May 28, 2025 • 46 mins
The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos examines the broligarchy’s reckless actions while detailing his new book The Haves and the Have Yachts. Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, spells out the cruel attacks in Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.”
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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 an implan analysis report says Trump's
policies could cost America twenty three billion in GDP if
Taurus continue to stay away. We have such a great
(00:21):
show for you today. The New Yorkers Evan Osno stops
by to talk to us about the tech brolocar key
and what can be done about their assault on democracy.
Then we'll talk to Randy Weingarten, president of the American
Federation of Teachers, who will spell out the cruel attacks
against working people and Trump's big beautiful bill. But first
(00:43):
the news, SAMII.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
We were doing an interview the listeners will hear in
a week or two about bitcoin. And as you were
doing that, the headlines started to rise that Trump media
plans to buy two point five billion of bitcoin. And
I look Robinhood and it was just soaring through the
roof that bitcoin price. What are you see in here?
Speaker 1 (01:05):
So again Jesse's obsessed with bitcoin. Now, now this is
Trump World one oh one, right, you know, buy sketchy things,
make you know, say you're going to buy more stuff,
Buy the dip. Remember Trump's tweet He's doing the same
thing with tariffs that he's doing with bitcoin. I mean again, Okay,
I'm going to read you the statement. First of all,
(01:26):
Trump Media and Technology Group said on Tuesday, it's raising
two point five billion two by bitcoin. I want to
emphasize the word said here, okay, because maybe but maybe
they just said it. Okay, this is not a group
of people for whom their word is something you can
take to the bank. Now that said, I'm not even
(01:47):
going to mention the name of the person who had
a quote about this, because he's very litigious. But I
am going to read the quote because it's very hilarious.
We view bitcoin as an apex instrument of financial freedom,
and now Trump Media will hold cryptocurrency as a crucial
part of our assets. Trump Media CEO, whose name cannot
(02:11):
be said because of his litigious nature. The investment will
help defend our company against harassment and discrimination by financial institutions,
which plague many American and US firms. Okay, first of
all Americans and US firms. All right, okay, we're not
going to parse that, but we are going to say
(02:32):
that pretty interesting. Maybe they have two point five billion
dollars to buy bitcoin. Maybe they don't. I would not
take any one of these people at their words zoom in,
because there's an axiom we're getting this is from axios.
We're going to zoom in. Nunez says the strategy would
provide opportunities for Trump media and areas like subscription payments
(02:53):
and a utility token. Really, who could have seen that
Trump World would get so excited about a very sketchy cryptocurrency, which,
by the way, cryptos sort of redundant cryptocurrency is sketchy.
But it's nice to see that Trump World has continued
its march to do what is possibly not what it's
(03:16):
saying it's doing. Who knows, who can say? Who can say?
Speaker 3 (03:20):
Speaking of lawsuits, yeah, well, basically each day, as I
try to select some subjects that you may want to
talk about, all I do is I just go, hmm,
blizzard of lawsuits?
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Which what should we discuss? And so today's one is
that NPR is suing the Trump administration over their funding
cuts from President Trump's stupid executive order.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Yes, so NPR National Public Radio doesn't even get that
much money from the government. Probably could make up the shortfall,
but I think it's really important to remember here you
win in court. You win in court when you sue
trump World, you win in court. You know why you
win in court because what Trump World is doing is
almost entirely illegal. There are occasionally times when they get
(04:03):
away with it because it's a trumpy judge or because
it ends up in front of Samuel Alito, but largely
all of this is completely an utterly sketch. So you
should sue. And that's what's happening here NPR and these
are local affiliates. It's suing the Trump administration. I want
to point out this is a guy record low approval rating.
(04:27):
People don't like this. He is crushing norms left and right,
and so the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is going to
sue back, and good for them. Republicans have been targeting
the portion of NPRS and PBS funding that is congressionally
approved by the way it's approved by Congress, not by Trump.
(04:47):
You know, this is another thing like Trump's executive orders
tend to undermine the power of the purse right one
of Congress is very few powers tend to be undermined
by trump Ism. Now, publicans just go along with it
because they don't care and because you know they'll do
anything Trump wants. But it's worth realizing that a lot
of this stuff is actually not within Trump's powers.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Yeah, that sounds right. So the Trump administration has canceled
Harvard's remaining federal contracts. One of the things we used
to discuss a lot in this podcast back when this
guy Ron DeSantis was really making a lot of headlines
was the concept of performative moronics. Yes, I can't think
of anything that fits that title more than this.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Ooh, performative moronics. That's a throwback to the first Trump administration.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
I think I think that was more of our Biden
era analysis a lot of the time, if I'm being honest.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Yeah, so this is really stupid, but it's also I
want to point out, just shows how little runway they
have here. So Trump administration will eliminate the remaining one
hundred million in federal contracts with Harvard University. They are saying, Okay,
so what are they going to do. They're going to
cut a lot of use federal contracts. First of all,
(06:02):
they're not going to be able to do it. Number one,
they are not going to be able to legally This
is so fucking dicey. The other thing is like, let's
just think this through. Okay, So this is stuff like
training feople. This is stuff like science stuff right, like
during cancer or stuff happening in the labs. What are
(06:23):
you gonna do. You're gonna move that lab work to
the Heritage Foundation. They don't have any labs at the
Heritage Foundation. You know you have these world class scientists. No, no,
we don't want the world class scientists. We're gonna we're
gonna go and throw away all this research and we're
gonna start doing research. You know what at Hillsdale College.
There's no medical school at Hillsdale College. Okay, that's not
(06:46):
how it works. What Charlie Kirk is gonna take over.
You're gonna have Turning Point USA labs, right, you have
PhD mds like Charlie Kirk doing this is the stupidest
fucking thing ever. To reiterate how stupid this is. This
is one of these things where we are literally we're
just throwing away scientific advances somebody, not somebody. A lot
(07:10):
of us are going to get cancer, right, and little
more than a third of all Americans will get cancer
or some form of cancer, and we will have doctors
who say to us, you know, we have some great
studies on this, but we're still, you know, maybe four
or five years behind. We're four or five years from
getting to a place where we can cure this. Four
or five years. That's the Trump administration, that's the second
(07:31):
Trump administration. There will be people who die because we
have lost four or five years of scientific advancements because
of COVID and Donald Trump and RFK Junior and people
who don't who just literally want to throw the baby
out with the bathwater. So it is so painful for
me as someone who is not a scientist. It's such
(07:53):
a tragedy. It's like we are burning the library at Alexandria.
We are cutting our noses off despite our faces. We're
doing our on purpose. It's not even an accident, right,
we are literally it is fall of the Roman Empire,
and we're doing it to ourselves. There are a lot
of reasons how we got here, and I just hope
(08:14):
that like Canada and Europe and China and all those
other countries are going to pick up these scientists and
keep the work going because you know, we are in
a climate rasis, We are in a really perilous moment
in all different ways. Microplastics, cancer, you know, clusters. I mean,
just we are as sort of free apocalyptic America and
(08:38):
a lot of this end. If you don't think there
are more pandemics coming, I don't know what to tell you.
It's a very dark moment in American life.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Yeah, speaking of darkness in America, there's a cloud over
the Pentagon. It's shaped kind of like a buggy beer
that's been frozen.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
No, I'm kidding. Yeah, definitely, definitely, we love it.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
So there's this fellow Pete hegg Sith the controversy with him.
You could pretty much set your watch to it at
this point that there will be an article about some
nefarious thing happening, some serious fuckery happening in under his purview.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Yeah, so let's talk about this. Look, you put a
guy like Pete Hegseth in this job, and I know
you're going to be shocked to hear, but my man
does not know how to do nearly anything, and that
in itself not necessarily. No, it's bad. So he's running
the dog. I was going to say it wasn't bad,
(09:36):
but it is really bad. He's running the DODA. Trump
has had many scandals now that are completely disqualifying, right,
heg Seth has had just scandal after scandal, like the
wife on the signal Chat. Remember when they added this
signal chat, there was a bunch of stuff with the wife,
with the brother, anti nepotism stuff. I mean, just like
(10:01):
continual problems with this guy. So now he's fired three people,
and again Trump advisors lose confidence in Pentagon leak investigation.
Hegseth used to justify firing of three top aides. So
that sounds as if Trump advisors think Pete hegg Seth
weekend Fox News host former, he's not doing it anymore
(10:23):
right now, though he may be back soon. I wonder
if he gets fired from his job, if he ends
up going back to the weekend, or if they like
bump him up to the weekday.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
Here's my guess. He takes Judge box of wines place
on the five.
Speaker 4 (10:36):
Ooh.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
From head of the DoD to panelists on the five,
jess A guitarl Off.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Put my bet from my crypto ortings on polymarket right now.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Yes, Jessin to Tarlaf, Pete hagg Seth coming to you
is certainly possible. I would never bet against you, Jesse,
but I think either way, there's something rotten in the
state of Denmark. Right, We've got Trump advisors losing confidence,
by the way, and I want to point out these
guys love to leak. One of the hallmarks of Trump
(11:10):
one point zero was just continual leaking. Right, you had
everyone in the world leaking to everyone. So Trump advisors
losing confidence makes me think that they think that the
legal wire tap may not have been true. Again, there's
a lot to parson this thing, but I think that
there's a real question about when does when does Trump
(11:33):
world start losing confidence? In Pete hexp. So Trump's big
thing is he doesn't like firing people this time because
like Rachel Mattow had that whole wall people he had fired,
so clearly some things do in fact breakthrough. So he
just moves everyone around. So remember Mike Walls was a
National security advisor. Now he's his body man and also
(11:55):
cook at mar A Lago. I'm kidding, obviously, and that's
what we're seeing here. So he Seth will probably be
running hod Or on the five. Eventually we'll see what happens. Obviously,
never a great Evan Osnos is a writer at The
New Yorker and the author of Behals and Have Yachts.
(12:18):
Welcome to past politics, Evan.
Speaker 4 (12:20):
Osnos, Thank you, Molly junk Fast.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
We're you know, very excited to have you.
Speaker 4 (12:25):
I'm very excited to be here.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Have books coming out in June. Yes, yours is a memoir. No,
I'm just.
Speaker 4 (12:32):
Kidding a loop. Should we do that? Do you want
to swop on?
Speaker 1 (12:37):
I'll talk about your book and memoir? So, uh, the
book is called The Have and the Have Yachts? Have
I butchered the title? Or now?
Speaker 4 (12:45):
No, you you got it exactly right. And it's uh,
it is with my debt to both Hemingway, who wrote
to Have and Have Not, and then the other guy
who got there first. So it is an idea that
is that resigns in our consciousness. But I think it
is a unique artifact of our time, the haves and aviats.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
It's so wild to me to watch this cycle of
backlash to backlash to backlash, right like financial inequality, push back,
some degree of making right or a little bit of
a change, and then a reelection of Trump. Explain what
the fuck is going on?
Speaker 4 (13:23):
Well, you hit on the exact issue that interests me,
which is that Americans have an almost uniquely complex and
ambivalent relationship to big money to wealth. I mean it
is we are both at some moments cynical about it
and then fundamentally still aspirational. And I mean this is
not like an abstract idea. There was a Harris poll
(13:44):
last year that showed that sixty percent of Americans believe
that billionaires are making the country less fair, and sixty
percent of Americans want to become billionaires themselves. It is
very often it's the same people who have this oscillation
of instincts, and I think you see that in our
politics where we are tugged back and forth. But I
(14:05):
think what it obscures, frankly, and this is really the
core of what interested me, was that we are living
through utterly unprecedented times when it comes to the sheer
scale and speed with which these fortunes have accumulated. If
I can just give you one stat it is that
as recently as ten years ago, there was nobody on
(14:27):
the planet who had one hundred billion dollars. The idea
of a cent to billionaire was a non thing. There
are now at least fifteen people who do and to
give you, I mean take Elon Musk as an example.
I mean, at the beginning of Trump's first term, he
had about ten billion dollars. Today, as everybody knows, he
has four hundred billion dollars. And if you talk to
(14:48):
people who are scholars of not just scholars of the
recent period, archaeologists who look at inequality back to the
Neolithic period, they will tell you that it is very
hard to find in a period that is anything like
what we're living through now. As somebody said to me,
the people who built the pyramids, we're living in a
less unequal society.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
So I want to get to the fall of the
Roman Empire because it's my fall of the Roman Empire.
There's a lot of joking that goes around that this
is a similar moment in America. You know that American
history that we history rhymes and we are in a
moment where the center cannot hold right, that there's just
too much inequality that we have, you know, And again
(15:33):
maybe it's this idea of the printing press. You know,
the technology has catapulted us into a kind of dark ages,
you know, a kind of brought time period. But but
do you I mean, is that your take on this,
I mean, what do you think, what do you think
about the instability?
Speaker 4 (15:50):
Well, I think that the Roman analogy is more than
casually important, Like it is more than just that we
sometimes throw up our hands and say God, it feels
like the fall a Rum. The great scholar of Rome,
the late scholar Ramsay McMullin at Yale, was once asked
he'd written acres on the subject of the fall of Rome,
and he said, well, if you really ask me to
(16:12):
boil this down, he says, the fall of Rum took
five hundred years, but it can be distilled into three words.
Fewer had more. The growth of radical inequality in both
political and economic power is such a large and encompassing
fact of our lives that it's almost like climate change
(16:34):
in the sense that you can go through the day
without thinking about it, remembering periodically, oh, yeah, this is happening,
and it probably will change the world I live in,
But you can lose sight of it. And there are
these moments, these little dramatic indications, these moments when it
comes into our lives. And I think that the Musk
Trump joint venture is one of those times when we
(16:55):
have been suddenly aware of what the windfall in economics
has meant for our politics and our political culture.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Elon Musk started out as pretty popular talk us through
his devolution.
Speaker 4 (17:08):
Yeah, I think he would be the first person to
in some ways acknowledge that he was caught unaware by
the collapse of his relationship with most of the public.
I mean he was until not long ago. If you
lined up a group of college students, you would very
often hear them say he is somebody who gives us
inspiration about what this country can be. And his level
(17:32):
of seclusion from actually the public, from real live experience,
as indicated by things like him saying that as many
of us have heard that the greatest flaw of Western
civilization is empathy, or describing social Security as a Ponzi scheme.
There are really a tell about how far his life
(17:56):
had become really divorced, in a kind of lunar way
from the lives of most other human beings. And I
think this is a theme that runs through my book
because over and over again I would find myself in
places that I know quite well. I mean like Greenwich, Connecticut,
which is where I grew up, is a place that
has historically been kind of in some sense connected to
(18:20):
but also disconnected from the rest of the country by
the forces of wealth. But in recent years, and Musk
is just the most dramatic illustration of this, that the
building of walls, both literally around people's estates but also
psychologically and emotionally and culturally has become so profound that
we are now living in an arrangement that is much
(18:42):
closer to what it was like in This is not
an extravagant analogy, but like medieval Europe, there's a reason
why people build castles. They built castles to defend themselves
and their property against others. And Elon Musk is a living,
breathing demonstration of what happens when you think that you
understand how other people live and you don't.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
So interesting because I think that's completely right. And I
also wonder how much Elon Musk is is a function
of not having anyone around you who has ever told
you the truth.
Speaker 4 (19:14):
Oh, completely right. I mean, this is the great risk
for authoritarians, either in private business or in public office,
is that you become so insulated and comfortable. It's like
this kind of amniotic fluid of agreement around you that
nobody who disagrees with you, stays very long, and as
(19:35):
a result you make actually sometimes terrible mistakes. This is
what's known as authoritarian backlash, and it's where you misjudge
the public mood. You know, if you're the Shaw of Iran,
you host a giant party to celebrate your leadership a
few months before the revolution rises up and removes you.
(19:56):
And that's the pattern. And I think it's because there's
nobody around who can say it. I'll give you one
other fascinating example. I wrote a profile that's in this
book of Mark Zuckerberg when he was in the period
of kind of coming to terms with his vast new powers,
and he had gone you'll remember Molly on this like
kind of weird tour of the United States where he
(20:18):
was going out and wanting to meet people and people,
and it was kind of it got mocked because, as
people put at the time, they said, this really looks
like a man who has landed or a person who
has landed on this planet and is like, bring your
humans to me. I will see them, and I will
meet them, and we will eat their things. And then
(20:38):
and somebody who had worked for him told me, look,
the reality was when he was on this tour. We
could all see that this was really not going to work,
and it looked, it looked kind of ridiculous, but there
was nobody around him who could and would tell him that, right, right,
right right, authoritarian backlash.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
So is it a question to keep going with this theory?
Putin's war with Ukraine is that? Is that the same?
Speaker 4 (21:07):
Very much so. Putin is the paradigmatic example of what
the scholars call a sultanistic oligarch, which is a wonderful
term actually, and a sultanistic oligarch is somebody who is
essentially agreed upon by the other elites or the other
oligarchs in a society to let one among them rule,
(21:29):
and it's because they all benefit from that. But the
danger of becoming a sultanistic oligarch is that kind of
seclusion and that kind of absence of any sort of
critical thinking and judgment around you. And so everybody begins
to say to you, well, it seems like invading Ukraine
is a brilliant strategic move, sir. And you know, we
all saw those images of the of the boardroom where
(21:52):
the oligarchs and the and the leaders of the intelligence
community in Moscow were being briefed on this plan and
there was up warrious applause, and that is a it's
you know, it's a lesson that I think goes beyond
just talking about our president or the Russian president or
it is really like a deep lesson in the problem
(22:15):
of becoming too far ahead, too far isolated, and becoming
too sure. To quote Kendrick Lamar, that you deserve it all.
It's a risk it'll blow up on you.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
It'll blow and that's what we're saying. So what we
saw with Elon I just want to get back to
Elon for a minute, because he is the most pertinent
right now in our American political world, is that his
polling went down. His the numbers at Tesla's prophets were
down seventy one percent. Who even knew that could happen?
At a company, right they sold well? I saw reporting
(22:52):
that they sold seven thousand cars in Europe. I mean, okay,
do you think that these kind of come to Jesus
moments where you see that the emperor really has no clothes?
Do you think they influence the zeitgeist or do you
think they're just sort of I mean, what, you know,
the question we all have all the time is what
(23:13):
breaks through.
Speaker 4 (23:14):
Yeah, I think there's no question that this leaves a
scar on the public mood. It's not just on Elon
Musk individually. I think this is really important because when
you try to understand essentially, like where does this lead Molly,
which is you know, the question we're all trying to
figure out, which is what happens when you have the
Musk era, Where does that go? Where does that take
(23:34):
a country? We actually have a useful, almost hauntingly useful model,
which is the end of the nineteenth century the beginning
of the twentieth century in this country, which is that
you know, that was a time when you had these tycoons,
the robber barons as they were called during the Gilded Age,
who were very in many ways Musk Like. I mean,
(23:55):
you know Jay Gould, who was the Wall Street Titan.
Twain used to say, look, Americans have always have always
revered money, but Jay Gould made them meal down and
worship it. And in many ways, Musk is the modern
incarnation of that. And what we saw in that period
in the late nineteenth century was that there were these
(24:16):
acts of just cartoonish extravagance, cartoonish sort of self indulgence,
the equivalent of having the many things that Musk has
accumulated for himself, most significantly perhaps his family arrangement, which
looks sultanistic in so many ways that in the at
the end of the nineteenth century, you had people hosting parties,
for instance, in New York City in a ballroom in Manhattan,
(24:39):
where they brought horses into the court into the ballroom
and they ate on horseback and drank champagne out of
the saddle bags. And the country, regular Americans, we're hearing
about this, reading about it in the newspapers, and it
was accumulating to the point of a breaking point where
people would say, we we just we can't go on
like this, And that's what you had that It's really
(25:00):
what gave way to the birth of the progressive era
and then ultimately to the New Deal, was this recognition
on the part of the public and ultimately on some
of the elites, people like Teddy Roosevelt and then later
Franklin Roosevelt, that this just you can't go on this
way or the country won't hold. I think that Musk
is pretty proficient at reading ultimately his role in the culture,
(25:22):
and he'll figure out a way to kind of, you know,
get himself back in I don't have any doubt about
that he'll find a way to rebuild some cultural cachet
which is now so very much in remission. But ultimately,
I think that the bigger impact is really on that
constant oscillation that we started with between fascination and revulsion
with giant wealth. And he has almost single handedly pushed
(25:44):
the United States away from capitalism.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
Ooh, that's interesting. Imagine being so rich that you turn
Americans off of capitalism.
Speaker 4 (25:53):
That's the pattern. That's history. It tells us, it happens,
and it takes ultimately other people to say to the
elon Musks of the world, if you carry on this way,
this system which has been ultimately so rewarding for them,
is going to be is going to lose.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Its public basis of support. Are you surprised that the
oligarchs of this moment aren't more philanthropic. You think about
Bill Gates with this comment that he made about Mosque,
where he said, this is a register in the world
taking away from the poorest children in the world. Talk
to me about that.
Speaker 4 (26:28):
Yeah, it's been quite noticeable in the philanthropy community. You
hear about this generational Really there's been a kind of
generational split, which is that the early generation of mega
wealth of the latter half of the twentieth century and
early twenty first century, principally Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, or
the iconic figures that they made.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
Larger the Waltons.
Speaker 4 (26:51):
Yeah, they and they did large. They made a point
in a sense to make to put themselves in the
tradition of Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, who believed
you had to give some of your fortune or in
Gates and Buffett's case, the lion's share of your fortune
back to the public through philanthropy. And there has been
(27:12):
this real shift though since then. Really it's sort of
started in the last ten years or so where and
this is not me making up making an abstraction. The
data is quite clear on this that the amount of
money that people like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are
giving to philanthropy is just simply much less than their predecessors,
(27:33):
like Buffetting Gates were. And what's the reason for this
is that there is a theory that's become popular in
Silicon Valley, which is that essentially your greatest act of philanthropy,
putting that in quotes is your business.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
You know, it's as much high on your own supply gone.
Speaker 4 (27:50):
I mean, that's you know, Musk's view is, as he
said at one point, the greatest gift I can give
to humanity is tesla, to which others might say, but
you know what about a Musk foundation? And I've watched
it happen just over the last ten years. This is
a real shift.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
I mean. The most incredible part of this is that
The New York Times had a lot of reporting on
the Musk Foundation where they were getting in trouble for
not giving away what they are required by law to
give away.
Speaker 4 (28:16):
Totally true, I mean, and I felt the most interesting
revealing detailing the Times reporting on Musk's philanthropies. One of
the recipients of his philanthropic foundation in the early years
was actually to a school that was located in his
own house, in which five of the fourteen students were
(28:36):
his own children.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Yes, many people are saying doing things for your kids
is not actually philanthropy, or when you are the richest
man in the world, we're laughing about this, but really
we are laughing to keep from crying because it's so dark.
I wonder if you could talk about are there any
I have to talk about this, because otherwise I'll go insane.
There anything you're seeing when you in this store of
(29:04):
the haves and the have yat about some kind of
positive move towards So let's talk about that.
Speaker 4 (29:13):
Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that, because there are some
good news things that should be recognized and cultivated and celebrated,
which is that there are some people who have really
gone through a bit of a process over the last
ten or fifteen years with the rise of Trump in
our politics, that has made them say that they recognize
that the country is, on some level on an unsustainable
(29:36):
cour There is this organization called the Patriotic Millionaires, which
I write about in this new piece in the New Yorker,
in which these are folks who have thrived in the
current disposition of power, the meaning that the tax code
that benefits them they have benefited from. But they are
in fact some of the people who are standing up
and saying, really, this is about taxes and wages. It's
(29:58):
not complicated. They say, look, if you if wages had
kept up with gains in productivity, if wages had kept
up with the growth in the economy, wages today would
be much higher than they were before. And you know,
there's one guy in particular who I'm thinking of named
John Driscoll, who was the CEO of a big healthcare
company who realized that, look, there is no way in
which I can expect to have a successful business if
(30:19):
the people who work for me are sleeping in their
cars at night. And so, and what's the encouraging thing
here too, is Molly that this is like any kind
of culture. Culture moves, and sometimes it moves even faster
than we expect. And so right now it feels as
if we're in the season of plunder. We're in the
season of the oligarchs who are exploiting this president to
(30:43):
benefit themselves as much as they can. But it also
can move fast, and we've seen it once before. We
saw it in nineteen thirteen when you had the rise
of elites in this country who recognized that to protect
the country's future, you had to reign in excesses and abuses.
And we're beginning to see some of that. And I
think that the size of the I'll just mention one
(31:04):
other thing, which is that the size of the protests
that Bernie Sanders has been getting this summer. Are really
remarkable because I interviewed a bunch of people at protests
at the Bernie Sanders rallies, and to a person, they
had never been to one before. These are not diehard
Bernie bros. These are people in some cases, in a
few cases actually people who are quite sympathetic to Republican
(31:25):
arguments who said, I didn't vote for this, I didn't
vote for what Trump is doing and what we know
from history. If there's one thing that listeners can take
away who are trying to figure out, what do we
do as a people now to protect this country, the
answer is it is sustained public pressure. Sustained public pressure
that it matters to use your voice and to get
(31:46):
up and say no, this is not right, this is
not fair, and this is not sustainable.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
Randy Weiningarden is the president of the American Federation of
Teachers and the author of the upcoming book Why Fascist
Spear Teachers. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Randy Winingarten. So
we're in this insane moment in American life. The houses out,
the senators out there is the big beautiful bill. It
both grows the deficit and cuts, food stamps for children.
(32:15):
Trump administration is at war with poor kids in every
which way. You are the head of the American Teachers Federation,
you are in it. Talk to us.
Speaker 5 (32:25):
So you know, a budget is your priorities. And what
you can see in that big, ugly bill is that
it is big, but it is pretty ugly. Is the
Trump administration's priorities, which is to keep the tax cuts
that they did in twenty seventeen, including most particularly, to
(32:49):
prefer the millionaires and the billionaires in this country and
let them keep all the wealth that they grew over
all this time, and to as actually give everybody else
trinkets or a trickle down effect. So they've given everybody
something little except for people who make under fifty thousand
(33:10):
dollars who may actually have to pay more taxes. And
that's the second point I want to do. So one,
they really really prefer the billionaires and the millionaires. But
the second thing they do is really really really cruel
because they're taking out, especially everything that created innovation in
(33:31):
the country, everything that helped in terms of climate control.
They're using education funding as a piggy bank for the rich,
a new tax shelter for vouchers, and then they take
a hatchet to student loans, to nutrition aid, and to
healthcare for the middle class and the poor. And now
(33:52):
they're lying about it like Johnson is saying, oh, no,
this is just about waste and abuse, when it essentially
we'll take fourteen million people off of healthcare and make
it impossible for families under the poverty line to feed
their kids. So if you hear my anger, and then
(34:14):
they sneak in things like stopping the courts from enforcing
their orders.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
As that was amazing. Let's go back to Mike Johnson
for a minute, because one of the things that Mike
Johnson actually said was that he said it was that
work requirements were actually they have a moral component. These
will be work requirements for snap benefits. They will mean
that if you have a child over seven years old,
(34:39):
if you are not working, you cannot qualify for nutrition assistance.
Speaker 5 (34:44):
Talk us through what that looks like. So level of
cruelty to their own voters is shocking to me. It's
essentially trying to find ways already the people who voted
for Trump, essentially aside from the people who have always
been for him. Let's say the net delta difference between
(35:06):
that decided the selection was the couch and the people
who made up their mind in the last few days.
They voted for a better life for themselves. Most of
not all of those folks are working really hard and
are trying to make ends meet. So when you say
to somebody who has a seven year old kid that
you're not going to feed them anymore because their parents
(35:30):
are not working, or their one parent is not working
exactly at the job you want them to work at.
Maybe they're working off the books because they can't make it. Yes,
that's wrong. Maybe there are a thousand other reasons, like
they're taking care of their elderly parents and they can't
(35:50):
be at work and take care of their elderly parents
at the same time. To actually do that and starve
children like that, it's cruel, it's inhuman.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
So what are we going to do.
Speaker 5 (36:03):
We're going to now take our AI surveillance and start
using it for every single family in America to make
that decision. How dare Mike Johnson decide what is moral
and what isn't moral from the state that actually is
now saying that no termination of pregnancy through abortion is
(36:27):
legal or not? Yes, sorry, I am just It's like, really,
how is all of a sudden we are our country
that used to believe in freedom of religion. Now it's
getting closer and closer to a handsmade tail kind of
oation here. How dare you tell somebody that they can't
(36:50):
get snap benefits for their kids, that a kid who
is older than seven is no longer dependent. It's my
boggling to me how cruel it is.
Speaker 1 (37:02):
It is very cool. One of the things that the
Republicans are trying to do is push back against medicaid expansion, right,
and Medicaid expansion is humongous and largely has benefited red
states right. In fact, I mean Snap too. You know,
if they are able to get these cuts through, they
will mean that at least twenty five percent of children
(37:22):
will be affected in states like Louisiana and West Virginia,
very red states. But with the issue with the Medicaid expansion,
your grandma's in a nursing home, she's coming to go
live with you, right, or she's going on the street. Right.
They're going to be closing nursing homes. They're going to
be closing rural hospitals. The Medicaid expansion question it is
(37:42):
wildly unpopular. I mean, the polling shows that like eighty
four percent of Americans want either the same or more Medicaid.
Speaker 5 (37:50):
So I think part of the problem and this is
actually a real problem for the Democratic Party and one
that the Democrats have not solved. Frankly, it's a problem
for truth, which is, yes, the Medicaid cuts in this
bill are terribly unpopular, but people actually have to see
them to believe them. Unfortunately, in America right now, disinformation
(38:14):
and misinformation reign supreme, and where people get their information
and what information people get has really become really problematic
because people are getting a steady diet of propaganda and
misinformation and disinformation. You can make a decision, for example,
about whether you want trickle down or not, whether you
(38:35):
want tax cuts for the wealthy or not, or whether
you want a social service net.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
That is a.
Speaker 5 (38:40):
Legitimate question that you can raise in the United States
and America in terms of economic policy. But if you
don't actually know the truth, if you don't actually know
what's in the bill, if somebody can get away and say,
oh no, this is really not a Medicaid cut when
it in fact is, that's part of the problem. And
what the Democrats have not been able to do is
(39:02):
they do not have the information. You know, assume for
a second they are telling the truth. People don't know it,
people don't hear it. So yes, the Medicaid cuts are
really unpopular. Frankly, all of the snap overhaul nutrition overhaul
will be really unpopular too. Think about we're going to
go back to lunch shaming in schools about who can
(39:24):
get a lunch and who can't get a lunch. We
were supposed to solve that housing crisis. We're supposed to
try to get the minimum wage raised to a living wage,
and now what's happening is we're seeing even more cutbacks
to the safety net and it's going to hurt for
and work in class folk.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
It's funny because it's like we spend so much time
handwriting about Democrats losing working people, but here are Republicans
having won them, now trying to hurt them. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (39:53):
I mean, I give Josh Holly a lot of credit
when he says, no, don't make these cuts, and you
know these cuts are going to hurt people. But that's
why I was astounded Johnson the Speaker wouldn't even be
honest about what they did. Yeah, but that's because they're
trying to hide it. And our goal, our job has
(40:14):
to be tell the truth about what these cuts do
and the impact they'll have.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
So let's talk about that. Eventually these cuts are going
maybe they won't be brought as broadly, but there will
be some level of cuts. And I wonder if Republicans
are just in denial, like, eventually this will hurt the
people that they just started winning, right.
Speaker 5 (40:36):
I think that they'll try to blame it on somebody else.
I agree with you, these cuts are unpopular. They will
hurt people, and the question is why are they doing it?
And they're doing it. I mean, look, Republicans say they
care about the debt, and they're raising the debt six
trillion dollars. So they're doing these cuts because they care
(40:57):
more about preserved having the huge maximalist wealth of the
people who were the winners from the last tax cut.
If you think about income inequality, it's you know, significantly
higher today than it was in twenty seventeen. So they,
you know, they care about that. That's who their constituency is,
(41:22):
and that's what they care about. And I think they probably,
I mean, they probably believe that they can sell anybody anything,
so that people are not they can blame other people
on it. And that's why our job is to actually
tell the truth and say what's in it. And frankly,
our job is also something else, which is we have
(41:44):
to show a different future and a better future. So
for example, I'm very much.
Speaker 6 (41:50):
Into let's actually have working class tax cut, Let's have
cost of living insulation here, let's do what the patriotic
millionaires have a really great proposal.
Speaker 5 (42:01):
Let's make that front street. Let's actually then also show
like where's the money for career tech ed? Donald Trump,
you say that you are you care about creating pathways
for jobs for others. So where's the pathway for career
tech ed? Why do you cut that money too? Why
don't you actually increase that funding. Don't tell me that
(42:25):
Harvard should get rid of their funds so you can
put in trade schools. Why don't you fund career tech
ed instead of cutting Harvard and instead of cutting the
Department of Education. Where's the big push for workforce pathways
in other ways? So we should actually be fighting for
(42:46):
not just critiquing them, which we need to do, but
we should be fighting for the things that working class
folks need, which is good jobs, affordable housing, affordable health,
health care, and decent retirement. And this is the stuff
that Americans want.
Speaker 1 (43:05):
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Randy, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 5 (43:11):
Be welcome.
Speaker 3 (43:14):
No second, Jesse Cannon, Molly, I'm going to really shock
you here.
Speaker 2 (43:22):
After someone's mother attended a one million dollar dinner for
mister Trump, there was a pardon exchanged. Who would have
thunk it.
Speaker 1 (43:30):
No, I can't believe it. I'm shocked. It's a great
story from the New York Times. Ken Vogel unblocked me
on Twitter. Ken Vogel, this is the Ken Vogel and
block Molly john fest On x challenge. So this is
a great story. This guy who worked for his mother.
His mother had a sort of nursing homeie thing. His
(43:53):
mother had been raising money for Trump for a long time.
They had been appealing for pardons for a long time.
But you know what put him over the top. You're
going to be shocked, shocked to hear this. By the way,
his mother was also involved in this Project Veritas thing
where they tried to buy Ashley Biden's diary. Everything is
(44:13):
so bad. American politics is so disgusting, right, they tried
to buy Ashley Biden's diary in order to hurt Joe
Biden by because this was publicizing her addiction, because she
was an addict. I mean, this is like, imagine, this
is so bad. This is like the world's darkest Cohen
(44:34):
Brothers movie. So anyway, eventually they got this pardon. Because,
by the way, there's also a great story of a
two million dollar yacht, which I'm not going to get
into right now. I do think it is funny though,
that between twenty sixteen and twenty nineteen, this guy withheld
more than ten million dollars from the paychecks of nurses, doctors,
(44:54):
and others who worked at his facilities, under the pretext
of using it for their Social Security, Medicare and federal
income tax. But you know what he did instead of
using it to pay there withholding taxes, he spent two
million dollars on a yacht he paid for travel and purchases,
and high end retailers including Broger of Goodman and Cardia
charged with thirteen counts of tax crimes. But our tax
(45:18):
crimes really crimes. If you support Donald Trump, many people
are saying they are not, So what happens. The mother
goes to a Trump fundraiser that is a million dollar
a plated fundraiser, and then he cuts the Barden great stuff.
That's what it is. That's it for this episode of
Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday
(45:44):
to hear the best minds and politics make sense of
all this chaos. If you enjoy this podcast, please send
it to a friend and keep the conversation going. Thanks
for listening.
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds, and an implan analysis report says Trump's
policies could cost America twenty three billion in GDP if
Taurus continue to stay away. We have such a great
(00:21):
show for you today. The New Yorkers Evan Osno stops
by to talk to us about the tech brolocar key
and what can be done about their assault on democracy.
Then we'll talk to Randy Weingarten, president of the American
Federation of Teachers, who will spell out the cruel attacks
against working people and Trump's big beautiful bill. But first
(00:43):
the news, SAMII.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
We were doing an interview the listeners will hear in
a week or two about bitcoin. And as you were
doing that, the headlines started to rise that Trump media
plans to buy two point five billion of bitcoin. And
I look Robinhood and it was just soaring through the
roof that bitcoin price. What are you see in here?
Speaker 1 (01:05):
So again Jesse's obsessed with bitcoin. Now, now this is
Trump World one oh one, right, you know, buy sketchy things,
make you know, say you're going to buy more stuff,
Buy the dip. Remember Trump's tweet He's doing the same
thing with tariffs that he's doing with bitcoin. I mean again, Okay,
I'm going to read you the statement. First of all,
(01:26):
Trump Media and Technology Group said on Tuesday, it's raising
two point five billion two by bitcoin. I want to
emphasize the word said here, okay, because maybe but maybe
they just said it. Okay, this is not a group
of people for whom their word is something you can
take to the bank. Now that said, I'm not even
(01:47):
going to mention the name of the person who had
a quote about this, because he's very litigious. But I
am going to read the quote because it's very hilarious.
We view bitcoin as an apex instrument of financial freedom,
and now Trump Media will hold cryptocurrency as a crucial
part of our assets. Trump Media CEO, whose name cannot
(02:11):
be said because of his litigious nature. The investment will
help defend our company against harassment and discrimination by financial institutions,
which plague many American and US firms. Okay, first of
all Americans and US firms. All right, okay, we're not
going to parse that, but we are going to say
(02:32):
that pretty interesting. Maybe they have two point five billion
dollars to buy bitcoin. Maybe they don't. I would not
take any one of these people at their words zoom in,
because there's an axiom we're getting this is from axios.
We're going to zoom in. Nunez says the strategy would
provide opportunities for Trump media and areas like subscription payments
(02:53):
and a utility token. Really, who could have seen that
Trump World would get so excited about a very sketchy cryptocurrency, which,
by the way, cryptos sort of redundant cryptocurrency is sketchy.
But it's nice to see that Trump World has continued
its march to do what is possibly not what it's
(03:16):
saying it's doing. Who knows, who can say? Who can say?
Speaker 3 (03:20):
Speaking of lawsuits, yeah, well, basically each day, as I
try to select some subjects that you may want to
talk about, all I do is I just go, hmm,
blizzard of lawsuits?
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Which what should we discuss? And so today's one is
that NPR is suing the Trump administration over their funding
cuts from President Trump's stupid executive order.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Yes, so NPR National Public Radio doesn't even get that
much money from the government. Probably could make up the shortfall,
but I think it's really important to remember here you
win in court. You win in court when you sue
trump World, you win in court. You know why you
win in court because what Trump World is doing is
almost entirely illegal. There are occasionally times when they get
(04:03):
away with it because it's a trumpy judge or because
it ends up in front of Samuel Alito, but largely
all of this is completely an utterly sketch. So you
should sue. And that's what's happening here NPR and these
are local affiliates. It's suing the Trump administration. I want
to point out this is a guy record low approval rating.
(04:27):
People don't like this. He is crushing norms left and right,
and so the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is going to
sue back, and good for them. Republicans have been targeting
the portion of NPRS and PBS funding that is congressionally
approved by the way it's approved by Congress, not by Trump.
(04:47):
You know, this is another thing like Trump's executive orders
tend to undermine the power of the purse right one
of Congress is very few powers tend to be undermined
by trump Ism. Now, publicans just go along with it
because they don't care and because you know they'll do
anything Trump wants. But it's worth realizing that a lot
of this stuff is actually not within Trump's powers.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Yeah, that sounds right. So the Trump administration has canceled
Harvard's remaining federal contracts. One of the things we used
to discuss a lot in this podcast back when this
guy Ron DeSantis was really making a lot of headlines
was the concept of performative moronics. Yes, I can't think
of anything that fits that title more than this.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Ooh, performative moronics. That's a throwback to the first Trump administration.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
I think I think that was more of our Biden
era analysis a lot of the time, if I'm being honest.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Yeah, so this is really stupid, but it's also I
want to point out, just shows how little runway they
have here. So Trump administration will eliminate the remaining one
hundred million in federal contracts with Harvard University. They are saying, Okay,
so what are they going to do. They're going to
cut a lot of use federal contracts. First of all,
(06:02):
they're not going to be able to do it. Number one,
they are not going to be able to legally This
is so fucking dicey. The other thing is like, let's
just think this through. Okay, So this is stuff like
training feople. This is stuff like science stuff right, like
during cancer or stuff happening in the labs. What are
(06:23):
you gonna do. You're gonna move that lab work to
the Heritage Foundation. They don't have any labs at the
Heritage Foundation. You know you have these world class scientists. No, no,
we don't want the world class scientists. We're gonna we're
gonna go and throw away all this research and we're
gonna start doing research. You know what at Hillsdale College.
There's no medical school at Hillsdale College. Okay, that's not
(06:46):
how it works. What Charlie Kirk is gonna take over.
You're gonna have Turning Point USA labs, right, you have
PhD mds like Charlie Kirk doing this is the stupidest
fucking thing ever. To reiterate how stupid this is. This
is one of these things where we are literally we're
just throwing away scientific advances somebody, not somebody. A lot
(07:10):
of us are going to get cancer, right, and little
more than a third of all Americans will get cancer
or some form of cancer, and we will have doctors
who say to us, you know, we have some great
studies on this, but we're still, you know, maybe four
or five years behind. We're four or five years from
getting to a place where we can cure this. Four
or five years. That's the Trump administration, that's the second
(07:31):
Trump administration. There will be people who die because we
have lost four or five years of scientific advancements because
of COVID and Donald Trump and RFK Junior and people
who don't who just literally want to throw the baby
out with the bathwater. So it is so painful for
me as someone who is not a scientist. It's such
(07:53):
a tragedy. It's like we are burning the library at Alexandria.
We are cutting our noses off despite our faces. We're
doing our on purpose. It's not even an accident, right,
we are literally it is fall of the Roman Empire,
and we're doing it to ourselves. There are a lot
of reasons how we got here, and I just hope
(08:14):
that like Canada and Europe and China and all those
other countries are going to pick up these scientists and
keep the work going because you know, we are in
a climate rasis, We are in a really perilous moment
in all different ways. Microplastics, cancer, you know, clusters. I mean,
just we are as sort of free apocalyptic America and
(08:38):
a lot of this end. If you don't think there
are more pandemics coming, I don't know what to tell you.
It's a very dark moment in American life.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Yeah, speaking of darkness in America, there's a cloud over
the Pentagon. It's shaped kind of like a buggy beer
that's been frozen.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
No, I'm kidding. Yeah, definitely, definitely, we love it.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
So there's this fellow Pete hegg Sith the controversy with him.
You could pretty much set your watch to it at
this point that there will be an article about some
nefarious thing happening, some serious fuckery happening in under his purview.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Yeah, so let's talk about this. Look, you put a
guy like Pete Hegseth in this job, and I know
you're going to be shocked to hear, but my man
does not know how to do nearly anything, and that
in itself not necessarily. No, it's bad. So he's running
the dog. I was going to say it wasn't bad,
(09:36):
but it is really bad. He's running the DODA. Trump
has had many scandals now that are completely disqualifying, right,
heg Seth has had just scandal after scandal, like the
wife on the signal Chat. Remember when they added this
signal chat, there was a bunch of stuff with the wife,
with the brother, anti nepotism stuff. I mean, just like
(10:01):
continual problems with this guy. So now he's fired three people,
and again Trump advisors lose confidence in Pentagon leak investigation.
Hegseth used to justify firing of three top aides. So
that sounds as if Trump advisors think Pete hegg Seth
weekend Fox News host former, he's not doing it anymore
(10:23):
right now, though he may be back soon. I wonder
if he gets fired from his job, if he ends
up going back to the weekend, or if they like
bump him up to the weekday.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
Here's my guess. He takes Judge box of wines place
on the five.
Speaker 4 (10:36):
Ooh.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
From head of the DoD to panelists on the five,
jess A guitarl Off.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Put my bet from my crypto ortings on polymarket right now.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Yes, Jessin to Tarlaf, Pete hagg Seth coming to you
is certainly possible. I would never bet against you, Jesse,
but I think either way, there's something rotten in the
state of Denmark. Right, We've got Trump advisors losing confidence,
by the way, and I want to point out these
guys love to leak. One of the hallmarks of Trump
(11:10):
one point zero was just continual leaking. Right, you had
everyone in the world leaking to everyone. So Trump advisors
losing confidence makes me think that they think that the
legal wire tap may not have been true. Again, there's
a lot to parson this thing, but I think that
there's a real question about when does when does Trump
(11:33):
world start losing confidence? In Pete hexp. So Trump's big
thing is he doesn't like firing people this time because
like Rachel Mattow had that whole wall people he had fired,
so clearly some things do in fact breakthrough. So he
just moves everyone around. So remember Mike Walls was a
National security advisor. Now he's his body man and also
(11:55):
cook at mar A Lago. I'm kidding, obviously, and that's
what we're seeing here. So he Seth will probably be
running hod Or on the five. Eventually we'll see what happens. Obviously,
never a great Evan Osnos is a writer at The
New Yorker and the author of Behals and Have Yachts.
(12:18):
Welcome to past politics, Evan.
Speaker 4 (12:20):
Osnos, Thank you, Molly junk Fast.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
We're you know, very excited to have you.
Speaker 4 (12:25):
I'm very excited to be here.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Have books coming out in June. Yes, yours is a memoir. No,
I'm just.
Speaker 4 (12:32):
Kidding a loop. Should we do that? Do you want
to swop on?
Speaker 1 (12:37):
I'll talk about your book and memoir? So, uh, the
book is called The Have and the Have Yachts? Have
I butchered the title? Or now?
Speaker 4 (12:45):
No, you you got it exactly right. And it's uh,
it is with my debt to both Hemingway, who wrote
to Have and Have Not, and then the other guy
who got there first. So it is an idea that
is that resigns in our consciousness. But I think it
is a unique artifact of our time, the haves and aviats.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
It's so wild to me to watch this cycle of
backlash to backlash to backlash, right like financial inequality, push back,
some degree of making right or a little bit of
a change, and then a reelection of Trump. Explain what
the fuck is going on?
Speaker 4 (13:23):
Well, you hit on the exact issue that interests me,
which is that Americans have an almost uniquely complex and
ambivalent relationship to big money to wealth. I mean it
is we are both at some moments cynical about it
and then fundamentally still aspirational. And I mean this is
not like an abstract idea. There was a Harris poll
(13:44):
last year that showed that sixty percent of Americans believe
that billionaires are making the country less fair, and sixty
percent of Americans want to become billionaires themselves. It is
very often it's the same people who have this oscillation
of instincts, and I think you see that in our
politics where we are tugged back and forth. But I
(14:05):
think what it obscures, frankly, and this is really the
core of what interested me, was that we are living
through utterly unprecedented times when it comes to the sheer
scale and speed with which these fortunes have accumulated. If
I can just give you one stat it is that
as recently as ten years ago, there was nobody on
(14:27):
the planet who had one hundred billion dollars. The idea
of a cent to billionaire was a non thing. There
are now at least fifteen people who do and to
give you, I mean take Elon Musk as an example.
I mean, at the beginning of Trump's first term, he
had about ten billion dollars. Today, as everybody knows, he
has four hundred billion dollars. And if you talk to
(14:48):
people who are scholars of not just scholars of the
recent period, archaeologists who look at inequality back to the
Neolithic period, they will tell you that it is very
hard to find in a period that is anything like
what we're living through now. As somebody said to me,
the people who built the pyramids, we're living in a
less unequal society.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
So I want to get to the fall of the
Roman Empire because it's my fall of the Roman Empire.
There's a lot of joking that goes around that this
is a similar moment in America. You know that American
history that we history rhymes and we are in a
moment where the center cannot hold right, that there's just
too much inequality that we have, you know, And again
(15:33):
maybe it's this idea of the printing press. You know,
the technology has catapulted us into a kind of dark ages,
you know, a kind of brought time period. But but
do you I mean, is that your take on this,
I mean, what do you think, what do you think
about the instability?
Speaker 4 (15:50):
Well, I think that the Roman analogy is more than
casually important, Like it is more than just that we
sometimes throw up our hands and say God, it feels
like the fall a Rum. The great scholar of Rome,
the late scholar Ramsay McMullin at Yale, was once asked
he'd written acres on the subject of the fall of Rome,
and he said, well, if you really ask me to
(16:12):
boil this down, he says, the fall of Rum took
five hundred years, but it can be distilled into three words.
Fewer had more. The growth of radical inequality in both
political and economic power is such a large and encompassing
fact of our lives that it's almost like climate change
(16:34):
in the sense that you can go through the day
without thinking about it, remembering periodically, oh, yeah, this is happening,
and it probably will change the world I live in,
But you can lose sight of it. And there are
these moments, these little dramatic indications, these moments when it
comes into our lives. And I think that the Musk
Trump joint venture is one of those times when we
(16:55):
have been suddenly aware of what the windfall in economics
has meant for our politics and our political culture.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Elon Musk started out as pretty popular talk us through
his devolution.
Speaker 4 (17:08):
Yeah, I think he would be the first person to
in some ways acknowledge that he was caught unaware by
the collapse of his relationship with most of the public.
I mean he was until not long ago. If you
lined up a group of college students, you would very
often hear them say he is somebody who gives us
inspiration about what this country can be. And his level
(17:32):
of seclusion from actually the public, from real live experience,
as indicated by things like him saying that as many
of us have heard that the greatest flaw of Western
civilization is empathy, or describing social Security as a Ponzi scheme.
There are really a tell about how far his life
(17:56):
had become really divorced, in a kind of lunar way
from the lives of most other human beings. And I
think this is a theme that runs through my book
because over and over again I would find myself in
places that I know quite well. I mean like Greenwich, Connecticut,
which is where I grew up, is a place that
has historically been kind of in some sense connected to
(18:20):
but also disconnected from the rest of the country by
the forces of wealth. But in recent years, and Musk
is just the most dramatic illustration of this, that the
building of walls, both literally around people's estates but also
psychologically and emotionally and culturally has become so profound that
we are now living in an arrangement that is much
(18:42):
closer to what it was like in This is not
an extravagant analogy, but like medieval Europe, there's a reason
why people build castles. They built castles to defend themselves
and their property against others. And Elon Musk is a living,
breathing demonstration of what happens when you think that you
understand how other people live and you don't.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
So interesting because I think that's completely right. And I
also wonder how much Elon Musk is is a function
of not having anyone around you who has ever told
you the truth.
Speaker 4 (19:14):
Oh, completely right. I mean, this is the great risk
for authoritarians, either in private business or in public office,
is that you become so insulated and comfortable. It's like
this kind of amniotic fluid of agreement around you that
nobody who disagrees with you, stays very long, and as
(19:35):
a result you make actually sometimes terrible mistakes. This is
what's known as authoritarian backlash, and it's where you misjudge
the public mood. You know, if you're the Shaw of Iran,
you host a giant party to celebrate your leadership a
few months before the revolution rises up and removes you.
(19:56):
And that's the pattern. And I think it's because there's
nobody around who can say it. I'll give you one
other fascinating example. I wrote a profile that's in this
book of Mark Zuckerberg when he was in the period
of kind of coming to terms with his vast new powers,
and he had gone you'll remember Molly on this like
kind of weird tour of the United States where he
(20:18):
was going out and wanting to meet people and people,
and it was kind of it got mocked because, as
people put at the time, they said, this really looks
like a man who has landed or a person who
has landed on this planet and is like, bring your
humans to me. I will see them, and I will
meet them, and we will eat their things. And then
(20:38):
and somebody who had worked for him told me, look,
the reality was when he was on this tour. We
could all see that this was really not going to work,
and it looked, it looked kind of ridiculous, but there
was nobody around him who could and would tell him that, right, right,
right right, authoritarian backlash.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
So is it a question to keep going with this theory?
Putin's war with Ukraine is that? Is that the same?
Speaker 4 (21:07):
Very much so. Putin is the paradigmatic example of what
the scholars call a sultanistic oligarch, which is a wonderful
term actually, and a sultanistic oligarch is somebody who is
essentially agreed upon by the other elites or the other
oligarchs in a society to let one among them rule,
(21:29):
and it's because they all benefit from that. But the
danger of becoming a sultanistic oligarch is that kind of
seclusion and that kind of absence of any sort of
critical thinking and judgment around you. And so everybody begins
to say to you, well, it seems like invading Ukraine
is a brilliant strategic move, sir. And you know, we
all saw those images of the of the boardroom where
(21:52):
the oligarchs and the and the leaders of the intelligence
community in Moscow were being briefed on this plan and
there was up warrious applause, and that is a it's
you know, it's a lesson that I think goes beyond
just talking about our president or the Russian president or
it is really like a deep lesson in the problem
(22:15):
of becoming too far ahead, too far isolated, and becoming
too sure. To quote Kendrick Lamar, that you deserve it all.
It's a risk it'll blow up on you.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
It'll blow and that's what we're saying. So what we
saw with Elon I just want to get back to
Elon for a minute, because he is the most pertinent
right now in our American political world, is that his
polling went down. His the numbers at Tesla's prophets were
down seventy one percent. Who even knew that could happen?
At a company, right they sold well? I saw reporting
(22:52):
that they sold seven thousand cars in Europe. I mean, okay,
do you think that these kind of come to Jesus
moments where you see that the emperor really has no clothes?
Do you think they influence the zeitgeist or do you
think they're just sort of I mean, what, you know,
the question we all have all the time is what
(23:13):
breaks through.
Speaker 4 (23:14):
Yeah, I think there's no question that this leaves a
scar on the public mood. It's not just on Elon
Musk individually. I think this is really important because when
you try to understand essentially, like where does this lead Molly,
which is you know, the question we're all trying to
figure out, which is what happens when you have the
Musk era, Where does that go? Where does that take
(23:34):
a country? We actually have a useful, almost hauntingly useful model,
which is the end of the nineteenth century the beginning
of the twentieth century in this country, which is that
you know, that was a time when you had these tycoons,
the robber barons as they were called during the Gilded Age,
who were very in many ways Musk Like. I mean,
(23:55):
you know Jay Gould, who was the Wall Street Titan.
Twain used to say, look, Americans have always have always
revered money, but Jay Gould made them meal down and
worship it. And in many ways, Musk is the modern
incarnation of that. And what we saw in that period
in the late nineteenth century was that there were these
(24:16):
acts of just cartoonish extravagance, cartoonish sort of self indulgence,
the equivalent of having the many things that Musk has
accumulated for himself, most significantly perhaps his family arrangement, which
looks sultanistic in so many ways that in the at
the end of the nineteenth century, you had people hosting parties,
for instance, in New York City in a ballroom in Manhattan,
(24:39):
where they brought horses into the court into the ballroom
and they ate on horseback and drank champagne out of
the saddle bags. And the country, regular Americans, we're hearing
about this, reading about it in the newspapers, and it
was accumulating to the point of a breaking point where
people would say, we we just we can't go on
like this, And that's what you had that It's really
(25:00):
what gave way to the birth of the progressive era
and then ultimately to the New Deal, was this recognition
on the part of the public and ultimately on some
of the elites, people like Teddy Roosevelt and then later
Franklin Roosevelt, that this just you can't go on this
way or the country won't hold. I think that Musk
is pretty proficient at reading ultimately his role in the culture,
(25:22):
and he'll figure out a way to kind of, you know,
get himself back in I don't have any doubt about
that he'll find a way to rebuild some cultural cachet
which is now so very much in remission. But ultimately,
I think that the bigger impact is really on that
constant oscillation that we started with between fascination and revulsion
with giant wealth. And he has almost single handedly pushed
(25:44):
the United States away from capitalism.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
Ooh, that's interesting. Imagine being so rich that you turn
Americans off of capitalism.
Speaker 4 (25:53):
That's the pattern. That's history. It tells us, it happens,
and it takes ultimately other people to say to the
elon Musks of the world, if you carry on this way,
this system which has been ultimately so rewarding for them,
is going to be is going to lose.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Its public basis of support. Are you surprised that the
oligarchs of this moment aren't more philanthropic. You think about
Bill Gates with this comment that he made about Mosque,
where he said, this is a register in the world
taking away from the poorest children in the world. Talk
to me about that.
Speaker 4 (26:28):
Yeah, it's been quite noticeable in the philanthropy community. You
hear about this generational Really there's been a kind of
generational split, which is that the early generation of mega
wealth of the latter half of the twentieth century and
early twenty first century, principally Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, or
the iconic figures that they made.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
Larger the Waltons.
Speaker 4 (26:51):
Yeah, they and they did large. They made a point
in a sense to make to put themselves in the
tradition of Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, who believed
you had to give some of your fortune or in
Gates and Buffett's case, the lion's share of your fortune
back to the public through philanthropy. And there has been
(27:12):
this real shift though since then. Really it's sort of
started in the last ten years or so where and
this is not me making up making an abstraction. The
data is quite clear on this that the amount of
money that people like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are
giving to philanthropy is just simply much less than their predecessors,
(27:33):
like Buffetting Gates were. And what's the reason for this
is that there is a theory that's become popular in
Silicon Valley, which is that essentially your greatest act of philanthropy,
putting that in quotes is your business.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
You know, it's as much high on your own supply gone.
Speaker 4 (27:50):
I mean, that's you know, Musk's view is, as he
said at one point, the greatest gift I can give
to humanity is tesla, to which others might say, but
you know what about a Musk foundation? And I've watched
it happen just over the last ten years. This is
a real shift.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
I mean. The most incredible part of this is that
The New York Times had a lot of reporting on
the Musk Foundation where they were getting in trouble for
not giving away what they are required by law to
give away.
Speaker 4 (28:16):
Totally true, I mean, and I felt the most interesting
revealing detailing the Times reporting on Musk's philanthropies. One of
the recipients of his philanthropic foundation in the early years
was actually to a school that was located in his
own house, in which five of the fourteen students were
(28:36):
his own children.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Yes, many people are saying doing things for your kids
is not actually philanthropy, or when you are the richest
man in the world, we're laughing about this, but really
we are laughing to keep from crying because it's so dark.
I wonder if you could talk about are there any
I have to talk about this, because otherwise I'll go insane.
There anything you're seeing when you in this store of
(29:04):
the haves and the have yat about some kind of
positive move towards So let's talk about that.
Speaker 4 (29:13):
Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that, because there are some
good news things that should be recognized and cultivated and celebrated,
which is that there are some people who have really
gone through a bit of a process over the last
ten or fifteen years with the rise of Trump in
our politics, that has made them say that they recognize
that the country is, on some level on an unsustainable
(29:36):
cour There is this organization called the Patriotic Millionaires, which
I write about in this new piece in the New Yorker,
in which these are folks who have thrived in the
current disposition of power, the meaning that the tax code
that benefits them they have benefited from. But they are
in fact some of the people who are standing up
and saying, really, this is about taxes and wages. It's
(29:58):
not complicated. They say, look, if you if wages had
kept up with gains in productivity, if wages had kept
up with the growth in the economy, wages today would
be much higher than they were before. And you know,
there's one guy in particular who I'm thinking of named
John Driscoll, who was the CEO of a big healthcare
company who realized that, look, there is no way in
which I can expect to have a successful business if
(30:19):
the people who work for me are sleeping in their
cars at night. And so, and what's the encouraging thing
here too, is Molly that this is like any kind
of culture. Culture moves, and sometimes it moves even faster
than we expect. And so right now it feels as
if we're in the season of plunder. We're in the
season of the oligarchs who are exploiting this president to
(30:43):
benefit themselves as much as they can. But it also
can move fast, and we've seen it once before. We
saw it in nineteen thirteen when you had the rise
of elites in this country who recognized that to protect
the country's future, you had to reign in excesses and abuses.
And we're beginning to see some of that. And I
think that the size of the I'll just mention one
(31:04):
other thing, which is that the size of the protests
that Bernie Sanders has been getting this summer. Are really
remarkable because I interviewed a bunch of people at protests
at the Bernie Sanders rallies, and to a person, they
had never been to one before. These are not diehard
Bernie bros. These are people in some cases, in a
few cases actually people who are quite sympathetic to Republican
(31:25):
arguments who said, I didn't vote for this, I didn't
vote for what Trump is doing and what we know
from history. If there's one thing that listeners can take
away who are trying to figure out, what do we
do as a people now to protect this country, the
answer is it is sustained public pressure. Sustained public pressure
that it matters to use your voice and to get
(31:46):
up and say no, this is not right, this is
not fair, and this is not sustainable.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
Randy Weiningarden is the president of the American Federation of
Teachers and the author of the upcoming book Why Fascist
Spear Teachers. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Randy Winingarten. So
we're in this insane moment in American life. The houses out,
the senators out there is the big beautiful bill. It
both grows the deficit and cuts, food stamps for children.
(32:15):
Trump administration is at war with poor kids in every
which way. You are the head of the American Teachers Federation,
you are in it. Talk to us.
Speaker 5 (32:25):
So you know, a budget is your priorities. And what
you can see in that big, ugly bill is that
it is big, but it is pretty ugly. Is the
Trump administration's priorities, which is to keep the tax cuts
that they did in twenty seventeen, including most particularly, to
(32:49):
prefer the millionaires and the billionaires in this country and
let them keep all the wealth that they grew over
all this time, and to as actually give everybody else
trinkets or a trickle down effect. So they've given everybody
something little except for people who make under fifty thousand
(33:10):
dollars who may actually have to pay more taxes. And
that's the second point I want to do. So one,
they really really prefer the billionaires and the millionaires. But
the second thing they do is really really really cruel
because they're taking out, especially everything that created innovation in
(33:31):
the country, everything that helped in terms of climate control.
They're using education funding as a piggy bank for the rich,
a new tax shelter for vouchers, and then they take
a hatchet to student loans, to nutrition aid, and to
healthcare for the middle class and the poor. And now
(33:52):
they're lying about it like Johnson is saying, oh, no,
this is just about waste and abuse, when it essentially
we'll take fourteen million people off of healthcare and make
it impossible for families under the poverty line to feed
their kids. So if you hear my anger, and then
(34:14):
they sneak in things like stopping the courts from enforcing
their orders.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
As that was amazing. Let's go back to Mike Johnson
for a minute, because one of the things that Mike
Johnson actually said was that he said it was that
work requirements were actually they have a moral component. These
will be work requirements for snap benefits. They will mean
that if you have a child over seven years old,
(34:39):
if you are not working, you cannot qualify for nutrition assistance.
Speaker 5 (34:44):
Talk us through what that looks like. So level of
cruelty to their own voters is shocking to me. It's
essentially trying to find ways already the people who voted
for Trump, essentially aside from the people who have always
been for him. Let's say the net delta difference between
(35:06):
that decided the selection was the couch and the people
who made up their mind in the last few days.
They voted for a better life for themselves. Most of
not all of those folks are working really hard and
are trying to make ends meet. So when you say
to somebody who has a seven year old kid that
you're not going to feed them anymore because their parents
(35:30):
are not working, or their one parent is not working
exactly at the job you want them to work at.
Maybe they're working off the books because they can't make it. Yes,
that's wrong. Maybe there are a thousand other reasons, like
they're taking care of their elderly parents and they can't
(35:50):
be at work and take care of their elderly parents
at the same time. To actually do that and starve
children like that, it's cruel, it's inhuman.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
So what are we going to do.
Speaker 5 (36:03):
We're going to now take our AI surveillance and start
using it for every single family in America to make
that decision. How dare Mike Johnson decide what is moral
and what isn't moral from the state that actually is
now saying that no termination of pregnancy through abortion is
(36:27):
legal or not? Yes, sorry, I am just It's like, really,
how is all of a sudden we are our country
that used to believe in freedom of religion. Now it's
getting closer and closer to a handsmade tail kind of
oation here. How dare you tell somebody that they can't
(36:50):
get snap benefits for their kids, that a kid who
is older than seven is no longer dependent. It's my
boggling to me how cruel it is.
Speaker 1 (37:02):
It is very cool. One of the things that the
Republicans are trying to do is push back against medicaid expansion, right,
and Medicaid expansion is humongous and largely has benefited red
states right. In fact, I mean Snap too. You know,
if they are able to get these cuts through, they
will mean that at least twenty five percent of children
(37:22):
will be affected in states like Louisiana and West Virginia,
very red states. But with the issue with the Medicaid expansion,
your grandma's in a nursing home, she's coming to go
live with you, right, or she's going on the street. Right.
They're going to be closing nursing homes. They're going to
be closing rural hospitals. The Medicaid expansion question it is
(37:42):
wildly unpopular. I mean, the polling shows that like eighty
four percent of Americans want either the same or more Medicaid.
Speaker 5 (37:50):
So I think part of the problem and this is
actually a real problem for the Democratic Party and one
that the Democrats have not solved. Frankly, it's a problem
for truth, which is, yes, the Medicaid cuts in this
bill are terribly unpopular, but people actually have to see
them to believe them. Unfortunately, in America right now, disinformation
(38:14):
and misinformation reign supreme, and where people get their information
and what information people get has really become really problematic
because people are getting a steady diet of propaganda and
misinformation and disinformation. You can make a decision, for example,
about whether you want trickle down or not, whether you
(38:35):
want tax cuts for the wealthy or not, or whether
you want a social service net.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
That is a.
Speaker 5 (38:40):
Legitimate question that you can raise in the United States
and America in terms of economic policy. But if you
don't actually know the truth, if you don't actually know
what's in the bill, if somebody can get away and say,
oh no, this is really not a Medicaid cut when
it in fact is, that's part of the problem. And
what the Democrats have not been able to do is
(39:02):
they do not have the information. You know, assume for
a second they are telling the truth. People don't know it,
people don't hear it. So yes, the Medicaid cuts are
really unpopular. Frankly, all of the snap overhaul nutrition overhaul
will be really unpopular too. Think about we're going to
go back to lunch shaming in schools about who can
(39:24):
get a lunch and who can't get a lunch. We
were supposed to solve that housing crisis. We're supposed to
try to get the minimum wage raised to a living wage,
and now what's happening is we're seeing even more cutbacks
to the safety net and it's going to hurt for
and work in class folk.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
It's funny because it's like we spend so much time
handwriting about Democrats losing working people, but here are Republicans
having won them, now trying to hurt them. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (39:53):
I mean, I give Josh Holly a lot of credit
when he says, no, don't make these cuts, and you
know these cuts are going to hurt people. But that's
why I was astounded Johnson the Speaker wouldn't even be
honest about what they did. Yeah, but that's because they're
trying to hide it. And our goal, our job has
(40:14):
to be tell the truth about what these cuts do
and the impact they'll have.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
So let's talk about that. Eventually these cuts are going
maybe they won't be brought as broadly, but there will
be some level of cuts. And I wonder if Republicans
are just in denial, like, eventually this will hurt the
people that they just started winning, right.
Speaker 5 (40:36):
I think that they'll try to blame it on somebody else.
I agree with you, these cuts are unpopular. They will
hurt people, and the question is why are they doing it?
And they're doing it. I mean, look, Republicans say they
care about the debt, and they're raising the debt six
trillion dollars. So they're doing these cuts because they care
(40:57):
more about preserved having the huge maximalist wealth of the
people who were the winners from the last tax cut.
If you think about income inequality, it's you know, significantly
higher today than it was in twenty seventeen. So they,
you know, they care about that. That's who their constituency is,
(41:22):
and that's what they care about. And I think they probably,
I mean, they probably believe that they can sell anybody anything,
so that people are not they can blame other people
on it. And that's why our job is to actually
tell the truth and say what's in it. And frankly,
our job is also something else, which is we have
(41:44):
to show a different future and a better future. So
for example, I'm very much.
Speaker 6 (41:50):
Into let's actually have working class tax cut, Let's have
cost of living insulation here, let's do what the patriotic
millionaires have a really great proposal.
Speaker 5 (42:01):
Let's make that front street. Let's actually then also show
like where's the money for career tech ed? Donald Trump,
you say that you are you care about creating pathways
for jobs for others. So where's the pathway for career
tech ed? Why do you cut that money too? Why
don't you actually increase that funding. Don't tell me that
(42:25):
Harvard should get rid of their funds so you can
put in trade schools. Why don't you fund career tech
ed instead of cutting Harvard and instead of cutting the
Department of Education. Where's the big push for workforce pathways
in other ways? So we should actually be fighting for
(42:46):
not just critiquing them, which we need to do, but
we should be fighting for the things that working class
folks need, which is good jobs, affordable housing, affordable health,
health care, and decent retirement. And this is the stuff
that Americans want.
Speaker 1 (43:05):
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Randy, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 5 (43:11):
Be welcome.
Speaker 3 (43:14):
No second, Jesse Cannon, Molly, I'm going to really shock
you here.
Speaker 2 (43:22):
After someone's mother attended a one million dollar dinner for
mister Trump, there was a pardon exchanged. Who would have
thunk it.
Speaker 1 (43:30):
No, I can't believe it. I'm shocked. It's a great
story from the New York Times. Ken Vogel unblocked me
on Twitter. Ken Vogel, this is the Ken Vogel and
block Molly john fest On x challenge. So this is
a great story. This guy who worked for his mother.
His mother had a sort of nursing homeie thing. His
(43:53):
mother had been raising money for Trump for a long time.
They had been appealing for pardons for a long time.
But you know what put him over the top. You're
going to be shocked, shocked to hear this. By the way,
his mother was also involved in this Project Veritas thing
where they tried to buy Ashley Biden's diary. Everything is
(44:13):
so bad. American politics is so disgusting, right, they tried
to buy Ashley Biden's diary in order to hurt Joe
Biden by because this was publicizing her addiction, because she
was an addict. I mean, this is like, imagine, this
is so bad. This is like the world's darkest Cohen
(44:34):
Brothers movie. So anyway, eventually they got this pardon. Because,
by the way, there's also a great story of a
two million dollar yacht, which I'm not going to get
into right now. I do think it is funny though,
that between twenty sixteen and twenty nineteen, this guy withheld
more than ten million dollars from the paychecks of nurses, doctors,
(44:54):
and others who worked at his facilities, under the pretext
of using it for their Social Security, Medicare and federal
income tax. But you know what he did instead of
using it to pay there withholding taxes, he spent two
million dollars on a yacht he paid for travel and purchases,
and high end retailers including Broger of Goodman and Cardia
charged with thirteen counts of tax crimes. But our tax
(45:18):
crimes really crimes. If you support Donald Trump, many people
are saying they are not, So what happens. The mother
goes to a Trump fundraiser that is a million dollar
a plated fundraiser, and then he cuts the Barden great stuff.
That's what it is. That's it for this episode of
Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday
(45:44):
to hear the best minds and politics make sense of
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it to a friend and keep the conversation going. Thanks
for listening.
Host
Molly Jong-Fast
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