval office. The one
argument you cannot make to the president elect is, hey,
we can't put this man in charge of the Defense
Department because he's been credibly accused of rape.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
That does not hold a lot of water to Trump.
Speaker 7 (22:36):
Right, because basically you will elect a rapist who grabs
women by the pussy, and you know what, you are
not going to be able to convince him that it's
disqualifying to rape someone or grab somebody. So the only
thing you can say is, yo, the votes aren't there,
or this is a distraction.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
I think the votes aren't there is probably all you
can say.
Speaker 7 (22:56):
That's the only thing you can say. I think that
hag sith there's got to be a big question mark. Again, ironically,
not because he may have raped someone. And by again,
the details of these you know, clean yourself up and all.
Speaker 5 (23:08):
Of that stuff.
Speaker 7 (23:09):
Oh my god, not because of that, but you know,
as the Wall Street Journal reports, the Trump transition team
was amazingly blindsided by this. Who knew that these things
like that would happen? When you basically say, we don't
need FBI background, Yeah, we don't need to vet these people.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Yeah, those cocks in the FBI.
Speaker 7 (23:27):
Yeah, we don't mind that you rape that girl, but
you should have told us about it on your form.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
Right, right, right, there's social justice warriors in the FBI
known for their liberalism. Yeah, I mean, we'll see, but
it continues. The House has this very slim majority. You've
got Mike Johnson in there. I'm wondering, the last time
Donald Trump was elected to the presidency, we were all
eight years better looking.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Now we are.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
And I'm speaking about myself obviously, because I remember those
salad days. Is it being in my thirties? Now we
are all very old and exhausted. I'm curious, like Paul
Ryan had to lead the House and then he and
then he left the business altogether. Now we have Mike Johnson.
Talk to me about the difference between Paul Ryan and
(24:16):
Mike Johnson.
Speaker 7 (24:17):
I was just thinking about the salad days in my
early sixties back then. So well, Paul Ryanland was of
course much smarter than Mike Johnson, but he had a
much bigger majority, right, right, they had quite an edge there,
and so when you're talking about a two three four
vote margin, particularly when you've seen that clown show that
(24:39):
they've had, and then of course now they have vacancies,
so Matt Gates is actually a vacancy. So for a
few months it's going to be below two hundred and twenty.
So I mean, we you know, what could go wrong? Well,
you know they've been giving us the off Broadway version
of what could go wrong for the last two years.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
So I do think that's worth watching a good line
today on television.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
I'm going to steal your line and no, no, I'll
let you use a birth.
Speaker 7 (25:06):
The other thing is that that right now everybody is
you know, they're all in you know, swinging around, you know,
VVAK and elon are swinging around their big dicks about
how much they're going to cut government spending. You're going
to need congressional approval, and so it's one thing to
put out, well, Assie, I don't think they quite understand
that all the things they're cutting, all of those spending programs,
(25:27):
and I'm certainly not going to say there's not wasteful spending.
There's a lot of wasteful spending. But every program exists
for a reason, and there is a constituency for every
single program. And once you step on some of those minefields,
you're going to find out that even some MAGA adjacent
congressmen are going to be very, very unlikely to vote
to cut I don't know, veterans' healthcare, for example, That
(25:49):
is just not going to happen. So it is going
to be extremely messy. They're going to have to have
real discipline and the kind of discipline that we have
come to know they rarely are able to exercise.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
Charlie Sikes, will you please come back?
Speaker 7 (26:06):
I will come back anytime. I mean, I am a
man without a podcast. I'm just sitting here in my
robe in front of this it's rather pathetically unused microphone.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
So yeah, yes, please come back. You are just the best,
and so.
Speaker 7 (26:19):
You're the only one who invites me, So I asked, Michael,
you are the best anytime.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
Scott Perryman is the president of Democracy Forward. Welcome back
to Fast Politics, Sky.
Speaker 8 (26:38):
Thanks for having me. Always get to chat with you.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
We're delighted to have you. So now we are in
the dystopia. Donald Trump is about to become president for
the second time, thus creating a tension where the courts
are really the only thing that are going to protect
the American people. So can you talk us through what
that look like?
Speaker 8 (27:00):
Absolutely, you know, And part of it is we have
a little bit of knowledge here because of his first administration.
He engaged and his administration engaged in such lawless activity
that was designed to create chaos. It was harmful, but
fundamentally it was also against the law. And while the
Supreme Court, of course has a majority of justices come
(27:22):
from the conservative legal movement, and we have the far
right legal movement that has obviously been responsible for cases
like Dobbs and other things that have really shaped the court.
The types of activities that this administration is expected to
engage in are ones that I think even that court
will stop in some instances. And the more important thing
is that there are hundreds of federal courts across the
(27:45):
country with judges that will fairly interpret the law and
litigation is just going to be a huge piece of
providing that check for the American people. So we can
talk specifically about kind of what the cases would look like.
But what we know in the last administration, the Trump
administration lost nearly eighty percent of the time in court
because of their you know, lawless activities. We intend, along
(28:08):
with a lot of other organizations, to be really making
sure that people and communities are represented in court moving forward.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
Yes, so that is a really good point. Say that again,
what percentage of court cases did Donald Trump lose?
Speaker 8 (28:23):
You know, there's different estimates, but it was approaching eighty percent,
and in the first year of his administration, I think
it was around you know, seventy nine eighty percent.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
So, like the Muslim ban, it's like big pieces of
quote unquote legislation, right.
Speaker 8 (28:37):
The Muslim ban, of course, was able to be successfully
challenged in the lower courts once it finally got up
to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court did issue an
upolled part of that at you know, part of that.
But the important thing is, like, let's just look at
what he did across the board. So they appointed and
this will sound familiar to you if you're watching and
(28:57):
following the news right. They would corrupt commissions. They would
appoint people from outside of government that were deeply tied
to industries or to special interests that they curried favor
with to commissions to try to shape the way the
federal government operates. And they would do that and did
that without complying with all of the transparency laws and
(29:18):
other laws that we have in this country about how
you do this. So they got sued on that a lot,
and we've shut down a range of corrupt commissions. They
sought to abruptly discontinue important federal funding funded bipartisan programs
in cities like Baltimore and in counties like King County, Seattle,
and we were able to sue and successfully restore those
funding and stop their conduct there. They sought to reverse
(29:41):
a lot of policies that were really important for working
Americans and working families, and we were able to stop those.
So I want to say, it's going to be a
tough fight, and I don't have rose colored glasses. This
is really such a critical moment for the country and
it's going to take all of us doing our part.
But we do know if the past is prologue, that
the courts are going to be such a frontline in
(30:01):
this battle, and we are ready to go. The lawyers
at Democracy for the lawyers at so many other organizations,
we are geared up and ready to go to ensure
that if they break the law, that there is legal
action to challenge it.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
Yes, what are we going to see as people that
is really easily addressed in the courts? For example, give
me the kind of things because Trump's going to do
it a.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
Lot of stuff.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
He's got like numerous executive orders all lined up to
start on day one. So explain to us what sort
of the stuff that's going to be easier to challenge,
and then this stuff is going to be harder to challenge.
Speaker 8 (30:36):
Yeah, I mean, look, I think there's a lot of
we don't know entirely how they're going to do things right,
but we know, for instance, when they say they're going
to engage in mass deportations, You've seen the ACLU out
there talking about what those challenges will look like swiftly
and on day one. I'm not saying those are easy,
but I'm saying that there will be swift legal challenges.
(30:58):
We've seen, you know, Elon Musk and others say that
they're going to remake the way the American government works,
and Trump has said that he's going to create some
type of commission or department to do that. The things
that I've seen suggest that they're not going to be
following the law when they create these commissions. And there's
a lot of legal remedies that will be utilized. If
they want to come after the civil service and engage
(31:21):
in arbitrary mass firings of the civil service, which is
what they've said that they want to do, there are
legal remedies there reversing the last administration. They sought to
just reverse a range of policies without going through the
process that they had to go through. And so I just,
you know, I think that this is not going to
be an easy path because there's so much but you know,
(31:42):
we're made to do hard things the courts right now
because of the balance in Congress. The courts really are
the tool at the federal level as well as I
think being clear and you and I talked a lot
about Project twenty twenty five before the election, and we're
now seeing him accelerate try to accelerate Project twenty twenty
five now that the election has been called for him.
(32:03):
You know, this is a president elect that ran by
telling the American people that he didn't know anything about
Project twenty twenty five and sought to distance himself from
all of these unpopular, you know, these unpopular policies. And
so I do think that there's going to also be
a role for the American people to really hold him
to account. But also they're members of Congress to accounts
(32:24):
when these Project twenty twenty five policies start rolling through,
to say, wait a second, you know, this is not
actually what the American people voted for. In fact, you know,
he sought to this is himself he.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
Said, I have nothing to do for Ragic twenty twenty five.
And then, by the way, let's talk about Russ's voice.
Speaker 8 (32:41):
Well, I mean, look, either they're not slowing down at
all to seek to really accelerate Project twenty twenty five.
Russ was one of the architects of this entire extreme agenda,
which again, in poll after poll, there was a lot
of disputes over polls. Guess where there wasn't disputes over polls.
In poll after poll, conservatives, liberals, and independents all broadly
(33:04):
rejected Project twenty twenty five on the issues. But now
they're going to seek to install Russ Voyd into the
administration and he will have to be confirmed by the Senate,
and I think that's going to be really important for
Americans to make their voices heard in those confirmation battles,
especially given them mis leading nature of the campaign where
(33:25):
they really disavowed Project twenty twenty five. But the bottom
line is, we also have that blueprint for over a
year because they published it. We know what their plan is,
and we know how to argue and we know how
to bring cases against it because a number of the
things that they are proposing are just flatly unlawful, and
we're going to have to rely on our courts to
(33:45):
do the right thing too. And that's really important that
people are making sure that we're clear that we expect
our courts to protect the rights of the American people,
to protect our democratic institutions, and that is what they
are here to do, and they're going to have to
stand up to you know, stand up and do that,
which we saw in many instances last time that happened.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
So I'm wondering if you Ross Vointe is being put
in charge of budget. Yeah, will you explain why that
is and what he has the opportunity to do there?
Speaker 8 (34:14):
Well, the Office of Management and Budget is really just
like such a core office that really seeks and is
able to help define the way the federal government operates
across agencies, because it's really an agency that is cross cutting.
This is, unfortunately for the American people, the type of
position that will have a lot of influence over multiple policies.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
By controlling budget, he will have a certain sort of
ability to cut off the finances.
Speaker 8 (34:46):
Right well, and what they've suggested is that this position
would be the one that would seek to impose what
is known as Schedule F to seek to reclassify our
federal workers to make them more political, to make you know,
reclassify civil servants as political appointees, to then enable the
president to engage in mass firings. And then also this
(35:07):
office potentially could seek, through much of that work, to
undermine some of the more autonomous organizations like the consumer
financial Protection Bureaus. So now that's what they say they're
going to do again, I will just say like there
is a broad and diverse effort, and I would encourage
our listeners to go to democracy twenty twenty five dot org,
where you can see so many of the organizations and
(35:28):
groups that are lined up to really help represent the
American people. When these agencies engage in that, these offices
engage in unlawful activity to that is what they you know,
attacking our civil service and our ability of government to
deliver for people has been a censure piece of Project
twenty twenty five. And so you know, if the Senate
were to confirm us, you would really see an opportunity
(35:49):
that he would have to accelerate or seek to accelerate,
many of the harmful things in that policy.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
Yeah, it is really scary.
Speaker 4 (35:58):
It is.
Speaker 8 (35:59):
It's scary, but it should also be motivating. Trump and
the GOP have been saying they have this mandate. I
don't see that. What I saw in the election was
deep red Missouri vote for abortion access and people in Florida,
more people in Florida voting for the ballot initiative than
if I have my figures right, then they voted for
(36:20):
Donald Trump or Rond de Santis the last time, and
people voting for a candidate in President elect Trump that
blatantly throughout the campaign trail thought to deceive people about
his connections to these very people and to these very policies,
And so I think there's just a real moment for
both those of us that work in the courts, but
also for the American people and for those that are
(36:42):
going to be going into Congress to check this extremism
by staying vigilant and pushing forward. And so it is
very scary, but there's not a mandate for this extremism.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
Yeah, I'm hoping you could talk about how pushing back
in the court it's sort of the only way to
stop a lot of this stuff, right because Democrats don't
control any of the federal branches.
Speaker 8 (37:05):
Yes, and I think this is important to understand that
the administration is poised to engage in a range of
harmful activities, many of which are of those activities will
have legal problems we can sue with the ultimate goal
of stopping that harm for people in communities, and that
is always the ultimate goal. And President Biden has appointed
(37:27):
more than two hundred and twenty pro democracy judges. I
believe at the end of this administration, if you look
across the federal judiciary that you will see that the
majority of those lower court judges have been appointed by
pro democracy presidents. And I will also tell you that
our team, as well as other teams, win in front
of judges, including judges that were appointed by former President
(37:50):
Trump and more conservative presidents. So I will say the
courts remain a hugely important tool to stop some of
this behavior. But more than that, litigation has a way
of helping change behavior, even if you disregard how a
court rules right, forcing people to every time they seek
(38:12):
to harm the American people and seek to do so
outside the bounds of the law, to have to show
up in court and defend that, and to defend that publicly,
for the public to be aware of those challenges, that
is a critical, critical tool to really forcing the sort
of extreme administration to account. And so there's really important
(38:33):
impact beyond just how a judge rules. In the last administration,
last Trump administration, let me give you one example, Trump
created the Pence Cobalt Voter Commission, which was seeking to
undermine votes, are seeking votes right exactly because he didn't
like the popular vote count. Notice that no one's dispute,
Notice that no one's disputing anything now, but he didn't
like the popular vote count. Them and a range of
(38:55):
organizations including ours. I was one of the lawyers who
did this, but a range of organizations representing people in
communities suit and in the face of that avalanche of litigation,
the administration actually just abandoned their plans of the Commission.
Now I'm not again, I don't have rose colored glasses,
and I think that they're going to seek to do
a range of very harmful things and are determined to
(39:16):
do that. But we have seen time and again that
even apart from how courts are rolling, litigation is important
to force that there be some costs when extreme lawmakers
are seeking to undermine the rights and privileges and well
being the American people. And that's what we're committed to doing,
and that's what hundreds of organizations are committed to doing.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
Yeah, you are faced with this because you're in the
court and your lawyer and your organization is faced with this.
Speaker 2 (39:44):
It is very stressful.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
Give us a two second tip because a lot of
people who listen to those feel things the way that
I feel things and the way that you feel things, like,
we really take this personally, we really care, which is
I always say, like the worst thing about.
Speaker 2 (39:58):
Me is I believe everything I see on television.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
So like, I actually I actually like think this is
a real crisis.
Speaker 2 (40:05):
I don't think this is a game.
Speaker 8 (40:06):
I think we're a huge crisis.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
Yeah, we're going to see if our institutions hold or not.
And I think it's a real fifty to fifty question.
And the best thing going for us is that Trump
is erratic, and you know, he's nominating people who are
completely unreasonable. Why do you worry about Pam Bondi because
she is not as problematic as Matt Gates, but she's
still very problematic.
Speaker 8 (40:28):
Well, I worry about so many of the people, and
Bondi is one. These are people that have made their
careers not engaging in the you know, just amazing opportunity
that we all have as people to help protect people's rights,
to ensure that our government is actually working for people
(40:48):
and delivering the things that we need. But this is
someone that's long been associated with a you know, a
quite extreme age, Inda, And so I think that you know,
we're the Department of Justice holds and just an incredibly
important role in American society and then protecting our rights.
And when you look at Project twenty twenty five, you
see that there are a range of plans that this
(41:09):
incoming administration has for perverting that institution and seeking to
weaponize it against the American people. I haven't seen evidence that,
and I'm an open minded person, so I'm going to
be listening and watching in the days ahead. But I
hadn't seen evidence that she is the type of person
(41:29):
that would buck that political and ideological pressure that we
see and know that the incoming administration would provide. And
so the question is will she be an accomplice and
seeking to accelerate some of the most harmful policies in
Project T only twenty five, or would she be a
good steward of the Department of Justice. I don't have
evidence to show me it to suggests that she would
(41:50):
be a good steward of that, but we will wait
at watch. But I think it's concerting when you look
at what they want to do to that institution, and
I think it's high concerning that. Like they've also sought
to prevent the release of information about Matt Gates, which
is important for American people to know and understand.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
And I think that's a really good point.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
And I think that the one bright spot here is
that you can absolutely bully.
Speaker 2 (42:16):
These people into doing the right.
Speaker 1 (42:18):
Thing if you're able to get their attention, and it's
going to be four fucking years of.
Speaker 8 (42:23):
That, and we saw in the campaign. I don't think
that it was a great day for Trump and his
associates when they had to come out and disavow and
distance themselves from Project twenty twenty five. I think it's
deceptive and it's consistent with this pattern of conduct we
see from him. But really it became such a problem
because the vast majority of American people in this country
(42:44):
reject that extremism and it is going to be incumbent
up on all of us. Yes, there's a Republican majority
in the Senate that there are senators that will be
held to account in two years.
Speaker 2 (42:54):
Tom Tillis in North Carolina.
Speaker 8 (42:56):
Wow, here's an old war story. You remember in the
first early days of the Trump administration the last time
that Trumps was hell bent on repealing the Affordable Care
Act and thought they had the majority in Congress to
do that. And I will tell yeah, you know, many
of us there would have been legal problems with some
of the implications of that, and so there, you know,
(43:17):
there was a court strategy there, but we never had
to go to court because Congress ultimately did not deliver
on what President Trump wanted them to do, because the
American people pushed back. And that is the kind of
retail level advocacy It is going to be required to
save some of the institutions in our country in order
(43:37):
to ensure that at some point we can be back
on the track of moving forward as opposed to just
preventing a backslide.
Speaker 2 (43:44):
Yep, yes, yes, yes, But.
Speaker 8 (43:46):
For your listeners, I think, like I know, we're all scared,
and everybody is. You know, it's just a highly emotional situation,
and we're moving into the holidays, but there is a
lot we can do, and we just have to remember
that we cannot give up our own power. And so
lawyers are going to be doing that every single day
on behalf of people in communities that people can do
(44:06):
that too. And these extremists do not get to write
the last chapter or the next chapter of what happens
in this country. The American people do. And it is
up to all of us to help galvanize people. And
there's a lot of disaffected people who our institutions haven't
delivered for, and our government hasn't delivered for and I
think you see set in the voting patterns, and it's
(44:27):
time to show up and do real things and to
motivate people to engage in that work, to show up
and do the real things. And that's what we're going
to really be focused on.
Speaker 2 (44:37):
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Please come back.
Speaker 8 (44:40):
Thanks Molly a moment, Jesse Cannon, my Jen Fast.
Speaker 3 (44:49):
One of the things that is just so sad that
we kind of knew would happen if mister Trump got
re elected is well, the racists, the Nazis, the clan
type people they will be, and we're seeing it play out.
Speaker 4 (45:02):
What are you see in here?
Speaker 2 (45:03):
I did not see it coming. Oh boy, oh a
group of neil. But if you can't laugh about Nazis,
who can you laugh about? Neo Nazi groups?
Speaker 1 (45:12):
Scattered flyers across lawns and doorsteps in three Waterloo, Iowa
neighborhoods just before veterans state, the Handouds offered a chilling
assessment of the group's proximity in capital letters, we are
your neighbors. We are the random strangers holding the door
open for you. We are everywhere. I'm not sure they are.
A week later, a dozen people march through with parts
(45:34):
of Columbus, Ohio that are known for arts and culture,
or carrying Nazi flags, using it bullhorn to shout racist
slurs against Jews and people of color. You'll notice they
also wore masks.
Speaker 2 (45:46):
You know why they.
Speaker 4 (45:47):
Wore masks, Please tell me?
Speaker 2 (45:49):
Because they were scared of being identified.
Speaker 1 (45:53):
And that, my friends, is why if you're scared of
being identified, perhaps you shouldn't be doing it.
Speaker 2 (46:00):
It's a good rule for life. I think that's it.
Speaker 1 (46:03):
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.
Speaker 2 (46:22):
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 Donald Trump is mad at the
reports that he did not win in a landslide after
winning less than fifty percent of the popular vote. We
have a show of shows for you today. To the contrary,
(00:23):
author Charlie Sikes talks to us about staying sane in
in Saturday. Then we'll talk to Democracy Forward Sky Perriman
about fighting back against Trump's agenda using the courts.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
But first the news.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
So, Molly, one of the things we've been talking about
that I think is most important about Trump's incoming regime
is this mass deportation plan.
Speaker 4 (00:50):
What are you seeing here?
Speaker 1 (00:51):
I've been saying that we all need to keep our
powder dry for when Donald Trump starts rounding people up.
But our powder, I mean our outrage, you know, we
have to save it for things that are really outrageous,
like mass deportation. But before even Donald Trump has taken office,
it has become clear that this mass deportation plan is
(01:13):
going to be very expensive, not just the price of
separating people from their families and flying them to countries
that won't necessarily take them, but it will have enormous
effects on agriculture. So there's reporting that agricultural output will
fall between thirty and sixty billion dollars if Trump's flagshift
(01:38):
policy is carried out.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
That's quite a lot.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
And remember, farmers are already suffering because climate change has
made it harder to predict what crops are going to
look like, what this sort of farming landscape, if you'll
excuse the use of the word landscape, will look like.
And so now deportation of all of the farm we'll
add another wrinkle to an already very unpredictable business. And
(02:04):
you'll remember Donald Trump ran on making things more affordable.
Getting rid of the people who farm the farms will
mean that everything will be more expensive. Farmers will have
to pay more for labor, wildly inflationary, and restaurant owners
are already and agricultural leaders are already calling foul on
(02:27):
Donald Trump's plans, and he isn't even in office yet.
Speaker 4 (02:31):
Even Walmart is I mean, it's ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
No, this is the whole thing is completely insane.
Speaker 4 (02:37):
It's okay, we'll all be eating the dogs and the
cats soon.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
That's right, they're eating them.
Speaker 4 (02:41):
So speaking of other things, that seems like mister Trump
wasn't telling the whole truth about on the campaign trail.
So begetting to look a lot like something you and
I said as coming true, which is that this whole
thing is gonna be staffed by Project twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Yeah, you'll be shocked to know that everything Donald Trump said,
maybe not everything, but certainly this when he said he
knew nothing about Project twenty twenty five and that Project
twenty twenty five is not him. Well it turns out,
you guys, I know you're gonna be shocked, but Donald
Trump was saying a lie. In fact, Project twenty twenty
five is basically Trump's transition And in fact, now we
(03:19):
see what the campaign over. Trump's transition team is turning
to Project twenty twenty five, even though they said they.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Weren't going to.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
They're taking suggestions from for potential hires from their website,
which was called Project twenty twenty five, a website.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
To staff the next Trump administration.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
How ironic that they actually are using the thing they
said they would. It's a database, you know, it's been
set up for a couple of years, so it has
people have applied through it. Project's twenty twenty five massive
book of conservative I was going to say conspiratorial, but
it's sort of the same policy recommendations. It received the
most attention from Democrats. It was a wishless and by
(04:00):
the way, when people started googling it, they realized that
all of the things were pretty dystopian. Now we get
to see Trump try to enact them, we'll see what happens.
But again, it's really important to realize that in fact,
this is all Donald Trump's plan. And Russ Vatt is
likely going to return to the OMB director and he
(04:23):
was acting director, and he was deputy director before. He
comes directly from Heritage Action, which is a branch of
the Heritage Foundation. He wrote a chapter of Project twenty
twenty five. His chapter covers the Executive Office of the Presidency.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
And you'll remember that the whole idea with.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Project twenty twenty five is to expand the powers of
the presidency to ncap the federal government and to make
almost all aspects of the federal government arms of Trump's campaign.
So you know, the DOJ will be his personal criminal
prosecution arm. Every part of the federal government will be
(05:06):
in the service of Donald Trump, and you'll be shocked
to know that Russ Vott is in fact one of
those parts.
Speaker 5 (05:14):
So this is interesting. Oftentimes I think people would get
really excited around election, sees that we can get rid
of the Marjorie Taylor Greens, of the Matt Gates is
at the ballot box, and that didn't happen. But it
turns out we are actually getting rid of Matt Gates
and Congress. What are you seeing here?
Speaker 1 (05:30):
You'll remember that Matt Gates.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
I can't stop laughing.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
So last week Matt Gates resigned because the Congressional Ethics Committee.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Known to be highly toothless.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
Okay, like the Congressional Ethics Committee has many times investigated
people and found no need for anything here, they were
about to release this report.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Clearly there was some stuff in there that really worried
Matt Gates.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
So he was designed and Trump made him his pick
for Attorney general. Only in Trump world does such a
series of events happen. But Mark Gates spent the week
trying to avoid sort of the alleged story of him
having sex with an underage girl. He resigned right before
CNN ran another story about him allegedly having sex with
(06:22):
another girl who was underage. So again their witnesses, there's
just a ton you know, there's all of these VENMO payments.
I mean, where there's Venmo payments, there's usually fire.
Speaker 4 (06:35):
Really twenty four thousand dollars to one girl, right.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
I mean, so now there was a question because Gates
resigned before the next Congress, which he'd already won a seat,
and if he would stay in Congress in Florida's first
district or not. But yesterday, which was Thursday, because today
is Friday and tomorrow you will be listening to this
podcast on Saturday.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
I know how the days of the week work at.
Gates told some news outlet, I'm going to be fighting
for President Trump. I'm going to be doing whatever he
asks of me as I always have. Oh, not even
a news outlet. He told that to Charlie Kirk. But
I think that eight years is probably enough time in
the United States Congress. I think the rest of Congress agrees.
(07:19):
Hours after Gates ended his big Trump announced longtime loyalist
and former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondy as his new
pick to head the Justice Department.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
God help us all, Samali.
Speaker 6 (07:33):
We have to discuss one last Trump phenomenee, wrestling magnate
Linda McMahon. Turns out she's had some pretty bad things
when it comes to being around children. What are you
seeing here?
Speaker 1 (07:44):
So Linda McMahon helped co run Trump's transition team with
Howard Lutnik. Linda McMahon really wanted to be Commerce Secretary.
She's a big dop donor. She lost out on Commerce
Secretary to Howard Lutnan, who really wanted to be Treasury Secretary,
but lost to add to someone that Wall Street thinks
(08:06):
is sane. We still don't know who that is because
there's a lot of inviting about that one job. You
can tell what jobs they think are important from how
long it takes them to put together a nominee anyway.
So McMahon now has been given the door prize in
the Trump cabinet. She is the Secretary of Education if
she gets through congressional approval. The hilarious part of this
(08:28):
is that Donald Trump is planning, or at least thinks
he can shutter the Department of Education. So here's the
job that Trump is hoping won't exist. She has not
without her scandals. She's the former CEO of the WWE,
which is a wrestling federation. She found herself in a
lawsuit against her, her husband, the WWE, and TKO Group Holding,
(08:53):
it's the league's parent company, knowingly allowed employee Marvin Phillips
Junior to use his position as ringside announcer and essentially
exploit children again, you mean like QAnon. Charlie Sykes is
(09:14):
the author of the newsletter to the Contrary and the
book How the Right Lost Its Mind Welcome Back Too
Fast Politics.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
My friend, Charlie Sikes, I.
Speaker 7 (09:25):
Actually wanted to talk to you, even what's your podcast.
I want to talk to you about your about your
strategy to remain sane, because I do think that this
needs everybody has to have this on their agenda. How
are you going to get through the next four years?
What's your plan right now? Other than not doing the
same thing we've done over the last eight years, we
got got to mix it up, right, Bunnie.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
You should ask this because I actually wrote about this
this week, and I think it's a pretty smart plan,
if I do say so myself. My theory of the
case is this, there is no knock novelty here, right.
We know where this is going, and there are very
few guardrails. Right, we have Democrats control no levers of
(10:09):
the federal government, though the House is very very tight,
and the Supreme Court has gone it is no longer
the Roberts courts. It's the you know, it's basically it's
like the Alito Court. It's not quite the allital Court,
but it's the Kavanaugh Court for sure. So my theory
of the case is that this needs to be a
kind of triage. The focus needs to be norms and institutions,
(10:32):
things that really will be undoable, like things where Trump
really just structurally damaged the United States in ways that
cannot be undone, and that those norms and institutions have
to be job one, and that everything cannot be outrageous,
because then nothing is well.
Speaker 7 (10:52):
I think this is the hard part is you know
that we're about to go into this fire hose of
outrage that you know, starting on January twenty I actually
already started. Now it's going to be like twenty seventeen
every single day, and it is gonna be hard not
to set yourself on fire, particularly for the folks who
have to have opinions every single day. This is one
of the things I was thinking about earlier this year
(11:12):
when I said I was stepping off the daily hamster
wheel of crazy, which is not to you turn your
back on it, but if you basically keep your face
right up against that fire hose, it's going to make
you insane because every single day you will try to,
you know, fill space. You'll have the hot takes, and
you have to react to whatever outrage, and some of
(11:32):
those outre I mean, look, they're all outrages, but some
of those outrages will matter, and some of them are ephemeral.
So I think it's kind of separating out the big
stuff from the little stuff and not being obsessed by it.
I don't want to digress too much, but I don't
want to be chasing every single moment when Nancy Mace
is demagoguing something or the latest stupid thing that Marjorie
(11:53):
Taylor Green is, because at the end of every week,
we'll think, how did I get so stupid? And it's
because I spent all my time I'm talking about Nancy
Mace or Marjorie Taylor Green. Well, meanwhile, they're carting out
all the furniture from the Department of Justice and they're
dismantling the EPA I'd say, Okay, maybe we ought to
focus on the big stuff.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
And I think that's exactly right. And look, Nancy Mace
wants you to be outraged, right. I mean this is
like democracy dies in darkness.
Speaker 7 (12:21):
Right, democracy dies in bullshit right.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
And Nancy Mays only exists if she can dictate the
news cycle. Right, like she has learned at the knee
of Marjorie Taylor.
Speaker 7 (12:32):
Green, do not take the bait. Just don't take the bait.
That's at least one thing.
Speaker 5 (12:35):
Now.
Speaker 7 (12:36):
How long we're going to be able to stick with that,
I just don't know. So I was I was on
a Canadian show this morning and the host says, so, Charlie,
are people afraid? Are you afraid? And I had a
very inadequate answer. I said, well, you know, the day
after the election, someone suggested that I write a you know,
on my substack newsletter to the contrary that I write
the headline be not afraid. And I said, hell with that,
(12:57):
because people should be afraid. People should be afraid, but
they should not be frightened. And I think this is
the key thing. People ought to be very aware of
the danger, but not be so frightened that they cave
in or obey in advance. If you act out of fear,
I think it's one thing to be again on alert,
to be aware, but to act out of fear is
(13:20):
the dark place. That's what authoritarians want. They want us
to cower. They want us to think, how can I
not be noticed? How can I not make them mad?
And of course there's a lot of that going on.
And again that's not for me to say there's nothing
to worry about. There's a lot to worry about them.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
There is really a lot.
Speaker 7 (13:36):
You worry about it, but you stand and you face
it intelligently and effectively not run away. That's the key thing.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Yeah, And I think that's really really so important. And
that's what I think about a lot is like this
is the break glass in case of emergency, right, Like,
this is it. This is as dark as it's going
to get. And so we need to be very thoughtful
about how we proceed, right.
Speaker 7 (14:04):
And you can't break the glass every single day. The
other thing that I'm I'm really trying to commit myself
to is try to not chase every squirrel of outrage,
you know, not every every single shiny object. But also,
and this is really hard, and I think I'm going
to be misunderstood here. I think we do have to
keep a sense of humor.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Yeah, no, no, agreed, A grade agrade, because I.
Speaker 7 (14:23):
Listened to some of just the grim people, you know,
repeating the same talking points that they've been repeating and
using the same jargon and everything, and they're depressed and
they're all ere and everything, and as a fuck that.
I mean, honestly, these people are They're absurd and they're dangerous,
and I think that there's a balance there to say,
(14:44):
you people are absolutely ridiculous. I mean people like Peter
hegxitt yes, and An RFK and Matt Gaates. I mean
they're risibly absurd human beings. Now that's not to say
they're not also dangerous human beings.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Yes, many things can be true, which I think is
part of what we're experiencing here. These people can be dangerous,
and they can also be ridiculous and look, and they
can also more importantly be stopped. And that's what we
saw with Matt Gates this week, right, because Matt Gates
really did in the end, there were enough brave Republicans
(15:21):
and we had questions and worries and dowds about this
but there were enough brave Republicans, so Matt Gates will
not be Attorney General.
Speaker 7 (15:29):
I would say there were enough nauseator Republicans.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
Right, we'll take it.
Speaker 7 (15:33):
No, okay, I want to take this in a positive
point of view. I did write this morning that, you know,
the fall of Matt Gates, which was is a splendid
thing to watch, maybe more of a speed bump than
a guardrail. We don't know how many brave Republicans there
will be, but it is worth pointing out that Donald
Trump went all out to get Matt Gates, including this
(15:53):
report that they were going around telling senators, you know,
if you don't bow the knee to Donald Trump and
Matt Gates, we're going to primary you, and this guy
Elon Musk is going to bankroll it. So you had
basically this thuggish out in the open threat, and the
Republicans didn't caved. And it also didn't work because there
was a retreat they could have taken. They could have
you done that craven recess appointment, They could have surrendered
(16:16):
their power.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Mitch McConnell, hero of the resistance, told them they couldn't.
Speaker 7 (16:21):
No fucking way. Mitch McConnell said not this time. Maybe,
unlike Susan Collins, he has learned his lesson. I don't know.
I don't want to be the lucy in the football
again with these guys. But you do get the sense
that maybe Donald Trump has seriously overplayed his hand by
going to war with the Republican Senate as right out
of the box. He insulted them, he threatened them, he
(16:44):
tried to humiliate them, and he's still trying to humiliate
them by shoving these nominees down their throat. And at
least as you and I are speaking, they said, no,
we're not going to do it, which again ought to
be you know, let plant let's plant this, you know,
rare flag of success.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
Enjoy it.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
I mean, I also do think like remember as soon
as Trump won, Trump and Elon were like, we are
going to install Rick Scott, the president for Mars Attacks
as the majority leader.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
And that did not work either.
Speaker 7 (17:20):
No, Actually that that was really interesting. That was his
first big failure, right that he was He clearly didn't
want John Thune, you had, the Maga verse was all
on fire about that, and they lost badly. In fact,
that was the day you might remember, that was the
day that he began, you know, rolling out some of
the absurd original appointments. And it felt to me, having
(17:42):
watched Trump this long, that that was a way of
distracting attention from what otherwise would have been something that
Trump hates more than anything else. People pointing out that
you just lost, you just lost big on something that
that is going to have long term ramifications. But I
know that some people are really really surprised. I'm only
mildly surprised that the you know, rape mcfoorhead was a
(18:02):
bridge too far, or for this that it was such
a ridiculous I stole that from somebody. No, I think
I stole it from the guy who drops all the
F bombs even more than me. We'll see what they
do with Peter Hegsith.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Yeah, now that Matt Gates is out of the lineup
and Pam BONDI we actually know, is a lawyer, Matt
Gates is also a lawyer, though that seemed more a
little more circuitous.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Who is the cabinet appointment who keeps you up at night?
Speaker 4 (18:30):
Now you know.
Speaker 7 (18:31):
That that's a hard one to choose. And this, this,
I think is the and I'm doing air quotes here.
The flood the zone with shit. Genius of all of this,
because you know, the notion of putting Peter Hegsyth in
charge of the Department of Defense keeps me up at night.
The idea that we would put a Russian asset like
Tlsea Gabbard in charge of the US intelligence community keeps
(18:52):
me up at night. The fact that you have a complete, demented,
deranged conspiracy theory nut job like Roberda F. Kennedy Junior
dismantling the Department of Health and Human Services. I mean
that one is not just absurd and dangerous, it's potentially deadly.
If we go back to pre vaccination days. We have
(19:14):
opened We've opened a Pandora's Box of medieval horrors here,
so you pick your horrors. And also, as people have noticed,
things are becoming more and more dangerous in the world,
and I think they will become even more dangerous between
now and January. And so that delta between what we
would hope the kinds of people we would hope would
(19:34):
be in charge of our intelligence agencies and the Department
of Defense of the United States of America and the
people that Donald Trump has put there is becoming wider
and wider so great that you know, down goes Matt Gates.
But we have this parade of grotesqueries and horribles in waiting.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
And I think the one who really keeps me up
at night. I mean, I guess you're right, RFK Junior
has to be the one because we did just live
through a pandemic. By the way, we just lived through
a pandemic that Donald Trump, you know, clearly again it's
not fair to say that he killed people, but he
certainly was not good for public health. Right.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
I think we can all agree on that A.
Speaker 7 (20:14):
Million people died and it has been completely memory hold,
just completely memory hold.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Yeah, a million people died.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
So let's let's put RFK, who does not believe in
vaccines in charge of public health.
Speaker 7 (20:29):
Let's put a guy with literal brainworms in charge of
deciding how to keep Americans safe from the next pandemic.
And there will be a next pandemic. I mean, this
is going to happen.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
Oh, no question, because of the climate stuff.
Speaker 7 (20:41):
Right. And that's not Donald Trump's fault, That's not RFK,
that's just the nature of things. The question.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
It's Ronald Reagan's fault.
Speaker 7 (20:47):
Yes, go on is how we handle it, how we
respond to it, whether or not we will we will
actually be intelligent and serious and sober, or whether or
not we have put one of the most dement I mean,
where do you even start with him? The fact that
he actually is out there saying that the first one
was a pandemic obviously planned by the Trump administration. Who
(21:07):
the freak knows what he's talking about.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
By the way, though I shouldn't laugh, but I'm laughing
to keep keep from crying.
Speaker 7 (21:15):
Yeah, I mean, I love these quotes that are now
surfacing about how you're saying, you know that the Trump
is hitler and you know.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
Terrible, and that's good.
Speaker 7 (21:23):
This is this is I think the pre brainworm RFK,
which is like, okay, you got it at one time
before your brain turned to tapioca pudding whatever it was, before.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
The worm the brainworm had died. I think that was
part of it right there. I think the brainworm is
no longer a line.
Speaker 7 (21:41):
I think the brain worman was killed by what it
was eating. I mean, I all know.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
Yeah, I'm going to go out on Pete Hexth because
if this happens, he will direct the United States military
and he will be sending the message that it's okay
to have numor allegations at the very least of sexual
assaulted misconduct.
Speaker 7 (22:05):
Yeah, the details of that police reporter are interesting to dad. Yeah,
did you see my newsletter today? I did the WWD
question mark not this FS Yeah, what would Jesus do?
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Not this?
Speaker 7 (22:19):
For fuck's sake? Okay, So here's an interesting dynamic though
in the whatever mar A Lago Oval office. The one
argument you cannot make to the president elect is, hey,
we can't put this man in charge of the Defense
Department because he's been credibly accused of rape.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
That does not hold a lot of water to Trump.
Speaker 7 (22:36):
Right, because basically you will elect a rapist who grabs
women by the pussy, and you know what, you are
not going to be able to convince him that it's
disqualifying to rape someone or grab somebody. So the only
thing you can say is, yo, the votes aren't there,
or this is a distraction.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
I think the votes aren't there is probably all you
can say.
Speaker 7 (22:56):
That's the only thing you can say. I think that
hag sith there's got to be a big question mark. Again, ironically,
not because he may have raped someone. And by again,
the details of these you know, clean yourself up and all.
Speaker 5 (23:08):
Of that stuff.
Speaker 7 (23:09):
Oh my god, not because of that, but you know,
as the Wall Street Journal reports, the Trump transition team
was amazingly blindsided by this. Who knew that these things
like that would happen? When you basically say, we don't
need FBI background, Yeah, we don't need to vet these people.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Yeah, those cocks in the FBI.
Speaker 7 (23:27):
Yeah, we don't mind that you rape that girl, but
you should have told us about it on your form.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
Right, right, right, there's social justice warriors in the FBI
known for their liberalism. Yeah, I mean, we'll see, but
it continues. The House has this very slim majority. You've
got Mike Johnson in there. I'm wondering, the last time
Donald Trump was elected to the presidency, we were all
eight years better looking.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Now we are.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
And I'm speaking about myself obviously, because I remember those
salad days. Is it being in my thirties? Now we
are all very old and exhausted. I'm curious, like Paul
Ryan had to lead the House and then he and
then he left the business altogether. Now we have Mike Johnson.
Talk to me about the difference between Paul Ryan and
(24:16):
Mike Johnson.
Speaker 7 (24:17):
I was just thinking about the salad days in my
early sixties back then. So well, Paul Ryanland was of
course much smarter than Mike Johnson, but he had a
much bigger majority, right, right, they had quite an edge there,
and so when you're talking about a two three four
vote margin, particularly when you've seen that clown show that
(24:39):
they've had, and then of course now they have vacancies,
so Matt Gates is actually a vacancy. So for a
few months it's going to be below two hundred and twenty.
So I mean, we you know, what could go wrong? Well,
you know they've been giving us the off Broadway version
of what could go wrong for the last two years.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
So I do think that's worth watching a good line
today on television.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
I'm going to steal your line and no, no, I'll
let you use a birth.
Speaker 7 (25:06):
The other thing is that that right now everybody is
you know, they're all in you know, swinging around, you know,
VVAK and elon are swinging around their big dicks about
how much they're going to cut government spending. You're going
to need congressional approval, and so it's one thing to
put out, well, Assie, I don't think they quite understand
that all the things they're cutting, all of those spending programs,
(25:27):
and I'm certainly not going to say there's not wasteful spending.
There's a lot of wasteful spending. But every program exists
for a reason, and there is a constituency for every
single program. And once you step on some of those minefields,
you're going to find out that even some MAGA adjacent
congressmen are going to be very, very unlikely to vote
to cut I don't know, veterans' healthcare, for example, That
(25:49):
is just not going to happen. So it is going
to be extremely messy. They're going to have to have
real discipline and the kind of discipline that we have
come to know they rarely are able to exercise.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
Charlie Sikes, will you please come back?
Speaker 7 (26:06):
I will come back anytime. I mean, I am a
man without a podcast. I'm just sitting here in my
robe in front of this it's rather pathetically unused microphone.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
So yeah, yes, please come back. You are just the best,
and so.
Speaker 7 (26:19):
You're the only one who invites me, So I asked, Michael,
you are the best anytime.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
Scott Perryman is the president of Democracy Forward. Welcome back
to Fast Politics, Sky.
Speaker 8 (26:38):
Thanks for having me. Always get to chat with you.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
We're delighted to have you. So now we are in
the dystopia. Donald Trump is about to become president for
the second time, thus creating a tension where the courts
are really the only thing that are going to protect
the American people. So can you talk us through what
that look like?
Speaker 8 (27:00):
Absolutely, you know, And part of it is we have
a little bit of knowledge here because of his first administration.
He engaged and his administration engaged in such lawless activity
that was designed to create chaos. It was harmful, but
fundamentally it was also against the law. And while the
Supreme Court, of course has a majority of justices come
(27:22):
from the conservative legal movement, and we have the far
right legal movement that has obviously been responsible for cases
like Dobbs and other things that have really shaped the court.
The types of activities that this administration is expected to
engage in are ones that I think even that court
will stop in some instances. And the more important thing
is that there are hundreds of federal courts across the
(27:45):
country with judges that will fairly interpret the law and
litigation is just going to be a huge piece of
providing that check for the American people. So we can
talk specifically about kind of what the cases would look like.
But what we know in the last administration, the Trump
administration lost nearly eighty percent of the time in court
because of their you know, lawless activities. We intend, along
(28:08):
with a lot of other organizations, to be really making
sure that people and communities are represented in court moving forward.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
Yes, so that is a really good point. Say that again,
what percentage of court cases did Donald Trump lose?
Speaker 8 (28:23):
You know, there's different estimates, but it was approaching eighty percent,
and in the first year of his administration, I think
it was around you know, seventy nine eighty percent.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
So, like the Muslim ban, it's like big pieces of
quote unquote legislation, right.
Speaker 8 (28:37):
The Muslim ban, of course, was able to be successfully
challenged in the lower courts once it finally got up
to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court did issue an
upolled part of that at you know, part of that.
But the important thing is, like, let's just look at
what he did across the board. So they appointed and
this will sound familiar to you if you're watching and
(28:57):
following the news right. They would corrupt commissions. They would
appoint people from outside of government that were deeply tied
to industries or to special interests that they curried favor
with to commissions to try to shape the way the
federal government operates. And they would do that and did
that without complying with all of the transparency laws and
(29:18):
other laws that we have in this country about how
you do this. So they got sued on that a lot,
and we've shut down a range of corrupt commissions. They
sought to abruptly discontinue important federal funding funded bipartisan programs
in cities like Baltimore and in counties like King County, Seattle,
and we were able to sue and successfully restore those
funding and stop their conduct there. They sought to reverse
(29:41):
a lot of policies that were really important for working
Americans and working families, and we were able to stop those.
So I want to say, it's going to be a
tough fight, and I don't have rose colored glasses. This
is really such a critical moment for the country and
it's going to take all of us doing our part.
But we do know if the past is prologue, that
the courts are going to be such a frontline in
(30:01):
this battle, and we are ready to go. The lawyers
at Democracy for the lawyers at so many other organizations,
we are geared up and ready to go to ensure
that if they break the law, that there is legal
action to challenge it.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
Yes, what are we going to see as people that
is really easily addressed in the courts? For example, give
me the kind of things because Trump's going to do
it a.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
Lot of stuff.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
He's got like numerous executive orders all lined up to
start on day one. So explain to us what sort
of the stuff that's going to be easier to challenge,
and then this stuff is going to be harder to challenge.
Speaker 8 (30:36):
Yeah, I mean, look, I think there's a lot of
we don't know entirely how they're going to do things right,
but we know, for instance, when they say they're going
to engage in mass deportations, You've seen the ACLU out
there talking about what those challenges will look like swiftly
and on day one. I'm not saying those are easy,
but I'm saying that there will be swift legal challenges.
(30:58):
We've seen, you know, Elon Musk and others say that
they're going to remake the way the American government works,
and Trump has said that he's going to create some
type of commission or department to do that. The things
that I've seen suggest that they're not going to be
following the law when they create these commissions. And there's
a lot of legal remedies that will be utilized. If
they want to come after the civil service and engage
(31:21):
in arbitrary mass firings of the civil service, which is
what they've said that they want to do, there are
legal remedies there reversing the last administration. They sought to
just reverse a range of policies without going through the
process that they had to go through. And so I just,
you know, I think that this is not going to
be an easy path because there's so much but you know,
(31:42):
we're made to do hard things the courts right now
because of the balance in Congress. The courts really are
the tool at the federal level as well as I
think being clear and you and I talked a lot
about Project twenty twenty five before the election, and we're
now seeing him accelerate try to accelerate Project twenty twenty
five now that the election has been called for him.
(32:03):
You know, this is a president elect that ran by
telling the American people that he didn't know anything about
Project twenty twenty five and sought to distance himself from
all of these unpopular, you know, these unpopular policies. And
so I do think that there's going to also be
a role for the American people to really hold him
to account. But also they're members of Congress to accounts
(32:24):
when these Project twenty twenty five policies start rolling through,
to say, wait a second, you know, this is not
actually what the American people voted for. In fact, you know,
he sought to this is himself he.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
Said, I have nothing to do for Ragic twenty twenty five.
And then, by the way, let's talk about Russ's voice.
Speaker 8 (32:41):
Well, I mean, look, either they're not slowing down at
all to seek to really accelerate Project twenty twenty five.
Russ was one of the architects of this entire extreme agenda,
which again, in poll after poll, there was a lot
of disputes over polls. Guess where there wasn't disputes over polls.
In poll after poll, conservatives, liberals, and independents all broadly
(33:04):
rejected Project twenty twenty five on the issues. But now
they're going to seek to install Russ Voyd into the
administration and he will have to be confirmed by the Senate,
and I think that's going to be really important for
Americans to make their voices heard in those confirmation battles,
especially given them mis leading nature of the campaign where
(33:25):
they really disavowed Project twenty twenty five. But the bottom
line is, we also have that blueprint for over a
year because they published it. We know what their plan is,
and we know how to argue and we know how
to bring cases against it because a number of the
things that they are proposing are just flatly unlawful, and
we're going to have to rely on our courts to
(33:45):
do the right thing too. And that's really important that
people are making sure that we're clear that we expect
our courts to protect the rights of the American people,
to protect our democratic institutions, and that is what they
are here to do, and they're going to have to
stand up to you know, stand up and do that,
which we saw in many instances last time that happened.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
So I'm wondering if you Ross Vointe is being put
in charge of budget. Yeah, will you explain why that
is and what he has the opportunity to do there?
Speaker 8 (34:14):
Well, the Office of Management and Budget is really just
like such a core office that really seeks and is
able to help define the way the federal government operates
across agencies, because it's really an agency that is cross cutting.
This is, unfortunately for the American people, the type of
position that will have a lot of influence over multiple policies.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
By controlling budget, he will have a certain sort of
ability to cut off the finances.
Speaker 8 (34:46):
Right well, and what they've suggested is that this position
would be the one that would seek to impose what
is known as Schedule F to seek to reclassify our
federal workers to make them more political, to make you know,
reclassify civil servants as political appointees, to then enable the
president to engage in mass firings. And then also this
(35:07):
office potentially could seek, through much of that work, to
undermine some of the more autonomous organizations like the consumer
financial Protection Bureaus. So now that's what they say they're
going to do again, I will just say like there
is a broad and diverse effort, and I would encourage
our listeners to go to democracy twenty twenty five dot org,
where you can see so many of the organizations and
(35:28):
groups that are lined up to really help represent the
American people. When these agencies engage in that, these offices
engage in unlawful activity to that is what they you know,
attacking our civil service and our ability of government to
deliver for people has been a censure piece of Project
twenty twenty five. And so you know, if the Senate
were to confirm us, you would really see an opportunity
(35:49):
that he would have to accelerate or seek to accelerate,
many of the harmful things in that policy.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
Yeah, it is really scary.
Speaker 4 (35:58):
It is.
Speaker 8 (35:59):
It's scary, but it should also be motivating. Trump and
the GOP have been saying they have this mandate. I
don't see that. What I saw in the election was
deep red Missouri vote for abortion access and people in Florida,
more people in Florida voting for the ballot initiative than
if I have my figures right, then they voted for
(36:20):
Donald Trump or Rond de Santis the last time, and
people voting for a candidate in President elect Trump that
blatantly throughout the campaign trail thought to deceive people about
his connections to these very people and to these very policies,
And so I think there's just a real moment for
both those of us that work in the courts, but
also for the American people and for those that are
(36:42):
going to be going into Congress to check this extremism
by staying vigilant and pushing forward. And so it is
very scary, but there's not a mandate for this extremism.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
Yeah, I'm hoping you could talk about how pushing back
in the court it's sort of the only way to
stop a lot of this stuff, right because Democrats don't
control any of the federal branches.
Speaker 8 (37:05):
Yes, and I think this is important to understand that
the administration is poised to engage in a range of
harmful activities, many of which are of those activities will
have legal problems we can sue with the ultimate goal
of stopping that harm for people in communities, and that
is always the ultimate goal. And President Biden has appointed
(37:27):
more than two hundred and twenty pro democracy judges. I
believe at the end of this administration, if you look
across the federal judiciary that you will see that the
majority of those lower court judges have been appointed by
pro democracy presidents. And I will also tell you that
our team, as well as other teams, win in front
of judges, including judges that were appointed by former President
(37:50):
Trump and more conservative presidents. So I will say the
courts remain a hugely important tool to stop some of
this behavior. But more than that, litigation has a way
of helping change behavior, even if you disregard how a
court rules right, forcing people to every time they seek
(38:12):
to harm the American people and seek to do so
outside the bounds of the law, to have to show
up in court and defend that, and to defend that publicly,
for the public to be aware of those challenges, that
is a critical, critical tool to really forcing the sort
of extreme administration to account. And so there's really important
(38:33):
impact beyond just how a judge rules. In the last administration,
last Trump administration, let me give you one example, Trump
created the Pence Cobalt Voter Commission, which was seeking to
undermine votes, are seeking votes right exactly because he didn't
like the popular vote count. Notice that no one's dispute,
Notice that no one's disputing anything now, but he didn't
like the popular vote count. Them and a range of
(38:55):
organizations including ours. I was one of the lawyers who
did this, but a range of organizations representing people in
communities suit and in the face of that avalanche of litigation,
the administration actually just abandoned their plans of the Commission.
Now I'm not again, I don't have rose colored glasses,
and I think that they're going to seek to do
a range of very harmful things and are determined to
(39:16):
do that. But we have seen time and again that
even apart from how courts are rolling, litigation is important
to force that there be some costs when extreme lawmakers
are seeking to undermine the rights and privileges and well
being the American people. And that's what we're committed to doing,
and that's what hundreds of organizations are committed to doing.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
Yeah, you are faced with this because you're in the
court and your lawyer and your organization is faced with this.
Speaker 2 (39:44):
It is very stressful.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
Give us a two second tip because a lot of
people who listen to those feel things the way that
I feel things and the way that you feel things, like,
we really take this personally, we really care, which is
I always say, like the worst thing about.
Speaker 2 (39:58):
Me is I believe everything I see on television.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
So like, I actually I actually like think this is
a real crisis.
Speaker 2 (40:05):
I don't think this is a game.
Speaker 8 (40:06):
I think we're a huge crisis.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
Yeah, we're going to see if our institutions hold or not.
And I think it's a real fifty to fifty question.
And the best thing going for us is that Trump
is erratic, and you know, he's nominating people who are
completely unreasonable. Why do you worry about Pam Bondi because
she is not as problematic as Matt Gates, but she's
still very problematic.
Speaker 8 (40:28):
Well, I worry about so many of the people, and
Bondi is one. These are people that have made their
careers not engaging in the you know, just amazing opportunity
that we all have as people to help protect people's rights,
to ensure that our government is actually working for people
(40:48):
and delivering the things that we need. But this is
someone that's long been associated with a you know, a
quite extreme age, Inda, And so I think that you know,
we're the Department of Justice holds and just an incredibly
important role in American society and then protecting our rights.
And when you look at Project twenty twenty five, you
see that there are a range of plans that this
(41:09):
incoming administration has for perverting that institution and seeking to
weaponize it against the American people. I haven't seen evidence that,
and I'm an open minded person, so I'm going to
be listening and watching in the days ahead. But I
hadn't seen evidence that she is the type of person
(41:29):
that would buck that political and ideological pressure that we
see and know that the incoming administration would provide. And
so the question is will she be an accomplice and
seeking to accelerate some of the most harmful policies in
Project T only twenty five, or would she be a
good steward of the Department of Justice. I don't have
evidence to show me it to suggests that she would
(41:50):
be a good steward of that, but we will wait
at watch. But I think it's concerting when you look
at what they want to do to that institution, and
I think it's high concerning that. Like they've also sought
to prevent the release of information about Matt Gates, which
is important for American people to know and understand.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
And I think that's a really good point.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
And I think that the one bright spot here is
that you can absolutely bully.
Speaker 2 (42:16):
These people into doing the right.
Speaker 1 (42:18):
Thing if you're able to get their attention, and it's
going to be four fucking years of.
Speaker 8 (42:23):
That, and we saw in the campaign. I don't think
that it was a great day for Trump and his
associates when they had to come out and disavow and
distance themselves from Project twenty twenty five. I think it's
deceptive and it's consistent with this pattern of conduct we
see from him. But really it became such a problem
because the vast majority of American people in this country
(42:44):
reject that extremism and it is going to be incumbent
up on all of us. Yes, there's a Republican majority
in the Senate that there are senators that will be
held to account in two years.
Speaker 2 (42:54):
Tom Tillis in North Carolina.
Speaker 8 (42:56):
Wow, here's an old war story. You remember in the
first early days of the Trump administration the last time
that Trumps was hell bent on repealing the Affordable Care
Act and thought they had the majority in Congress to
do that. And I will tell yeah, you know, many
of us there would have been legal problems with some
of the implications of that, and so there, you know,
(43:17):
there was a court strategy there, but we never had
to go to court because Congress ultimately did not deliver
on what President Trump wanted them to do, because the
American people pushed back. And that is the kind of
retail level advocacy It is going to be required to
save some of the institutions in our country in order
(43:37):
to ensure that at some point we can be back
on the track of moving forward as opposed to just
preventing a backslide.
Speaker 2 (43:44):
Yep, yes, yes, yes, But.
Speaker 8 (43:46):
For your listeners, I think, like I know, we're all scared,
and everybody is. You know, it's just a highly emotional situation,
and we're moving into the holidays, but there is a
lot we can do, and we just have to remember
that we cannot give up our own power. And so
lawyers are going to be doing that every single day
on behalf of people in communities that people can do
(44:06):
that too. And these extremists do not get to write
the last chapter or the next chapter of what happens
in this country. The American people do. And it is
up to all of us to help galvanize people. And
there's a lot of disaffected people who our institutions haven't
delivered for, and our government hasn't delivered for and I
think you see set in the voting patterns, and it's
(44:27):
time to show up and do real things and to
motivate people to engage in that work, to show up
and do the real things. And that's what we're going
to really be focused on.
Speaker 2 (44:37):
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Please come back.
Speaker 8 (44:40):
Thanks Molly a moment, Jesse Cannon, my Jen Fast.
Speaker 3 (44:49):
One of the things that is just so sad that
we kind of knew would happen if mister Trump got
re elected is well, the racists, the Nazis, the clan
type people they will be, and we're seeing it play out.
Speaker 4 (45:02):
What are you see in here?
Speaker 2 (45:03):
I did not see it coming. Oh boy, oh a
group of neil. But if you can't laugh about Nazis,
who can you laugh about? Neo Nazi groups?
Speaker 1 (45:12):
Scattered flyers across lawns and doorsteps in three Waterloo, Iowa
neighborhoods just before veterans state, the Handouds offered a chilling
assessment of the group's proximity in capital letters, we are
your neighbors. We are the random strangers holding the door
open for you. We are everywhere. I'm not sure they are.
A week later, a dozen people march through with parts
(45:34):
of Columbus, Ohio that are known for arts and culture,
or carrying Nazi flags, using it bullhorn to shout racist
slurs against Jews and people of color. You'll notice they
also wore masks.
Speaker 2 (45:46):
You know why they.
Speaker 4 (45:47):
Wore masks, Please tell me?
Speaker 2 (45:49):
Because they were scared of being identified.
Speaker 1 (45:53):
And that, my friends, is why if you're scared of
being identified, perhaps you shouldn't be doing it.
Speaker 2 (46:00):
It's a good rule for life. I think that's it.
Speaker 1 (46:03):
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.
Speaker 2 (46:22):
Thanks for listening.
Host
Molly Jong-Fast
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