April 23, 2025 • 44 mins
The New Republic’s Michael Tomasky examines where Trump’s lawlessness is headed. Strength In Numbers newsletter’s G. Elliott Morris details what polls can tell us about Trump’s agenda.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds and Larry David Rose, Bill Maher's meeting
with Trump as my dinner with Adolf.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
We have such a great show for you today.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
The New Republic's Mike Tamaski tries to make sense of
where Trump's lawlessness is headed. Then we'll talk to the
author of the Strength in Numbers newsletter, g Elliott Morris,
about what polls can tell us about Trump's agenda.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
But first the news.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
So, Molly, there's a million reports out that Pete Haiksith
is going to have to resign. I'm always skeptical of
those in US, are you? But we do have the
first Republican calling for him to resign, and it's the
guy with the most Republican name of all time, Don Bacon.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
So Bacon has done this before. Bacon is sort of
the Jeff Flake twenty twenty five. He calls Hegseth an
amateur person, which for a weekend television hosts, that's not
very nice. He stood up for things before. Now I
want to just remind you that he is in Nebraska.
(01:15):
He comes from Nebraska's second congressional district. Whenever you see
a Republican standing up for something, and this is not
always true, but it is often true, you should look
at their district and find out if it's a red
district or a purple district.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
A helpful thing is right on Wikipedia usually says their CPI,
which a lot of people don't know, is the Cook
Political Index, and I'll tell you how far it leans
left or right.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
So Nebraska's second congressional district, which is where he comes from,
it's an R plus three, so it is not a
very Republican district. So Marjorie Taylor Green is in an
R plus nineteen and Don Bacon is in an R
plus three, and the difference between an R plus three
and an R plus nineteen is Don Bacon says things
like Donald Trump should be king. Marjorie Taylor Green says
(02:03):
things like Donald Trump should be God king because there's
seventeen percent more Republicans in her district. That is why
I say to you, always be suspicious of Republicans who stand.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Up, but not even that.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
I mean Bacon has done that, and I think it's good,
and I think standing up to Trump is always good, and.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
There's a dearth of courage right now in America.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
But that said, just always be a little cynical because
these people are cowards. That said, I do think we're
going to see more standing up to Trump as his
poll numbers creator and as they crash the economy. So
I think it's very likely that you'll see more quote
unquote bravery and well it is good and we do
(02:47):
like it, and it may be the difference between authoritarianism
and continuing as are you know, not perfect democracy. I
do think it's worth remembering like public sentiment has changed.
The people have different incentives, structures. They are not just
doing this out of the goodness of their heart. That said,
Bacon did say that he does not think texting sensitive
(03:10):
or plans is something the Secretary of Defense should be doing.
By the way, this man manages three million people. This
is a humongous agency filled with a lot of important
stuff that they're doing. Also, Elon wants to fire a
huge swath of them because of Doge.
Speaker 4 (03:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
In other bleak News, sixty Minutes, despite its weakening relevance,
has long been one of the better journalists that out
what our country has had and a long time producer
is leaving because they feel the tide turning.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
On that So sixty Minutes has done some really really
important journalism, especially right now. And this producer is a
guy called Bill Owens. And every time someone does something
like this, there are not a lot of great jobs
in television journalisms. There are not a lot of jobs
in journalism period. So the fact that this guy is
(04:05):
leaving probably one of the best jobs in television. But
he's been there for a long time, and he's a
serious journalist. In fact, what he tells The New York
Times is so having defended this show and what we
stand for from every angle over time, with everything I could,
I'm stepping aside so the show can move forward, he
(04:25):
wrote in the memo, which was obtained by The Times.
Sixty Minutes has faced mounting pressure in recent months from
both President Trump, who sued CBS for ten billion dollars.
You'll ten billion dollars to get you know what, CBS
doesn't have ten billion dollars to give to Donald Trump.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
Some real Austin Powers stuff right there.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Accused the program of unlawful.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
And illegal behavior. And this is because I don't know
why he's mad at them.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
About this. Is this because of the Harris interview where
they he felt that it was.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
Edited in a way that made her look better than
I mean, it's just this is this thing with Trump.
He's an Autocrat, and you know, not all of this
makes sense or any of this, not even any of
this makes sense. So this guy, bill Owens is really
a hero to do this, to give up one of
these really best jobs in media because you don't feel
(05:27):
that CBS is doing what's right or that that's a
big deal. And we really do applaud him in a
world filled with cowards and a world filled with Paul Weiss's.
Don't be a Paul Weiss, be a Mark Elias, be
a Bill Owens, like, do the right thing, even if
(05:48):
the short term looks bad. We got to stick up
for what's right here some mind.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
Now we turn to the Handmaid's Tale like portion of
our news unbelievable. The White House is presently a sessex apollo,
such as baby bonuses, menstrual cycle classes, and some other
questionable ideas to try to boost the birth rate.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
So here's the problem.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
For the economy to survive, we've got to keep having children,
otherwise we're going to become Japan. But the problem is,
I mean, we're probably going to become Japan anyway because
of stiflation, but we won't have the cute outfits or
any of the cool food. Will just be US with Japanese.
But no, the problem here with this is that so
(06:30):
Trump administration doesn't want immigrants. They hate immigration, they don't
want immigration. But the problem is the only way for
our economy to survive is to get immigrants. So instead
of just welcoming immigrants and making a path to citizenship,
which is what you would do if you were not
completely insane, they're going to try to make the white
(06:51):
people have babies.
Speaker 5 (06:53):
Right.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
This is natalism, This is the whole idea is to
get more white babies. And the problem is America is
wildly expect and nobody has seen their way of life go, right.
We all feel we have less than our parents, right,
So how they're going to do this They have no
idea because nobody wants have kids. So because the really
(07:14):
we need old white guys to decide to get women
to have babies. So here are some of their ideas.
And I think that it's worth remembering that a lot
of this stuff has been tried in Hungary by Victor
orbon who Donald Trump wants to be. Most importantly, none
of its work there still can't get people to have kids.
And also Hungary is just disaster on every level. But
(07:37):
here's where we're going, Donald Trump's. Here are some of
Donald Trump's best ideas, and maybe not Donald Trump, maybe
one of his creepy friends. Five thousand dollars baby bonuses
to every woman after she delivers. That will cover about
half of the tariffs for the first year.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
What else? They have?
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Menstrual psycho classes, because that is not creepy at all.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
There are calls on the government.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
To fund programs that educate women on their menstrual cycles.
You're cutting headstart, okay, You're cutting free breakfast, You're cutting
child's care, you're cutting early whatever medicine for kids. You're
cutting food stamps, you're cutting snap, You're cutting all of
these things. But you're going to start menstrual classes.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Does anyone see how insane these are? These are insane ideas.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
But I'm excited to know that Vance and Musk are
policy experts and advocates of boosting the birth rate have
been meeting with White House AIDS. That's creepy people like
Steven Miller, and they are boosting the birth rate. These
are written proposals. I mean, this is their best mind
sitting there trying, and they can just watch The Handmaid's Tail.
(08:52):
They don't even need to spend so much time thinking.
Just watch The Handmaid's Tale.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
All I'm gonna say is they don't bring us their best.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
They do not bring a service. By the way, I
think Elon himself should be able to pretty much do it.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
He gets rejected a lot. I mean, you saw what
happened with him in Tiffany Fong on Twitter.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
I mean, come on, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true. Doesn't
she know the birthrate needs her?
Speaker 3 (09:17):
Okay, So, speaking of other bleak Handmaid's Tale like news,
you know who I don't want having my health.
Speaker 4 (09:24):
Records speak for yourself.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
The guy who picks up road kill that testified that
he had a braid wor RFK Juniors watching a disease
registry to track autistic people, and he's going to use
private medical records to make it happen.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
Oh, come on, it's too easy to remember that RFK
Junior is planning to tell us. He's probably going to
tell us the vaccines cause autism in the fall September
yeh time, Yeah, September again, an autism registry. I just
want to go back to this for a minute. RFK
(10:00):
has a worm in his brain. It's dead. The worm
is no longer eating his brain, but his brain is
not fully recovered. No, some things the guy does are
not terrible, like food coloring and organic food.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
We're going to talk about a really bad one in
the moment of fuckery today.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Right, this feels like Germany nineteen thirty three, like registry tracking.
By the way, I just want to point out, like
RFK is going to do this. He's ended all of
these different programs like tracking all sorts of health stuff. Right,
They're not tracking certain diseases like they're going to end
all that tracking, but they are going to track people
(10:40):
who have autism. So just explain to me how this
makes any sense.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
No, don't, you can't.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
I was good to say it not to do with that.
But what I will explain to you, which I'm sure
you already know, is that Trump is now saying about
his deportations that the reason they're going to start evading
new processes, they cannot everyone a trial.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Yeah, I love it so much. Yeah, you can't give
everyone a trial.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Yeah you can.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
That's how we do it here. He said this during
one of his truths. These truths we hold from his
truth social America can't give everyone a trial. It's actually
the bedrock of our constitution. He's very unhappy. He wants
to ship hundreds of Venezuelan men to Seecott, the scary
(11:27):
torture prison in Al Salvador. Funny, you know last week
we had some Republicans go to Seacott to mug for
the cameras in front of all the men in the
shaved heads and the white pajamas, a little bit like
Abu Grave right when we saw soldiers do that. Not
(11:47):
another dark moment in American history. You know, It's funny
because it's like, here we are Trump World trying to
enact this Alien Enemies Act, which was every time it's
been enacted, it's been during war, but it's also been
sort of the darkest moments, Like nobody is like we
need to go back to turning the Japanese, like that
was one of our darkest moments, and that's where we
(12:09):
are here more of the darkest moments. So not not surprising,
but you know here we are.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
I can't think of anything more American than our proud
tradition of making people wait two years for trials, to
the point that when we see somebody finally stayd trial
for something, we all go I thought they were dead.
Speaker 5 (12:30):
Yeah, that's what we do here.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Mike Tamaski is the editor of The New Republic and
the author of The Middle Out The Rise of Progressive Economics.
Welcome back to Fast Politics, Mike Tamaski.
Speaker 5 (12:46):
It's my favorite thing. Molly Jong Fast.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
We know each other forever. You taught me how to
write opinion.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Let's talk about the moment we find ourselves in not great,
not great great.
Speaker 5 (13:00):
Yeah, it gets weirder every week. This week's weirdness again
with the fact that the Pope sized up jd Vance
and decided it was time to go check out.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
I'm so bad, oh, the poor Pope.
Speaker 5 (13:16):
Yeah, absolutely no. He was one of the great popes
of my lifetime, which extended back much farther than I
care to admit, includes briefly, although I wasn't sentient and
wasn't aware of him, But it includes briefly John the
twenty third who, from our point of view is the best,
because you know, he was the liberal and he opened
things up in the English mass of this and that.
(13:39):
But then Pape Bendict never went as far as we
would have hoped. But he did a lot of things
and planted a lot of seeds that I hope will
sprout in the future. Anyway, let's stop so.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
We know he was a good pope because Marjorie Taylor
Green tweeted after he died today there were major shifts
in global leaderships. Evil is being defeated by the hand
of God.
Speaker 5 (14:03):
I did see that tweet. I didn't quite realize that
this was what she was referring to.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
But of course I too did not realize that was
what she was referring to. But later I realized that
she was in fact referring to the death of the pope.
Imagine if a Democrat did that. Imagine if a Democrat
was like even just was like, I never liked him anyway.
Speaker 5 (14:28):
I mean, yeah, it's insanity, and it's reached an intolerable point.
So what else do we have. We have a defense
secretary who's obviously way it over his head. It's not
as if we didn't know. Now, it's not as if
we didn't know. When he was nominated, there were dozens
hundreds of people who said, is he kidding? When Trump
was talking last year about his beautiful tariffs, the most
(14:51):
beautiful world word in the dictionary, there were dozens or
hundreds of people saying, he's out of his mind. He's
going to tank the markets, he's going to cause a
global trade war, he's going to ruin the economy, and
he just genuinely doesn't know what he's talking about when
he says having an individual trade deficit with any particular
(15:11):
country in the world is a horrible thing.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
You know.
Speaker 5 (15:13):
Another aspect of that that is under discussed, in my view,
is that he has said many times he wants to
go back to like it was in the eighteen hundreds,
when we didn't have an internal revenue service. The government
just lived off tariff income. That is an insane thought.
I could go into the numbers very well. Then, of
course there's the jailing of innocent people. And Khalil, his
(15:37):
son was born this week.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Did you cactually miss the birth of his son.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
Yeah, because he's in a detention facility, but they moved
him to New Jersey.
Speaker 5 (15:47):
Yeah, but he's a permanent resident.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
If I'm not mistaken, he's married to a citizen who's
married to a citizen another citizen, and whose only supposed
crime is having political opinion that this administration doesn't agree with.
It's sick, and it's getting sicker. I think the good
news here, if there is good news, and you know,
you and I we talk about this all the time
(16:09):
because we are friends and we tuk on the phone,
is that my prior is that I'm a little bit optimistic,
which is my worst quality and has proven me has
proven to be my achilles heel again and again and again.
But we're going to be a little optimistic here. It
does feel as if this is still the gang that
can't shoot straight. Like they may have had some help
(16:32):
with the Heritage Foundation, with Project twenty twenty five, they
may have had some more intellectual fortitude, or at least
the appearance of, but ultimately, at the end of the day,
this crew is still pretty incompetent.
Speaker 5 (16:46):
Yeah, and thank goodness for that, although you know, I
also read that like they've executed x out of the
total y number of ideas in Project twenty twenty five.
And for a gang that can't shoot straight, that's only
been in office ninety days. It was a surprisingly high percentage.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
Yeah, I want to talk about that today because I
saw an academic writing about this.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
This morning, and I thought this was important.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Executive orders are Trump World's favorite tool because they're really
ultimately like he does them that are not legal, right,
They're not thought out the way Democrats used to do.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
The more Republicans even.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Like, you know, a lot of these are like I'm
targeting Mark Elias for the Steel dossier and his lack
of respect for how.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Great I am.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
And they fall apart in court. And there's a reason
they fall apart in court, because they're not legal, right.
Speaker 5 (17:41):
We have to hope they continue to fall apart in court,
especially the one court that matters more than all the
other courts. And we'll see what they have to say.
You know, I think it's now obviously it's incumbent upon
the Supreme Court to say something more forceful about returning
Kilmar Abrado Garcia to the United States and getting him
out of El Salvador, the one where he wasn't supposed
(18:01):
to be sent. Yeah, what are there hundred and ninety
five countries in the world they could have sent him
to Lesotho. They could have sent him to Sri Lanka.
They had any and they have a lot of people.
This hasn't quite gotten through to a lot of people.
But they can bring him back and then immediately that
same day begin legal deportation procedures against him if they
(18:23):
wish to do that. But they don't wish to do that.
They're keeping him in the one place where they were
told they can't keep him. So yeah, I hope the
courts follow through. But then if the courts follow through
and Trump says, you know, okay, enforce it, then where
are we Look.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
The Supreme Court went nine to zero on the due process,
and again I think the reason why the wording was
so vague, at least what I've read, is that it
was probably that Roberts was trying to get the two
Fox News hosts to sign on, because when it was
more specific, it was seven two. But even seven to
two is humongous for this court. I mean, there's a
court that overturned Road. This is a court that said
(19:00):
Trump was a king a year ago. So you'll have
to wonder if Roberts sort of understands how precarious this
moment is.
Speaker 5 (19:08):
Well I think he does. I think he understands it.
The question is whether he has the courage to act
on that understanding. But I share your optimism to this extent,
Molly More and more people are standing up. What Harvard
is doing is very admirable because they didn't just say
no to Trump. Now they've turned around and turned the
tables on him and said we're suing you. And that's
(19:29):
going out of their way and kind of asking for
trouble in a good and admirable way. That should embolden people.
The schools of the Big ten, I hope make this
commitment of theirs. More firm does NATO Alliance affairs. I
hope more law firms stand up, and you know, I
think I do think. And finally, just to say what
Rachel Maddow was showing every night for the first ten
(19:50):
minutes of her show, all these demonstrations across the country
over time, that's all going to matter.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
So let's just for a minute talk about Trump's Warren
because I think it's important. This is straight out of
the Hungary playbook, right, This is you go after because
Hungary had these fine academic institutions. We saw orbon target
academia it worked. He won, quote unquote, which means destroyed
(20:20):
the academic institutions. Congratulations, and you no longer matter and
the academics just move somewhere else. But this is a
page from that, right, because as you and I both know,
this is not this is not and in fact, this
letter and I want to talk about this. So the
letter that they sent, the task on Anti Semitism sent
(20:40):
that had three different of these arts of the Trump
government signed it.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
Right, major letter.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Had all of these things that would basically put the
university into receivership. We will supervise all your teaching, we
will supervise all your admissions, we will supervise I mean,
it was just like a you will know longer be Harvard,
you will be Hillsdale. We're going to make Charlie Kirk
your dean of admissions. That was basically what they were saying.
What Harvard did right away was publish the letter and
(21:08):
say there's no way we can fucking do this, and
there's no way we will do this. The next day
you had just donations, endless donations coming in, and then
you had a groundswell of public support for Harvard. Contrast
that with Columbia which acquiesced and now Trump wants more.
Speaker 5 (21:27):
Yeah, it's the age old lesson people like this. You
give them a little bit and they just keep taking more.
But the bottom line question and all these kinds of things,
Molly to me is always this, just like, how are
you going to be judged by history? House? History going
to see you. I think it's pretty clear History's going
to judge Harvard very favorably when all this is over,
and hope, hopefully we return to being a more or
(21:48):
less normal democracy. Brad Karp, the head of SCAD and Arps,
is not going to be judged so favorably. That's where
people have to take their stands. And then you know
it's going to include journalists someday too.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
You and me, baby, we're going to be this Selena Zito, No,
I'm just kidding. When you look at this idea, right
that history, it's partially that it's the right thing to do,
but also even if you look at the law firms
for example, so all of these law firms, right, they're
scared about losing corporate clients. This is a money game.
(22:20):
The corporate law firms. These guys make ten fifteen million
dollars a year. I mean, this is like the really
you know, these guys make a ton of money and
they were worried about losing clients.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
This again goes back to these executive worders.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
None of these are you know, they say they're binding,
they're fucking bullshit. It's all made up, right, You take
Trump World to court and they lose. The law firms
that said no way actually have been winning in court.
So the idea here that any of this is, you know,
it's all boogeymen.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
But the ones who made the deal, like scan now.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
Trump wants more because of course, and so I'm sure
you read this or you saw him muse about how
perhaps the pro bone of work that these law firms
might do could be to help coal companies.
Speaker 5 (23:07):
I miss that, but I'm sure you know that's just
for starters.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
But coal companies. Like, you're a young associate. You went
to Harvard, then you went to Yale law school. You
kill yourself working and working and working twenty hour days,
and now you are going to represent a coal baron.
Speaker 5 (23:26):
Right, because they can't afford legal counsel after all.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Also, yeah, exact, isn't that crazy?
Speaker 5 (23:34):
It's total craziness. We don't know what to be outraged at,
because at eight in the morning, it's one thing, and
by tenth thirty in the morning, it's another thing. At
bout one o'clock in the afternoon, it's another thing. But
we're outraged by all of them. And they're all authoritarian,
they're all un American, and some of them are just well,
they're not all. Some of them are just as you said,
(23:55):
ignorance and stupidity and incompetence. So one I wrote about
in my column this week was Vladimir Putin calling for
a ceasefire and easter ceasefire and then breaking it right again, yeah, again,
and then asking, well, you know, after what Marco Rubio
said last Friday, what kind of thing do you expect
Vladimir Putin to do? Of course, he's going to do
(24:15):
whatever he wants. After the Secretary of State of the
United States of America said, we're just going to check
out on this unless we get something within days. It's
not our problem. It's not our war. That's what he said.
It's not our war. So you're sitting in the kremline
and you just you high five the guy next to you.
And now I take it back to Trump saying many
(24:35):
many times on the campaign trail. I will solve that
on my first day, in my first twenty four hours.
As I wrote a lot of times, when people say
use a phrase like day one, everybody understands they don't
mean it literally. But he did mean this letter he
said on the first day, in the first twenty four hours,
and he said it over and over again. Who was
(24:57):
idiot enough to believe that?
Speaker 2 (24:59):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
But again, I wonder if you could speak to little
Marco's incredible weakness here.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
He has his job. You've seen other Secretaries of State.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
I'm thinking of Rex Tillerson, right, who have done this
job and seemed weak, but not quite weak the same way.
Why does Marco seem just so weak?
Speaker 5 (25:22):
I would say, because of what we know from his background. Okay,
so he was running against Trump. He was originally appalled
by Trump, and then he went through this short period
before he dropped out of the race where he was
an insult comic toward Trump. You know, he was like
the Don Rickles of the Republican field of twenty sixteen
for about a week and a half. And he cracks
(25:44):
some very funny jokes. I must say, at Trump's expense,
but then all that was gone and he became a sycophant,
and he's been a ridiculous sycophant ever since. So of
course he's been a sycophant. So I mean when Trump
named him, I remember thinking to myself, Okay, that's actually
a plausible choice for secretary of State for three reasons.
(26:04):
One Rubio has been a sycophant for seven years. Number two,
Rubio will pass unanimously because he's a senator and he's not,
you know, a child bolister. And number three, he's a
perfect choice because Rubio is a nothing. You know, Trump
will be the real secretary of State. And I think
that wasn't you know, that wasn't a particularly insightful reaction
(26:26):
on my part. I'm sure it was your reaction. It
was the reaction of hundreds of people. Those three things.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
The other thing that Trump is doing this time, which
he didn't do last time, which I'm wondering if you
can speak to if you think it's going to work.
Trump is this time not firing people, because last time
he fired everyone and I think he thought that it whatever,
it gave him less gravitas. So he's like knock, going
to fire Hagsatz, despite the fact that heg sas is
(26:55):
pretty fast and loose with a lot of that did
the information that he probably shouldn't be fast and loose with.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
What do you think the play there is?
Speaker 5 (27:03):
I see, I'm firing he Sith. I mean based on
what you said yesterday at the Easter Egg thing, but
also just based on what we know about him. I mean,
that's not their play. Their play is to turn everything
around and make everything about the liberal media and the leftists.
As Hexath said also at the Easter Egg hunt, nothing's
their fault. Everything's the fault of the left wing media.
(27:25):
And so you know that's that's really all they have
to say. And that's that, and that Fox and Newsmax
and Sinclair and the rest of them ate that, and
that becomes the gospel. So if that's what you believe,
then why on earth would you fire Hexith? You didn't
do anything wrong because it's all the fault of the media.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Right, So true, Mike TAMASKI, will you.
Speaker 5 (27:48):
Please come back anytime?
Speaker 2 (27:50):
My dear.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
G Elliott Morris is the author of these Strength in
Numbers some stuff Welcome too fast polity ex Sally Morris.
Thanks Wally This is very exciting for me because I
had wanted to have you on for a million years
when you were at five point thirty eight and you were.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
At a network, and network can be persnickety.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
So I'm very delighted to get to have you on
because I think there's just a lot to learn from data.
Speaker 4 (28:17):
Yeah, I mean, I think, especially in this moment in politics,
it's really good to ink ourselves two of the facts.
I mean, this seems to be a problem that's getting
even worse as the media fractures, and you have one
party in power that is really in favor of that fracturing,
seeming egging on some of the factlessness. So I think
(28:38):
it's a good time for independent people to strike out
and devote publications two facts. If I can be oral,
self congratulatory here.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
And partisan too, a little bit partisan, and we like
it here because I'm on the opinion side.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
So you have a bunch of things I want to
talk to you about.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
The first thing I think we should talk about is
Trump's popularity, because I do think there's this authoritarian push
that the administration is doing. You could say it's dismantling
the administrative state. You could say it's authoritarianism. I say
it's authoritarianism, they say it's dismantling the administrative state. But
(29:16):
whatever it is, I want you to talk about just
sort of how popular he was when he came into
office and sort of where he's gone since then, because
it's almost one hundred days.
Speaker 4 (29:27):
Yeah, I mean, whether or not it's authoritarianism or remaking
the administrative state, it's kind of like calling a blackbird
a grackle. That's the same thing. They're using the power
of the state to their goals. To your question, that
does seem to be having an effect on Donald Trump's popularity,
on his approval rating in particular, but also his approval
rating on handling certain issues. So on my stub stack
(29:47):
at Strengthen Numbers, I have an average of Trump's approuval polls.
It's sort of the intellectual follow of the average we
had at five point thirty eight before it was shut down,
and it has Donald Trump's net approval rating today at
minus six. Okay, that's the difference between his approval rating
at forty five percent and his disapproval rating at fifty
one percent. So we find a majority of the country
(30:09):
disapproves of the job he's doing today. And when he started,
you know, his approval rating was at fifty and his
disapproval rating was at forty. So this is a pretty
big inversion of where he started as presidency.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
I want you to sort of track how this went.
He was as popular as he'd ever been, won the
popular vote.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
What were the sort of.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
Things that you can point to that change the trajectory.
Speaker 4 (30:33):
This is a hard problem to solve in social science
because there's two things going on. One is just there's
like a general trend down in your approval rating as
time goes on. So you know Trump, twenty seventeen, Joe Biden,
Barack Obama, all of those approval ratings just fell gradually
as the presidency kicked off. The political scientists would say,
(30:56):
this is because the party in power moves policy away
from the average voter just by virtue of being the
party in power, and you marginalize a small number of
people with every policy change, and that just adds up.
It certainly seems to be part of the explanation Trump's
his net approval rating falling, you know, seventeen points is
(31:17):
about how much it fell in twenty seventeen as well
over this amount of time in his first term. But
that's not to say that events don't matter. It's just
that they kind of pile up on each other over time.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Right, But there are certain For example, in Biden world,
the Afghanistan withdrawal, say what you will about it, liked it,
didn't like it. Most people didn't like it. I think
pretty true, but it did not pull well. So and
it really was a moment where his numbers started to
just create. So I wonder, like it seems to me
(31:53):
from what I understand, the tariffs are huge. That was
a huge moment in Trump administration.
Speaker 4 (31:59):
Yeah, so on April second, Best Liberation Day, the day
his tariffs go into due effect, he's at a minus
two approval rating, and now now he's at minus six
minus seven, And that's where most of the change in
his apprewer rating has happened since April second. So you
kind of have to use the other data to make
the argument that these things are being noticed by people.
(32:22):
But I think you have a strong argument there as well.
It's the lead story on every news outlet, at least
until last week. People say terrorists arey, you know, they
don't like them by twenty points or nineteen points. So
that's a compelling argument to me. I think that's probably
the biggest political misstep for the administration so far.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
So the tariffs, and this gets to something you wrote
about just recently on your Strength a numbers substaff. Should
Democrats focus on immigration or the economy? So Gavin Newsom
said this thing about how the tariffs were more detrimental
than the disappearing people and that Democrats should focus on that.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
What what is the data say?
Speaker 4 (33:04):
Yeah, well, if you look at the answer to the
question do you approve of the job the president is
doing on X? Where X is like immigration, economy, trader,
what have you, then you get about a four point
approplarating for the president. So four percentage point more people
say he approves than disapprove, you know. So you might
(33:25):
see that numbers say like, oh, what he's doing is popular,
But what's actually happening is this question is too broad
to really capture the nuances of public opinion on immigration.
That's my argument at least. So if you then ask people,
you know, not do you approve of the job the
president is doing on immigration, but do you think the
president should obey federal court rulings even if he disagrees
(33:47):
with them. For example, which is what's happening in the
Abrego Garcia case. Eighty two percent of people say the
president should obey the court ruling. If you ask, you
should Trump keep deporting people just by the court order?
Stop it? You know? Most Americans about sixty percent say
he should stop. If you and sorry to list things,
but if you ask people you know, should should the
US government deport undocumented immigrants who have lived here for
(34:10):
more than ten years? Than by thirty seven points people
say no, don't do that. So my whole sort of
project here at this immigration polling is just to get
people to acknowledge that there's nuances, that there's some types
of immigration policies that people like and don't like, and
that the broad question do you approve of whatever the
executive is doing is not super helpful.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
So let's just go another sort of minute on this,
which is, and I think you're right when you write
about this. You talk about the idea that in fact,
parties can hold two things in their head, right, that
you can focus on this sort of norms crushing of
deporting people who have not faced through process, and then
also the importance of not crashing the economy. So Trump's
(34:57):
people seem and I think this is something I really
want to dig into because today is yet another day
that ends and why and so the markets are down
and the bond anxiety gold is up. I mean, all
the indicators that they that people are not happy with
what the government is doing on the economy. Explain to
me how it breaks down on Poland, because it's interesting
(35:18):
and important.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
I think.
Speaker 4 (35:20):
Yeah, so maybe some relevant numbers here. About seventy percent
of Americans say they don't like Trump's tariff policies.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
Seems pretty high.
Speaker 4 (35:29):
Yeah, that's like a pretty negative signal with the incumbent
White House.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
Since you're a data die, can you just explain to
us how hard it is to get seventy percent of
Americans to agree on anything.
Speaker 4 (35:39):
Seventy percent disapproval is pretty high. That's about the percent
of people who said Joe Biden was doing poorly out
inflation with seventy percent. And I think, and we acknowledge
in hindsight that inflation was pretty bad in twenty twenty two.
So it's it's getting to the point where it's like, oh,
this is this is nearly an obvious and obvious truth,
you know, something you can see with your eyes inside
of with data.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
Yeah, the MAGA crew still has his back talk us
through those numbers and sort of what they're thinking is.
Speaker 4 (36:06):
I mean, I think the White House is thinking here
is that if they and shore up manufacturing in the
long term, then that would be politically popular. If they
can stick it to China, then those sort of victories
are popular. But those are long term plays and in
the short term you are like draining people's For one case,
(36:28):
people are losing their jobs in manufacturing because businesses can't
afford tariffs, and that is definitely showing up in the numbers.
So by an eighteen point margin. For example, in the
latest polling, people say they disapprove of Trump's trade and
economic policy.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
Right, which is amazing for a Republican, Right.
Speaker 4 (36:47):
I mean, the Republicans had the advantage on this question
for the last fifteen years, so he's really you know,
one way of looking at this as Trump is sort
of blowing probably the best asset Republicans had so the
last five elections on his sponge that tariffs would work
out right, completely uneminenced.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
Yeah, this is something I think about a lot. What's
the number of die hard magos. What's the number where
you crash the economy and they're still like, my guy
is great, he knows what he's doing.
Speaker 4 (37:18):
That's a great question. I think it's probably twenty five,
maybe thirty percent. And the reason they say that number
that that's the number of people who say you should
deport immigrants who have been here for like two decades
and have legal status. That is the number of people
who say they support Trump's tariffs, who approve extending tax cuts,
(37:39):
even if it means cutting Medicare, Like about thirty percent
is what you get as the yes to all of
the most extreme Trump policies let's call them extreme, the
most trumpy policies. So I think it's probably about twenty
five or thirty percent, But that would depend on the
scale of the economic crisis, like great Depression level might
be worst session level, Like I guess it depends on
(38:02):
how many people are still paying for Fox News and
X subscriptions. You know, there's a media influence going on
here too.
Speaker 1 (38:09):
What percentage of America do you think is the group
that went with Trump but has regrets.
Speaker 4 (38:14):
Well, if you ask people straight up, it's like five percent.
If you ask people, Hey, who do you know, do
you regret your vote? In twenty twenty four, low single
digits of people say that they regret it, But that's
a really hard thing to poll, Like people don't like
to admit they were wrong. And if yeah, if you
ask Kamala Harris supporters, do they regret their vote, it's
also low single digits. So you know, these things can
(38:37):
equal allow they can cancel each other out and have
small effects on electro performance even if you're you know,
even if there's some regret on either side.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
We talk a lot about sort of the middle of
the country, like the ideological middle of the country, and
I'm curious there's an added to the seventy percent of
the country is the middle. They're all sort of ideologically
much more centris. Do you think that number's right?
Speaker 4 (39:01):
What percentage of other country did you say you think
was centrist?
Speaker 1 (39:05):
What we've sort of heard is that seventy percent of
the country is sort of the is more centrist.
Speaker 4 (39:10):
I don't know, I'll just as some nuance here. So
like usually people don't have moderate opinions on a bunch
of different issues, and you call them moderates. That's really rare.
Most people don't pay attention to politics, and they feel
very intensely about a couple of issues, and then they
pick countervailing opinions on a bunch of stuff. So they'll
have a liberal, really liberal position on one thing, and
(39:32):
I'll maybe trade in a really conservative position on the
other thing, maybe immigration, let's say. And then we call
those people moderates just because of the way that polsters
and academics have combined all of those opinions together. But
most people don't pay attention to politics enough to like
be centrist. They're just kind of living their lives, and
you can activate them on the left or the right,
(39:54):
depending on what issues are most important to them. So
one way to answer your question is, like, on immigration,
maybe the country is more right leaning than the audience takes.
But on economics, like what people want is stability, predictability.
They want a president who's like committed mostly to fed independence,
so the monetary policy is and politicized, and that like,
(40:16):
you know, people also have this baseline expectation that politicians
will react to data that shows they did something wrong.
And I guess if you call that said all that
stuff's centrist, I think it's at least rational, or that's
how people should be behaving. Then definitely a lot more
interests than the ones that are in the whitehounch So
I guess.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
So interesting and also just you know, it's sort of
not how I think about things, which I think is important.
So I'm curious when you look at these protests, what
do you see in the data on the protests?
Speaker 4 (40:47):
Yeah, the way that I analyze this is like what
historical midterm cycles does this one look like? And the protests,
like the number of people that are out protesting in
the street, And that matters if it's like twenty million
versus two, of course, but the real important thing is
like are their protests at all? Are their mass protests?
And then do those protests align with like popular positions
(41:11):
from the opposition party that would indicate an opposition party
doing well in the next election. Is the media responding
to these protests, covering them, putting footage of people out there?
It's like, yes, well then well then a lot of
people are going to see the coverage of these protests.
So this is sort of the data driven journalism in
terms of like checking boxes empirically to try to match
things up historically, rather than the data driven journalism that's like, oh, look,
(41:34):
fifty million people turned out, Like I don't know how
many people turned out the last weekend. That doesn't really
matter because all the conditions for Democrats capturing the momentum
from the protests are there.
Speaker 2 (41:48):
So interesting. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Elliott. I
hope it'll come back.
Speaker 4 (41:53):
Okay, thank you, this is great.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
Moment. Jesse Cannon, Samali.
Speaker 3 (42:03):
The FDA under rfk's rule, it's suspending milk quality tests
amid workforce cuts, which seems bad.
Speaker 1 (42:12):
I want to explain this to everyone here. Okay, they
are cutting the workforce so that they can give very
wealthy people a tax cut. There is no reason that
this needs to happen. There is no like, all of
this is like, well, we can't do this. We can't
give very wealthy people a tax cut unless we cut
what the government does for people. So let's cut workforce cuts.
(42:35):
When it comes to food safety, because you know, again
like this is the whole Trump thing. You don't understand
why you have regulations until things go horribly wrong. So
like that train that derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, you
don't have those regulations until you have the train derail
in East Palestine. Ohio, and everyone gets sick from the
(42:58):
you know, the all the chemicals. That's what this is, right.
So now they're not going to inspect milk quality. And
here's what's going to happen. People are going to get
sent for milk. This is why we have these quality inspectors.
This is why we have regulation. Is because there was
a reason. Like Donald Trump loves to talk about tariffs
and how there was a time before the internal revenue system.
Speaker 2 (43:21):
I swear to God, like my man has he has
like very few ideas and they are so stuck in
his brain with like sticky tacky whatever. So he's like, yeah,
there was a time when America is really great. You
know during that time, like people would eat bad fish
and die. This is the goal, right, It's like, you know,
(43:42):
you drank that milk and it made you so sick.
That's where we're going to folks, and you hear you
heard it here first. And when that milk makes you sick,
remember who told you this is all going to happen.
And visit me in Seacott.
Speaker 3 (43:57):
I often think of discussions you and I have that
a lot of people say, oh, this is all to
benefit the rich, and this is one of those ones
where it's like, no, this is just stupid.
Speaker 2 (44:06):
This is all to benefit the rich.
Speaker 1 (44:08):
I say, this is someone who was you know, who
had a lot of advantages.
Speaker 3 (44:12):
Well, but this is also will affect the rich and
is also just the stupid one that affects everybody.
Speaker 1 (44:18):
Yeah, well, I guess Elon has a food taster. If
you don't have a food taster, this is going to
be very annoying and perhaps you might die.
Speaker 2 (44:27):
Welcome to Trump's America. You probably won't die, but you
might get a release it.
Speaker 1 (44:32):
Yeah, 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 (44:54):
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 Larry David Rose, Bill Maher's meeting
with Trump as my dinner with Adolf.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
We have such a great show for you today.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
The New Republic's Mike Tamaski tries to make sense of
where Trump's lawlessness is headed. Then we'll talk to the
author of the Strength in Numbers newsletter, g Elliott Morris,
about what polls can tell us about Trump's agenda.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
But first the news.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
So, Molly, there's a million reports out that Pete Haiksith
is going to have to resign. I'm always skeptical of
those in US, are you? But we do have the
first Republican calling for him to resign, and it's the
guy with the most Republican name of all time, Don Bacon.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
So Bacon has done this before. Bacon is sort of
the Jeff Flake twenty twenty five. He calls Hegseth an
amateur person, which for a weekend television hosts, that's not
very nice. He stood up for things before. Now I
want to just remind you that he is in Nebraska.
(01:15):
He comes from Nebraska's second congressional district. Whenever you see
a Republican standing up for something, and this is not
always true, but it is often true, you should look
at their district and find out if it's a red
district or a purple district.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
A helpful thing is right on Wikipedia usually says their CPI,
which a lot of people don't know, is the Cook
Political Index, and I'll tell you how far it leans
left or right.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
So Nebraska's second congressional district, which is where he comes from,
it's an R plus three, so it is not a
very Republican district. So Marjorie Taylor Green is in an
R plus nineteen and Don Bacon is in an R
plus three, and the difference between an R plus three
and an R plus nineteen is Don Bacon says things
like Donald Trump should be king. Marjorie Taylor Green says
(02:03):
things like Donald Trump should be God king because there's
seventeen percent more Republicans in her district. That is why
I say to you, always be suspicious of Republicans who stand.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Up, but not even that.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
I mean Bacon has done that, and I think it's good,
and I think standing up to Trump is always good, and.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
There's a dearth of courage right now in America.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
But that said, just always be a little cynical because
these people are cowards. That said, I do think we're
going to see more standing up to Trump as his
poll numbers creator and as they crash the economy. So
I think it's very likely that you'll see more quote
unquote bravery and well it is good and we do
(02:47):
like it, and it may be the difference between authoritarianism
and continuing as are you know, not perfect democracy. I
do think it's worth remembering like public sentiment has changed.
The people have different incentives, structures. They are not just
doing this out of the goodness of their heart. That said,
Bacon did say that he does not think texting sensitive
(03:10):
or plans is something the Secretary of Defense should be doing.
By the way, this man manages three million people. This
is a humongous agency filled with a lot of important
stuff that they're doing. Also, Elon wants to fire a
huge swath of them because of Doge.
Speaker 4 (03:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
In other bleak News, sixty Minutes, despite its weakening relevance,
has long been one of the better journalists that out
what our country has had and a long time producer
is leaving because they feel the tide turning.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
On that So sixty Minutes has done some really really
important journalism, especially right now. And this producer is a
guy called Bill Owens. And every time someone does something
like this, there are not a lot of great jobs
in television journalisms. There are not a lot of jobs
in journalism period. So the fact that this guy is
(04:05):
leaving probably one of the best jobs in television. But
he's been there for a long time, and he's a
serious journalist. In fact, what he tells The New York
Times is so having defended this show and what we
stand for from every angle over time, with everything I could,
I'm stepping aside so the show can move forward, he
(04:25):
wrote in the memo, which was obtained by The Times.
Sixty Minutes has faced mounting pressure in recent months from
both President Trump, who sued CBS for ten billion dollars.
You'll ten billion dollars to get you know what, CBS
doesn't have ten billion dollars to give to Donald Trump.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
Some real Austin Powers stuff right there.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Accused the program of unlawful.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
And illegal behavior. And this is because I don't know
why he's mad at them.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
About this. Is this because of the Harris interview where
they he felt that it was.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
Edited in a way that made her look better than
I mean, it's just this is this thing with Trump.
He's an Autocrat, and you know, not all of this
makes sense or any of this, not even any of
this makes sense. So this guy, bill Owens is really
a hero to do this, to give up one of
these really best jobs in media because you don't feel
(05:27):
that CBS is doing what's right or that that's a
big deal. And we really do applaud him in a
world filled with cowards and a world filled with Paul Weiss's.
Don't be a Paul Weiss, be a Mark Elias, be
a Bill Owens, like, do the right thing, even if
(05:48):
the short term looks bad. We got to stick up
for what's right here some mind.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
Now we turn to the Handmaid's Tale like portion of
our news unbelievable. The White House is presently a sessex apollo,
such as baby bonuses, menstrual cycle classes, and some other
questionable ideas to try to boost the birth rate.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
So here's the problem.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
For the economy to survive, we've got to keep having children,
otherwise we're going to become Japan. But the problem is,
I mean, we're probably going to become Japan anyway because
of stiflation, but we won't have the cute outfits or
any of the cool food. Will just be US with Japanese.
But no, the problem here with this is that so
(06:30):
Trump administration doesn't want immigrants. They hate immigration, they don't
want immigration. But the problem is the only way for
our economy to survive is to get immigrants. So instead
of just welcoming immigrants and making a path to citizenship,
which is what you would do if you were not
completely insane, they're going to try to make the white
(06:51):
people have babies.
Speaker 5 (06:53):
Right.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
This is natalism, This is the whole idea is to
get more white babies. And the problem is America is
wildly expect and nobody has seen their way of life go, right.
We all feel we have less than our parents, right,
So how they're going to do this They have no
idea because nobody wants have kids. So because the really
(07:14):
we need old white guys to decide to get women
to have babies. So here are some of their ideas.
And I think that it's worth remembering that a lot
of this stuff has been tried in Hungary by Victor
orbon who Donald Trump wants to be. Most importantly, none
of its work there still can't get people to have kids.
And also Hungary is just disaster on every level. But
(07:37):
here's where we're going, Donald Trump's. Here are some of
Donald Trump's best ideas, and maybe not Donald Trump, maybe
one of his creepy friends. Five thousand dollars baby bonuses
to every woman after she delivers. That will cover about
half of the tariffs for the first year.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
What else? They have?
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Menstrual psycho classes, because that is not creepy at all.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
There are calls on the government.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
To fund programs that educate women on their menstrual cycles.
You're cutting headstart, okay, You're cutting free breakfast, You're cutting
child's care, you're cutting early whatever medicine for kids. You're
cutting food stamps, you're cutting snap, You're cutting all of
these things. But you're going to start menstrual classes.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Does anyone see how insane these are? These are insane ideas.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
But I'm excited to know that Vance and Musk are
policy experts and advocates of boosting the birth rate have
been meeting with White House AIDS. That's creepy people like
Steven Miller, and they are boosting the birth rate. These
are written proposals. I mean, this is their best mind
sitting there trying, and they can just watch The Handmaid's Tail.
(08:52):
They don't even need to spend so much time thinking.
Just watch The Handmaid's Tale.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
All I'm gonna say is they don't bring us their best.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
They do not bring a service. By the way, I
think Elon himself should be able to pretty much do it.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
He gets rejected a lot. I mean, you saw what
happened with him in Tiffany Fong on Twitter.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
I mean, come on, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true. Doesn't
she know the birthrate needs her?
Speaker 3 (09:17):
Okay, So, speaking of other bleak Handmaid's Tale like news,
you know who I don't want having my health.
Speaker 4 (09:24):
Records speak for yourself.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
The guy who picks up road kill that testified that
he had a braid wor RFK Juniors watching a disease
registry to track autistic people, and he's going to use
private medical records to make it happen.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
Oh, come on, it's too easy to remember that RFK
Junior is planning to tell us. He's probably going to
tell us the vaccines cause autism in the fall September
yeh time, Yeah, September again, an autism registry. I just
want to go back to this for a minute. RFK
(10:00):
has a worm in his brain. It's dead. The worm
is no longer eating his brain, but his brain is
not fully recovered. No, some things the guy does are
not terrible, like food coloring and organic food.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
We're going to talk about a really bad one in
the moment of fuckery today.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Right, this feels like Germany nineteen thirty three, like registry tracking.
By the way, I just want to point out, like
RFK is going to do this. He's ended all of
these different programs like tracking all sorts of health stuff. Right,
They're not tracking certain diseases like they're going to end
all that tracking, but they are going to track people
(10:40):
who have autism. So just explain to me how this
makes any sense.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
No, don't, you can't.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
I was good to say it not to do with that.
But what I will explain to you, which I'm sure
you already know, is that Trump is now saying about
his deportations that the reason they're going to start evading
new processes, they cannot everyone a trial.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Yeah, I love it so much. Yeah, you can't give
everyone a trial.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Yeah you can.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
That's how we do it here. He said this during
one of his truths. These truths we hold from his
truth social America can't give everyone a trial. It's actually
the bedrock of our constitution. He's very unhappy. He wants
to ship hundreds of Venezuelan men to Seecott, the scary
(11:27):
torture prison in Al Salvador. Funny, you know last week
we had some Republicans go to Seacott to mug for
the cameras in front of all the men in the
shaved heads and the white pajamas, a little bit like
Abu Grave right when we saw soldiers do that. Not
(11:47):
another dark moment in American history. You know, It's funny
because it's like, here we are Trump World trying to
enact this Alien Enemies Act, which was every time it's
been enacted, it's been during war, but it's also been
sort of the darkest moments, Like nobody is like we
need to go back to turning the Japanese, like that
was one of our darkest moments, and that's where we
(12:09):
are here more of the darkest moments. So not not surprising,
but you know here we are.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
I can't think of anything more American than our proud
tradition of making people wait two years for trials, to
the point that when we see somebody finally stayd trial
for something, we all go I thought they were dead.
Speaker 5 (12:30):
Yeah, that's what we do here.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Mike Tamaski is the editor of The New Republic and
the author of The Middle Out The Rise of Progressive Economics.
Welcome back to Fast Politics, Mike Tamaski.
Speaker 5 (12:46):
It's my favorite thing. Molly Jong Fast.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
We know each other forever. You taught me how to
write opinion.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Let's talk about the moment we find ourselves in not great,
not great great.
Speaker 5 (13:00):
Yeah, it gets weirder every week. This week's weirdness again
with the fact that the Pope sized up jd Vance
and decided it was time to go check out.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
I'm so bad, oh, the poor Pope.
Speaker 5 (13:16):
Yeah, absolutely no. He was one of the great popes
of my lifetime, which extended back much farther than I
care to admit, includes briefly, although I wasn't sentient and
wasn't aware of him, But it includes briefly John the
twenty third who, from our point of view is the best,
because you know, he was the liberal and he opened
things up in the English mass of this and that.
(13:39):
But then Pape Bendict never went as far as we
would have hoped. But he did a lot of things
and planted a lot of seeds that I hope will
sprout in the future. Anyway, let's stop so.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
We know he was a good pope because Marjorie Taylor
Green tweeted after he died today there were major shifts
in global leaderships. Evil is being defeated by the hand
of God.
Speaker 5 (14:03):
I did see that tweet. I didn't quite realize that
this was what she was referring to.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
But of course I too did not realize that was
what she was referring to. But later I realized that
she was in fact referring to the death of the pope.
Imagine if a Democrat did that. Imagine if a Democrat
was like even just was like, I never liked him anyway.
Speaker 5 (14:28):
I mean, yeah, it's insanity, and it's reached an intolerable point.
So what else do we have. We have a defense
secretary who's obviously way it over his head. It's not
as if we didn't know. Now, it's not as if
we didn't know. When he was nominated, there were dozens
hundreds of people who said, is he kidding? When Trump
was talking last year about his beautiful tariffs, the most
(14:51):
beautiful world word in the dictionary, there were dozens or
hundreds of people saying, he's out of his mind. He's
going to tank the markets, he's going to cause a
global trade war, he's going to ruin the economy, and
he just genuinely doesn't know what he's talking about when
he says having an individual trade deficit with any particular
(15:11):
country in the world is a horrible thing.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
You know.
Speaker 5 (15:13):
Another aspect of that that is under discussed, in my view,
is that he has said many times he wants to
go back to like it was in the eighteen hundreds,
when we didn't have an internal revenue service. The government
just lived off tariff income. That is an insane thought.
I could go into the numbers very well. Then, of
course there's the jailing of innocent people. And Khalil, his
(15:37):
son was born this week.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Did you cactually miss the birth of his son.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
Yeah, because he's in a detention facility, but they moved
him to New Jersey.
Speaker 5 (15:47):
Yeah, but he's a permanent resident.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
If I'm not mistaken, he's married to a citizen who's
married to a citizen another citizen, and whose only supposed
crime is having political opinion that this administration doesn't agree with.
It's sick, and it's getting sicker. I think the good
news here, if there is good news, and you know,
you and I we talk about this all the time
(16:09):
because we are friends and we tuk on the phone,
is that my prior is that I'm a little bit optimistic,
which is my worst quality and has proven me has
proven to be my achilles heel again and again and again.
But we're going to be a little optimistic here. It
does feel as if this is still the gang that
can't shoot straight. Like they may have had some help
(16:32):
with the Heritage Foundation, with Project twenty twenty five, they
may have had some more intellectual fortitude, or at least
the appearance of, but ultimately, at the end of the day,
this crew is still pretty incompetent.
Speaker 5 (16:46):
Yeah, and thank goodness for that, although you know, I
also read that like they've executed x out of the
total y number of ideas in Project twenty twenty five.
And for a gang that can't shoot straight, that's only
been in office ninety days. It was a surprisingly high percentage.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
Yeah, I want to talk about that today because I
saw an academic writing about this.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
This morning, and I thought this was important.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Executive orders are Trump World's favorite tool because they're really
ultimately like he does them that are not legal, right,
They're not thought out the way Democrats used to do.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
The more Republicans even.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Like, you know, a lot of these are like I'm
targeting Mark Elias for the Steel dossier and his lack
of respect for how.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Great I am.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
And they fall apart in court. And there's a reason
they fall apart in court, because they're not legal, right.
Speaker 5 (17:41):
We have to hope they continue to fall apart in court,
especially the one court that matters more than all the
other courts. And we'll see what they have to say.
You know, I think it's now obviously it's incumbent upon
the Supreme Court to say something more forceful about returning
Kilmar Abrado Garcia to the United States and getting him
out of El Salvador, the one where he wasn't supposed
(18:01):
to be sent. Yeah, what are there hundred and ninety
five countries in the world they could have sent him
to Lesotho. They could have sent him to Sri Lanka.
They had any and they have a lot of people.
This hasn't quite gotten through to a lot of people.
But they can bring him back and then immediately that
same day begin legal deportation procedures against him if they
(18:23):
wish to do that. But they don't wish to do that.
They're keeping him in the one place where they were
told they can't keep him. So yeah, I hope the
courts follow through. But then if the courts follow through
and Trump says, you know, okay, enforce it, then where
are we Look.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
The Supreme Court went nine to zero on the due process,
and again I think the reason why the wording was
so vague, at least what I've read, is that it
was probably that Roberts was trying to get the two
Fox News hosts to sign on, because when it was
more specific, it was seven two. But even seven to
two is humongous for this court. I mean, there's a
court that overturned Road. This is a court that said
(19:00):
Trump was a king a year ago. So you'll have
to wonder if Roberts sort of understands how precarious this
moment is.
Speaker 5 (19:08):
Well I think he does. I think he understands it.
The question is whether he has the courage to act
on that understanding. But I share your optimism to this extent,
Molly More and more people are standing up. What Harvard
is doing is very admirable because they didn't just say
no to Trump. Now they've turned around and turned the
tables on him and said we're suing you. And that's
(19:29):
going out of their way and kind of asking for
trouble in a good and admirable way. That should embolden people.
The schools of the Big ten, I hope make this
commitment of theirs. More firm does NATO Alliance affairs. I
hope more law firms stand up, and you know, I
think I do think. And finally, just to say what
Rachel Maddow was showing every night for the first ten
(19:50):
minutes of her show, all these demonstrations across the country
over time, that's all going to matter.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
So let's just for a minute talk about Trump's Warren
because I think it's important. This is straight out of
the Hungary playbook, right, This is you go after because
Hungary had these fine academic institutions. We saw orbon target
academia it worked. He won, quote unquote, which means destroyed
(20:20):
the academic institutions. Congratulations, and you no longer matter and
the academics just move somewhere else. But this is a
page from that, right, because as you and I both know,
this is not this is not and in fact, this
letter and I want to talk about this. So the
letter that they sent, the task on Anti Semitism sent
(20:40):
that had three different of these arts of the Trump
government signed it.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
Right, major letter.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Had all of these things that would basically put the
university into receivership. We will supervise all your teaching, we
will supervise all your admissions, we will supervise I mean,
it was just like a you will know longer be Harvard,
you will be Hillsdale. We're going to make Charlie Kirk
your dean of admissions. That was basically what they were saying.
What Harvard did right away was publish the letter and
(21:08):
say there's no way we can fucking do this, and
there's no way we will do this. The next day
you had just donations, endless donations coming in, and then
you had a groundswell of public support for Harvard. Contrast
that with Columbia which acquiesced and now Trump wants more.
Speaker 5 (21:27):
Yeah, it's the age old lesson people like this. You
give them a little bit and they just keep taking more.
But the bottom line question and all these kinds of things,
Molly to me is always this, just like, how are
you going to be judged by history? House? History going
to see you. I think it's pretty clear History's going
to judge Harvard very favorably when all this is over,
and hope, hopefully we return to being a more or
(21:48):
less normal democracy. Brad Karp, the head of SCAD and Arps,
is not going to be judged so favorably. That's where
people have to take their stands. And then you know
it's going to include journalists someday too.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
You and me, baby, we're going to be this Selena Zito, No,
I'm just kidding. When you look at this idea, right
that history, it's partially that it's the right thing to do,
but also even if you look at the law firms
for example, so all of these law firms, right, they're
scared about losing corporate clients. This is a money game.
(22:20):
The corporate law firms. These guys make ten fifteen million
dollars a year. I mean, this is like the really
you know, these guys make a ton of money and
they were worried about losing clients.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
This again goes back to these executive worders.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
None of these are you know, they say they're binding,
they're fucking bullshit. It's all made up, right, You take
Trump World to court and they lose. The law firms
that said no way actually have been winning in court.
So the idea here that any of this is, you know,
it's all boogeymen.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
But the ones who made the deal, like scan now.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
Trump wants more because of course, and so I'm sure
you read this or you saw him muse about how
perhaps the pro bone of work that these law firms
might do could be to help coal companies.
Speaker 5 (23:07):
I miss that, but I'm sure you know that's just
for starters.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
But coal companies. Like, you're a young associate. You went
to Harvard, then you went to Yale law school. You
kill yourself working and working and working twenty hour days,
and now you are going to represent a coal baron.
Speaker 5 (23:26):
Right, because they can't afford legal counsel after all.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Also, yeah, exact, isn't that crazy?
Speaker 5 (23:34):
It's total craziness. We don't know what to be outraged at,
because at eight in the morning, it's one thing, and
by tenth thirty in the morning, it's another thing. At
bout one o'clock in the afternoon, it's another thing. But
we're outraged by all of them. And they're all authoritarian,
they're all un American, and some of them are just well,
they're not all. Some of them are just as you said,
(23:55):
ignorance and stupidity and incompetence. So one I wrote about
in my column this week was Vladimir Putin calling for
a ceasefire and easter ceasefire and then breaking it right again, yeah, again,
and then asking, well, you know, after what Marco Rubio
said last Friday, what kind of thing do you expect
Vladimir Putin to do? Of course, he's going to do
(24:15):
whatever he wants. After the Secretary of State of the
United States of America said, we're just going to check
out on this unless we get something within days. It's
not our problem. It's not our war. That's what he said.
It's not our war. So you're sitting in the kremline
and you just you high five the guy next to you.
And now I take it back to Trump saying many
(24:35):
many times on the campaign trail. I will solve that
on my first day, in my first twenty four hours.
As I wrote a lot of times, when people say
use a phrase like day one, everybody understands they don't
mean it literally. But he did mean this letter he
said on the first day, in the first twenty four hours,
and he said it over and over again. Who was
(24:57):
idiot enough to believe that?
Speaker 2 (24:59):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
But again, I wonder if you could speak to little
Marco's incredible weakness here.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
He has his job. You've seen other Secretaries of State.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
I'm thinking of Rex Tillerson, right, who have done this
job and seemed weak, but not quite weak the same way.
Why does Marco seem just so weak?
Speaker 5 (25:22):
I would say, because of what we know from his background. Okay,
so he was running against Trump. He was originally appalled
by Trump, and then he went through this short period
before he dropped out of the race where he was
an insult comic toward Trump. You know, he was like
the Don Rickles of the Republican field of twenty sixteen
for about a week and a half. And he cracks
(25:44):
some very funny jokes. I must say, at Trump's expense,
but then all that was gone and he became a sycophant,
and he's been a ridiculous sycophant ever since. So of
course he's been a sycophant. So I mean when Trump
named him, I remember thinking to myself, Okay, that's actually
a plausible choice for secretary of State for three reasons.
(26:04):
One Rubio has been a sycophant for seven years. Number two,
Rubio will pass unanimously because he's a senator and he's not,
you know, a child bolister. And number three, he's a
perfect choice because Rubio is a nothing. You know, Trump
will be the real secretary of State. And I think
that wasn't you know, that wasn't a particularly insightful reaction
(26:26):
on my part. I'm sure it was your reaction. It
was the reaction of hundreds of people. Those three things.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
The other thing that Trump is doing this time, which
he didn't do last time, which I'm wondering if you
can speak to if you think it's going to work.
Trump is this time not firing people, because last time
he fired everyone and I think he thought that it whatever,
it gave him less gravitas. So he's like knock, going
to fire Hagsatz, despite the fact that heg sas is
(26:55):
pretty fast and loose with a lot of that did
the information that he probably shouldn't be fast and loose with.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
What do you think the play there is?
Speaker 5 (27:03):
I see, I'm firing he Sith. I mean based on
what you said yesterday at the Easter Egg thing, but
also just based on what we know about him. I mean,
that's not their play. Their play is to turn everything
around and make everything about the liberal media and the leftists.
As Hexath said also at the Easter Egg hunt, nothing's
their fault. Everything's the fault of the left wing media.
(27:25):
And so you know that's that's really all they have
to say. And that's that, and that Fox and Newsmax
and Sinclair and the rest of them ate that, and
that becomes the gospel. So if that's what you believe,
then why on earth would you fire Hexith? You didn't
do anything wrong because it's all the fault of the media.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Right, So true, Mike TAMASKI, will you.
Speaker 5 (27:48):
Please come back anytime?
Speaker 2 (27:50):
My dear.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
G Elliott Morris is the author of these Strength in
Numbers some stuff Welcome too fast polity ex Sally Morris.
Thanks Wally This is very exciting for me because I
had wanted to have you on for a million years
when you were at five point thirty eight and you were.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
At a network, and network can be persnickety.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
So I'm very delighted to get to have you on
because I think there's just a lot to learn from data.
Speaker 4 (28:17):
Yeah, I mean, I think, especially in this moment in politics,
it's really good to ink ourselves two of the facts.
I mean, this seems to be a problem that's getting
even worse as the media fractures, and you have one
party in power that is really in favor of that fracturing,
seeming egging on some of the factlessness. So I think
(28:38):
it's a good time for independent people to strike out
and devote publications two facts. If I can be oral,
self congratulatory here.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
And partisan too, a little bit partisan, and we like
it here because I'm on the opinion side.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
So you have a bunch of things I want to
talk to you about.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
The first thing I think we should talk about is
Trump's popularity, because I do think there's this authoritarian push
that the administration is doing. You could say it's dismantling
the administrative state. You could say it's authoritarianism. I say
it's authoritarianism, they say it's dismantling the administrative state. But
(29:16):
whatever it is, I want you to talk about just
sort of how popular he was when he came into
office and sort of where he's gone since then, because
it's almost one hundred days.
Speaker 4 (29:27):
Yeah, I mean, whether or not it's authoritarianism or remaking
the administrative state, it's kind of like calling a blackbird
a grackle. That's the same thing. They're using the power
of the state to their goals. To your question, that
does seem to be having an effect on Donald Trump's popularity,
on his approval rating in particular, but also his approval
rating on handling certain issues. So on my stub stack
(29:47):
at Strengthen Numbers, I have an average of Trump's approuval polls.
It's sort of the intellectual follow of the average we
had at five point thirty eight before it was shut down,
and it has Donald Trump's net approval rating today at
minus six. Okay, that's the difference between his approval rating
at forty five percent and his disapproval rating at fifty
one percent. So we find a majority of the country
(30:09):
disapproves of the job he's doing today. And when he started,
you know, his approval rating was at fifty and his
disapproval rating was at forty. So this is a pretty
big inversion of where he started as presidency.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
I want you to sort of track how this went.
He was as popular as he'd ever been, won the
popular vote.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
What were the sort of.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
Things that you can point to that change the trajectory.
Speaker 4 (30:33):
This is a hard problem to solve in social science
because there's two things going on. One is just there's
like a general trend down in your approval rating as
time goes on. So you know Trump, twenty seventeen, Joe Biden,
Barack Obama, all of those approval ratings just fell gradually
as the presidency kicked off. The political scientists would say,
(30:56):
this is because the party in power moves policy away
from the average voter just by virtue of being the
party in power, and you marginalize a small number of
people with every policy change, and that just adds up.
It certainly seems to be part of the explanation Trump's
his net approval rating falling, you know, seventeen points is
(31:17):
about how much it fell in twenty seventeen as well
over this amount of time in his first term. But
that's not to say that events don't matter. It's just
that they kind of pile up on each other over time.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Right, But there are certain For example, in Biden world,
the Afghanistan withdrawal, say what you will about it, liked it,
didn't like it. Most people didn't like it. I think
pretty true, but it did not pull well. So and
it really was a moment where his numbers started to
just create. So I wonder, like it seems to me
(31:53):
from what I understand, the tariffs are huge. That was
a huge moment in Trump administration.
Speaker 4 (31:59):
Yeah, so on April second, Best Liberation Day, the day
his tariffs go into due effect, he's at a minus
two approval rating, and now now he's at minus six
minus seven, And that's where most of the change in
his apprewer rating has happened since April second. So you
kind of have to use the other data to make
the argument that these things are being noticed by people.
(32:22):
But I think you have a strong argument there as well.
It's the lead story on every news outlet, at least
until last week. People say terrorists arey, you know, they
don't like them by twenty points or nineteen points. So
that's a compelling argument to me. I think that's probably
the biggest political misstep for the administration so far.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
So the tariffs, and this gets to something you wrote
about just recently on your Strength a numbers substaff. Should
Democrats focus on immigration or the economy? So Gavin Newsom
said this thing about how the tariffs were more detrimental
than the disappearing people and that Democrats should focus on that.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
What what is the data say?
Speaker 4 (33:04):
Yeah, well, if you look at the answer to the
question do you approve of the job the president is
doing on X? Where X is like immigration, economy, trader,
what have you, then you get about a four point
approplarating for the president. So four percentage point more people
say he approves than disapprove, you know. So you might
(33:25):
see that numbers say like, oh, what he's doing is popular,
But what's actually happening is this question is too broad
to really capture the nuances of public opinion on immigration.
That's my argument at least. So if you then ask people,
you know, not do you approve of the job the
president is doing on immigration, but do you think the
president should obey federal court rulings even if he disagrees
(33:47):
with them. For example, which is what's happening in the
Abrego Garcia case. Eighty two percent of people say the
president should obey the court ruling. If you ask, you
should Trump keep deporting people just by the court order?
Stop it? You know? Most Americans about sixty percent say
he should stop. If you and sorry to list things,
but if you ask people you know, should should the
US government deport undocumented immigrants who have lived here for
(34:10):
more than ten years? Than by thirty seven points people
say no, don't do that. So my whole sort of
project here at this immigration polling is just to get
people to acknowledge that there's nuances, that there's some types
of immigration policies that people like and don't like, and
that the broad question do you approve of whatever the
executive is doing is not super helpful.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
So let's just go another sort of minute on this,
which is, and I think you're right when you write
about this. You talk about the idea that in fact,
parties can hold two things in their head, right, that
you can focus on this sort of norms crushing of
deporting people who have not faced through process, and then
also the importance of not crashing the economy. So Trump's
(34:57):
people seem and I think this is something I really
want to dig into because today is yet another day
that ends and why and so the markets are down
and the bond anxiety gold is up. I mean, all
the indicators that they that people are not happy with
what the government is doing on the economy. Explain to
me how it breaks down on Poland, because it's interesting
(35:18):
and important.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
I think.
Speaker 4 (35:20):
Yeah, so maybe some relevant numbers here. About seventy percent
of Americans say they don't like Trump's tariff policies.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
Seems pretty high.
Speaker 4 (35:29):
Yeah, that's like a pretty negative signal with the incumbent
White House.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
Since you're a data die, can you just explain to
us how hard it is to get seventy percent of
Americans to agree on anything.
Speaker 4 (35:39):
Seventy percent disapproval is pretty high. That's about the percent
of people who said Joe Biden was doing poorly out
inflation with seventy percent. And I think, and we acknowledge
in hindsight that inflation was pretty bad in twenty twenty two.
So it's it's getting to the point where it's like, oh,
this is this is nearly an obvious and obvious truth,
you know, something you can see with your eyes inside
of with data.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
Yeah, the MAGA crew still has his back talk us
through those numbers and sort of what they're thinking is.
Speaker 4 (36:06):
I mean, I think the White House is thinking here
is that if they and shore up manufacturing in the
long term, then that would be politically popular. If they
can stick it to China, then those sort of victories
are popular. But those are long term plays and in
the short term you are like draining people's For one case,
(36:28):
people are losing their jobs in manufacturing because businesses can't
afford tariffs, and that is definitely showing up in the numbers.
So by an eighteen point margin. For example, in the
latest polling, people say they disapprove of Trump's trade and
economic policy.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
Right, which is amazing for a Republican, Right.
Speaker 4 (36:47):
I mean, the Republicans had the advantage on this question
for the last fifteen years, so he's really you know,
one way of looking at this as Trump is sort
of blowing probably the best asset Republicans had so the
last five elections on his sponge that tariffs would work
out right, completely uneminenced.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
Yeah, this is something I think about a lot. What's
the number of die hard magos. What's the number where
you crash the economy and they're still like, my guy
is great, he knows what he's doing.
Speaker 4 (37:18):
That's a great question. I think it's probably twenty five,
maybe thirty percent. And the reason they say that number
that that's the number of people who say you should
deport immigrants who have been here for like two decades
and have legal status. That is the number of people
who say they support Trump's tariffs, who approve extending tax cuts,
(37:39):
even if it means cutting Medicare, Like about thirty percent
is what you get as the yes to all of
the most extreme Trump policies let's call them extreme, the
most trumpy policies. So I think it's probably about twenty
five or thirty percent, But that would depend on the
scale of the economic crisis, like great Depression level might
be worst session level, Like I guess it depends on
(38:02):
how many people are still paying for Fox News and
X subscriptions. You know, there's a media influence going on
here too.
Speaker 1 (38:09):
What percentage of America do you think is the group
that went with Trump but has regrets.
Speaker 4 (38:14):
Well, if you ask people straight up, it's like five percent.
If you ask people, Hey, who do you know, do
you regret your vote? In twenty twenty four, low single
digits of people say that they regret it, But that's
a really hard thing to poll, Like people don't like
to admit they were wrong. And if yeah, if you
ask Kamala Harris supporters, do they regret their vote, it's
also low single digits. So you know, these things can
(38:37):
equal allow they can cancel each other out and have
small effects on electro performance even if you're you know,
even if there's some regret on either side.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
We talk a lot about sort of the middle of
the country, like the ideological middle of the country, and
I'm curious there's an added to the seventy percent of
the country is the middle. They're all sort of ideologically
much more centris. Do you think that number's right?
Speaker 4 (39:01):
What percentage of other country did you say you think
was centrist?
Speaker 1 (39:05):
What we've sort of heard is that seventy percent of
the country is sort of the is more centrist.
Speaker 4 (39:10):
I don't know, I'll just as some nuance here. So
like usually people don't have moderate opinions on a bunch
of different issues, and you call them moderates. That's really rare.
Most people don't pay attention to politics, and they feel
very intensely about a couple of issues, and then they
pick countervailing opinions on a bunch of stuff. So they'll
have a liberal, really liberal position on one thing, and
(39:32):
I'll maybe trade in a really conservative position on the
other thing, maybe immigration, let's say. And then we call
those people moderates just because of the way that polsters
and academics have combined all of those opinions together. But
most people don't pay attention to politics enough to like
be centrist. They're just kind of living their lives, and
you can activate them on the left or the right,
(39:54):
depending on what issues are most important to them. So
one way to answer your question is, like, on immigration,
maybe the country is more right leaning than the audience takes.
But on economics, like what people want is stability, predictability.
They want a president who's like committed mostly to fed independence,
so the monetary policy is and politicized, and that like,
(40:16):
you know, people also have this baseline expectation that politicians
will react to data that shows they did something wrong.
And I guess if you call that said all that
stuff's centrist, I think it's at least rational, or that's
how people should be behaving. Then definitely a lot more
interests than the ones that are in the whitehounch So
I guess.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
So interesting and also just you know, it's sort of
not how I think about things, which I think is important.
So I'm curious when you look at these protests, what
do you see in the data on the protests?
Speaker 4 (40:47):
Yeah, the way that I analyze this is like what
historical midterm cycles does this one look like? And the protests,
like the number of people that are out protesting in
the street, And that matters if it's like twenty million
versus two, of course, but the real important thing is
like are their protests at all? Are their mass protests?
And then do those protests align with like popular positions
(41:11):
from the opposition party that would indicate an opposition party
doing well in the next election. Is the media responding
to these protests, covering them, putting footage of people out there?
It's like, yes, well then well then a lot of
people are going to see the coverage of these protests.
So this is sort of the data driven journalism in
terms of like checking boxes empirically to try to match
things up historically, rather than the data driven journalism that's like, oh, look,
(41:34):
fifty million people turned out, Like I don't know how
many people turned out the last weekend. That doesn't really
matter because all the conditions for Democrats capturing the momentum
from the protests are there.
Speaker 2 (41:48):
So interesting. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Elliott. I
hope it'll come back.
Speaker 4 (41:53):
Okay, thank you, this is great.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
Moment. Jesse Cannon, Samali.
Speaker 3 (42:03):
The FDA under rfk's rule, it's suspending milk quality tests
amid workforce cuts, which seems bad.
Speaker 1 (42:12):
I want to explain this to everyone here. Okay, they
are cutting the workforce so that they can give very
wealthy people a tax cut. There is no reason that
this needs to happen. There is no like, all of
this is like, well, we can't do this. We can't
give very wealthy people a tax cut unless we cut
what the government does for people. So let's cut workforce cuts.
(42:35):
When it comes to food safety, because you know, again
like this is the whole Trump thing. You don't understand
why you have regulations until things go horribly wrong. So
like that train that derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, you
don't have those regulations until you have the train derail
in East Palestine. Ohio, and everyone gets sick from the
(42:58):
you know, the all the chemicals. That's what this is, right.
So now they're not going to inspect milk quality. And
here's what's going to happen. People are going to get
sent for milk. This is why we have these quality inspectors.
This is why we have regulation. Is because there was
a reason. Like Donald Trump loves to talk about tariffs
and how there was a time before the internal revenue system.
Speaker 2 (43:21):
I swear to God, like my man has he has
like very few ideas and they are so stuck in
his brain with like sticky tacky whatever. So he's like, yeah,
there was a time when America is really great. You
know during that time, like people would eat bad fish
and die. This is the goal, right, It's like, you know,
(43:42):
you drank that milk and it made you so sick.
That's where we're going to folks, and you hear you
heard it here first. And when that milk makes you sick,
remember who told you this is all going to happen.
And visit me in Seacott.
Speaker 3 (43:57):
I often think of discussions you and I have that
a lot of people say, oh, this is all to
benefit the rich, and this is one of those ones
where it's like, no, this is just stupid.
Speaker 2 (44:06):
This is all to benefit the rich.
Speaker 1 (44:08):
I say, this is someone who was you know, who
had a lot of advantages.
Speaker 3 (44:12):
Well, but this is also will affect the rich and
is also just the stupid one that affects everybody.
Speaker 1 (44:18):
Yeah, well, I guess Elon has a food taster. If
you don't have a food taster, this is going to
be very annoying and perhaps you might die.
Speaker 2 (44:27):
Welcome to Trump's America. You probably won't die, but you
might get a release it.
Speaker 1 (44:32):
Yeah, 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 (44:54):
Thanks for listening.
Host
Molly Jong-Fast
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