February 12, 2025 • 42 mins
Substack's The Jim Acosta Show host Jim Acosta examines Trump’s strategy to exploit the weak points in our government.
Wired’s David Gilbert details the threats Elon’s DOGE-obsessed teenagers pose to U.S. national security.
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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 the American Bar Association is asking
lawyers to adhere to the rule of law.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
We have such a great show for you today.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Substacks own the Jim Acosta Shows. Jim Acosta joins us
to talk about Trump's strategy to poke holes in the
weak points of the government. Then we'll talk to Wired's
David Gilbert about the threats Elon Musk's DOGE and the
teenagers who work for it pose to US national security.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
But first the news.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
My we are no fans of Harrick Adams at this podcasts.
The news is very bad. So I think what was
an interesting thing though, was actually to do a timeline
of this before we get there, which was that yesterday morning,
I woke to a tweet that I immediately sent to
you and many people, which was Mayor Adams gathered as
top commissioners early Monday to give marching orders under the
(01:05):
new administration. Don't criticize President Trump, don't interfere with immigration enforcement,
and trust the mayor, sources told the city, and I thought, hmmm,
why would he do that.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
And then so I would like to take a moment
here to step back for a second and embrace.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
What you and I both know to be the mayoral curse.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Yes, I think you and I discussed this off air
every week for years.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
We discussed this often and always.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
The greatest city in the world has a mayor problem
and it rhymes with Adams. No, we have the worst
mayors in the world were cursed basically Rudy, I actually
like Bloomberg, but you don't. And then the groundhog killer Bill.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
De Blasio, build Abudle, build Bungler.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
And then now we have our mayor, a simple dyslexic man,
just like everyone else. Now I'm dyslexic, so no shade
on dyslexia. It's my favorite learning disability. But he's very
corrumpt Let's be honest here, being mayor is about more
than just hanging out at zero bond. And this is true.
(02:22):
So basically what this all looks like to me. So
the mayor got indicted a bunch of indictments. There was.
First of all, there was a while when everyone knew
he was going to get indicted, and everyone in his
inner circle kept resigning or marrying each other. Then eventually
he got indicted, and there were supposedly more indictments coming.
He got indicted for his sketchy relationship with Turkey, but
(02:45):
there's definitely also other stuff going on. Then he went
and sucked up to Trump, and now he has had
his indictments dismissed but without prejudice, which means that if
he stops behaving and letting Trump's deportation squads in, if
he stops doing that, then Trump can refile the charges.
(03:08):
By the way, there's a lot of insane details about this.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
You should definitely read.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
There's articles in the Times and The City Is this
really great news source that covers a lot of this.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
Helgate also did a phenomenal one right Hellgate.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
There's all sorts of insane details here, but the net
net of the story is that basically.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Our mayor is now free to.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Act as Trump's lackey until Trump decides that he doesn't
need him anymore. And that is not super surprising because
we saw him sucking up to Trump to try to
get a pardon. But it's yet another dark day for
American democracy.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
But what I really appreciated is, in typical Maga fashion,
they had to make sure that everyone could understand the message.
So what they did right after that was the next headline.
Trump has part in former Illinois Governor Rod Blogoyevitch, who
did some of the most brazen bribery you've ever seen.
And he would that's okay because Rod Bolgoyevitch has been
(04:11):
kissing my ass for quite a while, and I want
to show this is all you got to do.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Yes, yes, yes, Rod Blogoyevitch.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
So you'll remember he tried to sell the US Senate
seat vacated by former President Barack Obama. He served as
the governor for six years. It's funny because remember on
this podcast, we interviewed the great Governor Pritzker, and I said,
what are you doing next? And he said, if I
can serve out my second term, I will be a
history maker.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
Which was left us both lefting, so we probably had
to cut it.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
He's like our hero after saying that, But federal prosecutors,
I mean, look, he turned the government into a money
making operation for himself, or tried to and shaking down
at children's hospital and racetrack owners who among us, and
he went to do out. Look, the larger issue here
is that Donald Trump doesn't want bribery to be illegal
(05:07):
and let us continue here. Because Trump pauses enforcement of
law banning foreign bribery, you would think that this is
a law that you can't pause. First of all, when
is foreign bribery good? Like I would like my government
officials to be able to feel comfortable taking bribes from
(05:28):
foreign governments.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Kind of feels to me, not like training the swamp,
but importing the alligators into the swamp.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
The Foreign Corruption Practices Act. What I love about this
administration is that we are learning all of these laws
that you and I never thought, Like, who would have
even thought? The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act makes it illegal
for companies to operate in the United States to pay
foreign government officials to secure or keep business deals, you know,
(05:55):
like kickbacks.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Well, Donald Trump said no.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Kickbacks, okay, ordered to pause in the enforcement of a
federal law aimed at curbing corruption in most multinational companies.
Curbing corruption, you say, no one wants that. That sounds terrible,
says it creates an uneven playing field for people who
want to be corrupt.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Can't curb it, gotta do it.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
The law makes it illegal for companies that operate in
the United States to pay foreign government officials to secure
business deals. This is like quid pro quo is known.
It's one of his favorite things. The law was enacted
in nineteen seventy seven. By the way, I just want
to pause for a second. This another post Watergate seventies
anti corruption law that Donald Trump is taking a pickaxe to.
(06:42):
Worth thinking about that for a minute. Mister Trump has
objected to the law. I love mister Trump. Mister Trump
has objected to the law which had led to charges
in huge minds against some of the world's largest companies.
I mean, this is the thing, right, God forbid? So
anyway that is now not being in forced because what
are laws anyway?
Speaker 3 (07:03):
It's really funny. The only time you'd have to learn
about these laws is when we'd meet shady characters like
Paul Manifort and Eric Adams. Trump sick offense which now
has led us to a logical conclusion in the reality
based world aka not ours, which is that the US
has slipped to a do low with the interraditional corruption Index.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Yes, shocking, I know you'll be shocked here.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
It's almost like causes, right.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
I man, incredible stuff.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Here we go lowest ever the US received its lowest
ever Corruption Perceptions Index score since the Transparency International's current
scale was established in twenty twelve. According to the group's
annual ranking of public sector corruption across one hundred and
(07:57):
eighty countries, the US is one of the forty seven
country is to receive its lowest score yet effectively at
its most corrupt point.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
You don't have to tell me that.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
I think we all agree that anyone who has read
a newspaper in the United States of America knows there
something sketchy going on in our government. We should not
be surprised at all a four point drop since twenty
twenty three. I wonder what changed in twenty twenty three.
The cleanest country is Denmark. Finland and Singapore are the
(08:29):
three cleanest countries, which is a bit strange. Seventh year
in a row that Denmark has led the pack. Venezuela, Somalia,
and South Sudan.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Make up the bottom three. We're coming for you.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Baby, America, America, America.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
America, American.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
So let's do one last piece of light news before
we end.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
No, this is my favorite story of the week. This
is everyone's favorite story of the week.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
I would even instruct the listeners. You just go seek
out this clip and get a nice smile for yourself.
Donald Trump declines to endorse JD. Vance as twenty twenty
eight Republican successor.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
This is the one bright spot of the corruption, the stupidity,
the anti science. There's so much bad stuff that comes
out of the ADMIN, and yet they are occasionally a
moment of just incredible hilarity.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
This is like my favorite moment. Donald Trump declines to
endorse JD.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Vance's twenty twenty eight Republican successor. President Donald Trump said
in a preview of his Super Bowl interview on Monday
that it's too early to endorse Vice President Jady Vans.
Brett Baher said, do you think of Vance as your successor?
And Trump said no, he is said no, and these said, budd,
(09:47):
He's very capable. I think you have a lot of
very capable people. So I don't know if anyone remembers
from the first season of this disaster, but Mike Pence,
Mighty Mike Pence, would like a word. Jim Acosta is
the author of The Substack of The Jim Acosta Show
(10:09):
and the author of the New York Times bestseller The
Enemy of the People. A dangerous time to tell the
truth in America. Welcome to Fast Politics, Jim Acosta.
Speaker 4 (10:23):
Molly, how are you. It's been too long.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
It's been too long and things are going great. What
are we like in the first month of the Trump
administration and we're already we have to cover of the
New York Times. Is it a constitutional crisis?
Speaker 4 (10:37):
Yeah? I do think it is a constitutional crisis. I mean,
you have the American Bar Association putting out a statement
saying that the administration cannot just violate the law, cannot
just violate orders from a judge. You know, the American
Bar Association doesn't just do that willy nilly. My sense
of it is is that, you know, having covered Trump
the first time around, it is the shock and ag campaign,
(11:00):
and he is trying to poke and prod different pressure
points and see, you know, where the vulnerabilities are. And
you know, he wasn't able to pull this off on
January sixth of twenty twenty one, and so he's trying
to figure out and his team is trying to figure out,
how do we go about putting together this maximalist view
of the executive branch? And you know, I do think
(11:22):
people should be alarmed. I don't think that that's overstating things.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
There's been a lot of talk about how these people
want to grow presidential power, shrink the checks and balances,
sort of disassemble some of the founding principles of how
American democracy works. I'm surprised at how much Doge has
played a part in that. Are you and discussed?
Speaker 4 (11:48):
Yeah, I mean, Molly, you and I were watching this
during the campaign, Elon Musk was talking about Doge. Trump was,
you know, putting Elon Musk on stage with his dark
mega hat and all of that. It just seemed like
a joke. It seemed like a lark. And I mean
they were deadly serious during the campaign. And what we're
now finding out is that, you know, basically Elon Musk
(12:10):
is operating like a co president. And you know, one
of the things that you know, people need to be
alarmed by is I think we're seeing a level of
corruption already inside the government that we have not seen
since the Watergate days when you have I mean, there's
there's a guy named Big Balls or something, what is
his name. He's nineteen years old, and he's been he's
(12:30):
been put in place over at State and DHS and
you know, who are these people who appointed them. I
find this to be highly alarming. We have not seen
anything like this before. And you know, I was down
at the Treasury Department. I wanted to go check out
the protest that they had the other day outside the
Treasury Department. It seemed like, you know, people are just
(12:52):
starting to wake up to what is taking place. I mean,
I think that this is, without question and infiltration by
an oligarch who is not only looking to feather his nest,
but again realize some vision of a maximalist, autocratic, authoritarian
style view of how the government should work in this country.
(13:14):
And it's just it's just completely anesthetical to the experience
you and I and others have had our entire life,
and so there should be pushback.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Yeah, I think that's true. And I also think there
is starting to be real pushback, which I guess is
good and also is strange. And the funny thing to
me is like they are trying to take away things
from people.
Speaker 5 (13:35):
I mean, like healthcare CFPB, right exactly, CFPB, A lot
of stuff that are the kind of things that people
have gotten used to, and I'm not sure they understand
that they can be taken away exactly.
Speaker 4 (13:50):
I mean, I think that we've sort of been operating
under the premise over the last you know, fifty years
or so that you know, the government does some things. Yeah,
every once in a while, there's some waste, fraud and
abuse that needs to be rooted out, but by and large,
we've been plugging along as a country with a social
safety net, Medicare, Medicaid, social security, government funded science, scientific
(14:15):
research of the work, the important work that they do
at the nih usaid that this notion that in addition
to having the Pentagon with the strongest military in the world,
you're also going to have soft power. I mean, all
of these sort of basics that people like John McCain
and John Kerry and Hillary Clinton and you name it,
Mitt Romney all sort of agree on this is what
(14:37):
government does. All of that. The rug has been pulled
out from under all of that, and I think we're
right now living through all of this collectively in real
time and upending of the American way of life that
you and I have been accustomed to for the last
fifty years now. I mean, I was talking to James
Carvel about this yesterday on my substack. He is of
the mindset that progressive Democrats that left so on, people
(14:59):
in the center center right, you care about all this,
should just sit back, let Trump fall in his face.
He's going to do it in time and so on.
I do worry a little bit that that is perhaps
letting the barbarians to the gate.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
Yeah, yeah, I think that's a mistake for any number
of reasons.
Speaker 4 (15:15):
I do too, And I love James. I heard him
say it. I was like, you know, some people are
just frigging traumatized by what is going on in this
country right now.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
I think also games is you know, certainly there will
be unforced errors, which are probably the only way that
democracy makes it through this thing. I don't think that
people should And in fact, the truth is, pushback works
with this crew, and we've seen that again and again
and certainly when it comes to things like ice going
into schools and ice going into searches and sending people
(15:48):
to GIMO. These are real shock and all paradigm shifts,
things that we don't do in this country using the
American military on civilians. These are things we don't and
there has to be pushback or else they won't stop.
Speaker 4 (16:03):
That's absolutely right. My experience has been with Trump that
the only language that he understands is pushback. The only
language she understands is sort of going nose to nose
in a way that says no this far and no farther.
One of the problems that we are experiencing right now
is there is almost no pushback inside the Republican Party anymore.
(16:26):
The enablers are in charge, and you know when they
are putting somebody through like Tulsea Gabbert for Director of
National Intelligence. You talk to diplomats around Washington. They are
terrified of that prospect that somebody as gullible as she
is when it comes to eating hook line and sinker,
swallowing hook line and sinker, talking points from the Kremlin
(16:46):
and Basha al Asada and that sort of thing. To
think that she's going to be in charge of the
intelligence community is astounding. When you have somebody like cash
ptel Over at the FBI. There were times, and it
wasn't that long ago, Moley, and again this is what
I'm talking about, the rug pulled out from under all
of us. There was a time, I don't know ten
years ago when you would have had ten fifteen Republican
senators saying, oh, hell no, we're not doing Tulsa Gabert.
(17:09):
We are not doing cash Betel and all of that
is out the window, right.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
No, No, we are definitely in a different world than
we were in twenty seventeen. Oh those halcyon days of
twenty seventeen, which we're not so great either. What I
think is useful when we look at this admin is
that there have been many dark times in American democracy
before this, and I always feel like it's important to
(17:35):
think of like post reconstruction, like you know, I mean,
some of it is that affluent white people have not
necessarily gone through this kind of civil rights war the
way that people of color have right, especially in the
you know, we've seen that in the South and the North.
Jim Crow is a really good example of that. But
there have certainly been other times when the government has
(17:58):
decided that they that they want to root out people
who don't agree with them. I think that's a helpful framing.
What do you think about that?
Speaker 4 (18:07):
I think so too. I mean, George Clooney is bringing
back good night and good luck to Broadway here, and
it is a perfect time to relearn the lessons of
the Red scare. I think it is a perfect time
to relearn the lessons of the civil rights movement of
the nineteen sixties, when people were you know, it sounds
sort of I guess corny or Quaine or cliche. This
(18:28):
to some I suppose not to be, but that folks
would rise up and want to march on Washington because
they're outraged over what is taking place. That is as
american as baseball. I mean, that is as american as
the George Washington portrait that is over my shoulder right now.
That is as American as a statue of liberty. To
scoff at that, I mean, it's almost as though the
(18:49):
language we are using, the discourse we are having, has
been so warped and manipulated, in large part by people
in the right who have cowed much of the country
into this position that, oh yeah, that their point of
view is completely within the realm of normal political dialogue.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
No.
Speaker 4 (19:05):
Donald Trump has but become a very effective vehicle for
folks on the far right to push everybody to the
edge of the cliff. And at some point you have
to stop retreating. At some point you do have to
dig in your heels and you have to stand your ground.
And you know the other day, when you know, Trump's
on air Force one coming back from the Super Bowl
or whatever, and he's talking about the January sixth defendants
(19:28):
were the ones who were assaulted. He was making that
claim to reporters. I mean, we are in a place
right now where the truth is just completely out the
window for almost half of the country, and so there
just has to be a muscular, determined, relentless pushback from
people who want to protect the American way of life.
(19:48):
And I just think that that is completely within the
bounds of like normalcy. I mean, I just, you know,
why the hell is that not happening. You know, it
should be happening.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
I'm so struck by the way that ever you want,
or at least a lot of these people in Trump
world don't really believe in any of this. So right,
like Trump is the convert. Jade Vance was never Trump
until a couple of years ago. Like all these people
don't really believe in any of this. I mean, even
Elon was Democrat, was donating to Democrats too. I mean,
(20:19):
I just, you know, it doesn't seem like anyone feels
any of this real deeply. Talk to me about that yeah.
Speaker 4 (20:25):
I think that's an excellent point, Molly. I mean, you know,
when jd. Vance of Yale Law School is saying that,
you know, judges can't overrule legitimate actions from the executive
or whatever it was that he posted the other day,
just basshit crazy stuff for a guy who appears to
be reasonably intelligent. I think what they have found, Molly,
is they found a trick that works. And I was
(20:47):
talking about this with Timothy Snyder and Applebaum in the
week before the election, and you know, one of the
scary things, and it is a sorry state of affairs
about authoritarianism, about autocracy, about fascism, is that it works
with a sizeable percentage of a civilized society. I hate
(21:07):
to put it out there like that, but it absolutely
is the case. And so what does that mean for
the rest of us. For the rest of us, it
means it doesn't matter if they feel a deeply down
in their bone marrow or if they know that this
is all crap and they're peddling it anyway, the rest
of us have to say, no, you know, you take
that somewhere else. That's just not going to work here.
(21:28):
This idea that you don't have smart senators on the
Republican side of the aisle up on Capitol Hill saying,
what in the hell are you talking about taking over
the Panama Canal? What in the hell are you talking
about taking over Canada and Greenland?
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Stop?
Speaker 4 (21:41):
It's nonsense. It's crazy talk. But it gets people on
the right riled up. And I think it is very
much in line with this autocratic, authoritarian view that they
are trying to inject into the bloodstream of this country.
And it just, you know, it's like a snake bite.
We got to suck it out and spit it out.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
And what i'ms for by is that it's just it's
not a huge percent into the American people who believe this.
It's probably less than fifty percent. Talk to me about that.
Speaker 4 (22:08):
That's an excellent point, because you're absolutely correct. I mean,
I think, you know, maybe what ten to fifteen percent
believe this stuff. How does a vocal minority get across
stuff that is completely unpopular with the vast majority of Americans.
They do it through force. They do it through intimidation,
(22:28):
they do it through threats. They do it through cleaning
out the federal government and replacing officials in important places
with coronis and hacks, and I think that is what
we're in the middle of right now. It is the
reason why they're cleaning out the federal government. This notion that, oh,
we're trying to root out waste, fraud, and abuse, bullony.
What you're trying to do is you're trying to clean
(22:49):
out ten, fifteen, twenty percent of the federal employees in
the government, replace them with hacks and cronies and morons
and ass wipes right out of college so you can
bully and intimidate the rest of the federal government to
get these very unpopular policies across. In what world do
we want to have the Trump administration doing away with
the Department of Education? Who the hell voted for that?
During the campaign?
Speaker 1 (23:09):
Nobody voted for Nobody voted for that. I'm curious when
we watch this unfold in real time. There's a lot
of things that make sense or you see where they're
going with it, But some things like their war on
the FBI, right, I mean, those guys are Trumpers, Like,
how do you think that plays?
Speaker 4 (23:28):
I think that if the rule of law doesn't mean something,
then where the hell are we? And I was going
to talk about this on my substack later today. The
reason why we don't go one hundred miles an hour
down the interstate and rob banks and stick up seven
eleven's and so on, all of us. The reason why
we abide by the law is because we know there
are consequences to it. If we're going to upend that,
(23:51):
we're going to upend the notion of the rule of
law and everybody's faith and adherence to the idea that
there's nobody is above the law. If we're just going
to abandon all of that, then you're going to end
up just total bedlam. I mean, how is it that
we have a Justice Department a couple of months ago
that says we have a great case against Mayor Eric
Adams in New York, and then out of nowhere, the
Trump administration walks in and they want to dismiss the case.
(24:13):
The same Department of Justice, and I mean obviously not
the same anymore. It's led by Trump's cronies. But that
should be highly concerning when you have somebody like cash
Betel my god, that is an enemy's list that he
has put out there. How in the world are you
putting somebody in charge of the FBI who has an
enemy's list. It's insane. We're on the dark side of
(24:33):
the moon, which is an overused expression of mining, but
it is truly the case. And Democrats are in a
position where they can't really do much of anything. They
can take stuff to court, that's you know. Governors and
attorney's general can do that sort of thing. They just
do not have the numbers and the Congress to stop
these dominees, especially when you have a Republican party that
is just going to enable Trump at every turn.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
Yeah, I mean they do have things they can do that.
I mean, if you think about if Newt Gingrid right,
there are things Democrats can do, just like there are
things new Gingridge did. Jim Acosta, thank you so much
for joining us.
Speaker 4 (25:07):
It goes too fast. Molly, great to talk to you again.
We're reunited.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
We're reunited. It's all happening, just as it should be.
David Gilbert is a senior reporter at Wired magazine. Welcome
to Fast Politics, Dave, thanks for having me. Wired has
been doing some of the best reporting on the dog drama.
(25:33):
What are they doing with the computers over there?
Speaker 6 (25:36):
It's a really, really good question, and for all the
talk of transparency that Elon Musk and Donald Trump are
talking about bring transparency to government. We really have, at
the granular level no idea what these guys are doing
with the data with the computers over there. What we
do know is that a lot of them, at least
(25:57):
are very young engineers, them straight out of at least
one of them straight out of high school. Some of
them are a lot of them straight out of college.
Some of them have done internships with musques Ai companies
or with his SpaceX or Neuralink or Twitter. He has
recruited these young, ideologically aligned people to come in and
(26:20):
effectivating do whatever he tells them to do. But what
they're actually doing with the data, we still don't really
have that insight at the moment.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
I don't know, because I'm not in anyone's head, but
it strikes me that the original justification was sort of
to update the software. I mean, is that what it is,
or I mean, what was the original justification there?
Speaker 6 (26:39):
I think the overarching thing is that they want to
treat government as a startup, and they want to get
these young and most of them are based on their
academic career, extremely bright kids and young adults, and he
wanted to bring them in, treat the government as a
startup and cost our make efficiencies based in the same
(27:00):
way that people would go into tech companies and make efficiencies.
And they do that by using a lot of these
guys are proficient in machine learning and artificial intelligence, and
that seems to be where their expertise lies. And the
understanding or the belief is that they are using some
sort of AI. One of my colleagues reported that the
(27:22):
GSA is already developing its own custom chatbot and AI
system and that they are using their feeding federal government data,
the data of every single person in the US, into
these systems in order to identify where cuts should be made.
But what we don't know is what those systems are. Like,
we know it's AI, but what does that mean. Are
(27:42):
they using off the shelf systems or are they creating
their own systems? Is this just Mosque's own grock chatbot
that we see on Twitter? Is that just you know,
as he just brought that into make savings within the
US government, Which is a statement that if you said
it's six months ago, sounds ridiculous, but today it sounds
actually plausible because what's happening there is just so mind
(28:04):
blowing that it could potentially be happening.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
Yeah, it's interesting because it's like, there's no one in
the world who doesn't want to cut government boast, right,
there's no one in the world who doesn't want these
really archaic systems run more like a startup. Right. These
ideas in principle are quite good. The problem is when
you get into the details.
Speaker 6 (28:25):
Right, Yeah, and when you try to do everything all
at once, and you do it without consulting elected officials
because none of these people are elected. It's being done
in the background, in secret by these young engineers and
by some older engineers at least. We reckon about thirty
people working for those at the moment in the various
(28:46):
different agencies across government, and they're being overseen by Steve Davis,
who is a longtime Musk ally and also Musque, and
then he is reporting back to the White House about
what's happening. And so that's all happening without any real
oversight from Congress, from elected officials, and we just don't
know what's happening in there.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
And it's not entirely clear that Trump understands what Musk
is doing either.
Speaker 6 (29:12):
Absolutely, I doubt he does at all. To be honest,
I'm not sure Musk exactly knows what's happening in a
lot of cases.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
Say more about that.
Speaker 6 (29:21):
If you look at the background of where the people
who we know are working for those have come from.
They were recruited in chat rooms and discord channels of
you know, people who are very young and have a
lot of maturing yet to do and aren't fully developed
in terms of their view of the world. But most
(29:43):
of them are, if not all of them, have this
kind of they're very very pro elon Musk, and they
see him as this ideal bigger of someone who has
made this in terms of you know, startups and technology
and building a huge fortune, and they seem to be
(30:04):
willing to do whatever he says. And the problem, I
think is that the guys who are in there have
come from worlds where they speak in chat rooms in
this way where people are just as guess, they're talking
in a certain way that is not how you'd expect
(30:25):
people to talk working inside government, and they have brought
that kind of energy and that's chaos into government where
there are people who have worked for decades in those
positions and they are being undermined by these nineteen twenty
twenty one, twenty two year old people who have no
life experience.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
Yes, I mean they're certainly the ideological problem, but the
fundamental question I have is what are they doing in there? Right? Like,
I mean, make government more efficient? But why do they
need all this information? I mean, for example, we saw
Elon said that he had discovered that there people have
multiple Social Security numbers or that again I don't know
(31:06):
how that would happen, but or that there's some kind
of extra money going around social Security. How would they
find that? And can you sort of talk us through
that a little bit?
Speaker 6 (31:17):
They can find it because if they're been given access
to these classified and sensitive data within government, and they
are able then to see the raw data. And I
suppose a lot of the claims that Mosque is making
is not appears to be based on the actual data
itself or him getting access to the data. It's based
(31:37):
on claims that are being made by other people on
X who are doing some you know, of their own
research quote unquote, yeah, not necessarily based on anathink that
can be verified or that had you know, the people
who are doing it don't have the inside knowledge of
exactly how these systems and these processes work because they're
extremely complex, they've been built up over decades. I think
(32:00):
one insight that we have been given is that there
was one member of Thuge who was fired last week
because of some racist tweets.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
When do they stop doing this? What's sort of the
endgame here are? Well?
Speaker 6 (32:12):
I guess where we are at the moment is there's
a standoff where the courts are pushing back on this
and saying that they have to stop doing a lot
of what they're doing.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
But they haven't stopped, right, They're still doing it.
Speaker 6 (32:24):
To an extent. They have said that they have stopped
doing some things. But the sense is that, you know,
if you look at what Elon Musk is tweeting about,
you know that it's a judicial coup instead of the
coup that he is actually carried out. He's calling this
a judicial coup because he is saying the courts are
stopping them doing whatever they want to do. And we
saw in one court fighting this week where the fired
(32:46):
Dolge engineer from last week, they initially said he didn't
have right access to the data, which means that he can.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
Look, let's read it right, yeah, he said they said.
Speaker 6 (32:56):
Initially he don't really don't read on the access, but
in a new court they update and said, oh, we
were given wrong information. He did actually have right access
and he was able to play with that data in
a sandbox as they call it.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
And that's the guy big balls.
Speaker 4 (33:11):
Right, No, that's a different guy.
Speaker 6 (33:12):
That's this is the guy who was fired, but who
now they've said they're going to rehire, even though it
was exposed that he had posted a lot of racist tweets.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
Okay, so there's one guy who was fired because he
had leaked information about the company it worked at.
Speaker 6 (33:28):
Right, So there's two guys. One guy is Marco Eles.
He was the guy who was fired. He was the
guy who had access to the Treasury data right access,
even though they said initially he was right. He is
apparently going to be rehired because moscous said he's going
to be hired, and Trump and Vance have wading and
saying he should be rehired as well. Edward Paris team
that is big Balls. He is the nineteen year old guy.
(33:48):
He is the guy who was fired from his previous
job for leaking information to an competitor. He also ran
a huge number of web domains, including one that was
registered to of them actually that were registered in Russia,
and one of them that was China facing looking for
clients in China. So, and he's got a pretty sketchy
(34:10):
background in terms of the kind of people who he
interacted with online. He was kind of in the world
of the Calm, which is this really scary online network
of people who do a mixture of cyber criminality and
sex extortion and swatting and stuff like that. So he
was mixing in those circles. And he is still there.
(34:31):
He hasn't been fired. He's been given access to these
this data, and he has been given an official email address,
and he is doing interviews with people who have worked
in government for a long time. And he is nineteen
years of age.
Speaker 4 (34:43):
And he used to.
Speaker 6 (34:44):
Go by the handle of big Balls on his LinkedIn
profile up until a couple of weeks.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
No, so that guy is still working in our computers.
He's still there.
Speaker 6 (34:55):
He has still got the same access despite all the
reporting a number maybe because of it Elon Musk when
we reported on him, Elon Musk replied, you know, multiple
times and on Twitter kind of saying it was a
joke that we should be complaining that this guy shouldn't
be working within, you know, at the most sensitive levels
of the US government. He thinks that it was a joke,
and that he you know, he continues to work in
(35:16):
there to this day.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
It's hard to imagine this ending well.
Speaker 6 (35:21):
It is because when you listen to some of the
officials that we speak to that have been there for
a long time, and they talk about the systems that
have been put in place and how sensitive and how
complex they are, that if people go in and start
tinkering with those systems to kind of slash and burn effectively,
which is what el Musk seems to be trying to do,
then it's going to cause absolute chaos and potentially irreverbrical
(35:45):
damage because it's not something that you can change overnight.
These systems have been built over a long period of
time and contain millions and millions of lines of code.
These aren't iPhone apps or Android apps that you can
go in and tinker with and change a bit, and
you know, it's not going to have much of a difference.
These systems are what people's you know, people depend on
(36:05):
these for their livelihoods. They depend on them for Social
Security payments, They dependent on them for a vast number
of services that the US government provides, and by these
guys going in and tinkering with them, it's extremely dangerous.
And one of the engineers that we identified, there was
an anecdote about him when he was in college that
he accidentally deleted his entire code base and just kind
(36:30):
of shrugged and went and rewrote it over the next
forty eight hours. And that was seen in their world
as something that was great because it just showed that
he just, you know, was able to rewrite it instantly.
But if he does that within US government, that could
cause untold chaos.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
It just seems like playing with disaster, right. I mean,
this is all of everyone's information in America.
Speaker 6 (36:54):
It absolutely is, and sort of the most sensitive information,
you know, because people there's talk of them getting access
to background checks on people, so you know, in terms
of people's sexuality and their credit score and all of
that kind of really really sensitive data that people obviously
don't want a nineteen year old called big Balls having
access to that just seems to be on the cards
(37:15):
now because there doesn't seem to be any limits to
what these guys are willing to do or where they
want to go in terms of getting access to this
type of information.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
Is there anything that American citizens can do at this moment?
Speaker 6 (37:28):
Ray, I'm genuinely not sure, because they can hope that
the courts will hold the line. But even if they
are holding the line, but as you say, it seems
like they're just not going to abide by their rulings.
They're going to just continue to do what they're doing.
You know, we've seen some Democratic lawmakers have tried to
get access to some of the buildings to see what's
(37:48):
going on, but they've been blocked by private security. It
just seems incredibly worrying at the moment that if your
information is stored somewhere in the US government, that you know,
the group of a couple of dozen engineers and managers
can suddenly have access to it and do it, seems
whatever they want with it.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
I mean, what is the sort of best case scenario here,
because I'd love to see a best case scenario.
Speaker 6 (38:13):
I think the best case scenario is that there are
still people in these agencies who and because they are
contacting US and other publications in huge numbers to speak
out about what's happening, and I think their best hope
at the moment because they have been there, or a
lot of them have been there for a long time.
This is their life's work in a lot of cases,
(38:35):
and they don't want to see it just torn down.
They don't want to see it burned to the ground.
And so I believe that if they can somehow influence
what these guys are doing or help prevent them from
making the worst possible scenario, I think that's the best
hope for.
Speaker 4 (38:52):
A more positive outcome at the moment.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
Dave Gilbert, this is really some chilling stuff. Thank you.
I hope you'll come back.
Speaker 4 (38:59):
Absolutely. I'm sure there's going to be a lot more
to this. Unfortunately in the coming weeks.
Speaker 2 (39:05):
No moment, Jesse Cannon.
Speaker 3 (39:09):
SMI you down fast. Got to say you know this.
Every time I see the words Trump and Gaza, I
just think, oh, no, no more, please, no more, mercy, mercy, mercy,
because it just keeps getting stupider. And I feel like
today it got a lot stupider.
Speaker 1 (39:26):
We spend a lot of time not wanting to chastise
the Muslim voters in dear Born who voted for Trump
or who just didn't vote for Harris, and certainly I don't.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
Know that that's a way to win voters.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
But that said, oh my god, guys, these guys do
not want anything good for Gaza. So Tuesday, Trump met
with King Abdollah from Jordan and continued to muse about
his grand plan to turn the Gaza Strip into luxury
waterfront housing. I laugh to keep from crying again because
(40:05):
this is really really bleak stuff. He made no attempt
on Tuesday to soften his proposal. By the way, this
is a proposal that Jordanians don't want this. None of
the Middle East is into this, with the exception of
Donald Trump. So he had made no effort to soften
his proposal to relocate all of the Palestinadians in Gaza
and redevelop their land into Trump Tower Gaza. King Abdullah
(40:29):
suggested the Arab world was opposed, but you know what,
Donald Trump doesn't care. He repeated his views that Palestinians
should be moved out of the devastated strip to parcels
in third countries, including Jordan.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
I'm sure he must have.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
King Abdullah must have loved that, despite the fact that
no one wants him to do that. I think it's
worth musing for a minute. This is the guy who
he wants to annex Canada and he wants I mean,
this is mister, are like, no open borders except when
it comes to your countries. The President brushed aside questions
(41:06):
about what authority the US might wield to take control
of the Palestinian enclave, a good point like how is
America allowed to do this to someone else's country, And
he said, in the typical Trumpian fashion, it's not a
complex thing to do. And with the United States being
(41:26):
in control of that piece of land, which we're not
a fairly large piece of land, you're going to have
stability in the Middle East for the first time.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
Trump said, all right, well, there we go. I open
and shut. I'm convinced.
Speaker 1 (41:40):
Trump's in the oval office of Dellah seated next to him,
then made a face.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
No, he didn't make a face.
Speaker 1 (41:46):
But he did say that if he could have, would
have rolled his eyes.
Speaker 3 (41:51):
I think the most telling quote here was this one
from Trump that said, the US will take over the
Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it too.
Speaker 2 (41:59):
Sounds rights, He's going to go wild on it.
Speaker 3 (42:03):
That's what American posts.
Speaker 1 (42:05):
That's right, We're going to go wild on the Gaza
Strip just as soon as we get over our most
recent measles outbreak.
Speaker 3 (42:14):
In a county that voted ninety percent Trump.
Speaker 1 (42:18):
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday to hear the best
minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If
you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend
and keep the conversation going. Thanks for listening.
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds, and the American Bar Association is asking
lawyers to adhere to the rule of law.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
We have such a great show for you today.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Substacks own the Jim Acosta Shows. Jim Acosta joins us
to talk about Trump's strategy to poke holes in the
weak points of the government. Then we'll talk to Wired's
David Gilbert about the threats Elon Musk's DOGE and the
teenagers who work for it pose to US national security.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
But first the news.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
My we are no fans of Harrick Adams at this podcasts.
The news is very bad. So I think what was
an interesting thing though, was actually to do a timeline
of this before we get there, which was that yesterday morning,
I woke to a tweet that I immediately sent to
you and many people, which was Mayor Adams gathered as
top commissioners early Monday to give marching orders under the
(01:05):
new administration. Don't criticize President Trump, don't interfere with immigration enforcement,
and trust the mayor, sources told the city, and I thought, hmmm,
why would he do that.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
And then so I would like to take a moment
here to step back for a second and embrace.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
What you and I both know to be the mayoral curse.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Yes, I think you and I discussed this off air
every week for years.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
We discussed this often and always.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
The greatest city in the world has a mayor problem
and it rhymes with Adams. No, we have the worst
mayors in the world were cursed basically Rudy, I actually
like Bloomberg, but you don't. And then the groundhog killer Bill.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
De Blasio, build Abudle, build Bungler.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
And then now we have our mayor, a simple dyslexic man,
just like everyone else. Now I'm dyslexic, so no shade
on dyslexia. It's my favorite learning disability. But he's very
corrumpt Let's be honest here, being mayor is about more
than just hanging out at zero bond. And this is true.
(02:22):
So basically what this all looks like to me. So
the mayor got indicted a bunch of indictments. There was.
First of all, there was a while when everyone knew
he was going to get indicted, and everyone in his
inner circle kept resigning or marrying each other. Then eventually
he got indicted, and there were supposedly more indictments coming.
He got indicted for his sketchy relationship with Turkey, but
(02:45):
there's definitely also other stuff going on. Then he went
and sucked up to Trump, and now he has had
his indictments dismissed but without prejudice, which means that if
he stops behaving and letting Trump's deportation squads in, if
he stops doing that, then Trump can refile the charges.
(03:08):
By the way, there's a lot of insane details about this.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
You should definitely read.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
There's articles in the Times and The City Is this
really great news source that covers a lot of this.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
Helgate also did a phenomenal one right Hellgate.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
There's all sorts of insane details here, but the net
net of the story is that basically.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Our mayor is now free to.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Act as Trump's lackey until Trump decides that he doesn't
need him anymore. And that is not super surprising because
we saw him sucking up to Trump to try to
get a pardon. But it's yet another dark day for
American democracy.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
But what I really appreciated is, in typical Maga fashion,
they had to make sure that everyone could understand the message.
So what they did right after that was the next headline.
Trump has part in former Illinois Governor Rod Blogoyevitch, who
did some of the most brazen bribery you've ever seen.
And he would that's okay because Rod Bolgoyevitch has been
(04:11):
kissing my ass for quite a while, and I want
to show this is all you got to do.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Yes, yes, yes, Rod Blogoyevitch.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
So you'll remember he tried to sell the US Senate
seat vacated by former President Barack Obama. He served as
the governor for six years. It's funny because remember on
this podcast, we interviewed the great Governor Pritzker, and I said,
what are you doing next? And he said, if I
can serve out my second term, I will be a
history maker.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
Which was left us both lefting, so we probably had
to cut it.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
He's like our hero after saying that, But federal prosecutors,
I mean, look, he turned the government into a money
making operation for himself, or tried to and shaking down
at children's hospital and racetrack owners who among us, and
he went to do out. Look, the larger issue here
is that Donald Trump doesn't want bribery to be illegal
(05:07):
and let us continue here. Because Trump pauses enforcement of
law banning foreign bribery, you would think that this is
a law that you can't pause. First of all, when
is foreign bribery good? Like I would like my government
officials to be able to feel comfortable taking bribes from
(05:28):
foreign governments.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Kind of feels to me, not like training the swamp,
but importing the alligators into the swamp.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
The Foreign Corruption Practices Act. What I love about this
administration is that we are learning all of these laws
that you and I never thought, Like, who would have
even thought? The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act makes it illegal
for companies to operate in the United States to pay
foreign government officials to secure or keep business deals, you know,
(05:55):
like kickbacks.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Well, Donald Trump said no.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Kickbacks, okay, ordered to pause in the enforcement of a
federal law aimed at curbing corruption in most multinational companies.
Curbing corruption, you say, no one wants that. That sounds terrible,
says it creates an uneven playing field for people who
want to be corrupt.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Can't curb it, gotta do it.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
The law makes it illegal for companies that operate in
the United States to pay foreign government officials to secure
business deals. This is like quid pro quo is known.
It's one of his favorite things. The law was enacted
in nineteen seventy seven. By the way, I just want
to pause for a second. This another post Watergate seventies
anti corruption law that Donald Trump is taking a pickaxe to.
(06:42):
Worth thinking about that for a minute. Mister Trump has
objected to the law. I love mister Trump. Mister Trump
has objected to the law which had led to charges
in huge minds against some of the world's largest companies.
I mean, this is the thing, right, God forbid? So
anyway that is now not being in forced because what
are laws anyway?
Speaker 3 (07:03):
It's really funny. The only time you'd have to learn
about these laws is when we'd meet shady characters like
Paul Manifort and Eric Adams. Trump sick offense which now
has led us to a logical conclusion in the reality
based world aka not ours, which is that the US
has slipped to a do low with the interraditional corruption Index.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Yes, shocking, I know you'll be shocked here.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
It's almost like causes, right.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
I man, incredible stuff.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Here we go lowest ever the US received its lowest
ever Corruption Perceptions Index score since the Transparency International's current
scale was established in twenty twelve. According to the group's
annual ranking of public sector corruption across one hundred and
(07:57):
eighty countries, the US is one of the forty seven
country is to receive its lowest score yet effectively at
its most corrupt point.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
You don't have to tell me that.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
I think we all agree that anyone who has read
a newspaper in the United States of America knows there
something sketchy going on in our government. We should not
be surprised at all a four point drop since twenty
twenty three. I wonder what changed in twenty twenty three.
The cleanest country is Denmark. Finland and Singapore are the
(08:29):
three cleanest countries, which is a bit strange. Seventh year
in a row that Denmark has led the pack. Venezuela, Somalia,
and South Sudan.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Make up the bottom three. We're coming for you.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Baby, America, America, America.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
America, American.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
So let's do one last piece of light news before
we end.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
No, this is my favorite story of the week. This
is everyone's favorite story of the week.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
I would even instruct the listeners. You just go seek
out this clip and get a nice smile for yourself.
Donald Trump declines to endorse JD. Vance as twenty twenty
eight Republican successor.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
This is the one bright spot of the corruption, the stupidity,
the anti science. There's so much bad stuff that comes
out of the ADMIN, and yet they are occasionally a
moment of just incredible hilarity.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
This is like my favorite moment. Donald Trump declines to
endorse JD.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Vance's twenty twenty eight Republican successor. President Donald Trump said
in a preview of his Super Bowl interview on Monday
that it's too early to endorse Vice President Jady Vans.
Brett Baher said, do you think of Vance as your successor?
And Trump said no, he is said no, and these said, budd,
(09:47):
He's very capable. I think you have a lot of
very capable people. So I don't know if anyone remembers
from the first season of this disaster, but Mike Pence,
Mighty Mike Pence, would like a word. Jim Acosta is
the author of The Substack of The Jim Acosta Show
(10:09):
and the author of the New York Times bestseller The
Enemy of the People. A dangerous time to tell the
truth in America. Welcome to Fast Politics, Jim Acosta.
Speaker 4 (10:23):
Molly, how are you. It's been too long.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
It's been too long and things are going great. What
are we like in the first month of the Trump
administration and we're already we have to cover of the
New York Times. Is it a constitutional crisis?
Speaker 4 (10:37):
Yeah? I do think it is a constitutional crisis. I mean,
you have the American Bar Association putting out a statement
saying that the administration cannot just violate the law, cannot
just violate orders from a judge. You know, the American
Bar Association doesn't just do that willy nilly. My sense
of it is is that, you know, having covered Trump
the first time around, it is the shock and ag campaign,
(11:00):
and he is trying to poke and prod different pressure
points and see, you know, where the vulnerabilities are. And
you know, he wasn't able to pull this off on
January sixth of twenty twenty one, and so he's trying
to figure out and his team is trying to figure out,
how do we go about putting together this maximalist view
of the executive branch? And you know, I do think
(11:22):
people should be alarmed. I don't think that that's overstating things.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
There's been a lot of talk about how these people
want to grow presidential power, shrink the checks and balances,
sort of disassemble some of the founding principles of how
American democracy works. I'm surprised at how much Doge has
played a part in that. Are you and discussed?
Speaker 4 (11:48):
Yeah, I mean, Molly, you and I were watching this
during the campaign, Elon Musk was talking about Doge. Trump was,
you know, putting Elon Musk on stage with his dark
mega hat and all of that. It just seemed like
a joke. It seemed like a lark. And I mean
they were deadly serious during the campaign. And what we're
now finding out is that, you know, basically Elon Musk
(12:10):
is operating like a co president. And you know, one
of the things that you know, people need to be
alarmed by is I think we're seeing a level of
corruption already inside the government that we have not seen
since the Watergate days when you have I mean, there's
there's a guy named Big Balls or something, what is
his name. He's nineteen years old, and he's been he's
(12:30):
been put in place over at State and DHS and
you know, who are these people who appointed them. I
find this to be highly alarming. We have not seen
anything like this before. And you know, I was down
at the Treasury Department. I wanted to go check out
the protest that they had the other day outside the
Treasury Department. It seemed like, you know, people are just
(12:52):
starting to wake up to what is taking place. I mean,
I think that this is, without question and infiltration by
an oligarch who is not only looking to feather his nest,
but again realize some vision of a maximalist, autocratic, authoritarian
style view of how the government should work in this country.
(13:14):
And it's just it's just completely anesthetical to the experience
you and I and others have had our entire life,
and so there should be pushback.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Yeah, I think that's true. And I also think there
is starting to be real pushback, which I guess is
good and also is strange. And the funny thing to
me is like they are trying to take away things
from people.
Speaker 5 (13:35):
I mean, like healthcare CFPB, right exactly, CFPB, A lot
of stuff that are the kind of things that people
have gotten used to, and I'm not sure they understand
that they can be taken away exactly.
Speaker 4 (13:50):
I mean, I think that we've sort of been operating
under the premise over the last you know, fifty years
or so that you know, the government does some things. Yeah,
every once in a while, there's some waste, fraud and
abuse that needs to be rooted out, but by and large,
we've been plugging along as a country with a social
safety net, Medicare, Medicaid, social security, government funded science, scientific
(14:15):
research of the work, the important work that they do
at the nih usaid that this notion that in addition
to having the Pentagon with the strongest military in the world,
you're also going to have soft power. I mean, all
of these sort of basics that people like John McCain
and John Kerry and Hillary Clinton and you name it,
Mitt Romney all sort of agree on this is what
(14:37):
government does. All of that. The rug has been pulled
out from under all of that, and I think we're
right now living through all of this collectively in real
time and upending of the American way of life that
you and I have been accustomed to for the last
fifty years now. I mean, I was talking to James
Carvel about this yesterday on my substack. He is of
the mindset that progressive Democrats that left so on, people
(14:59):
in the center center right, you care about all this,
should just sit back, let Trump fall in his face.
He's going to do it in time and so on.
I do worry a little bit that that is perhaps
letting the barbarians to the gate.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
Yeah, yeah, I think that's a mistake for any number
of reasons.
Speaker 4 (15:15):
I do too, And I love James. I heard him
say it. I was like, you know, some people are
just frigging traumatized by what is going on in this
country right now.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
I think also games is you know, certainly there will
be unforced errors, which are probably the only way that
democracy makes it through this thing. I don't think that
people should And in fact, the truth is, pushback works
with this crew, and we've seen that again and again
and certainly when it comes to things like ice going
into schools and ice going into searches and sending people
(15:48):
to GIMO. These are real shock and all paradigm shifts,
things that we don't do in this country using the
American military on civilians. These are things we don't and
there has to be pushback or else they won't stop.
Speaker 4 (16:03):
That's absolutely right. My experience has been with Trump that
the only language that he understands is pushback. The only
language she understands is sort of going nose to nose
in a way that says no this far and no farther.
One of the problems that we are experiencing right now
is there is almost no pushback inside the Republican Party anymore.
(16:26):
The enablers are in charge, and you know when they
are putting somebody through like Tulsea Gabbert for Director of
National Intelligence. You talk to diplomats around Washington. They are
terrified of that prospect that somebody as gullible as she
is when it comes to eating hook line and sinker,
swallowing hook line and sinker, talking points from the Kremlin
(16:46):
and Basha al Asada and that sort of thing. To
think that she's going to be in charge of the
intelligence community is astounding. When you have somebody like cash
ptel Over at the FBI. There were times, and it
wasn't that long ago, Moley, and again this is what
I'm talking about, the rug pulled out from under all
of us. There was a time, I don't know ten
years ago when you would have had ten fifteen Republican
senators saying, oh, hell no, we're not doing Tulsa Gabert.
(17:09):
We are not doing cash Betel and all of that
is out the window, right.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
No, No, we are definitely in a different world than
we were in twenty seventeen. Oh those halcyon days of
twenty seventeen, which we're not so great either. What I
think is useful when we look at this admin is
that there have been many dark times in American democracy
before this, and I always feel like it's important to
(17:35):
think of like post reconstruction, like you know, I mean,
some of it is that affluent white people have not
necessarily gone through this kind of civil rights war the
way that people of color have right, especially in the
you know, we've seen that in the South and the North.
Jim Crow is a really good example of that. But
there have certainly been other times when the government has
(17:58):
decided that they that they want to root out people
who don't agree with them. I think that's a helpful framing.
What do you think about that?
Speaker 4 (18:07):
I think so too. I mean, George Clooney is bringing
back good night and good luck to Broadway here, and
it is a perfect time to relearn the lessons of
the Red scare. I think it is a perfect time
to relearn the lessons of the civil rights movement of
the nineteen sixties, when people were you know, it sounds
sort of I guess corny or Quaine or cliche. This
(18:28):
to some I suppose not to be, but that folks
would rise up and want to march on Washington because
they're outraged over what is taking place. That is as
american as baseball. I mean, that is as american as
the George Washington portrait that is over my shoulder right now.
That is as American as a statue of liberty. To
scoff at that, I mean, it's almost as though the
(18:49):
language we are using, the discourse we are having, has
been so warped and manipulated, in large part by people
in the right who have cowed much of the country
into this position that, oh yeah, that their point of
view is completely within the realm of normal political dialogue.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
No.
Speaker 4 (19:05):
Donald Trump has but become a very effective vehicle for
folks on the far right to push everybody to the
edge of the cliff. And at some point you have
to stop retreating. At some point you do have to
dig in your heels and you have to stand your ground.
And you know the other day, when you know, Trump's
on air Force one coming back from the Super Bowl
or whatever, and he's talking about the January sixth defendants
(19:28):
were the ones who were assaulted. He was making that
claim to reporters. I mean, we are in a place
right now where the truth is just completely out the
window for almost half of the country, and so there
just has to be a muscular, determined, relentless pushback from
people who want to protect the American way of life.
(19:48):
And I just think that that is completely within the
bounds of like normalcy. I mean, I just, you know,
why the hell is that not happening. You know, it
should be happening.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
I'm so struck by the way that ever you want,
or at least a lot of these people in Trump
world don't really believe in any of this. So right,
like Trump is the convert. Jade Vance was never Trump
until a couple of years ago. Like all these people
don't really believe in any of this. I mean, even
Elon was Democrat, was donating to Democrats too. I mean,
(20:19):
I just, you know, it doesn't seem like anyone feels
any of this real deeply. Talk to me about that yeah.
Speaker 4 (20:25):
I think that's an excellent point, Molly. I mean, you know,
when jd. Vance of Yale Law School is saying that,
you know, judges can't overrule legitimate actions from the executive
or whatever it was that he posted the other day,
just basshit crazy stuff for a guy who appears to
be reasonably intelligent. I think what they have found, Molly,
is they found a trick that works. And I was
(20:47):
talking about this with Timothy Snyder and Applebaum in the
week before the election, and you know, one of the
scary things, and it is a sorry state of affairs
about authoritarianism, about autocracy, about fascism, is that it works
with a sizeable percentage of a civilized society. I hate
(21:07):
to put it out there like that, but it absolutely
is the case. And so what does that mean for
the rest of us. For the rest of us, it
means it doesn't matter if they feel a deeply down
in their bone marrow or if they know that this
is all crap and they're peddling it anyway, the rest
of us have to say, no, you know, you take
that somewhere else. That's just not going to work here.
(21:28):
This idea that you don't have smart senators on the
Republican side of the aisle up on Capitol Hill saying,
what in the hell are you talking about taking over
the Panama Canal? What in the hell are you talking
about taking over Canada and Greenland?
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Stop?
Speaker 4 (21:41):
It's nonsense. It's crazy talk. But it gets people on
the right riled up. And I think it is very
much in line with this autocratic, authoritarian view that they
are trying to inject into the bloodstream of this country.
And it just, you know, it's like a snake bite.
We got to suck it out and spit it out.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
And what i'ms for by is that it's just it's
not a huge percent into the American people who believe this.
It's probably less than fifty percent. Talk to me about that.
Speaker 4 (22:08):
That's an excellent point, because you're absolutely correct. I mean,
I think, you know, maybe what ten to fifteen percent
believe this stuff. How does a vocal minority get across
stuff that is completely unpopular with the vast majority of Americans.
They do it through force. They do it through intimidation,
(22:28):
they do it through threats. They do it through cleaning
out the federal government and replacing officials in important places
with coronis and hacks, and I think that is what
we're in the middle of right now. It is the
reason why they're cleaning out the federal government. This notion that, oh,
we're trying to root out waste, fraud, and abuse, bullony.
What you're trying to do is you're trying to clean
(22:49):
out ten, fifteen, twenty percent of the federal employees in
the government, replace them with hacks and cronies and morons
and ass wipes right out of college so you can
bully and intimidate the rest of the federal government to
get these very unpopular policies across. In what world do
we want to have the Trump administration doing away with
the Department of Education? Who the hell voted for that?
During the campaign?
Speaker 1 (23:09):
Nobody voted for Nobody voted for that. I'm curious when
we watch this unfold in real time. There's a lot
of things that make sense or you see where they're
going with it, But some things like their war on
the FBI, right, I mean, those guys are Trumpers, Like,
how do you think that plays?
Speaker 4 (23:28):
I think that if the rule of law doesn't mean something,
then where the hell are we? And I was going
to talk about this on my substack later today. The
reason why we don't go one hundred miles an hour
down the interstate and rob banks and stick up seven
eleven's and so on, all of us. The reason why
we abide by the law is because we know there
are consequences to it. If we're going to upend that,
(23:51):
we're going to upend the notion of the rule of
law and everybody's faith and adherence to the idea that
there's nobody is above the law. If we're just going
to abandon all of that, then you're going to end
up just total bedlam. I mean, how is it that
we have a Justice Department a couple of months ago
that says we have a great case against Mayor Eric
Adams in New York, and then out of nowhere, the
Trump administration walks in and they want to dismiss the case.
(24:13):
The same Department of Justice, and I mean obviously not
the same anymore. It's led by Trump's cronies. But that
should be highly concerning when you have somebody like cash
Betel my god, that is an enemy's list that he
has put out there. How in the world are you
putting somebody in charge of the FBI who has an
enemy's list. It's insane. We're on the dark side of
(24:33):
the moon, which is an overused expression of mining, but
it is truly the case. And Democrats are in a
position where they can't really do much of anything. They
can take stuff to court, that's you know. Governors and
attorney's general can do that sort of thing. They just
do not have the numbers and the Congress to stop
these dominees, especially when you have a Republican party that
is just going to enable Trump at every turn.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
Yeah, I mean they do have things they can do that.
I mean, if you think about if Newt Gingrid right,
there are things Democrats can do, just like there are
things new Gingridge did. Jim Acosta, thank you so much
for joining us.
Speaker 4 (25:07):
It goes too fast. Molly, great to talk to you again.
We're reunited.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
We're reunited. It's all happening, just as it should be.
David Gilbert is a senior reporter at Wired magazine. Welcome
to Fast Politics, Dave, thanks for having me. Wired has
been doing some of the best reporting on the dog drama.
(25:33):
What are they doing with the computers over there?
Speaker 6 (25:36):
It's a really, really good question, and for all the
talk of transparency that Elon Musk and Donald Trump are
talking about bring transparency to government. We really have, at
the granular level no idea what these guys are doing
with the data with the computers over there. What we
do know is that a lot of them, at least
(25:57):
are very young engineers, them straight out of at least
one of them straight out of high school. Some of
them are a lot of them straight out of college.
Some of them have done internships with musques Ai companies
or with his SpaceX or Neuralink or Twitter. He has
recruited these young, ideologically aligned people to come in and
(26:20):
effectivating do whatever he tells them to do. But what
they're actually doing with the data, we still don't really
have that insight at the moment.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
I don't know, because I'm not in anyone's head, but
it strikes me that the original justification was sort of
to update the software. I mean, is that what it is,
or I mean, what was the original justification there?
Speaker 6 (26:39):
I think the overarching thing is that they want to
treat government as a startup, and they want to get
these young and most of them are based on their
academic career, extremely bright kids and young adults, and he
wanted to bring them in, treat the government as a
startup and cost our make efficiencies based in the same
(27:00):
way that people would go into tech companies and make efficiencies.
And they do that by using a lot of these
guys are proficient in machine learning and artificial intelligence, and
that seems to be where their expertise lies. And the
understanding or the belief is that they are using some
sort of AI. One of my colleagues reported that the
(27:22):
GSA is already developing its own custom chatbot and AI
system and that they are using their feeding federal government data,
the data of every single person in the US, into
these systems in order to identify where cuts should be made.
But what we don't know is what those systems are. Like,
we know it's AI, but what does that mean. Are
(27:42):
they using off the shelf systems or are they creating
their own systems? Is this just Mosque's own grock chatbot
that we see on Twitter? Is that just you know,
as he just brought that into make savings within the
US government, Which is a statement that if you said
it's six months ago, sounds ridiculous, but today it sounds
actually plausible because what's happening there is just so mind
(28:04):
blowing that it could potentially be happening.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
Yeah, it's interesting because it's like, there's no one in
the world who doesn't want to cut government boast, right,
there's no one in the world who doesn't want these
really archaic systems run more like a startup. Right. These
ideas in principle are quite good. The problem is when
you get into the details.
Speaker 6 (28:25):
Right, Yeah, and when you try to do everything all
at once, and you do it without consulting elected officials
because none of these people are elected. It's being done
in the background, in secret by these young engineers and
by some older engineers at least. We reckon about thirty
people working for those at the moment in the various
(28:46):
different agencies across government, and they're being overseen by Steve Davis,
who is a longtime Musk ally and also Musque, and
then he is reporting back to the White House about
what's happening. And so that's all happening without any real
oversight from Congress, from elected officials, and we just don't
know what's happening in there.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
And it's not entirely clear that Trump understands what Musk
is doing either.
Speaker 6 (29:12):
Absolutely, I doubt he does at all. To be honest,
I'm not sure Musk exactly knows what's happening in a
lot of cases.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
Say more about that.
Speaker 6 (29:21):
If you look at the background of where the people
who we know are working for those have come from.
They were recruited in chat rooms and discord channels of
you know, people who are very young and have a
lot of maturing yet to do and aren't fully developed
in terms of their view of the world. But most
(29:43):
of them are, if not all of them, have this
kind of they're very very pro elon Musk, and they
see him as this ideal bigger of someone who has
made this in terms of you know, startups and technology
and building a huge fortune, and they seem to be
(30:04):
willing to do whatever he says. And the problem, I
think is that the guys who are in there have
come from worlds where they speak in chat rooms in
this way where people are just as guess, they're talking
in a certain way that is not how you'd expect
(30:25):
people to talk working inside government, and they have brought
that kind of energy and that's chaos into government where
there are people who have worked for decades in those
positions and they are being undermined by these nineteen twenty
twenty one, twenty two year old people who have no
life experience.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
Yes, I mean they're certainly the ideological problem, but the
fundamental question I have is what are they doing in there? Right? Like,
I mean, make government more efficient? But why do they
need all this information? I mean, for example, we saw
Elon said that he had discovered that there people have
multiple Social Security numbers or that again I don't know
(31:06):
how that would happen, but or that there's some kind
of extra money going around social Security. How would they
find that? And can you sort of talk us through
that a little bit?
Speaker 6 (31:17):
They can find it because if they're been given access
to these classified and sensitive data within government, and they
are able then to see the raw data. And I
suppose a lot of the claims that Mosque is making
is not appears to be based on the actual data
itself or him getting access to the data. It's based
(31:37):
on claims that are being made by other people on
X who are doing some you know, of their own
research quote unquote, yeah, not necessarily based on anathink that
can be verified or that had you know, the people
who are doing it don't have the inside knowledge of
exactly how these systems and these processes work because they're
extremely complex, they've been built up over decades. I think
(32:00):
one insight that we have been given is that there
was one member of Thuge who was fired last week
because of some racist tweets.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
When do they stop doing this? What's sort of the
endgame here are? Well?
Speaker 6 (32:12):
I guess where we are at the moment is there's
a standoff where the courts are pushing back on this
and saying that they have to stop doing a lot
of what they're doing.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
But they haven't stopped, right, They're still doing it.
Speaker 6 (32:24):
To an extent. They have said that they have stopped
doing some things. But the sense is that, you know,
if you look at what Elon Musk is tweeting about,
you know that it's a judicial coup instead of the
coup that he is actually carried out. He's calling this
a judicial coup because he is saying the courts are
stopping them doing whatever they want to do. And we
saw in one court fighting this week where the fired
(32:46):
Dolge engineer from last week, they initially said he didn't
have right access to the data, which means that he can.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
Look, let's read it right, yeah, he said they said.
Speaker 6 (32:56):
Initially he don't really don't read on the access, but
in a new court they update and said, oh, we
were given wrong information. He did actually have right access
and he was able to play with that data in
a sandbox as they call it.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
And that's the guy big balls.
Speaker 4 (33:11):
Right, No, that's a different guy.
Speaker 6 (33:12):
That's this is the guy who was fired, but who
now they've said they're going to rehire, even though it
was exposed that he had posted a lot of racist tweets.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
Okay, so there's one guy who was fired because he
had leaked information about the company it worked at.
Speaker 6 (33:28):
Right, So there's two guys. One guy is Marco Eles.
He was the guy who was fired. He was the
guy who had access to the Treasury data right access,
even though they said initially he was right. He is
apparently going to be rehired because moscous said he's going
to be hired, and Trump and Vance have wading and
saying he should be rehired as well. Edward Paris team
that is big Balls. He is the nineteen year old guy.
(33:48):
He is the guy who was fired from his previous
job for leaking information to an competitor. He also ran
a huge number of web domains, including one that was
registered to of them actually that were registered in Russia,
and one of them that was China facing looking for
clients in China. So, and he's got a pretty sketchy
(34:10):
background in terms of the kind of people who he
interacted with online. He was kind of in the world
of the Calm, which is this really scary online network
of people who do a mixture of cyber criminality and
sex extortion and swatting and stuff like that. So he
was mixing in those circles. And he is still there.
(34:31):
He hasn't been fired. He's been given access to these
this data, and he has been given an official email address,
and he is doing interviews with people who have worked
in government for a long time. And he is nineteen
years of age.
Speaker 4 (34:43):
And he used to.
Speaker 6 (34:44):
Go by the handle of big Balls on his LinkedIn
profile up until a couple of weeks.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
No, so that guy is still working in our computers.
He's still there.
Speaker 6 (34:55):
He has still got the same access despite all the
reporting a number maybe because of it Elon Musk when
we reported on him, Elon Musk replied, you know, multiple
times and on Twitter kind of saying it was a
joke that we should be complaining that this guy shouldn't
be working within, you know, at the most sensitive levels
of the US government. He thinks that it was a joke,
and that he you know, he continues to work in
(35:16):
there to this day.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
It's hard to imagine this ending well.
Speaker 6 (35:21):
It is because when you listen to some of the
officials that we speak to that have been there for
a long time, and they talk about the systems that
have been put in place and how sensitive and how
complex they are, that if people go in and start
tinkering with those systems to kind of slash and burn effectively,
which is what el Musk seems to be trying to do,
then it's going to cause absolute chaos and potentially irreverbrical
(35:45):
damage because it's not something that you can change overnight.
These systems have been built over a long period of
time and contain millions and millions of lines of code.
These aren't iPhone apps or Android apps that you can
go in and tinker with and change a bit, and
you know, it's not going to have much of a difference.
These systems are what people's you know, people depend on
(36:05):
these for their livelihoods. They depend on them for Social
Security payments, They dependent on them for a vast number
of services that the US government provides, and by these
guys going in and tinkering with them, it's extremely dangerous.
And one of the engineers that we identified, there was
an anecdote about him when he was in college that
he accidentally deleted his entire code base and just kind
(36:30):
of shrugged and went and rewrote it over the next
forty eight hours. And that was seen in their world
as something that was great because it just showed that
he just, you know, was able to rewrite it instantly.
But if he does that within US government, that could
cause untold chaos.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
It just seems like playing with disaster, right. I mean,
this is all of everyone's information in America.
Speaker 6 (36:54):
It absolutely is, and sort of the most sensitive information,
you know, because people there's talk of them getting access
to background checks on people, so you know, in terms
of people's sexuality and their credit score and all of
that kind of really really sensitive data that people obviously
don't want a nineteen year old called big Balls having
access to that just seems to be on the cards
(37:15):
now because there doesn't seem to be any limits to
what these guys are willing to do or where they
want to go in terms of getting access to this
type of information.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
Is there anything that American citizens can do at this moment?
Speaker 6 (37:28):
Ray, I'm genuinely not sure, because they can hope that
the courts will hold the line. But even if they
are holding the line, but as you say, it seems
like they're just not going to abide by their rulings.
They're going to just continue to do what they're doing.
You know, we've seen some Democratic lawmakers have tried to
get access to some of the buildings to see what's
(37:48):
going on, but they've been blocked by private security. It
just seems incredibly worrying at the moment that if your
information is stored somewhere in the US government, that you know,
the group of a couple of dozen engineers and managers
can suddenly have access to it and do it, seems
whatever they want with it.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
I mean, what is the sort of best case scenario here,
because I'd love to see a best case scenario.
Speaker 6 (38:13):
I think the best case scenario is that there are
still people in these agencies who and because they are
contacting US and other publications in huge numbers to speak
out about what's happening, and I think their best hope
at the moment because they have been there, or a
lot of them have been there for a long time.
This is their life's work in a lot of cases,
(38:35):
and they don't want to see it just torn down.
They don't want to see it burned to the ground.
And so I believe that if they can somehow influence
what these guys are doing or help prevent them from
making the worst possible scenario, I think that's the best
hope for.
Speaker 4 (38:52):
A more positive outcome at the moment.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
Dave Gilbert, this is really some chilling stuff. Thank you.
I hope you'll come back.
Speaker 4 (38:59):
Absolutely. I'm sure there's going to be a lot more
to this. Unfortunately in the coming weeks.
Speaker 2 (39:05):
No moment, Jesse Cannon.
Speaker 3 (39:09):
SMI you down fast. Got to say you know this.
Every time I see the words Trump and Gaza, I
just think, oh, no, no more, please, no more, mercy, mercy, mercy,
because it just keeps getting stupider. And I feel like
today it got a lot stupider.
Speaker 1 (39:26):
We spend a lot of time not wanting to chastise
the Muslim voters in dear Born who voted for Trump
or who just didn't vote for Harris, and certainly I don't.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
Know that that's a way to win voters.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
But that said, oh my god, guys, these guys do
not want anything good for Gaza. So Tuesday, Trump met
with King Abdollah from Jordan and continued to muse about
his grand plan to turn the Gaza Strip into luxury
waterfront housing. I laugh to keep from crying again because
(40:05):
this is really really bleak stuff. He made no attempt
on Tuesday to soften his proposal. By the way, this
is a proposal that Jordanians don't want this. None of
the Middle East is into this, with the exception of
Donald Trump. So he had made no effort to soften
his proposal to relocate all of the Palestinadians in Gaza
and redevelop their land into Trump Tower Gaza. King Abdullah
(40:29):
suggested the Arab world was opposed, but you know what,
Donald Trump doesn't care. He repeated his views that Palestinians
should be moved out of the devastated strip to parcels
in third countries, including Jordan.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
I'm sure he must have.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
King Abdullah must have loved that, despite the fact that
no one wants him to do that. I think it's
worth musing for a minute. This is the guy who
he wants to annex Canada and he wants I mean,
this is mister, are like, no open borders except when
it comes to your countries. The President brushed aside questions
(41:06):
about what authority the US might wield to take control
of the Palestinian enclave, a good point like how is
America allowed to do this to someone else's country, And
he said, in the typical Trumpian fashion, it's not a
complex thing to do. And with the United States being
(41:26):
in control of that piece of land, which we're not
a fairly large piece of land, you're going to have
stability in the Middle East for the first time.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
Trump said, all right, well, there we go. I open
and shut. I'm convinced.
Speaker 1 (41:40):
Trump's in the oval office of Dellah seated next to him,
then made a face.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
No, he didn't make a face.
Speaker 1 (41:46):
But he did say that if he could have, would
have rolled his eyes.
Speaker 3 (41:51):
I think the most telling quote here was this one
from Trump that said, the US will take over the
Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it too.
Speaker 2 (41:59):
Sounds rights, He's going to go wild on it.
Speaker 3 (42:03):
That's what American posts.
Speaker 1 (42:05):
That's right, We're going to go wild on the Gaza
Strip just as soon as we get over our most
recent measles outbreak.
Speaker 3 (42:14):
In a county that voted ninety percent Trump.
Speaker 1 (42:18):
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday to hear the best
minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If
you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend
and keep the conversation going. Thanks for listening.
Host
Molly Jong-Fast
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