December 10, 2025 • 46 mins
The Jim Acosta Show’s Jim Acosta examines Trump vs. Marjorie Taylor Greene and the splintering of MAGA.The New York Times’ Annie Karni details the chaos inside Mike Johnson’s Congress.
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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 Justice Sodomayer says Trump will have
absolute power if the court overturns Humphrey's executor. We have
such a great show for you today that Jim Acosta
shows Jim Acasta stops by to talk about Trump versus
(00:24):
Marjorie Taylor Green and the splintering of MAGA. Then we'll
talk to The New York Times own Annie Carney about
women in Congress and the sexism they're facing, even Republicans.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
But first the News Smile.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Since Congress voted to release the Epstein files, he judges
the word of the release of Jizlen Maxwell's grand jury records,
and they'll be heavily reducted to protect victims. But there's
probably going to be some interesting stuff here, since the
evidence seemed pretty wild when it was getting released back
in the day.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Usually the grand jury material has the least information, so
we'll see. But I mean, certainly there's a lot of
people who want this stuff released. But I would say,
like the judge did say that the records would not
add to public knowledge, so it really feels like these
judges are releasing the stuff, but really the DOJ needs
(01:18):
to release and they had you know, the clock started
for thirty days after passing the Epstein Files Transparency Act,
so that was November nineteenth.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
So it's coming up.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
We'll see if this DOJ chooses not to release it.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
I mean that is very possible.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
Yeah, I mean, this is the grad jury that had
a lot of the more fun drawings that we saw.
And apparently this grad jury did have a lot of
details of the testimony that people who were reporting on
had said that that was sealed. That was pretty wild.
So we'll see.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Yeah, I mean, we'll see what happens. But they should
release everything they can.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
Yes, agreed. So Trump's very very strained economy is about
to see another self inflicted wound as they're going to
remove millions of student loan borrowers from the payment pause.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Yeah, you know, if those people just join ICE then
they can I'm kidding. This is like this really shitty
thing where we see Trump World punishing people. So these
student loans were paused and they're unpausing them. You know,
(02:31):
they want to take advantage of people. I mean, remember
this is an administration that has basically exists to give
the wealthy people a tax cut. So student loan borrowers,
you know, their student loans will be unpaused and they'll
have to start paying interest again. There are forty two
million Americans who hold student loans with outstanding debt exceeding
(02:53):
one point six trillion dollars. So this is like quite
a lot of money. And it is really just like
unnecessary cruelty to these people. Well, I mean it's again,
it's this idea, this Adam Sober, it's this idea that
the cruelty is the point, right, Like this, doesn't you
know they're just redoing these student loans unpausing that I'm
(03:14):
making it harder for people. You already know Americans are
struggling with quote unquote affordability, which means inflation. That's code
for inflation. And Trump has done all these wildly inflationary
things and now he's unpausing student loung jets. And by
the way, just wait until the Obamacare premiums go away.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
Oh that sounds so fun, speaking of so the Obamacare
in the latest Gallop pol is more popular than ever,
a new pole finds. I think this is very interesting
because the deadline to choose a plan for many of
us was yesterday, and man, I got so many texts
from friends about these premiums. And even in my household,
(03:55):
which is not from the Obamacare, the premiums are just skyrocketing.
Speaker 4 (04:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
I mean, that was the reason that we had this shutdown, right,
was because we saw that these premiums are going to
go way.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Way, way up.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
And Trump is already like unpopular, He's already in a
moment where voters want him to make things cheaper.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
So what is he going to do is going to
make things more expensive?
Speaker 1 (04:23):
I mean, it's just you know, this is another inflationary
part of this, right, And look, there's money. Congress can
make it so that there are subsidies so Obamacare rates
don't go up. None of this needs to happen. It's
like unpausing the student debt. None of this needs to happen.
These are all self inflicted wounds that Donald Trump is
wounding on the American people.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
Okay, my, let's get into some inner party politics. As
we know, the Republicans are at real disarray right now.
But this is the first time I've really seen Democrats
really keep fighting it out about these seven nominations. And
yesterday we saw Congressman Colin ol Red drop out of
the Texas Senate race at Jasmine Crockett inter And some
people are very unhappy because Jasmine Crockett's numbers are not
(05:04):
faring so well in the general election compared to James
Ta Rico. What are you see in here?
Speaker 1 (05:09):
So we'll see right this is going to be taller
Rico versus Crockett. I think the conventional wisdom here of
like people should not run in a primary because they
can't win a general is kind of fucked up. Like
if she can win a primary, she can win a general.
If she can't win the primary, she won't win the general.
Like why does she have to be kept out of
(05:30):
the race here? And Colin Auret had run and lost
and he dropped out and now he's going to run
for converse, So you have tell Rico versus Crockett. And
if tall Rico's such a strong candidate, then you'll have
no problem winning the primary. And I don't think that
this is such a like this whole idea that Democrats
should have their finger on the scale, like we saw
(05:52):
this in twenty sixteen with Bernie right, like, well, this
candidate can't win a general, so they shouldn't win a primary.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
But no, he really knows right, And a lot of
this conventional wisdom is wrong.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Also, what's happening on the Republican side in this race
is insane. So you have Paxton versus Cornin Cornyn is
a little less insane.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
Really grit to got a fucking curve.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Here, Yeah, Paxton is really insane. The two of them
are duking it out. So as much as look, if
Teller Rico is this boy wonder, which we've had him
on this podcast we thought he was great.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
We've had Jasmin on this podcast, we thought she was great.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
If he's this boy genius who can really do it
and who I mean, he's certainly you know, Joe Rogan
really likes him, then he shouldn't have trouble winning the primary.
I think the idea of not doing primaries because somehow
they hurt the candidate is really like exactly the wrong
way to think about primaries.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
Strong agree. I think there's also just an interesting thing
that both sides of this, and you know, I very
rarely over both sides anything seem to what the primary
shut down don't want to contest whatever it's advantageous for
their side. A lot of time, these arguments did to
be very silly, right, I don't.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
See why people need to run interference. Over at our
YouTube channel, we have some really exciting stuff. Jesse and
I have made a documentary. It's called Project twenty twenty nine,
A Reimagining. It's a series about how democrats can deliver
(07:31):
popular policies when they regain power. The first episode is
up now. It's the first part of the series, and
we're going to examine what went wrong with some of
the Biden administration's approach to policies that may have prevented
Democrats from being able to deliver the broad anti corruption
(07:54):
legislation that needed to happen, and by the way, that
would have prevented some of the corruption we're seeing right now.
The first episode dives deep into the first step of
fixing American politics.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
It may sound unsexy.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
But it's a big, important issue, and that big subject
is campaign finance reform. For this episode, we talk to
some of the smartest people we know, professors and academics,
people like Lawrence Lessig, Tiffany Muller, Michael Waldman, and Tom Moore.
(08:32):
Republicans were prepared for when they got the levers of power.
Democrats need that same kind of preparation.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
That's why we.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
Need to start the conversation on how democrats can do
the same thing. So please head over to our YouTube
channel and search Molly John Fast Project twenty twenty nine
or go to the Fast Politics YouTube channel page and
you'll find it there and help us spread the word
and stay tuned for more episodes. Jim Acosta is the
(09:07):
author of The Substack, The Jim Acosta Show, and the
author of the New York Times best selling book The
Enemy of the People, A Dangerous Time to Tell the
Truth in America.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Welcome back to Fast Politics. Now I get to interview you.
Speaker 5 (09:22):
Yeah, I love it. Perfect lest work for me.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
I'm going to ask you a lot to know.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
I think it's more work to be the subject than
the object.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Ooh, discuss interesting.
Speaker 5 (09:35):
You might be right about that, but for me, not
so much. You know, I'll do as little as possible.
All the pressure is on you.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Now you're getting the real You're in the real, uh,
Because sometimes you can just ask a question and then
somebody can talk for forty five seconds.
Speaker 5 (09:53):
And It's like, oh, what were they saying? Where am I?
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Oh, look there's something on my phone.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
I'm doing it right.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Yeah, I feel like but it is a fascinating moment
in American politics.
Speaker 5 (10:08):
It really is now.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Today Marjorie Taylly Green you may have heard of her,
Trump had tweeted about her. Yes, she had then shown
that she got no money from a pack, and he
got you know what, two hundred million dollars? Something crazy
sum of money? Is that?
Speaker 2 (10:28):
What is that?
Speaker 1 (10:29):
I cannot begin to quantify. Those numbers were humo. I
saw the number and I thought it would be like
two million dollars, But it was like, wasn't it like two?
Speaker 5 (10:38):
I mean, it was some, it was not so it
was a large amount of money. I saw that. My
reaction to all this is can be summed up as fight, fight, fight,
you know this whole I see people rolling out the
red carpet.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
Yeah, two thirty million dollars, two hundred and thirty million
dollars from my pack. I don't know how that works.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Go on? Yes, well, and.
Speaker 5 (11:00):
Also, you know, Marginill Green talking about this stuff feels
I don't know what's the word for it. I guess
people will say it's anti Israel, but it feels kind
of you know.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
She has had her as a Jew, she has had
her forays with anti Semitism before.
Speaker 5 (11:17):
Was there a Jewish space laser thing?
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Yeah? Does that strike me that her anti Israel stance
is completely due to her belief in the importance of
not killing Palestinians.
Speaker 5 (11:30):
Yes, I'm guessing that the whole plight of the Palestinian
thing is not top of mind for Marjorie Taylor Green.
I mean that's just a guess on my part. But
putting all that aside and all of the different rabbit
holes we could go down, I mean, you know, people
rolling out the red carpet to welcome MTG to the resistance,
I mean, please knock that off. Please stop doing that
(11:50):
to somebody. I remember in the run up to January sixth,
when she was putting out video saying that Donald Trump
won the twenty twenty election in a blowout. I mean,
this is somebody who has not just one, but like
a whole panoply of that shit, crazy conspiracy theories that
I don't believe she has abandoned.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
And so, yeah, no, she's not resistance, She's she's not
she is not on the side of the left.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
But yeah, she does.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
And again this is something as someone who has covered
the You have covered the swamp longer than I've covered
the swamp, and you even live in the swamp, whereas
I would never Yeah, but I think it's quite interesting.
I do think and this is not a compliment for
Marjorie Taillergreen in any shape or form. She does truly
(12:37):
believe in things where which is I mean, how what
percentage of congressional Republicans and Democrats really believe?
Speaker 3 (12:47):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (12:48):
No, I agree with you, and I think that I mean,
she has kind of a knack for getting under his skin,
which is a quality I like, you know, and it
is a quality that is not shared by many in
the Republican Party. I do think that. Listen, you can
say all of the terrible things in the world that
you can about margin Daller Green. There's a lot to say,
But the way that she stood on the side of
releasing the Epstein files, I'm just going to say right
(13:11):
now that should be commended. Being pro releasing the Epstein
files is a good thing. But you know, there's something
going on with the backstory between these two that we
have not gotten to. The bottom of and it feels
like it's going to bubble to the surface any day now.
This does not feel like Trump going after Liz Cheney.
There's a dimension to this that I don't think we
(13:31):
might have enough visibility on.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
We do know he refused to back her Senate campaign, yes, which.
Speaker 5 (13:39):
Is not wise on his part, because, I mean, one
thing that people don't understand. And in Georgia, the Republican
Party really does not like Donald Trump very much. And
there are people like Brian Kamp and so on who
and the second Rathensburger. I mean, there's a whole slew
of Republicans there who are very traditional establishment Republicans and
(14:01):
they do not like Donald Trump, and they're pretty out
in the open about.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
It, right.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
And then you have a complete nutter who also does
not like Donald Trump anymore. Both different sides of the
Republican Party, both not that happy with Trump.
Speaker 5 (14:14):
It is a preview of coming attractions, I think, you know,
I mean, you know the other thing that I did
not think we would get to the end of this year.
And my prevailing thinking on Donald Trump is is he
going to make it to the end of this term?
Because he is more and more out to lunch by
the day, he seems more detached from reality and just
(14:35):
you know, seems cognitively in a very different place than
he was even a year ago.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
I'm talking about the naps.
Speaker 5 (14:43):
The naps, I mean, the truth social posts, you know,
the stuff that he is saying, you know, the Somali
immigrants is I mean, some of this. You could say, well,
isn't this all the shit he's been saying since twenty fifteen. Yes,
to some extent, that's true. But it feels like, you know,
you look at pick of him, the bruises on the hands,
of the mysterious absences, the long weekends, you know there's
(15:07):
something going on, and I just you know, it's a
good thing when you and I've talked about this, when
authoritarians are incompetent, it is also and when they're in
a state of cognitive decline. And I think that's where
we are right now.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Donald Trump, he definitely has the bruises. Bruises are We
keep seeing the bruises. He's trying everything he can not
to show his hands, but we see the bruises. There's
definitely a feeling like he's having trouble staying awake. We
saw he had that North Korean style cabinet meeting, one
of my absolute favorite things he does. Or they go
(15:40):
around and talk about how great he is. The Secretary
of Education Linda McMahon, known for mostly being a Trump
downer whose husband created WWE and then had to leave
because of he had some I think he had a
sexual harassment right stuff there, Yeah, not good alleged bad step.
(16:02):
She of course does the Department of Education, because when
you think about education, you mostly think about wrestling. He
just nodded the hell out right. I mean, she was
talking and he was all.
Speaker 5 (16:14):
He was out. I mean he was I mean, this was,
you know, Mitch McConnell style, like you know, I'm just
going to leave for a while, I'll be back, you know.
And it was not just during Lynna McMahon. It was
Marco Rubio. It was several people around the table. I mean,
it was we've gone from the dear Leader treatment to
the good night Grandpa treatment, like that's they're each taking
(16:37):
turns putting Donald Trump to sleep as they go around
the cabinet room these days. And this is not the
same guy that we saw on the campaign trail, even
like a year and a half ago. It just I've
been around him enough to know, like the contrast.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Is there adds the agrig culture secretary of Brooke Rowlands. Yeah,
was talking about how great he was and thanking him
for preventing hurricanes, and he was The camera panned over
and he.
Speaker 5 (17:08):
Was like, oh, yeah, Grandpa likes to be told that
he prevented hurricanes. Puts them right to bed.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Yeah, very so terrific.
Speaker 5 (17:18):
You can roll out the mats on the floor in
the kindergarten room and drink our lemonade and go right
to sleep.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
So Donald Trump has just one year down.
Speaker 5 (17:28):
Yeah, okay, somebody draw me a picture as to how
he gets to twenty twenty. Doesn't twenty twenty eight three
years seem like a real stretch for him?
Speaker 2 (17:35):
That seems like a stretch.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Don't mean again, he'll be eighty two. He has the
greatest cheans ever. He does seem very tired.
Speaker 5 (17:45):
Though he seems extremely tired. And I will tell you,
having covered him, you know up close, where are the
press conferences. He doesn't do press conferences. The most he
can do now is he brings the little kids into
the room and he screams at them and calls them names,
and then he sends them away. That's his that's the
extent of him doing question and answer time now is
(18:06):
on Air Force one or in the overlock. Doesn't do
press conference, doesn't do rallies. Remember that special election y
where he literally phoned it in. He called Mike Johnson,
and Mike Johnson held the cell phone up to the
cameras and Donald Trump was talking about how they can't
lose this ruby red district in Tennessee. And the old
is he would have done the Hangar rally where he
(18:26):
flies in and gets off of Air Force one and
it cost the taxpayers a billion dollars. Doesn't do that anymore.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
I want I want to talk to you about something important.
So Punchball News Jake Scharman, the woman's Anna Palmer have
this congressional newsletter podcast. It's actually I think really good.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
They're good. I like that they're really it's like a resource.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Now that Politico has become whatever it is, you really
need Punchball because they're really in there.
Speaker 5 (18:57):
Yeah, doesn't feel as grifty or like yeah five seconds, yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
As you what I mean?
Speaker 1 (19:07):
That was mean, but but but really needed as I
was glazing them. But what I wanted to talk about
was neither none of that, but was actually this. They
do these surveys of congressional staffers, which I think are
pretty useful. I'm going to read to you the results
because I want your hottest take on this, and I
(19:29):
think that you will have something to say about this
because all right, so Hill staffers, Okay, so they they
talk to Hill staffers, they send out this thing. This
is the kind of thing Hill staffers love to do
because they're not supposed to you know, they're not supposed
to be public facing.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
So here we go.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
We asked which of the big four in leadership was
the most effective?
Speaker 2 (19:54):
All right, you ready?
Speaker 1 (19:57):
Did you see this already?
Speaker 5 (19:58):
I didn't see this, so this is actually suspenseful for me.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
Okay, oh it's not going to be though, once I
started talking. So fifty four percent of senior Democratic aids
chose as the most effective leader on the hell John Thun.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
Interesting, so they said Thune.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
Then they said Minority Leader Ha Teem, which makes sense.
So he gets twenty seven percent, thirteen percent for Mike Johnson,
which makes sense because he's incompetent. And just six percent
of Democratic staffers chose Minority Leader Chuck Schumer as the
(20:38):
most effective interesting and.
Speaker 5 (20:41):
The Chuck Schumer was never a Harry Reid type of guy,
was he. I mean, there was the old expression the
most dangerous place in Washington was between a camera and
Chuck Schumer. I mean, he was like sort of that
was his stock in trade. He was sort of the
show voting senator who would gun for spots on the
Sunday talk shows and that sort of thing. And I
think there are real problems that people have in the
(21:03):
Democratic Party with the job that Chuck Schumer has done
as the minority leader. And I mean the question becomes
it's sort of unsenatorial for Democrats to throw him overboard
and bring in a different majority leader if they were
to take the majority after the upcoming midterms. But that
is not surprising me. The other thing that's very funny
is that Mike Johnson is even in the running there.
(21:25):
I mean, he's he wasn't on a talk show the
other day saying or a podcast saying that he works
eighteen hours a day or twenty one hours a day.
He was trying to make it sound as though, you know,
he's the hardest working man in show business.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
He is literally nobody believes nobody believes it.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
I mean, my favorite thing about Mike Johnson is that
he's bad at his job and hated by everyone.
Speaker 5 (21:45):
Yes, there's no question about it. And this whole Epstein thing,
I mean, the way that blazed through Congress was deeply
embarrassing for him. I mean, first of all, he tried
to he I mean, everybody say, oh, the Democrats shut
down the government. No, Mike Johnson showed down the government
like that's yeah. You can't just say the Democrats shut
down the gunment. There are people in Washington media who
are saying that should be ashamed of themselves. When Mike
(22:07):
Johnson actually shut down the House of Representatives, it would
not swear in audily degreel. I guess that was work
on his part when he did that, But literally nobody
in Washington believes he works very hard. He essentially takes
marching orders from Donald Trump, and you know he is
He's been delegated the speakership by Donald Trump. That is
not the same thing as working as He's not a
(22:30):
John Bayner, He's not a not a Tip O'Neil or
a Nancy Pelosi. Those are real speakers of the House.
He is sort of a speaker in name only, it
seems to me.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
Yeah, I'll be curious to see what happens now. There's more,
They're going to be more specials that his lead will
get tighter. I want us to talk for a minute
about the other thing that's going on right now, which
is basically, there's this merger Warner You're all place of work.
(23:01):
Oh yeah, may or may not get bought by Netflix,
though CNN would not be part of that deal. We
have Paramount that swept in and thought they were beloved
by Donald Trump, and they have this wild set of investors,
including the Qataris who might want to buy Warner, and
(23:22):
also CNN, and also Jared Kushner. Jared Kushner, known to
be great at running media businesses discuss Yeah.
Speaker 5 (23:32):
Which one did he own? The New York Observation?
Speaker 1 (23:34):
The New York Observer, He ran it into the ground.
Speaker 5 (23:37):
I mean, it is sort of where we are right
I Also, I love that Jared Kushner was meeting face
to face with Vladimir Putin, which I know made everybody
around the world feel so much better about you know.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Trump Milan.
Speaker 5 (23:51):
He was a represented of the Trump Royal Court. Yea, Yeah,
they're at the Kremlin when he met with Vladimir Putin.
But I mean, you know, it is sort of a
perfect encapsulation, a perfect crystallization of where we are right
now as a country in terms of our media. I mean,
I've been saying this for months. Corporate media is in
a lousy place right now. When we have a system
(24:13):
in this country where these giant companies own the news organizations,
the most prominent news organizations in the country, and then
they can be held over the barrel by the President
of the United States. That is not a free press,
that is not an independent news media. And I think
people need to wake up to that reality. I mean,
(24:33):
we are just not living in that world anymore. And
you know, yes it is. We can all snicker about
Jared Kushner being potentially part of this deal to buy
Warner Brothers Discovery, but at the same time it should
send a chill down to all of our spines because
a member of the Trump family owning that much media
in this country feels very putent, like it feels very
(24:56):
early days Putin in the Russian Federation. And you know
what I mean, I both talk to people like Ruth
BEng Guillot and people who are experts and authoritarianism, and
they will tell you of people like an Applebaum and
so on, that that the pace that Donald Trump is
on right now, despite his cognitive cline and naps and
everything else, is much faster than Vladimir Putin in his pace. YEA.
(25:21):
Consolidating power and taking over the media is part of that.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
Yeah, I mean, I would say the problem with Trump
is not so much that he's taking over the media
as the media is giving itself over to trust.
Speaker 5 (25:33):
Well, there's that, there's no question, but it's almost two
separate things, right, I mean, the bending of the knee
issue that we saw with ABC paying its bribe to
Donald Trump and CBS paying it's bribe donald Trump. That
is one thing. But we have something sort of and
I've said this before, that Trump has cracked the code
and how to hurt the press in this country, and
(25:55):
that he has revealed vulnerabilities that we I don't think
fully appreciated up until this point. That you could cause mischief,
You could cause a lot of chaos in these mergers
and acquisitions with these media companies in a way that
brings them to heal, that puts them over a barrel
(26:15):
and creates kind of leverage that we're not accustomed to
seeing in this country, and I think it's very disturbing.
And I mean, just today, Trump was threatening to sue
sixty Minutes again or go after CBS because of some
interview with.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
Margine Marjorie Taylor Green. He was mad about that. Marjorie
Taylor Green, I want to talk to you about that,
because I think that's kind of incredible. So Donald Trump
was mad about Marjorie Taylor Green and he was upset
that she had that she had done this sixty Minutes interview.
(26:51):
And it was like it was, I feel like a
great moment because we saw that Donald Trump, like your paramount,
had done so much to suck up to Donald Trump exactly.
They had just done everything they could, and yet it
wasn't enough.
Speaker 5 (27:09):
That's right, and I mean it underlines the point that
you and I were just making. Yes, this construct that
we have of corporate media in this country is bad,
and it's been exposed by Trump and so on. But
you know the idea that CBS, you know, pays this bribe,
pays this bullshit settlement to Trump, and they think, gosh,
you know, we got Donald Trump off our case. He's
not mad at us anymore. It never works, It's never
(27:32):
going to work. And these these cowardly media executives who
tell themselves in these boardrooms, my goodness, well if we
just give them fifteen million dollars, he'll shut the hell up.
They just don't understand how Donald Trump operates. What you've
done is just give the monster more food, and eventually
the monster will want more food. And I just don't understand.
(27:52):
These are supposed to be smart people running these media companies,
and really they're just craven cow words. They're they've they've
been able to manipulate their way into these positions, but
at the end of the day, they're just goddamn cowards.
And the only way out of this for the media
in this country is for these gutless executives to find
their damn spines and stand the hell up to this guy. Honestly.
(28:16):
I mean, I just to me, you know why. You know,
somebody I saw to give credit to Shuck Schumer. I
think he was saying the other day that now he
wants to, you know, go after CBS over the way
they edited the Trump interview. Yeah, you know, I mean,
there's Trump is He's He's just a shameless He's a shister,
you know. And and why these companies don't see that,
(28:38):
to me is just really it's astounding. But we see
FEFA giving Trump a participation peace price, you know.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
I mean, yes, these they're all soccer piece.
Speaker 5 (28:50):
It's just so it's so appalling and grotesque.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
Jim Acosta, will you come back anytime? Would love to.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
Annie Karney is the White House correspondent for the New
York Times. Welcome to Fast Politics, Anny Carney, Hello, Molly,
you do this beat? You've done many beats. We' knew
you from other beats, but I think you may have
hit a beat that is uniquely interesting and at a
very unique and interesting and strange moment. When did you
get to Congress twenty twenty two?
Speaker 4 (29:23):
Yeah, but it.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
Feels like the Mike Johnson Congress is a completely strange
and new animal discuss.
Speaker 4 (29:34):
Yeah. Well, you know, I think that I have recently
stumbled on a beat within a beat, which is these women,
and these Republican women. They're kind of the gift that
keeps on giving. I wrote a book last year, No,
it was this year, god where Marjorie Taylor Green and
Lauren Bobert elis Stephonic Nancy Mays were all kind of
characters I followed, and they have proved those have proven
(29:55):
to be worthy investments because they have been at the
center of pushing back against Johnson, pushing to against Trump.
They were worth worth my time. It turns out.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
Yeah, the players in this I was about to ask
you who the players were, and I think you've covered
it nicely. All of these women, though they are pushing
back against Johnson, but all have very different motivations. So first,
let's talk about Marjorie Taylor Green, because I think she
is the sort of loudest of the crew.
Speaker 4 (30:21):
Yeah, I think that's right. She's the loudest and sort
of the most interesting political arc that she's been on.
She's a person who only exists in Congress because Donald
Trump exists. Like this is not a person who transformed
herself to meet this moment, Like she discovered politics through
the QAnon conspiracy theory. Like she's a true believer. She
got stripped of her committees, her own colleagues wanted to
(30:44):
distance themselves from her. Trump himself did not endorse her
in her twenty twenty primary. So she gets here. She's
like far far right outside the mainstream, but like always
Trump's biggest cheerleader, and he liked her, and it just
seemed like she would say racist things. She was support
him no matter what. It just no one would have
predicted that the break with Trump, the person who's going
(31:05):
to really stand up to Trump in a meaningful way
would be Marjorie Taylor Green. She really starts breaking with
him on Epstein. As we saw, she's obsessed with the
fact that she won her twenty twenty eight primary without Trump,
like that really gave her this I don't need him since.
So when the White House starts pressuring all the Republicans
to not sign on to this petition to force a vote,
(31:27):
she's like, f.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
That this is a discharge petition to release the Ebstein files.
Speaker 4 (31:32):
Right, And then you know what I think happens with
these people, Like once you break on something big, they're
like the veil comes off the eyes, and like you
start to break on other things too. And I think
that that is sort of like she broke with him
on a number of issues where she's breaking with him
from the right America, first on Israel AI and then
(31:52):
she just gets this chip, this feminist chip on her
shoulder where she's like men and my party treat women terribly.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
Like unbelievable.
Speaker 4 (32:00):
And then it's like she's pissed at the good old
boys club. She's just mad. And I do feel like
a common thing with all these women is they're just
mad at how they're being treated. She announces that she's
leaving Congress, which is a shock, and like i've there's
just no notice, satisfying answer to why she's doing this.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
So that's MTG. Now explain to me, Lauren Baupert.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
And also, I think we need to talk about the
one who has the discharge petition about congressional stock trading,
Anna Paulina Luna, because that's bizarre too.
Speaker 4 (32:30):
She's this far right congresswoman from Florida. It's kind of
weird that she's so far right because unlike MTG, like
her district is not that far right. So she's always
like she's not like super vulnerable. She's on the she's
not like a person like Marjorie who would have had
tenure for life in Congress that she had wanted to.
Luna like gets challengers.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
And Luna was involved in this thing about nursing on
the house Flora like even though she's very far right.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
She's got things she needs.
Speaker 4 (32:59):
Yeah, which that's that's good to bring up now when
we're talking about like why the women are so mad.
She tried to work with Democrats to do a bill
where you could have remote proxy voting for maternity leave,
so that when you're like thirty nine weeks pregnant or
have a six week old, you can vote by proxy
and not have to either let your constituents down by
(33:20):
missing votes or haul your baby to the House floor
with you and travel with a newborn right now is
their options. And Mike Johnson killed that, even though Trump
had sided with Luna. This was one time when Mike
Johnson got Trump to get out of his side. Mike
Johnson killed that. So he already has pissed off women,
like on a number of issues. Now. Anna Coulinolan is
(33:42):
back with a new petition to ban members from training stock.
This is a issue that's like broadly popular with Democrats
and Republicans' populist issue that Mike Johnson has been holding
up from coming to the floor for a vote.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
So Democrats have also held this issue.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
Up from Pelosi.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
Pelosi oddly did not want to vote on this issue,
which is Strange Pelosi.
Speaker 4 (34:08):
It was a huge issue for her.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
Paul loved to trade the stocks.
Speaker 4 (34:11):
Paul did love to trade the stocks, that's correct.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
Made a lot of money trading the stocks.
Speaker 4 (34:17):
In fact, I'm working on a store on that right now. Anyway,
these people would keep going around Johnson because they don't
have respect for him. They don't think he's that powerful.
They are not afraid to publicly challenge him, either by
disparaging him in the media or just going around his
leadership by getting a discharge petition to try and bring
(34:37):
votes to the floor that he does not want there.
And a lot of the have being led by the women.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Discharge petitions just explained us the math because right now
there are a bunch and before the Epstein one passed,
one hadn't actually passed in like seven years, right, They're.
Speaker 4 (34:53):
Really rare, Okay. So the way the House works is
the speaker has total control of what comes to the
floor for a vote. The only way a rank and
file member can get a bill to the floor that
the speaker doesn't want there is by getting two hundred
and eighteen members to sign in a petition to bring
it to the floor. That's a lot because that's a majority.
That means you need Democrats and Republicans. That's hard in
(35:15):
this moment that we live in. So it's really hard
to get two hundred eighteen signatures on something that. Oh
and you're only doing this if your own leadership, you know,
is against it. So you're going around leadership, So they're
going to be like whipping votes against you if you're
trying to do this. So it's really hard. But we saw,
you know, they succeeded on Epstein under immense pressure, and
(35:35):
Johnson had to do something he had been really trying
not to do and bring that to the floor for
our vote. So I think they're empowered to kind of
keep screwing with him, and if they get the votes
on this, it's just'll just be another embarrassment for the speaker.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
So Representative Luna has a discharge petition against congressional stock trading.
Is she catching any kind of.
Speaker 4 (35:57):
Yeah, she's getting. I mean, look, this is it's a
good issue to do a discharge on because AOC and
Chip Roy both are four banning members from trading stocks.
It really appeals to the far left of the far right.
It's something that could get bypars and support. It's one
of the top reasons people like don't trust Congress hate Congress.
So yeah, I think that's a good issue for a
discharge to pick up steam.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
Let's talk about Stavonic next, because she had a big
Twitter fight with leader.
Speaker 4 (36:24):
Explain you always know Congress is functioning when they're having
Twitter fights. That's always a good sign. At least. Stephanic
is a member of House leadership, so she's different from
these other ones we've been talking about, and leadership usually
doesn't attack leadership. Usually like some loud voice, a rank
and file person can attack leadership, and you understand why
(36:44):
that's happening, but leadership versus leadership is like a different
level of dysfunction. So she attacks him, calling him a
liar because he's blocking some provisions she wants in the
defense spending bill, and she calls him a habitual liar
on Twitter, which is like it's a lot, that's a
lot of infighting, bringing in the public, not doing anonymous sources,
just like straight on attacking him. And then she said,
(37:07):
this is like exactly what we've wanted to expect from
the speaker who's constantly falling down on our agenda. So
it's like aggressive. Then she gets Trump to intervene and
they have a three D way phone call and she
gets her way.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
But Stefanic has really gotten screwed by Trump. She has
he put her at the UN and then he changed
his mind.
Speaker 4 (37:27):
First he appoints it to the UN ambassador. She loses
that because he can't afford to lose another seat in
the House because the margins are so small, so he
pulls it. Then to add insult into injury, She's running
for governor in New York now, and her whole campaign
is based on calling mom Donnie like a scary socialist, a.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
Ge hottest socialist.
Speaker 4 (37:48):
Right, and then he has him in for like that
bizarre love best and the oh hoole just oh and
was asked specifically like a last Stefanic has been calling
him a gie hottis and Trump's like, no, no, no, that's
not true.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
Even worse, he said, you just have to say stuff
like that from the campaign, like she doesn't even believe.
Speaker 4 (38:07):
It totally undercuts her anyway. She can't. What she has
done is totally blamed Mike Johnson for failure of her
cabinet nomination. She's saying that he undermined her from the beginning.
He told Trump, don't let her out of the house.
I need the votes. And a lot of her colleagues
in my story, like her colleagues said this to me
on the record, that like she can't blame Trump, so
(38:28):
she's blaming Johnson anyway, and they think that, like this
is really just personal, like she's just so mad that
this happened to her. Whatever the point is, she feels
like the only way to actually communicate with him is
by going to the media or going to Twitter and
attacking him, and then she got what she wanted. She
doesn't feel like she can actually speak to him in private.
(38:48):
That relationship is totally combusted. So the only way they
seem to communicate is at least a phonic attacking him
Trump intervening, Mike Johnson relenting and anyway. It's another woman
that she thinks they're going to lose the house. She
thinks he has no strategy. I think that, like we
have to be aware of her motivations these personal issues,
like that doesn't take away from the fact that she's
(39:10):
saying statements that are true. He told The Wall Street
Journal last week in an interview, Like if there's a
speaker vote today, he wouldn't have the votes to be speaking.
I think that's also true statement. So she's being motivated
by whatever personal things. But she is spitting truths as they.
Speaker 1 (39:26):
Say, unbelievable now. Lauren Bobert, Yeah, Bobert is a maverick.
Speaker 4 (39:34):
Bobert is the one of these people that least wants
to be known. Like, she does not talk to us.
She does not talk to anybody. All the others really do.
She's got a chip on her shoulder. She doesn't play
the game. Like Marjorie Taylor Green learned to play the
game over the years she's been here, tried the inside game,
she tried the outside game. She learned to work the media.
(39:55):
She learned to talk to reporters in the hallway at
the Congress. She kind of came to underst that, like
in the reporting environment of Congress, like talking to reporters
is part of the job, and Lauren bober does not
do that. She has never kind of evolved in that
way over the years that she's been here. She still
does not think it's part of the job. She still shirk,
(40:16):
like runs away. So I was really interested that she
held firm on the Epstein vote because she was under
immen's pressure. Trump was calling her personally. They brought her
the situation room to meet with Pam Bondy and Cashtail
for like an exclusive briefing. I'm sure Lauren Bober has
never been in this situation room before. She was one
of the deciding votes there. And what I noticed in
(40:38):
the days afterwards, she really other ones kind of leaned
into I mean clearly Green leaned into breaking with Trump,
saying I'm real America. First, Lauren Bober quickly tried to
touch things up, like she tried to make a look
there was no gaylight like, of course me and Trump
both want the same thing. She did not want that
distance between her and the administration. But I think what
that speaks to it comes back to Mike's Johnson's mistake
(41:00):
a little bit, because that vote came after they were
home for eight weeks, because he sent the house all
during the government shutdown for eight weeks. And I was
told by my sources that all Lauren Bobergert heard for
eight weeks when she was home from her voters was
thank you for staying strong on Epstein, We're with you
the air whoops, thank you, like do not back down.
(41:24):
Don't like no, she went. Did she hear like, you're
getting in Trump's way, You're not being loyal? She heard,
You're where we want you to be, So that I
think strengthened her resolve to not be cowed by Trump anyway. Anyway,
So I think that again goes to like the mismanagement
some of Johnson's dismanagement.
Speaker 1 (41:43):
Right, if he hadn't sent everyone home, they wouldn't have
spent so much time with their constituents, right, And what
they really.
Speaker 4 (41:48):
Heard from their constituents was that it was clear cut
that this was a popular vote with their constituents.
Speaker 1 (41:54):
So let's talk about Nancy Mays. Because Nancy Mays is
she was crying in the hallway. She had this problem,
was her ex fiance. What's happening?
Speaker 4 (42:07):
She's been all over the map politically, and it's hard
at this point to take what she says as being
something genuine because seems to be very much like finger
in the wind or trying to gain intention. What I've
come to understand of Nancy Mace's philosophy of being in
politics is that people need to know your name. It
(42:29):
doesn't matter why, it doesn't matter if they like you,
They just need to know who you are, and that's
what drives her. A lot of the time. She tracks
her own name recognition and that's pretty much all she tracks.
So like, that's a good way to think about when
you see her in the news. To her, it's all
being in the news equals votes. I think that's a
little simplistic, but anyway, that's how she thinks about it.
(42:52):
That being said, she her entire political brand has been
built on being a survivor of sexual assault fourteen when
she was sixteen. She's accused her ex fiancee of like
horrible things, drugging and raping her and other women. He
has denied all that an he's sooner too right, It's
very messy. But saying that, like, if there's one thing
(43:14):
that she has not moved on that seems to be
driven out of actual like personal trauma, it's her views
on like women being sexually abused. And so this Epstein
thing was really even for someone like Mace who she
looks She's running for governor right now in South Carolina.
She could certainly use Trump's endorsement in that race. She
(43:34):
risked BA for sure by going against him on the
Epstein petition. But if there's one issue where she seems
to really be driven by her own experience and is
not going to move, it was this one. And she
didn't to her This is very very personal, and we
saw that picture of her crying after meeting with the
Epstein victims. It was a pretty raw Yeah. So again,
(43:57):
oh and she is. I reported last week that she
is so fed up with Johnson and the way he's
handling everything that she wants to go meet with Green
and talk about resigning early.
Speaker 1 (44:07):
Also right, right, right, And then she denied it for
you know, who knows.
Speaker 4 (44:13):
I'm just like going to say that, Like I felt
very confident that reporting. I don't think she'll actually go
through with it.
Speaker 1 (44:19):
But she did say it. Yeah, Annie Carney, will you
come back.
Speaker 4 (44:23):
Of course anytime?
Speaker 2 (44:25):
Always no perfect, Jesse.
Speaker 3 (44:31):
Cannon, my job fast. So there is blockbuster reporting. The
New York Times has it, more perfect Union has it.
Instacart has been price fixing within their app to different
users and using algorithmic pricing. This is a thing that
lead to Cod's FTC previously is stopped with other fields
and this seems like a real nightmare for the affordability
(44:51):
crisis that Donald Trump is pretending isn't happening.
Speaker 1 (44:54):
Yeah. Again, this is like why you want to have antitrust,
why you want to have a government that protects people.
But this is for sure what this administration does not
want to do. So you're going to have situations like this.
Not super surprised by it, but it is quite shitty
to see that instacart is charging different prices in different
(45:15):
places and serge pricing for eggs. You know, it's just
completely insane. I mean, I just think it's corrupt. And
the problem is that when things are corrupt, you stop
trusting the government, right, you have voters stop trusting it.
Speaker 2 (45:30):
So I think it's quite shitty.
Speaker 3 (45:33):
Yeah. I mean, we had Tim Moo on our last
episode who wrote this wonderful book called The Age of
Extraction that really talks about this, that what we're about
to see is nar where all these subscription companies, all
these companies that do things like this, are going to
find ways to extract every dollar out of the consumer.
And that's not going to go so well when everybody's
talking about inflation and how affordability is going down. And
(45:56):
I think we know who's going to get less popular
from it.
Speaker 1 (45:59):
Yeah, hard to him getting less popular, but it seems likely.
Speaker 3 (46:03):
He's right on his way to that end of the
George W. Bush second term numbers exactly.
Speaker 1 (46:09):
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.
Speaker 2 (46:29):
Thanks for listening.
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds, and Justice Sodomayer says Trump will have
absolute power if the court overturns Humphrey's executor. We have
such a great show for you today that Jim Acosta
shows Jim Acasta stops by to talk about Trump versus
(00:24):
Marjorie Taylor Green and the splintering of MAGA. Then we'll
talk to The New York Times own Annie Carney about
women in Congress and the sexism they're facing, even Republicans.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
But first the News Smile.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Since Congress voted to release the Epstein files, he judges
the word of the release of Jizlen Maxwell's grand jury records,
and they'll be heavily reducted to protect victims. But there's
probably going to be some interesting stuff here, since the
evidence seemed pretty wild when it was getting released back
in the day.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Usually the grand jury material has the least information, so
we'll see. But I mean, certainly there's a lot of
people who want this stuff released. But I would say,
like the judge did say that the records would not
add to public knowledge, so it really feels like these
judges are releasing the stuff, but really the DOJ needs
(01:18):
to release and they had you know, the clock started
for thirty days after passing the Epstein Files Transparency Act,
so that was November nineteenth.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
So it's coming up.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
We'll see if this DOJ chooses not to release it.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
I mean that is very possible.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
Yeah, I mean, this is the grad jury that had
a lot of the more fun drawings that we saw.
And apparently this grad jury did have a lot of
details of the testimony that people who were reporting on
had said that that was sealed. That was pretty wild.
So we'll see.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Yeah, I mean, we'll see what happens. But they should
release everything they can.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
Yes, agreed. So Trump's very very strained economy is about
to see another self inflicted wound as they're going to
remove millions of student loan borrowers from the payment pause.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Yeah, you know, if those people just join ICE then
they can I'm kidding. This is like this really shitty
thing where we see Trump World punishing people. So these
student loans were paused and they're unpausing them. You know,
(02:31):
they want to take advantage of people. I mean, remember
this is an administration that has basically exists to give
the wealthy people a tax cut. So student loan borrowers,
you know, their student loans will be unpaused and they'll
have to start paying interest again. There are forty two
million Americans who hold student loans with outstanding debt exceeding
(02:53):
one point six trillion dollars. So this is like quite
a lot of money. And it is really just like
unnecessary cruelty to these people. Well, I mean it's again,
it's this idea, this Adam Sober, it's this idea that
the cruelty is the point, right, Like this, doesn't you
know they're just redoing these student loans unpausing that I'm
(03:14):
making it harder for people. You already know Americans are
struggling with quote unquote affordability, which means inflation. That's code
for inflation. And Trump has done all these wildly inflationary
things and now he's unpausing student loung jets. And by
the way, just wait until the Obamacare premiums go away.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
Oh that sounds so fun, speaking of so the Obamacare
in the latest Gallop pol is more popular than ever,
a new pole finds. I think this is very interesting
because the deadline to choose a plan for many of
us was yesterday, and man, I got so many texts
from friends about these premiums. And even in my household,
(03:55):
which is not from the Obamacare, the premiums are just skyrocketing.
Speaker 4 (04:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
I mean, that was the reason that we had this shutdown, right,
was because we saw that these premiums are going to
go way.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Way, way up.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
And Trump is already like unpopular, He's already in a
moment where voters want him to make things cheaper.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
So what is he going to do is going to
make things more expensive?
Speaker 1 (04:23):
I mean, it's just you know, this is another inflationary
part of this, right, And look, there's money. Congress can
make it so that there are subsidies so Obamacare rates
don't go up. None of this needs to happen. It's
like unpausing the student debt. None of this needs to happen.
These are all self inflicted wounds that Donald Trump is
wounding on the American people.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
Okay, my, let's get into some inner party politics. As
we know, the Republicans are at real disarray right now.
But this is the first time I've really seen Democrats
really keep fighting it out about these seven nominations. And
yesterday we saw Congressman Colin ol Red drop out of
the Texas Senate race at Jasmine Crockett inter And some
people are very unhappy because Jasmine Crockett's numbers are not
(05:04):
faring so well in the general election compared to James
Ta Rico. What are you see in here?
Speaker 1 (05:09):
So we'll see right this is going to be taller
Rico versus Crockett. I think the conventional wisdom here of
like people should not run in a primary because they
can't win a general is kind of fucked up. Like
if she can win a primary, she can win a general.
If she can't win the primary, she won't win the general.
Like why does she have to be kept out of
(05:30):
the race here? And Colin Auret had run and lost
and he dropped out and now he's going to run
for converse, So you have tell Rico versus Crockett. And
if tall Rico's such a strong candidate, then you'll have
no problem winning the primary. And I don't think that
this is such a like this whole idea that Democrats
should have their finger on the scale, like we saw
(05:52):
this in twenty sixteen with Bernie right, like, well, this
candidate can't win a general, so they shouldn't win a primary.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
But no, he really knows right, And a lot of
this conventional wisdom is wrong.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Also, what's happening on the Republican side in this race
is insane. So you have Paxton versus Cornin Cornyn is
a little less insane.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
Really grit to got a fucking curve.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Here, Yeah, Paxton is really insane. The two of them
are duking it out. So as much as look, if
Teller Rico is this boy wonder, which we've had him
on this podcast we thought he was great.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
We've had Jasmin on this podcast, we thought she was great.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
If he's this boy genius who can really do it
and who I mean, he's certainly you know, Joe Rogan
really likes him, then he shouldn't have trouble winning the primary.
I think the idea of not doing primaries because somehow
they hurt the candidate is really like exactly the wrong
way to think about primaries.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
Strong agree. I think there's also just an interesting thing
that both sides of this, and you know, I very
rarely over both sides anything seem to what the primary
shut down don't want to contest whatever it's advantageous for
their side. A lot of time, these arguments did to
be very silly, right, I don't.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
See why people need to run interference. Over at our
YouTube channel, we have some really exciting stuff. Jesse and
I have made a documentary. It's called Project twenty twenty nine,
A Reimagining. It's a series about how democrats can deliver
(07:31):
popular policies when they regain power. The first episode is
up now. It's the first part of the series, and
we're going to examine what went wrong with some of
the Biden administration's approach to policies that may have prevented
Democrats from being able to deliver the broad anti corruption
(07:54):
legislation that needed to happen, and by the way, that
would have prevented some of the corruption we're seeing right now.
The first episode dives deep into the first step of
fixing American politics.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
It may sound unsexy.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
But it's a big, important issue, and that big subject
is campaign finance reform. For this episode, we talk to
some of the smartest people we know, professors and academics,
people like Lawrence Lessig, Tiffany Muller, Michael Waldman, and Tom Moore.
(08:32):
Republicans were prepared for when they got the levers of power.
Democrats need that same kind of preparation.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
That's why we.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
Need to start the conversation on how democrats can do
the same thing. So please head over to our YouTube
channel and search Molly John Fast Project twenty twenty nine
or go to the Fast Politics YouTube channel page and
you'll find it there and help us spread the word
and stay tuned for more episodes. Jim Acosta is the
(09:07):
author of The Substack, The Jim Acosta Show, and the
author of the New York Times best selling book The
Enemy of the People, A Dangerous Time to Tell the
Truth in America.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Welcome back to Fast Politics. Now I get to interview you.
Speaker 5 (09:22):
Yeah, I love it. Perfect lest work for me.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
I'm going to ask you a lot to know.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
I think it's more work to be the subject than
the object.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Ooh, discuss interesting.
Speaker 5 (09:35):
You might be right about that, but for me, not
so much. You know, I'll do as little as possible.
All the pressure is on you.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Now you're getting the real You're in the real, uh,
Because sometimes you can just ask a question and then
somebody can talk for forty five seconds.
Speaker 5 (09:53):
And It's like, oh, what were they saying? Where am I?
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Oh, look there's something on my phone.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
I'm doing it right.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Yeah, I feel like but it is a fascinating moment
in American politics.
Speaker 5 (10:08):
It really is now.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Today Marjorie Taylly Green you may have heard of her,
Trump had tweeted about her. Yes, she had then shown
that she got no money from a pack, and he
got you know what, two hundred million dollars? Something crazy
sum of money? Is that?
Speaker 2 (10:28):
What is that?
Speaker 1 (10:29):
I cannot begin to quantify. Those numbers were humo. I
saw the number and I thought it would be like
two million dollars, But it was like, wasn't it like two?
Speaker 5 (10:38):
I mean, it was some, it was not so it
was a large amount of money. I saw that. My
reaction to all this is can be summed up as fight, fight, fight,
you know this whole I see people rolling out the
red carpet.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
Yeah, two thirty million dollars, two hundred and thirty million
dollars from my pack. I don't know how that works.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Go on? Yes, well, and.
Speaker 5 (11:00):
Also, you know, Marginill Green talking about this stuff feels
I don't know what's the word for it. I guess
people will say it's anti Israel, but it feels kind
of you know.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
She has had her as a Jew, she has had
her forays with anti Semitism before.
Speaker 5 (11:17):
Was there a Jewish space laser thing?
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Yeah? Does that strike me that her anti Israel stance
is completely due to her belief in the importance of
not killing Palestinians.
Speaker 5 (11:30):
Yes, I'm guessing that the whole plight of the Palestinian
thing is not top of mind for Marjorie Taylor Green.
I mean that's just a guess on my part. But
putting all that aside and all of the different rabbit
holes we could go down, I mean, you know, people
rolling out the red carpet to welcome MTG to the resistance,
I mean, please knock that off. Please stop doing that
(11:50):
to somebody. I remember in the run up to January sixth,
when she was putting out video saying that Donald Trump
won the twenty twenty election in a blowout. I mean,
this is somebody who has not just one, but like
a whole panoply of that shit, crazy conspiracy theories that
I don't believe she has abandoned.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
And so, yeah, no, she's not resistance, She's she's not
she is not on the side of the left.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
But yeah, she does.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
And again this is something as someone who has covered
the You have covered the swamp longer than I've covered
the swamp, and you even live in the swamp, whereas
I would never Yeah, but I think it's quite interesting.
I do think and this is not a compliment for
Marjorie Taillergreen in any shape or form. She does truly
(12:37):
believe in things where which is I mean, how what
percentage of congressional Republicans and Democrats really believe?
Speaker 3 (12:47):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (12:48):
No, I agree with you, and I think that I mean,
she has kind of a knack for getting under his skin,
which is a quality I like, you know, and it
is a quality that is not shared by many in
the Republican Party. I do think that. Listen, you can
say all of the terrible things in the world that
you can about margin Daller Green. There's a lot to say,
But the way that she stood on the side of
releasing the Epstein files, I'm just going to say right
(13:11):
now that should be commended. Being pro releasing the Epstein
files is a good thing. But you know, there's something
going on with the backstory between these two that we
have not gotten to. The bottom of and it feels
like it's going to bubble to the surface any day now.
This does not feel like Trump going after Liz Cheney.
There's a dimension to this that I don't think we
(13:31):
might have enough visibility on.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
We do know he refused to back her Senate campaign, yes, which.
Speaker 5 (13:39):
Is not wise on his part, because, I mean, one
thing that people don't understand. And in Georgia, the Republican
Party really does not like Donald Trump very much. And
there are people like Brian Kamp and so on who
and the second Rathensburger. I mean, there's a whole slew
of Republicans there who are very traditional establishment Republicans and
(14:01):
they do not like Donald Trump, and they're pretty out
in the open about.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
It, right.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
And then you have a complete nutter who also does
not like Donald Trump anymore. Both different sides of the
Republican Party, both not that happy with Trump.
Speaker 5 (14:14):
It is a preview of coming attractions, I think, you know,
I mean, you know the other thing that I did
not think we would get to the end of this year.
And my prevailing thinking on Donald Trump is is he
going to make it to the end of this term?
Because he is more and more out to lunch by
the day, he seems more detached from reality and just
(14:35):
you know, seems cognitively in a very different place than
he was even a year ago.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
I'm talking about the naps.
Speaker 5 (14:43):
The naps, I mean, the truth social posts, you know,
the stuff that he is saying, you know, the Somali
immigrants is I mean, some of this. You could say, well,
isn't this all the shit he's been saying since twenty fifteen. Yes,
to some extent, that's true. But it feels like, you know,
you look at pick of him, the bruises on the hands,
of the mysterious absences, the long weekends, you know there's
(15:07):
something going on, and I just you know, it's a
good thing when you and I've talked about this, when
authoritarians are incompetent, it is also and when they're in
a state of cognitive decline. And I think that's where
we are right now.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Donald Trump, he definitely has the bruises. Bruises are We
keep seeing the bruises. He's trying everything he can not
to show his hands, but we see the bruises. There's
definitely a feeling like he's having trouble staying awake. We
saw he had that North Korean style cabinet meeting, one
of my absolute favorite things he does. Or they go
(15:40):
around and talk about how great he is. The Secretary
of Education Linda McMahon, known for mostly being a Trump
downer whose husband created WWE and then had to leave
because of he had some I think he had a
sexual harassment right stuff there, Yeah, not good alleged bad step.
(16:02):
She of course does the Department of Education, because when
you think about education, you mostly think about wrestling. He
just nodded the hell out right. I mean, she was
talking and he was all.
Speaker 5 (16:14):
He was out. I mean he was I mean, this was,
you know, Mitch McConnell style, like you know, I'm just
going to leave for a while, I'll be back, you know.
And it was not just during Lynna McMahon. It was
Marco Rubio. It was several people around the table. I mean,
it was we've gone from the dear Leader treatment to
the good night Grandpa treatment, like that's they're each taking
(16:37):
turns putting Donald Trump to sleep as they go around
the cabinet room these days. And this is not the
same guy that we saw on the campaign trail, even
like a year and a half ago. It just I've
been around him enough to know, like the contrast.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Is there adds the agrig culture secretary of Brooke Rowlands. Yeah,
was talking about how great he was and thanking him
for preventing hurricanes, and he was The camera panned over
and he.
Speaker 5 (17:08):
Was like, oh, yeah, Grandpa likes to be told that
he prevented hurricanes. Puts them right to bed.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Yeah, very so terrific.
Speaker 5 (17:18):
You can roll out the mats on the floor in
the kindergarten room and drink our lemonade and go right
to sleep.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
So Donald Trump has just one year down.
Speaker 5 (17:28):
Yeah, okay, somebody draw me a picture as to how
he gets to twenty twenty. Doesn't twenty twenty eight three
years seem like a real stretch for him?
Speaker 2 (17:35):
That seems like a stretch.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Don't mean again, he'll be eighty two. He has the
greatest cheans ever. He does seem very tired.
Speaker 5 (17:45):
Though he seems extremely tired. And I will tell you,
having covered him, you know up close, where are the
press conferences. He doesn't do press conferences. The most he
can do now is he brings the little kids into
the room and he screams at them and calls them names,
and then he sends them away. That's his that's the
extent of him doing question and answer time now is
(18:06):
on Air Force one or in the overlock. Doesn't do
press conference, doesn't do rallies. Remember that special election y
where he literally phoned it in. He called Mike Johnson,
and Mike Johnson held the cell phone up to the
cameras and Donald Trump was talking about how they can't
lose this ruby red district in Tennessee. And the old
is he would have done the Hangar rally where he
(18:26):
flies in and gets off of Air Force one and
it cost the taxpayers a billion dollars. Doesn't do that anymore.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
I want I want to talk to you about something important.
So Punchball News Jake Scharman, the woman's Anna Palmer have
this congressional newsletter podcast. It's actually I think really good.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
They're good. I like that they're really it's like a resource.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Now that Politico has become whatever it is, you really
need Punchball because they're really in there.
Speaker 5 (18:57):
Yeah, doesn't feel as grifty or like yeah five seconds, yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
As you what I mean?
Speaker 1 (19:07):
That was mean, but but but really needed as I
was glazing them. But what I wanted to talk about
was neither none of that, but was actually this. They
do these surveys of congressional staffers, which I think are
pretty useful. I'm going to read to you the results
because I want your hottest take on this, and I
(19:29):
think that you will have something to say about this
because all right, so Hill staffers, Okay, so they they
talk to Hill staffers, they send out this thing. This
is the kind of thing Hill staffers love to do
because they're not supposed to you know, they're not supposed
to be public facing.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
So here we go.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
We asked which of the big four in leadership was
the most effective?
Speaker 2 (19:54):
All right, you ready?
Speaker 1 (19:57):
Did you see this already?
Speaker 5 (19:58):
I didn't see this, so this is actually suspenseful for me.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
Okay, oh it's not going to be though, once I
started talking. So fifty four percent of senior Democratic aids
chose as the most effective leader on the hell John Thun.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
Interesting, so they said Thune.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
Then they said Minority Leader Ha Teem, which makes sense.
So he gets twenty seven percent, thirteen percent for Mike Johnson,
which makes sense because he's incompetent. And just six percent
of Democratic staffers chose Minority Leader Chuck Schumer as the
(20:38):
most effective interesting and.
Speaker 5 (20:41):
The Chuck Schumer was never a Harry Reid type of guy,
was he. I mean, there was the old expression the
most dangerous place in Washington was between a camera and
Chuck Schumer. I mean, he was like sort of that
was his stock in trade. He was sort of the
show voting senator who would gun for spots on the
Sunday talk shows and that sort of thing. And I
think there are real problems that people have in the
(21:03):
Democratic Party with the job that Chuck Schumer has done
as the minority leader. And I mean the question becomes
it's sort of unsenatorial for Democrats to throw him overboard
and bring in a different majority leader if they were
to take the majority after the upcoming midterms. But that
is not surprising me. The other thing that's very funny
is that Mike Johnson is even in the running there.
(21:25):
I mean, he's he wasn't on a talk show the
other day saying or a podcast saying that he works
eighteen hours a day or twenty one hours a day.
He was trying to make it sound as though, you know,
he's the hardest working man in show business.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
He is literally nobody believes nobody believes it.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
I mean, my favorite thing about Mike Johnson is that
he's bad at his job and hated by everyone.
Speaker 5 (21:45):
Yes, there's no question about it. And this whole Epstein thing,
I mean, the way that blazed through Congress was deeply
embarrassing for him. I mean, first of all, he tried
to he I mean, everybody say, oh, the Democrats shut
down the government. No, Mike Johnson showed down the government
like that's yeah. You can't just say the Democrats shut
down the gunment. There are people in Washington media who
are saying that should be ashamed of themselves. When Mike
(22:07):
Johnson actually shut down the House of Representatives, it would
not swear in audily degreel. I guess that was work
on his part when he did that, But literally nobody
in Washington believes he works very hard. He essentially takes
marching orders from Donald Trump, and you know he is
He's been delegated the speakership by Donald Trump. That is
not the same thing as working as He's not a
(22:30):
John Bayner, He's not a not a Tip O'Neil or
a Nancy Pelosi. Those are real speakers of the House.
He is sort of a speaker in name only, it
seems to me.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
Yeah, I'll be curious to see what happens now. There's more,
They're going to be more specials that his lead will
get tighter. I want us to talk for a minute
about the other thing that's going on right now, which
is basically, there's this merger Warner You're all place of work.
(23:01):
Oh yeah, may or may not get bought by Netflix,
though CNN would not be part of that deal. We
have Paramount that swept in and thought they were beloved
by Donald Trump, and they have this wild set of investors,
including the Qataris who might want to buy Warner, and
(23:22):
also CNN, and also Jared Kushner. Jared Kushner, known to
be great at running media businesses discuss Yeah.
Speaker 5 (23:32):
Which one did he own? The New York Observation?
Speaker 1 (23:34):
The New York Observer, He ran it into the ground.
Speaker 5 (23:37):
I mean, it is sort of where we are right
I Also, I love that Jared Kushner was meeting face
to face with Vladimir Putin, which I know made everybody
around the world feel so much better about you know.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Trump Milan.
Speaker 5 (23:51):
He was a represented of the Trump Royal Court. Yea, Yeah,
they're at the Kremlin when he met with Vladimir Putin.
But I mean, you know, it is sort of a
perfect encapsulation, a perfect crystallization of where we are right
now as a country in terms of our media. I mean,
I've been saying this for months. Corporate media is in
a lousy place right now. When we have a system
(24:13):
in this country where these giant companies own the news organizations,
the most prominent news organizations in the country, and then
they can be held over the barrel by the President
of the United States. That is not a free press,
that is not an independent news media. And I think
people need to wake up to that reality. I mean,
(24:33):
we are just not living in that world anymore. And
you know, yes it is. We can all snicker about
Jared Kushner being potentially part of this deal to buy
Warner Brothers Discovery, but at the same time it should
send a chill down to all of our spines because
a member of the Trump family owning that much media
in this country feels very putent, like it feels very
(24:56):
early days Putin in the Russian Federation. And you know
what I mean, I both talk to people like Ruth
BEng Guillot and people who are experts and authoritarianism, and
they will tell you of people like an Applebaum and
so on, that that the pace that Donald Trump is
on right now, despite his cognitive cline and naps and
everything else, is much faster than Vladimir Putin in his pace. YEA.
(25:21):
Consolidating power and taking over the media is part of that.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
Yeah, I mean, I would say the problem with Trump
is not so much that he's taking over the media
as the media is giving itself over to trust.
Speaker 5 (25:33):
Well, there's that, there's no question, but it's almost two
separate things, right, I mean, the bending of the knee
issue that we saw with ABC paying its bribe to
Donald Trump and CBS paying it's bribe donald Trump. That
is one thing. But we have something sort of and
I've said this before, that Trump has cracked the code
and how to hurt the press in this country, and
(25:55):
that he has revealed vulnerabilities that we I don't think
fully appreciated up until this point. That you could cause mischief,
You could cause a lot of chaos in these mergers
and acquisitions with these media companies in a way that
brings them to heal, that puts them over a barrel
(26:15):
and creates kind of leverage that we're not accustomed to
seeing in this country, and I think it's very disturbing.
And I mean, just today, Trump was threatening to sue
sixty Minutes again or go after CBS because of some
interview with.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
Margine Marjorie Taylor Green. He was mad about that. Marjorie
Taylor Green, I want to talk to you about that,
because I think that's kind of incredible. So Donald Trump
was mad about Marjorie Taylor Green and he was upset
that she had that she had done this sixty Minutes interview.
(26:51):
And it was like it was, I feel like a
great moment because we saw that Donald Trump, like your paramount,
had done so much to suck up to Donald Trump exactly.
They had just done everything they could, and yet it
wasn't enough.
Speaker 5 (27:09):
That's right, and I mean it underlines the point that
you and I were just making. Yes, this construct that
we have of corporate media in this country is bad,
and it's been exposed by Trump and so on. But
you know the idea that CBS, you know, pays this bribe,
pays this bullshit settlement to Trump, and they think, gosh,
you know, we got Donald Trump off our case. He's
not mad at us anymore. It never works, It's never
(27:32):
going to work. And these these cowardly media executives who
tell themselves in these boardrooms, my goodness, well if we
just give them fifteen million dollars, he'll shut the hell up.
They just don't understand how Donald Trump operates. What you've
done is just give the monster more food, and eventually
the monster will want more food. And I just don't understand.
(27:52):
These are supposed to be smart people running these media companies,
and really they're just craven cow words. They're they've they've
been able to manipulate their way into these positions, but
at the end of the day, they're just goddamn cowards.
And the only way out of this for the media
in this country is for these gutless executives to find
their damn spines and stand the hell up to this guy. Honestly.
(28:16):
I mean, I just to me, you know why. You know,
somebody I saw to give credit to Shuck Schumer. I
think he was saying the other day that now he
wants to, you know, go after CBS over the way
they edited the Trump interview. Yeah, you know, I mean,
there's Trump is He's He's just a shameless He's a shister,
you know. And and why these companies don't see that,
(28:38):
to me is just really it's astounding. But we see
FEFA giving Trump a participation peace price, you know.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
I mean, yes, these they're all soccer piece.
Speaker 5 (28:50):
It's just so it's so appalling and grotesque.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
Jim Acosta, will you come back anytime? Would love to.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
Annie Karney is the White House correspondent for the New
York Times. Welcome to Fast Politics, Anny Carney, Hello, Molly,
you do this beat? You've done many beats. We' knew
you from other beats, but I think you may have
hit a beat that is uniquely interesting and at a
very unique and interesting and strange moment. When did you
get to Congress twenty twenty two?
Speaker 4 (29:23):
Yeah, but it.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
Feels like the Mike Johnson Congress is a completely strange
and new animal discuss.
Speaker 4 (29:34):
Yeah. Well, you know, I think that I have recently
stumbled on a beat within a beat, which is these women,
and these Republican women. They're kind of the gift that
keeps on giving. I wrote a book last year, No,
it was this year, god where Marjorie Taylor Green and
Lauren Bobert elis Stephonic Nancy Mays were all kind of
characters I followed, and they have proved those have proven
(29:55):
to be worthy investments because they have been at the
center of pushing back against Johnson, pushing to against Trump.
They were worth worth my time. It turns out.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
Yeah, the players in this I was about to ask
you who the players were, and I think you've covered
it nicely. All of these women, though they are pushing
back against Johnson, but all have very different motivations. So first,
let's talk about Marjorie Taylor Green, because I think she
is the sort of loudest of the crew.
Speaker 4 (30:21):
Yeah, I think that's right. She's the loudest and sort
of the most interesting political arc that she's been on.
She's a person who only exists in Congress because Donald
Trump exists. Like this is not a person who transformed
herself to meet this moment, Like she discovered politics through
the QAnon conspiracy theory. Like she's a true believer. She
got stripped of her committees, her own colleagues wanted to
(30:44):
distance themselves from her. Trump himself did not endorse her
in her twenty twenty primary. So she gets here. She's
like far far right outside the mainstream, but like always
Trump's biggest cheerleader, and he liked her, and it just
seemed like she would say racist things. She was support
him no matter what. It just no one would have
predicted that the break with Trump, the person who's going
(31:05):
to really stand up to Trump in a meaningful way
would be Marjorie Taylor Green. She really starts breaking with
him on Epstein. As we saw, she's obsessed with the
fact that she won her twenty twenty eight primary without Trump,
like that really gave her this I don't need him since.
So when the White House starts pressuring all the Republicans
to not sign on to this petition to force a vote,
(31:27):
she's like, f.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
That this is a discharge petition to release the Ebstein files.
Speaker 4 (31:32):
Right, And then you know what I think happens with
these people, Like once you break on something big, they're
like the veil comes off the eyes, and like you
start to break on other things too. And I think
that that is sort of like she broke with him
on a number of issues where she's breaking with him
from the right America, first on Israel AI and then
(31:52):
she just gets this chip, this feminist chip on her
shoulder where she's like men and my party treat women terribly.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
Like unbelievable.
Speaker 4 (32:00):
And then it's like she's pissed at the good old
boys club. She's just mad. And I do feel like
a common thing with all these women is they're just
mad at how they're being treated. She announces that she's
leaving Congress, which is a shock, and like i've there's
just no notice, satisfying answer to why she's doing this.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
So that's MTG. Now explain to me, Lauren Baupert.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
And also, I think we need to talk about the
one who has the discharge petition about congressional stock trading,
Anna Paulina Luna, because that's bizarre too.
Speaker 4 (32:30):
She's this far right congresswoman from Florida. It's kind of
weird that she's so far right because unlike MTG, like
her district is not that far right. So she's always
like she's not like super vulnerable. She's on the she's
not like a person like Marjorie who would have had
tenure for life in Congress that she had wanted to.
Luna like gets challengers.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
And Luna was involved in this thing about nursing on
the house Flora like even though she's very far right.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
She's got things she needs.
Speaker 4 (32:59):
Yeah, which that's that's good to bring up now when
we're talking about like why the women are so mad.
She tried to work with Democrats to do a bill
where you could have remote proxy voting for maternity leave,
so that when you're like thirty nine weeks pregnant or
have a six week old, you can vote by proxy
and not have to either let your constituents down by
(33:20):
missing votes or haul your baby to the House floor
with you and travel with a newborn right now is
their options. And Mike Johnson killed that, even though Trump
had sided with Luna. This was one time when Mike
Johnson got Trump to get out of his side. Mike
Johnson killed that. So he already has pissed off women,
like on a number of issues. Now. Anna Coulinolan is
(33:42):
back with a new petition to ban members from training stock.
This is a issue that's like broadly popular with Democrats
and Republicans' populist issue that Mike Johnson has been holding
up from coming to the floor for a vote.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
So Democrats have also held this issue.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
Up from Pelosi.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
Pelosi oddly did not want to vote on this issue,
which is Strange Pelosi.
Speaker 4 (34:08):
It was a huge issue for her.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
Paul loved to trade the stocks.
Speaker 4 (34:11):
Paul did love to trade the stocks, that's correct.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
Made a lot of money trading the stocks.
Speaker 4 (34:17):
In fact, I'm working on a store on that right now. Anyway,
these people would keep going around Johnson because they don't
have respect for him. They don't think he's that powerful.
They are not afraid to publicly challenge him, either by
disparaging him in the media or just going around his
leadership by getting a discharge petition to try and bring
(34:37):
votes to the floor that he does not want there.
And a lot of the have being led by the women.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Discharge petitions just explained us the math because right now
there are a bunch and before the Epstein one passed,
one hadn't actually passed in like seven years, right, They're.
Speaker 4 (34:53):
Really rare, Okay. So the way the House works is
the speaker has total control of what comes to the
floor for a vote. The only way a rank and
file member can get a bill to the floor that
the speaker doesn't want there is by getting two hundred
and eighteen members to sign in a petition to bring
it to the floor. That's a lot because that's a majority.
That means you need Democrats and Republicans. That's hard in
(35:15):
this moment that we live in. So it's really hard
to get two hundred eighteen signatures on something that. Oh
and you're only doing this if your own leadership, you know,
is against it. So you're going around leadership, So they're
going to be like whipping votes against you if you're
trying to do this. So it's really hard. But we saw,
you know, they succeeded on Epstein under immense pressure, and
(35:35):
Johnson had to do something he had been really trying
not to do and bring that to the floor for
our vote. So I think they're empowered to kind of
keep screwing with him, and if they get the votes
on this, it's just'll just be another embarrassment for the speaker.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
So Representative Luna has a discharge petition against congressional stock trading.
Is she catching any kind of.
Speaker 4 (35:57):
Yeah, she's getting. I mean, look, this is it's a
good issue to do a discharge on because AOC and
Chip Roy both are four banning members from trading stocks.
It really appeals to the far left of the far right.
It's something that could get bypars and support. It's one
of the top reasons people like don't trust Congress hate Congress.
So yeah, I think that's a good issue for a
discharge to pick up steam.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
Let's talk about Stavonic next, because she had a big
Twitter fight with leader.
Speaker 4 (36:24):
Explain you always know Congress is functioning when they're having
Twitter fights. That's always a good sign. At least. Stephanic
is a member of House leadership, so she's different from
these other ones we've been talking about, and leadership usually
doesn't attack leadership. Usually like some loud voice, a rank
and file person can attack leadership, and you understand why
(36:44):
that's happening, but leadership versus leadership is like a different
level of dysfunction. So she attacks him, calling him a
liar because he's blocking some provisions she wants in the
defense spending bill, and she calls him a habitual liar
on Twitter, which is like it's a lot, that's a
lot of infighting, bringing in the public, not doing anonymous sources,
just like straight on attacking him. And then she said,
(37:07):
this is like exactly what we've wanted to expect from
the speaker who's constantly falling down on our agenda. So
it's like aggressive. Then she gets Trump to intervene and
they have a three D way phone call and she
gets her way.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
But Stefanic has really gotten screwed by Trump. She has
he put her at the UN and then he changed
his mind.
Speaker 4 (37:27):
First he appoints it to the UN ambassador. She loses
that because he can't afford to lose another seat in
the House because the margins are so small, so he
pulls it. Then to add insult into injury, She's running
for governor in New York now, and her whole campaign
is based on calling mom Donnie like a scary socialist, a.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
Ge hottest socialist.
Speaker 4 (37:48):
Right, and then he has him in for like that
bizarre love best and the oh hoole just oh and
was asked specifically like a last Stefanic has been calling
him a gie hottis and Trump's like, no, no, no, that's
not true.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
Even worse, he said, you just have to say stuff
like that from the campaign, like she doesn't even believe.
Speaker 4 (38:07):
It totally undercuts her anyway. She can't. What she has
done is totally blamed Mike Johnson for failure of her
cabinet nomination. She's saying that he undermined her from the beginning.
He told Trump, don't let her out of the house.
I need the votes. And a lot of her colleagues
in my story, like her colleagues said this to me
on the record, that like she can't blame Trump, so
(38:28):
she's blaming Johnson anyway, and they think that, like this
is really just personal, like she's just so mad that
this happened to her. Whatever the point is, she feels
like the only way to actually communicate with him is
by going to the media or going to Twitter and
attacking him, and then she got what she wanted. She
doesn't feel like she can actually speak to him in private.
(38:48):
That relationship is totally combusted. So the only way they
seem to communicate is at least a phonic attacking him
Trump intervening, Mike Johnson relenting and anyway. It's another woman
that she thinks they're going to lose the house. She
thinks he has no strategy. I think that, like we
have to be aware of her motivations these personal issues,
like that doesn't take away from the fact that she's
(39:10):
saying statements that are true. He told The Wall Street
Journal last week in an interview, Like if there's a
speaker vote today, he wouldn't have the votes to be speaking.
I think that's also true statement. So she's being motivated
by whatever personal things. But she is spitting truths as they.
Speaker 1 (39:26):
Say, unbelievable now. Lauren Bobert, Yeah, Bobert is a maverick.
Speaker 4 (39:34):
Bobert is the one of these people that least wants
to be known. Like, she does not talk to us.
She does not talk to anybody. All the others really do.
She's got a chip on her shoulder. She doesn't play
the game. Like Marjorie Taylor Green learned to play the
game over the years she's been here, tried the inside game,
she tried the outside game. She learned to work the media.
(39:55):
She learned to talk to reporters in the hallway at
the Congress. She kind of came to underst that, like
in the reporting environment of Congress, like talking to reporters
is part of the job, and Lauren bober does not
do that. She has never kind of evolved in that
way over the years that she's been here. She still
does not think it's part of the job. She still shirk,
(40:16):
like runs away. So I was really interested that she
held firm on the Epstein vote because she was under
immen's pressure. Trump was calling her personally. They brought her
the situation room to meet with Pam Bondy and Cashtail
for like an exclusive briefing. I'm sure Lauren Bober has
never been in this situation room before. She was one
of the deciding votes there. And what I noticed in
(40:38):
the days afterwards, she really other ones kind of leaned
into I mean clearly Green leaned into breaking with Trump,
saying I'm real America. First, Lauren Bober quickly tried to
touch things up, like she tried to make a look
there was no gaylight like, of course me and Trump
both want the same thing. She did not want that
distance between her and the administration. But I think what
that speaks to it comes back to Mike's Johnson's mistake
(41:00):
a little bit, because that vote came after they were
home for eight weeks, because he sent the house all
during the government shutdown for eight weeks. And I was
told by my sources that all Lauren Bobergert heard for
eight weeks when she was home from her voters was
thank you for staying strong on Epstein, We're with you
the air whoops, thank you, like do not back down.
(41:24):
Don't like no, she went. Did she hear like, you're
getting in Trump's way, You're not being loyal? She heard,
You're where we want you to be, So that I
think strengthened her resolve to not be cowed by Trump anyway. Anyway,
So I think that again goes to like the mismanagement
some of Johnson's dismanagement.
Speaker 1 (41:43):
Right, if he hadn't sent everyone home, they wouldn't have
spent so much time with their constituents, right, And what
they really.
Speaker 4 (41:48):
Heard from their constituents was that it was clear cut
that this was a popular vote with their constituents.
Speaker 1 (41:54):
So let's talk about Nancy Mays. Because Nancy Mays is
she was crying in the hallway. She had this problem,
was her ex fiance. What's happening?
Speaker 4 (42:07):
She's been all over the map politically, and it's hard
at this point to take what she says as being
something genuine because seems to be very much like finger
in the wind or trying to gain intention. What I've
come to understand of Nancy Mace's philosophy of being in
politics is that people need to know your name. It
(42:29):
doesn't matter why, it doesn't matter if they like you,
They just need to know who you are, and that's
what drives her. A lot of the time. She tracks
her own name recognition and that's pretty much all she tracks.
So like, that's a good way to think about when
you see her in the news. To her, it's all
being in the news equals votes. I think that's a
little simplistic, but anyway, that's how she thinks about it.
(42:52):
That being said, she her entire political brand has been
built on being a survivor of sexual assault fourteen when
she was sixteen. She's accused her ex fiancee of like
horrible things, drugging and raping her and other women. He
has denied all that an he's sooner too right, It's
very messy. But saying that, like, if there's one thing
(43:14):
that she has not moved on that seems to be
driven out of actual like personal trauma, it's her views
on like women being sexually abused. And so this Epstein
thing was really even for someone like Mace who she
looks She's running for governor right now in South Carolina.
She could certainly use Trump's endorsement in that race. She
(43:34):
risked BA for sure by going against him on the
Epstein petition. But if there's one issue where she seems
to really be driven by her own experience and is
not going to move, it was this one. And she
didn't to her This is very very personal, and we
saw that picture of her crying after meeting with the
Epstein victims. It was a pretty raw Yeah. So again,
(43:57):
oh and she is. I reported last week that she
is so fed up with Johnson and the way he's
handling everything that she wants to go meet with Green
and talk about resigning early.
Speaker 1 (44:07):
Also right, right, right, And then she denied it for
you know, who knows.
Speaker 4 (44:13):
I'm just like going to say that, Like I felt
very confident that reporting. I don't think she'll actually go
through with it.
Speaker 1 (44:19):
But she did say it. Yeah, Annie Carney, will you
come back.
Speaker 4 (44:23):
Of course anytime?
Speaker 2 (44:25):
Always no perfect, Jesse.
Speaker 3 (44:31):
Cannon, my job fast. So there is blockbuster reporting. The
New York Times has it, more perfect Union has it.
Instacart has been price fixing within their app to different
users and using algorithmic pricing. This is a thing that
lead to Cod's FTC previously is stopped with other fields
and this seems like a real nightmare for the affordability
(44:51):
crisis that Donald Trump is pretending isn't happening.
Speaker 1 (44:54):
Yeah. Again, this is like why you want to have antitrust,
why you want to have a government that protects people.
But this is for sure what this administration does not
want to do. So you're going to have situations like this.
Not super surprised by it, but it is quite shitty
to see that instacart is charging different prices in different
(45:15):
places and serge pricing for eggs. You know, it's just
completely insane. I mean, I just think it's corrupt. And
the problem is that when things are corrupt, you stop
trusting the government, right, you have voters stop trusting it.
Speaker 2 (45:30):
So I think it's quite shitty.
Speaker 3 (45:33):
Yeah. I mean, we had Tim Moo on our last
episode who wrote this wonderful book called The Age of
Extraction that really talks about this, that what we're about
to see is nar where all these subscription companies, all
these companies that do things like this, are going to
find ways to extract every dollar out of the consumer.
And that's not going to go so well when everybody's
talking about inflation and how affordability is going down. And
(45:56):
I think we know who's going to get less popular
from it.
Speaker 1 (45:59):
Yeah, hard to him getting less popular, but it seems likely.
Speaker 3 (46:03):
He's right on his way to that end of the
George W. Bush second term numbers exactly.
Speaker 1 (46:09):
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.
Speaker 2 (46:29):
Thanks for listening.
Host
Molly Jong-Fast
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