October 4, 2025 • 42 mins
Think Like an Economist’s Justin Wolfers examines the Trump administration’s refusal to release job statistics. MSNBC’s Jacob Soboroff details the implications of ICE indiscriminately raiding Americans’ homes.
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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.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
And Donald Trump.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Has turned down the rhetoric by calling Democrats the party
of hate, evil and Satan. We have such a great
joke for you today. Think like an economists owned Justin
Wolfers stops by to talk to us about the Trump
administration not releasing all sorts of data. I wonder why.
(00:30):
Then we'll talk to MSNBC's own Jacob sober Off about
the implications of having ice indiscriminately raid American homes. But
first the news.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Smill, I'm very disturbed that our politicians are not clocking
what's going on. I personally have always found it unacceptable
that we just raid immigrants homes and rip them out
away from their children. But now we're doing this to
US citizens, where you get detained for hours upon hours
without any call to your lawyer, and they get away
with this. And what happened in Chicago the other night,
(01:03):
it's an escalation that I feel our politicians should mark.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
So it's called the Kavanaugh Stop, named for Brett Kavanaugh,
or as we call him on this podcast, Justice Keg stand.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
I was gonna say, is it not a kegstand stuff?
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Justice Kavanaugh kegstand. He stops people. So dhs run by
one puppy killer Christy Nome and her boyfriend Corey Lubandowski,
both people married to other people. But let us not
cast aspersions. They raided in an apartment buildings.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Ouadcast aspersions on their asparagus.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Yes, they didn't actually raid this because she's busy. She
had a photo shoot, right, she's busy wearing makeup and
expensive watches. They raid an apartment building, smashing down every
door and dragging entire families into the street, detaining everyone
for hours. You'll be shot to know that, just like
what happened during the Dwight Eisenhower administration when they did
(02:08):
this very same thing. One US citizen, that's right, A
US citizen, by the way. The whole idea that these
people don't have rights like we do. We are still
governed by international law. We are not like a black
site yet, but this is an American citizen was held
for five hours. ABC spoke to a woman who lives
(02:32):
in the building. She said ice agent took everyone in
the building, including her, asked questions. Later, they treated us
like we were nothing. She came into the hallway of
her apartment complex on the corner of seventy fifth and
South Shore Drive and her nightgout at ten pm, Ice
agents yelling police it was scary because I've never had
a gun in my face, Fisher said. They asked my
(02:53):
name and my date of birth and asked me did
I have any warrants? And I told them no, I didn't.
Fisher said she was handcuffed before being least around three am,
and she was told if anyone had any kind of
worn out for them, even it was unrelated to immigration,
they would be arrested. Very nice, very nice, Christy nom
thanks team.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
I am almost just as mad that our politicians aren't
standing up to this. It's just I'm very angry.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Yeah. I want to point out something really important about
this news story, which is one of the very few
good things about this administration, is that they are doing
it out in the open. So this has gotten covered
by People Magazine. You know, People magazine. People Magazine is
not like The Times or the Washington Post, and People
(03:42):
Magazine is a media outlet that people read casually, and
part of the thing that we always spend a lot
of time puzzling about is like what breaks through. What
are the stories where people go, holy shit, this is
not okay. And when you have something like this where
it is in People magazine, when it is pictures, when
(04:06):
it's videos, when it's American citizens taken in their bathrobes
and nightgowns, when you look at the success of someone
like Victor orbon Or, you look at the success of
someone like Vladimir Putin, they didn't do this shit right away.
They built up to this stuff. So part of the
one really good thing about this administration is they are
doing the full on fast shit right now and that
(04:29):
is unbelievably as crazy as that sends, that's the good
news for us. Yeah, sorry, Jesse, I'm about good news.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
I mean, I'm back from my disassociation.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
So we have this government shutdown right now. People like
my own wife are not getting paid right now. It
affects our home greatly. And Trump is figuring out how
he can dismantle the government, particularly one Russ fought, is
trying to figure out which quote unquote Democrat agencies should
get cuts.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Yeah. So again, it's hard to know what is just
crazy threats and what is real. But there are crazy threats,
and this is where we are. Are they freezing a
lot of stuff? Yes? Are they going to fire some people? Yes?
Will it ultimately backfrond them? Very possibly? Right now, the
(05:18):
polling shows that people are blaming Republicans because they control
all three branches of government. Does that mean they keep
blaming Republicans? Maybe? Maybe not. But I do think like
clearly what Trump is doing, and Trump did tweet about
Project twenty twenty five. Project twenty twenty five wildly unpopular.
Trump said he wasn't going to do it. Now he's
(05:39):
doing it, So I think that that is meaningful and
I think it's possibly problematic for him.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
Almost fifty percent of it implemented already, so yeah. So
what's interesting though, is we are seeing that the White
House is panicking about the Obamacare subsidies, since it seems
like they're just hearing about this like the death of
Ruth Bader Ginsburg. But the set of GOP is betting
on the Dems not really showing up for a fight.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Republicans think Democrats Schumer's office, etc. Ocave. Maybe they will,
maybe they won't. There are a lot of Republicans who
are worried about these Obamacare premiums going up, and so
that is a real worry for some of these people
on the right too, because you know, there's a really
(06:27):
good article about this in the Wall Street Journal. Trump
ran on this idea he was going to make things cheaper, right,
I was told he was going to make things cheaper.
I was told bacon. If I'm being told bacon, where
is the There's no bacon here, baby. And Trump has
seems like he says he's willing to do some negotiation
on the Obamacare subsidies. So we'll see what happens. We
(06:48):
have not seen the last this. There is definitely a
negotiating platform here.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
Somali. After Trump and Pete hegsas psychotic little episode where
they put on the show in front of the generals.
They talked a lot about war, and everybody's wondering, great,
who are we going to war for? It's very clear
from every poll that America has no taste for war. Well,
it looks like our first war is going to be
with the cartels.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Yeah, we're seeing a lot of retreads from season one.
He had wanted to do war with the cartels before
you know, he blew up all those fishing boats he
likes a cartel war. I don't know. I mean, none
of this is okay. Again, A lot of this is
like to desensitize people towards killings, right, I mean, that's
(07:32):
what is happening here. None of this, by the way, FYI,
is constitutional or anything. But you know, we could definitely
see more of this. Justin Wolfers is the host of
We Think Like an Economist podcast and a professor at
the University of Michigan.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Welcome too Fast Politics, Justin.
Speaker 4 (07:53):
Wolfers, Molly, it's been ages dice Alis.
Speaker 5 (07:58):
Wait two knows.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Isn't that the Bureau for Labor Statistics not releasing labor
statistics because of the shutdown? Or is it because Donald
Trump fire at the head of Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Speaker 4 (08:11):
You are my favorite conspiracy theorist in the world.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
But they were supposed to okay, go is that really
a conspiracy?
Speaker 4 (08:21):
Yes, so this is what always happened in the past
during shutdowns. So a shutdown is anything that's discretionary spending
and non emergency or essential. And I know that you
hang on the job's numbers as if it was a
question of life or death.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
Yes, everygon I'm like, I don't know how to feel well,
I see them.
Speaker 4 (08:40):
I just want you to look inside, Molly and breathe
and see what's there for you.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
That's right, that's right, so tell me.
Speaker 4 (08:50):
So that's why the job's numbers are not being published,
literally because they're in the middle of a shutdown. Now,
the irony, if you wanted to get back to being infuriated,
is the numbers have all been collected and then sitting
on someone's desk that one person probably needs to just
hit publish, but that person's not allowed to work right now.
So what that means is that you and I and
all of our listeners have paid literally millions of dollars
(09:12):
to contact tens of thousands of businesses and tens of
thousands of Americans to find out what's going on in
the economy at this remarkable inflection point, and we don't
get any return on all that money that has been invested.
This is just one case study of the many pointless
case studies of dumb waste during a shutdown.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Right, So, there are humongous implications to shutting down the
government that are financial and a little bit maybe sort
of second order. Can you talk about that?
Speaker 4 (09:45):
Yeah, So, at one level, I want to calm our
audience down at another level. I'll then help us all
feel a little more furious. So we're going to have
an emotional rollercoaster. Let me calm you down. First of all,
we have done this over and over and over and
over and over, over and over. Some of us have
been through many of these radios where the government is
shut down. Many years ago, this would have been regarded
(10:09):
as catastrophic, would have been regarded as embarrassing, humiliating for
the United States, for the White House, for Congress, that
we can't literally maintain a function in government. We've now
done it so many times that we're no longer humiliated
by it. The direct economic implications are relatively minor in
many respects. First of all, big parts of the government
(10:29):
are still running, so importantly, for instance, folks who rely
on Social Security. Social Security is not discretionary spending, as
most of the budgets what's called mandatory spending, none of
which is affected by the shutdown. So the Social Security
checks are still going out. That's a big part of
what the government does. Medicare Medicaid is still going on, right,
So it's the smaller part, which is called discretionary spending
(10:51):
that is affected within that, some functions are regarded as
essential the military, you know, certain types of security, safety
and so on. And because they're essential, those folks are
still working annoyingly for them. They're not getting paid, but
they're still doing their jobs. Then there's all the parts
that are deemed inessential and so producing employment numbers, producing
(11:12):
inflation numbers. The people who answer the phone at the
Federal Trade Commission when you call to say I think
someone's trying to fraud my mother, they don't answer the
phone anymore. It's not clear they've been answering the phone
for a while. And so there's many, many small functions
of government that you may not notice every day are
going to be missing. Now, if they're missing for a
(11:33):
not very long period of time, it's not a big deal.
Speaker 5 (11:35):
Great.
Speaker 4 (11:35):
For instance, most of the federal government already closes down
two days out of the week, big Saturday and Sunday.
The economy keeps some going on, we just wait till Monday.
So a short shutdown in some sense, just think about
it as another weekend, and that fraud call you wanted
to make, you'll just make in a few days.
Speaker 5 (11:53):
Now.
Speaker 4 (11:54):
The longer this goes on, the more important this becomes.
It becomes important directly because some of the services that
people need to become unavailable for so long that it
becomes difficult for them to do anything. More importantly, the
longer it goes on, the more we're learning about the
profound dysfunction and rot at the heart of the US
federal government, and that might cause all different forms of nervousness.
(12:16):
I'm going to pause so you can ask me a question,
but I can even tell you which question to ask
if you want, yes, goal, Molly, are you interested what
the president's advisors have told him and to telling congressional
Republicans the economic cost of this will be?
Speaker 1 (12:30):
Yes?
Speaker 4 (12:30):
Do you want to ask me a question about it? No,
just tell me, just look interested.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
Said, it's so hard.
Speaker 4 (12:38):
And when I talk to like these people like you
who have all these interests and things like culture and
the arts, and I'm.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Just economists, what is it? Tell me what it is?
Speaker 5 (12:49):
But you've forgotten what questions you ask?
Speaker 1 (12:52):
What have Trump's advisors told him the economic cost of
this will be? And then I want to know what
the political cost will be?
Speaker 5 (12:58):
Great?
Speaker 4 (12:58):
The counsel are going to be advised put out a
note a couple of days ago saying their estimate is
that this will shave point two percent off GDP growth
this quarter, or cost fifteen billion dollars. Here's the fun
part and why I'm so glad you're asked, Molly with
your vital interest. They made an arithmetic error. I'm not joking. Literally,
(13:19):
they got their sums wrong. This is not if I
were justin saying it's a different way of evaluating this,
I'd come and tell you that it's.
Speaker 5 (13:26):
Literally they made an arithmetic error.
Speaker 4 (13:29):
So they claim it'll be fifteen Every week of the
shutdown will cut fifteen billion dollars off US GDP, which
sounds terrifying. We'll come back to whether it is yeah,
and would reduce growth by point two percent. So if
we had four weeks of that, it would reduce growth
by point eight percent. That also starts to sound scary.
But actually their literal arithmetic error means they overstated everything
by a factor of four. I have pointed this out
(13:51):
to them and they have yet to issue any retraction.
Speaker 5 (13:55):
I know that surprises you.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Did you when you wrote them an email? Did you
get an email back with a poopomolgi?
Speaker 4 (14:01):
I actually didn't email them. I just tagged them on
the Twitter. I figured that's why they must spend their
whole time I am going through the press office. They
know what's going on by now, so they've overstated it
by a factor of for I just want to just
linger for a moment on the irony. These are the
people who want to fire the Commissioner of the Bureau
of Labor Statistics because they believe statistics are not quite
(14:22):
right and they literally miscalculated a percentage change, not a joke.
These are the PhD economists. These are the responsible ones
in the Trump White House. So actually the effect is
much much smaller than that. And actually the calculations say,
whatever we lose this quarter GDP will go back to
where it should be the following quarter when we get
back to reopening the government. And so actually the economic
(14:46):
costs macroeconomic costs a US GDP over twenty twenty five
for a week long shutdown will be one one hundred
to one percent lower, which is tiny. I partly tell
you that story because I like to about the incompetence
of others.
Speaker 5 (15:02):
Well, I don't like to talk about it.
Speaker 4 (15:03):
I think it's important that people are aware of the
nonsense that's coming out of the White House, partly to
point out this is not a macroeconomic story. So if
you're on the edge of your seat, worry that this
is a recession, it's just around the corner. I want
to calm you down. And then we can still come
back and say, well, if the real number is not
fifteen billion, it's three and three quarter billion, we might
(15:24):
just notice here, Molly, you and I three and three
quarter is a lot of billions. It's a lot of dollars.
So even if it's not macroeconomics, this is like saying
to the American people, we want to burn dollar bills
as a way of providing political advertising for one side
of politics or the other. And frankly, I find that disgusting, wasteful,
(15:47):
and I wish we weren't treated this way.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Yes, I wonder if you could talk a little bit
about how hard it is to run an economy when
you can't necessarily try asked the information coming from the
White House, which is part of this. I mean, so
they made a mistake here, it sounds like, and they
do make mistakes because they move fast and break things
(16:10):
and are super incompetent, displaying like, what the sort of
second order effects are of having an administration that BoA's
isn'tcompetent but also is dishonest.
Speaker 5 (16:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (16:21):
So, look, there was a long rule in American politics
that when an American politician said, some threw, even if
it were often cherry picked in misleading. Yeah, I better half.
Used to be on President Obama's Council of Economic Advisors,
and before the stated in the nation, they would go
through and there would be a check mark from the
different departments around the White House.
Speaker 5 (16:40):
This fact is true.
Speaker 4 (16:42):
It may not represent the whole truth, but it is
a literal truth. And so when people have asked me
the question that you asked me five years ago, I
would say, any statistic coming out of a magic statistical agency,
the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the Bureau
of laboris toistics, the Department of.
Speaker 5 (17:01):
Agriculture is true.
Speaker 4 (17:03):
And facts coming out of the White House or cabinet
secretary's mouths are true, although maybe literally true, or though
maybe not the whole truth. That was what I said
five years ago. What's important to understand where we are now,
it is still true. I want to take the heat
down a little. It is still the case that data
coming out of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Bureau
of Economic Analysis, the Census Bureau, the Department of Agriculture
is true. That may not be true for HHS, where
(17:27):
Senator Kennedy is telling us that if we did more
jumping jacks, we wouldn't get COVID. So what they're saying
is untrue on its face. But the statistical agencies still
have their independence, they still tell the truth, and they
still have that culture of truth telling. What we don't
have is any sense that anything the president or any
cabinet secretary says any time there shouldn't even be a
(17:50):
default now to believe them. The President walks around saying
things like, there is seventeen trillion dollars investment of investment
that I have personally raised. This is literally a number
made up out of whole time, like genuinely just he
and then some days he wakes up in a bad
mood and to make himself feel better he adds an
extra trillion to it. It's this is not a question
(18:11):
of political this or political that. This is bullshit, nonsense, horseshit, untrue.
Treasury Secretary Percent, I think would prefer to tell the truth,
but has to tell untruths to remain inside the circle,
and as a result he now tells enormous and extraordinary untruths.
The example I talked about a moment ago where a
nerdy economist me points out to the Council of Economic
(18:31):
Advisors they literally got their sums wrong, and they're not
going to respond to that because there's a culture of
masculinity and macho and never admitting you're wrong, and weakness
and blah blah blah. Then means even the folks who
were meant to be truth oriented within the White House
have given up on the truth. That is really worrying.
You ask for how it's worrying for the outside what?
(18:53):
Let me just pause on something even simpler. If you
spend enough time lying to the person next to you
and they spend time lying to you back, you start.
Speaker 5 (18:59):
To bully what you speak.
Speaker 4 (19:01):
And so if you believe that the American economy is
close to perfect and they're on the cusp of an
investment boom, you're going to make policy choices that are
absolutely bananas.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Yeah, and that's.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Like bailing out Argentina.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Argentina, Oh you glad about the Argentina Baling.
Speaker 4 (19:19):
No, I don't really have a view, and I think
too many of us reflex I think too many of
us are reflexively. You might have a sophisticated view, but
I think many people who are anti Argentina bailout are
reflexively thinking about it. I have not actually been able
to find enough serious insight into what's going on to
have a strong view.
Speaker 5 (19:38):
I'm just slowly in.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
No. Yeah, clearly, I want you to talk about the soybeans.
So we have Scott Assen, you know, saying on television
that you talked to China and China said you remember
you know the clip I'm going to ask you about I.
Speaker 5 (19:54):
Do, and like, I love the fact.
Speaker 4 (19:55):
Hello China speaking Minnesueta.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Yeah, I talked to China and they said they used
to buy soybeans until Joe Biden, and now they don't
buy sobeans anymore, and that is why our farmers are hurting. Okay,
we're nine months into Donald Trump's presidency. We know for
a fact that this is a product of Trump's first presidency.
So explain to me how Joe Biden got involved in.
Speaker 4 (20:23):
Those So when I said they lie, they lie, I
mean they love relentlessly The idea that this has anything
to do with Biden is absurd. So let me make
a couple of analytic points. First of all, who didn't
see this coming. Trump tried tariffs in the first term,
China boycotted soybeans. Soybean farmers freaked out and needed a
rest of US bailed them out. And that's a bailout
(20:46):
where they send a check to keep money is coming
out of your wallet to a soybean farmer.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
Let me make it deeper, socialize the law, social liabtise
the games exactly.
Speaker 4 (20:56):
Let me make a I think a more important analytic point.
Soybean farmers are hurting. Soybeans are fine. I don't have
particular emotional attachment to soybean farmers. Maybe I'm not a
real American. They are hurting, but they're also intensely organized.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
They're getting cash.
Speaker 4 (21:16):
And they get cash. They get cash that comes from yours.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
And my taxes because they have larbyats.
Speaker 4 (21:22):
You and I and every member of our audience is
paying tariffs and a lot of money in an incredibly
regressive way. So as much as soybean farmers are hurting,
remember farmers very rarely are like our depression era image
of them. They're often very large commercial enterprises. We do
know that working class families are finding it much much
(21:43):
harder to get buy and the cost of living particularly,
they're the folks who buy their furniture from China, for instance,
who have seen a lot of their cost of living rising,
have got even more coming up. They're hurting no less
and possibly more than the soybean farmers. Not only are
they getting no help, they're paying taxes to pay this.
So farmers, what this gives you? It's another side effective tariffs.
(22:04):
Tariffs redistribute according to political power. Working the middle class
Americans lack the political power of soybean farmers, and twelve
fifteen billion dollars going out the door from the rest
of us to soybean farmers, the rest of us should
be getting checks as well. Mile, I have a solution
to many of our nation's problems. What I can get
(22:26):
rid of stagflation. I can get rid of the ways
in which work in class of Americas.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
Wait, are we in stagflation?
Speaker 4 (22:32):
I mean I am. I see the unemployment rate rising,
I see inflation high and rising, and I see that
the tariffs are going to make that worse. Now, if
you want to be polite. You can call it stagflation light.
This isn't quite as.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
Bad tory stagflation.
Speaker 5 (22:48):
Okay, we're going to do economic theory.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
Okay, you have ninety seconds go.
Speaker 4 (22:52):
I'm going to use the first twenty just telling you
how much I love you, Molly. I don't need ninety
I go.
Speaker 5 (22:58):
Tariffs are what has called a suppliia. Cost go up.
Speaker 4 (23:01):
Therefore the farmers raise their prices and other businesses raise
their prices. During that period, you've got inflation because prices
are rising, and it takes a while for us to
rejeitter everything, and so some people lose their job, so
unemployment rises. Once we've stuck at this new equilibrium, the
claim is, and the hope is, and experiences and models
(23:21):
suggest that it shouldn't keep going. Inflation's ongoing price rises,
this would be a rise in prices. Those higher prices
should not, in economic theory, continue forever. So the hope
is supply shocks callused transitory inflation.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Justin Wilfers.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, a great pleasure.
Speaker 5 (23:40):
Molly.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Jacob sober Off is a senior political and national correspondent
and MSNBC and the author of separated as well as
he will appear at MSNBC Live twenty five on October eleventh.
Welcome to Fast Politechs Sabarov.
Speaker 6 (24:00):
Thanks Molly, good to see you.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
I'm really glad to see you. Let's talk about this
child separation because I do think like the only thing
worse than twenty sixteen, twenty eighteen, the sort of just
watching this horror playout is now when it's playing out
ten times faster and ten times scarier.
Speaker 7 (24:20):
Yeah, I mean, and don't take it from me, take
it from the Republican appointed judges stopped the policy, who
literally called what they did in the first term one
of the most shameful chapters in the history of the country,
and that was, you know, the deliberate and forcable separation
of fifty five hundred children from their parents, which is
not a small number, it's enormous. And then it will
go down, you know, amongst all the other ignoble chapters
(24:43):
in our country's history. But now they're looking to supersize
it and we're watching it play out in real time,
and they literally have modeled this mass deportation program the
largest in the history of the country.
Speaker 6 (24:54):
Is what they want after Dwight D.
Speaker 7 (24:56):
Eisenhower's nineteen fifty four program that deported literally not only
did it have an insanely racist name, the official name
of the policy of the operation, but it deported a
million Mexicans and some Mexican Americans. And now we're seeing
that exact thing play out on the streets all over
the country, American citizens screaming, not only am I born here,
I'm a US citizen, my family are US citizens, And
(25:18):
it doesn't matter, they're still snatching people up off the street.
Speaker 6 (25:21):
It's both.
Speaker 7 (25:21):
I think it shocks the conscious, just like the family
separation did, but it also is exactly what they said
they were going to do when I watched them report
about this from the floor of the convention, and everyone
held up those those science those mass deportation now signs yes.
And I have to say, hey, Molly, like to sit
next to you. I won't forget what happened a couple
weeks ago, and we sat on the set with Nicole
Wallace on Deadline, and these stories. I wish they affected
(25:43):
everybody like they affected you that day. And I was
very moved to be sitting next to you and talking
to you, because it's not just happening on the streets,
it's happening in the hallway of the immigration court. And
we told that story of Nori Santai Ramos, who was
deported as a high school track star honor student from
here in La Yeah, a senior. Her mother died a
couple of weeks after I was there. Now she's alone, well,
(26:05):
the mother died. The mother died, the family says of grief.
The story that they told us is that she had
medicine taken away for blood pressure issues when she was
in nice attention, never got it back, and literally one
night as she was going to bed, said she wasn't
feeling well and passed away. So now Nori is without
the mother that she was deported from Los Angeles with.
(26:26):
And we don't know how many Norris there are, how
many Estella's her mother?
Speaker 1 (26:30):
And you see it right, because you see in the
detention centers in the courts. I mean, like yesterday we
saw a journalist get pushed to the ground and is
now left in a structure of the ambulance came to
take them away.
Speaker 7 (26:46):
Do you remember that I was just messaging with them
today because you know I was there too in twenty
six federal applause. And I watched all that stuff myself,
and not a lot of stuff shocks me. Not a
lot of stuff is surprising anymore. But to be there
and just to watch them pick off people one after
the next, after the next, after the next. Remember before
this journalist, a photojournalist was knocked down yesterday, put into
(27:06):
a neck brace and taken into a stretcher by ice,
trying to get someone in the elevator. They did it
to a mother with the two children standing right there,
and this is your last week, and they pushed her
exactly a whole other week of stories. It happens every day,
and I think the five hours out of there, I
saw them do it five times.
Speaker 6 (27:21):
And this is because we know why.
Speaker 7 (27:23):
It is because Stephen Miller wants to hit a quota,
wants to hit a certain number of deportations every day
and every month so that they can get to this
one million plus number for the year. But if we
don't talk about the consequences, if we don't show what
the consequences are, I think we're failing to do our
jobs properly.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
Yeah, you know, I spend a lot of time thinking about,
like my grandfather during the House of American Activities and
what like this looks like in the context. So that's
why talking about Operation Went Back, which right is the
name of it, which we don't want to say because
it's so racist, but that was the name they called it.
Speaker 7 (27:57):
That was the official name of an aeial government policy
in the Eisenhower administration.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
I feel like it's so important to say stuff like
that because you know, this is who we are, this
is the country of Operation Went Back, and that's what
this is.
Speaker 7 (28:11):
Just like when we think back about all of these
chapters like Native American genocide and slavery, and Japanese American internment,
and the turning back of the Jews, you know in
the Saint Louis back to the Holocaust, Native American boarding schools,
you name it. That's why when I wrote Separated about
famous Operation Policy, I called it inside an American tragedy
because very specifically, it is an American feature and phenomenon
(28:32):
to treat people in this way, particularly people who are
coming here to seek a better life.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
Yes, one hundred percent. I just think about what does
it take to get people to change, What does it
take to have the moment where everybody changes, because what
we've seen in this particular moment in American history is
backlash to backlash to backlash to backlash. So like, there
was a moment that spurred on Black Lives Matter, and
(28:57):
it was that video of those cops with the guy
with his knee on George Floyd's neck and everybody just
sort of wandering around not stopping at So the question is, like,
what does it take for people, what is the breaking point?
And I'm thinking about Illinois Governor Pritzker said get your
(29:18):
phone out and videotape everything you see, so I want
you to talk about that.
Speaker 7 (29:22):
I think the people who are like definitionally performing the
greatest public service you can right now are local journalists
like La Taco Here in La which is a small
independent media organization with a handful of people who have
been there. Started off talking about food, but I think
they deserve Pultzer Prize for their work around the ice
rates here over the summer and the extent to which
they helped document. They documented themselves, Lexus Oliver Ray and
(29:47):
so many other people Memo Torres with his daily updates
to let people see what was actually happening in the streets.
And I do think that in no small part because
of their work. The No Kings they wrote this in
June here in La were as big as they were
tat Liarry. Tens of thousands of people in the street.
And that was the first time during this administration that
I was reminded of the reaction to famous separation in
the first one. And that was hundreds of thousands, if
(30:08):
not millions of people in the streets all around the
not just around the country, around the world. And it
wasn't just bipartisan, it was a universal condemnation. The popes
spoke out, and that was the if not the one,
it was certainly one of the most major policy reversals
of the first Trump term where he backed down and
he didn't back down. Everybody shuld remember that he didn't
back down because he felt morally opposed to the policy.
Speaker 6 (30:28):
He tried to reinstitute it.
Speaker 7 (30:29):
You know, I've reported he said, quote unquote, I didn't
like the site or the feeling of the families being separated.
He was responding to the audio of Pro Publica Ginger
Thompson that got the babies crying in the border patrol facilities.
Speaker 6 (30:39):
When the guy said, well.
Speaker 7 (30:41):
It sounds like we have an orchestra here and then
the reaction to that, and that was in the late
late June of twenty eighteen, and he backed down, and
in the beginning of these immigration rates, he waffled. He
backed down once the image of the people being chased
through fields in Oxnard, California and Ventura County came out,
back down on the hotels, and then he flipped bopped
because reportedly, you know, Steven Miller pushed back against him,
(31:03):
which raised this question about who's running these policies in
the first places, that even the president, and.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
That is a real question because it does seem like
Russpot and Steven Miller are doing more and more and more.
Speaker 7 (31:13):
This is exactly what Steven Miller wanted to do during
the first term. He didn't want to separate fifty five hundred.
He wanted to separate twenty five thousand using administrative separations.
And now he's putting to use all of those tools
in the hallways of Immigration Court, on the streets of
cities around the country, at freaking flower stands and fruit stands,
and in home depot parking lots. It is very disturbing
(31:36):
to see play out for anybody, but especially people in
the communities across the country, and so I think, to
your question, people are starting to realize that this has
been our hands more than anybody else's, because we're the
ones walking down Michigan Avenue when there's Border Patrol agents
in Chicago in tactical gear and masks, or in Washington,
DC posted up outside Union Station, or now in Memphis,
(31:57):
or now in Portland, the National Guard. And you want
to know how in talking to National Guard troops who
were here during the deployment in LA the ones I
talked to, and I'm speaking for all of them, they
didn't want to be here. Their friends and their family
members are from this community. They are of the community.
These are people that they know who they're scaring, and
at some point this will tip. And that's why I
(32:18):
love that, first of all, as all, I love being
a part of this MSNBC family and the word that
Rachel does on Monday nights showing these protests out in
the street, and then Nicole does every day, and frankly
everybody does. And why I'm excited to get together with
everybody on the eleventh in person, because unless we're together,
unless we're talking about these things, unless we're sharing these things.
We're all sitting in our little isolated bubbles not participating.
(32:39):
And I think that participation, whatever that means to you now,
is the greatest form of secific service that anybody can do.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
Yes, Jacob, let's talk about MSNBC Live. Tell me about
this MSNBC Live event.
Speaker 6 (32:53):
It's going to be really cool.
Speaker 7 (32:54):
I had big fomo that I missed it last year,
but I was still on the NBC side of the operation,
and that I came home to MSNBC is that it's
always been about the people, not about the politics for me,
and I mean that for the people in front of
the camera and the people behind the camera, and the
people in our audience. I think we have the most
engaged audience in all of news, not just television news.
(33:15):
But people are extraordinarily passionate about their relationship with us,
including you that they see on their TV every day,
and this opportunity to get together with people in person.
I remember the first time I did anything like it.
There was a thing called Politicon out here in LA
and I remember saying to my boss at MSNBC at
the time, we have got to do something like this
because you don't understand how meaningful it is to the
(33:35):
people that watch us and consume our journalism to be
able to connect with us face to face, and so
that's what this thing is. It's at the Hammersteen Ballroom
on October eleventh, is all day long. I'm going to
be there. My good friend Katie Turko I grew up
with in La and I are going to be doing
some stuff. Stephanie Rul and I are going to be
doing some stuff together. But everyone up and down the
lineup is going to be there, including Nicole Rachel, Chris Lawrence.
Speaker 6 (33:54):
It's going to be really awesome.
Speaker 7 (33:55):
And it's meaningful to me too to be able to
find a time where we can get together with thousands
of ours, our viewers, and be able to connect with
them on one on one to one and let them
ask us questions, let us ask them questions about what
they're seeing out there. So I think it should be
I know it's going to be really special. And my
Phona was slowly going away as we approachucted over eleventh.
Speaker 1 (34:13):
It's cute that you and Katie ter grew up together.
Speaker 6 (34:15):
You don't even know.
Speaker 7 (34:16):
I mean, in my old shitty Priests, we would drive
around the palasads getting.
Speaker 6 (34:21):
Ourselves into trouble.
Speaker 7 (34:22):
It's cool to be able to work for the last
ten years with somebody who's been a friend of mine
since we were teenagers. Has been really special. This is
not corporate speak or any sort of nobody's telling me
to say this. I really, really am happy about being
back at MSNBC. I love the people here, and Katie
is first among them because we've known each other for
such a long time. But like, just look at the
work we've done together over the years here. We've been
(34:42):
able to cover the fires in our own hometown together
in the Palisades. Who else had that opportunity, you know,
in such an insane, devid personal moment to be there
with not only a friend but a trusted colleague. But
we did American Swap together the doc series in twenty
nineteen and got to travel around. And I remember the
first day I started and she saw that I was
in the system, and I did tell her I was
coming to work here, and she wrote me a message
(35:03):
being like this is for real, and it has it
seemed like a real, It seemed like a dream. She's
she's a wonderful person, and I think it's be really
cool to talk to her in front of everybody.
Speaker 6 (35:10):
They get to see sort of that side of us.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
I have two things that I really want you to
talk about. First is the redistricting in Los Angeles. You
got a special election coming up. It's not in Los Angeles,
it's in California. You got a special election coming up.
Speaker 6 (35:23):
State wide special election. I'm gearing up.
Speaker 7 (35:25):
I'll be part you know, and this might be a
spoiler alert for your listeners and our viewers, but we're
going to definitely be in special coverage on that night
for the special election on MSNBC because think about the
consequences of this, literally the balance of power in the
House of Representatives as in Texas and in these other states,
all of this cheermanering is occurring. Gavin Newsom has put
on the ballot here with the state legislature and initiative
(35:47):
to temporarily pause our nonpartisan redistricting system that Arnld Schuarzenegger
put into place when he was governor. And I think
that based on what the poll's stand with, the people say,
you know, they're supportive of this, despite the fact they
want to take redistricting out of the hands of the.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
Politicians, which is insane.
Speaker 7 (36:03):
Newsom's argument that I've had the fortune spent a lot
of time with is why would you unilaterally disarm in
the face of the Republicans doing this in all these
other states and obviously preparing to gobble up all of
these seats in the House. And so that's literally what's
on the ballot, you know, potentially five new seats in
the House representatives for Democrats in California. I think it's
going to be for an off year election. You know,
(36:25):
we don't have a midterm, we don't have a huge
statewide race. I think it's going to be nutst Talk.
Speaker 1 (36:29):
To me about what it looks like in your mind,
because also millions of dollars are being poured into it too, oh.
Speaker 7 (36:34):
Tons, And I'm watching commercials have TV at my desk
right here, and I'm seeing commercials played on cable all
the time about it. I think people when they first
hear about it sort of recoiled because there was a
lot of time and energy spent into taking redistricting out
of hands of politicians and making it a non partisan
thing as a model for the nation to do, to
do away with gerrymandering nationwide. When it is explained to
them what this is and why the governor and the
(36:55):
legislature put this on the ballot.
Speaker 6 (36:56):
You see the people moving in the direction of.
Speaker 7 (36:59):
Supporting this, so I think, you know, it's October early October.
Now there's going to be a major blitz like we
see in all state wide racists in California. And as
you said, God knows how many tens of millions of
dollars spent in order to get people to focus on this,
because the consequences are not for California.
Speaker 6 (37:15):
The consequences are for the nation. Obviously. It's the balance
of power in the House.
Speaker 1 (37:18):
I mean, the consequences of this thing are fucking huge.
I want you to talk about this book you're writing
about the fires. I mean, watching you cover it was
really moving for any number of reasons. It's also like
this story has continued on, like the rebuilding, the environmental
repercussions from it, like it is a lot. I live
(37:41):
in New York and always well and during nine to eleven,
you know, we were like, oh shit, this this smoke,
the sow it. I mean, I remember people you knew,
you knew, you knew something bad.
Speaker 7 (37:54):
Nine to eleven was my seventh day of school as
a freshman at nyu oh in Washington.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
Spare Okay, you're younger than we are, Jesse, and I.
Speaker 6 (38:02):
Hear it, but I was there too.
Speaker 7 (38:04):
No, there was a feeling that was similar to the
point that you're getting to, is a point that I
The book is called Firestorm, The Great Los Angeles Fires
and America's New Age of Disaster, and it comes out
on January sixth, one day before the first anniversary of
the fires, and I hope people will pre order it
because it's not just a story about the costliest natural
disaster in the history of California, nor the cost of
(38:26):
wildfire theory of the costs wildfire in the history of
the United States of America. It's the story of what
happens when all kinds of circumstances find themselves at this confluence,
perhaps most importantly, misinformation and disinformation. And this all played
out during the transition from Joe Biden to Donald Trump
coming into office. And there is so much to unpack
about why the fires were as bad as they were.
Speaker 6 (38:49):
A lot of it was uncontrollable.
Speaker 7 (38:50):
These were hurricane force winds at a time when we
had had virtually no rain for many months, and so
it was a tinderbox waiting to go. But the politic
around this moment, and the book is the story of
me being there watching my own hometown carbonized before my eyes,
not understanding how to process that. How do you process
that in real time? You don't actually and especially when
(39:11):
you're out there talking about it on television, to try
to explain it to millions of people who are watching
along with you. But what I have come to understand
about what these fires were were the basically the fire
of the future. There will only be more of them
because of many factors, climate change, of course, the degradation
of our infrastructure, the changes in the way we live.
Thousands of lithium ion batteries from electric cars were blowing up.
(39:32):
But like I said, I think most importantly throughout the fire,
Donald Trump, who was not a sitting elected official at
the time, Elon Musk, who had no official governmental position
but certainly a giant microphone, were out there spreading an
extraordinary amount of incorrect information about how the fires happened,
what happened, and how we could recover from them. And
so there's a lot of original reporting in this book,
(39:53):
and that's what I want to do. I needed to
understand better how it could have been so bad, And
so you read a lot about what Governor Newsom went
through about his interactions with President Trump, about members of
the Trump administration who reached out to me directly about
their own personal homes despite the fact that we had
been adversarial as reporter source relationships. These fires didn't spare anybody,
(40:13):
but the minute they were over all of that stuff continued,
and it certainly hasn't helped the recovery at all out
of tens of thousands of structures that have been destroyed,
and certainly local officials are to blame as well. There's
less than a thousand permits that have been issued for
homes to be rebuilt so far, and so a lot
of work to do and a lot of things for
all of us to understand about how these huge natural disasters,
(40:34):
not just fires, are happening today, because if we don't,
they're just going to happen again.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
Jacob, thank you for coming on, Molly.
Speaker 6 (40:41):
I love talking to you. Oh and I was honored
that you asked, so thank you.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
No moment, Jesse Cannon.
Speaker 3 (40:51):
My junk fast.
Speaker 5 (40:52):
So Gavinan K.
Speaker 3 (40:53):
Newsome of the Governor of California, it's almost like, you know,
he's doing the Warrio dash, the opposite version of mister Trump.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
I don't hate it.
Speaker 2 (41:02):
Do you hate it?
Speaker 3 (41:03):
No, I don't hate it at all. I actually think
the way he did this, I mean it's very interesting.
Like when people discuss the left and right being the same,
Like one of the things that the stupidest analysis will
ease out is that it's not the same when you're
helping people and you're making sure people get good outcomes
versus people doing things out of hate and doing things
to hurt people. And I think what he's doing here
is very interesting, which is that he's saying he'll instantly
(41:26):
cut funding at California collegist that signed the Trump Packed.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
Yeah, and look, Trump has this dumb packed. There's a
really good article in The Times today by the head
of the USC Law schools saying that this is bullshit.
It's not if you go and become a captured institution,
you are forever at the behest of Donald Trump. And
it's not like it's going to stop, like it'll just
(41:50):
keep going. He will keep doing that. So there is
absolutely no reason to go along with what Trump wants.
This is very not surprising but bad. Yeah, I mean
good for Newsome. You know. By the way, we interviewed
Chris Murphy, and Chris Murphy said that Newsome redistricting those
(42:12):
five seeds, like he is one of the very few
people who was really hitting back. 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,
(42:33):
please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
Speaker 2 (42:37):
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.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
And Donald Trump.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Has turned down the rhetoric by calling Democrats the party
of hate, evil and Satan. We have such a great
joke for you today. Think like an economists owned Justin
Wolfers stops by to talk to us about the Trump
administration not releasing all sorts of data. I wonder why.
(00:30):
Then we'll talk to MSNBC's own Jacob sober Off about
the implications of having ice indiscriminately raid American homes. But
first the news.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Smill, I'm very disturbed that our politicians are not clocking
what's going on. I personally have always found it unacceptable
that we just raid immigrants homes and rip them out
away from their children. But now we're doing this to
US citizens, where you get detained for hours upon hours
without any call to your lawyer, and they get away
with this. And what happened in Chicago the other night,
(01:03):
it's an escalation that I feel our politicians should mark.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
So it's called the Kavanaugh Stop, named for Brett Kavanaugh,
or as we call him on this podcast, Justice Keg stand.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
I was gonna say, is it not a kegstand stuff?
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Justice Kavanaugh kegstand. He stops people. So dhs run by
one puppy killer Christy Nome and her boyfriend Corey Lubandowski,
both people married to other people. But let us not
cast aspersions. They raided in an apartment buildings.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Ouadcast aspersions on their asparagus.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Yes, they didn't actually raid this because she's busy. She
had a photo shoot, right, she's busy wearing makeup and
expensive watches. They raid an apartment building, smashing down every
door and dragging entire families into the street, detaining everyone
for hours. You'll be shot to know that, just like
what happened during the Dwight Eisenhower administration when they did
(02:08):
this very same thing. One US citizen, that's right, A
US citizen, by the way. The whole idea that these
people don't have rights like we do. We are still
governed by international law. We are not like a black
site yet, but this is an American citizen was held
for five hours. ABC spoke to a woman who lives
(02:32):
in the building. She said ice agent took everyone in
the building, including her, asked questions. Later, they treated us
like we were nothing. She came into the hallway of
her apartment complex on the corner of seventy fifth and
South Shore Drive and her nightgout at ten pm, Ice
agents yelling police it was scary because I've never had
a gun in my face, Fisher said. They asked my
(02:53):
name and my date of birth and asked me did
I have any warrants? And I told them no, I didn't.
Fisher said she was handcuffed before being least around three am,
and she was told if anyone had any kind of
worn out for them, even it was unrelated to immigration,
they would be arrested. Very nice, very nice, Christy nom
thanks team.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
I am almost just as mad that our politicians aren't
standing up to this. It's just I'm very angry.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Yeah. I want to point out something really important about
this news story, which is one of the very few
good things about this administration, is that they are doing
it out in the open. So this has gotten covered
by People Magazine. You know, People magazine. People Magazine is
not like The Times or the Washington Post, and People
(03:42):
Magazine is a media outlet that people read casually, and
part of the thing that we always spend a lot
of time puzzling about is like what breaks through. What
are the stories where people go, holy shit, this is
not okay. And when you have something like this where
it is in People magazine, when it is pictures, when
(04:06):
it's videos, when it's American citizens taken in their bathrobes
and nightgowns, when you look at the success of someone
like Victor orbon Or, you look at the success of
someone like Vladimir Putin, they didn't do this shit right away.
They built up to this stuff. So part of the
one really good thing about this administration is they are
doing the full on fast shit right now and that
(04:29):
is unbelievably as crazy as that sends, that's the good
news for us. Yeah, sorry, Jesse, I'm about good news.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
I mean, I'm back from my disassociation.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
So we have this government shutdown right now. People like
my own wife are not getting paid right now. It
affects our home greatly. And Trump is figuring out how
he can dismantle the government, particularly one Russ fought, is
trying to figure out which quote unquote Democrat agencies should
get cuts.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Yeah. So again, it's hard to know what is just
crazy threats and what is real. But there are crazy threats,
and this is where we are. Are they freezing a
lot of stuff? Yes? Are they going to fire some people? Yes?
Will it ultimately backfrond them? Very possibly? Right now, the
(05:18):
polling shows that people are blaming Republicans because they control
all three branches of government. Does that mean they keep
blaming Republicans? Maybe? Maybe not. But I do think like
clearly what Trump is doing, and Trump did tweet about
Project twenty twenty five. Project twenty twenty five wildly unpopular.
Trump said he wasn't going to do it. Now he's
(05:39):
doing it, So I think that that is meaningful and
I think it's possibly problematic for him.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
Almost fifty percent of it implemented already, so yeah. So
what's interesting though, is we are seeing that the White
House is panicking about the Obamacare subsidies, since it seems
like they're just hearing about this like the death of
Ruth Bader Ginsburg. But the set of GOP is betting
on the Dems not really showing up for a fight.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Republicans think Democrats Schumer's office, etc. Ocave. Maybe they will,
maybe they won't. There are a lot of Republicans who
are worried about these Obamacare premiums going up, and so
that is a real worry for some of these people
on the right too, because you know, there's a really
(06:27):
good article about this in the Wall Street Journal. Trump
ran on this idea he was going to make things cheaper, right,
I was told he was going to make things cheaper.
I was told bacon. If I'm being told bacon, where
is the There's no bacon here, baby. And Trump has
seems like he says he's willing to do some negotiation
on the Obamacare subsidies. So we'll see what happens. We
(06:48):
have not seen the last this. There is definitely a
negotiating platform here.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
Somali. After Trump and Pete hegsas psychotic little episode where
they put on the show in front of the generals.
They talked a lot about war, and everybody's wondering, great,
who are we going to war for? It's very clear
from every poll that America has no taste for war. Well,
it looks like our first war is going to be
with the cartels.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Yeah, we're seeing a lot of retreads from season one.
He had wanted to do war with the cartels before
you know, he blew up all those fishing boats he
likes a cartel war. I don't know. I mean, none
of this is okay. Again, A lot of this is
like to desensitize people towards killings, right, I mean, that's
(07:32):
what is happening here. None of this, by the way, FYI,
is constitutional or anything. But you know, we could definitely
see more of this. Justin Wolfers is the host of
We Think Like an Economist podcast and a professor at
the University of Michigan.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Welcome too Fast Politics, Justin.
Speaker 4 (07:53):
Wolfers, Molly, it's been ages dice Alis.
Speaker 5 (07:58):
Wait two knows.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Isn't that the Bureau for Labor Statistics not releasing labor
statistics because of the shutdown? Or is it because Donald
Trump fire at the head of Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Speaker 4 (08:11):
You are my favorite conspiracy theorist in the world.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
But they were supposed to okay, go is that really
a conspiracy?
Speaker 4 (08:21):
Yes, so this is what always happened in the past
during shutdowns. So a shutdown is anything that's discretionary spending
and non emergency or essential. And I know that you
hang on the job's numbers as if it was a
question of life or death.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
Yes, everygon I'm like, I don't know how to feel well,
I see them.
Speaker 4 (08:40):
I just want you to look inside, Molly and breathe
and see what's there for you.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
That's right, that's right, so tell me.
Speaker 4 (08:50):
So that's why the job's numbers are not being published,
literally because they're in the middle of a shutdown. Now,
the irony, if you wanted to get back to being infuriated,
is the numbers have all been collected and then sitting
on someone's desk that one person probably needs to just
hit publish, but that person's not allowed to work right now.
So what that means is that you and I and
all of our listeners have paid literally millions of dollars
(09:12):
to contact tens of thousands of businesses and tens of
thousands of Americans to find out what's going on in
the economy at this remarkable inflection point, and we don't
get any return on all that money that has been invested.
This is just one case study of the many pointless
case studies of dumb waste during a shutdown.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Right, So, there are humongous implications to shutting down the
government that are financial and a little bit maybe sort
of second order. Can you talk about that?
Speaker 4 (09:45):
Yeah, So, at one level, I want to calm our
audience down at another level. I'll then help us all
feel a little more furious. So we're going to have
an emotional rollercoaster. Let me calm you down. First of all,
we have done this over and over and over and
over and over, over and over. Some of us have
been through many of these radios where the government is
shut down. Many years ago, this would have been regarded
(10:09):
as catastrophic, would have been regarded as embarrassing, humiliating for
the United States, for the White House, for Congress, that
we can't literally maintain a function in government. We've now
done it so many times that we're no longer humiliated
by it. The direct economic implications are relatively minor in
many respects. First of all, big parts of the government
(10:29):
are still running, so importantly, for instance, folks who rely
on Social Security. Social Security is not discretionary spending, as
most of the budgets what's called mandatory spending, none of
which is affected by the shutdown. So the Social Security
checks are still going out. That's a big part of
what the government does. Medicare Medicaid is still going on, right,
So it's the smaller part, which is called discretionary spending
(10:51):
that is affected within that, some functions are regarded as
essential the military, you know, certain types of security, safety
and so on. And because they're essential, those folks are
still working annoyingly for them. They're not getting paid, but
they're still doing their jobs. Then there's all the parts
that are deemed inessential and so producing employment numbers, producing
(11:12):
inflation numbers. The people who answer the phone at the
Federal Trade Commission when you call to say I think
someone's trying to fraud my mother, they don't answer the
phone anymore. It's not clear they've been answering the phone
for a while. And so there's many, many small functions
of government that you may not notice every day are
going to be missing. Now, if they're missing for a
(11:33):
not very long period of time, it's not a big deal.
Speaker 5 (11:35):
Great.
Speaker 4 (11:35):
For instance, most of the federal government already closes down
two days out of the week, big Saturday and Sunday.
The economy keeps some going on, we just wait till Monday.
So a short shutdown in some sense, just think about
it as another weekend, and that fraud call you wanted
to make, you'll just make in a few days.
Speaker 5 (11:53):
Now.
Speaker 4 (11:54):
The longer this goes on, the more important this becomes.
It becomes important directly because some of the services that
people need to become unavailable for so long that it
becomes difficult for them to do anything. More importantly, the
longer it goes on, the more we're learning about the
profound dysfunction and rot at the heart of the US
federal government, and that might cause all different forms of nervousness.
(12:16):
I'm going to pause so you can ask me a question,
but I can even tell you which question to ask
if you want, yes, goal, Molly, are you interested what
the president's advisors have told him and to telling congressional
Republicans the economic cost of this will be?
Speaker 1 (12:30):
Yes?
Speaker 4 (12:30):
Do you want to ask me a question about it? No,
just tell me, just look interested.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
Said, it's so hard.
Speaker 4 (12:38):
And when I talk to like these people like you
who have all these interests and things like culture and
the arts, and I'm.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Just economists, what is it? Tell me what it is?
Speaker 5 (12:49):
But you've forgotten what questions you ask?
Speaker 1 (12:52):
What have Trump's advisors told him the economic cost of
this will be? And then I want to know what
the political cost will be?
Speaker 5 (12:58):
Great?
Speaker 4 (12:58):
The counsel are going to be advised put out a
note a couple of days ago saying their estimate is
that this will shave point two percent off GDP growth
this quarter, or cost fifteen billion dollars. Here's the fun
part and why I'm so glad you're asked, Molly with
your vital interest. They made an arithmetic error. I'm not joking. Literally,
(13:19):
they got their sums wrong. This is not if I
were justin saying it's a different way of evaluating this,
I'd come and tell you that it's.
Speaker 5 (13:26):
Literally they made an arithmetic error.
Speaker 4 (13:29):
So they claim it'll be fifteen Every week of the
shutdown will cut fifteen billion dollars off US GDP, which
sounds terrifying. We'll come back to whether it is yeah,
and would reduce growth by point two percent. So if
we had four weeks of that, it would reduce growth
by point eight percent. That also starts to sound scary.
But actually their literal arithmetic error means they overstated everything
by a factor of four. I have pointed this out
(13:51):
to them and they have yet to issue any retraction.
Speaker 5 (13:55):
I know that surprises you.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Did you when you wrote them an email? Did you
get an email back with a poopomolgi?
Speaker 4 (14:01):
I actually didn't email them. I just tagged them on
the Twitter. I figured that's why they must spend their
whole time I am going through the press office. They
know what's going on by now, so they've overstated it
by a factor of for I just want to just
linger for a moment on the irony. These are the
people who want to fire the Commissioner of the Bureau
of Labor Statistics because they believe statistics are not quite
(14:22):
right and they literally miscalculated a percentage change, not a joke.
These are the PhD economists. These are the responsible ones
in the Trump White House. So actually the effect is
much much smaller than that. And actually the calculations say,
whatever we lose this quarter GDP will go back to
where it should be the following quarter when we get
back to reopening the government. And so actually the economic
(14:46):
costs macroeconomic costs a US GDP over twenty twenty five
for a week long shutdown will be one one hundred
to one percent lower, which is tiny. I partly tell
you that story because I like to about the incompetence
of others.
Speaker 5 (15:02):
Well, I don't like to talk about it.
Speaker 4 (15:03):
I think it's important that people are aware of the
nonsense that's coming out of the White House, partly to
point out this is not a macroeconomic story. So if
you're on the edge of your seat, worry that this
is a recession, it's just around the corner. I want
to calm you down. And then we can still come
back and say, well, if the real number is not
fifteen billion, it's three and three quarter billion, we might
(15:24):
just notice here, Molly, you and I three and three
quarter is a lot of billions. It's a lot of dollars.
So even if it's not macroeconomics, this is like saying
to the American people, we want to burn dollar bills
as a way of providing political advertising for one side
of politics or the other. And frankly, I find that disgusting, wasteful,
(15:47):
and I wish we weren't treated this way.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Yes, I wonder if you could talk a little bit
about how hard it is to run an economy when
you can't necessarily try asked the information coming from the
White House, which is part of this. I mean, so
they made a mistake here, it sounds like, and they
do make mistakes because they move fast and break things
(16:10):
and are super incompetent, displaying like, what the sort of
second order effects are of having an administration that BoA's
isn'tcompetent but also is dishonest.
Speaker 5 (16:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (16:21):
So, look, there was a long rule in American politics
that when an American politician said, some threw, even if
it were often cherry picked in misleading. Yeah, I better half.
Used to be on President Obama's Council of Economic Advisors,
and before the stated in the nation, they would go
through and there would be a check mark from the
different departments around the White House.
Speaker 5 (16:40):
This fact is true.
Speaker 4 (16:42):
It may not represent the whole truth, but it is
a literal truth. And so when people have asked me
the question that you asked me five years ago, I
would say, any statistic coming out of a magic statistical agency,
the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the Bureau
of laboris toistics, the Department of.
Speaker 5 (17:01):
Agriculture is true.
Speaker 4 (17:03):
And facts coming out of the White House or cabinet
secretary's mouths are true, although maybe literally true, or though
maybe not the whole truth. That was what I said
five years ago. What's important to understand where we are now,
it is still true. I want to take the heat
down a little. It is still the case that data
coming out of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Bureau
of Economic Analysis, the Census Bureau, the Department of Agriculture
is true. That may not be true for HHS, where
(17:27):
Senator Kennedy is telling us that if we did more
jumping jacks, we wouldn't get COVID. So what they're saying
is untrue on its face. But the statistical agencies still
have their independence, they still tell the truth, and they
still have that culture of truth telling. What we don't
have is any sense that anything the president or any
cabinet secretary says any time there shouldn't even be a
(17:50):
default now to believe them. The President walks around saying
things like, there is seventeen trillion dollars investment of investment
that I have personally raised. This is literally a number
made up out of whole time, like genuinely just he
and then some days he wakes up in a bad
mood and to make himself feel better he adds an
extra trillion to it. It's this is not a question
(18:11):
of political this or political that. This is bullshit, nonsense, horseshit, untrue.
Treasury Secretary Percent, I think would prefer to tell the truth,
but has to tell untruths to remain inside the circle,
and as a result he now tells enormous and extraordinary untruths.
The example I talked about a moment ago where a
nerdy economist me points out to the Council of Economic
(18:31):
Advisors they literally got their sums wrong, and they're not
going to respond to that because there's a culture of
masculinity and macho and never admitting you're wrong, and weakness
and blah blah blah. Then means even the folks who
were meant to be truth oriented within the White House
have given up on the truth. That is really worrying.
You ask for how it's worrying for the outside what?
(18:53):
Let me just pause on something even simpler. If you
spend enough time lying to the person next to you
and they spend time lying to you back, you start.
Speaker 5 (18:59):
To bully what you speak.
Speaker 4 (19:01):
And so if you believe that the American economy is
close to perfect and they're on the cusp of an
investment boom, you're going to make policy choices that are
absolutely bananas.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Yeah, and that's.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Like bailing out Argentina.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Argentina, Oh you glad about the Argentina Baling.
Speaker 4 (19:19):
No, I don't really have a view, and I think
too many of us reflex I think too many of
us are reflexively. You might have a sophisticated view, but
I think many people who are anti Argentina bailout are
reflexively thinking about it. I have not actually been able
to find enough serious insight into what's going on to
have a strong view.
Speaker 5 (19:38):
I'm just slowly in.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
No. Yeah, clearly, I want you to talk about the soybeans.
So we have Scott Assen, you know, saying on television
that you talked to China and China said you remember
you know the clip I'm going to ask you about I.
Speaker 5 (19:54):
Do, and like, I love the fact.
Speaker 4 (19:55):
Hello China speaking Minnesueta.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Yeah, I talked to China and they said they used
to buy soybeans until Joe Biden, and now they don't
buy sobeans anymore, and that is why our farmers are hurting. Okay,
we're nine months into Donald Trump's presidency. We know for
a fact that this is a product of Trump's first presidency.
So explain to me how Joe Biden got involved in.
Speaker 4 (20:23):
Those So when I said they lie, they lie, I
mean they love relentlessly The idea that this has anything
to do with Biden is absurd. So let me make
a couple of analytic points. First of all, who didn't
see this coming. Trump tried tariffs in the first term,
China boycotted soybeans. Soybean farmers freaked out and needed a
rest of US bailed them out. And that's a bailout
(20:46):
where they send a check to keep money is coming
out of your wallet to a soybean farmer.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
Let me make it deeper, socialize the law, social liabtise
the games exactly.
Speaker 4 (20:56):
Let me make a I think a more important analytic point.
Soybean farmers are hurting. Soybeans are fine. I don't have
particular emotional attachment to soybean farmers. Maybe I'm not a
real American. They are hurting, but they're also intensely organized.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
They're getting cash.
Speaker 4 (21:16):
And they get cash. They get cash that comes from yours.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
And my taxes because they have larbyats.
Speaker 4 (21:22):
You and I and every member of our audience is
paying tariffs and a lot of money in an incredibly
regressive way. So as much as soybean farmers are hurting,
remember farmers very rarely are like our depression era image
of them. They're often very large commercial enterprises. We do
know that working class families are finding it much much
(21:43):
harder to get buy and the cost of living particularly,
they're the folks who buy their furniture from China, for instance,
who have seen a lot of their cost of living rising,
have got even more coming up. They're hurting no less
and possibly more than the soybean farmers. Not only are
they getting no help, they're paying taxes to pay this.
So farmers, what this gives you? It's another side effective tariffs.
(22:04):
Tariffs redistribute according to political power. Working the middle class
Americans lack the political power of soybean farmers, and twelve
fifteen billion dollars going out the door from the rest
of us to soybean farmers, the rest of us should
be getting checks as well. Mile, I have a solution
to many of our nation's problems. What I can get
(22:26):
rid of stagflation. I can get rid of the ways
in which work in class of Americas.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
Wait, are we in stagflation?
Speaker 4 (22:32):
I mean I am. I see the unemployment rate rising,
I see inflation high and rising, and I see that
the tariffs are going to make that worse. Now, if
you want to be polite. You can call it stagflation light.
This isn't quite as.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
Bad tory stagflation.
Speaker 5 (22:48):
Okay, we're going to do economic theory.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
Okay, you have ninety seconds go.
Speaker 4 (22:52):
I'm going to use the first twenty just telling you
how much I love you, Molly. I don't need ninety
I go.
Speaker 5 (22:58):
Tariffs are what has called a suppliia. Cost go up.
Speaker 4 (23:01):
Therefore the farmers raise their prices and other businesses raise
their prices. During that period, you've got inflation because prices
are rising, and it takes a while for us to
rejeitter everything, and so some people lose their job, so
unemployment rises. Once we've stuck at this new equilibrium, the
claim is, and the hope is, and experiences and models
(23:21):
suggest that it shouldn't keep going. Inflation's ongoing price rises,
this would be a rise in prices. Those higher prices
should not, in economic theory, continue forever. So the hope
is supply shocks callused transitory inflation.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Justin Wilfers.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, a great pleasure.
Speaker 5 (23:40):
Molly.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Jacob sober Off is a senior political and national correspondent
and MSNBC and the author of separated as well as
he will appear at MSNBC Live twenty five on October eleventh.
Welcome to Fast Politechs Sabarov.
Speaker 6 (24:00):
Thanks Molly, good to see you.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
I'm really glad to see you. Let's talk about this
child separation because I do think like the only thing
worse than twenty sixteen, twenty eighteen, the sort of just
watching this horror playout is now when it's playing out
ten times faster and ten times scarier.
Speaker 7 (24:20):
Yeah, I mean, and don't take it from me, take
it from the Republican appointed judges stopped the policy, who
literally called what they did in the first term one
of the most shameful chapters in the history of the country,
and that was, you know, the deliberate and forcable separation
of fifty five hundred children from their parents, which is
not a small number, it's enormous. And then it will
go down, you know, amongst all the other ignoble chapters
(24:43):
in our country's history. But now they're looking to supersize
it and we're watching it play out in real time,
and they literally have modeled this mass deportation program the
largest in the history of the country.
Speaker 6 (24:54):
Is what they want after Dwight D.
Speaker 7 (24:56):
Eisenhower's nineteen fifty four program that deported literally not only
did it have an insanely racist name, the official name
of the policy of the operation, but it deported a
million Mexicans and some Mexican Americans. And now we're seeing
that exact thing play out on the streets all over
the country, American citizens screaming, not only am I born here,
I'm a US citizen, my family are US citizens, And
(25:18):
it doesn't matter, they're still snatching people up off the street.
Speaker 6 (25:21):
It's both.
Speaker 7 (25:21):
I think it shocks the conscious, just like the family
separation did, but it also is exactly what they said
they were going to do when I watched them report
about this from the floor of the convention, and everyone
held up those those science those mass deportation now signs yes.
And I have to say, hey, Molly, like to sit
next to you. I won't forget what happened a couple
weeks ago, and we sat on the set with Nicole
Wallace on Deadline, and these stories. I wish they affected
(25:43):
everybody like they affected you that day. And I was
very moved to be sitting next to you and talking
to you, because it's not just happening on the streets,
it's happening in the hallway of the immigration court. And
we told that story of Nori Santai Ramos, who was
deported as a high school track star honor student from
here in La Yeah, a senior. Her mother died a
couple of weeks after I was there. Now she's alone, well,
(26:05):
the mother died. The mother died, the family says of grief.
The story that they told us is that she had
medicine taken away for blood pressure issues when she was
in nice attention, never got it back, and literally one
night as she was going to bed, said she wasn't
feeling well and passed away. So now Nori is without
the mother that she was deported from Los Angeles with.
(26:26):
And we don't know how many Norris there are, how
many Estella's her mother?
Speaker 1 (26:30):
And you see it right, because you see in the
detention centers in the courts. I mean, like yesterday we
saw a journalist get pushed to the ground and is
now left in a structure of the ambulance came to
take them away.
Speaker 7 (26:46):
Do you remember that I was just messaging with them
today because you know I was there too in twenty
six federal applause. And I watched all that stuff myself,
and not a lot of stuff shocks me. Not a
lot of stuff is surprising anymore. But to be there
and just to watch them pick off people one after
the next, after the next, after the next. Remember before
this journalist, a photojournalist was knocked down yesterday, put into
(27:06):
a neck brace and taken into a stretcher by ice,
trying to get someone in the elevator. They did it
to a mother with the two children standing right there,
and this is your last week, and they pushed her
exactly a whole other week of stories. It happens every day,
and I think the five hours out of there, I
saw them do it five times.
Speaker 6 (27:21):
And this is because we know why.
Speaker 7 (27:23):
It is because Stephen Miller wants to hit a quota,
wants to hit a certain number of deportations every day
and every month so that they can get to this
one million plus number for the year. But if we
don't talk about the consequences, if we don't show what
the consequences are, I think we're failing to do our
jobs properly.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
Yeah, you know, I spend a lot of time thinking about,
like my grandfather during the House of American Activities and
what like this looks like in the context. So that's
why talking about Operation Went Back, which right is the
name of it, which we don't want to say because
it's so racist, but that was the name they called it.
Speaker 7 (27:57):
That was the official name of an aeial government policy
in the Eisenhower administration.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
I feel like it's so important to say stuff like
that because you know, this is who we are, this
is the country of Operation Went Back, and that's what
this is.
Speaker 7 (28:11):
Just like when we think back about all of these
chapters like Native American genocide and slavery, and Japanese American internment,
and the turning back of the Jews, you know in
the Saint Louis back to the Holocaust, Native American boarding schools,
you name it. That's why when I wrote Separated about
famous Operation Policy, I called it inside an American tragedy
because very specifically, it is an American feature and phenomenon
(28:32):
to treat people in this way, particularly people who are
coming here to seek a better life.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
Yes, one hundred percent. I just think about what does
it take to get people to change, What does it
take to have the moment where everybody changes, because what
we've seen in this particular moment in American history is
backlash to backlash to backlash to backlash. So like, there
was a moment that spurred on Black Lives Matter, and
(28:57):
it was that video of those cops with the guy
with his knee on George Floyd's neck and everybody just
sort of wandering around not stopping at So the question is, like,
what does it take for people, what is the breaking point?
And I'm thinking about Illinois Governor Pritzker said get your
(29:18):
phone out and videotape everything you see, so I want
you to talk about that.
Speaker 7 (29:22):
I think the people who are like definitionally performing the
greatest public service you can right now are local journalists
like La Taco Here in La which is a small
independent media organization with a handful of people who have
been there. Started off talking about food, but I think
they deserve Pultzer Prize for their work around the ice
rates here over the summer and the extent to which
they helped document. They documented themselves, Lexus Oliver Ray and
(29:47):
so many other people Memo Torres with his daily updates
to let people see what was actually happening in the streets.
And I do think that in no small part because
of their work. The No Kings they wrote this in
June here in La were as big as they were
tat Liarry. Tens of thousands of people in the street.
And that was the first time during this administration that
I was reminded of the reaction to famous separation in
the first one. And that was hundreds of thousands, if
(30:08):
not millions of people in the streets all around the
not just around the country, around the world. And it
wasn't just bipartisan, it was a universal condemnation. The popes
spoke out, and that was the if not the one,
it was certainly one of the most major policy reversals
of the first Trump term where he backed down and
he didn't back down. Everybody shuld remember that he didn't
back down because he felt morally opposed to the policy.
Speaker 6 (30:28):
He tried to reinstitute it.
Speaker 7 (30:29):
You know, I've reported he said, quote unquote, I didn't
like the site or the feeling of the families being separated.
He was responding to the audio of Pro Publica Ginger
Thompson that got the babies crying in the border patrol facilities.
Speaker 6 (30:39):
When the guy said, well.
Speaker 7 (30:41):
It sounds like we have an orchestra here and then
the reaction to that, and that was in the late
late June of twenty eighteen, and he backed down, and
in the beginning of these immigration rates, he waffled. He
backed down once the image of the people being chased
through fields in Oxnard, California and Ventura County came out,
back down on the hotels, and then he flipped bopped
because reportedly, you know, Steven Miller pushed back against him,
(31:03):
which raised this question about who's running these policies in
the first places, that even the president, and.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
That is a real question because it does seem like
Russpot and Steven Miller are doing more and more and more.
Speaker 7 (31:13):
This is exactly what Steven Miller wanted to do during
the first term. He didn't want to separate fifty five hundred.
He wanted to separate twenty five thousand using administrative separations.
And now he's putting to use all of those tools
in the hallways of Immigration Court, on the streets of
cities around the country, at freaking flower stands and fruit stands,
and in home depot parking lots. It is very disturbing
(31:36):
to see play out for anybody, but especially people in
the communities across the country, and so I think, to
your question, people are starting to realize that this has
been our hands more than anybody else's, because we're the
ones walking down Michigan Avenue when there's Border Patrol agents
in Chicago in tactical gear and masks, or in Washington,
DC posted up outside Union Station, or now in Memphis,
(31:57):
or now in Portland, the National Guard. And you want
to know how in talking to National Guard troops who
were here during the deployment in LA the ones I
talked to, and I'm speaking for all of them, they
didn't want to be here. Their friends and their family
members are from this community. They are of the community.
These are people that they know who they're scaring, and
at some point this will tip. And that's why I
(32:18):
love that, first of all, as all, I love being
a part of this MSNBC family and the word that
Rachel does on Monday nights showing these protests out in
the street, and then Nicole does every day, and frankly
everybody does. And why I'm excited to get together with
everybody on the eleventh in person, because unless we're together,
unless we're talking about these things, unless we're sharing these things.
We're all sitting in our little isolated bubbles not participating.
(32:39):
And I think that participation, whatever that means to you now,
is the greatest form of secific service that anybody can do.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
Yes, Jacob, let's talk about MSNBC Live. Tell me about
this MSNBC Live event.
Speaker 6 (32:53):
It's going to be really cool.
Speaker 7 (32:54):
I had big fomo that I missed it last year,
but I was still on the NBC side of the operation,
and that I came home to MSNBC is that it's
always been about the people, not about the politics for me,
and I mean that for the people in front of
the camera and the people behind the camera, and the
people in our audience. I think we have the most
engaged audience in all of news, not just television news.
(33:15):
But people are extraordinarily passionate about their relationship with us,
including you that they see on their TV every day,
and this opportunity to get together with people in person.
I remember the first time I did anything like it.
There was a thing called Politicon out here in LA
and I remember saying to my boss at MSNBC at
the time, we have got to do something like this
because you don't understand how meaningful it is to the
(33:35):
people that watch us and consume our journalism to be
able to connect with us face to face, and so
that's what this thing is. It's at the Hammersteen Ballroom
on October eleventh, is all day long. I'm going to
be there. My good friend Katie Turko I grew up
with in La and I are going to be doing
some stuff. Stephanie Rul and I are going to be
doing some stuff together. But everyone up and down the
lineup is going to be there, including Nicole Rachel, Chris Lawrence.
Speaker 6 (33:54):
It's going to be really awesome.
Speaker 7 (33:55):
And it's meaningful to me too to be able to
find a time where we can get together with thousands
of ours, our viewers, and be able to connect with
them on one on one to one and let them
ask us questions, let us ask them questions about what
they're seeing out there. So I think it should be
I know it's going to be really special. And my
Phona was slowly going away as we approachucted over eleventh.
Speaker 1 (34:13):
It's cute that you and Katie ter grew up together.
Speaker 6 (34:15):
You don't even know.
Speaker 7 (34:16):
I mean, in my old shitty Priests, we would drive
around the palasads getting.
Speaker 6 (34:21):
Ourselves into trouble.
Speaker 7 (34:22):
It's cool to be able to work for the last
ten years with somebody who's been a friend of mine
since we were teenagers. Has been really special. This is
not corporate speak or any sort of nobody's telling me
to say this. I really, really am happy about being
back at MSNBC. I love the people here, and Katie
is first among them because we've known each other for
such a long time. But like, just look at the
work we've done together over the years here. We've been
(34:42):
able to cover the fires in our own hometown together
in the Palisades. Who else had that opportunity, you know,
in such an insane, devid personal moment to be there
with not only a friend but a trusted colleague. But
we did American Swap together the doc series in twenty
nineteen and got to travel around. And I remember the
first day I started and she saw that I was
in the system, and I did tell her I was
coming to work here, and she wrote me a message
(35:03):
being like this is for real, and it has it
seemed like a real, It seemed like a dream. She's
she's a wonderful person, and I think it's be really
cool to talk to her in front of everybody.
Speaker 6 (35:10):
They get to see sort of that side of us.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
I have two things that I really want you to
talk about. First is the redistricting in Los Angeles. You
got a special election coming up. It's not in Los Angeles,
it's in California. You got a special election coming up.
Speaker 6 (35:23):
State wide special election. I'm gearing up.
Speaker 7 (35:25):
I'll be part you know, and this might be a
spoiler alert for your listeners and our viewers, but we're
going to definitely be in special coverage on that night
for the special election on MSNBC because think about the
consequences of this, literally the balance of power in the
House of Representatives as in Texas and in these other states,
all of this cheermanering is occurring. Gavin Newsom has put
on the ballot here with the state legislature and initiative
(35:47):
to temporarily pause our nonpartisan redistricting system that Arnld Schuarzenegger
put into place when he was governor. And I think
that based on what the poll's stand with, the people say,
you know, they're supportive of this, despite the fact they
want to take redistricting out of the hands of the.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
Politicians, which is insane.
Speaker 7 (36:03):
Newsom's argument that I've had the fortune spent a lot
of time with is why would you unilaterally disarm in
the face of the Republicans doing this in all these
other states and obviously preparing to gobble up all of
these seats in the House. And so that's literally what's
on the ballot, you know, potentially five new seats in
the House representatives for Democrats in California. I think it's
going to be for an off year election. You know,
(36:25):
we don't have a midterm, we don't have a huge
statewide race. I think it's going to be nutst Talk.
Speaker 1 (36:29):
To me about what it looks like in your mind,
because also millions of dollars are being poured into it too, oh.
Speaker 7 (36:34):
Tons, And I'm watching commercials have TV at my desk
right here, and I'm seeing commercials played on cable all
the time about it. I think people when they first
hear about it sort of recoiled because there was a
lot of time and energy spent into taking redistricting out
of hands of politicians and making it a non partisan
thing as a model for the nation to do, to
do away with gerrymandering nationwide. When it is explained to
them what this is and why the governor and the
(36:55):
legislature put this on the ballot.
Speaker 6 (36:56):
You see the people moving in the direction of.
Speaker 7 (36:59):
Supporting this, so I think, you know, it's October early October.
Now there's going to be a major blitz like we
see in all state wide racists in California. And as
you said, God knows how many tens of millions of
dollars spent in order to get people to focus on this,
because the consequences are not for California.
Speaker 6 (37:15):
The consequences are for the nation. Obviously. It's the balance
of power in the House.
Speaker 1 (37:18):
I mean, the consequences of this thing are fucking huge.
I want you to talk about this book you're writing
about the fires. I mean, watching you cover it was
really moving for any number of reasons. It's also like
this story has continued on, like the rebuilding, the environmental
repercussions from it, like it is a lot. I live
(37:41):
in New York and always well and during nine to eleven,
you know, we were like, oh shit, this this smoke,
the sow it. I mean, I remember people you knew,
you knew, you knew something bad.
Speaker 7 (37:54):
Nine to eleven was my seventh day of school as
a freshman at nyu oh in Washington.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
Spare Okay, you're younger than we are, Jesse, and I.
Speaker 6 (38:02):
Hear it, but I was there too.
Speaker 7 (38:04):
No, there was a feeling that was similar to the
point that you're getting to, is a point that I
The book is called Firestorm, The Great Los Angeles Fires
and America's New Age of Disaster, and it comes out
on January sixth, one day before the first anniversary of
the fires, and I hope people will pre order it
because it's not just a story about the costliest natural
disaster in the history of California, nor the cost of
(38:26):
wildfire theory of the costs wildfire in the history of
the United States of America. It's the story of what
happens when all kinds of circumstances find themselves at this confluence,
perhaps most importantly, misinformation and disinformation. And this all played
out during the transition from Joe Biden to Donald Trump
coming into office. And there is so much to unpack
about why the fires were as bad as they were.
Speaker 6 (38:49):
A lot of it was uncontrollable.
Speaker 7 (38:50):
These were hurricane force winds at a time when we
had had virtually no rain for many months, and so
it was a tinderbox waiting to go. But the politic
around this moment, and the book is the story of
me being there watching my own hometown carbonized before my eyes,
not understanding how to process that. How do you process
that in real time? You don't actually and especially when
(39:11):
you're out there talking about it on television, to try
to explain it to millions of people who are watching
along with you. But what I have come to understand
about what these fires were were the basically the fire
of the future. There will only be more of them
because of many factors, climate change, of course, the degradation
of our infrastructure, the changes in the way we live.
Thousands of lithium ion batteries from electric cars were blowing up.
(39:32):
But like I said, I think most importantly throughout the fire,
Donald Trump, who was not a sitting elected official at
the time, Elon Musk, who had no official governmental position
but certainly a giant microphone, were out there spreading an
extraordinary amount of incorrect information about how the fires happened,
what happened, and how we could recover from them. And
so there's a lot of original reporting in this book,
(39:53):
and that's what I want to do. I needed to
understand better how it could have been so bad, And
so you read a lot about what Governor Newsom went
through about his interactions with President Trump, about members of
the Trump administration who reached out to me directly about
their own personal homes despite the fact that we had
been adversarial as reporter source relationships. These fires didn't spare anybody,
(40:13):
but the minute they were over all of that stuff continued,
and it certainly hasn't helped the recovery at all out
of tens of thousands of structures that have been destroyed,
and certainly local officials are to blame as well. There's
less than a thousand permits that have been issued for
homes to be rebuilt so far, and so a lot
of work to do and a lot of things for
all of us to understand about how these huge natural disasters,
(40:34):
not just fires, are happening today, because if we don't,
they're just going to happen again.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
Jacob, thank you for coming on, Molly.
Speaker 6 (40:41):
I love talking to you. Oh and I was honored
that you asked, so thank you.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
No moment, Jesse Cannon.
Speaker 3 (40:51):
My junk fast.
Speaker 5 (40:52):
So Gavinan K.
Speaker 3 (40:53):
Newsome of the Governor of California, it's almost like, you know,
he's doing the Warrio dash, the opposite version of mister Trump.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
I don't hate it.
Speaker 2 (41:02):
Do you hate it?
Speaker 3 (41:03):
No, I don't hate it at all. I actually think
the way he did this, I mean it's very interesting.
Like when people discuss the left and right being the same,
Like one of the things that the stupidest analysis will
ease out is that it's not the same when you're
helping people and you're making sure people get good outcomes
versus people doing things out of hate and doing things
to hurt people. And I think what he's doing here
is very interesting, which is that he's saying he'll instantly
(41:26):
cut funding at California collegist that signed the Trump Packed.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
Yeah, and look, Trump has this dumb packed. There's a
really good article in The Times today by the head
of the USC Law schools saying that this is bullshit.
It's not if you go and become a captured institution,
you are forever at the behest of Donald Trump. And
it's not like it's going to stop, like it'll just
(41:50):
keep going. He will keep doing that. So there is
absolutely no reason to go along with what Trump wants.
This is very not surprising but bad. Yeah, I mean
good for Newsome. You know. By the way, we interviewed
Chris Murphy, and Chris Murphy said that Newsome redistricting those
(42:12):
five seeds, like he is one of the very few
people who was really hitting back. 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,
(42:33):
please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
Speaker 2 (42:37):
Thanks for listening.
Host
Molly Jong-Fast
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