July 24, 2025 • 52 mins
Talking Feds’ Harry Litman examines Trump’s latest legal maneuvers to keep the Epstein files a secret.Strength In Numbers Substack author G. Elliot Morris details new polling showing how unpopular Trump’s actions as president are with independents.
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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 an economist. You gov poll found
that fifty six percent of respondents strongly or somewhat disapprove
of the president's handling of the Epstein investigations. We have
(00:20):
such a great show for you today, talking fed's own
Harry Litman stops by to talk about Trump's legal snap
foods with the Epstein files. Then we'll talk to Strength
and Numbers Substack author g Elliott Morris about the interesting
polling he has discovered and how it shows that Donald
(00:42):
Trump is not popular with independence and he's becoming really
not popular with young people.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
But first the news, So Molly, yesterday the k file
from CNN found pictures of Jeffrey Epstein at Trump and
Marvel Maple's wedding. It's really shocked to hear that his
best friend of decade would be at his wedding and
they called him and Trump took it really well.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Yeah. I mean the headline in The New Republic, which
we love because it's edited by the great Mike Tamaski.
Among other things, Trump crashes out over damning surface photos.
So there's a guy at CNN whose name is Andrew Kazinski,
no relation to Ted. And Andrew Kazinsky is like a
(01:30):
super sluice. You just never want Andrew Kazinski coming after you,
is all I can say. You'll be very surprised to
hear that. Not only did Donald Trump say in two
thousand and two to New York Magazine that Jeffrey Emstein
is a terrific guy and who likes beautiful women almost
as much as I do, and some of them on
(01:52):
the younger side. Not only did he say quotes about him,
but he also took photos with him. And it turns
out that jeff epp was at a lot of things
in New York Magazine. He said that Epstein was a
terrific guy, and he's known him for fifteen years. Anyway,
these pictures, there's pictures Jeffrey Epstein at Trump's second wedding.
(02:13):
When Kazinski called Trump, he said, we were not on
the phone very long. I think our call lasts about
thirty seconds. But when I asked him about the wedding photo,
he said he sort of paused for a second and
then and then said, quote, you've got to be kidding
me before calling CNN fake news and hanging up. Stephen Chung,
who is known to be a very thoughtful and sensitive guy.
(02:38):
The White House Communications Director, ferociously spit back at the network,
decrying the images as nothing more than out of context
frame grabs of innocuous videos and pictures of widely intended events.
Was in everyone at Trump's second wedding. U QCNN of
leveraging the images in its reporting to discuss stingy infer
(03:01):
something nefarious. Yes, that's right. Weren't we all friends with
Jeffrey Epstein? The fact that the President kicked him out
of his club for being a creep, which Trump World
says is nothing more. Again, you know whatever, they they're
going to deny it.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
So let me take the listeners down a very stupid
hole of the internet. Kendas Owens, who is a former
Daily Wire host and has a very very popular podcast,
often does this very weird conspiracy theory that first Lady
Bridget Macrone, the wife of Emmanuel Macron, is trans and
(03:38):
her followers and her transvestigate her all day where they
look at her calf muscles and analyze that they are
off by millimeters and so clearly she was born to mail. Well,
guess what they're suing for defamation now, and that's exactly
what should happen.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
So Owens had an eight part podcast for eight parts, okay,
eight parts? How many parts we have on Project twenty
twenty five?
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Four?
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Four? Okay? So we had four on Project twenty twenty five,
which is this book that the Trump administration pages. Yeah,
he has seven hundred page book of things the Trump
administration put out, but they had eight parts of becoming
Brigid as a secret trans woman and a blood relative
of her husband. Again, there was very disgusting conservative lie.
(04:26):
Conservative is the wrong word, Maga lie about Michelle Obama.
And I just want to point out McCrone has this
interesting marriage because he's very, very handsome, and his wife
is older than him, and in a very misogynistic culture,
an older wife is almost you know, there's sort of
a like, should you be married to someone who's older.
(04:49):
It's her value, she has less value. That's the misogyny, right,
that as women get older, they get less valuable to
the culture. And so the idea is, here's macrone, he's
the president of France, he's very handsome, he should be
married to someone who's much younger, because that is the
innate misogyny of this situation. So why this is important
(05:11):
is besides the fact that it's disgusting and appalling and
the Crones are right pursuing, it's also just another way
in which a woman has internalized misogyny and is now
spouting it out right. The idea is that somehow there's
no world in which he could actually love an older woman,
that in fact, this is some kind of conspiracy.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
The conspiracy is that the world is being run by
a gang of satanic pedophiles masquating as Jewish people. That's
an exact quote.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Actually, wow, it's just worth remember that there's always this
sort of another terrifying subtext to all of this.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Well, and the other terrifying subtext, which is kind of
not subtext, is that she's not backing down. She says
that she's going to keep going, which is going to
make this defamation suit just keep mounting and mounting and mounting,
which I for one hope it really brings her.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Room and she's going to lose by the way she is.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
So let's get to my personal nightmare fuel unregulated AI
development today with the Trump administration unveiled its plans to
give AI to developers a freehand, and what I would
more say is no regulation and no oversight.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Yeah, I mean, you'd be shocked, right because Congress is
also going to give them no regulation and no oversight.
I just want to point out this is like my
favorite hobby horse, because this is one where Democrats have
apps of fucking lotely fallen down on the job big time.
This is Congress' is grift right that they have kids
(06:40):
who work for tech companies, they have spouses who invest
in technology. They have this and that that have created
a incentive structure that rewards not regulating tech companies. And
so here is AI something that gets smarter or something
(07:00):
that has capabilities that we don't totally understand, that uses
tons and tons and tons and tons of electricity, that
will use more electricity than I read a statistic that
it uses more electricity than certain states do in a year.
I mean, it is just something that desperately needs to
(07:23):
be regulated. So Donald Trump, the King of regulation, just kidding,
has said he won't regulate it. And you'll remember that
in the BBB there was this weird bit of legislative
language about States being not allowed to regulate AI for
(07:43):
a decade. Clearly this was a setup and the people,
from what I understand, the person who is the most
against regulating AI going to be shocked to hear this
is the quietly the most evil of the whole crew.
Can you guess Teal now? Cool? Mark Zuckerberg, Oh yeah,
(08:03):
that makes sense. It squares right. The man who kept
who is basically managed to make it so that tech
is not regulated. And I mean Congress, certainly there's a
lot of blame to go around here, but that he
is the person. Again that's not reported. That's just what
I heard from gossip. But it is still something so.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
In really great news for the American economy that always
ends up being a harbinger of really great things to come.
Take my sarcasm as it is. Home prices have hit
a record high in June, driving down sales. That always
leads to great things, right, Molly.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Yeah, you'll remember that Trump said he was going to
make everything cheaper. That was his big thing. You know
this that bacon cheaper. Well, home prices are not cheaper.
In fact, we've hit a record high home price reflecting
multiple years of undersupply. So this is inflation, and Donald
(09:00):
Trump has a solution, which is to fire the FED chair,
which will not lower inflation. If anything, it will be
inflationary again. Just a complete, incomplete, complete, complete, complete disaster.
Or here the second quarter we had negative growth. So
now it just seems to me very likely that we
(09:23):
are paying a price for the trade war already.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Harry Littman is a former US attorney and the host
of the podcast Talking Feds.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
Hey, Hey, everyone, it's our latest Molly Harry mashup where
Mallijong Fast throws legal questions my way and I return
fire with political questions. Let me just say, always a
pleasure to be with the celebrated Maulli Young Fast, who
has added since the last time we were here to
her long famous resume, a new book, How to Lose
(10:00):
Your Mother, which came out last month muzzletub New York
Times bestseller Baby, New York Times bestseller Baby. Okay, And
speaking of the New York Times, man, you had a
great article in there that was sort of part memoir
and part political analysis about the Stephen Colbert firing. And
let me start with that. You wrote there that canceling
(10:23):
Colbert isn't funny, but you noted how the point of
authoritarian coercion is. It's a motivator, and man, we're seeing
it sort of everywhere where he's been. Has Trump in
this first eighth of his new term pretty damn successful
in getting people, including broad sectors of civil society, to
(10:45):
really toe the line or approach the line. Why is
he so much more effective at doing that and sort
of calling the speech of big sectors of the country
than he was last time around? Do you think so?
Speaker 1 (11:01):
There's actually a really smart piece in the Times today,
an opinion piece from the former ambassador to Hungary a
bad vector or bond and how dangerous all of this is.
And I would say I think Trump is effective at
doing it because people don't understand the stakes of the decisions.
So if you're Sherry Redstone, you think, I want to
(11:23):
do this merger so I can have two billion dollars,
And you think, well, you know Colbert nighttime shows, they
are not the business they once were, and all of
this is very expensive and it's a huge headache. So
let's just kill it. It'll make Trump happy, it'll make
the deal go, right, That's what she's thinking. She's thinking,
(11:43):
whatever it doesn't matter. I just got to get my
deal done. This is a consequence of an imperial presidency, right,
a presidency that no longer has any kind of firewall
between regulation and Trump's whims. So Trump does not like
to be made fun of. His regular Tory body serves
at his pleasure ergo goodbye to late night hosts, possibly
(12:07):
one and all, because, as you and I both know,
network television and also cable television has a regulatory body that,
unlike the Internet or anything else, really is regulated.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
They're going to be jumpy at least, right. And it's
a great article, by the way, because he said I
saw this happening.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
And basically what he says is, you don't put together
this one decision with what it ends up happening. Now.
I'm not convinced that Hungary and America are one to
one for any number of reasons, but we certainly have
an Orbanic figure in Trump, right, orbon putin, an autocrat
(12:49):
who does not believe the rule of law applies to him.
So I do think there are a lot of parallels.
So it means really that powerful people might stand up
to Trump. That means it's more important than ever that
a Jeff Bezos, who obviously in his heart knows all
(13:09):
of this is insanitay that he stands up and again,
all of the writing about authoritarianism, all of the books
about authoritarism, say it's a game of inches, not feed.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
That's so important.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
Yeah, yeah, all right, so bring it. We're going to
do legal on Epstein. This entire time breaking news which
won't be breaking by tomorrow when people listen to this.
But Pam Bondi, who is very much in the hot
seat right now, decided she wanted the grand jury stuff
for Epstein, which is, by the way, just a very
very small slice of all of the Epstein stuff she
(13:43):
has on her desk, probably from the FBI to the DOJ.
All of that, A very slim sliver of it is
the grand jury stuff. And fyi, we know that all
the names will be redacted in grand jury stuff, accusers
and victims, which I think it's important data point. So
the judge said, no, go on that. Explain to us
(14:05):
why and what that looks like.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
Sure, let me just start with the headline. It's not
just a slim slice. It's a slice that, in the
Van diagram has zero connection with what everyone's clamoring for
it's the slice that the parted marine Konmi you put
to put together an indictment that doesn't talk about It's
all about Epstein and Maxwell and the underage girls and
(14:28):
the people who facilitated. But what's Paul Engelmeyer up to
the rules? Molly say, here's six reasons why it's a
serious thing to uncover grand jury stuff in any event,
and yes, you were dac names. Here's six reasons why
you can do it. Guess what none of them is
the public interest, which is what this four page filing
(14:50):
by the Deputy Attorney General stunning in itself, says. But
there's no warrant for that in the rules. There maybe
is a little play in it joints according to one
second Circuit opinion, but that was not about public interest.
And imagine if public interest were a reason for piercing
this and going into a grand jurial. Maybe Trump wants
(15:13):
him to deny it. What is he doing for now?
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Though?
Speaker 3 (15:15):
Angel Myer says, I'm going to deal with this quickly,
but I need a few things, like the transcripts which
you haven't given me administration, Like what is Maxwell as
Julane's Maxwell's position on this. I want to hear about
the victims. This is just what I need so I
can make the decision. Is there a reason to do
(15:35):
this even though it's clearly not in the rules. So
you know, I think it's a gambit on their part.
They maybe hope he'll turn them down. But the number
one thing to understand, it's got nothing to do with
what everyone's clamoring for. What's that it's an FBI database
of three hundred gigabytes, that's like a million and a
half pages with the motherload of everything and the case
(15:59):
if you look at the indictment, you just didn't need
to prove anything about customers, pals wingman as we're now hearing,
or besting. He's got nothing to do with it, nor
even what you know maga's obsession with there being a
whole cabal of pedophiles and a leaf zero zero part
(16:19):
of the case. The case was sealed so that they
could retry Maxwell on the same charge as if they
wanted to. If you uncover it, it'll give nothing, which brings
me to my Epstein question. I only Fire wanted you,
But like Man, this is so different. I mean, he's
been flouting the Constitution and doing all these outrageous kinds
(16:41):
of a legal conduct. But this is the one that
has stuck. He has stepped in it for reasons that
I think a lot of people on one of them
didn't fully appreciate the real vehemence of the you saw.
Maybe Stewart Rhodes's quote comes out, this is what we
care about. We don't give a shit about trade pairs
any of that. This is what he's there for.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Explain who Stuart Roads is?
Speaker 3 (17:03):
Okay, Stuart Rhoades maybe number one insurrectionists whom Trump pardoned.
He's the Yale glasschool guy with the patch who got
like a twenty year sentence, mister insurrey, and he's coming out.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
Isn't he the head of the Proud Boys?
Speaker 3 (17:17):
I think it is the Proud Boys, not not the
three not keep okay.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
They have it fun fact he shot out his own
eye by accident.
Speaker 3 (17:27):
These things happen right when you're yeah, all right? Anyway?
Does the administration is doing everything throwing stuff against the wall.
Maybe we'll talk about more, But the really big sally
in difference here is it's Maga that's up in arms.
And my you know, my question to you is whether
any of these half measures, like if the grand Jury
were to come out, but even more, will it satisfy them?
(17:50):
Is there a time when Maga, which you know is
even cowing members of Congress, the speaker, et cetera, will
say okay and let go of the bone that they have,
or is this not going away until Trump plays an
open hand with whatever the hell that reveals, because Mago
(18:11):
won't let it go away.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
So this is a real question, and I think it's wild.
I mean, I think we could start by realizing that
it's a great example of how in twenty sixteen there
were things that happened where we all thought they would
matter because they mattered to us, but they didn't matter
to the Trump Bay. So the Trumpeys operate in a
completely different sphere. A lot of times they wouldn't hear
(18:33):
about this stuff because it was in the liberal bobble,
and when they did, they were sort of immune to
it because Trump had in nerd them to it. He
had said, you know, the even like a really interesting
moment was during this whole thing where he was like,
it's a hoax. It's a fake hoax, like the Russia, Russia, Russia.
(18:53):
When he spoke during the election. He would say things
like bacon, and his people would know he was talking
about inflation. Right, I'd say, bacon, and that's what this is, right,
This is the base is very tuned into him. They
usually respond, Like with bacon, they usually respond, But here,
all of a sudden, that's not what's happening. And I
(19:14):
think it's caught him very off guard, and he thought
he could just sort of bully them into submission, which
he has been able to do with all. I mean,
you have to remember all elected Republicans, from Mitch McConnell
to John Thoon to Mike Johnson, if they haven't behaved,
he's just kicked him out. So there has been no one.
(19:35):
He has effectively had pushback from no one, with the
exception of maybe Elon after he fired Elon, right, but
Elon's out, so he has almost no pushback, and all
of a sudden, the base starts pushing back and he
is not ready for that, and so he just says,
don't be weak, which I think was strategically the worst
(19:57):
thing he could have said to them. Like I think
if he had said, I was here to sow, you know,
to find the deep state, you Remember he has for
almost a decade been like, I am here to solve
the deep state, and then he gets there and he's like,
you're stupid for thinking there's a deep state. And I
think it's very undermining. I mean, I just think the
(20:18):
problem here is Trump one point zero would have fired everyone, right.
He would have fired Pam Bondi, he would have fired Bongino,
he might have fired Patel. And what would have happened,
I think is that the chaos would have sort of
absorbed what happened. But instead he's like very into this,
not firing people and just moving them around in the
(20:40):
hopes that they won't leave. And I actually think it
doesn't serve got it?
Speaker 3 (20:44):
And you maybe I got a legal point to that,
But maybe that's what you're going to ask me, because
you say you're all Epstein all the time, at least today,
So bring it. What do you got?
Speaker 1 (20:52):
No, if you have a legal point, go, well, what boy.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
Is just this? You say, he's done the stupidest thing.
I it's politically strategically, he's done absolute lutely the stupidest
thing legally, because look, there is some truth to him.
You know, he's some kind of pal there's not necessarily
any reason to think he's a client or anything like that.
But he made it in his reflexive way all about
(21:16):
he came out fake media, and it's all about this
piece of paper, this letter he wrote Epstein, and he's
saying it's fake and I'm sorry. We know anybody was
sophisticated about the media knows this is not fake. Wall
Street Journal has it buttoned down, not just the actual letter.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
Rupert Murdach knows about publishing controversial stuff and he's not
gonna do it unless right.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
And they are all in. This is not like CBF
or Amy, where they're gonna knuckle under. So he's done
the exact strategy that A extends things be puts him
through a like discovery and a deposition, and at the
end of the day the card gets turned over and
it's exactly what he's been saying. It isn't so legally.
I can't think of anything worse than the defamation suit.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
Tina Brown, though, did have an amazing quip at the
end of this New York Times article where she was like,
we have Rupert Murdock is the only media mogul.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
I mean freedoms, yes, ex but.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
It is kind of amazing and also pretty disturbing.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
Yeah, but I think in his universe you wouldn't know better, Molly.
But I think, look, that news operation of the Wall
Street Journal is just a separate thing. Everyone would just
leave if he totally pulled out the run from under them.
It's not Fox News.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Right, no question. And by the way, Fox News has
not been covering it, right, I mean like there's been
It's been mentioned twice some Fox News and supposedly. I
mean I read this in the in the ft, so.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
It's Tony, you cover the waterfront.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
Yeah, I'm not entirely sure what this means. But what
Murdoch's lieutenant, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Rupert
was pushing to see whether the base was still with Trump.
Because what Rupert Murdoch, which I think is pretty smart,
I mean bad for American democracy and for all of us,
and morally very dicey, but smart, what he saw in
(23:16):
twenty twenty was that he is that Fox News is
not more powerful than its viewers, that the viewers are
actually more powerful than the narrative. And so if the
narrative goes off the cliff and says Trump didn't win
the election, and Trump says he did win the election.
They will just tune out, they will turn off. So
he is trying to poke and now see if they
(23:38):
are going to be separated from him, And there's certainly
some evidence to support a possibility that they will be.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
Yeah, I mean more than some it seems so far.
It's not just do it road right. You've also seen
like a whole cast of characters, Cannon and Ingram and
Meghan Kelly basically finding something they care about more than
Donald Trump.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
So it's so supid because like they should care about
rural hospitals closing but whatever.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
And the constitution and the rule of law.
Speaker 4 (24:07):
But here we go.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
I want to know Congress has been talking about maybe
trying to get some of this stuff released. There's a
huge amount of Ebstein stuff that's at the DOJIB.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
Three hundred gigabytes, like a million and a half pages
roughly speaking, depending what's on there.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
Yeah, so if you wanted to get it released, who
could get it released?
Speaker 3 (24:27):
Donald Trump or Pam Bondy. It's with the FBI now,
so it implicates the whole Bongino Patel Bondy mess. Now
and we've seen over the you know in Trump one
point zero Congress on paper has pretty strong you know,
they were going to maybe do it subpoena. I don't
see that working basically. I think you'll see stonewalling, maybe
(24:51):
even embedded by the court, if a Supreme Court, if
it comes to it, And that means it's going to
be a decision that will be on Trump alone. In
that means it's going to be based on the political dynamic.
But all this stuff, Mollie, the DOJ is now wading
into it and doing this grand jury thing. This is
not what they do. It is all funky in the extreme.
(25:14):
Normally there's a case they're investigating or something. Now there
is no warrant for much less the Deputy Attorney General
to go I just want to talk to Gilaine Maxwell.
God knows what he's going to try to offer her.
On the like, they are all upriver and doing this
sort of thing they would never have done before because
it's so plainly political. It's a political operation that at
(25:38):
least for now you can imagine they're sort of constructing
something that has a kind of law enforcement hook up
to and including you know, some people say Epstein was
murdered for example. But right now they're just freelancing for
political reasons and inappropriately at least pre Trump era, because
they're obviously the number one lookout here is solving a
(25:58):
political crisis for the White House. So they've thrown out
the rule book long since, and they're playing by whatever
rules they want and making people try to stop them,
and so far on this kind of thing anyway, you know,
the record of the courts for stopping them isn't good.
So the bottom line answer has to be greenlighted by Trump.
And you would know this better than I. But I
think that's a political dynamic, right, no question, Oh miter,
(26:22):
so interested in what's going on with young voters who
were among the people who deserted Harris and the others
and really seemed young males, but really young voters in
general to do so much so we have I've never
seen something quite like this, A like reversal from what
was it, you know, seventy twenty fourth pro to like
(26:42):
the exact opposite. You know, the buyer's remorse is super strong.
What do you make of the shift? And do you
think it's got legs?
Speaker 1 (26:51):
Funny? You should ask that, but I believe it or not.
The other interview on this episode is a guy called
g Elliott Morris who goes through the polling with me
one by one and explain sort of what happened. But basically,
young adults age eighteen two thirty four have he sold
(27:14):
himself on the podcast and then he got in there
and they don't like anything he's doing. And I think
they don't like the regressive taxation, they don't like the
tax cuts for billionaires, they don't like the dissolving of Medicaid.
They don't like any of it. And I think he
had a very smart point. They grew up in Obama Land.
(27:35):
They believed that the government. You know, they're not Reagan kids.
You know, I grew up in Reagan when the goal
of Reagan was to make the government as small as possible.
Droughted in the bathtub, you know, how dare you want
a weather forecast?
Speaker 3 (27:49):
You know their traffic controller R care to you a monster?
Speaker 1 (27:53):
You can control your own air. And I think that
Obama really reset and then COVID really reset again. So
the thing that he said that I thought was the
most interesting, And you should listen to this interview because
there's just a lot of really interesting stuff in there
that I wouldn't have just to get you don't miss it.
(28:13):
Just to have him walk through the data was made
was really interesting. But the thing that he said that
I thought was the most interesting was that the only
thing less popular than what they're doing now was in
Trump's first term when he tried that Obamacare repeal. So
because the BBB hasn't it a skinny Medicare Medicaid or
(28:35):
repeal that was hidden in reconciliation. By the way, what
happened to the parliamentarian who was like, yes, you can
repeal Obamacare, you know in the in reconciliation, like.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
The ghost of Robert Byrd seems to have left the building,
doesn't it. Yeah?
Speaker 1 (28:51):
Yeah, But that I think is really interesting. And again,
so the question is have his midterm. We're six months
into Trump's term, which means we're eighteen months for the midterms.
The question is young voters are already unhappy. How much more
unhappy can they get? For Breezio, Trump's pollster says it
about ten percent of his base are like straight QAnon
(29:13):
right there, the paranoid style in American politics, So that
ten percent, here's a real question, does he lose that
ten percent.
Speaker 3 (29:21):
I mean because of Epstein, right.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
And if he loses that ten percent, even if they
don't vote for Democrats, they just don't go out for
him and they don't vote for his candidates. Ten percent
is a lot of.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
Voters for him've been governing on a minority razor's edge.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Yes, yeah, last question. Trump has a lot of fanciful
stuff to try to distract. One of them is Telsea
Gabbert has this crazy Barack Obama treason. She's going to
refer it to the Justice Department. It seems insane, But
is there a world in which this really does, Like
do we see Trump trying to arrest Barack Obama? Or
(29:58):
is this just fanciful so we don't see it?
Speaker 3 (30:01):
And we've had a lot of this, Yeah, I mean
my favorite I gather there's like an AI thing out
there they've created with Obama, you know, talk about the
new world we are in now. It does strike me,
Mollie that these are mainly diversionary tactic. Same thing with
the Redskins, and I'm going to scuttle that if they
don't change the name. You know, really a whole bunch
(30:23):
of stuff that best I can tell is just not working.
But I don't think there's a world, even our world,
even the Hungary version of our world, where he tries
to arrest Obama, and I don't think Obama thinks so
either much. We're to say on that, but don't need to.
I think that's the bottom line, and I know we're
out of time. Always so fun and best of luck
(30:45):
with the book. And by the way, that New York
Times article talks about your grandfather and the McCarthy era
and it's returning now. Everyone should read that too.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
Key Elliott Morris is the author The Strength in Numbers
substat Welcome to Fast Politics, Elliot.
Speaker 4 (31:04):
Morris, Hey, thanks for having me back, Molly.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
So I always like to just for everyone who's not
completely read up on this, I've been a longtime fan
of Elliott's work doing polling, statistical sort of the more
math side of politics. I think that's fair and I.
Speaker 4 (31:20):
Had it's a very generous way to put it, Molly.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
I long wanted to have him on the podcast, but
he was at five thirty eight, and then now you
started at five thirty eight, right, and then the economist
he was.
Speaker 4 (31:33):
An economist, and then five thirty eight slash ABC that's
probably where we were running into some problems setting me
on the bar.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
Right, But even the economists is actually we have a
lot of people from the economists on and their fabulous anyway.
Point is, I've been a longtime fan of your work
because you look at the numbers in a more of
a sort of whole body experience, and because so much
of this kind of stuff is about what's asked, how
it's asked, what medium it's asked. There's just a lot
(32:01):
of nuance that can really mess you up if you
have it wrong. So you have new polls yesterday, and
I would love you to start by talking about that. Sure.
Speaker 4 (32:10):
Yeah, So over at Strengthened Numbers my sub stack, we've
been doing a poll with pulling from called versaite.
Speaker 3 (32:16):
I'm supposed to say them.
Speaker 4 (32:18):
We do this every month, so we've done this with May, June,
and July. This is our third survey. That's important because
we can look at changes over time, so for example,
or the lack of changes.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
Really.
Speaker 4 (32:29):
For example, we found the Democrats have been leading in
the generic house ballot for the last three surveys. They're
up by four. Now, for context, that's the survey that
asks who would you vote for in your local district
at the election we're hell today, so it's a proxy
for the House vote, so stable pro democratic. We also
asked Trump approval.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
Just for a second, because I just because not everyone
is this read in on this as perhaps they would
like to not be, but they need to be because
this is the future of American democracy and possibly our
last election. What not to be hyperbolic, but I think
it's pretty much true. Can you explain what usual House
(33:12):
generic is like usually sort of historically what the numbers are,
because four it is actually a seismically huge number for that. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (33:22):
Yeah, So typically what happens is in the like two
years before in midterm, so once the new president takes office,
between that day, which in this case was January twentieth,
twenty twenty five, and the next midterm, which will be
next November, the party that controls the White House, in
this case Republicans tends to lose ground over time, so
they start off doing pretty well, so that would indicate
(33:45):
that Republicans should be doing much better in fact, maybe
even leading or tied in the generic ballot. The fact
that they're down forward now is consequential for them. It
points to a bad midterm. Just for context, at this
point in twenty eighteen, Democrats were up six, so not four,
but like we know, within the margin of error.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
Right, it's still humongo. These are huge numbers. Usually the day,
you know, usually one party is up one or two
in these generic because you don't have a candidate, it's
really just a which party is making you the least
mad kind of question? All right, so continue.
Speaker 4 (34:21):
So, so we've got those generic ballot numbers and the
paradox here, which you'll notice Democrats are up for Trump
is underwater severely in his approval ratings. He's down by
fifteen points, So fifty seven percent of the public say
they disapprove of him, forty two percent say they approve.
That's pretty terrible. For context, no other president except for
(34:45):
Trump in his first term, has had an approval rating
that bad at this point through their term.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
Because we're six months into the Trump press Trump two
point zero.
Speaker 4 (34:55):
Yeah, six months cent of president's typically still popular by
like twenty points. Even you'll bind that this point was
popular by fifteen points, so minus fifteen is also a
very bad number. Trump is at the issue level, He's
unpopular on everything from inflation and jobs in the economy
and tariffs to deportations, and immigration, where his numbers have
(35:19):
decreased significantly since our June survey.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
So let's stop and talk about those immigration numbers for
a minute, because I think that's really important Trump. What
the sort of the two things that Trump was elected on,
if you're going to take the sort of what information
we got from that twenty twenty four cycle was the
economy and immigration. People were mad at immigrants, people were
(35:44):
mad at inflation, right, I think it's important to realize, like,
he's underwater in the economy. This is, like, I think, also,
the first time he's ever been underwater on the economy,
or at least in this way. So can you talk
us through that.
Speaker 4 (35:59):
So through his first term, Trump had a slight lead
on the economy until his numbers got so bad that he,
you know, was just dragged down on everything. He's never
been thirty points underwater on inflation right now, he's fifteen
points excuse me, ten points underwater on jobs in the economy.
At this point in his first term, he was positive
on both of these. Thanks. So yeah, I mean that
(36:21):
contributed to the I guess perception of Trump as a
president who could like usher in economic growth or I
guess bring down prices or something, as the campaign claimed
during the twenty twenty four election. Obviously, voters don't feel
that way anymore. Even if they did, you know, feel
that way during the election, sixty one percent of people
(36:42):
are saying they don't like how he's handling inflation or
the economy right now. That's actually worse than Joe Biden
at this point in his presidency. So, you know, if
you have this mental image of Joe Biden, that's like
some sort of catastrophic president who raised prices. Actually, people
are feeling the same way about Trump right now, at
least on inflation.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
But more they're actually really feeling like there was some
you know, there was a feeling that Trump that Biden
lost because of inflation, but he was still he had
better numbers on the economy than Trump did at this moment.
Speaker 4 (37:16):
At this point. Yeah, but even if if you look
at the twenty twenty four, if you look at the
twenty twenty four impression of Biden, it's about this bad,
if not a little bit worse on the economy overall.
I think the thing here is that people just don't
like how presidents. And not to get too much into this,
but they just don't like inflation in general. So if
you ask them, hey, how are you feeling about how
the president's handling inflation, They're going to say they don't
(37:38):
like it. And as soon as that's an issue for Trump,
the reelection prospects for Republicans tank's it's not really a
Republican thing. It's just a who's in party thing.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
People make people hate inflation and it kills her party.
And that's true for Trump. Yeah, that's true, true, true
for Democrats. The immigration stuff super interesting. I would love
you to talk us through where Trump was on immigration
on election day, where he is now, and some of
(38:08):
how he got there. Sure.
Speaker 4 (38:10):
So when Trump took office, the idea was, you know,
the American people support his master deportation agenda. They want
to get rid of criminals and everyone else. Importantly, who's
here you.
Speaker 1 (38:22):
Know without grandmotheration or whatever forty years Yeah.
Speaker 4 (38:28):
Or this case in Missouri, the woman who works at
the diner and the whole community is like, where did
Carol go?
Speaker 3 (38:33):
Right?
Speaker 1 (38:33):
Yeah, she was taking went to a camp.
Speaker 3 (38:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (38:38):
So so he was positive on immigration by about ten
points when he started. Now he's underwater by five, and
we can break this out. We can separate the questions,
how do you think about the president handling immigration and
how do you think about the president handling deportation. Deportation's
actually worse close from to minus fifteen now almost as
bad as people say he's doing on the economy, which
(39:01):
is important because he used to be doing worse on
the economy now doing he's doing about the same on both.
So that's just important from a strategy messaging perspective, And.
Speaker 1 (39:11):
It's important because what it says is that people don't
like the camps, that Alligator Alcatraz is only for the base,
at the very online base, but that normal people do
not like a camp, and they.
Speaker 4 (39:27):
Don't like to put the put the polling point on this.
They don't like non criminal, unauthorized immigrants being deported period.
For as often as we will see the image come
up on social media of all the people at the
Trump rally holding the mass deportation sign, the impression of
(39:48):
in what the campaign was claiming was that they were
going to deport everyone who's like a criminal, who's a
bad guy. They have a real bad ombre, right, not
everyone else. And if you ask them, should we deport
people who've been here for ten years? The supermajority the
public says no. If you ask them, should we deport
people who have kids here? People say no. So the
more often Trump does that, his numbers fall off a cliff,
(40:09):
really underwater.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
So every story about a grandmother being deported, or a
kid being separated from a mother, or a you know,
any of this stuff, which nobody wanted to begin with,
probably ends up changing even more hearts and minds.
Speaker 4 (40:29):
Yeah, and just think about the images too, that people
are saying on their television, Like, you know, it's one
thing to see the guy with the shaved head and
the tattoo kneeling and in Cetot he saw an El Salvador,
and like there are some cases where that's also people
are gonna think about that with like negative affect. They're
gonna be like, oh, that's like weird. I don't like that.
(40:49):
People watching Fox News they're gonna be like, okay, good,
Like they're getting rid of the criminals. When they have
like normal looking people, parents and kids being taken from
the bus to of the ice facility. That's a different
image that people are seeing. And they've told us that
they don't like those sorts of deportations. So you can
imagine that the more those images are on TV, the
more people start to reframe. They have a different image
(41:12):
in their head about what the administration's deportation agenda is.
And that's worse for politically worse for Trump then before.
It's also morally worse. But just try I'm not politics.
Speaker 1 (41:22):
Here, Yeah, yeah, yeah, keep going. Sure.
Speaker 4 (41:24):
So we've also asked if I can change the subject
support for One Big Beautiful Bill.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
That was actually where I was going to go next.
So that's good.
Speaker 4 (41:32):
And so yeah, if we're thinking about the theme of like, shit,
that's bad for Donald Trump. This is probably worse than immigration.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
We asked not just.
Speaker 4 (41:41):
You know, do you support the bill, We get people specifics.
We said, it's cutting medicaid, it's cutting SNAP, it's increasing
ice funding, and yeah, some people are going to get
a tax cut, a lot of people aren't. So we
asked support for those individual four things. They're all underwater,
and medicaid is the most underwater. Sixty two percent of
the public said they oppose of the Medicaid cuts in
(42:03):
the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which is one of
the worst numbers I've ever seen for these like support
oppose of the presidents agenda.
Speaker 1 (42:12):
Ever seen sixty two percent of America. I mean, that's
a crazy in polling world, that's a crazy number.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (42:19):
To get sixty two percent of the public disapproving, you
have to do something pretty disastrous because it means inherently
that independence are like twenty points against you and you've
lost like twenty percent of your party. To answer a question,
I've never seen something that is, I guess in this
case thirty thirty points underwater, except for the twenty seventeen
(42:41):
Republican health care bill that tried to do the same
thing that Republicans just did. Now, so the previous really
unpopular thing you'll maybe remember is a tarp bailout in
two thousand, Right, that was terrible. That's what was gonna
like sun sunk. There was gonna sink Democrats in the House.
That was only eight points underwater, not thirty.
Speaker 1 (42:59):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (43:00):
Aah, that's a really The ACA was five points underwater.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
Right, And the ACA, I mean it's more important to
remember that the ACA, which is Obamacare, which is now
this Medicaid expansion, which is now having a skinny repeal
in the BBB, which is so unpopular, was unpopular because
it was new and people didn't understand what it is.
This is unpopular because it's taking it away.
Speaker 4 (43:24):
It's taking away benefit. I think people largely see us
helping their neighbors.
Speaker 1 (43:31):
Yeah, and it's something they had like that they're entitled to.
Speaker 4 (43:34):
In the tradeoff, people don't like the trade off. Specifically,
we asked in our last survey in June, would you
rather the government extend tax cuts and cut services to
fund those tax cuts, or would you rather them raise
taxes and keep current level of spending so you can
decrease the deficit, And by like a sixty to ten
percent margin very expected, people said, Oh yeah, I just
raise taxes on the wealthy a little bit, don't cut
(43:57):
services for people like people like when the government is
doing stuff for them. In Republicans, even though like the
young people that I'm in lots of circles with that
voted for Trump having previously supported Democrats, they just want
the government to do stuff for them, and they don't
want it to give tax cuts to super wealthy people.
Speaker 1 (44:15):
I'm shocked. One of the many reasons why I wanted
to have you on is about these young Trump voters
the millennial is it millennial or it's younger than millennial.
I'm gen z technically okay, but these young people who
were Democrats, pretty reliably Democrat or pretty democratic or low
(44:37):
frequency who went to this sort of podcast bros. The
people who heard him on Joe Rogan and were like,
this guy's great. Those people are having some buyers remorse.
Speaker 4 (44:47):
Yeah, that's right. So it's important to note this group
of people probably only voted fifty to fifty for Trump
to begin with. So again, the picture we have in
our head of this group may have already been miscalibrated
or formed.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
But Jimedia, a point here is that they would have
been previous elections sixty four day.
Speaker 4 (45:10):
Right, yeah, yeah, they've definitely become more trumpeting. Just a
note on calibration. Yeah, yeah, So that group of people,
according to Yugov, actually just young people overall, according to YouGov.
Speaker 1 (45:21):
He asked him what age.
Speaker 4 (45:23):
Less than thirty four? In Okay, I'm not calling people
who are thirty seven old. That's just Yugov's typification between
twenty one and thirty four. That's that's young teen eighteen
thirty eighteen, sorry, eighteen thirty four. Yeah. So that group
of people, about half of them said they approved of
Trump when his presidency started, and half said they disapproved.
(45:44):
So he was even at this point that group of people,
Trump's underwater by forty points. That's seventy five percent say
they disapprove of it than twenty five percent say they
approve of him.
Speaker 1 (45:54):
That seems a lot in six months.
Speaker 4 (45:57):
Yeah, that is the biggest decline of any age group,
is the biggest decline of any racial group or income group.
So if you want to characterize them as having buyers remorse, yeah,
I think that's probably what's you know, a little bit
of what's going on here. And yeah, I think this
goes back to the point I was just saying, like,
this group of people specifically has a kind of an
(46:19):
Obama era government in their head, one that's providing services
that's redistributive, that as progressive tax system to fund services,
and they're not getting that anymore. And the reason they
voted for Trump was not because they wanted a regressive
tax system or tax cussed for super wealthy, et cetera,
just because they just didn't like inflation. So at the
(46:40):
beginning of his term, when he was still saying we're
going to bring down prices, and that looked like something
he might do. Then he was fifty to fifty. When
he starts increasing taxes by passing tariffs and redistributing wealth
upwards and cutting services, these people like, O, no, no, no,
that's not what we signed up for. That makes sense
to me.
Speaker 1 (46:54):
It's what we kept telling everyone. So it's infuriating, but
it's also interesting. Okay, so tell what other we're I
want you to just sort of what other things are
we missing here in this data? Look, I think what
else is important to talk about?
Speaker 4 (47:11):
Yeah? So the other thing that I'll mention just I
guess one theme here is like stuff people and political
analysts think that is wrong, Like you should focus on
please coommigration or the economy, not immigration or whatever. The
other thing that our survey says is wrong. There's an
idea that Democrat or that the Democratic Party's favorability grating
(47:32):
is low because they're too low. They've gone too far
to the left. Oh yeah, so so we'd asked about this.
We asked our representative sample of Americans to tell us
do you think the Democratic Party has moved too far left,
too far right? Or is it fine? Has it not
moved too far at all, and we asked the same
thing about Republicans. The results of this is forty percent
(47:54):
of people say the Democratic Party has gone too far left.
That's more than the percent of people who say that
they're good, which is thirty five percent. But forty two
percent of people say the Republicans have gone too far right.
So there's no evidence in our data that the public
is saying the Democratic Party is too far to the
left at least. If anything, they're saying Republicans are a
(48:16):
little bit more too far right than the Democrats are
too far left. So yeah, wokeism to the extent that's
has tanked the Democratic Party brand. That's like a two
ten to twenty twenty four phenomenon that doesn't show up
in the data at all anymore.
Speaker 1 (48:32):
Just explain this to me, because even though forty percent
of all Democrats think that the party is too lefty,
that's normal, or explain.
Speaker 4 (48:41):
I'm not sure it's normal. I don't have compare comparative numbers.
I guess I would rationalize this by saying, let me
put it this way, forty five percent of voters say
the Democratic Party either is in the right place or
has gone too far to the right, and forty percent
of people say it has gone too far to the left.
So on balance, people are saying the average person is
(49:01):
saying Democracratic Party is good or needs to move a
little bit to the left. They're saying the same thing
about the Republicans, but to the right, they're saying either
it's good, or it needs to you know, or it's
a little bit too far, too far to the left,
it needs to be a little bit more conservative. So, yeah,
there's no evidence here that like the Democratic Party brand
is underwater because of biological extremism, right or else. It's
(49:25):
the Republican party brand just as bad, basically.
Speaker 1 (49:28):
Right, That's exactly what is important here, is that the
problem with the Democratic brand it's politics, right, It's it's leadership, right.
It's the faces, not the ideas that are getting Democrats
in trouble right now, is that what you're saying?
Speaker 4 (49:47):
Yeah, I think that's right. If you ask people to
rate Democratic Party leaders then the ones in charge, Chuck
Schumer and hicking Jeffrees are about twenty to thirty points underwater.
The party brand is thirty five points underwater. The people
who are making headlines as sort of reformers, Alexandro Cosio Cortez,
Bernie Sanders, those people people to judge. Those are the
(50:08):
only Democratic Party figures today that are popular and not
popular with the average person. That includes lots of Republicans
and independents, and notably, those people are not Those are
not the people in power in the Democratic Party.
Speaker 1 (50:21):
So interesting, Thank you, Elliott.
Speaker 4 (50:24):
Okay, thanks Molly, there a moment perfectly, Jesse Cannon Smiley.
Speaker 2 (50:32):
The Intercept has this disturbing article where we have quotes
from ICE Deputy Director Madison Shean where they're basically saying
that they're going to start arresting anybody who's helping to
protest ICE. It's not looking good.
Speaker 1 (50:47):
Well, I also want to add that these guys are
such Okay, so they want to make it so you
can't give people masks. Right, ally's anti ICE movement has
been wearing masks, and the Trump administration is trying to
criminalize activism like trying to wear masks.
Speaker 2 (51:05):
Well, we should also say our own mayor also has
been doing things like this too and keep sporting with
us too.
Speaker 1 (51:11):
Yeah, but here's the thing. ICE wears masks. That's right,
So on morning, Joe We had Tom Holman on who
was defending I wasn't there for that, but he was
defending ICE's use of masks because he was like, everyone
(51:33):
so mean to them. Yes, I swear to god. He
was like, they're so everyone's so mean to them.
Speaker 2 (51:38):
They're just trying to illegally deport people and accidentally taking
the wrong people out. They're so mean to them.
Speaker 1 (51:45):
Yeah, they're really, really, really really mean, and they don't
like it when people are mean to them, and so
they wear masks. So now they want to arrest protesters
for wearing masks. Seems kind of mean.
Speaker 2 (52:02):
Seems that way.
Speaker 1 (52:04):
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday to hear the best
minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If
you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend
and keep the conversation going. Thanks for listening.
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds and an economist. You gov poll found
that fifty six percent of respondents strongly or somewhat disapprove
of the president's handling of the Epstein investigations. We have
(00:20):
such a great show for you today, talking fed's own
Harry Litman stops by to talk about Trump's legal snap
foods with the Epstein files. Then we'll talk to Strength
and Numbers Substack author g Elliott Morris about the interesting
polling he has discovered and how it shows that Donald
(00:42):
Trump is not popular with independence and he's becoming really
not popular with young people.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
But first the news, So Molly, yesterday the k file
from CNN found pictures of Jeffrey Epstein at Trump and
Marvel Maple's wedding. It's really shocked to hear that his
best friend of decade would be at his wedding and
they called him and Trump took it really well.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Yeah. I mean the headline in The New Republic, which
we love because it's edited by the great Mike Tamaski.
Among other things, Trump crashes out over damning surface photos.
So there's a guy at CNN whose name is Andrew Kazinski,
no relation to Ted. And Andrew Kazinsky is like a
(01:30):
super sluice. You just never want Andrew Kazinski coming after you,
is all I can say. You'll be very surprised to
hear that. Not only did Donald Trump say in two
thousand and two to New York Magazine that Jeffrey Emstein
is a terrific guy and who likes beautiful women almost
as much as I do, and some of them on
(01:52):
the younger side. Not only did he say quotes about him,
but he also took photos with him. And it turns
out that jeff epp was at a lot of things
in New York Magazine. He said that Epstein was a
terrific guy, and he's known him for fifteen years. Anyway,
these pictures, there's pictures Jeffrey Epstein at Trump's second wedding.
(02:13):
When Kazinski called Trump, he said, we were not on
the phone very long. I think our call lasts about
thirty seconds. But when I asked him about the wedding photo,
he said he sort of paused for a second and
then and then said, quote, you've got to be kidding
me before calling CNN fake news and hanging up. Stephen Chung,
who is known to be a very thoughtful and sensitive guy.
(02:38):
The White House Communications Director, ferociously spit back at the network,
decrying the images as nothing more than out of context
frame grabs of innocuous videos and pictures of widely intended events.
Was in everyone at Trump's second wedding. U QCNN of
leveraging the images in its reporting to discuss stingy infer
(03:01):
something nefarious. Yes, that's right. Weren't we all friends with
Jeffrey Epstein? The fact that the President kicked him out
of his club for being a creep, which Trump World
says is nothing more. Again, you know whatever, they they're
going to deny it.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
So let me take the listeners down a very stupid
hole of the internet. Kendas Owens, who is a former
Daily Wire host and has a very very popular podcast,
often does this very weird conspiracy theory that first Lady
Bridget Macrone, the wife of Emmanuel Macron, is trans and
(03:38):
her followers and her transvestigate her all day where they
look at her calf muscles and analyze that they are
off by millimeters and so clearly she was born to mail. Well,
guess what they're suing for defamation now, and that's exactly
what should happen.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
So Owens had an eight part podcast for eight parts, okay,
eight parts? How many parts we have on Project twenty
twenty five?
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Four?
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Four? Okay? So we had four on Project twenty twenty five,
which is this book that the Trump administration pages. Yeah,
he has seven hundred page book of things the Trump
administration put out, but they had eight parts of becoming
Brigid as a secret trans woman and a blood relative
of her husband. Again, there was very disgusting conservative lie.
(04:26):
Conservative is the wrong word, Maga lie about Michelle Obama.
And I just want to point out McCrone has this
interesting marriage because he's very, very handsome, and his wife
is older than him, and in a very misogynistic culture,
an older wife is almost you know, there's sort of
a like, should you be married to someone who's older.
(04:49):
It's her value, she has less value. That's the misogyny, right,
that as women get older, they get less valuable to
the culture. And so the idea is, here's macrone, he's
the president of France, he's very handsome, he should be
married to someone who's much younger, because that is the
innate misogyny of this situation. So why this is important
(05:11):
is besides the fact that it's disgusting and appalling and
the Crones are right pursuing, it's also just another way
in which a woman has internalized misogyny and is now
spouting it out right. The idea is that somehow there's
no world in which he could actually love an older woman,
that in fact, this is some kind of conspiracy.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
The conspiracy is that the world is being run by
a gang of satanic pedophiles masquating as Jewish people. That's
an exact quote.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Actually, wow, it's just worth remember that there's always this
sort of another terrifying subtext to all of this.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Well, and the other terrifying subtext, which is kind of
not subtext, is that she's not backing down. She says
that she's going to keep going, which is going to
make this defamation suit just keep mounting and mounting and mounting,
which I for one hope it really brings her.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Room and she's going to lose by the way she is.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
So let's get to my personal nightmare fuel unregulated AI
development today with the Trump administration unveiled its plans to
give AI to developers a freehand, and what I would
more say is no regulation and no oversight.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Yeah, I mean, you'd be shocked, right because Congress is
also going to give them no regulation and no oversight.
I just want to point out this is like my
favorite hobby horse, because this is one where Democrats have
apps of fucking lotely fallen down on the job big time.
This is Congress' is grift right that they have kids
(06:40):
who work for tech companies, they have spouses who invest
in technology. They have this and that that have created
a incentive structure that rewards not regulating tech companies. And
so here is AI something that gets smarter or something
(07:00):
that has capabilities that we don't totally understand, that uses
tons and tons and tons and tons of electricity, that
will use more electricity than I read a statistic that
it uses more electricity than certain states do in a year.
I mean, it is just something that desperately needs to
(07:23):
be regulated. So Donald Trump, the King of regulation, just kidding,
has said he won't regulate it. And you'll remember that
in the BBB there was this weird bit of legislative
language about States being not allowed to regulate AI for
(07:43):
a decade. Clearly this was a setup and the people,
from what I understand, the person who is the most
against regulating AI going to be shocked to hear this
is the quietly the most evil of the whole crew.
Can you guess Teal now? Cool? Mark Zuckerberg, Oh yeah,
(08:03):
that makes sense. It squares right. The man who kept
who is basically managed to make it so that tech
is not regulated. And I mean Congress, certainly there's a
lot of blame to go around here, but that he
is the person. Again that's not reported. That's just what
I heard from gossip. But it is still something so.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
In really great news for the American economy that always
ends up being a harbinger of really great things to come.
Take my sarcasm as it is. Home prices have hit
a record high in June, driving down sales. That always
leads to great things, right, Molly.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Yeah, you'll remember that Trump said he was going to
make everything cheaper. That was his big thing. You know
this that bacon cheaper. Well, home prices are not cheaper.
In fact, we've hit a record high home price reflecting
multiple years of undersupply. So this is inflation, and Donald
(09:00):
Trump has a solution, which is to fire the FED chair,
which will not lower inflation. If anything, it will be
inflationary again. Just a complete, incomplete, complete, complete, complete disaster.
Or here the second quarter we had negative growth. So
now it just seems to me very likely that we
(09:23):
are paying a price for the trade war already.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Harry Littman is a former US attorney and the host
of the podcast Talking Feds.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
Hey, Hey, everyone, it's our latest Molly Harry mashup where
Mallijong Fast throws legal questions my way and I return
fire with political questions. Let me just say, always a
pleasure to be with the celebrated Maulli Young Fast, who
has added since the last time we were here to
her long famous resume, a new book, How to Lose
(10:00):
Your Mother, which came out last month muzzletub New York
Times bestseller Baby, New York Times bestseller Baby. Okay, And
speaking of the New York Times, man, you had a
great article in there that was sort of part memoir
and part political analysis about the Stephen Colbert firing. And
let me start with that. You wrote there that canceling
(10:23):
Colbert isn't funny, but you noted how the point of
authoritarian coercion is. It's a motivator, and man, we're seeing
it sort of everywhere where he's been. Has Trump in
this first eighth of his new term pretty damn successful
in getting people, including broad sectors of civil society, to
(10:45):
really toe the line or approach the line. Why is
he so much more effective at doing that and sort
of calling the speech of big sectors of the country
than he was last time around? Do you think so?
Speaker 1 (11:01):
There's actually a really smart piece in the Times today,
an opinion piece from the former ambassador to Hungary a
bad vector or bond and how dangerous all of this is.
And I would say I think Trump is effective at
doing it because people don't understand the stakes of the decisions.
So if you're Sherry Redstone, you think, I want to
(11:23):
do this merger so I can have two billion dollars,
And you think, well, you know Colbert nighttime shows, they
are not the business they once were, and all of
this is very expensive and it's a huge headache. So
let's just kill it. It'll make Trump happy, it'll make
the deal go, right, That's what she's thinking. She's thinking,
(11:43):
whatever it doesn't matter. I just got to get my
deal done. This is a consequence of an imperial presidency, right,
a presidency that no longer has any kind of firewall
between regulation and Trump's whims. So Trump does not like
to be made fun of. His regular Tory body serves
at his pleasure ergo goodbye to late night hosts, possibly
(12:07):
one and all, because, as you and I both know,
network television and also cable television has a regulatory body that,
unlike the Internet or anything else, really is regulated.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
They're going to be jumpy at least, right. And it's
a great article, by the way, because he said I
saw this happening.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
And basically what he says is, you don't put together
this one decision with what it ends up happening. Now.
I'm not convinced that Hungary and America are one to
one for any number of reasons, but we certainly have
an Orbanic figure in Trump, right, orbon putin, an autocrat
(12:49):
who does not believe the rule of law applies to him.
So I do think there are a lot of parallels.
So it means really that powerful people might stand up
to Trump. That means it's more important than ever that
a Jeff Bezos, who obviously in his heart knows all
(13:09):
of this is insanitay that he stands up and again,
all of the writing about authoritarianism, all of the books
about authoritarism, say it's a game of inches, not feed.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
That's so important.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
Yeah, yeah, all right, so bring it. We're going to
do legal on Epstein. This entire time breaking news which
won't be breaking by tomorrow when people listen to this.
But Pam Bondi, who is very much in the hot
seat right now, decided she wanted the grand jury stuff
for Epstein, which is, by the way, just a very
very small slice of all of the Epstein stuff she
(13:43):
has on her desk, probably from the FBI to the DOJ.
All of that, A very slim sliver of it is
the grand jury stuff. And fyi, we know that all
the names will be redacted in grand jury stuff, accusers
and victims, which I think it's important data point. So
the judge said, no, go on that. Explain to us
(14:05):
why and what that looks like.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
Sure, let me just start with the headline. It's not
just a slim slice. It's a slice that, in the
Van diagram has zero connection with what everyone's clamoring for
it's the slice that the parted marine Konmi you put
to put together an indictment that doesn't talk about It's
all about Epstein and Maxwell and the underage girls and
(14:28):
the people who facilitated. But what's Paul Engelmeyer up to
the rules? Molly say, here's six reasons why it's a
serious thing to uncover grand jury stuff in any event,
and yes, you were dac names. Here's six reasons why
you can do it. Guess what none of them is
the public interest, which is what this four page filing
(14:50):
by the Deputy Attorney General stunning in itself, says. But
there's no warrant for that in the rules. There maybe
is a little play in it joints according to one
second Circuit opinion, but that was not about public interest.
And imagine if public interest were a reason for piercing
this and going into a grand jurial. Maybe Trump wants
(15:13):
him to deny it. What is he doing for now?
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Though?
Speaker 3 (15:15):
Angel Myer says, I'm going to deal with this quickly,
but I need a few things, like the transcripts which
you haven't given me administration, Like what is Maxwell as
Julane's Maxwell's position on this. I want to hear about
the victims. This is just what I need so I
can make the decision. Is there a reason to do
(15:35):
this even though it's clearly not in the rules. So
you know, I think it's a gambit on their part.
They maybe hope he'll turn them down. But the number
one thing to understand, it's got nothing to do with
what everyone's clamoring for. What's that it's an FBI database
of three hundred gigabytes, that's like a million and a
half pages with the motherload of everything and the case
(15:59):
if you look at the indictment, you just didn't need
to prove anything about customers, pals wingman as we're now hearing,
or besting. He's got nothing to do with it, nor
even what you know maga's obsession with there being a
whole cabal of pedophiles and a leaf zero zero part
(16:19):
of the case. The case was sealed so that they
could retry Maxwell on the same charge as if they
wanted to. If you uncover it, it'll give nothing, which brings
me to my Epstein question. I only Fire wanted you,
But like Man, this is so different. I mean, he's
been flouting the Constitution and doing all these outrageous kinds
(16:41):
of a legal conduct. But this is the one that
has stuck. He has stepped in it for reasons that
I think a lot of people on one of them
didn't fully appreciate the real vehemence of the you saw.
Maybe Stewart Rhodes's quote comes out, this is what we
care about. We don't give a shit about trade pairs
any of that. This is what he's there for.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Explain who Stuart Roads is?
Speaker 3 (17:03):
Okay, Stuart Rhoades maybe number one insurrectionists whom Trump pardoned.
He's the Yale glasschool guy with the patch who got
like a twenty year sentence, mister insurrey, and he's coming out.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
Isn't he the head of the Proud Boys?
Speaker 3 (17:17):
I think it is the Proud Boys, not not the
three not keep okay.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
They have it fun fact he shot out his own
eye by accident.
Speaker 3 (17:27):
These things happen right when you're yeah, all right? Anyway?
Does the administration is doing everything throwing stuff against the wall.
Maybe we'll talk about more, But the really big sally
in difference here is it's Maga that's up in arms.
And my you know, my question to you is whether
any of these half measures, like if the grand Jury
were to come out, but even more, will it satisfy them?
(17:50):
Is there a time when Maga, which you know is
even cowing members of Congress, the speaker, et cetera, will
say okay and let go of the bone that they have,
or is this not going away until Trump plays an
open hand with whatever the hell that reveals, because Mago
(18:11):
won't let it go away.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
So this is a real question, and I think it's wild.
I mean, I think we could start by realizing that
it's a great example of how in twenty sixteen there
were things that happened where we all thought they would
matter because they mattered to us, but they didn't matter
to the Trump Bay. So the Trumpeys operate in a
completely different sphere. A lot of times they wouldn't hear
(18:33):
about this stuff because it was in the liberal bobble,
and when they did, they were sort of immune to
it because Trump had in nerd them to it. He
had said, you know, the even like a really interesting
moment was during this whole thing where he was like,
it's a hoax. It's a fake hoax, like the Russia, Russia, Russia.
(18:53):
When he spoke during the election. He would say things
like bacon, and his people would know he was talking
about inflation. Right, I'd say, bacon, and that's what this is, right,
This is the base is very tuned into him. They
usually respond, Like with bacon, they usually respond, But here,
all of a sudden, that's not what's happening. And I
(19:14):
think it's caught him very off guard, and he thought
he could just sort of bully them into submission, which
he has been able to do with all. I mean,
you have to remember all elected Republicans, from Mitch McConnell
to John Thoon to Mike Johnson, if they haven't behaved,
he's just kicked him out. So there has been no one.
(19:35):
He has effectively had pushback from no one, with the
exception of maybe Elon after he fired Elon, right, but
Elon's out, so he has almost no pushback, and all
of a sudden, the base starts pushing back and he
is not ready for that, and so he just says,
don't be weak, which I think was strategically the worst
(19:57):
thing he could have said to them. Like I think
if he had said, I was here to sow, you know,
to find the deep state, you Remember he has for
almost a decade been like, I am here to solve
the deep state, and then he gets there and he's like,
you're stupid for thinking there's a deep state. And I
think it's very undermining. I mean, I just think the
(20:18):
problem here is Trump one point zero would have fired everyone, right.
He would have fired Pam Bondi, he would have fired Bongino,
he might have fired Patel. And what would have happened,
I think is that the chaos would have sort of
absorbed what happened. But instead he's like very into this,
not firing people and just moving them around in the
(20:40):
hopes that they won't leave. And I actually think it
doesn't serve got it?
Speaker 3 (20:44):
And you maybe I got a legal point to that,
But maybe that's what you're going to ask me, because
you say you're all Epstein all the time, at least today,
So bring it. What do you got?
Speaker 1 (20:52):
No, if you have a legal point, go, well, what boy.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
Is just this? You say, he's done the stupidest thing.
I it's politically strategically, he's done absolute lutely the stupidest
thing legally, because look, there is some truth to him.
You know, he's some kind of pal there's not necessarily
any reason to think he's a client or anything like that.
But he made it in his reflexive way all about
(21:16):
he came out fake media, and it's all about this
piece of paper, this letter he wrote Epstein, and he's
saying it's fake and I'm sorry. We know anybody was
sophisticated about the media knows this is not fake. Wall
Street Journal has it buttoned down, not just the actual letter.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
Rupert Murdach knows about publishing controversial stuff and he's not
gonna do it unless right.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
And they are all in. This is not like CBF
or Amy, where they're gonna knuckle under. So he's done
the exact strategy that A extends things be puts him
through a like discovery and a deposition, and at the
end of the day the card gets turned over and
it's exactly what he's been saying. It isn't so legally.
I can't think of anything worse than the defamation suit.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
Tina Brown, though, did have an amazing quip at the
end of this New York Times article where she was like,
we have Rupert Murdock is the only media mogul.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
I mean freedoms, yes, ex but.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
It is kind of amazing and also pretty disturbing.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
Yeah, but I think in his universe you wouldn't know better, Molly.
But I think, look, that news operation of the Wall
Street Journal is just a separate thing. Everyone would just
leave if he totally pulled out the run from under them.
It's not Fox News.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Right, no question. And by the way, Fox News has
not been covering it, right, I mean like there's been
It's been mentioned twice some Fox News and supposedly. I
mean I read this in the in the ft, so.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
It's Tony, you cover the waterfront.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
Yeah, I'm not entirely sure what this means. But what
Murdoch's lieutenant, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Rupert
was pushing to see whether the base was still with Trump.
Because what Rupert Murdoch, which I think is pretty smart,
I mean bad for American democracy and for all of us,
and morally very dicey, but smart, what he saw in
(23:16):
twenty twenty was that he is that Fox News is
not more powerful than its viewers, that the viewers are
actually more powerful than the narrative. And so if the
narrative goes off the cliff and says Trump didn't win
the election, and Trump says he did win the election.
They will just tune out, they will turn off. So
he is trying to poke and now see if they
(23:38):
are going to be separated from him, And there's certainly
some evidence to support a possibility that they will be.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
Yeah, I mean more than some it seems so far.
It's not just do it road right. You've also seen
like a whole cast of characters, Cannon and Ingram and
Meghan Kelly basically finding something they care about more than
Donald Trump.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
So it's so supid because like they should care about
rural hospitals closing but whatever.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
And the constitution and the rule of law.
Speaker 4 (24:07):
But here we go.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
I want to know Congress has been talking about maybe
trying to get some of this stuff released. There's a
huge amount of Ebstein stuff that's at the DOJIB.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
Three hundred gigabytes, like a million and a half pages
roughly speaking, depending what's on there.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
Yeah, so if you wanted to get it released, who
could get it released?
Speaker 3 (24:27):
Donald Trump or Pam Bondy. It's with the FBI now,
so it implicates the whole Bongino Patel Bondy mess. Now
and we've seen over the you know in Trump one
point zero Congress on paper has pretty strong you know,
they were going to maybe do it subpoena. I don't
see that working basically. I think you'll see stonewalling, maybe
(24:51):
even embedded by the court, if a Supreme Court, if
it comes to it, And that means it's going to
be a decision that will be on Trump alone. In
that means it's going to be based on the political dynamic.
But all this stuff, Mollie, the DOJ is now wading
into it and doing this grand jury thing. This is
not what they do. It is all funky in the extreme.
(25:14):
Normally there's a case they're investigating or something. Now there
is no warrant for much less the Deputy Attorney General
to go I just want to talk to Gilaine Maxwell.
God knows what he's going to try to offer her.
On the like, they are all upriver and doing this
sort of thing they would never have done before because
it's so plainly political. It's a political operation that at
(25:38):
least for now you can imagine they're sort of constructing
something that has a kind of law enforcement hook up
to and including you know, some people say Epstein was
murdered for example. But right now they're just freelancing for
political reasons and inappropriately at least pre Trump era, because
they're obviously the number one lookout here is solving a
(25:58):
political crisis for the White House. So they've thrown out
the rule book long since, and they're playing by whatever
rules they want and making people try to stop them,
and so far on this kind of thing anyway, you know,
the record of the courts for stopping them isn't good.
So the bottom line answer has to be greenlighted by Trump.
And you would know this better than I. But I
think that's a political dynamic, right, no question, Oh miter,
(26:22):
so interested in what's going on with young voters who
were among the people who deserted Harris and the others
and really seemed young males, but really young voters in
general to do so much so we have I've never
seen something quite like this, A like reversal from what
was it, you know, seventy twenty fourth pro to like
(26:42):
the exact opposite. You know, the buyer's remorse is super strong.
What do you make of the shift? And do you
think it's got legs?
Speaker 1 (26:51):
Funny? You should ask that, but I believe it or not.
The other interview on this episode is a guy called
g Elliott Morris who goes through the polling with me
one by one and explain sort of what happened. But basically,
young adults age eighteen two thirty four have he sold
(27:14):
himself on the podcast and then he got in there
and they don't like anything he's doing. And I think
they don't like the regressive taxation, they don't like the
tax cuts for billionaires, they don't like the dissolving of Medicaid.
They don't like any of it. And I think he
had a very smart point. They grew up in Obama Land.
(27:35):
They believed that the government. You know, they're not Reagan kids.
You know, I grew up in Reagan when the goal
of Reagan was to make the government as small as possible.
Droughted in the bathtub, you know, how dare you want
a weather forecast?
Speaker 3 (27:49):
You know their traffic controller R care to you a monster?
Speaker 1 (27:53):
You can control your own air. And I think that
Obama really reset and then COVID really reset again. So
the thing that he said that I thought was the
most interesting, And you should listen to this interview because
there's just a lot of really interesting stuff in there
that I wouldn't have just to get you don't miss it.
(28:13):
Just to have him walk through the data was made
was really interesting. But the thing that he said that
I thought was the most interesting was that the only
thing less popular than what they're doing now was in
Trump's first term when he tried that Obamacare repeal. So
because the BBB hasn't it a skinny Medicare Medicaid or
(28:35):
repeal that was hidden in reconciliation. By the way, what
happened to the parliamentarian who was like, yes, you can
repeal Obamacare, you know in the in reconciliation, like.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
The ghost of Robert Byrd seems to have left the building,
doesn't it. Yeah?
Speaker 1 (28:51):
Yeah, But that I think is really interesting. And again,
so the question is have his midterm. We're six months
into Trump's term, which means we're eighteen months for the midterms.
The question is young voters are already unhappy. How much more
unhappy can they get? For Breezio, Trump's pollster says it
about ten percent of his base are like straight QAnon
(29:13):
right there, the paranoid style in American politics, So that
ten percent, here's a real question, does he lose that
ten percent.
Speaker 3 (29:21):
I mean because of Epstein, right.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
And if he loses that ten percent, even if they
don't vote for Democrats, they just don't go out for
him and they don't vote for his candidates. Ten percent
is a lot of.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
Voters for him've been governing on a minority razor's edge.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Yes, yeah, last question. Trump has a lot of fanciful
stuff to try to distract. One of them is Telsea
Gabbert has this crazy Barack Obama treason. She's going to
refer it to the Justice Department. It seems insane, But
is there a world in which this really does, Like
do we see Trump trying to arrest Barack Obama? Or
(29:58):
is this just fanciful so we don't see it?
Speaker 3 (30:01):
And we've had a lot of this, Yeah, I mean
my favorite I gather there's like an AI thing out
there they've created with Obama, you know, talk about the
new world we are in now. It does strike me,
Mollie that these are mainly diversionary tactic. Same thing with
the Redskins, and I'm going to scuttle that if they
don't change the name. You know, really a whole bunch
(30:23):
of stuff that best I can tell is just not working.
But I don't think there's a world, even our world,
even the Hungary version of our world, where he tries
to arrest Obama, and I don't think Obama thinks so
either much. We're to say on that, but don't need to.
I think that's the bottom line, and I know we're
out of time. Always so fun and best of luck
(30:45):
with the book. And by the way, that New York
Times article talks about your grandfather and the McCarthy era
and it's returning now. Everyone should read that too.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
Key Elliott Morris is the author The Strength in Numbers
substat Welcome to Fast Politics, Elliot.
Speaker 4 (31:04):
Morris, Hey, thanks for having me back, Molly.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
So I always like to just for everyone who's not
completely read up on this, I've been a longtime fan
of Elliott's work doing polling, statistical sort of the more
math side of politics. I think that's fair and I.
Speaker 4 (31:20):
Had it's a very generous way to put it, Molly.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
I long wanted to have him on the podcast, but
he was at five thirty eight, and then now you
started at five thirty eight, right, and then the economist
he was.
Speaker 4 (31:33):
An economist, and then five thirty eight slash ABC that's
probably where we were running into some problems setting me
on the bar.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
Right, But even the economists is actually we have a
lot of people from the economists on and their fabulous anyway.
Point is, I've been a longtime fan of your work
because you look at the numbers in a more of
a sort of whole body experience, and because so much
of this kind of stuff is about what's asked, how
it's asked, what medium it's asked. There's just a lot
(32:01):
of nuance that can really mess you up if you
have it wrong. So you have new polls yesterday, and
I would love you to start by talking about that. Sure.
Speaker 4 (32:10):
Yeah, So over at Strengthened Numbers my sub stack, we've
been doing a poll with pulling from called versaite.
Speaker 3 (32:16):
I'm supposed to say them.
Speaker 4 (32:18):
We do this every month, so we've done this with May, June,
and July. This is our third survey. That's important because
we can look at changes over time, so for example,
or the lack of changes.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
Really.
Speaker 4 (32:29):
For example, we found the Democrats have been leading in
the generic house ballot for the last three surveys. They're
up by four. Now, for context, that's the survey that
asks who would you vote for in your local district
at the election we're hell today, so it's a proxy
for the House vote, so stable pro democratic. We also
asked Trump approval.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
Just for a second, because I just because not everyone
is this read in on this as perhaps they would
like to not be, but they need to be because
this is the future of American democracy and possibly our
last election. What not to be hyperbolic, but I think
it's pretty much true. Can you explain what usual House
(33:12):
generic is like usually sort of historically what the numbers are,
because four it is actually a seismically huge number for that. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (33:22):
Yeah, So typically what happens is in the like two
years before in midterm, so once the new president takes office,
between that day, which in this case was January twentieth,
twenty twenty five, and the next midterm, which will be
next November, the party that controls the White House, in
this case Republicans tends to lose ground over time, so
they start off doing pretty well, so that would indicate
(33:45):
that Republicans should be doing much better in fact, maybe
even leading or tied in the generic ballot. The fact
that they're down forward now is consequential for them. It
points to a bad midterm. Just for context, at this
point in twenty eighteen, Democrats were up six, so not four,
but like we know, within the margin of error.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
Right, it's still humongo. These are huge numbers. Usually the day,
you know, usually one party is up one or two
in these generic because you don't have a candidate, it's
really just a which party is making you the least
mad kind of question? All right, so continue.
Speaker 4 (34:21):
So, so we've got those generic ballot numbers and the
paradox here, which you'll notice Democrats are up for Trump
is underwater severely in his approval ratings. He's down by
fifteen points, So fifty seven percent of the public say
they disapprove of him, forty two percent say they approve.
That's pretty terrible. For context, no other president except for
(34:45):
Trump in his first term, has had an approval rating
that bad at this point through their term.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
Because we're six months into the Trump press Trump two
point zero.
Speaker 4 (34:55):
Yeah, six months cent of president's typically still popular by
like twenty points. Even you'll bind that this point was
popular by fifteen points, so minus fifteen is also a
very bad number. Trump is at the issue level, He's
unpopular on everything from inflation and jobs in the economy
and tariffs to deportations, and immigration, where his numbers have
(35:19):
decreased significantly since our June survey.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
So let's stop and talk about those immigration numbers for
a minute, because I think that's really important Trump. What
the sort of the two things that Trump was elected on,
if you're going to take the sort of what information
we got from that twenty twenty four cycle was the
economy and immigration. People were mad at immigrants, people were
(35:44):
mad at inflation, right, I think it's important to realize, like,
he's underwater in the economy. This is, like, I think, also,
the first time he's ever been underwater on the economy,
or at least in this way. So can you talk
us through that.
Speaker 4 (35:59):
So through his first term, Trump had a slight lead
on the economy until his numbers got so bad that he,
you know, was just dragged down on everything. He's never
been thirty points underwater on inflation right now, he's fifteen
points excuse me, ten points underwater on jobs in the economy.
At this point in his first term, he was positive
on both of these. Thanks. So yeah, I mean that
(36:21):
contributed to the I guess perception of Trump as a
president who could like usher in economic growth or I
guess bring down prices or something, as the campaign claimed
during the twenty twenty four election. Obviously, voters don't feel
that way anymore. Even if they did, you know, feel
that way during the election, sixty one percent of people
(36:42):
are saying they don't like how he's handling inflation or
the economy right now. That's actually worse than Joe Biden
at this point in his presidency. So, you know, if
you have this mental image of Joe Biden, that's like
some sort of catastrophic president who raised prices. Actually, people
are feeling the same way about Trump right now, at
least on inflation.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
But more they're actually really feeling like there was some
you know, there was a feeling that Trump that Biden
lost because of inflation, but he was still he had
better numbers on the economy than Trump did at this moment.
Speaker 4 (37:16):
At this point. Yeah, but even if if you look
at the twenty twenty four, if you look at the
twenty twenty four impression of Biden, it's about this bad,
if not a little bit worse on the economy overall.
I think the thing here is that people just don't
like how presidents. And not to get too much into this,
but they just don't like inflation in general. So if
you ask them, hey, how are you feeling about how
the president's handling inflation, They're going to say they don't
(37:38):
like it. And as soon as that's an issue for Trump,
the reelection prospects for Republicans tank's it's not really a
Republican thing. It's just a who's in party thing.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
People make people hate inflation and it kills her party.
And that's true for Trump. Yeah, that's true, true, true
for Democrats. The immigration stuff super interesting. I would love
you to talk us through where Trump was on immigration
on election day, where he is now, and some of
(38:08):
how he got there. Sure.
Speaker 4 (38:10):
So when Trump took office, the idea was, you know,
the American people support his master deportation agenda. They want
to get rid of criminals and everyone else. Importantly, who's
here you.
Speaker 1 (38:22):
Know without grandmotheration or whatever forty years Yeah.
Speaker 4 (38:28):
Or this case in Missouri, the woman who works at
the diner and the whole community is like, where did
Carol go?
Speaker 3 (38:33):
Right?
Speaker 1 (38:33):
Yeah, she was taking went to a camp.
Speaker 3 (38:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (38:38):
So so he was positive on immigration by about ten
points when he started. Now he's underwater by five, and
we can break this out. We can separate the questions,
how do you think about the president handling immigration and
how do you think about the president handling deportation. Deportation's
actually worse close from to minus fifteen now almost as
bad as people say he's doing on the economy, which
(39:01):
is important because he used to be doing worse on
the economy now doing he's doing about the same on both.
So that's just important from a strategy messaging perspective, And.
Speaker 1 (39:11):
It's important because what it says is that people don't
like the camps, that Alligator Alcatraz is only for the base,
at the very online base, but that normal people do
not like a camp, and they.
Speaker 4 (39:27):
Don't like to put the put the polling point on this.
They don't like non criminal, unauthorized immigrants being deported period.
For as often as we will see the image come
up on social media of all the people at the
Trump rally holding the mass deportation sign, the impression of
(39:48):
in what the campaign was claiming was that they were
going to deport everyone who's like a criminal, who's a
bad guy. They have a real bad ombre, right, not
everyone else. And if you ask them, should we deport
people who've been here for ten years? The supermajority the
public says no. If you ask them, should we deport
people who have kids here? People say no. So the
more often Trump does that, his numbers fall off a cliff,
(40:09):
really underwater.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
So every story about a grandmother being deported, or a
kid being separated from a mother, or a you know,
any of this stuff, which nobody wanted to begin with,
probably ends up changing even more hearts and minds.
Speaker 4 (40:29):
Yeah, and just think about the images too, that people
are saying on their television, Like, you know, it's one
thing to see the guy with the shaved head and
the tattoo kneeling and in Cetot he saw an El Salvador,
and like there are some cases where that's also people
are gonna think about that with like negative affect. They're
gonna be like, oh, that's like weird. I don't like that.
(40:49):
People watching Fox News they're gonna be like, okay, good,
Like they're getting rid of the criminals. When they have
like normal looking people, parents and kids being taken from
the bus to of the ice facility. That's a different
image that people are seeing. And they've told us that
they don't like those sorts of deportations. So you can
imagine that the more those images are on TV, the
more people start to reframe. They have a different image
(41:12):
in their head about what the administration's deportation agenda is.
And that's worse for politically worse for Trump then before.
It's also morally worse. But just try I'm not politics.
Speaker 1 (41:22):
Here, Yeah, yeah, yeah, keep going. Sure.
Speaker 4 (41:24):
So we've also asked if I can change the subject
support for One Big Beautiful Bill.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
That was actually where I was going to go next.
So that's good.
Speaker 4 (41:32):
And so yeah, if we're thinking about the theme of like, shit,
that's bad for Donald Trump. This is probably worse than immigration.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
We asked not just.
Speaker 4 (41:41):
You know, do you support the bill, We get people specifics.
We said, it's cutting medicaid, it's cutting SNAP, it's increasing
ice funding, and yeah, some people are going to get
a tax cut, a lot of people aren't. So we
asked support for those individual four things. They're all underwater,
and medicaid is the most underwater. Sixty two percent of
the public said they oppose of the Medicaid cuts in
(42:03):
the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which is one of
the worst numbers I've ever seen for these like support
oppose of the presidents agenda.
Speaker 1 (42:12):
Ever seen sixty two percent of America. I mean, that's
a crazy in polling world, that's a crazy number.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (42:19):
To get sixty two percent of the public disapproving, you
have to do something pretty disastrous because it means inherently
that independence are like twenty points against you and you've
lost like twenty percent of your party. To answer a question,
I've never seen something that is, I guess in this
case thirty thirty points underwater, except for the twenty seventeen
(42:41):
Republican health care bill that tried to do the same
thing that Republicans just did. Now, so the previous really
unpopular thing you'll maybe remember is a tarp bailout in
two thousand, Right, that was terrible. That's what was gonna
like sun sunk. There was gonna sink Democrats in the House.
That was only eight points underwater, not thirty.
Speaker 1 (42:59):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (43:00):
Aah, that's a really The ACA was five points underwater.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
Right, And the ACA, I mean it's more important to
remember that the ACA, which is Obamacare, which is now
this Medicaid expansion, which is now having a skinny repeal
in the BBB, which is so unpopular, was unpopular because
it was new and people didn't understand what it is.
This is unpopular because it's taking it away.
Speaker 4 (43:24):
It's taking away benefit. I think people largely see us
helping their neighbors.
Speaker 1 (43:31):
Yeah, and it's something they had like that they're entitled to.
Speaker 4 (43:34):
In the tradeoff, people don't like the trade off. Specifically,
we asked in our last survey in June, would you
rather the government extend tax cuts and cut services to
fund those tax cuts, or would you rather them raise
taxes and keep current level of spending so you can
decrease the deficit, And by like a sixty to ten
percent margin very expected, people said, Oh yeah, I just
raise taxes on the wealthy a little bit, don't cut
(43:57):
services for people like people like when the government is
doing stuff for them. In Republicans, even though like the
young people that I'm in lots of circles with that
voted for Trump having previously supported Democrats, they just want
the government to do stuff for them, and they don't
want it to give tax cuts to super wealthy people.
Speaker 1 (44:15):
I'm shocked. One of the many reasons why I wanted
to have you on is about these young Trump voters
the millennial is it millennial or it's younger than millennial.
I'm gen z technically okay, but these young people who
were Democrats, pretty reliably Democrat or pretty democratic or low
(44:37):
frequency who went to this sort of podcast bros. The
people who heard him on Joe Rogan and were like,
this guy's great. Those people are having some buyers remorse.
Speaker 4 (44:47):
Yeah, that's right. So it's important to note this group
of people probably only voted fifty to fifty for Trump
to begin with. So again, the picture we have in
our head of this group may have already been miscalibrated
or formed.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
But Jimedia, a point here is that they would have
been previous elections sixty four day.
Speaker 4 (45:10):
Right, yeah, yeah, they've definitely become more trumpeting. Just a
note on calibration. Yeah, yeah, So that group of people,
according to Yugov, actually just young people overall, according to YouGov.
Speaker 1 (45:21):
He asked him what age.
Speaker 4 (45:23):
Less than thirty four? In Okay, I'm not calling people
who are thirty seven old. That's just Yugov's typification between
twenty one and thirty four. That's that's young teen eighteen
thirty eighteen, sorry, eighteen thirty four. Yeah. So that group
of people, about half of them said they approved of
Trump when his presidency started, and half said they disapproved.
(45:44):
So he was even at this point that group of people,
Trump's underwater by forty points. That's seventy five percent say
they disapprove of it than twenty five percent say they
approve of him.
Speaker 1 (45:54):
That seems a lot in six months.
Speaker 4 (45:57):
Yeah, that is the biggest decline of any age group,
is the biggest decline of any racial group or income group.
So if you want to characterize them as having buyers remorse, yeah,
I think that's probably what's you know, a little bit
of what's going on here. And yeah, I think this
goes back to the point I was just saying, like,
this group of people specifically has a kind of an
(46:19):
Obama era government in their head, one that's providing services
that's redistributive, that as progressive tax system to fund services,
and they're not getting that anymore. And the reason they
voted for Trump was not because they wanted a regressive
tax system or tax cussed for super wealthy, et cetera,
just because they just didn't like inflation. So at the
(46:40):
beginning of his term, when he was still saying we're
going to bring down prices, and that looked like something
he might do. Then he was fifty to fifty. When
he starts increasing taxes by passing tariffs and redistributing wealth
upwards and cutting services, these people like, O, no, no, no,
that's not what we signed up for. That makes sense
to me.
Speaker 1 (46:54):
It's what we kept telling everyone. So it's infuriating, but
it's also interesting. Okay, so tell what other we're I
want you to just sort of what other things are
we missing here in this data? Look, I think what
else is important to talk about?
Speaker 4 (47:11):
Yeah? So the other thing that I'll mention just I
guess one theme here is like stuff people and political
analysts think that is wrong, Like you should focus on
please coommigration or the economy, not immigration or whatever. The
other thing that our survey says is wrong. There's an
idea that Democrat or that the Democratic Party's favorability grating
(47:32):
is low because they're too low. They've gone too far
to the left. Oh yeah, so so we'd asked about this.
We asked our representative sample of Americans to tell us
do you think the Democratic Party has moved too far left,
too far right? Or is it fine? Has it not
moved too far at all, and we asked the same
thing about Republicans. The results of this is forty percent
(47:54):
of people say the Democratic Party has gone too far left.
That's more than the percent of people who say that
they're good, which is thirty five percent. But forty two
percent of people say the Republicans have gone too far right.
So there's no evidence in our data that the public
is saying the Democratic Party is too far to the
left at least. If anything, they're saying Republicans are a
(48:16):
little bit more too far right than the Democrats are
too far left. So yeah, wokeism to the extent that's
has tanked the Democratic Party brand. That's like a two
ten to twenty twenty four phenomenon that doesn't show up
in the data at all anymore.
Speaker 1 (48:32):
Just explain this to me, because even though forty percent
of all Democrats think that the party is too lefty,
that's normal, or explain.
Speaker 4 (48:41):
I'm not sure it's normal. I don't have compare comparative numbers.
I guess I would rationalize this by saying, let me
put it this way, forty five percent of voters say
the Democratic Party either is in the right place or
has gone too far to the right, and forty percent
of people say it has gone too far to the left.
So on balance, people are saying the average person is
(49:01):
saying Democracratic Party is good or needs to move a
little bit to the left. They're saying the same thing
about the Republicans, but to the right, they're saying either
it's good, or it needs to you know, or it's
a little bit too far, too far to the left,
it needs to be a little bit more conservative. So, yeah,
there's no evidence here that like the Democratic Party brand
is underwater because of biological extremism, right or else. It's
(49:25):
the Republican party brand just as bad, basically.
Speaker 1 (49:28):
Right, That's exactly what is important here, is that the
problem with the Democratic brand it's politics, right, It's it's leadership, right.
It's the faces, not the ideas that are getting Democrats
in trouble right now, is that what you're saying?
Speaker 4 (49:47):
Yeah, I think that's right. If you ask people to
rate Democratic Party leaders then the ones in charge, Chuck
Schumer and hicking Jeffrees are about twenty to thirty points underwater.
The party brand is thirty five points underwater. The people
who are making headlines as sort of reformers, Alexandro Cosio Cortez,
Bernie Sanders, those people people to judge. Those are the
(50:08):
only Democratic Party figures today that are popular and not
popular with the average person. That includes lots of Republicans
and independents, and notably, those people are not Those are
not the people in power in the Democratic Party.
Speaker 1 (50:21):
So interesting, Thank you, Elliott.
Speaker 4 (50:24):
Okay, thanks Molly, there a moment perfectly, Jesse Cannon Smiley.
Speaker 2 (50:32):
The Intercept has this disturbing article where we have quotes
from ICE Deputy Director Madison Shean where they're basically saying
that they're going to start arresting anybody who's helping to
protest ICE. It's not looking good.
Speaker 1 (50:47):
Well, I also want to add that these guys are
such Okay, so they want to make it so you
can't give people masks. Right, ally's anti ICE movement has
been wearing masks, and the Trump administration is trying to
criminalize activism like trying to wear masks.
Speaker 2 (51:05):
Well, we should also say our own mayor also has
been doing things like this too and keep sporting with
us too.
Speaker 1 (51:11):
Yeah, but here's the thing. ICE wears masks. That's right,
So on morning, Joe We had Tom Holman on who
was defending I wasn't there for that, but he was
defending ICE's use of masks because he was like, everyone
(51:33):
so mean to them. Yes, I swear to god. He
was like, they're so everyone's so mean to them.
Speaker 2 (51:38):
They're just trying to illegally deport people and accidentally taking
the wrong people out. They're so mean to them.
Speaker 1 (51:45):
Yeah, they're really, really, really really mean, and they don't
like it when people are mean to them, and so
they wear masks. So now they want to arrest protesters
for wearing masks. Seems kind of mean.
Speaker 2 (52:02):
Seems that way.
Speaker 1 (52:04):
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday to hear the best
minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If
you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend
and keep the conversation going. Thanks for listening.
Host
Molly Jong-Fast
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