June 21, 2025 • 50 mins
The Mary Trump Show’s Mary Trump examines Trump’s devolving mental state. American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten details her departure from the DNC.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds, and a federal judge has ordered Matt
mood Kohlil must be released on bail. We have such
a great show for you today, the Mary Trump Shows
Own Mary Trump stops by to talk about Trump's devolving
(00:21):
mental state. Then we'll talk to the American Federation of
Teachers President Randy Winegarden on her departure from the d NC.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
But first the news.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
So Molly Josh Hawley, who some fools pretend could become
a Democrat who apparently have never heard him talk, and
I don't want to BELI le anyonet here, but this
guy does what's best for him. He's saying Trump's budget
bill faces a nightmare scenario.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Dun dun, dull And what's the nightmer scenario That there's a.
Speaker 4 (00:53):
Lot of bullshit at the big bullshit bill.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
I think the nightmare scenario is what they're living right now,
which is the pulling this bill is fucking awful. Okay,
we had Jake Sherman Welcome to the Resistance, Jake Sherman saying.
Speaker 4 (01:07):
I don't think he's welcoming hisself there.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
He doesn't want to be in there.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
But he's saying that the polling, both the internal and
the public polling, is terrible. Here we have the Washington
Post gop budget bill faced nearly two to one opposition,
with many unaware. So if you this is like Project
twenty twenty five, if you learn about this, you hate it.
Right here we go. Democrats oppose the bill. Independent you
may have heard of Independence. Republicans need them to win elections,
(01:32):
oppose the bill forty percent. Only seventeen percent of Independence
like this bill, and wait till they learn about it,
because four and ten have no opinion, And when they
have an opinion, they're going to be.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Like, what the fuck?
Speaker 1 (01:45):
So this bill does all the things that are unpopular.
It cuts medicaid, right, it cuts food stamps for children,
but it also grows the deficit. Really, it's hard to
think of a less popular bill than this. I think
that what Hall is saying is not so much that
he wants to help Americans, but that passing a piece
of legislation that both grows the deficit and starves children
(02:09):
may actually be unpopular sounds.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
Like good logic to me, and I don't often agree
with that, fella.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
It just sounds like logic, right, Like there's a difference
between Trump and like a normal politician.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Is that normal politicians are like, hmmm, logically. I mean
that's the thinking.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Trump just can't ever follow the thread long enough to
see where it might go.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
That's a very well put way of saying it. So,
speaking of people I don't often agree with, the Supreme
Court has allowed terrorist victims to sue the Palestinian authority.
Speaker 4 (02:37):
This is very weird.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
If you think about it, if victims of and we
interviewed someone about this coming up in the next couple
of weeks, a documentary about kids who got hurt by
social media and these lawyers suing for the families, right,
and you think about it, like you should be able
to sue. I mean, America is a country where you're
allowed to sue. If people just point you.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
I think of the great saying from the great comedians,
the Jerky boys, sue you, sue me, sue everybody.
Speaker 4 (03:06):
That's what we do here, right.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
I mean, this is a country based on lawsuits. So
you would think that you.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Would if you were a victim of terrorism, you should
be able to sue the people who did the terrorism
to you.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
And if you were able to do.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
This, you'd be able to sue people who incited violence,
which in itself might be good. You'd be able to
sue companies that posted fake claims and then led to
things like this. So I think this is actually quite good.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Again.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
Yeah, my brain goes to where Peter Teele will fund
lawsuits about this. That goes I really don't want to
enable any more power of retigious nature, but.
Speaker 4 (03:47):
At the same time, maybe it'll shake out.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
I don't have a crystal ball quite yet, but maybe
if we got a bonus for this podcast, that's what
we should buy.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
What more lawsuits? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (03:58):
No, no, no, no, a crystal all so we could predict the.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Future crystal ball.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Yes, it's funny because Jesse's favorite thing to say to me,
and it's like now he doesn't even say it anymore
because it's like in my blood, as you say. The
worst thing you can ever do in podcasting is ask
people to predict the future. Now, when you listen to podcasts,
listen and see when one hosts ask guests to predict
the future.
Speaker 4 (04:23):
Doesn't go well.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
So let's talk about another thing that doesn't go Well,
everybody loves to say Trump's a populist, and there's two
things that run through his populist nature. One he's pretending
to appeal like he cares to the working man. And
two racism. Here we have a stark conflict word one
single tweet. You can't keep those two in harbordy. What
(04:44):
do you see it here with this Jude ten sweet Bali.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Okay, so this is the question of right, Like, let's
just talk about a second. If you're anti anti racism,
then what do you pro your pro racism?
Speaker 2 (04:57):
You see what I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
The double negative cancels each other at Donald trus US
has too many holidays. You know why he says this.
He says this on June teenth. We obviously don't have
too many holidays. We have less holidays than anywhere else. Right,
there are ten public holidays normally celebrated in the US.
South Korea has thirty one, Japan has twenty six, the
(05:19):
UK is twenty eight.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
In Europe they take six weeks off if we take
five hours off. You know, you have fifty seven texts
from me.
Speaker 4 (05:27):
It's not a lie of people, that's not a lot.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
It's true.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
But the point here is that Juneteenth is a day
that celebrates the end of slavery. Donald Trump wants to
message that celebrating the end of slavery is not okay
because it's anti racism and Trump is anti anti racism.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
And there you have.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
Yeah, good stuff, all right, So I always save the
scariest for last. Pandemic preparedness experts are saying that our
preparedness is dramatically eroding under Trump. I think we knew
that was going to happen.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
No, no, it cannot be.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Really, we are completely being governed by people who are
just they don't believe in science. How could we be
ready for a pandemic. We're not even ready for you know,
vaccinating our kids in the fall H one N one.
That's the flu, which is actually real less attention under
the Trump administration than from the Biden team. We have
(06:25):
bird flu with the potential to spark a pandemic. But look,
we are so fucked. If there's a pandemic, we are
so fucked. There is no world in which it's not
a complete disaster. And by the way, this is all
because Trump was angry about COVID. Right, We're abandoning public
health because of a pandemic that could have been prevented
(06:46):
with better public health. I mean, this is the absolute
dumbest thing. I mean, there's a lot of dumb shit
that's happened in this administration, and I promise you, as
someone who can tell the future, a lot of dumb
shit is to come. But this, by far is really
just beyond stupid. Mary Trump is the host of The
(07:09):
Mary Trump Show and the author of Who Could Ever
Love You?
Speaker 2 (07:12):
A family memoir. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Mary Trump.
It is awesome going to be here. Maladn Cels.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
You know, it's funny because I wrote this book about
my just the emotional experience of having elderly parents and
a husband who got diagnosed with cancer, and I'm called
How to Lose Your Mother.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Which I just plug endlessly, but.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Well, thank you, But somebody said, they said to me,
you know, dealing with an arm sististic parent must have
really prepared you for covering Donald Trump and coming from
a family riddled with alcoholism. You know, you and I
both had had alcoholic parents, right, So it's just funny that, like,
(07:56):
and you have this background as being a psychologist and
you have you just you know, spend a lot of
time on the kind of emotional familial trauma that is
both very symptomatic of a lot of us in modern life,
but also very much underpins our American political lives with
(08:17):
Donald Trump right now.
Speaker 5 (08:19):
Yeah, yeah, And I either, to be honest, I don't
know necessarily that growing up in such a family prepares us.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
I think in some ways it makes it harder. Yeah,
because it's exhausting.
Speaker 5 (08:32):
I think my training as a psychologist has definitely been
more helpful because that's a tool. And yes, of course,
the familiarity and being used to something, I guess it's
nothing surprises us, but it's not as if it makes
it less difficult to bear, right, So, and I don't
(08:53):
even know if that necessarily helps some people make sense
of it, because I think what we're finding is what
you just pointed to, is this is an epidemic in
this country. There are so many people in this country
who are like the leaders they choose, who wish they
were or something.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
And then on the other side.
Speaker 5 (09:17):
Of it, there are so many people who come from
similar kinds of families but are not equipped, don't have
the self awareness, or for whatever reasons, have not been
able to do the work of understanding their roles or
where they are vis a vis the dysfunction. And wow,
(09:38):
that has shocked me more than I'd care to admit.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Actually, one of the things that I've been struck by
is how much the sort of alcoholism is. We don't
talk about it so much, but you know, you have
Trump never dreams, right because of his familial connection to alcoholism, right, ever,
drank because of his familial connection to alcoholism. Hunter in
(10:05):
and out of rehab, Like I got so born I
was nineteen because of my family riddled with alcoholism. You
take a job in the healing and helping profession because
of your father's experience with alcohoism. Like, it just strikes
me that this is such a central theme in the
(10:26):
twenty twenty election, the twenty twenty four cycle. We'll see it,
you know that we saw it be tweenty twenty eight.
You know, like these are central tenants alcoholism, and yet
we don't talk about.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
It at all. No, And as you know better than most,
that's lethal.
Speaker 5 (10:47):
And we are going to continue to see the fallout
of all of the things we don't talk about in
this country, perhaps most in the long term, most relevantly
are history which the right is trying to erase, although
quite frankly, I mean we've done a really good job
of ignoring it to the point where white Americans, certainly
(11:10):
to the point where we have made no strides in
terms of race and racism in America, because we've never
dealt with the genocide against the native population, the enslavement
of another entire population for eight generations Jim Grow, etc.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
The failures of reconstruction.
Speaker 5 (11:27):
And in more recent times, we've done nothing to deal
with the trauma of COVID, during which time people who
had addictions did a lot of backsliding some people, and
people who didn't started self medicating in ways they may
not have before. And then the rest of us who
(11:50):
didn't do either of those things but just are traumatized
by the divisions and the terror and all of it.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Let's talk about COVID, because I think of COVID as
a really important moment in American life that really brought
a lot of darkness. And I think there's a direct
line between COVID and the installation of RFK Junior.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Yes, absolutely, I mean we know that well.
Speaker 5 (12:22):
On the right, the devaluing of science has been going
on for a very long time, but the acceleration since
January twentieth, twenty twenty five is alarming, to say the least,
because any other Republican candidate one in twenty sixteen, they
would have handled COVID.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Like any Democrat would have.
Speaker 5 (12:41):
Yeah, because it would happen to be the worst person
on the planet to deal with that crisis.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
That did accelerate the mistrust.
Speaker 5 (12:49):
And one of the things that is most horrifying about it,
it's all because the man in charge couldn't admit he
was wrong and would it work mask And he recognized
that his political future was tied to his ability to
divide this country further.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
That's why. And look at us now.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
So it seems to me like there was a sort
of embrace of junk signs on the side of the
right and a kind of refusal. Like I always thought
that what would happen with COVID is that the thesis
would bear out that this was a real disease, which
it clearly is, and then Republicans would be like, oh,
(13:36):
I guess this is actually real. But that's not what happened. No, No,
quite the opposite.
Speaker 5 (13:42):
And again I think part of it was loyalty. You know,
Donald is good in very few things, but one of
them is softening the ground to make the unacceptable acceptable
over time.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
So he engages in a lot of.
Speaker 5 (13:57):
Microconcessions and microaggressions you get from you know, beat up.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
That protester at a rally to let's kill everybody.
Speaker 5 (14:05):
Yeah, it's like, that's that's what we're getting on in
about ten ten years.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
He is also intentionally hyperbolic in a way to inspire
his protesters, but his protectors, right, his people. He tries
to inspire them, but he also does it in a
way so that he can say I.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
Was just kidding.
Speaker 5 (14:27):
Obviously, I don't mean that right, right exactly, So it's
to somebody else to do it, because he's a.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Coward as well.
Speaker 5 (14:35):
So loyalty became literally laying down your life for him,
and people did that by deciding that they were their
loyalty to Donald Trump. Their ability to be in that
club was more important to them than their lives, or
the lives of their loved ones, or the lives of
anybody else. And because I think initially COVID was only
(15:00):
hitting blue states or hitting blue states more, that made
it easier to make the case that it wasn't a
big deal. And then it also like there was also
this this weird overlap with toxic masculinity, as if believing
that COVID was a real disease or wearing a mask
made you some limp wristed a Northeastern liberal elite.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
You know, and.
Speaker 5 (15:25):
Believing an expertise also became a marker of your inability
to fit in. And here we are with a Republican
party so degraded that even an actual medical doctor decided
that his political career was more important to him than
(15:47):
saving the American people from the likes of a rubber candidate.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
I think he's obviously pretty underestimated. He's been continually underestimated, right,
like continuously.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
And he obviously has no real.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Personal love for RFK Junior, right, I mean, except that
he loves a convert. Jor strikes me as the person
who is the most dangerous cabinet secretary by a lot. Right,
He's probably more dangerous than Trump ultimately, because he really
could cause the death of tens of thousands of children
(16:27):
in this country when they have seen. Yeah, one of
the things that I've been struck by, and this comes
back to Elon is like Trump and Elon. We knew
that wasn't going to last, and ultimately it didn't. Ultimately
Elon just flamed out with RFK and Trump. It strikes
me there was a similar dynamic there. I wonder if
(16:48):
you could talk us through.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Yeah. First of all, I just want to add something
that I think is important.
Speaker 5 (16:54):
I agree with you about people's underestimating Donald, and it's
easy to do because he is a smart person. He
has no intellectual curiosity. His arrogance should have gotten him
into much more trouble than it has.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
He's a failure. He is a serial failure.
Speaker 5 (17:10):
But I think the other thing that's been underestimated is
the extent to which much smarter, much more powerful people
want to use him for their own ends, and that
he's not here because of any special skills he has.
He's here because so many people found him of use
(17:30):
and were willing to use him.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Quite frankly, so with Kennedy, I mean one difference.
Speaker 5 (17:36):
Obviously, he's also an egomaniac and a narcissist, and he's associopath.
So you know that probably makes Donald feel like he
has company.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
But he's not as powerful as Elon Musk. He's not
threatening in the way Musk would be to Donald.
Speaker 5 (17:53):
He's not in Donald's perception, He's not superior in any way,
and Kennedy is less publicly needing the ego boost.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
That Musk does.
Speaker 5 (18:09):
Like he doesn't talk about himself in the way Musk
talks about himself.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
So he's not challenging Donald's authority.
Speaker 5 (18:17):
He's not in any competition with Donald because he's insane
and he has an agenda. The best way for him
to fill that agenda is to make sure that he
doesn't rub Donald the wrong way, to make sure that
he does stay under the radar, and it is in public.
Most people do know what Musk was up to, because
(18:41):
he was in the freaking Oval office all the time.
He was at every cabinet meeting, he was in every
press conference. Most people don't know what Robert Kennedy.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Is up to, right right, right, right exactly, and Donald
may not even know exactly. Do you think that's the answer,
that Donald doesn't know what's really happening, and that if
he knew, he might shut it down. No, he doesn't
care because he can't think that far ahead.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
No. No, because he's the one who created these conditions.
He made a deal that As.
Speaker 5 (19:11):
Long as he got what he wanted, which is to
become as rich as he could possibly be, to have
as much power as he could possibly have, he will
give the Republican.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Party and the base whatever they want.
Speaker 5 (19:23):
And that is turning women into second class citizens who
have no reproductive freedom and no bodily autonomy. And that
also means being anti vax being anti science and pro disease.
So what does he care if millions, hundreds of thousands,
or millions of children die from easily preventable diseases for
(19:46):
which we have vaccines already. As long as he's rich
and powerful, I'm telling you doesn't care.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
But don't you think he cares because he wants to
stay in power and he might see this as preventing
him from stay in power.
Speaker 5 (20:00):
Well, I mean, the guy doesn't have very good judgment.
If he you know, he wouldn't be threatening war with
Iran uh Or, which clearly is not going over. Well,
he wouldn't have enacted tariffs and you know, destroyed our
economy and the global economy if he were able to
think things through.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
But you know, he gets ideas in his head. But
I don't know.
Speaker 5 (20:19):
I also I don't think he sees it that way
because again, they control the narrative in a lot.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
Of cases, not in all of them. You know, sometimes obviously,
like with tariffs.
Speaker 5 (20:30):
And and with UH with Iran, it kind of spirals
out of their control.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
But again, much of what Kennedy is doing is under
the radar.
Speaker 5 (20:40):
And you know, if there were some horrific outbreak of
a disease, UH, they'll they'll spin it, They'll figure out
how to spin it.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Donald won't take responsibility for what have you. So no,
I don't. I don't think he sees it that way.
Speaker 5 (20:56):
And even if he did, maybe that would make him
change core for forced Kennedy to change for us. But
it wouldn't be because he cares about children, right, American lives,
that's right. But it might be because of taco. Right,
Trump always chickens out. Let's talk about taco, because this
is like a real thing. Right with the tariffs he has,
you know, there's still they're still going to mess up
(21:19):
our economy, but he's backed a little bit. Right, he
had these crazy tariffs.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
With China and then he backed down and now right
and there's by the way, China is getting around a
lot of these tariffs because if they weren't, you wouldn't
see I mean a lot of these prices have gone up,
but a lot of stayed the same.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Right.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
Service prices have gone up, but some of them, like Amazon,
clearly is not paying a tariff to China because if
they were, you wouldn't be able to buy the same
kind of cheap stuff you are. You see taco there,
you see it with Iran, right, he was going to
bomb Ran then he you know, he saw that his
base is furious. I actually think that Tako Carlson and
(22:02):
I'm Steve Bannon coming out against this, and as Jones
by the way, and now it's Jones. Those are Trump's people,
and I actually think Trump will not cross them. Donald
is really good at making things worse for himself. He's
a very self destructive person.
Speaker 5 (22:18):
But to the extent that he still is cognitive such
thing cognizant of such things, Yes, he is capable of
as long as he can find out a way.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
To do it without admitting that he was wrong.
Speaker 5 (22:30):
Of course, Yeah, he will chicken out.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
It's in the taco. The d is silent, but it's
to taco. Donald Trump always changed. Yeah, that's good. So
just to clarification.
Speaker 6 (22:44):
So I think again what worries me about Kennedy is
that by the time something happens that's big enough and
public enough, it might be too late, like people aren't
paying enough for attention.
Speaker 5 (22:58):
Now, Aron's different, or is war and you know with
somebody is save a reality rattling and saying that it's
such an emergency.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
But I'll get back to you in two weeks.
Speaker 5 (23:08):
Then clearly, right, that's something that's dealt with in the immediate.
They took a very long time for the tariff thing
to stop, and again it hasn't stopped. You just sound
back a little bit. So with the vaccine issue or
the communicable disease issue, I think by then we would
be past.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
The point of no return.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
I'm afraid, right, no question. But like Steve Bannon went
to the White House talk to Trump. So obviously Trump,
you know, bomb Iran is getting like the full core
press from his people against bombing Iran. So the question
is if Steve Bannon were to say, like, look, childhood
(23:49):
vaccine's good idea, let's not killed children, I wonder if
you'd see taco.
Speaker 5 (23:58):
I think the problem here is that you're looking at
at uh the base having very different perspectives on these things.
The base is ANTII. I mean, it kind of shocks
me because they're all so cruel and it's such a
death cult, like you think they'd be all all for war,
but you know, again, that's a condition he created my
(24:20):
campaigning as if you know, Hillary Clinton's the WARHOWK Joe
Biden's the WARHOWK rocket Bomba's the warhawk.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
And he hates war and forever it will end all
the forever wars. The base hates science and has been
trained over a very long time to hate vaccines.
Speaker 5 (24:36):
Maybe in during his first the beginning of his first administration,
I would have had a different thought about it. But
then I see what people did during COVID, and I
don't have any faith in their ability to see what
is really going on. If we did, we already did
have an outbreak of a horrific disease that was killing
(24:58):
people by thousands every single day.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
It didn't change their minds. If anything, it got them here.
Mary Trump, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Thanks mother, it's great to see you.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
Randy Winegarden is the president of the American Federation of
Teachers and the author of the upcoming book, Why Fascists
Fear Teachers.
Speaker 7 (25:20):
Welcome to Fast Politics, Randy Winingarten, how are you. I
am in the morning, Joe greenroom wearing curlers, So I'm great.
But we wanted to make this happen this week because
there's just a lot to talk about.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
And the thing we really want to talk about was
what's happening at the DNC. You've left the DNC. You
are one of the great labor leaders, right you won't
be studied in history books.
Speaker 8 (25:47):
You lead the teachers Union, you are a champion for teachers' rights,
but you also served in the DNC in a sort
of advisory capacity. I would love you to talk about
why you left the DNC.
Speaker 9 (25:59):
I'm not going to go through all the ins and
outs and the what happened, because that's not a I'm
really a proud Democrat, and I've been on the DNC
since I think two thousand and two, and on the
Rules and Bilows Committee since two thousand and nine, and
that's a long time, you know, in political life, that's
(26:19):
a very long time. What both Lee Saunders and I
decided was that we would not after we were asked
to be reappointed, we would decline the reappointment, and we
both set letters in doing that and didn't intend those
letters to be public. But what happened is I talked
to my members and my and you know, got around
(26:43):
and you know, so I basically gave the letter to
the New York Times and frankly asked them. You know,
the New York Times figured it out, and I asked
them to wait until No Kings before they put it out.
So that's essentially the timing of what happened. The letters
were dated. My letter was dated early June. The issue
(27:06):
that I am focused on right now, and you saw
it my letter had you know. The line in the
letter was that it was clear that, you know, I
had a different view about how to enlarge the tent
in terms of the Democratic Party. And frankly, when you
(27:26):
have a different view and it's clear that the chairman doesn't,
you know, has a different view than you, I got
a lot of work to do and so I decided
to do it outside of the party. That's essentially what
I said, That's essentially what I thought. That's what the
last six months have looked like to me, and that's
why I did what I did. The dilemma I have
(27:47):
is this The conversation right now should be about what
we as Democrats need to do, including the party, not
an internescing squabble about who said what to who. And
right now, the Reconciliation Bill, it's so bad for regular people.
(28:08):
It's such a huge shift of wealth from the poor
and the working class to the wealthy.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
The party should.
Speaker 9 (28:17):
Be all in on this right now. There should be
a surround sound to what you know Schumer and the
Democrats are doing in the Senate, to what Jeffreys and
the Democrats were doing in the House. Because the more
people know about this bill, the more.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
They hate it.
Speaker 9 (28:36):
So this bill is a study in contrast between who
Trump really is and what you're trying to do in
the country.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
And that's what the.
Speaker 9 (28:47):
DSc should be doing constantly right now, like every single letter,
an ad campaign, talk to the people around the country
about it. And since can actually has you know, this
great relationship with all these state party chairs, do a
fifty state strategy right now. So that's an example, a
(29:09):
clear example to me, like you know, the four unions,
Anya s CiU Aft asked me, you know, we put
a bunch of money in to actually educate the public
and to try to lobby Congress to not cut RURLD
hospitals and to not cut medicate. That's what the Democrat
(29:30):
part should be doing too.
Speaker 10 (29:31):
Is some of this an ideological debate between whether or
not the DNC is supposed to be storing upstate And
I'm not pushing back because this is like a real question,
because I don't think anyone really knows what the DNC
is supposed to be. Is the DNC supposed to be
storing up state parties or is it supposed to be
(29:54):
a sort of larger top line, you know, messaging apparatus,
And and if so, what is it suppose me?
Speaker 2 (30:02):
And what has it historically been.
Speaker 9 (30:03):
If we're having that conversation right now publicly or privately,
right the Democrats have lost the debate right every organ
of the Democratic Party right now in response to the
last election. The policies that we propose, in my judgment,
(30:23):
I mean, I've been Democrats all my life, are one
thousand percent better, oh, in terms of how we help
create a better life and the opportunity land of the
you know, land of the free and home of the
brave America. How we create an opportunity for all Americans
marginalized and those who are not marginalized. When there's a
(30:46):
debate about whether the party is supposed to be calling
bulls and strikes in terms of a presidential election or
shoring up the fifty you know parties all across the country,
then what's happening is American people say, oh, you're talking
about your little club and you're not actually focusing on
(31:07):
my needs. I think that the clear message from the
last election, because I think Biden was a transformational president
if you look at the economic foundations, what he tried
to do with industrial policy, how he tried to move
things and you can't move things in a day. And
in fact, even this new polling is showing that even
(31:28):
though people don't like what Trump is doing economically, if
it's explained to people, people are willing to give a
president a benefit of the doubt if it's communicated about what.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
They're trying to do.
Speaker 9 (31:40):
Biden was doing that it wasn't explained to people. People
didn't see what the Democrats were doing. They connected enough
people unfortunately connected to Trump and you know, his emotional
connection to them as opposed to what Biden did. So
my view is that the party you know, just like Union,
(32:00):
you have to operate and do four things at the
same time. You have to actually communicate with people about
who we are and what we're doing and why, and
be people's champions.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
I don't care who you are within the Democratic Party.
That's really true.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
So I know that there are ads right now on
television about the BBB, right, the Big Beautiful Bill, which
is bullshit, and it pulls very badly.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
It polls badly. I thought when you said BBB, I
thought you said you were talking about build back better.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
And now now the Big Beautiful Bill which got through bigly,
which got through the House, but is now having a
lot of problems in the Senate. So the polling is
just awful. It's bad. The public polling, the private polling, bad, bad, bad.
And basically what this bill does grows the deficit and
(32:56):
also just cuts and cuts, and it does it does
four things, but it does four things that are really terrible.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
First, there is no coherent strategy.
Speaker 9 (33:06):
On how you build and grow the economy. The economy
in the United States of America for working people.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
You have to do two things.
Speaker 9 (33:13):
You have to grow it and you have to make
it more fair. You have to do both of those
things I'm sorry at the same time, and this bill
does neither. What it essentially is it is a shift.
It's a further shift of income or of wealth from
the poor to the wealthy. And it does that by
(33:34):
doing by not only keeping all the corporate and the
business I'm sorry all the wealthy tax cuts from twenty seventeen,
but it doesn't actually do any of the things that
incentivizes the tax system to grow the economy, and in
fact it hurts it because all of those things that
(33:55):
we're helping with the Inflation Reduction Act and tax credits
and whatever build new green economy, it cuts that, So
it doesn't help on the economy. Number two, it's a
shift of income from the poor to the wealthy. Number three,
it really really really hurts people in rural hospitals and
(34:16):
our grandparents who you need to use Medicaid to be
in nursing home. So it's gonna hurt kids, it's gonna
hurt rural hospitals. It's gonna hurt our grandparents. It's gonna
hurt or our parents. It's going to hurt all of that.
Number Four, it kills the nutritional progress and the.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
Threat snap which is child food stamps for children.
Speaker 9 (34:36):
Stamps and all the nutritional programs for children. So it's
really really hurts kids. It's also there's a terrible boutcher
piece on it, But I want to get to the
last piece, which nobody knows. It really is a terrible
measure that hurts security and safety of people because what
it does there's a hidden provision in there that says
(34:59):
states can no longer do anything in terms.
Speaker 11 (35:03):
Of the guard rails AI. How is it that you
can actually tell states we can't protect people against a
machine and the federal government is doing nothing about it.
It essentially says to people who want to make a
surveillance state, here's the green light to do it. And
(35:25):
so we never regulated this social media. We get social.
Speaker 9 (35:30):
Media the immunity, and look at what is happening in
terms of attention of our kids. Look what is happening
in terms of the algorithms, the addictive quality of this
and now hidden in this bill is basically saying, Okay,
big tech, you can do everything you want with AI.
It is an anti safety bill. It is a way
(35:53):
of shifting wealth, and it really hurts the people who
need governmental work for them, and it does nothing to
help spur on innovation in the economy.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
In fact, I would say it hurts it. That's why
we have to educate people on this bill and use
every organ we can to do that. I wonder how
much of where we are is an inability or refusal
on the part of government to regulate really anything.
Speaker 1 (36:22):
Can you talk about that? Like we have technology? You know,
I actually was at a party where I heard a
United States Senator complaining about how there's no fact checking
on the Internet, and I thought to myself, well, isn't
that odd a person who could have regulated fact checking
(36:44):
on the internet complaining about how there's no fact checking
on the internet. Would you sort of talk through how
are electeds both on the left and the right have
refused to provide any regulation.
Speaker 9 (36:57):
What unfortunately has happened in in so many ways is
that the bureaucracy seems to get in the way of progress.
And I say this as a school teacher whose members
many times hate the bureaucracy and hate a whole bunch
of rules and regulations that are thrown at them that
(37:20):
create a lot of paperwork. And I think most Americans,
probably since Reagan, kind of experienced government as not being
efficient and as a result kind of are what gets
obscured is all the important things that government does. So
(37:40):
I want to start that way because's because of course
we need regulation.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
Of course we need guardrails.
Speaker 9 (37:48):
Of course we need things to create a level playing field,
and that's what government is supposed to do. You want
the guardrails to make sure that planes fly safely, but
no one would question the regulations about making sure that
planes flies safely.
Speaker 12 (38:08):
Or the regular Oh wow, no, yes, now, same person
should be questioning that, And then I would say the
same thing in terms of so much else in government.
Speaker 9 (38:22):
If someone is getting discriminated against taking education, really like
a kid who has a disability and the school is
not functioning for that kid, or the kid is in
a wheelchair and the school that the kid goes to
she's on the fourth floor and there's no elevator. You
(38:43):
can't do that to a child. So there is a
way in which a parent can then say this is
not fair for my kid.
Speaker 2 (38:52):
That's what government should do.
Speaker 9 (38:54):
So we have to figure out a way to balance
between having affect efficient government and not overly bureaucratic and
bureaucratized government. So that is how most people experience it
what we're seeing right now with President Trump, and we
(39:16):
saw it with President Reagan as well, but this one,
this time, it is much more excessive. They want to
get rid of all the rules. And what essentially then
happens is you go back to a situation of kings
and Mars, where the people who have the power keep
the power and everyone else has nothing. And because how
(39:40):
do regular people then navigate that, how do you still
have social security, how do you still have medicarea, how
do you have a basic safety net? And with AI
and with all of this technology coming in all of
a sudden, the tech companies then in some ways become
the mini government because they're the ones that own the data,
(40:03):
they're the ones that have the machines, and they're the
ones that base a crete control information. And if you're
not having guardrails around that about disinformation, about privacy, about
making sure that the human being is in control of
the machines, then we are in a world that we
have never been in before. So right now, regulation, I
(40:27):
would say, of all the things of that bill, that
is the most dangerous, this piece that doesn't allow states
after the federal government refused to do it to actually
regulate to make sure it keeps.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
Its citizens safe.
Speaker 9 (40:46):
That's the most dangerous part of this big, ugly bill.
Speaker 2 (40:49):
Oh, if you are a person listening to this podcast
and you are freaked out, what should you be doing.
Speaker 9 (40:58):
You should be calling and writing your senator right now,
your governor right now, particularly if you're in a red state,
and say, do not pass this bill. Do not do
this to us, do not make us less safe, do
not hurt our American dream.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
Should you explain why marching and organizing like does If
you're a person listening to this podcast and you are like,
I don't know if I should go to this protest.
There's going to be July Forest protest, now, tell us
why you should.
Speaker 9 (41:34):
Let me put my Civics teacher hat on, Molly, and look,
you know, I am honored. Let me just also say
I'm honored that my union is the fastest growing union
now in the.
Speaker 2 (41:44):
In the afl CIO.
Speaker 9 (41:46):
We're the second largest nursing union now, we're the largest
high red union now. So what we're saying is this,
and this goes to this question. When things are not
working and they're not fair, and they're not working for people,
and you have anger rather than aspiration, dominating the public
(42:07):
discord In terms of America. I teased before about America
is the land of the Free and the home of
the brave. I've been rereading the Constitution and rereading the
Declaration of Independence, and those words about aspiration and about opportunity.
They didn't, you know, the founders didn't always do the
right thing, as we all know, but those words opportunity, freedom, justice, liberty,
(42:33):
and so they are moored in the people. We elect
representatives to try to do our work, but they're moored
in the people. And when those representatives, whether it's the
president or whether it's the Congress, was supposed to be
three branches of government and then two systems, the federal
(42:56):
system and states. States did some stuff. The federal system
did some stuff. That's our constitutional democracy. When they're not
doing the right thing, there's two choices. You can give up.
You can say, okay, I'm not going to deal, or
you can fight. And frankly, what we learned two hundred
(43:19):
and fifty years ago from the colonists is they fought.
That's the only reason we have our country.
Speaker 2 (43:26):
They fought the monarchy.
Speaker 9 (43:28):
They started an army two hundred and fifty years ago,
to fight the monarchy, to have no taxation, without representation,
to have freedom. And so if we don't fight, we're
not going to have freedom. We're not going to be
able to give our kids and our grandkids a country
where we can speak like you and I are speaking
(43:48):
right now. And I often say to my conervative friends,
I want to have a country that we have freedom,
so you and I can fight with each other, so
we can fight about policy. But but if the people
don't fight right now, We've learned this from history. Every
time you go from a democracy to a dictatorship, or
(44:08):
you go or you see dictatorship, or you see authoritarianism,
it's because the people weren't on the street and didn't fight.
And so the second piece I would say is this,
Donald Trump creates.
Speaker 2 (44:21):
A lot of fear. Remember what he said right before
the protests. You know if you it's going to be
met by huge force.
Speaker 9 (44:30):
Every other word out of his mouth is fear and bullying,
and fear and bullying. When there's one person, you can
bully one person. If there are millions of people on
the streets like we had this weekend, people then see
each other. They create it creates courage, Courage becomes contagious,
and for everyone to see the millions of people that
(44:52):
were on the streets this weekend, millions. What it says is,
regardless of what do you think about labor union, is
our public education. I'll fight the fight about public education.
I'll fight the fight about labor unions, regardless of what
you think about all that or a snap, or you know,
of so many other issues. What is enduring in America
(45:13):
is that we have to have the voice and the
right to have our lives. And that's why we have
to fight. That democracy gives us the right to fight
for a better life, That democracy gives us the right
to fight for our families, that democracy.
Speaker 2 (45:32):
Gives us the right to have a future. And that's why.
Speaker 9 (45:36):
We have to be on the street because Donald Trump
doesn't care about it, and so many people in the
Senate and the House don't care about it. So we
the people have to take that power again that we
have together and fight to make sure our kids and
our grandkids and our great grandkids have a country where
(45:57):
they are free.
Speaker 2 (45:59):
Thank you, Brandy wineguard.
Speaker 13 (46:04):
No more perfectly Jesse Canon Molly, I have to tell
you something, as if you don't know this because we
don't experience this every day.
Speaker 3 (46:15):
The base of the Democratic Party really really is over
its leadership.
Speaker 2 (46:20):
Yes, and you know how we know this.
Speaker 4 (46:22):
We have a lot of indicators.
Speaker 3 (46:24):
I feel like, you know, when you walk outside the
you edit, you see all those flags, that's us with
red flags of this subject.
Speaker 2 (46:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
So we are really the two of us are quite liberal.
We are partisans, we are liberals. We completely believe in
the democratic policy.
Speaker 3 (46:41):
I think an important distinction, even to say for people's
I think something that sets us apart from a lot
of other people who do what we do is we
have more of a foot in activism than many of
these people. Many people cover from a journalistic perspective, we
are actually people who are pushing for these subjects to
get enacted and for the party to be stronger.
Speaker 2 (46:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (47:00):
Yeah, and I also just think, you know, we really
do believe in this stuff. But I'm telling you, I
was on this book tour and everywhere I went people
were furious at leadership, furious, furious, furious, and like they
were just mad. They felt like their leaders were not
working for them. And also I might add, you know
(47:22):
we've seen on this podcast when we have elected, a
lot of times people do not want to hear them.
So it is a real problem, and this is now
really reflected in the data, So let's talk about it.
We're seeing and this is polling. It's what we are seeing,
(47:44):
but it's also what I think is happening. Sixty two
percent of Democrats polled say the party needs new leadership.
Democrats seek they want focus on economic issues ahead of
the midterms. They think that rank and file Democrats see
disconnect from party leaders. Who are the party leaders, that's
Jeffries and Schumer. So that's what these people are saying.
(48:04):
They feel Schumer and Jeffries are not doing what they need.
You know, I don't think they feel this way about
Chris Murphy. I don't think they feel this way about
Corey Booker. I don't think they feel this way about
their governors. I think they feel this way about the
leadership because they feel the leadership is not leading. Now again,
(48:25):
if you call up Jeffries's office, which I happen to often,
do they feel that they are leading? Right, they feel
they're doing everything they can. But clearly the polls do
not feel like this, and we're seeing, you know, Gavin
Newsom who is at best controversial, at worst infuriating to
(48:48):
a lot of people, not super liberal, but is a
very talented politician, does come from California, did have Charlie
Kirk on his podcast, which kind of undermined him and
Steve Bannon. People don't trust us, They don't think we
have their back on issues that are core to them. Now,
I actually think that that's not really true. But clearly
(49:11):
something is wrong here right these polls show something is wrong.
I think we need to really take a hard look
at finding leadership that appeals to people, that connects to
them the way AOC does or even Chris Murphy does.
Right like, there are definitely people Jasmine Crockett, These people
are connecting with Democrats in a way that right now
(49:34):
Jeffries and Schumer aren't.
Speaker 3 (49:36):
I think one of the most interesting things you can
see is like a lot of times people are like, oh, well,
we don't know what to do. These people will never
be happy and say these things that are like very resigned.
When you look at how people's pulling goes up and down.
Gavin Newsom's a great case tist for this. His pulling
went down when he did a bunch of ill advised
podcasts with some right wing people. When he started fighting
(49:56):
and fighting Trump, his pulling went up. With Corey Booker
started fighting, his Polley went from horrible to very popular.
The indicator of what to do here is not hit
it in the.
Speaker 2 (50:07):
Weeds, right right, right.
Speaker 1 (50:09):
I think that's a really really, really really good point.
Speaker 2 (50:14):
That's exactly right. This is not rocket science.
Speaker 1 (50:18):
Your base wants you to fight, and if it doesn't
look like you're fighting, then it doesn't count, right like
they want you out there fighting.
Speaker 4 (50:26):
One hundred percent.
Speaker 1 (50:28):
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday to hear the best
minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If
you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend
and keep the conversation going.
Speaker 2 (50:48):
Thanks for listening.
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds, and a federal judge has ordered Matt
mood Kohlil must be released on bail. We have such
a great show for you today, the Mary Trump Shows
Own Mary Trump stops by to talk about Trump's devolving
(00:21):
mental state. Then we'll talk to the American Federation of
Teachers President Randy Winegarden on her departure from the d NC.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
But first the news.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
So Molly Josh Hawley, who some fools pretend could become
a Democrat who apparently have never heard him talk, and
I don't want to BELI le anyonet here, but this
guy does what's best for him. He's saying Trump's budget
bill faces a nightmare scenario.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Dun dun, dull And what's the nightmer scenario That there's a.
Speaker 4 (00:53):
Lot of bullshit at the big bullshit bill.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
I think the nightmare scenario is what they're living right now,
which is the pulling this bill is fucking awful. Okay,
we had Jake Sherman Welcome to the Resistance, Jake Sherman saying.
Speaker 4 (01:07):
I don't think he's welcoming hisself there.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
He doesn't want to be in there.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
But he's saying that the polling, both the internal and
the public polling, is terrible. Here we have the Washington
Post gop budget bill faced nearly two to one opposition,
with many unaware. So if you this is like Project
twenty twenty five, if you learn about this, you hate it.
Right here we go. Democrats oppose the bill. Independent you
may have heard of Independence. Republicans need them to win elections,
(01:32):
oppose the bill forty percent. Only seventeen percent of Independence
like this bill, and wait till they learn about it,
because four and ten have no opinion, And when they
have an opinion, they're going to be.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Like, what the fuck?
Speaker 1 (01:45):
So this bill does all the things that are unpopular.
It cuts medicaid, right, it cuts food stamps for children,
but it also grows the deficit. Really, it's hard to
think of a less popular bill than this. I think
that what Hall is saying is not so much that
he wants to help Americans, but that passing a piece
of legislation that both grows the deficit and starves children
(02:09):
may actually be unpopular sounds.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
Like good logic to me, and I don't often agree
with that, fella.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
It just sounds like logic, right, Like there's a difference
between Trump and like a normal politician.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Is that normal politicians are like, hmmm, logically. I mean
that's the thinking.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Trump just can't ever follow the thread long enough to
see where it might go.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
That's a very well put way of saying it. So,
speaking of people I don't often agree with, the Supreme
Court has allowed terrorist victims to sue the Palestinian authority.
Speaker 4 (02:37):
This is very weird.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
If you think about it, if victims of and we
interviewed someone about this coming up in the next couple
of weeks, a documentary about kids who got hurt by
social media and these lawyers suing for the families, right,
and you think about it, like you should be able
to sue. I mean, America is a country where you're
allowed to sue. If people just point you.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
I think of the great saying from the great comedians,
the Jerky boys, sue you, sue me, sue everybody.
Speaker 4 (03:06):
That's what we do here, right.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
I mean, this is a country based on lawsuits. So
you would think that you.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Would if you were a victim of terrorism, you should
be able to sue the people who did the terrorism
to you.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
And if you were able to do.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
This, you'd be able to sue people who incited violence,
which in itself might be good. You'd be able to
sue companies that posted fake claims and then led to
things like this. So I think this is actually quite good.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Again.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
Yeah, my brain goes to where Peter Teele will fund
lawsuits about this. That goes I really don't want to
enable any more power of retigious nature, but.
Speaker 4 (03:47):
At the same time, maybe it'll shake out.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
I don't have a crystal ball quite yet, but maybe
if we got a bonus for this podcast, that's what
we should buy.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
What more lawsuits? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (03:58):
No, no, no, no, a crystal all so we could predict the.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Future crystal ball.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Yes, it's funny because Jesse's favorite thing to say to me,
and it's like now he doesn't even say it anymore
because it's like in my blood, as you say. The
worst thing you can ever do in podcasting is ask
people to predict the future. Now, when you listen to podcasts,
listen and see when one hosts ask guests to predict
the future.
Speaker 4 (04:23):
Doesn't go well.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
So let's talk about another thing that doesn't go Well,
everybody loves to say Trump's a populist, and there's two
things that run through his populist nature. One he's pretending
to appeal like he cares to the working man. And
two racism. Here we have a stark conflict word one
single tweet. You can't keep those two in harbordy. What
(04:44):
do you see it here with this Jude ten sweet Bali.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Okay, so this is the question of right, Like, let's
just talk about a second. If you're anti anti racism,
then what do you pro your pro racism?
Speaker 2 (04:57):
You see what I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
The double negative cancels each other at Donald trus US
has too many holidays. You know why he says this.
He says this on June teenth. We obviously don't have
too many holidays. We have less holidays than anywhere else. Right,
there are ten public holidays normally celebrated in the US.
South Korea has thirty one, Japan has twenty six, the
(05:19):
UK is twenty eight.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
In Europe they take six weeks off if we take
five hours off. You know, you have fifty seven texts
from me.
Speaker 4 (05:27):
It's not a lie of people, that's not a lot.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
It's true.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
But the point here is that Juneteenth is a day
that celebrates the end of slavery. Donald Trump wants to
message that celebrating the end of slavery is not okay
because it's anti racism and Trump is anti anti racism.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
And there you have.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
Yeah, good stuff, all right, So I always save the
scariest for last. Pandemic preparedness experts are saying that our
preparedness is dramatically eroding under Trump. I think we knew
that was going to happen.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
No, no, it cannot be.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Really, we are completely being governed by people who are
just they don't believe in science. How could we be
ready for a pandemic. We're not even ready for you know,
vaccinating our kids in the fall H one N one.
That's the flu, which is actually real less attention under
the Trump administration than from the Biden team. We have
(06:25):
bird flu with the potential to spark a pandemic. But look,
we are so fucked. If there's a pandemic, we are
so fucked. There is no world in which it's not
a complete disaster. And by the way, this is all
because Trump was angry about COVID. Right, We're abandoning public
health because of a pandemic that could have been prevented
(06:46):
with better public health. I mean, this is the absolute
dumbest thing. I mean, there's a lot of dumb shit
that's happened in this administration, and I promise you, as
someone who can tell the future, a lot of dumb
shit is to come. But this, by far is really
just beyond stupid. Mary Trump is the host of The
(07:09):
Mary Trump Show and the author of Who Could Ever
Love You?
Speaker 2 (07:12):
A family memoir. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Mary Trump.
It is awesome going to be here. Maladn Cels.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
You know, it's funny because I wrote this book about
my just the emotional experience of having elderly parents and
a husband who got diagnosed with cancer, and I'm called
How to Lose Your Mother.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Which I just plug endlessly, but.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Well, thank you, But somebody said, they said to me,
you know, dealing with an arm sististic parent must have
really prepared you for covering Donald Trump and coming from
a family riddled with alcoholism. You know, you and I
both had had alcoholic parents, right, So it's just funny that, like,
(07:56):
and you have this background as being a psychologist and
you have you just you know, spend a lot of
time on the kind of emotional familial trauma that is
both very symptomatic of a lot of us in modern life,
but also very much underpins our American political lives with
(08:17):
Donald Trump right now.
Speaker 5 (08:19):
Yeah, yeah, And I either, to be honest, I don't
know necessarily that growing up in such a family prepares us.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
I think in some ways it makes it harder. Yeah,
because it's exhausting.
Speaker 5 (08:32):
I think my training as a psychologist has definitely been
more helpful because that's a tool. And yes, of course,
the familiarity and being used to something, I guess it's
nothing surprises us, but it's not as if it makes
it less difficult to bear, right, So, and I don't
(08:53):
even know if that necessarily helps some people make sense
of it, because I think what we're finding is what
you just pointed to, is this is an epidemic in
this country. There are so many people in this country
who are like the leaders they choose, who wish they
were or something.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
And then on the other side.
Speaker 5 (09:17):
Of it, there are so many people who come from
similar kinds of families but are not equipped, don't have
the self awareness, or for whatever reasons, have not been
able to do the work of understanding their roles or
where they are vis a vis the dysfunction. And wow,
(09:38):
that has shocked me more than I'd care to admit.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Actually, one of the things that I've been struck by
is how much the sort of alcoholism is. We don't
talk about it so much, but you know, you have
Trump never dreams, right because of his familial connection to alcoholism, right, ever,
drank because of his familial connection to alcoholism. Hunter in
(10:05):
and out of rehab, Like I got so born I
was nineteen because of my family riddled with alcoholism. You
take a job in the healing and helping profession because
of your father's experience with alcohoism. Like, it just strikes
me that this is such a central theme in the
(10:26):
twenty twenty election, the twenty twenty four cycle. We'll see it,
you know that we saw it be tweenty twenty eight.
You know, like these are central tenants alcoholism, and yet
we don't talk about.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
It at all. No, And as you know better than most,
that's lethal.
Speaker 5 (10:47):
And we are going to continue to see the fallout
of all of the things we don't talk about in
this country, perhaps most in the long term, most relevantly
are history which the right is trying to erase, although
quite frankly, I mean we've done a really good job
of ignoring it to the point where white Americans, certainly
(11:10):
to the point where we have made no strides in
terms of race and racism in America, because we've never
dealt with the genocide against the native population, the enslavement
of another entire population for eight generations Jim Grow, etc.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
The failures of reconstruction.
Speaker 5 (11:27):
And in more recent times, we've done nothing to deal
with the trauma of COVID, during which time people who
had addictions did a lot of backsliding some people, and
people who didn't started self medicating in ways they may
not have before. And then the rest of us who
(11:50):
didn't do either of those things but just are traumatized
by the divisions and the terror and all of it.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Let's talk about COVID, because I think of COVID as
a really important moment in American life that really brought
a lot of darkness. And I think there's a direct
line between COVID and the installation of RFK Junior.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Yes, absolutely, I mean we know that well.
Speaker 5 (12:22):
On the right, the devaluing of science has been going
on for a very long time, but the acceleration since
January twentieth, twenty twenty five is alarming, to say the least,
because any other Republican candidate one in twenty sixteen, they
would have handled COVID.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Like any Democrat would have.
Speaker 5 (12:41):
Yeah, because it would happen to be the worst person
on the planet to deal with that crisis.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
That did accelerate the mistrust.
Speaker 5 (12:49):
And one of the things that is most horrifying about it,
it's all because the man in charge couldn't admit he
was wrong and would it work mask And he recognized
that his political future was tied to his ability to
divide this country further.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
That's why. And look at us now.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
So it seems to me like there was a sort
of embrace of junk signs on the side of the
right and a kind of refusal. Like I always thought
that what would happen with COVID is that the thesis
would bear out that this was a real disease, which
it clearly is, and then Republicans would be like, oh,
(13:36):
I guess this is actually real. But that's not what happened. No, No,
quite the opposite.
Speaker 5 (13:42):
And again I think part of it was loyalty. You know,
Donald is good in very few things, but one of
them is softening the ground to make the unacceptable acceptable
over time.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
So he engages in a lot of.
Speaker 5 (13:57):
Microconcessions and microaggressions you get from you know, beat up.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
That protester at a rally to let's kill everybody.
Speaker 5 (14:05):
Yeah, it's like, that's that's what we're getting on in
about ten ten years.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
He is also intentionally hyperbolic in a way to inspire
his protesters, but his protectors, right, his people. He tries
to inspire them, but he also does it in a
way so that he can say I.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
Was just kidding.
Speaker 5 (14:27):
Obviously, I don't mean that right, right exactly, So it's
to somebody else to do it, because he's a.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Coward as well.
Speaker 5 (14:35):
So loyalty became literally laying down your life for him,
and people did that by deciding that they were their
loyalty to Donald Trump. Their ability to be in that
club was more important to them than their lives, or
the lives of their loved ones, or the lives of
anybody else. And because I think initially COVID was only
(15:00):
hitting blue states or hitting blue states more, that made
it easier to make the case that it wasn't a
big deal. And then it also like there was also
this this weird overlap with toxic masculinity, as if believing
that COVID was a real disease or wearing a mask
made you some limp wristed a Northeastern liberal elite.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
You know, and.
Speaker 5 (15:25):
Believing an expertise also became a marker of your inability
to fit in. And here we are with a Republican
party so degraded that even an actual medical doctor decided
that his political career was more important to him than
(15:47):
saving the American people from the likes of a rubber candidate.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
I think he's obviously pretty underestimated. He's been continually underestimated, right,
like continuously.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
And he obviously has no real.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Personal love for RFK Junior, right, I mean, except that
he loves a convert. Jor strikes me as the person
who is the most dangerous cabinet secretary by a lot. Right,
He's probably more dangerous than Trump ultimately, because he really
could cause the death of tens of thousands of children
(16:27):
in this country when they have seen. Yeah, one of
the things that I've been struck by, and this comes
back to Elon is like Trump and Elon. We knew
that wasn't going to last, and ultimately it didn't. Ultimately
Elon just flamed out with RFK and Trump. It strikes
me there was a similar dynamic there. I wonder if
(16:48):
you could talk us through.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Yeah. First of all, I just want to add something
that I think is important.
Speaker 5 (16:54):
I agree with you about people's underestimating Donald, and it's
easy to do because he is a smart person. He
has no intellectual curiosity. His arrogance should have gotten him
into much more trouble than it has.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
He's a failure. He is a serial failure.
Speaker 5 (17:10):
But I think the other thing that's been underestimated is
the extent to which much smarter, much more powerful people
want to use him for their own ends, and that
he's not here because of any special skills he has.
He's here because so many people found him of use
(17:30):
and were willing to use him.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Quite frankly, so with Kennedy, I mean one difference.
Speaker 5 (17:36):
Obviously, he's also an egomaniac and a narcissist, and he's associopath.
So you know that probably makes Donald feel like he
has company.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
But he's not as powerful as Elon Musk. He's not
threatening in the way Musk would be to Donald.
Speaker 5 (17:53):
He's not in Donald's perception, He's not superior in any way,
and Kennedy is less publicly needing the ego boost.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
That Musk does.
Speaker 5 (18:09):
Like he doesn't talk about himself in the way Musk
talks about himself.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
So he's not challenging Donald's authority.
Speaker 5 (18:17):
He's not in any competition with Donald because he's insane
and he has an agenda. The best way for him
to fill that agenda is to make sure that he
doesn't rub Donald the wrong way, to make sure that
he does stay under the radar, and it is in public.
Most people do know what Musk was up to, because
(18:41):
he was in the freaking Oval office all the time.
He was at every cabinet meeting, he was in every
press conference. Most people don't know what Robert Kennedy.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Is up to, right right, right, right exactly, and Donald
may not even know exactly. Do you think that's the answer,
that Donald doesn't know what's really happening, and that if
he knew, he might shut it down. No, he doesn't
care because he can't think that far ahead.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
No. No, because he's the one who created these conditions.
He made a deal that As.
Speaker 5 (19:11):
Long as he got what he wanted, which is to
become as rich as he could possibly be, to have
as much power as he could possibly have, he will
give the Republican.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Party and the base whatever they want.
Speaker 5 (19:23):
And that is turning women into second class citizens who
have no reproductive freedom and no bodily autonomy. And that
also means being anti vax being anti science and pro disease.
So what does he care if millions, hundreds of thousands,
or millions of children die from easily preventable diseases for
(19:46):
which we have vaccines already. As long as he's rich
and powerful, I'm telling you doesn't care.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
But don't you think he cares because he wants to
stay in power and he might see this as preventing
him from stay in power.
Speaker 5 (20:00):
Well, I mean, the guy doesn't have very good judgment.
If he you know, he wouldn't be threatening war with
Iran uh Or, which clearly is not going over. Well,
he wouldn't have enacted tariffs and you know, destroyed our
economy and the global economy if he were able to
think things through.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
But you know, he gets ideas in his head. But
I don't know.
Speaker 5 (20:19):
I also I don't think he sees it that way
because again, they control the narrative in a lot.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
Of cases, not in all of them. You know, sometimes obviously,
like with tariffs.
Speaker 5 (20:30):
And and with UH with Iran, it kind of spirals
out of their control.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
But again, much of what Kennedy is doing is under
the radar.
Speaker 5 (20:40):
And you know, if there were some horrific outbreak of
a disease, UH, they'll they'll spin it, They'll figure out
how to spin it.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Donald won't take responsibility for what have you. So no,
I don't. I don't think he sees it that way.
Speaker 5 (20:56):
And even if he did, maybe that would make him
change core for forced Kennedy to change for us. But
it wouldn't be because he cares about children, right, American lives,
that's right. But it might be because of taco. Right,
Trump always chickens out. Let's talk about taco, because this
is like a real thing. Right with the tariffs he has,
you know, there's still they're still going to mess up
(21:19):
our economy, but he's backed a little bit. Right, he
had these crazy tariffs.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
With China and then he backed down and now right
and there's by the way, China is getting around a
lot of these tariffs because if they weren't, you wouldn't
see I mean a lot of these prices have gone up,
but a lot of stayed the same.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Right.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
Service prices have gone up, but some of them, like Amazon,
clearly is not paying a tariff to China because if
they were, you wouldn't be able to buy the same
kind of cheap stuff you are. You see taco there,
you see it with Iran, right, he was going to
bomb Ran then he you know, he saw that his
base is furious. I actually think that Tako Carlson and
(22:02):
I'm Steve Bannon coming out against this, and as Jones
by the way, and now it's Jones. Those are Trump's people,
and I actually think Trump will not cross them. Donald
is really good at making things worse for himself. He's
a very self destructive person.
Speaker 5 (22:18):
But to the extent that he still is cognitive such
thing cognizant of such things, Yes, he is capable of
as long as he can find out a way.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
To do it without admitting that he was wrong.
Speaker 5 (22:30):
Of course, Yeah, he will chicken out.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
It's in the taco. The d is silent, but it's
to taco. Donald Trump always changed. Yeah, that's good. So
just to clarification.
Speaker 6 (22:44):
So I think again what worries me about Kennedy is
that by the time something happens that's big enough and
public enough, it might be too late, like people aren't
paying enough for attention.
Speaker 5 (22:58):
Now, Aron's different, or is war and you know with
somebody is save a reality rattling and saying that it's
such an emergency.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
But I'll get back to you in two weeks.
Speaker 5 (23:08):
Then clearly, right, that's something that's dealt with in the immediate.
They took a very long time for the tariff thing
to stop, and again it hasn't stopped. You just sound
back a little bit. So with the vaccine issue or
the communicable disease issue, I think by then we would
be past.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
The point of no return.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
I'm afraid, right, no question. But like Steve Bannon went
to the White House talk to Trump. So obviously Trump,
you know, bomb Iran is getting like the full core
press from his people against bombing Iran. So the question
is if Steve Bannon were to say, like, look, childhood
(23:49):
vaccine's good idea, let's not killed children, I wonder if
you'd see taco.
Speaker 5 (23:58):
I think the problem here is that you're looking at
at uh the base having very different perspectives on these things.
The base is ANTII. I mean, it kind of shocks
me because they're all so cruel and it's such a
death cult, like you think they'd be all all for war,
but you know, again, that's a condition he created my
(24:20):
campaigning as if you know, Hillary Clinton's the WARHOWK Joe
Biden's the WARHOWK rocket Bomba's the warhawk.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
And he hates war and forever it will end all
the forever wars. The base hates science and has been
trained over a very long time to hate vaccines.
Speaker 5 (24:36):
Maybe in during his first the beginning of his first administration,
I would have had a different thought about it. But
then I see what people did during COVID, and I
don't have any faith in their ability to see what
is really going on. If we did, we already did
have an outbreak of a horrific disease that was killing
(24:58):
people by thousands every single day.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
It didn't change their minds. If anything, it got them here.
Mary Trump, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Thanks mother, it's great to see you.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
Randy Winegarden is the president of the American Federation of
Teachers and the author of the upcoming book, Why Fascists
Fear Teachers.
Speaker 7 (25:20):
Welcome to Fast Politics, Randy Winingarten, how are you. I
am in the morning, Joe greenroom wearing curlers, So I'm great.
But we wanted to make this happen this week because
there's just a lot to talk about.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
And the thing we really want to talk about was
what's happening at the DNC. You've left the DNC. You
are one of the great labor leaders, right you won't
be studied in history books.
Speaker 8 (25:47):
You lead the teachers Union, you are a champion for teachers' rights,
but you also served in the DNC in a sort
of advisory capacity. I would love you to talk about
why you left the DNC.
Speaker 9 (25:59):
I'm not going to go through all the ins and
outs and the what happened, because that's not a I'm
really a proud Democrat, and I've been on the DNC
since I think two thousand and two, and on the
Rules and Bilows Committee since two thousand and nine, and
that's a long time, you know, in political life, that's
(26:19):
a very long time. What both Lee Saunders and I
decided was that we would not after we were asked
to be reappointed, we would decline the reappointment, and we
both set letters in doing that and didn't intend those
letters to be public. But what happened is I talked
to my members and my and you know, got around
(26:43):
and you know, so I basically gave the letter to
the New York Times and frankly asked them. You know,
the New York Times figured it out, and I asked
them to wait until No Kings before they put it out.
So that's essentially the timing of what happened. The letters
were dated. My letter was dated early June. The issue
(27:06):
that I am focused on right now, and you saw
it my letter had you know. The line in the
letter was that it was clear that, you know, I
had a different view about how to enlarge the tent
in terms of the Democratic Party. And frankly, when you
(27:26):
have a different view and it's clear that the chairman doesn't,
you know, has a different view than you, I got
a lot of work to do and so I decided
to do it outside of the party. That's essentially what
I said, That's essentially what I thought. That's what the
last six months have looked like to me, and that's
why I did what I did. The dilemma I have
(27:47):
is this The conversation right now should be about what
we as Democrats need to do, including the party, not
an internescing squabble about who said what to who. And
right now, the Reconciliation Bill, it's so bad for regular people.
(28:08):
It's such a huge shift of wealth from the poor
and the working class to the wealthy.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
The party should.
Speaker 9 (28:17):
Be all in on this right now. There should be
a surround sound to what you know Schumer and the
Democrats are doing in the Senate, to what Jeffreys and
the Democrats were doing in the House. Because the more
people know about this bill, the more.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
They hate it.
Speaker 9 (28:36):
So this bill is a study in contrast between who
Trump really is and what you're trying to do in
the country.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
And that's what the.
Speaker 9 (28:47):
DSc should be doing constantly right now, like every single letter,
an ad campaign, talk to the people around the country
about it. And since can actually has you know, this
great relationship with all these state party chairs, do a
fifty state strategy right now. So that's an example, a
(29:09):
clear example to me, like you know, the four unions,
Anya s CiU Aft asked me, you know, we put
a bunch of money in to actually educate the public
and to try to lobby Congress to not cut RURLD
hospitals and to not cut medicate. That's what the Democrat
(29:30):
part should be doing too.
Speaker 10 (29:31):
Is some of this an ideological debate between whether or
not the DNC is supposed to be storing upstate And
I'm not pushing back because this is like a real question,
because I don't think anyone really knows what the DNC
is supposed to be. Is the DNC supposed to be
storing up state parties or is it supposed to be
(29:54):
a sort of larger top line, you know, messaging apparatus,
And and if so, what is it suppose me?
Speaker 2 (30:02):
And what has it historically been.
Speaker 9 (30:03):
If we're having that conversation right now publicly or privately,
right the Democrats have lost the debate right every organ
of the Democratic Party right now in response to the
last election. The policies that we propose, in my judgment,
(30:23):
I mean, I've been Democrats all my life, are one
thousand percent better, oh, in terms of how we help
create a better life and the opportunity land of the
you know, land of the free and home of the
brave America. How we create an opportunity for all Americans
marginalized and those who are not marginalized. When there's a
(30:46):
debate about whether the party is supposed to be calling
bulls and strikes in terms of a presidential election or
shoring up the fifty you know parties all across the country,
then what's happening is American people say, oh, you're talking
about your little club and you're not actually focusing on
(31:07):
my needs. I think that the clear message from the
last election, because I think Biden was a transformational president
if you look at the economic foundations, what he tried
to do with industrial policy, how he tried to move
things and you can't move things in a day. And
in fact, even this new polling is showing that even
(31:28):
though people don't like what Trump is doing economically, if
it's explained to people, people are willing to give a
president a benefit of the doubt if it's communicated about what.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
They're trying to do.
Speaker 9 (31:40):
Biden was doing that it wasn't explained to people. People
didn't see what the Democrats were doing. They connected enough
people unfortunately connected to Trump and you know, his emotional
connection to them as opposed to what Biden did. So
my view is that the party you know, just like Union,
(32:00):
you have to operate and do four things at the
same time. You have to actually communicate with people about
who we are and what we're doing and why, and
be people's champions.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
I don't care who you are within the Democratic Party.
That's really true.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
So I know that there are ads right now on
television about the BBB, right, the Big Beautiful Bill, which
is bullshit, and it pulls very badly.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
It polls badly. I thought when you said BBB, I
thought you said you were talking about build back better.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
And now now the Big Beautiful Bill which got through bigly,
which got through the House, but is now having a
lot of problems in the Senate. So the polling is
just awful. It's bad. The public polling, the private polling, bad, bad, bad.
And basically what this bill does grows the deficit and
(32:56):
also just cuts and cuts, and it does it does
four things, but it does four things that are really terrible.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
First, there is no coherent strategy.
Speaker 9 (33:06):
On how you build and grow the economy. The economy
in the United States of America for working people.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
You have to do two things.
Speaker 9 (33:13):
You have to grow it and you have to make
it more fair. You have to do both of those
things I'm sorry at the same time, and this bill
does neither. What it essentially is it is a shift.
It's a further shift of income or of wealth from
the poor to the wealthy. And it does that by
(33:34):
doing by not only keeping all the corporate and the
business I'm sorry all the wealthy tax cuts from twenty seventeen,
but it doesn't actually do any of the things that
incentivizes the tax system to grow the economy, and in
fact it hurts it because all of those things that
(33:55):
we're helping with the Inflation Reduction Act and tax credits
and whatever build new green economy, it cuts that, So
it doesn't help on the economy. Number two, it's a
shift of income from the poor to the wealthy. Number three,
it really really really hurts people in rural hospitals and
(34:16):
our grandparents who you need to use Medicaid to be
in nursing home. So it's gonna hurt kids, it's gonna
hurt rural hospitals. It's gonna hurt our grandparents. It's gonna
hurt or our parents. It's going to hurt all of that.
Number Four, it kills the nutritional progress and the.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
Threat snap which is child food stamps for children.
Speaker 9 (34:36):
Stamps and all the nutritional programs for children. So it's
really really hurts kids. It's also there's a terrible boutcher
piece on it, But I want to get to the
last piece, which nobody knows. It really is a terrible
measure that hurts security and safety of people because what
it does there's a hidden provision in there that says
(34:59):
states can no longer do anything in terms.
Speaker 11 (35:03):
Of the guard rails AI. How is it that you
can actually tell states we can't protect people against a
machine and the federal government is doing nothing about it.
It essentially says to people who want to make a
surveillance state, here's the green light to do it. And
(35:25):
so we never regulated this social media. We get social.
Speaker 9 (35:30):
Media the immunity, and look at what is happening in
terms of attention of our kids. Look what is happening
in terms of the algorithms, the addictive quality of this
and now hidden in this bill is basically saying, Okay,
big tech, you can do everything you want with AI.
It is an anti safety bill. It is a way
(35:53):
of shifting wealth, and it really hurts the people who
need governmental work for them, and it does nothing to
help spur on innovation in the economy.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
In fact, I would say it hurts it. That's why
we have to educate people on this bill and use
every organ we can to do that. I wonder how
much of where we are is an inability or refusal
on the part of government to regulate really anything.
Speaker 1 (36:22):
Can you talk about that? Like we have technology? You know,
I actually was at a party where I heard a
United States Senator complaining about how there's no fact checking
on the Internet, and I thought to myself, well, isn't
that odd a person who could have regulated fact checking
(36:44):
on the internet complaining about how there's no fact checking
on the internet. Would you sort of talk through how
are electeds both on the left and the right have
refused to provide any regulation.
Speaker 9 (36:57):
What unfortunately has happened in in so many ways is
that the bureaucracy seems to get in the way of progress.
And I say this as a school teacher whose members
many times hate the bureaucracy and hate a whole bunch
of rules and regulations that are thrown at them that
(37:20):
create a lot of paperwork. And I think most Americans,
probably since Reagan, kind of experienced government as not being
efficient and as a result kind of are what gets
obscured is all the important things that government does. So
(37:40):
I want to start that way because's because of course
we need regulation.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
Of course we need guardrails.
Speaker 9 (37:48):
Of course we need things to create a level playing field,
and that's what government is supposed to do. You want
the guardrails to make sure that planes fly safely, but
no one would question the regulations about making sure that
planes flies safely.
Speaker 12 (38:08):
Or the regular Oh wow, no, yes, now, same person
should be questioning that, And then I would say the
same thing in terms of so much else in government.
Speaker 9 (38:22):
If someone is getting discriminated against taking education, really like
a kid who has a disability and the school is
not functioning for that kid, or the kid is in
a wheelchair and the school that the kid goes to
she's on the fourth floor and there's no elevator. You
(38:43):
can't do that to a child. So there is a
way in which a parent can then say this is
not fair for my kid.
Speaker 2 (38:52):
That's what government should do.
Speaker 9 (38:54):
So we have to figure out a way to balance
between having affect efficient government and not overly bureaucratic and
bureaucratized government. So that is how most people experience it
what we're seeing right now with President Trump, and we
(39:16):
saw it with President Reagan as well, but this one,
this time, it is much more excessive. They want to
get rid of all the rules. And what essentially then
happens is you go back to a situation of kings
and Mars, where the people who have the power keep
the power and everyone else has nothing. And because how
(39:40):
do regular people then navigate that, how do you still
have social security, how do you still have medicarea, how
do you have a basic safety net? And with AI
and with all of this technology coming in all of
a sudden, the tech companies then in some ways become
the mini government because they're the ones that own the data,
(40:03):
they're the ones that have the machines, and they're the
ones that base a crete control information. And if you're
not having guardrails around that about disinformation, about privacy, about
making sure that the human being is in control of
the machines, then we are in a world that we
have never been in before. So right now, regulation, I
(40:27):
would say, of all the things of that bill, that
is the most dangerous, this piece that doesn't allow states
after the federal government refused to do it to actually
regulate to make sure it keeps.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
Its citizens safe.
Speaker 9 (40:46):
That's the most dangerous part of this big, ugly bill.
Speaker 2 (40:49):
Oh, if you are a person listening to this podcast
and you are freaked out, what should you be doing.
Speaker 9 (40:58):
You should be calling and writing your senator right now,
your governor right now, particularly if you're in a red state,
and say, do not pass this bill. Do not do
this to us, do not make us less safe, do
not hurt our American dream.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
Should you explain why marching and organizing like does If
you're a person listening to this podcast and you are like,
I don't know if I should go to this protest.
There's going to be July Forest protest, now, tell us
why you should.
Speaker 9 (41:34):
Let me put my Civics teacher hat on, Molly, and look,
you know, I am honored. Let me just also say
I'm honored that my union is the fastest growing union
now in the.
Speaker 2 (41:44):
In the afl CIO.
Speaker 9 (41:46):
We're the second largest nursing union now, we're the largest
high red union now. So what we're saying is this,
and this goes to this question. When things are not
working and they're not fair, and they're not working for people,
and you have anger rather than aspiration, dominating the public
(42:07):
discord In terms of America. I teased before about America
is the land of the Free and the home of
the brave. I've been rereading the Constitution and rereading the
Declaration of Independence, and those words about aspiration and about opportunity.
They didn't, you know, the founders didn't always do the
right thing, as we all know, but those words opportunity, freedom, justice, liberty,
(42:33):
and so they are moored in the people. We elect
representatives to try to do our work, but they're moored
in the people. And when those representatives, whether it's the
president or whether it's the Congress, was supposed to be
three branches of government and then two systems, the federal
(42:56):
system and states. States did some stuff. The federal system
did some stuff. That's our constitutional democracy. When they're not
doing the right thing, there's two choices. You can give up.
You can say, okay, I'm not going to deal, or
you can fight. And frankly, what we learned two hundred
(43:19):
and fifty years ago from the colonists is they fought.
That's the only reason we have our country.
Speaker 2 (43:26):
They fought the monarchy.
Speaker 9 (43:28):
They started an army two hundred and fifty years ago,
to fight the monarchy, to have no taxation, without representation,
to have freedom. And so if we don't fight, we're
not going to have freedom. We're not going to be
able to give our kids and our grandkids a country
where we can speak like you and I are speaking
(43:48):
right now. And I often say to my conervative friends,
I want to have a country that we have freedom,
so you and I can fight with each other, so
we can fight about policy. But but if the people
don't fight right now, We've learned this from history. Every
time you go from a democracy to a dictatorship, or
(44:08):
you go or you see dictatorship, or you see authoritarianism,
it's because the people weren't on the street and didn't fight.
And so the second piece I would say is this,
Donald Trump creates.
Speaker 2 (44:21):
A lot of fear. Remember what he said right before
the protests. You know if you it's going to be
met by huge force.
Speaker 9 (44:30):
Every other word out of his mouth is fear and bullying,
and fear and bullying. When there's one person, you can
bully one person. If there are millions of people on
the streets like we had this weekend, people then see
each other. They create it creates courage, Courage becomes contagious,
and for everyone to see the millions of people that
(44:52):
were on the streets this weekend, millions. What it says is,
regardless of what do you think about labor union, is
our public education. I'll fight the fight about public education.
I'll fight the fight about labor unions, regardless of what
you think about all that or a snap, or you know,
of so many other issues. What is enduring in America
(45:13):
is that we have to have the voice and the
right to have our lives. And that's why we have
to fight. That democracy gives us the right to fight
for a better life, That democracy gives us the right
to fight for our families, that democracy.
Speaker 2 (45:32):
Gives us the right to have a future. And that's why.
Speaker 9 (45:36):
We have to be on the street because Donald Trump
doesn't care about it, and so many people in the
Senate and the House don't care about it. So we
the people have to take that power again that we
have together and fight to make sure our kids and
our grandkids and our great grandkids have a country where
(45:57):
they are free.
Speaker 2 (45:59):
Thank you, Brandy wineguard.
Speaker 13 (46:04):
No more perfectly Jesse Canon Molly, I have to tell
you something, as if you don't know this because we
don't experience this every day.
Speaker 3 (46:15):
The base of the Democratic Party really really is over
its leadership.
Speaker 2 (46:20):
Yes, and you know how we know this.
Speaker 4 (46:22):
We have a lot of indicators.
Speaker 3 (46:24):
I feel like, you know, when you walk outside the
you edit, you see all those flags, that's us with
red flags of this subject.
Speaker 2 (46:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
So we are really the two of us are quite liberal.
We are partisans, we are liberals. We completely believe in
the democratic policy.
Speaker 3 (46:41):
I think an important distinction, even to say for people's
I think something that sets us apart from a lot
of other people who do what we do is we
have more of a foot in activism than many of
these people. Many people cover from a journalistic perspective, we
are actually people who are pushing for these subjects to
get enacted and for the party to be stronger.
Speaker 2 (46:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (47:00):
Yeah, and I also just think, you know, we really
do believe in this stuff. But I'm telling you, I
was on this book tour and everywhere I went people
were furious at leadership, furious, furious, furious, and like they
were just mad. They felt like their leaders were not
working for them. And also I might add, you know
(47:22):
we've seen on this podcast when we have elected, a
lot of times people do not want to hear them.
So it is a real problem, and this is now
really reflected in the data, So let's talk about it.
We're seeing and this is polling. It's what we are seeing,
(47:44):
but it's also what I think is happening. Sixty two
percent of Democrats polled say the party needs new leadership.
Democrats seek they want focus on economic issues ahead of
the midterms. They think that rank and file Democrats see
disconnect from party leaders. Who are the party leaders, that's
Jeffries and Schumer. So that's what these people are saying.
(48:04):
They feel Schumer and Jeffries are not doing what they need.
You know, I don't think they feel this way about
Chris Murphy. I don't think they feel this way about
Corey Booker. I don't think they feel this way about
their governors. I think they feel this way about the
leadership because they feel the leadership is not leading. Now again,
(48:25):
if you call up Jeffries's office, which I happen to often,
do they feel that they are leading? Right, they feel
they're doing everything they can. But clearly the polls do
not feel like this, and we're seeing, you know, Gavin
Newsom who is at best controversial, at worst infuriating to
(48:48):
a lot of people, not super liberal, but is a
very talented politician, does come from California, did have Charlie
Kirk on his podcast, which kind of undermined him and
Steve Bannon. People don't trust us, They don't think we
have their back on issues that are core to them. Now,
I actually think that that's not really true. But clearly
(49:11):
something is wrong here right these polls show something is wrong.
I think we need to really take a hard look
at finding leadership that appeals to people, that connects to
them the way AOC does or even Chris Murphy does.
Right like, there are definitely people Jasmine Crockett, These people
are connecting with Democrats in a way that right now
(49:34):
Jeffries and Schumer aren't.
Speaker 3 (49:36):
I think one of the most interesting things you can
see is like a lot of times people are like, oh, well,
we don't know what to do. These people will never
be happy and say these things that are like very resigned.
When you look at how people's pulling goes up and down.
Gavin Newsom's a great case tist for this. His pulling
went down when he did a bunch of ill advised
podcasts with some right wing people. When he started fighting
(49:56):
and fighting Trump, his pulling went up. With Corey Booker
started fighting, his Polley went from horrible to very popular.
The indicator of what to do here is not hit
it in the.
Speaker 2 (50:07):
Weeds, right right, right.
Speaker 1 (50:09):
I think that's a really really, really really good point.
Speaker 2 (50:14):
That's exactly right. This is not rocket science.
Speaker 1 (50:18):
Your base wants you to fight, and if it doesn't
look like you're fighting, then it doesn't count, right like
they want you out there fighting.
Speaker 4 (50:26):
One hundred percent.
Speaker 1 (50:28):
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday to hear the best
minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If
you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend
and keep the conversation going.
Speaker 2 (50:48):
Thanks for listening.
Host
Molly Jong-Fast
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!