April 26, 2024 • 52 mins
Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick examines the Supreme Court’s hearing on what care pregnant patients can be provided in emergency rooms in states with draconian anti-abortion laws. Think Like an Economist’s Justin Wolfers explains how inflation in insurance markets is affecting the economy. Semafor’s Dave Weigel details the weird Electoral College move Republicans are trying in Nebraska.
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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 Justice Clarence Thomas has chosen not
to recuse himself from another January sixth case. We have
the experts here, We have like people who really know
what the folks they're talking about. Slate Dahlia Lithwick gives
(00:22):
us the really the four to one one on Mtala,
the Supreme Court's hearing on what happens to pregnant women
in emergency, And let me just tell you this Supreme Court,
you can't even believe how much they suck except the
Liberals anyway. Then we have Semaphore's Dave Weigel about the
weird stuff that Republicans are trying to pull in the
(00:43):
state of Nebraska. But first we have the host of
the Think Like an Economists podcast, University of Michigan, Professor
Justin Wolfers. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Justin Wolfers.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Fast Politics and Fast Economics. Molly.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
Full disclosure, you are not in the United States right now.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Full disclosure. The American election campaign is so much more
enjoyable from Australia.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Full disclosure. That is very annoying to me. You need
to have skin in the games. You're coming back souit right.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Yeah. Also, I'll tell you I'm up early at six
am to talk to your listeners. So that's my Schemeia, Molly, So.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Let's talk about the American economy. Is it too good?
And how is that bad for Joe Biden?
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Did I wake up at a parallel universe of like
the universe Bucks News? I love it?
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Is it too good? How is that bad for Joe Biden?
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Good? There's two things in the world, Molly. There's economic statistics,
which I think correspond to reality, and there's the vibe
and how people talk.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Oh, the vibes. Let's talk vibes.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Okay. The story of twenty twenty three. The most talked
about economic story in twenty twenty three was why is
the US economy about to fall into a recession? And
I did one hundred thousand interviews on that, and I said, no,
it's not. People said, why would you say otherwise? And
I said, because the economic statistics keep telling me the
(02:20):
economy is growing faster than it normally does, and unemployments
near a fifty year low, and inequality is falling and
wages are rising faster than prices, and people still looked
at me baffled, and they said, but it feels so bad.
There was a moment, though, I'm going to date it
for you December twenty twenty three, maybe December twenty eight,
(02:43):
get really precise, or I heard a crack, and that
crack was public opinions starting to turn around, and a
few people started to look out the window and notice
that they were better off than they were four years ago.
They started to respond to surveys that way, and that
led journalists to stop talking down the economy quite so
much and so look to vibeate perfect There is still
(03:06):
a lot of resentment about inflation. There are a lot
of issues I think being stoked by partisans, but I
get a sense that public opinion is starting to catch
up to economic reality.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
Which is pretty fucking core.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
All Right, Did the Inflation Reduction Act reduce inflation? Oh?
Speaker 2 (03:27):
What a topsy to the upside down world we live in.
The Inflation Reduction Act should have been called something like
Infrastructure and Green Transition Act, right, I.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Mean, they just made shit up. But I respect the
hell out of it because it's like very kind of
Republican just to make it whatever you think it should
be called.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
It really is a symbol of our times. The problem
that they faced was that Joe Manchin doesn't like all
the things that mainstream Democrats like, and Joe Manchin hates inflation.
They couldn't get any of this past without Joe Manchin.
In fact, they thought they'd get none of it passed.
And then Mansin essentially said, shave a few things off
(04:12):
the edges, you get rid of the things that I hate,
and form me into thinking it's about reducing inflation, and
I'll sign on. So there might be an official White
House answer that pretends that the Inflation Reduction Act reduced inflation,
but at the very least in the short run, it didn't.
There is actually a deeper debate. So the Inflation Reduction
(04:32):
Act put a lot more spending into the economy. Typically,
more spending leads to more demand, which leads to higher
prices and more inflation. There's a different perspective, which is
over the medium run, what matters is our capacity to produce.
If you boost supply, then we can make more stuff
(04:52):
without bottlenecks arising. And so you can think about the
infrastructure spending in particular as being about boosting the economy
productive capacity, which will allow this boom to continue a
lot longer. So the inflation reduction. I probably did nothing
to reduce inflation in the year which was past, but
maybe part of our longer term growth strategy that allows
(05:14):
this little engine that could to keep on chugging up
the hill and keep growing.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
That's an interesting answer.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
So explain to me how the American economy is better
than all the other economies.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Look, there's lots of ways in which it's worse. We
don't have much of a social safety net.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
Oh oh yes, No, it's a terrible place to live
and we're all going to die.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
But I mean, our economy is better than other people.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Well, Mollie, could I just take a sidebar?
Speaker 3 (05:40):
Yes, yes, yes, I.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Believe firmly as an economist we should never talk about
the economy without understanding that it's what we're talking about
is people's lives. We can't say our lives suck, that
our economy is good. If our lives suck, our economy sucks. Okay,
Having said that, I think the question you meant to
ask is how is our econom me outperforming the others?
Right now? Yes, our economy bounced back from COVID further
(06:06):
and faster and more dynamically than other industrialized nations. While
we have inflation, and Republicans would have you believe it's
Joe Biden's inflation. Inflation is lower and has fallen faster
than in other industrialized countries. So somehow Joe Biden caused
worse inflation in other countries. If that Republican point were true,
(06:28):
the US is at or near a fifty year low
in unemployment, whereas some other European countries in particular are
slowing down. Now, I don't want to put too much
blame there. They've also had to deal with Putin and
the war in Ukraine to a much greater extent than
we have. But if you looked at International League tables
and you said which economy has done best since twenty
(06:50):
twenty one, has improved the most, you would say the
United States. Now that's a really hard political point for
the president to People are kind of angry, less angry,
I think, but somewhat angry. And you could say, well,
you think you're pissed. How do you think the Germans
or the Brits feel right now or the Canadians. It's
(07:12):
less bad here than elsewhere. It's a hard story to tell,
But why is that. Look, there's a really big difference
in this economy between what people say and what they do. So, yes,
you can turn on Fox News and hear about all
the terrible stories of people's lives. Or you could look
at public opinion polls which suggest they're not really convinced
that Biden is a better steward for the economy. Or
(07:34):
you could look at polls that suggest that they're somewhat
unhappy about the state of the economy. Or you could
look at what they do. If people were worried about
the future, they wouldn't be spending money. They'd be saving
for a rainy day. They're doing the opposite. If people
were worried about the economy, they wouldn't be switching jobs.
But they're switching jobs as if they believe that now
is a great time to go out and find opportunity.
(07:55):
And here's the thing I love, and it's the story
we haven't heard enough about, which is, if people were
worried about the economy, they wouldn't be starting new businesses
because they think that most businesses fail. But in fact,
we're in the midst of the greatest boom in new
business formation I've ever seen in the United States. People
are starting businesses at absolute record rates. In twenty twenty one,
(08:18):
we thought, well, maybe this is just a post pandemic boom,
And in twenty twenty two we told the same story,
and in twenty twenty three we started to believe this
might be real, and by twenty twenty four it seems
like it's absolutely an essential part of the story, which
is we're in an absolute boom of new businesses starting
new businesses, forming entrepreneurship, that people are optimistic about the
(08:40):
future and building their own new economy. So people smell
opportunity out there.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
That's interesting and why why is.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
A really hard question. If I knew the way, I'd
be one of those entrepreneurs out there starting a business boom.
But I think what it tells us is that people
feel this is a good environment for doing business. And
that's a really important point because you think about the
traditional Republican heartland. It's the folks who believe in small business,
(09:09):
who want people to be able to pull themselves up
by their bootstraps and so on. They've never done it
at greater rates than they're doing it right now. You
can't complain about the state of the economy on the
one hand and then start a new business the next
day on the other. It's a tremendous act of optimism
and faith.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
It's a really good point and also so interesting.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Let's just talk for a second about kind of what
indicators are coming up now and where we are with
the United States economy.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Yeah, so the biggest recent news has been that inflation
has fallen dramatically from nine percent down to three percent,
and it got us all very excited that it would
just continue to magically drop, which has been a beautiful
thing to watch without needing a recession for that to occur.
(10:02):
And we got a little over our skis on that,
I'm afraid. And so we've had three readings in a
row which are consistent with inflation having fallen to what
i'd call nearly normal rates, the high twos or low threes,
so the sort of rates that you wouldn't really spend
too much time worrying about. But it hasn't kept falling
(10:22):
at the to all the way down to normal, which
is what we've been hoping for. That in turn has
led the Fed, which had previously promised or not promised,
indicated that it was on a path to cut interest
rates at least three times this year. They've sort of said,
whoa nellie, inflation's not falling fast enough. We're going to
keep interest rates a little higher for a little longer.
(10:43):
And that in turn has been the latest bout of pessimism.
Maybe interest rates are going to stay high. And this
is where you were right, Molly, to say that what's
happening there is the economy in some level is a
little too hot, at least for the Fed's comfort. That
we are getting so many people into job that it's
worried that may cause bottlenecks. So part of this is
(11:04):
saying that the actual stuff we do, that side of
things is getting better, perhaps so much better, so much faster,
that they're a little more worried about inflation. To your
listeners who are worried about all of this, I feel
your pain, but I just want to counsel patients. What
the Fed is saying is not that interest rates aren't
coming down, but they aren't coming down for a few
more months. So this is a relief delayed rather than
(11:27):
relief denied. The only person who this might really hurt
is Joe Biden, who was hoping to be able to
tell that story before the election.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Do you think that the rates are going to cop
before the election now?
Speaker 3 (11:39):
Like in a September A.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
There had been a lot of hope we'd be looking
at our first rate cut at the next FED meeting.
That now seems to be off the table, and so
that would move from three rate cuts to two this year.
And really, people are people know, people are going about
their lives, markets are on edge. If the inflation reading
starts to turn out a little better, it might turn
(12:02):
out we get that at least one rate cup before
the election. But if not, then the Fed faces this
very awkward dance, which is, yes, it'll want to cut
interest rates by late twenty twenty four, I think probably
no matter what. But will it want to sneak that
in before the election or after the election. It wants
to pretend that it's unaware of when election day is,
(12:24):
but it also wants to look like it's independent of
the White House, and often that means not doing anything
during an election campaign. And so I'm awfully glad I'm
not running the FED. In the weeks leading up to
the election.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
Yeah, I bet so.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
Then let's talk though about some of the sort of
economic news that's happened with the Biden administration. That has
been good news about environmental spending and you know that
kind of grows like Chips, the manufacturing stuff.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
I mean that has helped the American economy.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Right, Chips is two things. It's a short investment, which is,
we're going to give a bunch of money to try
and be a leader in certain new tech industries. And
when that money goes out the door, you've literally got
to build the factories. And so what's happening right now
is we're literally building the factories, and so construction, for instance,
(13:17):
in certain types of construction actually moving pretty strongly right now.
But that's not what the Chips actor is about. It's
really about you make a long term investment because you
want to be a leader, not for affecting the state
of the economy in mid twenty twenty four, but because
you want a layer foundation for growth over the ensuing decade.
And so it's something of an experiment. Can we boost
(13:38):
the industries we think of the industries of the future,
and will we succeed at being leaders as a result
of this big government investment. And that's a conversation I'm
delighted to have with you, Moali, But we're going to
have to have that one in twenty thirty four rather
than twenty twenty.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
Four, right too soon to know how that works out.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
I want to address a talking point. I bet a
lot of listeners hearing, and I just want to give
them the facts so that they can be the one
most informed ones around the water cool Two criticisms that
I hear most about the state of the economy. The
first is inflation is killing it. Well, inflation is back
down to nearly normal levels. And then people say, well,
priss are still high at the grocery store, and they
(14:18):
absolutely are. Although grocery store prices haven't been rising over
the past in the year, they'll say, yes, but the
price is still high. And that's when I remind you
that what matters is where wages are compared to prices. Right,
if wages go up ten percent and prices go up
ten percent, everyone comes out of even. In fact, over
the four years at last, the four years since the
(14:40):
pre pandemic, I think that's the best starting point. Prices
have gone up twenty percent. The pain is real, but
average wages have gone up twenty two percent, so wages
are actually pulled their head of prices, people's material standard
of living, what they can buy with their pay packet.
There's actually risen. Now you might say, oh, only two percent,
that's not much. Rising by two two percent over four
(15:01):
years is rising half a percent per year, which also
sounds like not much. But that's actually dramatically faster than
the average over the preceding four or five decades. So yes,
prices are rising, but wages are keeping up. Then let
me address the really untold story, which is lots of
people fear that all those gains are going to the rich.
And they've got every reason to fear that, because that's
(15:22):
been the story of the American economy every decade since
the nineteen seventies onward. The pie gets bigger, but the
slice of the rich gets bigger, so my slice ain't
getting bigger. The last four years or the last three
years has been the first time in my lifetime as
an economist in which that's turned around. This is the
first time for most of your listeners in their lifetimes
(15:42):
that wages at the bottom end, wages for working in
middle class Americans are rising faster than they are for
the rich, and so everything I just told you about
wages moving ahead of prices is doubly true for the
folks who need it. So this is and I can't
pinpoint why, but this is for the first time in
most of our lifetimes, the first time that wage gains
(16:04):
are going to those who need the most. That's a
really exciting story, but it's one I just haven't heard enough.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
Of, and it is this idea that the middle class
is growing.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
The middle class is growing because working class folks who
are earning enough money to join the middle class. Part
of this is the Great Resort after COVID that a
lot of people change jobs, and they moved out of
dead end jobs. They looked for opportunities and they found them.
And so a lot of the job growth has been
in higher quality, higher paying jobs. People aren't just getting
(16:39):
higher pay, they're also getting better conditions. I think a
lot of it remains to be seen. Economists are going
to spend decades figuring out the why. But you're right
to say we have the most pro labor president in memory.
But it's an economy where the wages of folks who
write newspaper headlines. Folks like me who were pine about
(17:01):
the economy, and folks like you who talk at Molly,
I assume that you're talking cocktail parties for a living?
Is that right?
Speaker 3 (17:09):
Yes? Pretty much.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
The economy for those folks hasn't delivered for the chattering classes, right.
You and I, I'm sure, are in the top quarter
of the income distribution. But for everyone else, it's growing
and really delivering at a much much faster rate. And
that may be part of why the chattering coming out
of the chattering classes isn't as optimistic as the reality
(17:30):
that people are seeing in their lives.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
So interesting. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
Justin Wolfers can't wait for you to be back stateside
with us.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Always a joy, Molly.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Springs here and I bet you are trying to look fashionable,
So why not pick up some fashionable all new Fast
Politics merchandise. We just opened a news store with all
new designs just for you.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
Get t shirts, hats, and top bags.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
To grab some, head to fastpolitics dot com. Dahlia Leswick
is a senior editor at Slate and the author of
Lady Justice, Women, The Law and the Battle to Save America.
Welcome Back, too fast politics. My I want to say,
you might.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
I don't know. You're everything to me, Dahlia.
Speaker 4 (18:26):
And you are everything to me, but you make.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Me understand stuff, whereas I feel like I make things
more complicated. Let's do two minutes on the rage we
feel about m Dala, can we sure?
Speaker 4 (18:39):
I mean, it was yesterday's rage, Mollie, and I've sort
of like it's integrated. It's like in every blood vessel
there's like m Tala rage. But we can do a
little quickie. I think the one thing I would say
about M Tala for folks who have not been really.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
Clocking it, which a lot of people haven't, I think.
Speaker 4 (18:58):
It's the most important case that nobody knows about. I
think that, you know, we expended so much energy on
that MiFi pristone case, and I know you and I
talked about it, and I think in a lot of ways,
a m Tala is a bigger deal abortion case. And
b I think everybody kind of missed it. Like I
(19:21):
don't know why it was a sleeper.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
Case because they just put it in that they just
slip it by. You know, it's like EPA versus West Virginia.
This Supreme Court has done such a multitude of crazy things.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
But what I think is interesting.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
About that case, besides the fact that the three liberal
justices all were so angry, you could.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
Hear it in their voices.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
I mean, I listened to these arguments as much as possible.
I was surprised, like I could hear their voices shaking
at different times.
Speaker 4 (19:52):
Let's do one quick minute on what the case is.
EMTALA stands for the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act,
and it is a nineteen eighty six statute that was
passed because people were dumping patients. Emergency rooms would get
patients in America, only in America, particularly women of color,
particularly poor women of color, often who were having pregnancy
(20:16):
related crises, and the ers were like nah and sending
them somewhere else, right. So m TALA essentially says that
any hospital that receives Medicare funds, and that means virtually
every hospital has to provide what's called stabilizing care to
a patient if their life or their health is at risk,
(20:37):
and if they can't do that, they have to provide
safe transport to a different hospital that can't. Am TALA
was essentially the way of saying, do not take people
who are dying in your er and say you can't
treat them.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
Right, so leaving people to die is a no go
if you're a doctor, correct, which.
Speaker 4 (20:57):
By the way, let's be super clear, Molly, doctors are
trained to do this. They are actually trained to not
let people die. And am TALA was a way of
saying we're going to make sure that you don't let
people die.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
In itself, completely insane that it had to be said.
Speaker 4 (21:13):
But yes, yes, it's in conflict with a bunch of laws,
in this case, an Idaho law that essentially says, no,
you don't have to provide stabilizing care if there's an
abortion involved, then there are often often abortions involved.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
Right.
Speaker 4 (21:30):
People come with topic pregnancies, they come with rupturing organs
or membranes, they come you know, they're hemorrhaging, their septic,
they're bleeding out. So we don't have to wait till
the person is going to die, except Idaho has a
new abortion trigger law that says, yes, no abortions unless
that patient is imminently going to die in front of you.
(21:51):
And so there's a huge gap between the Idaho law
and MTALA. And there's a little thing called preemption doctrine
that says that if there's a federal law and of
state law and they are in conflict, the federal law
wins because otherwise right every state is doing its own thing.
This should have been an easy case, but as you said,
it was not an easy case because we heard just
(22:13):
a festival, a circus, a cornucopia of insanity from male
justices who are like chin stroking and being like, well,
I don't know about this. This seems to violate the
spending clause, this seems to violate their state's rights. And
the thing that you're saying, and this is really important,
(22:35):
is like women are dying, like they are dying. There
have been cases around the country. Idaho itself has had
two helicopter not one, not two, but six women to
other hospitals since this law went into effect, and the
female justices are pissed.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
I've heard that number that six women were ha to
be helicoptered out of state. But it's important to realize,
like every minute they are in agonizing pain, closer to death,
they have to be helicopter right because their health.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
Is so fragile.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
They could just have the procedure in the hospital, except
this crazy law means they have to be helicoptered out
of state.
Speaker 4 (23:13):
One other point, which is this crazy Idaho law says
that a physician who performs an abortion unless it is
quote necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman
faces two to five years in jail and loss of
her licensure. So this is no joke. This is these
(23:33):
doctors who, as I said, these er doctors. And we
had an amazing Derek Cass on my show last week
just explaining like, this is what we are trained to do,
this is what stabilizing care looks like. And to have
to stand back because a bunch of hospital lawyers are
going to come after your license and put you in
jail because you said, you know what, I actually think
(23:56):
organ damage, like the permanent loss of your fritility is
enough for me to intervene, and the Idaho law says no.
And so I just think the zeitgeist that you and
I were feeling is not just like Katanji Brown Jackson,
who never lets herself get mad, just almost vibrating the
Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogger, who never gets rattled. Every single
(24:20):
one of these women, including Amy Cony Barrett in this case,
who was just utterly horrified at the inhumanity that she
was hearing from her colleagues. Every single one of them
was just like, women are dying. This is what it
looks like. There is an objective standard of care. Please
don't gaslight us and tell us that there's no daylight
(24:43):
between the Idaho law and the federal law. Because six
women were helicoptered out of Idaho, and so it was
just a horrifying, horrifying performance. And this is the last
thing I guess I would just say. Throughout the argument,
which went on for almost two hours, every doctor was
referenced as heat and the nurses were referenced as she
(25:04):
and as my friend Caroline sent in a text today,
do these male justices believe that all dogs are boys
and all cats are girls?
Speaker 1 (25:13):
Probably yes is the answer, but yes. What I thought
was amazing we heard was that we heard the three
liberal justices who were all women, and then immediately Alito
was in there right like.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
The first, you know, just right in there.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
So that primed us that Idaho versus United States, I
feel like, really primed us for today because we all
knew having heard yesterday that Alito and Thomas were going
to give their guy a pass no matter what because
they watch enough Fox News, so their brains and again
we don't know if they watch Fox News, but whatever
has made their brains like this can only be Fox News.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
So let's talk about the immunity case today.
Speaker 4 (25:56):
Right, I mean, this is probably the single most important case,
I mean certainly of the term possibly of our lifetimes.
And this is essentially the case that was you know,
Jack Smith's absolutely lean and winnable case that was being
brought in Judge Chuckkin Tanya Chuckkin's court in Washington, d C.
(26:19):
About Trump's efforts to set aside the twenty twenty election
and all the things he did, right, fake slates of
electors calling state legislators, lying to the head of the
RNC and saying like, oh, you know, we've got ample fraud,
so make sure you line up these fake electors. You know,
(26:40):
going to fire people at the Justice Department because they
weren't with him on this plan. All this stuff, open
and shutcase, very clean, and Trump comes to the court
with this claim of quote absolute immunity, just complete blanket
immunity from criminal prosecution. Ironically, the claim is unless you
(27:00):
impeached me, which you may recallturing the impeachment.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
It was like, oh, seemed to remember you do.
Speaker 4 (27:06):
This in the criminal process, not through impeachment. But here
we are, and so this should have been an easy case.
The DC Circuit Court handed down an incredibly tight across
ideological lines, like absolutely no to blanket immunity. Famously, everyone remembers.
One of the judges at that appeal said, are you
(27:26):
saying the President could like call on Seal Team six
to assassinate arrival And the answer was like, well, kind
of depends on the circumstances. The court was horrified, all
three judges again all women. If you're just gonna make
the point about women, all three women saying like, this
is an absurd claim of absolute blanket immunity. Absolutely not.
The Supreme Court could have just given a summary affirments
(27:49):
when that came down in February, the case would have
gone to trial last month, but no, the Supreme Court
agreed to hear it and then docketed it for today,
which is the very very last oral argument of the terms.
So they slow walked it and still had the case
been decided quickly, even in the next couple of weeks,
we might have still had that case in Judge Chutkins Court.
(28:12):
But as you say, Mollie, today was just another festival
of chin stroking questions about you know, rogue prosecutors going
after poor confused presidents who made a mistake.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
I want to talk about justice. So, tomay Er, is
it plausible that it's within his presidential right to create
a fraudulent state of electors?
Speaker 3 (28:36):
The lawyers are sure.
Speaker 4 (28:37):
Yeah, No, he was pretty clear. This was John Sower,
who was Trump's attorney at the Appeals court as well,
who said the scale team sixth thing. And yes, when
Sodomiora asked this morning, could Trump order someone to assassinate arrival, yes,
could he you know, order a coup? Yes? Depends on
the circumstances, but yes, if you really want, I mean,
(29:01):
just depends on these circumstances. And again that kind of sneaky.
You know, he could be impeached for it and removed.
And you know, this brought about the whole weight. But
what if he's not president anymore? Like, what if this
happens as it did in you know, the last weeks
of his presidency? And I guess I don't want to
put too fine a point on this, but we got
so bogged down in again Justices Gorsi, Justice Kavanaugh, Justice Alito,
(29:28):
just Chin stroking questions about you know deep state, you know,
bad actors in the Justice Department prosecuting with you know,
over zealous Sage statutes. And it literally turned into this
kind of crazy referendum of what would be worse for
America to have a president who was like a little
(29:50):
bit afraid because over zealous prosecutors would come after him
and there's a thousand layers of protection to make sure
that doesn't happen, or as just as Jackson said, you know,
basically operating a criminal enterprise the Oval.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
Office with impunity.
Speaker 4 (30:08):
And I think we had at least four, maybe five
votes for the proposition that would be much worse for
poor old presidents to face mean prosecutors. So I think
at minimum I counted five, I think votes to kick
this back, to send it back to the district court
for more findings.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
And which is a win for Trump.
Speaker 4 (30:28):
Right, because if what we care about is the shot clock, right,
if we care about is getting this thing done before
the election, if this under any set of questions, whether
it's what is an official act or what does the
president's mental state have to be or any of the
arkhana that came up today. But any of that going
back to the district court means this thing doesn't get
(30:49):
started until after the election. In other words, it's pointless.
And that was a win for Trump exactly.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
And I feel like you and I who listened to them,
oh oka is the day before, thought these guys are
going to just do the most partisan thing they can
possibly do, because we had heard them for four hours
the day before just basically say that women should die
in order to protect their idea of.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
Fetal rights I mean an embryonic personhood.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
I mean, it just was in my mind the idea
that they would do anything that wasn't just absolutely the
most partisan hackey thing.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
I would have been shocked.
Speaker 4 (31:30):
So here, I think, my friend is where you and
I slightly differ because I think I drank enough Scotis
kool aid. Right, this is my job. I've been like
right feeding at the trough of Scotis kool aid for
like almost twenty five years. And I made the error,
and I'd made it a year ago. I said, look,
there's two real Muga justices, and it's Thomas and Alito,
(31:53):
and we know how Thomas feels his wife was involved
in this thing and he should have recused. But I
just really can convinced myself that Justice Kavanaugh, Justice Barrett
certainly the chief Justice. I didn't know what to do
with Justice Gorsich, but I thought they would be like
sort of uninterested in the proposition of November being the
(32:13):
last free and fair elections we ever have.
Speaker 3 (32:16):
Like I convinced myself.
Speaker 4 (32:18):
I really thought they'd be like listen, I'm for crazy,
I'm for Fedzock, I'm for fetal personhood, like I'm for
dismantling the entire administrative state and putting guns in the
hands of all of those embryonic babies. Like I really
thought they're there. But are they there for like a
crazy lunatic making up fake election results and lying about
(32:41):
it and getting states on board and calling Georgia and saying,
I just need you to find me this many votes. No,
I thought that that was not true, and after today,
it certainly feels to me. And to be clear, I
don't think there are five votes for the batshit blanket
immunity claims.
Speaker 3 (32:59):
But the that.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
Shit blanket immunity claim was to get here like they
did this because they knew that they could get to
a place where they got some immunity. They knew they
weren't going to be able to get badget The thing
I'm struck by when you talk about this is how
much the people I know who believe in the court.
I mean, because I think about George Conway, my friend
(33:20):
who may or may not be involved with having put
a lot of those people in the court. You know,
he was like, no, they won't do this, this is
too crazy or even justice letic. These people are like no,
because they believe in the sanctity of the court.
Speaker 3 (33:35):
But the problem is it's just a partisan institution.
Speaker 4 (33:38):
Now I think it's partisan, and I think those of
us who were saying post dubs, oh okay, this is
just like a maga court, Like this is just you know,
the most wellly conservative court probably in American history, but
certainly since before the New Deal. I think that we
thought it was partisan and yet would put democracy itself first.
(34:01):
And now I think this is like not even about partisanship, Molly,
this is about convincing themselves. And we had an argument
last week that was about you know, one of the
criminal charges that a whole bunch of the January sixth
insurrectionists have been charged under And you would have thought,
listening to that argument that the bulk of the justices
(34:23):
were fully on board with the like these were just
like hapless tourists who happened to, like, you know, pick
up a stake and a gun on their way into
the Capitol and they had no idea what they're doing.
So I think they have moved from kind of being conservative,
like you say, Fedsock, George Conway. Conservatives. That's fine, That's
(34:44):
what I thought this was. I think they genuinely do
not think that Donald Trump was a threat to democracy
on January sixth, twenty twenty one, and clearly the bulk
of them do not think that he will be a
threat to democracy in November of twenty twenty before. And
I don't know what they're reading.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
Yeah, this was so helpful and important.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
I hope you'll come back always. Dave Wigall is a
reporter at Semaphore. Welcome back, Too Fast Politics.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
Dave, it's good to be back. Thank you, so excited
to have you.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
And there's just a lot of really interesting stuff that
one of the things you do is you like crisscross
the country and write about a lot of really interesting stuff.
So Dave talk to us about what's happening in Nebraska
and this electoral college drama.
Speaker 5 (35:38):
Yeah, so right now, Nebraska and may and both give
two electoral votes whoever wins the state one electoral vote
each for the winner of the congressional districts. And in
twenty sixteen and twenty Donald Trump won the more conservative
district in Maine, the mo rural district, the one does
not on Portland. In twenty twenty and two thousand and eight,
(35:59):
Democrats carried the second district of Nebraska, which has always
been centered Nomaha. Republicans have redrawn it a couple times
to make it more conservative at bringing in other parts
of the state, splitting it up a little bit, but
it's still just without getting into the entire modern history
of the Republican Party, it's full of the kind of
voters who would vote Repblican ten years ago but not now.
Speaker 3 (36:18):
Country club Republicans.
Speaker 5 (36:20):
Yeah, and there's an effort under way by the state
Republican party, the governor a large number of senators. In
Nebraska is a single unicameral state legislature. When it's the
senator to change this and say, okay, we're going to
go like the other forty eight states and just assign
the electors based on whoever wins Nebraska, which would mean effectively,
(36:42):
since Nebraska's not gone democratic and generations, that it just
gives five electoral votes to Republicans. They're pretty explicit about that,
and it was Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA, Turning
Point of Action.
Speaker 3 (36:52):
They got this idea from Charlie Kirk.
Speaker 5 (36:55):
Yeah, I've been describing it backwards because where we are
now is that Governor Jim Pillin needs to call a
special session to do this. He said he will call
a special session to deal with some other tax issues.
And this cause began right before the end of the term,
the legislative term. Charlie Kirk and his producers realized this
was possible, you could get Republicans to change this law
(37:17):
in time for the election, and they just they built
very quickly and they have a big, good organizing capacity.
They built a operation to call the legislators, called the
state senators, tell them to do this, Call the state
party chair who was on board. They had a rally
before the end of the session and for probably too
boring for podcast reasons.
Speaker 2 (37:36):
That will get all of the funey was bad.
Speaker 5 (37:38):
They couldn't get it done right before the end of
the session. But the government can call this anytime he wants.
And the question is how much would he want to
call a session in Lincoln a lot of potential protesters
nearby to change the change their electoral system to help
Donald drop.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
That's what that's what he would do.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
Right, And do you think he's going to do it?
Speaker 5 (37:57):
They're holding some of their cards closer now. He has
repeatedly said he wants to until they run out of time,
and running down of time would be ended the summer
a little bit earlier. Bro, they have to do this
by July until the deadline runs out.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
I'm not rolling it out.
Speaker 5 (38:11):
I think they were surprised by how quickly Democrats countermobilized,
and they were surprised by the Republican reaction. Some Republicans,
not many, but enough to block it said they didn't
like the way this process is being handled. So what
they need to do is work on this. Republican centers
he didn't want to cram this at the end of session,
say well, you want to cram this in the other session,
(38:32):
but you should be on board with doing a special
session to get this done.
Speaker 3 (38:36):
They need it.
Speaker 5 (38:37):
Just there are independently minded Republican state centers who say,
this seems a little much. Maybe we can do it
for a mixed cycle. And so I'd be very surprised,
given this momentum if Nebraska in twenty twenty eight does
the electoral college split, given that that that area keeps
treading democratic for now, probably not, but I'm not rolling
it out. The organizers of this like that a lot
(38:59):
of the media has already said this isn't happening, we
move on to another.
Speaker 1 (39:02):
Story, right, because they feel like to sort of if
the attention goes away, maybe they could do it quietly.
Speaker 3 (39:07):
But if it's going to be I mean, that's something
I'm struck by.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
I'm wondering if you could talk about this a second,
because one of the things we've seen again and again
is like there's been a sort of like pundit pooh
poohing of special elections.
Speaker 3 (39:21):
Well, it's a special election, it's low turnout.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
But one of the things I'm struck by is that
these elections people are actually paying attention.
Speaker 3 (39:31):
Right, So the problem for the.
Speaker 1 (39:34):
Republicans in Nebraska was that people were paying attention, and
part of the problem for Democrats in twenty sixteen was
that people just assumed Hillary would win and so they
weren't paying attention. Do you think this theory sort of
holds water, that Democrats have a certain level of attention
and anxiety that were not. I mean, the Republicans are
(39:55):
trying to gin it up on that side, but I'm
not seeing it the same way.
Speaker 5 (39:59):
Yeah, and it's about how their coalition has changed. This
is conventional wisdom, but I agree with it that since
twenty really fourteen, but Trump sped this up, more college
educated professionals who used to vote Republican vote Democratic, and
those voters always were the most likely to vote in elections.
This has been a problem for well, lots of people,
but for the left for a very long time. So
(40:20):
much left wing organizing for generations has been about getting
the working class black voter, working class wive voter to say, no,
elections really matter and you should turn out. And that
is not a problem that people have two very well
off college professors or bankers or whatever who live in
Winnetka or Fairfax who are doing fine and voted Republican
(40:41):
for fiscal reasons. A lot of them have moved away
from the party, and those voters, yes, they do turn out.
This has been a problem for Republicans since Trump got
in office. It was not that surprising that they did
so well in special elections with Trumps president. It's been
more surprising to people that Joe Biden's president disapproval rating
can be in the gutter and Democrats do great. This
(41:01):
is the last version this I covered was on Long Island. God,
I almost did the thing that you can't do.
Speaker 3 (41:06):
Can they get very bad? They do not take that lightlight.
Speaker 5 (41:09):
Going on Long Island. Tom Swazi won this special election,
reclaimed the seat that George Stantos want and if you
look at the vote patterns there, that's a fairly affluent district.
They had good Democratic turnout in the Queen's section, but
they had great Democratic turnout in the Nassau County section.
And that is some of those people used to be
Republicans and now that they used to vote every election,
they still vote in every election. That's what's happened to Democrats.
(41:31):
So this is why this is kind of a fight
between Democrats. Simon Rosenberg is a sort of Democratic optimists
on this who says the media is not paying enough
attention now while we do in special elections. A lot
of other people disagree and say, we're aware of this.
It is not bad for Democrats that they turn out
for special elections.
Speaker 3 (41:47):
We just don't know if it trans lands.
Speaker 5 (41:49):
Yeah, And it even happened again this week in Pennsylvania
that there was a special election the same day as
the primary. Republicans won it, but their margin was about
nine points smaller than it was in twenty twenty under Trump.
I didn't see many Democrats saying this means that Pennsylvania
is a lot for us now. It just means that
more Democrats in northeat Pennsylvania just vote in every election now, right.
Speaker 3 (42:07):
I think some of this is in a you can
gauge enthusiasm, right.
Speaker 5 (42:11):
Yeah, you can. And that's one thing this has done
is quieted some of the idea that I was referring
to earlier that when Donald Trump left office, the resistance
would die off. And I've seen a couple of stories
over the years on this theme. Usually whatever happened to
the Women's March, which which is a reportable fact, just
that the group itself kind of shrugged because of things
(42:33):
of the news, because of anti Semitism allegations. But whatever
happened to these hacks, whatever happened to these rallies, YadA YadA,
people will ask that, and that public facing part just
became less important for let's call them resistance resistance voters,
they just kept voting. You did not see a fall
off in donations or in voting patterns by that kind
(42:53):
of activated by Trump voter. You did see less protesting.
I'm not trying to be a little let anything go any
other right now, but for those voters less to protest,
there was a different Trump outrage for them every day,
and there's not a different Biden outreach every day. So
they're not out in the streets. They're just showing up
at the schoolhouse or the church wherever the bowling place
is all the time, right.
Speaker 1 (43:13):
I mean, Trump small dollar numbers have gone down about
I mean, the thing I read in the ft was
they were down about two hundred thousand from twenty fifteen
or twenty sixteen. But if you were to do the
math onlike the number of people have died of COVID,
you know we've lost a million people maybe more on COVID,
so you could see, like I mean, I have a
(43:34):
theory that there are ripples from like you know, if
somebody died of COVID because they didn't get vaxed. I mean,
you could see them having slightly negative feelings about the
people who have told them not to get vaccinated. Who knows,
maybe they like him even more. But I saw reporting
that Biden's small dollar donation numbers have done really well.
Speaker 5 (43:53):
Now, yeah, people got activated. We all covered this. If
we were out in the trail, we would meet Democratic
voters who wish there was some alternative to Biden that
was running and not him. But once that stopped being
the case, they came back to buy he didn't need
that much money to win the primary. Democratic small dollar
fundraising in general has been up. This is of a
piece what I was just saying that this didn't really
(44:13):
change after Trump left office. What happened in the past.
If you look at fundraising numbers for Democrats in twenty
fourteen when they lost the Senate, not putrid, but not good.
They just they were incumbent setters who struggled to raise money,
and they just have been in money ever since. They
minted money in races they couldn't win, and companies serve
yet set of Democrats. They're breaking records every quarter for
how much has been raised in the state's history. And
(44:35):
Jackie Rosen did this in Nevada. The sherif run does up,
so they're still giving to everything and they're still pretty
efficient in donating. Republicans not entirely so. Both parties have
big dotors five o'h one C three, secretcyt et cetera.
But Republicans have been relying a bit more. You've seen
that this a few times a cycle. Where a Democrat
raises a ton of money, they make a ton of
ad AD reservations. One of Mitch McConnell's packs or the
(44:57):
House GOP pack will burst in with money from larger
donors and make their own reservations. But they're having to
tap larger donors to compete with the Democratic support.
Speaker 2 (45:08):
But Trump still a lot of it.
Speaker 5 (45:10):
Whose reporting this was might have might have been Teddy
Sleeper Puck. The Trump trial has been good for him
raising money. If you are on the Trump or Republican
text list, which I am kind of by accident, but
it's a good reporting habit to be on it, you
get texts all the time, a learning of things Trump
is doing around the trial, and people have been giving
money because they're angry, but that juice is not as
(45:31):
reliable as was when he was indicted the first time.
They were hoping Republicans that every time he was in
the news for this, you get the kind of fundraising
burst he got when he's indicted in April twenty twenty three,
and the returns had diminished a little bit. Whereas a Democrat,
they don't need a news hook in particular, they just
keep giving the candidates.
Speaker 3 (45:50):
I want you to talk about that.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
A little more because I find myself often on television
panels where I am the person saying, you, guys, I
don't think being a criminal defendant is helping him. And
there was so much like voodoo economics in the primary,
where people are like in the primary, he won because
(46:12):
he was indicted, and I was like, no, he won
because nobody, because there were fifteen other people running against him,
and they were all running as like baby mimiographs of
the og Like I never understood the whole idea that
somehow being indicted helped him. Maybe it helped him with
the base, but I'm not even convinced. I mean, it
was more like DeSantis flamed out.
Speaker 5 (46:32):
Yeah, and that's their consensus. Everybody worked on these campaigns.
When they talk about it, just say there was no
way truly to compete with Trump getting indicted because our
base was furious about this. Very profiled, psychoanalyzed base at
this point of Republicans who believe that Trump is a
uniquely powerful, iconoclastic leader and that when he is in
(46:54):
trouble it's because his enemies want to stop him. None
of them could cut through that message. But that the
Republican voter makes up about thirty five percent of the electorate,
and outside outside that base, I actould say there are
independents who always a Reublican who grew with that. Most
people don't, and that's what happened. It could be very
tough in the heat of a primary to transition to
(47:15):
how the general electorate might think. I would say that
Democratic primary voters are pretty good about that. This was
a major factor in twenty twenty just Democrats were both
promising progressive policies but also getting questions constantly in Iowa,
New Hampshire about how do you appeal to people who
in the Midwest and win the general election, and that
(47:35):
wasn't really a question for Republicans. I don't want to
just spin off all the reasons, but what I said, Plus,
Democrats really think when they lose elections, they lose elections.
They really thought they lost in twenty sixteen. They thought
they were screwed by things like the email being hacked constantly,
but they really thought they lost. They need to fix things.
And Repulican voters think they didn't lose. And there's no
(47:56):
good reason to deny Donald Trump this nomination. So if
he's in trouble, they have to stay by him, because
I mean, I could quote, you can quote an any
number of Republicans. This is just turn on Fox or
Newsmax for an hour you'll hear this point date about
honderd times.
Speaker 1 (48:09):
It is so amazing to me that that is like
the fundamental problem with trump Ism is that the man
was like, no, we won, so voters are like, we won,
so we don't have to change, And like that inability
or belief that you don't need to change is ultimately
what could undermine the whole situation.
Speaker 5 (48:28):
Yes, and there wasn't that much of an attitude to change.
I felt there a campaign that Mike Pence was the
only candidate trying to introduce new ideas into the race,
specific policies, litmus tests, just the things that normally work
in a primary, and he was the guy who proved
that didn't matter for them. For Democrats, I think a
lot of it did matter, But the electability question is
(48:51):
what has driven a lot of Democratic primaries recently, and
it just did. It doesn't for Republicans. So I don't
want to get too far from the point of what's
happening with him in the court. But yeah, he's with
a general electorate that never liked this stuff, that never
agreed that he was only in trouble for these date Greece.
This is an electorate that in many cases has been
aware of Donald Trump for a long time. And if
you were aware of Donald Trump in a nineteen ninety
(49:13):
seven and someone told you this guy sometimes takes things
too far and gets in trouble with the law, everyone
would agree with you. The idea that Donald Trump himself
would not be under any legal scrutiny would not be
in a courtroom if it wasn't for this. This is
a guy who's settled all the time, risky deals and
uses of the abuse of the legal system. So for
(49:34):
the average voter, the idea that he's only in trouble
because he's so powerful and threatening to the left, it's
a little complicated, caid and convoluted might just make more
sense that he's Donald Trump and he does this kind
of thing.
Speaker 3 (49:44):
How do Republicans that you meet on the trail seam?
Speaker 5 (49:47):
I talked to House members all the time too, and
I do find the same dynamic that every reporter will
tell you about that there are a lot of members
who will say one thing privately about how frustrating they
find this, and that never say it public like that's true.
I've encountered that with Republican voters. This has really not
changed since November twenty twenty, when I was in Georgia
(50:08):
and asking Republican voters showing up for Trump or Cente
Ralph events. I wasn't just asking if they thought the
election was pair. I was asking do you think Trump
will still be scorn in as president January? And I
remember beforting back to my desk and saying, I can't
started to do Republican voters who sincerely think that Donald
Trump lost the election and will not be president again.
(50:29):
That's never changed, and polling has shown this. It's just
been frozen. One thing you'll see from the Steve Bannags
of the world is they'll point to this polling and
will claim that it's rising. It isn't when most independence
in every Democrat doesn't think this way. But among Republican
voters that that's been the case was that the election
was stolen. The American people had never stopped wanting Trump back,
(50:50):
and they have some ballast for this now in polling
that chose voters miss many things about the state of
the world when Trump was president and they won him back.
That has kind of been retconned into well, you see,
Americans felt this way the whole time. There's no way
that Joe Biden could have won the elect That's the
universal SENTI almost universal. I mean I've only heard diversions
(51:12):
from that. When Nikki Haley was running and Republican voters
voted for Haley said no Trump lust, we really would
somebody else being to nominate.
Speaker 1 (51:19):
So insane, insane, insane, insane. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Oh.
Speaker 5 (51:24):
Yes, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (51:27):
No moment. Jesse Cannon by junk Fast, You'll be shocked
to hear there's interesting developments in the Trump trial.
Speaker 1 (51:38):
One of the developments in the Trump trial is that
David Pecker, who is testifying right during the Thursday trial,
is talking about why he decided not to cut the
check for Stormy Daniels. And it had been conventional wisdom
that Pecker didn't pay off Stormy Daniels. This is from
(51:58):
Lisa Rubin at MSMB, because he was angry that Trump
never reimbursed him. Packer testifies that it's actually not true.
Pecker backed out of negotiating the licensing agreement and repayment
scheme once she talked to the company's general counsel and
realized that it could be problematic legally, which is basically
the entire theory of this case if you think about
(52:20):
it right, because this is campaign donations, illegal campaign donations.
And the implication here is that Packer pumped the brakes
because he knew that this was not okay. And there
we go, ladies and gentlemen, and there we are. That's
it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday,
(52:42):
Wednesday and Friday to hear the best minds in politics
makes sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what
you've heard, Please send it to a friend and keep
the conversation going. And again 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 Justice Clarence Thomas has chosen not
to recuse himself from another January sixth case. We have
the experts here, We have like people who really know
what the folks they're talking about. Slate Dahlia Lithwick gives
(00:22):
us the really the four to one one on Mtala,
the Supreme Court's hearing on what happens to pregnant women
in emergency, And let me just tell you this Supreme Court,
you can't even believe how much they suck except the
Liberals anyway. Then we have Semaphore's Dave Weigel about the
weird stuff that Republicans are trying to pull in the
(00:43):
state of Nebraska. But first we have the host of
the Think Like an Economists podcast, University of Michigan, Professor
Justin Wolfers. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Justin Wolfers.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Fast Politics and Fast Economics. Molly.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
Full disclosure, you are not in the United States right now.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Full disclosure. The American election campaign is so much more
enjoyable from Australia.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Full disclosure. That is very annoying to me. You need
to have skin in the games. You're coming back souit right.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Yeah. Also, I'll tell you I'm up early at six
am to talk to your listeners. So that's my Schemeia, Molly, So.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Let's talk about the American economy. Is it too good?
And how is that bad for Joe Biden?
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Did I wake up at a parallel universe of like
the universe Bucks News? I love it?
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Is it too good? How is that bad for Joe Biden?
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Good? There's two things in the world, Molly. There's economic statistics,
which I think correspond to reality, and there's the vibe
and how people talk.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Oh, the vibes. Let's talk vibes.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Okay. The story of twenty twenty three. The most talked
about economic story in twenty twenty three was why is
the US economy about to fall into a recession? And
I did one hundred thousand interviews on that, and I said, no,
it's not. People said, why would you say otherwise? And
I said, because the economic statistics keep telling me the
(02:20):
economy is growing faster than it normally does, and unemployments
near a fifty year low, and inequality is falling and
wages are rising faster than prices, and people still looked
at me baffled, and they said, but it feels so bad.
There was a moment, though, I'm going to date it
for you December twenty twenty three, maybe December twenty eight,
(02:43):
get really precise, or I heard a crack, and that
crack was public opinions starting to turn around, and a
few people started to look out the window and notice
that they were better off than they were four years ago.
They started to respond to surveys that way, and that
led journalists to stop talking down the economy quite so
much and so look to vibeate perfect There is still
(03:06):
a lot of resentment about inflation. There are a lot
of issues I think being stoked by partisans, but I
get a sense that public opinion is starting to catch
up to economic reality.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
Which is pretty fucking core.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
All Right, Did the Inflation Reduction Act reduce inflation? Oh?
Speaker 2 (03:27):
What a topsy to the upside down world we live in.
The Inflation Reduction Act should have been called something like
Infrastructure and Green Transition Act, right, I.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Mean, they just made shit up. But I respect the
hell out of it because it's like very kind of
Republican just to make it whatever you think it should
be called.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
It really is a symbol of our times. The problem
that they faced was that Joe Manchin doesn't like all
the things that mainstream Democrats like, and Joe Manchin hates inflation.
They couldn't get any of this past without Joe Manchin.
In fact, they thought they'd get none of it passed.
And then Mansin essentially said, shave a few things off
(04:12):
the edges, you get rid of the things that I hate,
and form me into thinking it's about reducing inflation, and
I'll sign on. So there might be an official White
House answer that pretends that the Inflation Reduction Act reduced inflation,
but at the very least in the short run, it didn't.
There is actually a deeper debate. So the Inflation Reduction
(04:32):
Act put a lot more spending into the economy. Typically,
more spending leads to more demand, which leads to higher
prices and more inflation. There's a different perspective, which is
over the medium run, what matters is our capacity to produce.
If you boost supply, then we can make more stuff
(04:52):
without bottlenecks arising. And so you can think about the
infrastructure spending in particular as being about boosting the economy
productive capacity, which will allow this boom to continue a
lot longer. So the inflation reduction. I probably did nothing
to reduce inflation in the year which was past, but
maybe part of our longer term growth strategy that allows
(05:14):
this little engine that could to keep on chugging up
the hill and keep growing.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
That's an interesting answer.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
So explain to me how the American economy is better
than all the other economies.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Look, there's lots of ways in which it's worse. We
don't have much of a social safety net.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
Oh oh yes, No, it's a terrible place to live
and we're all going to die.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
But I mean, our economy is better than other people.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Well, Mollie, could I just take a sidebar?
Speaker 3 (05:40):
Yes, yes, yes, I.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Believe firmly as an economist we should never talk about
the economy without understanding that it's what we're talking about
is people's lives. We can't say our lives suck, that
our economy is good. If our lives suck, our economy sucks. Okay,
Having said that, I think the question you meant to
ask is how is our econom me outperforming the others?
Right now? Yes, our economy bounced back from COVID further
(06:06):
and faster and more dynamically than other industrialized nations. While
we have inflation, and Republicans would have you believe it's
Joe Biden's inflation. Inflation is lower and has fallen faster
than in other industrialized countries. So somehow Joe Biden caused
worse inflation in other countries. If that Republican point were true,
(06:28):
the US is at or near a fifty year low
in unemployment, whereas some other European countries in particular are
slowing down. Now, I don't want to put too much
blame there. They've also had to deal with Putin and
the war in Ukraine to a much greater extent than
we have. But if you looked at International League tables
and you said which economy has done best since twenty
(06:50):
twenty one, has improved the most, you would say the
United States. Now that's a really hard political point for
the president to People are kind of angry, less angry,
I think, but somewhat angry. And you could say, well,
you think you're pissed. How do you think the Germans
or the Brits feel right now or the Canadians. It's
(07:12):
less bad here than elsewhere. It's a hard story to tell,
But why is that. Look, there's a really big difference
in this economy between what people say and what they do. So, yes,
you can turn on Fox News and hear about all
the terrible stories of people's lives. Or you could look
at public opinion polls which suggest they're not really convinced
that Biden is a better steward for the economy. Or
(07:34):
you could look at polls that suggest that they're somewhat
unhappy about the state of the economy. Or you could
look at what they do. If people were worried about
the future, they wouldn't be spending money. They'd be saving
for a rainy day. They're doing the opposite. If people
were worried about the economy, they wouldn't be switching jobs.
But they're switching jobs as if they believe that now
is a great time to go out and find opportunity.
(07:55):
And here's the thing I love, and it's the story
we haven't heard enough about, which is, if people were
worried about the economy, they wouldn't be starting new businesses
because they think that most businesses fail. But in fact,
we're in the midst of the greatest boom in new
business formation I've ever seen in the United States. People
are starting businesses at absolute record rates. In twenty twenty one,
(08:18):
we thought, well, maybe this is just a post pandemic boom,
And in twenty twenty two we told the same story,
and in twenty twenty three we started to believe this
might be real, and by twenty twenty four it seems
like it's absolutely an essential part of the story, which
is we're in an absolute boom of new businesses starting
new businesses, forming entrepreneurship, that people are optimistic about the
(08:40):
future and building their own new economy. So people smell
opportunity out there.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
That's interesting and why why is.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
A really hard question. If I knew the way, I'd
be one of those entrepreneurs out there starting a business boom.
But I think what it tells us is that people
feel this is a good environment for doing business. And
that's a really important point because you think about the
traditional Republican heartland. It's the folks who believe in small business,
(09:09):
who want people to be able to pull themselves up
by their bootstraps and so on. They've never done it
at greater rates than they're doing it right now. You
can't complain about the state of the economy on the
one hand and then start a new business the next
day on the other. It's a tremendous act of optimism
and faith.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
It's a really good point and also so interesting.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Let's just talk for a second about kind of what
indicators are coming up now and where we are with
the United States economy.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Yeah, so the biggest recent news has been that inflation
has fallen dramatically from nine percent down to three percent,
and it got us all very excited that it would
just continue to magically drop, which has been a beautiful
thing to watch without needing a recession for that to occur.
(10:02):
And we got a little over our skis on that,
I'm afraid. And so we've had three readings in a
row which are consistent with inflation having fallen to what
i'd call nearly normal rates, the high twos or low threes,
so the sort of rates that you wouldn't really spend
too much time worrying about. But it hasn't kept falling
(10:22):
at the to all the way down to normal, which
is what we've been hoping for. That in turn has
led the Fed, which had previously promised or not promised,
indicated that it was on a path to cut interest
rates at least three times this year. They've sort of said,
whoa nellie, inflation's not falling fast enough. We're going to
keep interest rates a little higher for a little longer.
(10:43):
And that in turn has been the latest bout of pessimism.
Maybe interest rates are going to stay high. And this
is where you were right, Molly, to say that what's
happening there is the economy in some level is a
little too hot, at least for the Fed's comfort. That
we are getting so many people into job that it's
worried that may cause bottlenecks. So part of this is
(11:04):
saying that the actual stuff we do, that side of
things is getting better, perhaps so much better, so much faster,
that they're a little more worried about inflation. To your
listeners who are worried about all of this, I feel
your pain, but I just want to counsel patients. What
the Fed is saying is not that interest rates aren't
coming down, but they aren't coming down for a few
more months. So this is a relief delayed rather than
(11:27):
relief denied. The only person who this might really hurt
is Joe Biden, who was hoping to be able to
tell that story before the election.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Do you think that the rates are going to cop
before the election now?
Speaker 3 (11:39):
Like in a September A.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
There had been a lot of hope we'd be looking
at our first rate cut at the next FED meeting.
That now seems to be off the table, and so
that would move from three rate cuts to two this year.
And really, people are people know, people are going about
their lives, markets are on edge. If the inflation reading
starts to turn out a little better, it might turn
(12:02):
out we get that at least one rate cup before
the election. But if not, then the Fed faces this
very awkward dance, which is, yes, it'll want to cut
interest rates by late twenty twenty four, I think probably
no matter what. But will it want to sneak that
in before the election or after the election. It wants
to pretend that it's unaware of when election day is,
(12:24):
but it also wants to look like it's independent of
the White House, and often that means not doing anything
during an election campaign. And so I'm awfully glad I'm
not running the FED. In the weeks leading up to
the election.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
Yeah, I bet so.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
Then let's talk though about some of the sort of
economic news that's happened with the Biden administration. That has
been good news about environmental spending and you know that
kind of grows like Chips, the manufacturing stuff.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
I mean that has helped the American economy.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Right, Chips is two things. It's a short investment, which is,
we're going to give a bunch of money to try
and be a leader in certain new tech industries. And
when that money goes out the door, you've literally got
to build the factories. And so what's happening right now
is we're literally building the factories, and so construction, for instance,
(13:17):
in certain types of construction actually moving pretty strongly right now.
But that's not what the Chips actor is about. It's
really about you make a long term investment because you
want to be a leader, not for affecting the state
of the economy in mid twenty twenty four, but because
you want a layer foundation for growth over the ensuing decade.
And so it's something of an experiment. Can we boost
(13:38):
the industries we think of the industries of the future,
and will we succeed at being leaders as a result
of this big government investment. And that's a conversation I'm
delighted to have with you, Moali, But we're going to
have to have that one in twenty thirty four rather
than twenty twenty.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
Four, right too soon to know how that works out.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
I want to address a talking point. I bet a
lot of listeners hearing, and I just want to give
them the facts so that they can be the one
most informed ones around the water cool Two criticisms that
I hear most about the state of the economy. The
first is inflation is killing it. Well, inflation is back
down to nearly normal levels. And then people say, well,
priss are still high at the grocery store, and they
(14:18):
absolutely are. Although grocery store prices haven't been rising over
the past in the year, they'll say, yes, but the
price is still high. And that's when I remind you
that what matters is where wages are compared to prices. Right,
if wages go up ten percent and prices go up
ten percent, everyone comes out of even. In fact, over
the four years at last, the four years since the
(14:40):
pre pandemic, I think that's the best starting point. Prices
have gone up twenty percent. The pain is real, but
average wages have gone up twenty two percent, so wages
are actually pulled their head of prices, people's material standard
of living, what they can buy with their pay packet.
There's actually risen. Now you might say, oh, only two percent,
that's not much. Rising by two two percent over four
(15:01):
years is rising half a percent per year, which also
sounds like not much. But that's actually dramatically faster than
the average over the preceding four or five decades. So yes,
prices are rising, but wages are keeping up. Then let
me address the really untold story, which is lots of
people fear that all those gains are going to the rich.
And they've got every reason to fear that, because that's
(15:22):
been the story of the American economy every decade since
the nineteen seventies onward. The pie gets bigger, but the
slice of the rich gets bigger, so my slice ain't
getting bigger. The last four years or the last three
years has been the first time in my lifetime as
an economist in which that's turned around. This is the
first time for most of your listeners in their lifetimes
(15:42):
that wages at the bottom end, wages for working in
middle class Americans are rising faster than they are for
the rich, and so everything I just told you about
wages moving ahead of prices is doubly true for the
folks who need it. So this is and I can't
pinpoint why, but this is for the first time in
most of our lifetimes, the first time that wage gains
(16:04):
are going to those who need the most. That's a
really exciting story, but it's one I just haven't heard enough.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
Of, and it is this idea that the middle class
is growing.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
The middle class is growing because working class folks who
are earning enough money to join the middle class. Part
of this is the Great Resort after COVID that a
lot of people change jobs, and they moved out of
dead end jobs. They looked for opportunities and they found them.
And so a lot of the job growth has been
in higher quality, higher paying jobs. People aren't just getting
(16:39):
higher pay, they're also getting better conditions. I think a
lot of it remains to be seen. Economists are going
to spend decades figuring out the why. But you're right
to say we have the most pro labor president in memory.
But it's an economy where the wages of folks who
write newspaper headlines. Folks like me who were pine about
(17:01):
the economy, and folks like you who talk at Molly,
I assume that you're talking cocktail parties for a living?
Is that right?
Speaker 3 (17:09):
Yes? Pretty much.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
The economy for those folks hasn't delivered for the chattering classes, right.
You and I, I'm sure, are in the top quarter
of the income distribution. But for everyone else, it's growing
and really delivering at a much much faster rate. And
that may be part of why the chattering coming out
of the chattering classes isn't as optimistic as the reality
(17:30):
that people are seeing in their lives.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
So interesting. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
Justin Wolfers can't wait for you to be back stateside
with us.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Always a joy, Molly.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Springs here and I bet you are trying to look fashionable,
So why not pick up some fashionable all new Fast
Politics merchandise. We just opened a news store with all
new designs just for you.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
Get t shirts, hats, and top bags.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
To grab some, head to fastpolitics dot com. Dahlia Leswick
is a senior editor at Slate and the author of
Lady Justice, Women, The Law and the Battle to Save America.
Welcome Back, too fast politics. My I want to say,
you might.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
I don't know. You're everything to me, Dahlia.
Speaker 4 (18:26):
And you are everything to me, but you make.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Me understand stuff, whereas I feel like I make things
more complicated. Let's do two minutes on the rage we
feel about m Dala, can we sure?
Speaker 4 (18:39):
I mean, it was yesterday's rage, Mollie, and I've sort
of like it's integrated. It's like in every blood vessel
there's like m Tala rage. But we can do a
little quickie. I think the one thing I would say
about M Tala for folks who have not been really.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
Clocking it, which a lot of people haven't, I think.
Speaker 4 (18:58):
It's the most important case that nobody knows about. I
think that, you know, we expended so much energy on
that MiFi pristone case, and I know you and I
talked about it, and I think in a lot of ways,
a m Tala is a bigger deal abortion case. And
b I think everybody kind of missed it. Like I
(19:21):
don't know why it was a sleeper.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
Case because they just put it in that they just
slip it by. You know, it's like EPA versus West Virginia.
This Supreme Court has done such a multitude of crazy things.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
But what I think is interesting.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
About that case, besides the fact that the three liberal
justices all were so angry, you could.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
Hear it in their voices.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
I mean, I listened to these arguments as much as possible.
I was surprised, like I could hear their voices shaking
at different times.
Speaker 4 (19:52):
Let's do one quick minute on what the case is.
EMTALA stands for the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act,
and it is a nineteen eighty six statute that was
passed because people were dumping patients. Emergency rooms would get
patients in America, only in America, particularly women of color,
particularly poor women of color, often who were having pregnancy
(20:16):
related crises, and the ers were like nah and sending
them somewhere else, right. So m TALA essentially says that
any hospital that receives Medicare funds, and that means virtually
every hospital has to provide what's called stabilizing care to
a patient if their life or their health is at risk,
(20:37):
and if they can't do that, they have to provide
safe transport to a different hospital that can't. Am TALA
was essentially the way of saying, do not take people
who are dying in your er and say you can't
treat them.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
Right, so leaving people to die is a no go
if you're a doctor, correct, which.
Speaker 4 (20:57):
By the way, let's be super clear, Molly, doctors are
trained to do this. They are actually trained to not
let people die. And am TALA was a way of
saying we're going to make sure that you don't let
people die.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
In itself, completely insane that it had to be said.
Speaker 4 (21:13):
But yes, yes, it's in conflict with a bunch of laws,
in this case, an Idaho law that essentially says, no,
you don't have to provide stabilizing care if there's an
abortion involved, then there are often often abortions involved.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
Right.
Speaker 4 (21:30):
People come with topic pregnancies, they come with rupturing organs
or membranes, they come you know, they're hemorrhaging, their septic,
they're bleeding out. So we don't have to wait till
the person is going to die, except Idaho has a
new abortion trigger law that says, yes, no abortions unless
that patient is imminently going to die in front of you.
(21:51):
And so there's a huge gap between the Idaho law
and MTALA. And there's a little thing called preemption doctrine
that says that if there's a federal law and of
state law and they are in conflict, the federal law
wins because otherwise right every state is doing its own thing.
This should have been an easy case, but as you said,
it was not an easy case because we heard just
(22:13):
a festival, a circus, a cornucopia of insanity from male
justices who are like chin stroking and being like, well,
I don't know about this. This seems to violate the
spending clause, this seems to violate their state's rights. And
the thing that you're saying, and this is really important,
(22:35):
is like women are dying, like they are dying. There
have been cases around the country. Idaho itself has had
two helicopter not one, not two, but six women to
other hospitals since this law went into effect, and the
female justices are pissed.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
I've heard that number that six women were ha to
be helicoptered out of state. But it's important to realize,
like every minute they are in agonizing pain, closer to death,
they have to be helicopter right because their health.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
Is so fragile.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
They could just have the procedure in the hospital, except
this crazy law means they have to be helicoptered out
of state.
Speaker 4 (23:13):
One other point, which is this crazy Idaho law says
that a physician who performs an abortion unless it is
quote necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman
faces two to five years in jail and loss of
her licensure. So this is no joke. This is these
(23:33):
doctors who, as I said, these er doctors. And we
had an amazing Derek Cass on my show last week
just explaining like, this is what we are trained to do,
this is what stabilizing care looks like. And to have
to stand back because a bunch of hospital lawyers are
going to come after your license and put you in
jail because you said, you know what, I actually think
(23:56):
organ damage, like the permanent loss of your fritility is
enough for me to intervene, and the Idaho law says no.
And so I just think the zeitgeist that you and
I were feeling is not just like Katanji Brown Jackson,
who never lets herself get mad, just almost vibrating the
Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogger, who never gets rattled. Every single
(24:20):
one of these women, including Amy Cony Barrett in this case,
who was just utterly horrified at the inhumanity that she
was hearing from her colleagues. Every single one of them
was just like, women are dying. This is what it
looks like. There is an objective standard of care. Please
don't gaslight us and tell us that there's no daylight
(24:43):
between the Idaho law and the federal law. Because six
women were helicoptered out of Idaho, and so it was
just a horrifying, horrifying performance. And this is the last
thing I guess I would just say. Throughout the argument,
which went on for almost two hours, every doctor was
referenced as heat and the nurses were referenced as she
(25:04):
and as my friend Caroline sent in a text today,
do these male justices believe that all dogs are boys
and all cats are girls?
Speaker 1 (25:13):
Probably yes is the answer, but yes. What I thought
was amazing we heard was that we heard the three
liberal justices who were all women, and then immediately Alito
was in there right like.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
The first, you know, just right in there.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
So that primed us that Idaho versus United States, I
feel like, really primed us for today because we all
knew having heard yesterday that Alito and Thomas were going
to give their guy a pass no matter what because
they watch enough Fox News, so their brains and again
we don't know if they watch Fox News, but whatever
has made their brains like this can only be Fox News.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
So let's talk about the immunity case today.
Speaker 4 (25:56):
Right, I mean, this is probably the single most important case,
I mean certainly of the term possibly of our lifetimes.
And this is essentially the case that was you know,
Jack Smith's absolutely lean and winnable case that was being
brought in Judge Chuckkin Tanya Chuckkin's court in Washington, d C.
(26:19):
About Trump's efforts to set aside the twenty twenty election
and all the things he did, right, fake slates of
electors calling state legislators, lying to the head of the
RNC and saying like, oh, you know, we've got ample fraud,
so make sure you line up these fake electors. You know,
(26:40):
going to fire people at the Justice Department because they
weren't with him on this plan. All this stuff, open
and shutcase, very clean, and Trump comes to the court
with this claim of quote absolute immunity, just complete blanket
immunity from criminal prosecution. Ironically, the claim is unless you
(27:00):
impeached me, which you may recallturing the impeachment.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
It was like, oh, seemed to remember you do.
Speaker 4 (27:06):
This in the criminal process, not through impeachment. But here
we are, and so this should have been an easy case.
The DC Circuit Court handed down an incredibly tight across
ideological lines, like absolutely no to blanket immunity. Famously, everyone remembers.
One of the judges at that appeal said, are you
(27:26):
saying the President could like call on Seal Team six
to assassinate arrival And the answer was like, well, kind
of depends on the circumstances. The court was horrified, all
three judges again all women. If you're just gonna make
the point about women, all three women saying like, this
is an absurd claim of absolute blanket immunity. Absolutely not.
The Supreme Court could have just given a summary affirments
(27:49):
when that came down in February, the case would have
gone to trial last month, but no, the Supreme Court
agreed to hear it and then docketed it for today,
which is the very very last oral argument of the terms.
So they slow walked it and still had the case
been decided quickly, even in the next couple of weeks,
we might have still had that case in Judge Chutkins Court.
(28:12):
But as you say, Mollie, today was just another festival
of chin stroking questions about you know, rogue prosecutors going
after poor confused presidents who made a mistake.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
I want to talk about justice. So, tomay Er, is
it plausible that it's within his presidential right to create
a fraudulent state of electors?
Speaker 3 (28:36):
The lawyers are sure.
Speaker 4 (28:37):
Yeah, No, he was pretty clear. This was John Sower,
who was Trump's attorney at the Appeals court as well,
who said the scale team sixth thing. And yes, when
Sodomiora asked this morning, could Trump order someone to assassinate arrival, yes,
could he you know, order a coup? Yes? Depends on
the circumstances, but yes, if you really want, I mean,
(29:01):
just depends on these circumstances. And again that kind of sneaky.
You know, he could be impeached for it and removed.
And you know, this brought about the whole weight. But
what if he's not president anymore? Like, what if this
happens as it did in you know, the last weeks
of his presidency? And I guess I don't want to
put too fine a point on this, but we got
so bogged down in again Justices Gorsi, Justice Kavanaugh, Justice Alito,
(29:28):
just Chin stroking questions about you know deep state, you know,
bad actors in the Justice Department prosecuting with you know,
over zealous Sage statutes. And it literally turned into this
kind of crazy referendum of what would be worse for
America to have a president who was like a little
(29:50):
bit afraid because over zealous prosecutors would come after him
and there's a thousand layers of protection to make sure
that doesn't happen, or as just as Jackson said, you know,
basically operating a criminal enterprise the Oval.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
Office with impunity.
Speaker 4 (30:08):
And I think we had at least four, maybe five
votes for the proposition that would be much worse for
poor old presidents to face mean prosecutors. So I think
at minimum I counted five, I think votes to kick
this back, to send it back to the district court
for more findings.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
And which is a win for Trump.
Speaker 4 (30:28):
Right, because if what we care about is the shot clock, right,
if we care about is getting this thing done before
the election, if this under any set of questions, whether
it's what is an official act or what does the
president's mental state have to be or any of the
arkhana that came up today. But any of that going
back to the district court means this thing doesn't get
(30:49):
started until after the election. In other words, it's pointless.
And that was a win for Trump exactly.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
And I feel like you and I who listened to them,
oh oka is the day before, thought these guys are
going to just do the most partisan thing they can
possibly do, because we had heard them for four hours
the day before just basically say that women should die
in order to protect their idea of.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
Fetal rights I mean an embryonic personhood.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
I mean, it just was in my mind the idea
that they would do anything that wasn't just absolutely the
most partisan hackey thing.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
I would have been shocked.
Speaker 4 (31:30):
So here, I think, my friend is where you and
I slightly differ because I think I drank enough Scotis
kool aid. Right, this is my job. I've been like
right feeding at the trough of Scotis kool aid for
like almost twenty five years. And I made the error,
and I'd made it a year ago. I said, look,
there's two real Muga justices, and it's Thomas and Alito,
(31:53):
and we know how Thomas feels his wife was involved
in this thing and he should have recused. But I
just really can convinced myself that Justice Kavanaugh, Justice Barrett
certainly the chief Justice. I didn't know what to do
with Justice Gorsich, but I thought they would be like
sort of uninterested in the proposition of November being the
(32:13):
last free and fair elections we ever have.
Speaker 3 (32:16):
Like I convinced myself.
Speaker 4 (32:18):
I really thought they'd be like listen, I'm for crazy,
I'm for Fedzock, I'm for fetal personhood, like I'm for
dismantling the entire administrative state and putting guns in the
hands of all of those embryonic babies. Like I really
thought they're there. But are they there for like a
crazy lunatic making up fake election results and lying about
(32:41):
it and getting states on board and calling Georgia and saying,
I just need you to find me this many votes. No,
I thought that that was not true, and after today,
it certainly feels to me. And to be clear, I
don't think there are five votes for the batshit blanket
immunity claims.
Speaker 3 (32:59):
But the that.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
Shit blanket immunity claim was to get here like they
did this because they knew that they could get to
a place where they got some immunity. They knew they
weren't going to be able to get badget The thing
I'm struck by when you talk about this is how
much the people I know who believe in the court.
I mean, because I think about George Conway, my friend
(33:20):
who may or may not be involved with having put
a lot of those people in the court. You know,
he was like, no, they won't do this, this is
too crazy or even justice letic. These people are like no,
because they believe in the sanctity of the court.
Speaker 3 (33:35):
But the problem is it's just a partisan institution.
Speaker 4 (33:38):
Now I think it's partisan, and I think those of
us who were saying post dubs, oh okay, this is
just like a maga court, Like this is just you know,
the most wellly conservative court probably in American history, but
certainly since before the New Deal. I think that we
thought it was partisan and yet would put democracy itself first.
(34:01):
And now I think this is like not even about partisanship, Molly,
this is about convincing themselves. And we had an argument
last week that was about you know, one of the
criminal charges that a whole bunch of the January sixth
insurrectionists have been charged under And you would have thought,
listening to that argument that the bulk of the justices
(34:23):
were fully on board with the like these were just
like hapless tourists who happened to, like, you know, pick
up a stake and a gun on their way into
the Capitol and they had no idea what they're doing.
So I think they have moved from kind of being conservative,
like you say, Fedsock, George Conway. Conservatives. That's fine, That's
(34:44):
what I thought this was. I think they genuinely do
not think that Donald Trump was a threat to democracy
on January sixth, twenty twenty one, and clearly the bulk
of them do not think that he will be a
threat to democracy in November of twenty twenty before. And
I don't know what they're reading.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
Yeah, this was so helpful and important.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
I hope you'll come back always. Dave Wigall is a
reporter at Semaphore. Welcome back, Too Fast Politics.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
Dave, it's good to be back. Thank you, so excited
to have you.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
And there's just a lot of really interesting stuff that
one of the things you do is you like crisscross
the country and write about a lot of really interesting stuff.
So Dave talk to us about what's happening in Nebraska
and this electoral college drama.
Speaker 5 (35:38):
Yeah, so right now, Nebraska and may and both give
two electoral votes whoever wins the state one electoral vote
each for the winner of the congressional districts. And in
twenty sixteen and twenty Donald Trump won the more conservative
district in Maine, the mo rural district, the one does
not on Portland. In twenty twenty and two thousand and eight,
(35:59):
Democrats carried the second district of Nebraska, which has always
been centered Nomaha. Republicans have redrawn it a couple times
to make it more conservative at bringing in other parts
of the state, splitting it up a little bit, but
it's still just without getting into the entire modern history
of the Republican Party, it's full of the kind of
voters who would vote Repblican ten years ago but not now.
Speaker 3 (36:18):
Country club Republicans.
Speaker 5 (36:20):
Yeah, and there's an effort under way by the state
Republican party, the governor a large number of senators. In
Nebraska is a single unicameral state legislature. When it's the
senator to change this and say, okay, we're going to
go like the other forty eight states and just assign
the electors based on whoever wins Nebraska, which would mean effectively,
(36:42):
since Nebraska's not gone democratic and generations, that it just
gives five electoral votes to Republicans. They're pretty explicit about that,
and it was Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA, Turning
Point of Action.
Speaker 3 (36:52):
They got this idea from Charlie Kirk.
Speaker 5 (36:55):
Yeah, I've been describing it backwards because where we are
now is that Governor Jim Pillin needs to call a
special session to do this. He said he will call
a special session to deal with some other tax issues.
And this cause began right before the end of the term,
the legislative term. Charlie Kirk and his producers realized this
was possible, you could get Republicans to change this law
(37:17):
in time for the election, and they just they built
very quickly and they have a big, good organizing capacity.
They built a operation to call the legislators, called the
state senators, tell them to do this, Call the state
party chair who was on board. They had a rally
before the end of the session and for probably too
boring for podcast reasons.
Speaker 2 (37:36):
That will get all of the funey was bad.
Speaker 5 (37:38):
They couldn't get it done right before the end of
the session. But the government can call this anytime he wants.
And the question is how much would he want to
call a session in Lincoln a lot of potential protesters
nearby to change the change their electoral system to help
Donald drop.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
That's what that's what he would do.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
Right, And do you think he's going to do it?
Speaker 5 (37:57):
They're holding some of their cards closer now. He has
repeatedly said he wants to until they run out of time,
and running down of time would be ended the summer
a little bit earlier. Bro, they have to do this
by July until the deadline runs out.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
I'm not rolling it out.
Speaker 5 (38:11):
I think they were surprised by how quickly Democrats countermobilized,
and they were surprised by the Republican reaction. Some Republicans,
not many, but enough to block it said they didn't
like the way this process is being handled. So what
they need to do is work on this. Republican centers
he didn't want to cram this at the end of session,
say well, you want to cram this in the other session,
(38:32):
but you should be on board with doing a special
session to get this done.
Speaker 3 (38:36):
They need it.
Speaker 5 (38:37):
Just there are independently minded Republican state centers who say,
this seems a little much. Maybe we can do it
for a mixed cycle. And so I'd be very surprised,
given this momentum if Nebraska in twenty twenty eight does
the electoral college split, given that that that area keeps
treading democratic for now, probably not, but I'm not rolling
it out. The organizers of this like that a lot
(38:59):
of the media has already said this isn't happening, we
move on to another.
Speaker 1 (39:02):
Story, right, because they feel like to sort of if
the attention goes away, maybe they could do it quietly.
Speaker 3 (39:07):
But if it's going to be I mean, that's something
I'm struck by.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
I'm wondering if you could talk about this a second,
because one of the things we've seen again and again
is like there's been a sort of like pundit pooh
poohing of special elections.
Speaker 3 (39:21):
Well, it's a special election, it's low turnout.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
But one of the things I'm struck by is that
these elections people are actually paying attention.
Speaker 3 (39:31):
Right, So the problem for the.
Speaker 1 (39:34):
Republicans in Nebraska was that people were paying attention, and
part of the problem for Democrats in twenty sixteen was
that people just assumed Hillary would win and so they
weren't paying attention. Do you think this theory sort of
holds water, that Democrats have a certain level of attention
and anxiety that were not. I mean, the Republicans are
(39:55):
trying to gin it up on that side, but I'm
not seeing it the same way.
Speaker 5 (39:59):
Yeah, and it's about how their coalition has changed. This
is conventional wisdom, but I agree with it that since
twenty really fourteen, but Trump sped this up, more college
educated professionals who used to vote Republican vote Democratic, and
those voters always were the most likely to vote in elections.
This has been a problem for well, lots of people,
but for the left for a very long time. So
(40:20):
much left wing organizing for generations has been about getting
the working class black voter, working class wive voter to say, no,
elections really matter and you should turn out. And that
is not a problem that people have two very well
off college professors or bankers or whatever who live in
Winnetka or Fairfax who are doing fine and voted Republican
(40:41):
for fiscal reasons. A lot of them have moved away
from the party, and those voters, yes, they do turn out.
This has been a problem for Republicans since Trump got
in office. It was not that surprising that they did
so well in special elections with Trumps president. It's been
more surprising to people that Joe Biden's president disapproval rating
can be in the gutter and Democrats do great. This
(41:01):
is the last version this I covered was on Long Island. God,
I almost did the thing that you can't do.
Speaker 3 (41:06):
Can they get very bad? They do not take that lightlight.
Speaker 5 (41:09):
Going on Long Island. Tom Swazi won this special election,
reclaimed the seat that George Stantos want and if you
look at the vote patterns there, that's a fairly affluent district.
They had good Democratic turnout in the Queen's section, but
they had great Democratic turnout in the Nassau County section.
And that is some of those people used to be
Republicans and now that they used to vote every election,
they still vote in every election. That's what's happened to Democrats.
(41:31):
So this is why this is kind of a fight
between Democrats. Simon Rosenberg is a sort of Democratic optimists
on this who says the media is not paying enough
attention now while we do in special elections. A lot
of other people disagree and say, we're aware of this.
It is not bad for Democrats that they turn out
for special elections.
Speaker 3 (41:47):
We just don't know if it trans lands.
Speaker 5 (41:49):
Yeah, And it even happened again this week in Pennsylvania
that there was a special election the same day as
the primary. Republicans won it, but their margin was about
nine points smaller than it was in twenty twenty under Trump.
I didn't see many Democrats saying this means that Pennsylvania
is a lot for us now. It just means that
more Democrats in northeat Pennsylvania just vote in every election now, right.
Speaker 3 (42:07):
I think some of this is in a you can
gauge enthusiasm, right.
Speaker 5 (42:11):
Yeah, you can. And that's one thing this has done
is quieted some of the idea that I was referring
to earlier that when Donald Trump left office, the resistance
would die off. And I've seen a couple of stories
over the years on this theme. Usually whatever happened to
the Women's March, which which is a reportable fact, just
that the group itself kind of shrugged because of things
(42:33):
of the news, because of anti Semitism allegations. But whatever
happened to these hacks, whatever happened to these rallies, YadA YadA,
people will ask that, and that public facing part just
became less important for let's call them resistance resistance voters,
they just kept voting. You did not see a fall
off in donations or in voting patterns by that kind
(42:53):
of activated by Trump voter. You did see less protesting.
I'm not trying to be a little let anything go any
other right now, but for those voters less to protest,
there was a different Trump outrage for them every day,
and there's not a different Biden outreach every day. So
they're not out in the streets. They're just showing up
at the schoolhouse or the church wherever the bowling place
is all the time, right.
Speaker 1 (43:13):
I mean, Trump small dollar numbers have gone down about
I mean, the thing I read in the ft was
they were down about two hundred thousand from twenty fifteen
or twenty sixteen. But if you were to do the
math onlike the number of people have died of COVID,
you know we've lost a million people maybe more on COVID,
so you could see, like I mean, I have a
(43:34):
theory that there are ripples from like you know, if
somebody died of COVID because they didn't get vaxed. I mean,
you could see them having slightly negative feelings about the
people who have told them not to get vaccinated. Who knows,
maybe they like him even more. But I saw reporting
that Biden's small dollar donation numbers have done really well.
Speaker 5 (43:53):
Now, yeah, people got activated. We all covered this. If
we were out in the trail, we would meet Democratic
voters who wish there was some alternative to Biden that
was running and not him. But once that stopped being
the case, they came back to buy he didn't need
that much money to win the primary. Democratic small dollar
fundraising in general has been up. This is of a
piece what I was just saying that this didn't really
(44:13):
change after Trump left office. What happened in the past.
If you look at fundraising numbers for Democrats in twenty
fourteen when they lost the Senate, not putrid, but not good.
They just they were incumbent setters who struggled to raise money,
and they just have been in money ever since. They
minted money in races they couldn't win, and companies serve
yet set of Democrats. They're breaking records every quarter for
how much has been raised in the state's history. And
(44:35):
Jackie Rosen did this in Nevada. The sherif run does up,
so they're still giving to everything and they're still pretty
efficient in donating. Republicans not entirely so. Both parties have
big dotors five o'h one C three, secretcyt et cetera.
But Republicans have been relying a bit more. You've seen
that this a few times a cycle. Where a Democrat
raises a ton of money, they make a ton of
ad AD reservations. One of Mitch McConnell's packs or the
(44:57):
House GOP pack will burst in with money from larger
donors and make their own reservations. But they're having to
tap larger donors to compete with the Democratic support.
Speaker 2 (45:08):
But Trump still a lot of it.
Speaker 5 (45:10):
Whose reporting this was might have might have been Teddy
Sleeper Puck. The Trump trial has been good for him
raising money. If you are on the Trump or Republican
text list, which I am kind of by accident, but
it's a good reporting habit to be on it, you
get texts all the time, a learning of things Trump
is doing around the trial, and people have been giving
money because they're angry, but that juice is not as
(45:31):
reliable as was when he was indicted the first time.
They were hoping Republicans that every time he was in
the news for this, you get the kind of fundraising
burst he got when he's indicted in April twenty twenty three,
and the returns had diminished a little bit. Whereas a Democrat,
they don't need a news hook in particular, they just
keep giving the candidates.
Speaker 3 (45:50):
I want you to talk about that.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
A little more because I find myself often on television
panels where I am the person saying, you, guys, I
don't think being a criminal defendant is helping him. And
there was so much like voodoo economics in the primary,
where people are like in the primary, he won because
(46:12):
he was indicted, and I was like, no, he won
because nobody, because there were fifteen other people running against him,
and they were all running as like baby mimiographs of
the og Like I never understood the whole idea that
somehow being indicted helped him. Maybe it helped him with
the base, but I'm not even convinced. I mean, it
was more like DeSantis flamed out.
Speaker 5 (46:32):
Yeah, and that's their consensus. Everybody worked on these campaigns.
When they talk about it, just say there was no
way truly to compete with Trump getting indicted because our
base was furious about this. Very profiled, psychoanalyzed base at
this point of Republicans who believe that Trump is a
uniquely powerful, iconoclastic leader and that when he is in
(46:54):
trouble it's because his enemies want to stop him. None
of them could cut through that message. But that the
Republican voter makes up about thirty five percent of the electorate,
and outside outside that base, I actould say there are
independents who always a Reublican who grew with that. Most
people don't, and that's what happened. It could be very
tough in the heat of a primary to transition to
(47:15):
how the general electorate might think. I would say that
Democratic primary voters are pretty good about that. This was
a major factor in twenty twenty just Democrats were both
promising progressive policies but also getting questions constantly in Iowa,
New Hampshire about how do you appeal to people who
in the Midwest and win the general election, and that
(47:35):
wasn't really a question for Republicans. I don't want to
just spin off all the reasons, but what I said, Plus,
Democrats really think when they lose elections, they lose elections.
They really thought they lost in twenty sixteen. They thought
they were screwed by things like the email being hacked constantly,
but they really thought they lost. They need to fix things.
And Repulican voters think they didn't lose. And there's no
(47:56):
good reason to deny Donald Trump this nomination. So if
he's in trouble, they have to stay by him, because
I mean, I could quote, you can quote an any
number of Republicans. This is just turn on Fox or
Newsmax for an hour you'll hear this point date about
honderd times.
Speaker 1 (48:09):
It is so amazing to me that that is like
the fundamental problem with trump Ism is that the man
was like, no, we won, so voters are like, we won,
so we don't have to change, And like that inability
or belief that you don't need to change is ultimately
what could undermine the whole situation.
Speaker 5 (48:28):
Yes, and there wasn't that much of an attitude to change.
I felt there a campaign that Mike Pence was the
only candidate trying to introduce new ideas into the race,
specific policies, litmus tests, just the things that normally work
in a primary, and he was the guy who proved
that didn't matter for them. For Democrats, I think a
lot of it did matter, But the electability question is
(48:51):
what has driven a lot of Democratic primaries recently, and
it just did. It doesn't for Republicans. So I don't
want to get too far from the point of what's
happening with him in the court. But yeah, he's with
a general electorate that never liked this stuff, that never
agreed that he was only in trouble for these date Greece.
This is an electorate that in many cases has been
aware of Donald Trump for a long time. And if
you were aware of Donald Trump in a nineteen ninety
(49:13):
seven and someone told you this guy sometimes takes things
too far and gets in trouble with the law, everyone
would agree with you. The idea that Donald Trump himself
would not be under any legal scrutiny would not be
in a courtroom if it wasn't for this. This is
a guy who's settled all the time, risky deals and
uses of the abuse of the legal system. So for
(49:34):
the average voter, the idea that he's only in trouble
because he's so powerful and threatening to the left, it's
a little complicated, caid and convoluted might just make more
sense that he's Donald Trump and he does this kind
of thing.
Speaker 3 (49:44):
How do Republicans that you meet on the trail seam?
Speaker 5 (49:47):
I talked to House members all the time too, and
I do find the same dynamic that every reporter will
tell you about that there are a lot of members
who will say one thing privately about how frustrating they
find this, and that never say it public like that's true.
I've encountered that with Republican voters. This has really not
changed since November twenty twenty, when I was in Georgia
(50:08):
and asking Republican voters showing up for Trump or Cente
Ralph events. I wasn't just asking if they thought the
election was pair. I was asking do you think Trump
will still be scorn in as president January? And I
remember beforting back to my desk and saying, I can't
started to do Republican voters who sincerely think that Donald
Trump lost the election and will not be president again.
(50:29):
That's never changed, and polling has shown this. It's just
been frozen. One thing you'll see from the Steve Bannags
of the world is they'll point to this polling and
will claim that it's rising. It isn't when most independence
in every Democrat doesn't think this way. But among Republican
voters that that's been the case was that the election
was stolen. The American people had never stopped wanting Trump back,
(50:50):
and they have some ballast for this now in polling
that chose voters miss many things about the state of
the world when Trump was president and they won him back.
That has kind of been retconned into well, you see,
Americans felt this way the whole time. There's no way
that Joe Biden could have won the elect That's the
universal SENTI almost universal. I mean I've only heard diversions
(51:12):
from that. When Nikki Haley was running and Republican voters
voted for Haley said no Trump lust, we really would
somebody else being to nominate.
Speaker 1 (51:19):
So insane, insane, insane, insane. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Oh.
Speaker 5 (51:24):
Yes, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (51:27):
No moment. Jesse Cannon by junk Fast, You'll be shocked
to hear there's interesting developments in the Trump trial.
Speaker 1 (51:38):
One of the developments in the Trump trial is that
David Pecker, who is testifying right during the Thursday trial,
is talking about why he decided not to cut the
check for Stormy Daniels. And it had been conventional wisdom
that Pecker didn't pay off Stormy Daniels. This is from
(51:58):
Lisa Rubin at MSMB, because he was angry that Trump
never reimbursed him. Packer testifies that it's actually not true.
Pecker backed out of negotiating the licensing agreement and repayment
scheme once she talked to the company's general counsel and
realized that it could be problematic legally, which is basically
the entire theory of this case if you think about
(52:20):
it right, because this is campaign donations, illegal campaign donations.
And the implication here is that Packer pumped the brakes
because he knew that this was not okay. And there
we go, ladies and gentlemen, and there we are. That's
it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday,
(52:42):
Wednesday and Friday to hear the best minds in politics
makes sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what
you've heard, Please send it to a friend and keep
the conversation going. And again thanks for listening.
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