July 19, 2025 • 48 mins
NOTUS’ Evan McMorris-Santoro examines the continued fallout for the GOP as Trump tries to cover up his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
Wisconsin Senator Tammy Baldwin details the GOP’s rescission package cuts and the effects they’ll have on the American people.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds, and six and ten americans think that
the new GOP tax law, the BBB will do more
to hurt than help low income people. We have such
a great show for you today. Notice his own Evan mcmorros.
(00:23):
Santorro stops by to talk about the continued fallout from
the GOP is Ebstein crisis. Then we'll talk to Wisconsin
Senator Tammy Baldwin about the GOP's recision package, which they
passed in the dead of night and the effects that
(00:43):
it will have on the American people. But first the
news Somali.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
This recision package is really really bad. At codifies nine
billion in DOGE cuts, and it seems like the Democrats
didn't pull the levers they could to stop this, because
I don't know, is this leadership just this roll over
and die? Like what do you see here?
Speaker 1 (01:05):
I know what you see here? You see it. Grace
is in leadership.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
I mean I know what I've read.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Yeah, let's talk about this nine billion dollars. The goal
was to completely screw over NPR and PBS and also
to pull back some foreign aid. Democrats could have dragged
this out for much longer than Trump would have. First
of all, it would have been a failure for Trump,
which in itself would have been good. There was a
(01:32):
sort of way that they could have missed this Doge deadline,
and that would have helped. I don't know why it
would have been, it would have been something. It would
have been some kind of win. Look, Democrats can't do
that much, but they can make things worse, right like
you're maybe you're not in power, but you can drag
(01:53):
it us out. You can make people more unhappy. You
can make them miss long weekend. There's if there's one
thing that members of Congress hate, it's missing long travel weekends.
It's being inconvenience, it's missing their flights. They can do
stuff to make this worse, and they are not necessarily
(02:14):
doing them. And this is a failure on the part
of leadership in both houses. And it's a real question
to me if you I mean, I just want everyone
to close their eyes and pretend that Mitch McConnell was
a Democrat and was the minority leader of the Senate
and ask yourself, what would Mitch mcconnald do. Would Mitch
(02:35):
McConnell be a good soldier and help Republicans get their
work done, or would Mitch mcconald fight do every dirty
trick he could to keep Republicans from doing what they
wanted to do. I would like to see Democrats in
leadership do anything.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Somali. We really love polls when they validate hypothesises I've
long held, which is that a lot of the voters
and one of the reasons Democrats lose elections when they're
on a national level seems to be that a lot
of the left stays home when they don't put progressive
candidates up for these national roles. And a new poll
validates that voters want more candidates like Bernie and AOC,
(03:14):
and that's why they skip the twenty twenty four election.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
So this is what I think both of us have
long suspected, which is that there's a real sense that
the party actually wants populous and not mealy mouse centrists.
This is what Cylinda Lake says. She was a Biden bolster,
so worked at the White House or worked for the
(03:39):
White House. The conventional wisdom is really wrong on these voters,
as pollsters Cylinda Lake. They want leaders who will fight
for everyone. It means that the Center's candidate is perhaps
not the candidate that voters really want, at least in
this poll. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the politicians most popular among voters
polled were the one who have long campaigned done making
(04:01):
healthcare accessible for all and making Bailli owners play their
fair share. That's Bernie Sanders, AOC far and away the
favorite candidates of posters. Seventy eight percent of those polled
held favorable views of Sanders. Sixty four had favorable views
of AOC. Newsom Whitmerror also pulled relatively well. Actually Newsome
(04:22):
as his sixty percent approval rating, which is kind of
incredible considering that he comes from California and that's often
used against him. So I don't know, you know, that
certainly seems to me like progressive candidates are where it's at.
But then again, Jesse and I perhaps have a horse
in this race.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Yeah, I mean, I believe it was Thomas Frank who
made this argument many years ago, as if you look
through national races, every time the Democrats have lost the
presidency is when the left has perceived that the candidate
is too far to the center. So I think it's
pretty interesting. So in things that are interesting and horrifying,
ACA Health Insuran. It will cost the average person seventy
(05:01):
five percent bard extra. And for those people who've never
been on Obamacare, I have only been off of Obamacare
for less than a year after being on it for
over a decade, I know these costs were way way,
way bigger than they should be and than anyone else pays.
So this is really really bad stuff.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Look, the whole point here is to make it so
that Obamacare fails. This is what this is about. They
have tried to fuck over Obamacare. Now, there were these
polls last week from Fabrizio, the pollster of Trump, who
showed that this is really unpopular what they're doing, And
(05:41):
basically they're making it so that all of the premiums
are going to go up by about seventy five percent,
which is like Trump is very inflationary. He does a
lot of inflationary stuff, but this seems like a lot
even for him. And you know, the whole game here,
as we've said before, is to make it so that
people can't afford their healthcare, that they or they can't
(06:04):
aren't able to register for things or they aren't able to.
I mean, it is just they really, really really want
to make life as hard as possible. This is the
whole ball game here. It's just, you know, they want
to make it so you can't complains, you can't file,
so you can't get on your healthcare. They want to
make life as hard as possible. They're using the case
(06:24):
for efficiency to make the whole system more inefficient in
the hopes that people drop off. Look, the other the
one thing that might save healthcare in this country is
that Republicans are hoping to have these cuts come in
after the midterm because they know they're very unpopular and
they want to win the midterms. This is incredibly dishonest,
but that's what the brand here is is just rank dishonesty.
(06:49):
And so I don't know what ends up happening here,
but it's just completely shitty and fucked up and insane.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Yeah, speaking of insanity, tariffs, our prices are going up
as much as fifty percent, and it is the tariffs
that are to believe.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Yeah, I know you're shocked to hear this.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
This was basically one of those articles I could have
just pre written and then we could have just chosen
which data actually air it.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
We know they already said that, It's just that the
Trump administration told them they couldn't say it right. Remember
when Amazon wanted to put on their website how much
tariffs were going to make things be more expensive, and
Trump was like, no, you're not allowed to. This is
here we are, ladies and gentlemen. This is it. This
is where we go. This is Tariffs are inflationary. Tariffs
(07:36):
are a tax paid by the consumer. We knew this
was happening. Everyone who saw the inflation report knew that
everything was getting more expensive because of tariffs. You know,
the president's an idiot, and she's obsessed with this idea
that tariffs will help us. Okay, twelve piece pots and
pans ninety nine dollars on May twenty, it's one hundred
and forty nine dollars on July seventh. That's a fifty
(07:57):
one percent change. Trio three and one travel system May
twentieth to ninety nine on July seventh. The tariffs or
taxes paid by the consumer. This is not rocket science.
This is what we kept saying was going to happen.
Evan McMorris Santuro is a reporter for Notice. Welcome back
(08:22):
Evan to Fast Politics.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
How are so nice to be with you? It's so
I'm so glad to be with you. This is like,
this has been great about we never got to do
this until now.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
It we we I thought I had you on. That's
why I said welcome back.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
You did so. At my previous employer one time I
logged in and then while I logged in, my boss
said you can't do this podcast and put it up.
I won't say what that employer was, but it is
a cable news network that uses those three letters to
delineate itself. But now I work at Notice and I
(08:58):
can just like you, which.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Is real newspaper. Wait, did they really say you couldn't
talk to me?
Speaker 3 (09:04):
Yeah? I was on like it. Literally you were like, Hi,
you were on the podcast, and my boss was like,
you can't do this podcast.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
You can only write books about how bad Joe Biden
is when you work at that network. That's the only
opiniony thing you can do.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
Is correct?
Speaker 1 (09:25):
That is correct? Yeah, all right, let's talk. Last night
was one of those nights where I actually was interviewing
Marish Kahrgate about this amazing documentary she made about her mom.
So I was not able to just be completely online,
so I think I may have missed I was only
able to spend seven hours on my phone as opposed
(09:45):
to the usual seventy, so I may have missed some details.
But give me the top line. This airs Saturday morning,
So give us this sort of top line of the
incredible news dump that happened yesterday, which.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
It was one of those, it was one of those
classic nights. So you know, I'll put us in time
in space. You know, I write the Notice daily newsletter
every morning, which means that what I'm doing at night
is I'm sort of like reading all the stories you're
gonna be publishing tomorrow. You know, I'm looking at everything
that's happening. And we have published this really interesting story
about how the House was having a trouble passing this
(10:23):
recisions bill that Trump wants really badly. That's going to know,
defund a lot of public television, a lot of foreign
policy stuff, a lot of foreign age stuff. And when
there is the bill that.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
I just want to pausit for a second, the bill
that grows the BBB, which grows the deficit right four
trillion dollars. Give her minus he wanted to cut a
couple billion to screw over NPR and PBS and also
some like poor children in foreign countries.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
I think it is better to think of this rather
than a complisation about the deficit, and more conversation about
knocking out conservative goals, right, and the idea of eliminating
foreign aid and eliminating funding for public broadcasting. They've been
around for like as long as I've been covering politics
about longer, right, and like they've now done that. And
(11:14):
you look, you look at the BBB that had a
lot of Trump stuff into two. So really this is
like sort of racking up a bunch of wins. I
feel like. So we're watching this bill happen, and one
of my college wrote this story about how it was
struggling in the House because this Epstein stuff was happening.
That like the Democrats had gotten hold of Jeffrey Epstein
story and were trying to force a vote on releasing
these files. Trump up to that point had been saying,
(11:37):
don't talk about this anymore. I don't want to talk
about this anymore. If you talk about this or not,
one of my supporters, So all the Republicans were voting
against this bill they didn't want to release the files.
Right in the middle of that, like right in the
middle of that was this Wall Street Journal news alert
that was like surprise, there was a birthday book reportedly
(11:57):
that a lot of the friends of Jeffrey signed Alan
with a.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
Friend group you never want to be in.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
Yeah, it's it's a strange, it's very it's a strange
group and also like a very I don't know if
you read the article, like they're not particularly clever, but
they do have the sort of like a centralized theme
of things they want to talk about.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
It's mostly sexual assault or harassment.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
Well, it was a lot of like literally this like
drawings of booze. Like it was like we're going I'm
gonna I'm going to like get like I'm going to
give you a book full of like a fifty year
old whatever, how over old. He was a doodle book
full of like boobies. I mean, it's really quite remarkable
to think about this. But anyway, so in it, obviously
Trump is mentioned as one of the prominent doodlers in
(12:42):
this book, and it just sort of blew the whole
world up. I mean, this was one you know, very
rarely do we do we have this that, like whild
Congress is actively talking about this issue, this giant news
story drops into the middle of the conversation all of
a sudden, Trump, who had been like, don't talk about this,
(13:03):
We're not releasing anything, we don't do anything, We're moving on. Well, suddenly,
you know, in the midst of attacking the media and
saying the media was fake and this is all bullshit,
he also said, actually, let's release some stuff. And so
as we sit here on Friday talking about this, we're
in the morning now where Pam Bondi, who has been
(13:23):
kind of in hiding over this, is now saying, yes,
I will release an Epstein stuff, and Trump is saying, yes,
we'll release an Epstein stuff. And a lot of the
MAGA people who were mad at Trump about Epstein appear
to be now more mad at the Wall Street Journal.
In some way, of course, the whole thing has been
kind of twisted up, but the end result has been
(13:45):
that the Epstein story is not only not going away,
but has been kind of like turbocharged in the past
twenty four hours.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
One of the things that I think is important to
remember here is that the Wall Street Journal is owned
by one Rupert Murdoch, a man who was often accused
of having created Donald Trump, right, who owns the Fox
News Network. So this is a scenario where we have
Donald Trump v. We have Donald Trump v. Rupert Murdoch,
(14:17):
because in the truths or tweets or whatever they're called,
we do see Donald Trump complaining about Ruper Murdoch and
saying he's going to sue the Wall Street Journal.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
Directly saying Rupert murroc asshowed me that he was going
to take care of this for meeting, and then the
story came out. It's funny because when I was covering,
you know, for the him a Biden administration, I spent
a lot of time covering the Biden administration and the
people of the Biden administration, they were pretty met at
the press too, if you're a recall, right, for a
lot of different reasons. Yes, But the paper that they
thought that they liked, that they said people told me
(14:50):
was like they thought was like maybe the best paper
covering politics was the Wall Street Journal, right, And the
Journal had the famous story about Biden's age that The's
quotes and Kevin McCarthy that Democrats immediately said, oh, it's
got Kevin MacCarthy, This story has to be complete crap.
We hate this, oh god. And then of course you know,
YadA YadA, Biden's out that aforementioned book has written. The
(15:13):
feeling about that is totally different that that story feels
fair depression. Now, the same thing is true that if
you ask people in the Trump administration, they like the
Wall Street Journal like as a reporting operation. They do
hate the coverage that they get from them, which every
one house does, right, But there's a lot of respect
for the Wall Street Journal the work that they do
sort of in politics in general. And as you mentioned,
(15:34):
Trump feels like he can call up Murdic if he
wants to. So you have this thing where this is
not a story that was not in Mother Jones. This
is not a story you can on MSNBC. This is
a story that was in a newspaper that people in
American politics really respect from a team that they really respect.
So as you see this sort of swirling conversation about
(15:56):
what crap this is, or how bad a report this is,
or how how fake news this is, remember back to
those days of when Democrats were freaking out about the
Kevin McCarthy story and what ended up happening with that, Like,
I feel like there's a lot of just kind of
normal political pushback on the reporting, but it's very it's
(16:18):
very difficult in the world that we live in now.
Just need to put those into a generalized context. But
the truth is, like the reaction is very normal, like
we hate this story, they hate us, but people do
not feel that way about the journal in general. Like
just like preciply, you know that outlet.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
A really important thing to say here is that the
editorial page is completely brainworm. So the Wall Street Journal
reporting is second to none. The editorial page is just
where our thoughts and we're smart thoughts go to die.
So they're gonna BONDI wants to release this grand jury stuff,
but Bondy is still Ultimately she did say she had
(16:58):
a list on her death right and she's walked that back.
I mean, there are just just to be Devil's advocate
and actually interested in facts for a minute, which no
one else involved in this is right, there were tens
of thousands of documents and videos sent from the FBI
(17:21):
to the DOJ. Right that actually did happen in season one,
right of this fiasco.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
What's season Why we know like twelve fifteen, one hundred
and thirty.
Speaker 4 (17:32):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
So it's a very long running show.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
Ten thousand.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
Again, let's let's let's let's do the face value argument. Right.
The person who's the head of the FBI, now Cash
could Tel, He said there was a bunch of stuff
that needed to come out for years before he became
the head of the FBI. Right. The person who's the
deputyhead of the FBI, Dan Bongino, said for years, there's
a bunch of stuff that needs to come out. Right,
And now after this administration has changed over and those
(17:58):
guys are in there, you know, they signed off on
this sort of like actually there isn't anything else to
find whatever. But now Democrats are saying, look, there's a
bunch of stuff that needs to be found. We've seen
you know, Senator Ron Whiten and some other Democrats saying
there's a bunch of stuff to be found.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
You know.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
The issue here is I feel like the straight politics
of this is. I do think the White House doesn't
want to talk about this. My colleague Jasmine right if
I write the newsletter with spoke with a senior administration
official this week and they were kind of like, all right,
we just need to weather this. This was back when
Charlie Kirk was really complaining, I need a press conference
(18:34):
from Pam Bonnie who explain what's going on, and this
White House, this senior administration official said, do you really
think a press conference from Pambonni's gonna put this to bed?
Like they are aware that they are in this situation
where there really is no way kind of out of this, right,
but there is this issue of we don't really know
what remains that can be looked at. And so even
(18:55):
with this stuff today, Trump said, I want the pertinent
I'm doing, Eric, people can't see it, the pertinent stuff
from this grand jury test, and we're going to be released,
which of course means some filtration, right, And you've seen
Pambondi tried by the fact that we can't release everything
because some of it is maybe might revictimize people, or
maybe it's just kind of disgusting and not really again
(19:17):
pertinent to the conspiracy that people want it to be.
But the problem with that is is that as long
as there is sort of any document inside any drawer
that has the word Epstein on it that is not released,
they're going to be under pressure to release stuff, and
I think that, like I think that they really thought
that they would be trusted in some way on this
(19:40):
and could move on from this, and that is just
clearly not the case, especially now with this new reporting.
But you know, there may be stuff that's valuable, or
maybe stuff that's not valuable. I am not a super
deep thinking Epstein head. I don't know a kun about
all their conspiracy layers, but I do understand politics in
the very basic sense. And this is a thing of
like they want everything, and anything short of everything is
(20:03):
going to not be everything, right, and so you can't
give people what they want if you can't get them everything.
And it does seem very clear that everything is not
on the table.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
In this siloed media ecosystem. There are things that would
appall other people that Donald Trump has rowed through right
because of the support of the base, things like the women,
many allegations, things like you know, the many scandals, the this,
the that, I mean, the base right, everything crypto. Yeah,
(20:36):
I mean, we could be here all month. But the
one thing that the base seems to genuinely be stuck
on is the ebscene stuff. So there have been many,
many scandals in Trump world, where normal reporters on the
opinion side or on the straight news side have gotten
into like this is going to be the thing that
ends Donald Trump and it never is killing people COVID,
(21:01):
giving them bad advice, telling them, none of that even
touched him. But this seems to be something that has
really gotten the base riled up in a way. It
shows how how much they are not really connected with
the sort of world that we are, which I think
is pretty interesting.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
That is interesting. That's a really good point on that. Actually,
I think there's something here about the nature of the
way this is being talked about, right because I did
some reporting very early on in this when this, when
this came back, talked to you know, the Senior Guide
Medium Matters and sort of follows everything about this and
goes on the right remedia, and you know, I asked him,
I said, you know, is this does this look different?
(21:43):
He said, well, we're still seeing most people are still
saying this doesn't you know, this isn't about Trump. We're
mad at Bondie, we're mad at Patel, we're mad at
each other people. But when it comes to the idea
of putting this away, what these people are kind of saying,
is like, Trump, you're being duped, Trump, you're being misled. Trump,
You're not really in charge. And I think that's the
(22:05):
kind of thing that might foment more challenges for a
white hashing to put this away. Because Trump does not
like when people say this kind of stuff. He tends
to jump in and get involved and say, actually, no, hey,
I am in charge. I am in charge. I got
this and you and we saw some message discipline for
about one day. One day the mega discipline was this
is nothing. If you like this, you are a victim
(22:27):
of a democratic led hoax. We're not talking about anymore,
and we're done with. And then literally the next day
it changed because the pressure again becomes well why don't
you know more about it? Trump? Like, why don't you?
Why aren't you in charge of this? And this? This
is an issue of I think that the president, these
people who believe that the president has this sort of
(22:50):
special miraculous power, that he's completely you know, in charge
of all this stuff and what and that he is
going to go in there and sort of clean all
this stuff out for them, that now what seeing is
the idea that he himself is being influenced in some
way by these supposed deep state actors, etc. And I
think that that is a more political danger if you're
a Trump supporter, because the problem is people are saying
(23:12):
that Trump is weak. Now these magat people are not
saying Trump is in on it. They are not saying
Trump is somehow a liar. They're saying he's like week
or not paying attention. And that kind of thing can
derail this president all the time, and that makes it
very difficult to focus on the things that they want
to focus on.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
Another really fucked up thing happened this week Thursday night,
which was Sherry Redstone, stalwart of American democracy. She is
the queen of standing up for journalistic integrity, a NEPO
baby to put us all to shame. She did, in
fact cancel Cobert the highest rated, highest rated, certainly very
(23:58):
high rated for History and free Fall, and she canceled
it because it's a financial decision and has nothing to
do with the fact that Donald Trump hates Stephen Colbert.
Speaker 3 (24:08):
Discuss We're in an absolutely remarkable moment when it comes
to this, because one of the things that has been important,
you know, is that that's important about these places to
make money, right, is the idea that they are not
beholden to like the politics and the government. Right, you
want your news division, your newspeople that we you know,
(24:29):
no fear or favor. We'll just go out there and
say we have to say. You know, the idea that
you were going to possibly have fired a late night
host because they're not nice enough to the president. I
don't really know how that gives you credibility with an
audience down the line, you know what I mean. Like,
it's a very strange change. And again, look, GBS is
not saying that this is what happened, right, They're saying, Look,
(24:53):
they are absolutely saying happened right. He wasn't making money anymore,
et cetera, et cetera. But this like.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Her fourth offense, right, because we had sixty minutes. The
executive producer left and then Scott Pelly got on there
and said he left because our content is being supervised
in ways it has never been before. Okay, so then
we have settling the lawsuit, this scurrilous lawsuit. I mean,
(25:21):
there's no reason to believe that my favorite Redstone NEPO
baby is acting out of her own belief in you know,
her own want to make a dial dollar. No.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
I mean even the South Park guys, we're like, this
merger is totally fucked and we are having a really
hard time dealing with this, and you know, there's some
question about this. The thing that comes out in the
end is what do you have to market after this?
Like if you have turned yourself into this network that
is very clearly suggesting that you have a political bent
(25:57):
that is, like, you know, towards the mega side of things,
or your support you know, you know, you're supporting this
president and his and his allies. What like, at what
point does this become a danger to your profits and
ability to do your job as a network. And I
think that that is that that is the big question
that we're dealing with here, because you know, a lot
of this is, you know, the fact that you're putting
(26:18):
this pressure on reports. It's really sad. People are Scott Pelly,
you know, incredibly prominent journalists leaving and and and and
saying this stuff is incredibly sad and dangerous. But there's
also the aspect of like, what is the long term
impact of this, right, what is the long term impact
of buying into the idea that came from the right
(26:41):
that you have an entire network that is carrying the
water for the Democrats or carrying the water for the
left or whatever. Again, ask the Democrats if they think
that that was true, and they will tell you now like, hey,
we'll not telling you that that that's happening. But now
you have a network saying actually, okay, maybe you're right,
and now we're going to like, actually, look like we're
(27:01):
carrying water for a side. And what makes that really
challenging is I don't know what that means for my
business down the road. I don't know what it means
if one of the premier brands in my industry decides, actually,
we are going to carry water. Now, we are going
to do it. We'll just see what happens. This is
(27:22):
seeing what happens could really mean both the demise of
really good news obviously from thatject you know that perspective,
but also the demise of like the idea of what
the news business is, and that is it's very very
dangerous and very scary. I don't know really what to
say about it. When it comes to Colbert, this is
all sort of like very high level entertainment level stuff.
(27:43):
I do think that people who are connecting the dots
between one of the most prominent and effective Trump critics
and being fired in the middle of a lawsuit in
which millions of dollars are extracted from that network for
critical of Trump. You know, I can see how those
doctor connected.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
I definitely Evan, fellow hyphenate. Yes, will you come back?
Because we both have hyphenated names. You got it right,
fellow hyphenate? Oh really, Jack, will you come back?
Speaker 3 (28:14):
Oh? This this is great. I've been wanting to do
this for a long time. Anytime.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
Evan McMorris Santuro is a reporter from Notice. Tammy Baldwin
is the junior Senator from Wisconsin. Welcome back to Fast Politics,
Senator Tammy Baldwin.
Speaker 4 (28:32):
It is so great to join you again.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Let's start with what's happening in the Senate with the
Recisions package and what that means.
Speaker 4 (28:41):
So let's put a little context on recisions because it's
super wonky. But every year, Cogres and the Senate in particular,
goes through a process of setting the budget the funding
levels for all the agencies, and we in the Senate
usually do that on a really bypart of basis and
then what happened in this recision package is that Donald
(29:06):
Trump and Republicans sort of said, oh, we don't like
what we just agreed to in these certain areas. We
want to just take a part the usaid. We want
to take apart the Corporation for Public Radio and defund
public media, and we're going to use the reconciliation process,
(29:29):
which is this obscure process that only requires a simple
majority to pass it, which means only Republicans in this
particular case, because they're the majority party. So they just
undid what we just a few months ago decided we
wanted to do together. They just undid it. And what
it means is that on the public media side that
(29:50):
there are there's probably fifteen hundred local radio and TV
stations that get money through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
to do things like amber alerts and emergency alerts in
natural disasters and weather emergencies, to do things like provide
local community news. And there's so many places across this country,
(30:14):
especially rural areas, that no longer have like local newspapers
because they've crashed, right, and so this is a lifeline
for our local communities. Also, educational programming and it's like
the Republicans in the Senate just got down on bended
knee for President Trump. Whatever you want, sir, we will provide,
(30:36):
we will do. And it's just been pretty horrifying to
watch what happened. We had a long session. We were
in for many many hours offering amendments, trying to restore
some of the funding that Donald Trump, and particularly this
guy named Russell Vote, who uh charge of an agency
called OMB, the Office of Management and Budget, who just
(31:00):
doesn't believe he needs to listen to Congress. He just
believed in the unilateral presidency, who needs the Congress.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
He was one of the authors of Project twenty twenty five.
And he also did, in fact, in the first Trump administration,
try to prevent Congress from using its executive powers of
the purse right.
Speaker 4 (31:20):
And so you know, it's our Article one responsibilities in
the United States Constitution that like we make the laws,
we set the budgets, we appropriate dollars, they implement it administer.
But Russell Vote has a very different idea, as certainly
does Donald Trump. And a couple of things that Russell
Vote made clear this week. One was that this is
(31:41):
just the first recisions package that they're going to bring
they're going to undo a lot more of our bipartisan
work if they get their way. And we warned our
Republican colleagues more of this is to come. Don't fall
for it the first time, because once you fall for
it the first time, they're going to come back over
and over again. And the other thing Russell Volte said
(32:03):
this week as the Senate was considering and the Republicans
passed the Recisions package is he said, you know, the
Senate appropriations process is to bipartisan. I mean, what, what right? Really?
Did I just hear that?
Speaker 1 (32:17):
But this recisions package, so this BBB grows a deficit
four trillion dollars, cuts a lot of services for people,
and also is ultimately a skinny Medicaid repeal. But the
thing that I am so struck by in this is
that Congress doesn't usually do recisions packages. In fact, the
(32:37):
last one was during Bush Clinton. But they didn't provide
you with any information, right, they were just like, trust
us exactly.
Speaker 4 (32:46):
Well, let's say just say this isn't a quote of
Russell vote, but others sort of purporting to paraphrase his words.
It's like the Corporation for Public broadcasting is too woke, right,
That's why we have to pull away their funding. But
what was so like ironic? At the very end of
the recisions package, when we're getting ready for the final vote,
Republicans are all going to vote it through. No Democrat
(33:09):
voted to past recisions. The Majority leader gets up and says,
you know, we're doing the first thing something that Congress
has never done before. You know, we're cutting programs. We're
going to reduce the deficit. That I just went wait
a second. It was only two weeks ago that Republicans
added three point five trillion dollars to the deficit and
(33:32):
the debt over the next ten years, and they're growing
about having saved nine billion dollars. Do you understand the
difference between those two actions. It was really crazy. And
the other thing I want to point out is we've
never had a partisan recisions bill. We have, indeed, and
you're writing about the date it was the early nineteen
(33:54):
nineties we had a bipartisan recisions bill. You know, usually
recisions happen within the appropriations process. So you're looking at
next year's budget and you're saying, oh, we allocated too
much money for this activity. They didn't spend it all,
so let's rescind it and put it somewhere else or
return it to the taxpayers. We usually do that in
(34:16):
the context of our annual budgeting and appropriating, and so
it's done all the time, but it's always done on
a bipartisans and this idea of now we're going to
just have the party in power rescind is very counter
to the culture of the Senate, and it's really eroding
the trust between members of the minority and majority party.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
Since you are in the Senate, and the Senate has
historically been thought of as less insane than the House.
These senators are, in fact, like any hope that any
of us had that any of them would do the
right thing. I think on the Republican side, we're absolutely
blown out by the weird math they did to get
(35:02):
the BBB through, and I want to talk about that
because it hasn't gotten a ton of attention. So Murkowski
voted yes because she'd got lots of goodies for Alaska.
Collins voted no. She's up for reelection very soon in
a purple state. Tillis voted no.
Speaker 4 (35:18):
And then at that he wasn't running for reelection next year.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
Right and Rand Paul, Rand Paul Ran Paul.
Speaker 4 (35:25):
Because remember JD had to break the tie.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
Right, Clearly Murkowski could have voted no and could have
made this not pass. It just struck me that the
people who voted yes or voted no, that there was
that this was just so craven and about re election
in the midterm and not so much about like trying
(35:49):
in any way to protect their constituents. Obviously you were
in this world, but I'm just curious did it strike
you as that? And also just the math on it
truck me as kind of performative.
Speaker 4 (36:00):
Ultimately, Yeah, as long as JD Vance is around Washington,
d C. They can afford to have three Republicans drop off,
then they have a fifty to fifty tie. JD Vance
comes and breaks it, they win. I'm not in those
conversations on the Republican side. I don't know how much
they're saying like, we can let you off on this vote,
we can let you off on this vote because you
have big reelections. I don't know if I assume that
(36:22):
those conversations are happening. I'm not a part of it,
but they know. But the other thing I would note
is it's just striking to me. Also, the lack of
independence from Donald Trump. There was not the same fear
of George W. Bush there was even in Trump's first term,
(36:43):
there was not the same fear to be expressing some
independence from that administration. But Trump two point zero is
totally different. And you know, many of my Republican colleagues
in the Senate are truly maga people. So shouldn't be
a big shock or a surprise that they're not independent
from the president. But the rest of them, the longtimers,
(37:06):
should have some sense of wanting to preserve the power
of the Senate, the power of the Appropriations committee, committees
that they're on, a body that they're in, and I
see that slowly eroding or not so slowly eroding under
this second presidency of Donald Trump.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
Yeah, I mean as bad as Trump one point zero was,
this is a completely different ballgame.
Speaker 4 (37:32):
Steve Miller, Steve banned all of them, said what before
he was inaugurated, They said, look, folks, we're going to
flood the zone. You know, we started off this conversation like,
there's so much to talk about. Let's just stick to
what happened in the last couple of weeks in the Senate,
but they're flooding the zone. Everywhere else. People are just
looking at action after action this administration takes. But the
(37:53):
stuff that's happening in the Senate is really notable because
they're basically saying, we don't care about Congress, we don't
care about the people that the people elected to fight
for them. We're just going to steamroll right over.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
So I wonder if you could talk to us about
now here we are. There's just a lot of talk
about Democrats and what they should be doing and how
they should be breaking through. And we on this podcast
have seen a lot some Democrats do better than others
at connecting with the media about breaking through. This is
(38:29):
a real problem we see again and again. I feel
like you are very much your own person, and when
you talk to you, you just talk about what's going on,
and you're quite good at speaking in it as a human.
How much do you think that that is an important
element of where we are right now? Because I don't
believe that they're in the wilderness, because I think Democrats
(38:52):
have won a lot of elections and I think that
Trump is a singular force that is not really transferable
in any possible way, But if you could talk a
little bit about what you think the sort of ways
to connect with voters are and why this has been
such a struggle, especially for people who should be able
(39:12):
to Yeah.
Speaker 4 (39:13):
So there's the content and then there's the process of communication.
So I think you're absolutely right in terms of connecting.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
You know, there's.
Speaker 4 (39:24):
Colleagues who use statistics all the time. There's colleagues who
use stories. Stories are more powerful. It shows that you
were listening to your constituents and what they told you
on what their fears are in this last election last year,
you got it. If you were talking about how much
people were struggling just to be able to afford their
groceries and I can't find a place that I can
(39:45):
afford to rent. And you know, if you were hearing
that and talking about it, you're obviously connecting. Then there's
a process of connecting. And I think so many of
us you know, who are at the point that were
like in the Senate, didn't grow up speaking to folks
in the way that we do these days. I'm used
(40:06):
to very much in person. I love connecting with people
in person. I'm also used to doing television interviews and
radio interviews. But you know, we have to get better
about communicating in the spaces where people are talking these days.
I think I heard or read just in the last
day or so that the flip has occurred between people
(40:30):
who get their information on television and you know that
broadcast and cable to same content online. That that just happened.
And so somebody was teasing us in our caucus like, oh,
I'm so excited I just got booked on a cable
TV tonight. Well, you know, I'm going to talk to
(40:51):
more people by talking to you. That's going to be true.
And so I think the process of how we talk,
we're behind the Republicans on that. And so, you know,
remain are authentic selves who listen to people and uplift
their stories and then start communicating in the spaces where
people are actually exchanging information these days, which is different
(41:14):
than what it was a year ago or five years
ago or ten years ago, and we got to keep
up with that.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
Yeah, no, that's a really good answer. I want you
to talk for a minute about all the LGBTQ services
or you nine hundred and eighty eight LGBTQ plus services
that were ended in the BBB so explain to us
what those services are.
Speaker 4 (41:37):
Yeah, so let me give you the overarching this. Several
years ago, I was part of an effort, bipartisan effort
to create the nine to eight to eight hotline, which
is a suicide prevention, mental health crisis hotline. You know,
we've always had a number you could call, but it
used to be a ten digit area code and then
(41:58):
seven digits and nobody in their time of crisis remembered
the number or you know whatever, and so we knew,
like we've done nine to one one, we used to
have something called four to one one. You got to
be pretty old to remember that. But anyways, it's not old. Yeah,
me too. So but nine to eight eight is a
crisis line, and we fielded that three years ago this week,
(42:20):
and it has meant so much to people who were
in crisis. You know, we publicized that it's out there.
You can text, you can chat, or you can call,
and somebody answers quickly on the other line and helps
through a crisis. And then hopefully, if the crisis is
more than just you know, a moment, you're referred to
(42:41):
services in your community that help you through the longer crisis.
The longer set of issues, and so we set it up,
and we recognized as we were setting it up that
there's certain populations set up a much higher rate of
suicide or attempted suicide military veterans, often due to the
traumas that they've been exposed to in wartime, members of
(43:04):
the LGBT community, in part because society, especially under Trump,
has it out for them. And so especially for youth
who are coming out, where do they fit in this
world when they're seeing this relentless series of attacks. So
what did we do when we set up nine eight eight.
We had a specialized you know, press one if you're
a veteran, and we'll get you those services from somebody
(43:26):
who's walked in your boots before, and press three if
you're part of the LGBT community, and we will get
you those crisis services from somebody who understands your journey.
And abruptly this week the Trump administration said we are
no longer going to provide specialized services on this crisis
line for fue side prevention to LGBTQ youth. And that
(43:50):
is just cruel in my mind. Now, I want to
be really clear, nine eight eight still exists. The specialized
services have been defunded, a fight to restore them. But
I do want to say to anyone LGBTQ or not,
if you're experiencing a mental health crisis, if you're contemplating suicide,
(44:11):
I still want you to call nine eight eight. There
are still people to help you, and I'll fight to
get those specialized services back on track.
Speaker 1 (44:19):
I want you to talk for a minute about Alligator Alcatraz.
We've seen some members of Congress have toward it. The
administration wants to see more of this writ large.
Speaker 4 (44:31):
You know, the while they're cutting seventeen million people off
their healthcare. In the bbb Ugly Bill, not beautiful bill,
they did plus up the budgets of Defense and Homeland Security,
which includes all of the immigration enforcement activities, so that
they can do these activities like deport people from Central
(44:54):
America to Africa, and to build new detention facilities in
very inhospitable places here in the United States. So there's
a lot of money being spent in a bill that
they said, we're slashing nutrition assistance and slashing Medicaid and
(45:16):
the Affordable Care Act premium subsidies. We're slashing all that. Oh,
but yes we did find money for some other activities,
tax cuts for millionaires and big corporations, and let's build
alligator alcabiraths, right, And so they're finding plenty of money
for the president's priorities of mass deportation or mass detention
(45:37):
at the same time that our most vulnerable neighbors are
being told you are going to have to fill out
a lot more paperwork for your medicaid.
Speaker 1 (45:45):
Senator Baldwin, thank you, please come back.
Speaker 4 (45:49):
I will thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (45:53):
A moment. Jesse Cannon, all right, may I want to
paint a picture for you.
Speaker 2 (45:59):
So Donald Trump Junior owns one percent of this company,
Grab a Gun, and he goes to the Stock Exchange,
ring the bell, and here's what he says. To be
able to come back to the New York Stock Exchange
and actually take a gun company public feels like such
a vindication of all the insanity and all of the woke.
What do you think happened next?
Speaker 1 (46:17):
I think that the shares of online gun retailer Grab
a Gun began publicly trading in the New York Stock
Exchange and then drop sharply. I am twenty percent shocked. Yeah,
that Donald Trump Junior and a shareholder and advisor of
grab a Gun, ranging the opening bell two chance of
USA USA, because there is nothing more USA than a
(46:41):
spac led by a Republican mega downer that sells guns.
There is nothing more American than being able to buy
a gun from a spack led by the President's son.
Donald Trump, the eldest son, is projected to own three
hundred thousand shares of grab a Gun, or about one
(47:05):
percent of the company's stock. Lucky guy, Well, maybe not
so lucky.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
He said it was an ultimate triumphant return.
Speaker 1 (47:14):
Don Junior is a partner in seventeen eighty nine Capital
as well as an advisor to gubb a Gun. Grab
A Gun raised one hundred and seventy nine million in
gross proceeds from the merger. According to a statement, grab
a Gun is the latest example of the President's family
and allies backing companies related to conservative political causes or
(47:36):
in this case, buying a gun. You have to grab it,
you grab a gun. I just want to say that.
Visit me in a pineapple under this safe. That's it
for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday,
Thursday and Saturday to hear the best minds and politics
(47:59):
make sense of all this chaos. If you enjoy this podcast,
please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
Thanks for listening.
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds, and six and ten americans think that
the new GOP tax law, the BBB will do more
to hurt than help low income people. We have such
a great show for you today. Notice his own Evan mcmorros.
(00:23):
Santorro stops by to talk about the continued fallout from
the GOP is Ebstein crisis. Then we'll talk to Wisconsin
Senator Tammy Baldwin about the GOP's recision package, which they
passed in the dead of night and the effects that
(00:43):
it will have on the American people. But first the
news Somali.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
This recision package is really really bad. At codifies nine
billion in DOGE cuts, and it seems like the Democrats
didn't pull the levers they could to stop this, because
I don't know, is this leadership just this roll over
and die? Like what do you see here?
Speaker 1 (01:05):
I know what you see here? You see it. Grace
is in leadership.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
I mean I know what I've read.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Yeah, let's talk about this nine billion dollars. The goal
was to completely screw over NPR and PBS and also
to pull back some foreign aid. Democrats could have dragged
this out for much longer than Trump would have. First
of all, it would have been a failure for Trump,
which in itself would have been good. There was a
(01:32):
sort of way that they could have missed this Doge deadline,
and that would have helped. I don't know why it
would have been, it would have been something. It would
have been some kind of win. Look, Democrats can't do
that much, but they can make things worse, right like
you're maybe you're not in power, but you can drag
(01:53):
it us out. You can make people more unhappy. You
can make them miss long weekend. There's if there's one
thing that members of Congress hate, it's missing long travel weekends.
It's being inconvenience, it's missing their flights. They can do
stuff to make this worse, and they are not necessarily
(02:14):
doing them. And this is a failure on the part
of leadership in both houses. And it's a real question
to me if you I mean, I just want everyone
to close their eyes and pretend that Mitch McConnell was
a Democrat and was the minority leader of the Senate
and ask yourself, what would Mitch mcconnald do. Would Mitch
(02:35):
McConnell be a good soldier and help Republicans get their
work done, or would Mitch mcconald fight do every dirty
trick he could to keep Republicans from doing what they
wanted to do. I would like to see Democrats in
leadership do anything.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Somali. We really love polls when they validate hypothesises I've
long held, which is that a lot of the voters
and one of the reasons Democrats lose elections when they're
on a national level seems to be that a lot
of the left stays home when they don't put progressive
candidates up for these national roles. And a new poll
validates that voters want more candidates like Bernie and AOC,
(03:14):
and that's why they skip the twenty twenty four election.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
So this is what I think both of us have
long suspected, which is that there's a real sense that
the party actually wants populous and not mealy mouse centrists.
This is what Cylinda Lake says. She was a Biden bolster,
so worked at the White House or worked for the
(03:39):
White House. The conventional wisdom is really wrong on these voters,
as pollsters Cylinda Lake. They want leaders who will fight
for everyone. It means that the Center's candidate is perhaps
not the candidate that voters really want, at least in
this poll. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the politicians most popular among voters
polled were the one who have long campaigned done making
(04:01):
healthcare accessible for all and making Bailli owners play their
fair share. That's Bernie Sanders, AOC far and away the
favorite candidates of posters. Seventy eight percent of those polled
held favorable views of Sanders. Sixty four had favorable views
of AOC. Newsom Whitmerror also pulled relatively well. Actually Newsome
(04:22):
as his sixty percent approval rating, which is kind of
incredible considering that he comes from California and that's often
used against him. So I don't know, you know, that
certainly seems to me like progressive candidates are where it's at.
But then again, Jesse and I perhaps have a horse
in this race.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Yeah, I mean, I believe it was Thomas Frank who
made this argument many years ago, as if you look
through national races, every time the Democrats have lost the
presidency is when the left has perceived that the candidate
is too far to the center. So I think it's
pretty interesting. So in things that are interesting and horrifying,
ACA Health Insuran. It will cost the average person seventy
(05:01):
five percent bard extra. And for those people who've never
been on Obamacare, I have only been off of Obamacare
for less than a year after being on it for
over a decade, I know these costs were way way,
way bigger than they should be and than anyone else pays.
So this is really really bad stuff.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Look, the whole point here is to make it so
that Obamacare fails. This is what this is about. They
have tried to fuck over Obamacare. Now, there were these
polls last week from Fabrizio, the pollster of Trump, who
showed that this is really unpopular what they're doing, And
(05:41):
basically they're making it so that all of the premiums
are going to go up by about seventy five percent,
which is like Trump is very inflationary. He does a
lot of inflationary stuff, but this seems like a lot
even for him. And you know, the whole game here,
as we've said before, is to make it so that
people can't afford their healthcare, that they or they can't
(06:04):
aren't able to register for things or they aren't able to.
I mean, it is just they really, really really want
to make life as hard as possible. This is the
whole ball game here. It's just, you know, they want
to make it so you can't complains, you can't file,
so you can't get on your healthcare. They want to
make life as hard as possible. They're using the case
(06:24):
for efficiency to make the whole system more inefficient in
the hopes that people drop off. Look, the other the
one thing that might save healthcare in this country is
that Republicans are hoping to have these cuts come in
after the midterm because they know they're very unpopular and
they want to win the midterms. This is incredibly dishonest,
but that's what the brand here is is just rank dishonesty.
(06:49):
And so I don't know what ends up happening here,
but it's just completely shitty and fucked up and insane.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Yeah, speaking of insanity, tariffs, our prices are going up
as much as fifty percent, and it is the tariffs
that are to believe.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Yeah, I know you're shocked to hear this.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
This was basically one of those articles I could have
just pre written and then we could have just chosen
which data actually air it.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
We know they already said that, It's just that the
Trump administration told them they couldn't say it right. Remember
when Amazon wanted to put on their website how much
tariffs were going to make things be more expensive, and
Trump was like, no, you're not allowed to. This is
here we are, ladies and gentlemen. This is it. This
is where we go. This is Tariffs are inflationary. Tariffs
(07:36):
are a tax paid by the consumer. We knew this
was happening. Everyone who saw the inflation report knew that
everything was getting more expensive because of tariffs. You know,
the president's an idiot, and she's obsessed with this idea
that tariffs will help us. Okay, twelve piece pots and
pans ninety nine dollars on May twenty, it's one hundred
and forty nine dollars on July seventh. That's a fifty
(07:57):
one percent change. Trio three and one travel system May
twentieth to ninety nine on July seventh. The tariffs or
taxes paid by the consumer. This is not rocket science.
This is what we kept saying was going to happen.
Evan McMorris Santuro is a reporter for Notice. Welcome back
(08:22):
Evan to Fast Politics.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
How are so nice to be with you? It's so
I'm so glad to be with you. This is like,
this has been great about we never got to do
this until now.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
It we we I thought I had you on. That's
why I said welcome back.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
You did so. At my previous employer one time I
logged in and then while I logged in, my boss
said you can't do this podcast and put it up.
I won't say what that employer was, but it is
a cable news network that uses those three letters to
delineate itself. But now I work at Notice and I
(08:58):
can just like you, which.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Is real newspaper. Wait, did they really say you couldn't
talk to me?
Speaker 3 (09:04):
Yeah? I was on like it. Literally you were like, Hi,
you were on the podcast, and my boss was like,
you can't do this podcast.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
You can only write books about how bad Joe Biden
is when you work at that network. That's the only
opiniony thing you can do.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
Is correct?
Speaker 1 (09:25):
That is correct? Yeah, all right, let's talk. Last night
was one of those nights where I actually was interviewing
Marish Kahrgate about this amazing documentary she made about her mom.
So I was not able to just be completely online,
so I think I may have missed I was only
able to spend seven hours on my phone as opposed
(09:45):
to the usual seventy, so I may have missed some details.
But give me the top line. This airs Saturday morning,
So give us this sort of top line of the
incredible news dump that happened yesterday, which.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
It was one of those, it was one of those
classic nights. So you know, I'll put us in time
in space. You know, I write the Notice daily newsletter
every morning, which means that what I'm doing at night
is I'm sort of like reading all the stories you're
gonna be publishing tomorrow. You know, I'm looking at everything
that's happening. And we have published this really interesting story
about how the House was having a trouble passing this
(10:23):
recisions bill that Trump wants really badly. That's going to know,
defund a lot of public television, a lot of foreign
policy stuff, a lot of foreign age stuff. And when
there is the bill that.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
I just want to pausit for a second, the bill
that grows the BBB, which grows the deficit right four
trillion dollars. Give her minus he wanted to cut a
couple billion to screw over NPR and PBS and also
some like poor children in foreign countries.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
I think it is better to think of this rather
than a complisation about the deficit, and more conversation about
knocking out conservative goals, right, and the idea of eliminating
foreign aid and eliminating funding for public broadcasting. They've been
around for like as long as I've been covering politics
about longer, right, and like they've now done that. And
(11:14):
you look, you look at the BBB that had a
lot of Trump stuff into two. So really this is
like sort of racking up a bunch of wins. I
feel like. So we're watching this bill happen, and one
of my college wrote this story about how it was
struggling in the House because this Epstein stuff was happening.
That like the Democrats had gotten hold of Jeffrey Epstein
story and were trying to force a vote on releasing
these files. Trump up to that point had been saying,
(11:37):
don't talk about this anymore. I don't want to talk
about this anymore. If you talk about this or not,
one of my supporters, So all the Republicans were voting
against this bill they didn't want to release the files.
Right in the middle of that, like right in the
middle of that was this Wall Street Journal news alert
that was like surprise, there was a birthday book reportedly
(11:57):
that a lot of the friends of Jeffrey signed Alan
with a.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
Friend group you never want to be in.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
Yeah, it's it's a strange, it's very it's a strange
group and also like a very I don't know if
you read the article, like they're not particularly clever, but
they do have the sort of like a centralized theme
of things they want to talk about.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
It's mostly sexual assault or harassment.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
Well, it was a lot of like literally this like
drawings of booze. Like it was like we're going I'm
gonna I'm going to like get like I'm going to
give you a book full of like a fifty year
old whatever, how over old. He was a doodle book
full of like boobies. I mean, it's really quite remarkable
to think about this. But anyway, so in it, obviously
Trump is mentioned as one of the prominent doodlers in
(12:42):
this book, and it just sort of blew the whole
world up. I mean, this was one you know, very
rarely do we do we have this that, like whild
Congress is actively talking about this issue, this giant news
story drops into the middle of the conversation all of
a sudden, Trump, who had been like, don't talk about this,
(13:03):
We're not releasing anything, we don't do anything, We're moving on. Well, suddenly,
you know, in the midst of attacking the media and
saying the media was fake and this is all bullshit,
he also said, actually, let's release some stuff. And so
as we sit here on Friday talking about this, we're
in the morning now where Pam Bondi, who has been
(13:23):
kind of in hiding over this, is now saying, yes,
I will release an Epstein stuff, and Trump is saying, yes,
we'll release an Epstein stuff. And a lot of the
MAGA people who were mad at Trump about Epstein appear
to be now more mad at the Wall Street Journal.
In some way, of course, the whole thing has been
kind of twisted up, but the end result has been
(13:45):
that the Epstein story is not only not going away,
but has been kind of like turbocharged in the past
twenty four hours.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
One of the things that I think is important to
remember here is that the Wall Street Journal is owned
by one Rupert Murdoch, a man who was often accused
of having created Donald Trump, right, who owns the Fox
News Network. So this is a scenario where we have
Donald Trump v. We have Donald Trump v. Rupert Murdoch,
(14:17):
because in the truths or tweets or whatever they're called,
we do see Donald Trump complaining about Ruper Murdoch and
saying he's going to sue the Wall Street Journal.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
Directly saying Rupert murroc asshowed me that he was going
to take care of this for meeting, and then the
story came out. It's funny because when I was covering,
you know, for the him a Biden administration, I spent
a lot of time covering the Biden administration and the
people of the Biden administration, they were pretty met at
the press too, if you're a recall, right, for a
lot of different reasons. Yes, But the paper that they
thought that they liked, that they said people told me
(14:50):
was like they thought was like maybe the best paper
covering politics was the Wall Street Journal, right, And the
Journal had the famous story about Biden's age that The's
quotes and Kevin McCarthy that Democrats immediately said, oh, it's
got Kevin MacCarthy, This story has to be complete crap.
We hate this, oh god. And then of course you know,
YadA YadA, Biden's out that aforementioned book has written. The
(15:13):
feeling about that is totally different that that story feels
fair depression. Now, the same thing is true that if
you ask people in the Trump administration, they like the
Wall Street Journal like as a reporting operation. They do
hate the coverage that they get from them, which every
one house does, right, But there's a lot of respect
for the Wall Street Journal the work that they do
sort of in politics in general. And as you mentioned,
(15:34):
Trump feels like he can call up Murdic if he
wants to. So you have this thing where this is
not a story that was not in Mother Jones. This
is not a story you can on MSNBC. This is
a story that was in a newspaper that people in
American politics really respect from a team that they really respect.
So as you see this sort of swirling conversation about
(15:56):
what crap this is, or how bad a report this is,
or how how fake news this is, remember back to
those days of when Democrats were freaking out about the
Kevin McCarthy story and what ended up happening with that, Like,
I feel like there's a lot of just kind of
normal political pushback on the reporting, but it's very it's
(16:18):
very difficult in the world that we live in now.
Just need to put those into a generalized context. But
the truth is, like the reaction is very normal, like
we hate this story, they hate us, but people do
not feel that way about the journal in general. Like
just like preciply, you know that outlet.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
A really important thing to say here is that the
editorial page is completely brainworm. So the Wall Street Journal
reporting is second to none. The editorial page is just
where our thoughts and we're smart thoughts go to die.
So they're gonna BONDI wants to release this grand jury stuff,
but Bondy is still Ultimately she did say she had
(16:58):
a list on her death right and she's walked that back.
I mean, there are just just to be Devil's advocate
and actually interested in facts for a minute, which no
one else involved in this is right, there were tens
of thousands of documents and videos sent from the FBI
(17:21):
to the DOJ. Right that actually did happen in season one,
right of this fiasco.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
What's season Why we know like twelve fifteen, one hundred
and thirty.
Speaker 4 (17:32):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
So it's a very long running show.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
Ten thousand.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
Again, let's let's let's let's do the face value argument. Right.
The person who's the head of the FBI, now Cash
could Tel, He said there was a bunch of stuff
that needed to come out for years before he became
the head of the FBI. Right. The person who's the
deputyhead of the FBI, Dan Bongino, said for years, there's
a bunch of stuff that needs to come out. Right,
And now after this administration has changed over and those
(17:58):
guys are in there, you know, they signed off on
this sort of like actually there isn't anything else to
find whatever. But now Democrats are saying, look, there's a
bunch of stuff that needs to be found. We've seen
you know, Senator Ron Whiten and some other Democrats saying
there's a bunch of stuff to be found.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
You know.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
The issue here is I feel like the straight politics
of this is. I do think the White House doesn't
want to talk about this. My colleague Jasmine right if
I write the newsletter with spoke with a senior administration
official this week and they were kind of like, all right,
we just need to weather this. This was back when
Charlie Kirk was really complaining, I need a press conference
(18:34):
from Pam Bonnie who explain what's going on, and this
White House, this senior administration official said, do you really
think a press conference from Pambonni's gonna put this to bed?
Like they are aware that they are in this situation
where there really is no way kind of out of this, right,
but there is this issue of we don't really know
what remains that can be looked at. And so even
(18:55):
with this stuff today, Trump said, I want the pertinent
I'm doing, Eric, people can't see it, the pertinent stuff
from this grand jury test, and we're going to be released,
which of course means some filtration, right, And you've seen
Pambondi tried by the fact that we can't release everything
because some of it is maybe might revictimize people, or
maybe it's just kind of disgusting and not really again
(19:17):
pertinent to the conspiracy that people want it to be.
But the problem with that is is that as long
as there is sort of any document inside any drawer
that has the word Epstein on it that is not released,
they're going to be under pressure to release stuff, and
I think that, like I think that they really thought
that they would be trusted in some way on this
(19:40):
and could move on from this, and that is just
clearly not the case, especially now with this new reporting.
But you know, there may be stuff that's valuable, or
maybe stuff that's not valuable. I am not a super
deep thinking Epstein head. I don't know a kun about
all their conspiracy layers, but I do understand politics in
the very basic sense. And this is a thing of
like they want everything, and anything short of everything is
(20:03):
going to not be everything, right, and so you can't
give people what they want if you can't get them everything.
And it does seem very clear that everything is not
on the table.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
In this siloed media ecosystem. There are things that would
appall other people that Donald Trump has rowed through right
because of the support of the base, things like the women,
many allegations, things like you know, the many scandals, the this,
the that, I mean, the base right, everything crypto. Yeah,
(20:36):
I mean, we could be here all month. But the
one thing that the base seems to genuinely be stuck
on is the ebscene stuff. So there have been many,
many scandals in Trump world, where normal reporters on the
opinion side or on the straight news side have gotten
into like this is going to be the thing that
ends Donald Trump and it never is killing people COVID,
(21:01):
giving them bad advice, telling them, none of that even
touched him. But this seems to be something that has
really gotten the base riled up in a way. It
shows how how much they are not really connected with
the sort of world that we are, which I think
is pretty interesting.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
That is interesting. That's a really good point on that. Actually,
I think there's something here about the nature of the
way this is being talked about, right because I did
some reporting very early on in this when this, when
this came back, talked to you know, the Senior Guide
Medium Matters and sort of follows everything about this and
goes on the right remedia, and you know, I asked him,
I said, you know, is this does this look different?
(21:43):
He said, well, we're still seeing most people are still
saying this doesn't you know, this isn't about Trump. We're
mad at Bondie, we're mad at Patel, we're mad at
each other people. But when it comes to the idea
of putting this away, what these people are kind of saying,
is like, Trump, you're being duped, Trump, you're being misled. Trump,
You're not really in charge. And I think that's the
(22:05):
kind of thing that might foment more challenges for a
white hashing to put this away. Because Trump does not
like when people say this kind of stuff. He tends
to jump in and get involved and say, actually, no, hey,
I am in charge. I am in charge. I got
this and you and we saw some message discipline for
about one day. One day the mega discipline was this
is nothing. If you like this, you are a victim
(22:27):
of a democratic led hoax. We're not talking about anymore,
and we're done with. And then literally the next day
it changed because the pressure again becomes well why don't
you know more about it? Trump? Like, why don't you?
Why aren't you in charge of this? And this? This
is an issue of I think that the president, these
people who believe that the president has this sort of
(22:50):
special miraculous power, that he's completely you know, in charge
of all this stuff and what and that he is
going to go in there and sort of clean all
this stuff out for them, that now what seeing is
the idea that he himself is being influenced in some
way by these supposed deep state actors, etc. And I
think that that is a more political danger if you're
a Trump supporter, because the problem is people are saying
(23:12):
that Trump is weak. Now these magat people are not
saying Trump is in on it. They are not saying
Trump is somehow a liar. They're saying he's like week
or not paying attention. And that kind of thing can
derail this president all the time, and that makes it
very difficult to focus on the things that they want
to focus on.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
Another really fucked up thing happened this week Thursday night,
which was Sherry Redstone, stalwart of American democracy. She is
the queen of standing up for journalistic integrity, a NEPO
baby to put us all to shame. She did, in
fact cancel Cobert the highest rated, highest rated, certainly very
(23:58):
high rated for History and free Fall, and she canceled
it because it's a financial decision and has nothing to
do with the fact that Donald Trump hates Stephen Colbert.
Speaker 3 (24:08):
Discuss We're in an absolutely remarkable moment when it comes
to this, because one of the things that has been important,
you know, is that that's important about these places to
make money, right, is the idea that they are not
beholden to like the politics and the government. Right, you
want your news division, your newspeople that we you know,
(24:29):
no fear or favor. We'll just go out there and
say we have to say. You know, the idea that
you were going to possibly have fired a late night
host because they're not nice enough to the president. I
don't really know how that gives you credibility with an
audience down the line, you know what I mean. Like,
it's a very strange change. And again, look, GBS is
not saying that this is what happened, right, They're saying, Look,
(24:53):
they are absolutely saying happened right. He wasn't making money anymore,
et cetera, et cetera. But this like.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Her fourth offense, right, because we had sixty minutes. The
executive producer left and then Scott Pelly got on there
and said he left because our content is being supervised
in ways it has never been before. Okay, so then
we have settling the lawsuit, this scurrilous lawsuit. I mean,
(25:21):
there's no reason to believe that my favorite Redstone NEPO
baby is acting out of her own belief in you know,
her own want to make a dial dollar. No.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
I mean even the South Park guys, we're like, this
merger is totally fucked and we are having a really
hard time dealing with this, and you know, there's some
question about this. The thing that comes out in the
end is what do you have to market after this?
Like if you have turned yourself into this network that
is very clearly suggesting that you have a political bent
(25:57):
that is, like, you know, towards the mega side of things,
or your support you know, you know, you're supporting this
president and his and his allies. What like, at what
point does this become a danger to your profits and
ability to do your job as a network. And I
think that that is that that is the big question
that we're dealing with here, because you know, a lot
of this is, you know, the fact that you're putting
(26:18):
this pressure on reports. It's really sad. People are Scott Pelly,
you know, incredibly prominent journalists leaving and and and and
saying this stuff is incredibly sad and dangerous. But there's
also the aspect of like, what is the long term
impact of this, right, what is the long term impact
of buying into the idea that came from the right
(26:41):
that you have an entire network that is carrying the
water for the Democrats or carrying the water for the
left or whatever. Again, ask the Democrats if they think
that that was true, and they will tell you now like, hey,
we'll not telling you that that that's happening. But now
you have a network saying actually, okay, maybe you're right,
and now we're going to like, actually, look like we're
(27:01):
carrying water for a side. And what makes that really
challenging is I don't know what that means for my
business down the road. I don't know what it means
if one of the premier brands in my industry decides, actually,
we are going to carry water. Now, we are going
to do it. We'll just see what happens. This is
(27:22):
seeing what happens could really mean both the demise of
really good news obviously from thatject you know that perspective,
but also the demise of like the idea of what
the news business is, and that is it's very very
dangerous and very scary. I don't know really what to
say about it. When it comes to Colbert, this is
all sort of like very high level entertainment level stuff.
(27:43):
I do think that people who are connecting the dots
between one of the most prominent and effective Trump critics
and being fired in the middle of a lawsuit in
which millions of dollars are extracted from that network for
critical of Trump. You know, I can see how those
doctor connected.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
I definitely Evan, fellow hyphenate. Yes, will you come back?
Because we both have hyphenated names. You got it right,
fellow hyphenate? Oh really, Jack, will you come back?
Speaker 3 (28:14):
Oh? This this is great. I've been wanting to do
this for a long time. Anytime.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
Evan McMorris Santuro is a reporter from Notice. Tammy Baldwin
is the junior Senator from Wisconsin. Welcome back to Fast Politics,
Senator Tammy Baldwin.
Speaker 4 (28:32):
It is so great to join you again.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Let's start with what's happening in the Senate with the
Recisions package and what that means.
Speaker 4 (28:41):
So let's put a little context on recisions because it's
super wonky. But every year, Cogres and the Senate in particular,
goes through a process of setting the budget the funding
levels for all the agencies, and we in the Senate
usually do that on a really bypart of basis and
then what happened in this recision package is that Donald
(29:06):
Trump and Republicans sort of said, oh, we don't like
what we just agreed to in these certain areas. We
want to just take a part the usaid. We want
to take apart the Corporation for Public Radio and defund
public media, and we're going to use the reconciliation process,
(29:29):
which is this obscure process that only requires a simple
majority to pass it, which means only Republicans in this
particular case, because they're the majority party. So they just
undid what we just a few months ago decided we
wanted to do together. They just undid it. And what
it means is that on the public media side that
(29:50):
there are there's probably fifteen hundred local radio and TV
stations that get money through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
to do things like amber alerts and emergency alerts in
natural disasters and weather emergencies, to do things like provide
local community news. And there's so many places across this country,
(30:14):
especially rural areas, that no longer have like local newspapers
because they've crashed, right, and so this is a lifeline
for our local communities. Also, educational programming and it's like
the Republicans in the Senate just got down on bended
knee for President Trump. Whatever you want, sir, we will provide,
(30:36):
we will do. And it's just been pretty horrifying to
watch what happened. We had a long session. We were
in for many many hours offering amendments, trying to restore
some of the funding that Donald Trump, and particularly this
guy named Russell Vote, who uh charge of an agency
called OMB, the Office of Management and Budget, who just
(31:00):
doesn't believe he needs to listen to Congress. He just
believed in the unilateral presidency, who needs the Congress.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
He was one of the authors of Project twenty twenty five.
And he also did, in fact, in the first Trump administration,
try to prevent Congress from using its executive powers of
the purse right.
Speaker 4 (31:20):
And so you know, it's our Article one responsibilities in
the United States Constitution that like we make the laws,
we set the budgets, we appropriate dollars, they implement it administer.
But Russell Vote has a very different idea, as certainly
does Donald Trump. And a couple of things that Russell
Vote made clear this week. One was that this is
(31:41):
just the first recisions package that they're going to bring
they're going to undo a lot more of our bipartisan
work if they get their way. And we warned our
Republican colleagues more of this is to come. Don't fall
for it the first time, because once you fall for
it the first time, they're going to come back over
and over again. And the other thing Russell Volte said
(32:03):
this week as the Senate was considering and the Republicans
passed the Recisions package is he said, you know, the
Senate appropriations process is to bipartisan. I mean, what, what right? Really?
Did I just hear that?
Speaker 1 (32:17):
But this recisions package, so this BBB grows a deficit
four trillion dollars, cuts a lot of services for people,
and also is ultimately a skinny Medicaid repeal. But the
thing that I am so struck by in this is
that Congress doesn't usually do recisions packages. In fact, the
(32:37):
last one was during Bush Clinton. But they didn't provide
you with any information, right, they were just like, trust
us exactly.
Speaker 4 (32:46):
Well, let's say just say this isn't a quote of
Russell vote, but others sort of purporting to paraphrase his words.
It's like the Corporation for Public broadcasting is too woke, right,
That's why we have to pull away their funding. But
what was so like ironic? At the very end of
the recisions package, when we're getting ready for the final vote,
Republicans are all going to vote it through. No Democrat
(33:09):
voted to past recisions. The Majority leader gets up and says,
you know, we're doing the first thing something that Congress
has never done before. You know, we're cutting programs. We're
going to reduce the deficit. That I just went wait
a second. It was only two weeks ago that Republicans
added three point five trillion dollars to the deficit and
(33:32):
the debt over the next ten years, and they're growing
about having saved nine billion dollars. Do you understand the
difference between those two actions. It was really crazy. And
the other thing I want to point out is we've
never had a partisan recisions bill. We have, indeed, and
you're writing about the date it was the early nineteen
(33:54):
nineties we had a bipartisan recisions bill. You know, usually
recisions happen within the appropriations process. So you're looking at
next year's budget and you're saying, oh, we allocated too
much money for this activity. They didn't spend it all,
so let's rescind it and put it somewhere else or
return it to the taxpayers. We usually do that in
(34:16):
the context of our annual budgeting and appropriating, and so
it's done all the time, but it's always done on
a bipartisans and this idea of now we're going to
just have the party in power rescind is very counter
to the culture of the Senate, and it's really eroding
the trust between members of the minority and majority party.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
Since you are in the Senate, and the Senate has
historically been thought of as less insane than the House.
These senators are, in fact, like any hope that any
of us had that any of them would do the
right thing. I think on the Republican side, we're absolutely
blown out by the weird math they did to get
(35:02):
the BBB through, and I want to talk about that
because it hasn't gotten a ton of attention. So Murkowski
voted yes because she'd got lots of goodies for Alaska.
Collins voted no. She's up for reelection very soon in
a purple state. Tillis voted no.
Speaker 4 (35:18):
And then at that he wasn't running for reelection next year.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
Right and Rand Paul, Rand Paul Ran Paul.
Speaker 4 (35:25):
Because remember JD had to break the tie.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
Right, Clearly Murkowski could have voted no and could have
made this not pass. It just struck me that the
people who voted yes or voted no, that there was
that this was just so craven and about re election
in the midterm and not so much about like trying
(35:49):
in any way to protect their constituents. Obviously you were
in this world, but I'm just curious did it strike
you as that? And also just the math on it
truck me as kind of performative.
Speaker 4 (36:00):
Ultimately, Yeah, as long as JD Vance is around Washington,
d C. They can afford to have three Republicans drop off,
then they have a fifty to fifty tie. JD Vance
comes and breaks it, they win. I'm not in those
conversations on the Republican side. I don't know how much
they're saying like, we can let you off on this vote,
we can let you off on this vote because you
have big reelections. I don't know if I assume that
(36:22):
those conversations are happening. I'm not a part of it,
but they know. But the other thing I would note
is it's just striking to me. Also, the lack of
independence from Donald Trump. There was not the same fear
of George W. Bush there was even in Trump's first term,
(36:43):
there was not the same fear to be expressing some
independence from that administration. But Trump two point zero is
totally different. And you know, many of my Republican colleagues
in the Senate are truly maga people. So shouldn't be
a big shock or a surprise that they're not independent
from the president. But the rest of them, the longtimers,
(37:06):
should have some sense of wanting to preserve the power
of the Senate, the power of the Appropriations committee, committees
that they're on, a body that they're in, and I
see that slowly eroding or not so slowly eroding under
this second presidency of Donald Trump.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
Yeah, I mean as bad as Trump one point zero was,
this is a completely different ballgame.
Speaker 4 (37:32):
Steve Miller, Steve banned all of them, said what before
he was inaugurated, They said, look, folks, we're going to
flood the zone. You know, we started off this conversation like,
there's so much to talk about. Let's just stick to
what happened in the last couple of weeks in the Senate,
but they're flooding the zone. Everywhere else. People are just
looking at action after action this administration takes. But the
(37:53):
stuff that's happening in the Senate is really notable because
they're basically saying, we don't care about Congress, we don't
care about the people that the people elected to fight
for them. We're just going to steamroll right over.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
So I wonder if you could talk to us about
now here we are. There's just a lot of talk
about Democrats and what they should be doing and how
they should be breaking through. And we on this podcast
have seen a lot some Democrats do better than others
at connecting with the media about breaking through. This is
(38:29):
a real problem we see again and again. I feel
like you are very much your own person, and when
you talk to you, you just talk about what's going on,
and you're quite good at speaking in it as a human.
How much do you think that that is an important
element of where we are right now? Because I don't
believe that they're in the wilderness, because I think Democrats
(38:52):
have won a lot of elections and I think that
Trump is a singular force that is not really transferable
in any possible way, But if you could talk a
little bit about what you think the sort of ways
to connect with voters are and why this has been
such a struggle, especially for people who should be able
(39:12):
to Yeah.
Speaker 4 (39:13):
So there's the content and then there's the process of communication.
So I think you're absolutely right in terms of connecting.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
You know, there's.
Speaker 4 (39:24):
Colleagues who use statistics all the time. There's colleagues who
use stories. Stories are more powerful. It shows that you
were listening to your constituents and what they told you
on what their fears are in this last election last year,
you got it. If you were talking about how much
people were struggling just to be able to afford their
groceries and I can't find a place that I can
(39:45):
afford to rent. And you know, if you were hearing
that and talking about it, you're obviously connecting. Then there's
a process of connecting. And I think so many of
us you know, who are at the point that were
like in the Senate, didn't grow up speaking to folks
in the way that we do these days. I'm used
(40:06):
to very much in person. I love connecting with people
in person. I'm also used to doing television interviews and
radio interviews. But you know, we have to get better
about communicating in the spaces where people are talking these days.
I think I heard or read just in the last
day or so that the flip has occurred between people
(40:30):
who get their information on television and you know that
broadcast and cable to same content online. That that just happened.
And so somebody was teasing us in our caucus like, oh,
I'm so excited I just got booked on a cable
TV tonight. Well, you know, I'm going to talk to
(40:51):
more people by talking to you. That's going to be true.
And so I think the process of how we talk,
we're behind the Republicans on that. And so, you know,
remain are authentic selves who listen to people and uplift
their stories and then start communicating in the spaces where
people are actually exchanging information these days, which is different
(41:14):
than what it was a year ago or five years
ago or ten years ago, and we got to keep
up with that.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
Yeah, no, that's a really good answer. I want you
to talk for a minute about all the LGBTQ services
or you nine hundred and eighty eight LGBTQ plus services
that were ended in the BBB so explain to us
what those services are.
Speaker 4 (41:37):
Yeah, so let me give you the overarching this. Several
years ago, I was part of an effort, bipartisan effort
to create the nine to eight to eight hotline, which
is a suicide prevention, mental health crisis hotline. You know,
we've always had a number you could call, but it
used to be a ten digit area code and then
(41:58):
seven digits and nobody in their time of crisis remembered
the number or you know whatever, and so we knew,
like we've done nine to one one, we used to
have something called four to one one. You got to
be pretty old to remember that. But anyways, it's not old. Yeah,
me too. So but nine to eight eight is a
crisis line, and we fielded that three years ago this week,
(42:20):
and it has meant so much to people who were
in crisis. You know, we publicized that it's out there.
You can text, you can chat, or you can call,
and somebody answers quickly on the other line and helps
through a crisis. And then hopefully, if the crisis is
more than just you know, a moment, you're referred to
(42:41):
services in your community that help you through the longer crisis.
The longer set of issues, and so we set it up,
and we recognized as we were setting it up that
there's certain populations set up a much higher rate of
suicide or attempted suicide military veterans, often due to the
traumas that they've been exposed to in wartime, members of
(43:04):
the LGBT community, in part because society, especially under Trump,
has it out for them. And so especially for youth
who are coming out, where do they fit in this
world when they're seeing this relentless series of attacks. So
what did we do when we set up nine eight eight.
We had a specialized you know, press one if you're
a veteran, and we'll get you those services from somebody
(43:26):
who's walked in your boots before, and press three if
you're part of the LGBT community, and we will get
you those crisis services from somebody who understands your journey.
And abruptly this week the Trump administration said we are
no longer going to provide specialized services on this crisis
line for fue side prevention to LGBTQ youth. And that
(43:50):
is just cruel in my mind. Now, I want to
be really clear, nine eight eight still exists. The specialized
services have been defunded, a fight to restore them. But
I do want to say to anyone LGBTQ or not,
if you're experiencing a mental health crisis, if you're contemplating suicide,
(44:11):
I still want you to call nine eight eight. There
are still people to help you, and I'll fight to
get those specialized services back on track.
Speaker 1 (44:19):
I want you to talk for a minute about Alligator Alcatraz.
We've seen some members of Congress have toward it. The
administration wants to see more of this writ large.
Speaker 4 (44:31):
You know, the while they're cutting seventeen million people off
their healthcare. In the bbb Ugly Bill, not beautiful bill,
they did plus up the budgets of Defense and Homeland Security,
which includes all of the immigration enforcement activities, so that
they can do these activities like deport people from Central
(44:54):
America to Africa, and to build new detention facilities in
very inhospitable places here in the United States. So there's
a lot of money being spent in a bill that
they said, we're slashing nutrition assistance and slashing Medicaid and
(45:16):
the Affordable Care Act premium subsidies. We're slashing all that. Oh,
but yes we did find money for some other activities,
tax cuts for millionaires and big corporations, and let's build
alligator alcabiraths, right, And so they're finding plenty of money
for the president's priorities of mass deportation or mass detention
(45:37):
at the same time that our most vulnerable neighbors are
being told you are going to have to fill out
a lot more paperwork for your medicaid.
Speaker 1 (45:45):
Senator Baldwin, thank you, please come back.
Speaker 4 (45:49):
I will thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (45:53):
A moment. Jesse Cannon, all right, may I want to
paint a picture for you.
Speaker 2 (45:59):
So Donald Trump Junior owns one percent of this company,
Grab a Gun, and he goes to the Stock Exchange,
ring the bell, and here's what he says. To be
able to come back to the New York Stock Exchange
and actually take a gun company public feels like such
a vindication of all the insanity and all of the woke.
What do you think happened next?
Speaker 1 (46:17):
I think that the shares of online gun retailer Grab
a Gun began publicly trading in the New York Stock
Exchange and then drop sharply. I am twenty percent shocked. Yeah,
that Donald Trump Junior and a shareholder and advisor of
grab a Gun, ranging the opening bell two chance of
USA USA, because there is nothing more USA than a
(46:41):
spac led by a Republican mega downer that sells guns.
There is nothing more American than being able to buy
a gun from a spack led by the President's son.
Donald Trump, the eldest son, is projected to own three
hundred thousand shares of grab a Gun, or about one
(47:05):
percent of the company's stock. Lucky guy, Well, maybe not
so lucky.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
He said it was an ultimate triumphant return.
Speaker 1 (47:14):
Don Junior is a partner in seventeen eighty nine Capital
as well as an advisor to gubb a Gun. Grab
A Gun raised one hundred and seventy nine million in
gross proceeds from the merger. According to a statement, grab
a Gun is the latest example of the President's family
and allies backing companies related to conservative political causes or
(47:36):
in this case, buying a gun. You have to grab it,
you grab a gun. I just want to say that.
Visit me in a pineapple under this safe. That's it
for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday,
Thursday and Saturday to hear the best minds and politics
(47:59):
make sense of all this chaos. If you enjoy this podcast,
please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
Thanks for listening.
Host
Molly Jong-Fast
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