December 1, 2025 • 45 mins
The Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson examines the numerous corrupt dealings happening inside the Trump White House on the back of U.S. foreign policy. Can’t Win Victory Fund’s Kate Compton Barr details why she’s a Democrat running in a Republican primary for Congress.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds and Congressman Troy Nell's won't seek reelection.
We have such a great show for you today. The
Lincoln Projects owner Rick Wilson joins us to discuss the
numerous people in Trump's White House who are doing crimes.
(00:24):
Then we'll talk to can't win victory Funds Kate Compton
Barr about why she's a Democrat running in a Republican
primary for Congress. But first the news, Smiley.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
As we know, there was a horrible shooting of two
National Guards troops in DC. I'm going to shock you here,
but the Trump administration is looking for someone to blame
as always. But you know what's great. They brought out
Christy Nome with Kristen Welker on Meet the Press to
fed this all and can you guess how well it went?
Speaker 1 (00:56):
I think you're going to play some sound now.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
When we've at individual under this administration, we know who
they are, why they are here and going through that.
Unfortunately this individual, that entire process happened under Joe Biden's watch.
Speaker 4 (01:09):
Well, but just to be very clear, We're going to
go back to what happened on the Trump administration's watch.
He was extensively vetted in order to serve alongside US
service members as a part of the CIA trained Strikeforce.
But in terms of what happened on the Trump administration's watch,
just to be very clear, what vetting did the Trump
administration do before giving this suspect asylum.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
The vetting process, Kristen happens when the person comes into
the country, and Joe Biden completely did not vet any
of these individuals, did not vet this individual waited until
he got into the United States, and then that application
for asylum was opened under the Joe Biden administration when
he was the president in the White House and allowed
that to go forward with the information that they provided.
(01:53):
That's the Biden administration's responsibility. This is the consequences of
the dangerous situation he put our in when he allowed
those people to infiltrate our country during that abandonment of Afghanistan.
And that's why I'm so grateful we have a president
now that isn't going to allow it to happen. That
he now has put in place measures under his watch.
Speaker 5 (02:13):
At the Department of home that we are bringing new
information on vetting, new information to use, such as what
do they do on Facebook, what do they do on
TikTok and other social media platforms, and who are they
talking to? Who are their conversations with and we use
their biometric data information now to track to make sure
they are who they say they are and they're here
(02:35):
for their right intentions.
Speaker 4 (02:36):
So we are going to talk about some of the
steps the presidents taking, but it's just want to be
very clear about this, because his asylum was approved in
April of this year on the Trump administration's watch, So
just to be very clear, was there a vetting process
in place to approve that asylum request?
Speaker 3 (02:54):
Yeah, the vetting process all happened under Joe Biden's administer.
Speaker 6 (02:57):
Was he vetted when.
Speaker 4 (02:58):
He was wanted asylum?
Speaker 6 (03:00):
Are you saying he wasn't vetted? Vetting?
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Is vetting is happening when they come into the country,
and that was completely abandoned under Joe Biden's administration.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Oops, whats I mean? Look, I liked it when they said,
well what about with the court orders? And she said,
I give all the answers, I give all the decisions,
I do all of it. So here's the good news,
these people are morons. Truly, here's the bad news, these
(03:32):
people are criminals.
Speaker 6 (03:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
It does not inspire confidence at all when you literally
just stowwall at interview with the world's stupidest talking points
and just do it in a folks the accent that
makes us Sarah Palin sound fancy.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
Sarah Palin is like an Albert Einstein compared to Secretary Christy.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
I don't think that that's too far off, So Moley,
another feature of the Trump administration loves freeing criminals like
up to socializing things these days. This is like passion
number two.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
I feel like, here's the deal, my man. Donald Trump
loves a pardon. He loves a pardon. He likes to pardon.
He pardons all the time. He's very into partning. And
why does he love to pardon? Why not? You know,
I can't imagine that there's a reason that Donald Trump
(04:25):
loves to pardon so much that wouldn't be totally legit,
because I know Donald Trump is always the paragon of
honesty and truth. So I assume his love of pardons
just comes from his love of being a philanthropist.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Yeah, definitely, not to say Eddie, what on our side
could do anything they want?
Speaker 1 (04:45):
Certainly not think about when he pardoned everyone's favorite member
of Congress, George Santos, who did lots of crimes, and
he pardoned him because Donald Trump loves freedom.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
I think he missed Santos' Twitter presence where he says
really nasty insults the people all day, and he just
wanted that back.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
I think he wanted George Santos to be able to
get back to his work with orphans and his philanthropy.
Another volleyball guy, real stand up guy.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Speaking of stand up guys, the FDA is just filled
with them ever since RFK brought in a bunch of
kooks and wacos and they're now planning to change vaccine
approval processes.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
I think it's worth realizing that we were just talking
about Secretary Christy, my favorite, and then we were talking
about Whiskey Pete, another genius operator. But it's worth remembering
the person who will ultimately have caused the most deaths
besides Marco Usa. What's that Rubio and Elon take from
(05:55):
the poor Mosque is ultimately going to be my man.
RFK swims in Rock Creek Park candidate junior. So let's
discuss they plan to change vaccine approval process, claiming that
COVID nineteen vaccine called child deaths. Here's what COVID vaccine did,
not that. Okay, they're just trying to undermine vaccines. And
(06:17):
why are they doing that. They're doing that because partially
because RFK is part of this wellness influencer community, and
these wellness influencers do a lot of crazy, non scientific shit,
and so that's where we are. This is just sketchy
as hell, you know, that's where we are. So they're
(06:40):
gonna make it harder to get COVID vaccines. They're gonna
make it harder to get all vaccine. So that's why
if you should just be vaccinating, you know, get every
vaccine you can. I got the shingles vaccine. I know
I've talked about this before, but by the way, I
want to point out again this weekend a really incredible
piece in The New Yorker by Tatiana, the grand of JFK,
(07:02):
Tatiana Slasburg, and she wrote this really excellent piece about
having cancer, and she mentioned that her uncle had slash
funding for MR and A vaccines. MR and A vaccines
are the future of cancer treatment. He did it because
he doesn't believe in vaccines, because he swims in Rock
Creek Park, because he doesn't understand science, because he's all
of the things you think he would be. Find that
(07:24):
incredible article about Tatiana Slasburg and her battle with blood cancer.
It is absolutely worth reading in The New Yorker. A
heartbreaking story of a thirty four year old woman who's dying.
The two children has to watch her cousin just destroy
American medicine. Really important article to.
Speaker 6 (07:44):
Read, Sabi.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
One of the things we have to always decipher is
when Trump's trying to say something stupid to not talk
about the Epstein files and his other failures as a president,
and then when there saw that's really stupid, but also
gets that a greater thing that they're going to try
to do with this administration, and that is his new
aggression where he says all of Joe Biden's autopen signed
(08:06):
executive orders are all canceled out.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
Yeah, go find the picture of Donald Trump in mar
A Lago this weekend. I think that Tim Miller tweeted
it out. He does not look great. He does not
look great, but he's very worried about Joe Biden's autopen pardons.
He can't do that, you know, Like, my man's just
truth in it out right. He's truth socializing again and
(08:32):
again and again, trying to find something that I'll stick.
You're more likely to get a twenty five hundred dollars
Trump check than you are for Donald Trump to be
able to cancel Biden's autopen pardons or whatever else he
wants to cancel. Rick Wilson is the founder of The
Lincoln Project and the host of the Enemy's List.
Speaker 6 (08:53):
Rick Wilson Welcome.
Speaker 7 (08:54):
Back, Hey Molly, how are you. How's your Thanksgiving?
Speaker 6 (08:57):
Just the best? Who doesn't love Paul Dray?
Speaker 7 (09:00):
Absolutely we serve Duck this year.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Yeah, because Turkey is terrible. Let's start with a man
called Steve. It turns out that being from a wealthy
real estate dynasty does not necessarily make you a genius negotiator.
Speaker 6 (09:17):
A negotiator.
Speaker 7 (09:19):
Yeah, No, I mean, look, I think I think the
most probably the ugliest, most devastating piece.
Speaker 6 (09:24):
Folks.
Speaker 7 (09:24):
You if you think you have a calibration on how
corrupt this administration is, go read the Washington Post piece
from this weekend on Witkoff and Kushner and Trump who
do not care about Ukraine or America's security. They're trying
to make personal financial deals with Russia. The classes of
course betraying Ukraine, but they want to make these financial
(09:46):
deals with Russia to cash in. It is a level
of corruption that even with these guys, I still look
at and go, uh what how Yeah, it's dark, It's true,
it's dark.
Speaker 6 (09:57):
It's dark.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Also important to remember that Witkoff is also negotiating with
a guy who is also not serving in the federal government,
my man Jared Kushner.
Speaker 7 (10:11):
And look, Molly, what we've got here is Kushner and
Witkoff and this clown show with Marco. They have now
in order to make separate side financial deals, taken the
bait with a Russian written, Russian design plan to end
the Ukraine War. Oh it's going to end, all right,
It's going to end with Russian troops and tanks in
(10:32):
the streets in Kiev. And so these guys have shown
us now abundantly clearly they are not about NATO American
security Ukraine. They're about making separate side deals. Like one
of wit Coss friends is a guy who wants to
buy the Russian nord Stream pipeline, and they are in
(10:53):
these rare earth mineral deals in Russia, and they want
to make do development deals in Russia. All of it
is so profoundly carre up. And the Russians are once
again playing Trump and everyone around him like a fiddle.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
And I think it's important to see that not only
are they trying to cash in, but they're also just
completely incompetent like Russia. You know, there's leaked transcripts of
the phone calls with the Russian and Russian minister trying
saying like this is how you negotiate with.
Speaker 7 (11:22):
Trump, when wik Coff is on the phone saying to
the Russians, here's how you manipulate Trump, Here's how you
get Trump. Here's how you make Trump bark like a dog.
I'm sorry, call me old fashion and traditionalist, but that
strikes me as sort of treasony.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
And also just incompetent, and that I think the wit
coough incompetence really does. You know, they're corrupt, but they're
awesome incompetent, and.
Speaker 7 (11:50):
So right, you can be corrupt and stupid. It's it's
a Venn diagram that overlaps very neatly with these people.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
And by the way, thank god, because these guys were
good at what they did, we would not have these,
you know, leaks of the transcripts, leaks of the you know,
we would not have the kind of reporting we're starting
to see coming out. And by the way, think about
if we had a mainstream media like we had in
twenty sixteen, think about of the reporting we'd be getting
(12:18):
every day, Tron the documents.
Speaker 7 (12:21):
And now they're so afraid to cover a story. They're
so afraid to stand up. They're terrified every minute of
the damn day that they're going to end up on
the new White House social media hate list.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Right, which was offline for a little bit today, which
I think is a great metaphor for this admin.
Speaker 7 (12:39):
It is a singularly perfect metaphor for this administration, because
none of these people, when it comes to capability and
competence of anything. Even their trolling is bad.
Speaker 6 (12:50):
Right right right, you know, even.
Speaker 7 (12:51):
Their trolling attempts are blame.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
That gets us to this next story, which is in
the New York Times today, which if you haven't read it,
it's rat avoid, which is my man, everyone's favorite, and
by by everyone, I mean no. One's favorite David David
Sacks all in podcast bro, crypto king and also kleptocrat.
Speaker 7 (13:12):
Yes, David Sachs, who is a man who is never
not wrong. David Sax is wrong this ratio. Look, I
get things wrong all the time, but David Sax is wrong.
This ratio is cosmic. It is he is beyond the
valley of human understanding. How much of a wrong dipshit
he is about everything.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
Except using his government connections to make money, and in
which that good about that?
Speaker 6 (13:41):
Yeah, pretty freaking good at that.
Speaker 7 (13:43):
This is a guy who you know, Susie Wiles even
said in that he re good piece. And it's like
Susie Willer's like, no, you can't host this under the
brand of your podcast.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
Yeah, and does government.
Speaker 6 (13:57):
Employee for Fox sake.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
David's ax is basically a sort of mini Elon Right.
Elon comes in, he does government deals, he slices and
dices things he doesn't like, and that's what this is,
except is smaller but more corrupt, but also more annoying
for any numberle reasons.
Speaker 7 (14:19):
Look, he's also the guy who is in charge of
in the White House crypto and AI. And we know
two things about this right now. We know that crypto
is on a free fall right now, But I was
told it was going to be the best thing since
prepared mustard for people and our economy. Not so much apparently.
Speaker 6 (14:36):
And the other thing.
Speaker 7 (14:37):
He's doing is AI, which is increasingly people are figuring
it out. The reason we're doing AI is to fire everybody.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
Right. Well, that in itself is bad, but even worse
is that it seems so far what we've seen is
that it just it has, as far as I can tell,
almost no use except like sloppy photos and bad search.
Speaker 6 (15:02):
Well.
Speaker 7 (15:02):
Look, I mean, we're only going to invest one point
five trillion dollars right through the government, by the way,
as what helps Sam Waltman, that's what it does.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Yeah, imagine if they spend that money on like healthwarding healthcare.
Speaker 6 (15:19):
Fuck healthcare.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
I mean, yes, we spend that money in healthcare, but
like reporting or.
Speaker 7 (15:26):
Like imagine Molly, if they spent that money in education
and just straight up education for American kids, right, I mean,
imagine that for one second.
Speaker 6 (15:36):
You know, all the arts, all.
Speaker 7 (15:38):
These all these studies that are coming out this week,
Like you know, people no longer view college as a
worthhole investment. Well, of course they don't, because now you know,
you're talking about spending one hundreds of thousand of dollars
and AI is about to suck out the very life
out of every job sector that that doesn't involve, like
turning a wrench or wiring a circuit.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
I think that some of this sayah stuff is really
exaggerated and so like, because I see a lot of
shit that's just.
Speaker 7 (16:06):
Your lips, for God's ear. But I still have very graves.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Let's move on to whiskey Pete, my.
Speaker 6 (16:15):
Man, whiskey, love our boy Pete.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
It turns out that active alcoholism is not I say,
this is someone who's been sober since I was eighteen,
not not the best qualification for doing.
Speaker 7 (16:28):
You know, I think, I think there are a lot
of people who have held that that is the case
for some time now, that being a you know, five
a day drunkard is not where you want to be.
If you're any secretary of defense. Having known a few
secretaries of defense, they generally are are men of probity
and discipline, and they are not crazy people who spend
(16:49):
more time on social media than they do working to
defend the country.
Speaker 6 (16:52):
But that's whiskey Pete. Right there, let's just talk about this.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
He basically tweeted that he does war crimes.
Speaker 6 (16:59):
Fucking you.
Speaker 7 (17:01):
The answer was, I do war crimes. Fuck you.
Speaker 6 (17:03):
Yeah, what are you going to do about it?
Speaker 1 (17:05):
But not so unlike Secretary Christie, who was on the
Sunday shows saying, I defy court orders. What are you
going to do about it?
Speaker 7 (17:16):
Yeah? By the way, christinome appears to increasingly be made
out of some sort of synthetic material.
Speaker 6 (17:23):
I like it.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
We don't criticize plastic surgery on this podcast.
Speaker 7 (17:27):
Listen, everything everything in its place, and everything that's measure right.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
But second Christie, she certainly had a lot of.
Speaker 7 (17:34):
Basically, she basically came out today and was in a
position of saying.
Speaker 6 (17:38):
Oh, well, I don't care, right, I do work.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
I do work crimes, right, Yeah. I mean the question
of whether, like notice the SYMPI I do war crimes,
whiskey Pete. What I mean the reporting we saw today
is that after they had blown up the ship, they
may have, whiskey Pete, I have ordered for them to
(18:02):
go back and kill the two other people that they
thought may or may not.
Speaker 7 (18:06):
Here's the thing, and I'm just I'm just gonna summarize
this right off the bat. Everything that they say about
the President has never issued in an illegal order or
the or the administration has never issued an illegal order
that was an illegal order, that was an illegal order.
There is no such thing an American military doctrine in
the Uniform Code of Military Justice that says no quarter
(18:29):
given just doesn't exist.
Speaker 6 (18:31):
It doesn't exist. In fact, we are required.
Speaker 7 (18:34):
And the example that is cited in the Manual of
the Uniform Code of Military Justice in this country. The
example that is cited says uses a case of what
if people are on a boat and they're and they're
injured and out of combat, and what do you do?
Speaker 1 (18:49):
Then?
Speaker 7 (18:49):
Are you allowed to kill them?
Speaker 6 (18:50):
And the answer is.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
No, except if you're whiskey p and then the answer
is yes. Even though you're not in a war, right
you've declared war whatever, right you're you're not in a war.
Speaker 7 (19:03):
But you're in a you're in a imaginary conflict with
supposed drug dealers who are allegedly taking these boats that
have like a two hundred mile range, and they're they
have to stop to refuel like seven times if they're
gonna get to America. But you better you better shoot
him out of the water right now, because obviously Donnie
(19:25):
will be unhappy unless you do.
Speaker 6 (19:27):
Let's talk about what else we're seeing here.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
So we have this poll that came out today that
was pretty fucking devastating. It was, I mean that the
morning console you saw that.
Speaker 7 (19:40):
Yep. Look, Trump's numbers are basically cratering. They're not coming back.
There's nothing he is doing, and frankly, nothing he can do,
Molly to make this thing change. It's not gonna change.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
Right.
Speaker 7 (19:55):
He has killed his presidency. Anybody who doesn't get that
by now he's not paying attention. He has killed his
presidency economically and politically and temperamentally and morally and from corruption,
and it's all going downhill from here. It is never
going to get any better. This is not a world
where where people are gonna wake up tomorrow go You know,
(20:17):
Trump's had a really chaotic one hundred and ninety seven
days or whatever the number is now. But you know,
I'm really gonna give him a chance now because obviously
this is a guy who really, really, he's putting it
all out there, he's really doing his best.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
He's not. But it is interesting to me that we
have gotten ourselves into such a moment here where there
is so we have these these these cratering numbers we have.
He's underwater on everything. Yep, Affordability continues to be this
(20:49):
sort of.
Speaker 7 (20:50):
The bleed underneath everything with him is affordable right for
economy is kill laying him. And here's the funny part
of this. You know that thing we always talked to
in the first administration, like there wasn't a lot of
adult supervision, but there were occasionally people who would go, sir,
we can't take this argument because no one will buy it.
Speaker 6 (21:08):
Right right now, when he.
Speaker 7 (21:10):
Says the economy is the best it's ever been, were
the hottest country in the world, every single person in
that White House it says, yes, sir, you're absolutely right.
There's no there's no dispute. Here's a poll that says so,
and it's it's all a lie and they're doing him
a massive disservice. But I'm here for that.
Speaker 6 (21:27):
Can we do carry on, Susie Wiles?
Speaker 1 (21:29):
Can we do a minute on what the problem the
Trump's big problem here because it is you know well,
but it's also he has an unreality problem. Right His
polls are he says his polls are great. He says,
his numbers are great. He says, the economy is great.
Speaker 7 (21:47):
And that's why we definitely haven't released the numbers because
they're so great. We can't release those numbers.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
But it is like when you have problems like that,
when you get into a sort of unreality problem which
his president has, there's no way out of it. Explain
to us what that is about.
Speaker 7 (22:03):
Yeah, Molly, A big part of this problem is once
you've decided, once you go all in on the bullshit,
once you go all in on saying the sky is
purple and not blue, you know, and Donald Trump, you know,
weighs one hundred and seventy five pousies more fit than
an AVC, and all the other garbage, all of that stuff.
It eventually adds up to where when you have to
(22:26):
tell the truth about something, even if it's something that's
actually good for you, nobody buys it. This is the
boy who cried wolf over and over and over again.
And unfortunately for Trump, you know, being the boy who
cried wolf, it runs directly up against the actual economic
realities of every American. Every American family knows the economy sucks.
(22:47):
They get it. They see it. They know their groceries
are more expensive. They're in the grocery store, they're swiping
that credit card to that ATM card in the grocery store.
They're paying those prices at the gas pump.
Speaker 6 (22:57):
None of that.
Speaker 7 (22:58):
You can't bullshit people away from what's really happening in
their actual lives.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
One of the things Trump does, though, which I think
is interesting and I'd love you to talk about, is
he'll say, well, maybe we'll do a check, a dividend
check for techs. Sure, right, there's no way he can
do this, right, there's this one.
Speaker 7 (23:18):
There is zero mechanism for doing this. And I will
tell you one other thing that I've heard over the
weekend from a person who was involved in the first administration. Yes,
told me that when they did the COVID checks, the
stimulus checks for COVID, that was one thing. There is
no appetite in Congress now at all to do a
(23:40):
fake tariff check. He could not get it through the House.
There are enough conservatives in the House. And I mean
that in the old way, the small sea way in
the House. Who are they going to go, oh, no, oh, no,
we're not spending X billion dollars to give out or
trillion dollars to give out two thousand dollars checks.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
Which gets us to the Mike Johnson problem, which is
Donald Trump does not have a Speaker of the House
who is a Mitch McConnell. He doesn't even have god
Kevin McCarthy. He's got a man who basically has At
this point, we are in discharge petition paloozo, which means
(24:20):
a discharge petition is when the House decides, fuck leadership,
these are things we want to vote on.
Speaker 6 (24:27):
We're just going to bring them up ourselves.
Speaker 7 (24:29):
We're just going to deal what we want. I mean, really,
it is. It is the end. It is the end
of the traditional speakership, all right, it is. It is
a It is a total departure from what used to be.
You know, remember, the House already decided, at least the
Republicans said they're not going to be a part of
the traditional tripartite government of having a legislative branch. They
(24:52):
already decided that, they already said.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
Up their power because they let Trump and Russ Vought
take over.
Speaker 7 (24:58):
That is correct, And because of that, we're now in
a position where no one in the House can say
no to Trump. Right, No one in the House can
say stop it, you're being crazy, or we won't do this.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
But can I just say, no one in the House
leadership can. But Republicans in the House who are not
in leadership, with these discharge petitions, have very vocally said,
we don't have a fuck what Donald Trump wants.
Speaker 7 (25:25):
I mean, there's a number of people that are supporting
these discharge petitions. Is rising, not falling, This is not
It's not going to ever get any easier. And in
terms of the spending to do the imaginary doze checks
or the imaginary tariff checks would require them to pass
a spending bill, as we have seen, they are not
(25:45):
great at passing spending bills.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
Right, No, now, they are very much not great at
passing spending bills. I think that is a great a
mild way of plate, a mild way of placing.
Speaker 6 (25:58):
Rick Wilson, Maud John Fast. Will you come back?
Speaker 7 (26:01):
I sure will.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
Kate Compton Barr is the founder of Can't Win Victory
Fund and a candidate in the Republican primary for North
Carolina's fourteenth congressional district.
Speaker 8 (26:16):
Welcome to Best Politics, Kate bar Time, Ollie, thanks for
having me.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
So glad to have you. You're running for Congress and
you're definitely gonna win. Absolutely, explain to us what the
play here is.
Speaker 8 (26:29):
Yeah, So I'm running for Congress in North Carolina's fourteenth
congressional district, which is super jerrymanderd.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Who's the candidate you're running against? And what beliefs does
he have about women?
Speaker 8 (26:41):
Go? Yeah, So I'm running against the Republican incumbent Tim Moore,
and I'm actually running in the Republican primary against him.
So I changed my letter in order to run in
the election that counts in our jerrymandered district.
Speaker 9 (26:57):
Tim is known as a bit of a woman.
Speaker 6 (27:00):
I would say. He actually got sued for.
Speaker 8 (27:02):
Alienation of affection by the husband of one of Tim's girlfriends.
So I don't know, folks should go look at a
picture of him and decide how they feel about that.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
Oh yeah, can you explain what that is?
Speaker 6 (27:17):
Yeah?
Speaker 8 (27:17):
So, alienation of affection basically means stealing someone's spouse in
the South and out to be a thing you can
get sued for down here.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
So embattled North Carolina House Speaker Tim Moore to run
for Congress. So he already had some problems back in
twenty twenty three when he originally ran. So he's only
one term congressman. Yeah, and he has a lot of ladies.
I think it's fair we don't talk about the way
(27:49):
men look here because we don't want to objectify them.
Speaker 6 (27:52):
Yes, correct, not hot though not.
Speaker 8 (27:55):
Twing to do the opposite of objectifying him. He is
a one term congressman, but he was actually the leader
of the state House, and he did about five terms
in the North Carolina State House.
Speaker 6 (28:07):
And there he met lots of women. Apparently he did
meet a lot.
Speaker 8 (28:11):
Yeah, that's him there he is, because we're not talking
about appearance. I also should throw out there that he's
shorter than me. Just I mean, you could be seven
feet tall.
Speaker 6 (28:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
And also he could have a lot of game, do
you guys.
Speaker 9 (28:26):
I mean, he clearly has a lot of work in there.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Yeah, because the fact that he has multiple girlfriends, so
much so that ex husbands are suing him.
Speaker 8 (28:36):
Yes, this has hurt. He drives a maserati. So maybe
it's about the car.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
Oh does he come from money?
Speaker 8 (28:43):
Well, he has been a government employee for quite some time,
and I think he's just done really well for himself
in the stock market.
Speaker 6 (28:50):
If you know what I'm saying. Wow, Wow, all right,
So here we go.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
This is Tim Morris. You run against Tim Moore. He
has been a member of Congress for a year and change.
Why are you running in a Republican primary in an.
Speaker 6 (29:05):
R plus eleven ish? Yeah? Tell us why?
Speaker 1 (29:10):
So?
Speaker 8 (29:11):
I don't know if y'all saw North Carolina got further jerrymandered,
Like our state legislature drew new congressional maps a few
weeks ago, and we already had jerrymandered maps, so they
just like pushed it farther to try to get yet
another congressional seat. And basically what that means for voters
is that there's no competitive congressional district in our state
(29:34):
when you look at the general election, and we have
to run where the competition actually happens, which is in
primary elections. And in order to run in a primary
election that matters, I have to be a Republican because
the Republican primary is what will determine who goes to
Congress from my district.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
What does your Republican primary look like? Is in an
open primary? What just sort of explained us the math
of your North Carolina primary, Because like I feel like
things are so bad for Republicans. I'm going to caveat this,
and anyone who listens podcast knows this. But things are
so bad for Republicans that plays like this would seem
(30:12):
insane could theoretically work.
Speaker 8 (30:15):
Yeah, the math is really interesting here. So in North Carolina,
we have a partially closed primary, meaning that folks who
are registered Republican can vote in the Republican primary, and
folks who are registered unaffiliated can pull the Republican primary ballot.
Speaker 6 (30:30):
The primary is on March third.
Speaker 8 (30:32):
And North Carolinians are pretty smart and so the majority
of North Carolinians, especially in my district, are registered unaffiliated
because they know how this game works. The district has
five hundred and forty four thousand people in it, and
our estimated win number, because primary turnout is so low,
is thirty three thousand votes.
Speaker 6 (30:51):
And that's where it gets kind of nuts.
Speaker 8 (30:54):
And why someone like me who's running a completely progressive
platform could win a Republican prime.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Wow, what would you need? You would need how many
votes to win?
Speaker 6 (31:06):
Thirty three thousand? Wow?
Speaker 8 (31:08):
Yeah, so tell me how you do this. So the
district is thirty eight percent unaffiliated. Plenty of those folks
are left leaning. A tricky piece of all of this
is I'm kind of a woman with no party because
the Republican Party obviously is not supporting my candidacy in
any way. And then I'm not a Democrat, so the
(31:29):
Democratic Party is not supporting my candidacy in any way,
which means we don't have any builtrastructure infrastructure.
Speaker 9 (31:37):
But that's also kind of awesome.
Speaker 8 (31:39):
So we're going to go deep old school grassroots, like
Neighborhood Captains a lot of lit drops. We are going
to do like holiday gift bundles with hot chocolate and
a cookie in them and some vote for Kate Barr
stuff attached to it as part of that lit drop.
I'm hoping to do something called drunk dairymandering out in Gastonia.
Speaker 9 (32:03):
What does that mean? In January? What does that mean?
Speaker 5 (32:06):
Yeah?
Speaker 8 (32:06):
Yeah, So drunk dairymandering is when we invite people who
are funnier than me and musicians who are more talented
than me to come and be awesome, and then in
the middle of it, I get kind of drunk and
try to give everyone the history of jerrymandering.
Speaker 9 (32:23):
So it's like hiding vegetables inside a grilled cheese.
Speaker 6 (32:27):
Right, Yeah, does that work? Yeah?
Speaker 9 (32:31):
Surprisingly, people will show up for a thing like that.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
No, I meant hiding the vegetables and the grilled cheese.
Speaker 9 (32:36):
Oh, it works on one of my children, but not that, right, Yeah,
my daughter is.
Speaker 6 (32:40):
Way too smart for that. I mean my kids.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
I'm not allowed to talk about them, but if I were,
I would say that that has never worked. But also
I've never cooked for them. So the question here is
someone in a blue state of blue city far away,
what's appetite like for this? So far, it seems pretty high.
Speaker 8 (33:00):
I mean, I've been running this for two weeks now,
so it's early days and this is going to be
a real sprint. But we had a town hall on
Wednesday night and I booked a room that would hold
twenty five people and we ended up with fifty folks there.
So people are really curious about what's going on. We're
also in this moment, at least my opinion, like we've
(33:22):
used to think about politics on this continuum from Democrat
to Republican and people kind of fell somewhere on that.
But I think there's a different continuum happening, and that
is status quo to disruption, burn it down, And I
don't think that is as related to party so much
as it is to frankly age and life experience. A
(33:45):
lot of folks in this district are in a burn
it down place, and this candidacy is exactly that.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
I think that there's a lot of burn it down
going on here. And let me rephrase that. I know,
just anecdotally, that there's a lot that people are very mad,
and that they are mad at Trump for sure, but
that my man, Chuck Schumer and the rest of the
(34:12):
crowd there, they are not you know, it's not twenty sixteen,
it's not Orange Man bad retweet if truth.
Speaker 8 (34:18):
Yeah, yeah, it's really true. And I mean, I frankly
share that feeling.
Speaker 6 (34:23):
I think a lot of us do.
Speaker 8 (34:25):
Yeah, and we're but we're in an opportunity where, you know,
we're at the start of something new and it feels
like chaos because it is, but we also have the
chance to build something better. That's what I would like
to be a part of. That's what I want to
keep thinking about. It's not about party affiliation. It's about
what does a better version of democracy look like on
(34:47):
the other side of this, And I think that's a
really interesting conversation to be having with folks.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
Yeah, I think that's right. So let's talk a little
bit about how you do this. So you do you
do grasps roots? You come from grassroots World. Tell us
your background a little bit.
Speaker 8 (35:03):
Yeah, So I have a master's in public health, studied
all the commie community organizers, and then I worked in
behavioral science and persuasive communication for twenty years. Most of
that was remotely for the University of Michigan, trying to
help people make healthier life choices. So my experience is
(35:25):
trying to get people to quit smoking or eat vegetables
instead of sweet treats, which means I am great at
convincing people to do things that maybe feel uncomfortable to
them or that they don't want to do.
Speaker 6 (35:36):
And then for a little bit and there I ran a.
Speaker 8 (35:39):
Company just because I have add tell us about your organization. Yes,
So in twenty twenty four I ran first date Senate
as in the general election as a Democrat, and I
ran what we call it can't win campaign where I
just announced that I lost the day that I filed.
And that means it was like a protest against jerrymandering
(36:02):
the whole way through because in a Jerrymander district. The
outcome is decided before votes are cast. It's just about
how that district is drawn. And my plan was to
go back to my day job at Michigan as soon
as that election was over. But when we started pulling
the data, it looked like that campaign had actually been
successful in terms of driving up voter turnout the reddest
(36:26):
part of my district. That county was actually one of
only eight counties in North Carolina out of one hundred
to turn bluer in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 6 (36:34):
I flipped some our.
Speaker 8 (36:35):
Votes to D votes, about five hundred of them by
our count and I outperformed other state Senate candidates. And
we were like, who knew that telling everyone you were
a loser would actually motivate them to show up for you.
But it kind of made sense, right. These are people
that have not had any politician show up for them historically.
(36:55):
Knocked on one woman's door. She'd lived in that house
for forty years, she's eighty years old, and no candidate
or Canvasser had ever knocked on her door. And she
literally tried to give me a puppy in gratitude. And
so they don't a real Pepper, a puppy, a little baby.
It was like an English spaniel.
Speaker 6 (37:15):
It was very sweet. It's name was Many.
Speaker 8 (37:18):
My daughter's never forgiven me for not bringing that dogs.
That's like I almost never forgive you. I know, it's terrible.
I mean, my husband would have filed paper. So I
did prioritize the family or the puppy, but it.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
Was touch and go.
Speaker 6 (37:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 8 (37:32):
But because that campaign actually had positive outcomes for reaching people,
we launched something called the Can't Win Victory Fund, which
is a political nonprofit that supports candidates running in Jerrymander
districts that it's really hard to get support when you
run in one of those districts, whether it be from
a party or donors or whatever, because you're going to
(37:53):
lose and everybody's focused on the winnable races. But that's
like the democratic obsession with instant gratification. That's not a
plan for the future. So what we do is make
sure that awesome candidates have the skills and tools and
like websites and social media experience and communications training, all
(38:14):
that stuff that they need to run high quality campaigns
even though they can't win.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
So, do you have other places where you're doing that
and what is that?
Speaker 6 (38:26):
Yeah?
Speaker 8 (38:27):
Right now we're focused in North Carolina because North Carolina
filing deadline is December nineteenth, so that's coming right up.
We have been asked to work in Texas and South
Carolina and Tennessee. We had been asked to work in Utah,
but their maps look a little better, so we're going
to kind of see what happens there.
Speaker 9 (38:46):
And we'll just keep growing, frankly, as much as we
can afford to.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
Can you do just like a minute or two on
like when your primary is and how it would work? Yeah,
Republican primary in North Carolina.
Speaker 8 (38:59):
Yeah, so the Republican primary is March third, and Republican
voters and unaffiliated voters will have the opportunity to register
for me.
Speaker 6 (39:11):
Is their prevent and just is it just you and
the incombent? That's it so far?
Speaker 1 (39:17):
Okay.
Speaker 8 (39:17):
If there are Democrats who want to be able to
vote for me, they have until February sixth to change
their voter registration to unaffiliated and they can do that
either on the North Carolina DMV website or down at
their local Board of Elections. It's super easy. It takes
about two minutes and you can change it right back
on March fourth, if you want to.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
Right, that makes sense. I mean, being affiliated doesn't necessarily matter,
especially if it's so jerry mandard.
Speaker 8 (39:43):
Yeah, Actually being unaffiliated is a powerful voter tool if
you don't plan to run for office. If you want
to run for office, you have to be registered to
either party or go collect signatures. Is an unaffiliated But
being unaffiliated is a powerful voting tool for folks in
this state because you can pick your primary ballot, so
you can vote on the ballot that's going to determine
(40:05):
your leader.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
You really have been in it with the jerrymandering. We
talk a lot about the idea that maybe this ends
up backfiring, that this ends up giving them a dummy mander.
Does that feel possible?
Speaker 8 (40:17):
It does, And especially in a couple of districts like
the Texas twenty eighth and thirty fourth, which are like
right on the southern border.
Speaker 9 (40:24):
Places like that, right, the thing that still gives me pause.
Speaker 8 (40:28):
This is like a feature of jerrymandering that we don't
talk about very much. Jerrymandering reduces the number of competitive districts,
which makes voter suppression more efficient and economical because you
have fewer places that you have to suppress the vote
to get the outcome you want.
Speaker 9 (40:47):
And so as I look at the places that we
have ice.
Speaker 8 (40:50):
And border patrol going, those places perfectly align with districts
where we would be concerned where rather not we those
districts perfectly align with places that Donald Trump would be
concerned Latino voters would vote Democrat. So the whole state
(41:11):
of North Carolina, because we have a really competitive Senate
race in twenty twenty six, is.
Speaker 9 (41:16):
Ripe for voter suppression tactics.
Speaker 8 (41:18):
We even saw just two days ago the Greenland, Greensboro
AT and CA and T. The Guildford County Board of
Elections is closing some of the early voting sites in
the student communities and in communities of color, beding that
they don't have resources, but really really right. So the
thing that makes me worried about counting on dummy manders
(41:41):
or on a blue tsunami is that, even if we
have the will for that, I'm worried we're gonna have
a lot of.
Speaker 6 (41:47):
Voters who are afraid to go to the polls.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
Kate Barr, I hope you'll come back.
Speaker 9 (41:52):
I would love to. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
No moment soon Rick Wilson, Well, I junk fast, you
are an amazing assistant.
Speaker 6 (42:05):
Now I'm reading these.
Speaker 1 (42:06):
On On did a really good piece about this in
The Times about how if the fancier you are, the
less you have to know how to spell or punctuate, which.
Speaker 7 (42:14):
By the way, I'm not unfancy, but spelling and punctuation
is not Jeffrey Epstein's trunk suit.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
It's not his milieu. But speaking of which, he did
spend a lot. He wrote a lot of emails to
a lot of people, including.
Speaker 6 (42:28):
Steve, our good friend, Steve scablrd Bannon.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
So let's talk about these emails.
Speaker 7 (42:33):
Well, he's helping Steve do travel arrangements from Europe. He's
giving Steve advice on dealing with European political leaders because
Bannon wanted to set up his Nazi Hogwarts school over
in Italy.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
Oh right, remember Nazi Hogwarts. I forgot about that from
season one.
Speaker 7 (42:48):
Oh I remember it very well because I played a
small role in killing Nazi Hogwarts.
Speaker 6 (42:52):
Michell.
Speaker 7 (42:53):
Tell the story another time, but.
Speaker 1 (42:54):
Yes, heartwarming. But in this story, you have a lot
of emails between the two of them. There's a lot
of let's see, Bannon wrote, there's a crazy jihad against you.
I've never seen anything like it, and I've seen a lot. Yeah,
I don't know.
Speaker 7 (43:11):
That there is you know what, I'm just going to say,
Brother Steve has a lot more explaining to do than
he would like to admit.
Speaker 1 (43:18):
By the way, every time he saw Trump criticism, he said,
it's apo, dude, I do this for a living. The
pieces are dropping are deeply researched anyway, So go on.
Speaker 7 (43:27):
Yeah, well, okay, Steve, thanks for talking the lingo, Steve. Strangely,
these people on the right who are hyperactively obsessive about
all things regarding any Democrat, even vaguely adjacent to Jeffrey Epstein,
there's been a massive wailing silence when it comes to
(43:47):
his sloppy Steve and his buddy Jeff who when you
read those emails, folks, Steve Bannon is helping him, and
he said it to him, I can give you MAGA
as a shield. I can help use MAGA to protect
and re form your image. Guys, at this point, we
knew who Jeffrey Epstein was as a human being. This
is moments before he gets arrested on federal charges, and
(44:09):
Steve Bannon has had a total skate on this because
he's on the fucking speed dials of a lot of
reporters and he gets a good quote.
Speaker 6 (44:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
I also think that we're going to see a lot
of stuff. We're going to see a lot of emails,
and we already saw Larry Summer's resign. I think, and look, Democrat, Republican,
lock them all up. We don't care. It's a non
partisan activity.
Speaker 7 (44:32):
If it is Bill Clinton in there, so be it.
Speaker 6 (44:35):
That's it, so be it. Yeah, go for it. Moving on.
Speaker 1 (44:40):
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear the best
minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If
you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend
and keep the conversation going. Thanks for listening.
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds and Congressman Troy Nell's won't seek reelection.
We have such a great show for you today. The
Lincoln Projects owner Rick Wilson joins us to discuss the
numerous people in Trump's White House who are doing crimes.
(00:24):
Then we'll talk to can't win victory Funds Kate Compton
Barr about why she's a Democrat running in a Republican
primary for Congress. But first the news, Smiley.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
As we know, there was a horrible shooting of two
National Guards troops in DC. I'm going to shock you here,
but the Trump administration is looking for someone to blame
as always. But you know what's great. They brought out
Christy Nome with Kristen Welker on Meet the Press to
fed this all and can you guess how well it went?
Speaker 1 (00:56):
I think you're going to play some sound now.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
When we've at individual under this administration, we know who
they are, why they are here and going through that.
Unfortunately this individual, that entire process happened under Joe Biden's watch.
Speaker 4 (01:09):
Well, but just to be very clear, We're going to
go back to what happened on the Trump administration's watch.
He was extensively vetted in order to serve alongside US
service members as a part of the CIA trained Strikeforce.
But in terms of what happened on the Trump administration's watch,
just to be very clear, what vetting did the Trump
administration do before giving this suspect asylum.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
The vetting process, Kristen happens when the person comes into
the country, and Joe Biden completely did not vet any
of these individuals, did not vet this individual waited until
he got into the United States, and then that application
for asylum was opened under the Joe Biden administration when
he was the president in the White House and allowed
that to go forward with the information that they provided.
(01:53):
That's the Biden administration's responsibility. This is the consequences of
the dangerous situation he put our in when he allowed
those people to infiltrate our country during that abandonment of Afghanistan.
And that's why I'm so grateful we have a president
now that isn't going to allow it to happen. That
he now has put in place measures under his watch.
Speaker 5 (02:13):
At the Department of home that we are bringing new
information on vetting, new information to use, such as what
do they do on Facebook, what do they do on
TikTok and other social media platforms, and who are they
talking to? Who are their conversations with and we use
their biometric data information now to track to make sure
they are who they say they are and they're here
(02:35):
for their right intentions.
Speaker 4 (02:36):
So we are going to talk about some of the
steps the presidents taking, but it's just want to be
very clear about this, because his asylum was approved in
April of this year on the Trump administration's watch, So
just to be very clear, was there a vetting process
in place to approve that asylum request?
Speaker 3 (02:54):
Yeah, the vetting process all happened under Joe Biden's administer.
Speaker 6 (02:57):
Was he vetted when.
Speaker 4 (02:58):
He was wanted asylum?
Speaker 6 (03:00):
Are you saying he wasn't vetted? Vetting?
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Is vetting is happening when they come into the country,
and that was completely abandoned under Joe Biden's administration.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Oops, whats I mean? Look, I liked it when they said,
well what about with the court orders? And she said,
I give all the answers, I give all the decisions,
I do all of it. So here's the good news,
these people are morons. Truly, here's the bad news, these
(03:32):
people are criminals.
Speaker 6 (03:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
It does not inspire confidence at all when you literally
just stowwall at interview with the world's stupidest talking points
and just do it in a folks the accent that
makes us Sarah Palin sound fancy.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
Sarah Palin is like an Albert Einstein compared to Secretary Christy.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
I don't think that that's too far off, So Moley,
another feature of the Trump administration loves freeing criminals like
up to socializing things these days. This is like passion
number two.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
I feel like, here's the deal, my man. Donald Trump
loves a pardon. He loves a pardon. He likes to pardon.
He pardons all the time. He's very into partning. And
why does he love to pardon? Why not? You know,
I can't imagine that there's a reason that Donald Trump
(04:25):
loves to pardon so much that wouldn't be totally legit,
because I know Donald Trump is always the paragon of
honesty and truth. So I assume his love of pardons
just comes from his love of being a philanthropist.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Yeah, definitely, not to say Eddie, what on our side
could do anything they want?
Speaker 1 (04:45):
Certainly not think about when he pardoned everyone's favorite member
of Congress, George Santos, who did lots of crimes, and
he pardoned him because Donald Trump loves freedom.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
I think he missed Santos' Twitter presence where he says
really nasty insults the people all day, and he just
wanted that back.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
I think he wanted George Santos to be able to
get back to his work with orphans and his philanthropy.
Another volleyball guy, real stand up guy.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Speaking of stand up guys, the FDA is just filled
with them ever since RFK brought in a bunch of
kooks and wacos and they're now planning to change vaccine
approval processes.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
I think it's worth realizing that we were just talking
about Secretary Christy, my favorite, and then we were talking
about Whiskey Pete, another genius operator. But it's worth remembering
the person who will ultimately have caused the most deaths
besides Marco Usa. What's that Rubio and Elon take from
(05:55):
the poor Mosque is ultimately going to be my man.
RFK swims in Rock Creek Park candidate junior. So let's
discuss they plan to change vaccine approval process, claiming that
COVID nineteen vaccine called child deaths. Here's what COVID vaccine did,
not that. Okay, they're just trying to undermine vaccines. And
(06:17):
why are they doing that. They're doing that because partially
because RFK is part of this wellness influencer community, and
these wellness influencers do a lot of crazy, non scientific shit,
and so that's where we are. This is just sketchy
as hell, you know, that's where we are. So they're
(06:40):
gonna make it harder to get COVID vaccines. They're gonna
make it harder to get all vaccine. So that's why
if you should just be vaccinating, you know, get every
vaccine you can. I got the shingles vaccine. I know
I've talked about this before, but by the way, I
want to point out again this weekend a really incredible
piece in The New Yorker by Tatiana, the grand of JFK,
(07:02):
Tatiana Slasburg, and she wrote this really excellent piece about
having cancer, and she mentioned that her uncle had slash
funding for MR and A vaccines. MR and A vaccines
are the future of cancer treatment. He did it because
he doesn't believe in vaccines, because he swims in Rock
Creek Park, because he doesn't understand science, because he's all
of the things you think he would be. Find that
(07:24):
incredible article about Tatiana Slasburg and her battle with blood cancer.
It is absolutely worth reading in The New Yorker. A
heartbreaking story of a thirty four year old woman who's dying.
The two children has to watch her cousin just destroy
American medicine. Really important article to.
Speaker 6 (07:44):
Read, Sabi.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
One of the things we have to always decipher is
when Trump's trying to say something stupid to not talk
about the Epstein files and his other failures as a president,
and then when there saw that's really stupid, but also
gets that a greater thing that they're going to try
to do with this administration, and that is his new
aggression where he says all of Joe Biden's autopen signed
(08:06):
executive orders are all canceled out.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
Yeah, go find the picture of Donald Trump in mar
A Lago this weekend. I think that Tim Miller tweeted
it out. He does not look great. He does not
look great, but he's very worried about Joe Biden's autopen pardons.
He can't do that, you know, Like, my man's just
truth in it out right. He's truth socializing again and
(08:32):
again and again, trying to find something that I'll stick.
You're more likely to get a twenty five hundred dollars
Trump check than you are for Donald Trump to be
able to cancel Biden's autopen pardons or whatever else he
wants to cancel. Rick Wilson is the founder of The
Lincoln Project and the host of the Enemy's List.
Speaker 6 (08:53):
Rick Wilson Welcome.
Speaker 7 (08:54):
Back, Hey Molly, how are you. How's your Thanksgiving?
Speaker 6 (08:57):
Just the best? Who doesn't love Paul Dray?
Speaker 7 (09:00):
Absolutely we serve Duck this year.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Yeah, because Turkey is terrible. Let's start with a man
called Steve. It turns out that being from a wealthy
real estate dynasty does not necessarily make you a genius negotiator.
Speaker 6 (09:17):
A negotiator.
Speaker 7 (09:19):
Yeah, No, I mean, look, I think I think the
most probably the ugliest, most devastating piece.
Speaker 6 (09:24):
Folks.
Speaker 7 (09:24):
You if you think you have a calibration on how
corrupt this administration is, go read the Washington Post piece
from this weekend on Witkoff and Kushner and Trump who
do not care about Ukraine or America's security. They're trying
to make personal financial deals with Russia. The classes of
course betraying Ukraine, but they want to make these financial
(09:46):
deals with Russia to cash in. It is a level
of corruption that even with these guys, I still look
at and go, uh what how Yeah, it's dark, It's true,
it's dark.
Speaker 6 (09:57):
It's dark.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Also important to remember that Witkoff is also negotiating with
a guy who is also not serving in the federal government,
my man Jared Kushner.
Speaker 7 (10:11):
And look, Molly, what we've got here is Kushner and
Witkoff and this clown show with Marco. They have now
in order to make separate side financial deals, taken the
bait with a Russian written, Russian design plan to end
the Ukraine War. Oh it's going to end, all right,
It's going to end with Russian troops and tanks in
(10:32):
the streets in Kiev. And so these guys have shown
us now abundantly clearly they are not about NATO American
security Ukraine. They're about making separate side deals. Like one
of wit Coss friends is a guy who wants to
buy the Russian nord Stream pipeline, and they are in
(10:53):
these rare earth mineral deals in Russia, and they want
to make do development deals in Russia. All of it
is so profoundly carre up. And the Russians are once
again playing Trump and everyone around him like a fiddle.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
And I think it's important to see that not only
are they trying to cash in, but they're also just
completely incompetent like Russia. You know, there's leaked transcripts of
the phone calls with the Russian and Russian minister trying
saying like this is how you negotiate with.
Speaker 7 (11:22):
Trump, when wik Coff is on the phone saying to
the Russians, here's how you manipulate Trump, Here's how you
get Trump. Here's how you make Trump bark like a dog.
I'm sorry, call me old fashion and traditionalist, but that
strikes me as sort of treasony.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
And also just incompetent, and that I think the wit
coough incompetence really does. You know, they're corrupt, but they're
awesome incompetent, and.
Speaker 7 (11:50):
So right, you can be corrupt and stupid. It's it's
a Venn diagram that overlaps very neatly with these people.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
And by the way, thank god, because these guys were
good at what they did, we would not have these,
you know, leaks of the transcripts, leaks of the you know,
we would not have the kind of reporting we're starting
to see coming out. And by the way, think about
if we had a mainstream media like we had in
twenty sixteen, think about of the reporting we'd be getting
(12:18):
every day, Tron the documents.
Speaker 7 (12:21):
And now they're so afraid to cover a story. They're
so afraid to stand up. They're terrified every minute of
the damn day that they're going to end up on
the new White House social media hate list.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Right, which was offline for a little bit today, which
I think is a great metaphor for this admin.
Speaker 7 (12:39):
It is a singularly perfect metaphor for this administration, because
none of these people, when it comes to capability and
competence of anything. Even their trolling is bad.
Speaker 6 (12:50):
Right right right, you know, even.
Speaker 7 (12:51):
Their trolling attempts are blame.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
That gets us to this next story, which is in
the New York Times today, which if you haven't read it,
it's rat avoid, which is my man, everyone's favorite, and
by by everyone, I mean no. One's favorite David David
Sacks all in podcast bro, crypto king and also kleptocrat.
Speaker 7 (13:12):
Yes, David Sachs, who is a man who is never
not wrong. David Sax is wrong this ratio. Look, I
get things wrong all the time, but David Sax is wrong.
This ratio is cosmic. It is he is beyond the
valley of human understanding. How much of a wrong dipshit
he is about everything.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
Except using his government connections to make money, and in
which that good about that?
Speaker 6 (13:41):
Yeah, pretty freaking good at that.
Speaker 7 (13:43):
This is a guy who you know, Susie Wiles even
said in that he re good piece. And it's like
Susie Willer's like, no, you can't host this under the
brand of your podcast.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
Yeah, and does government.
Speaker 6 (13:57):
Employee for Fox sake.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
David's ax is basically a sort of mini Elon Right.
Elon comes in, he does government deals, he slices and
dices things he doesn't like, and that's what this is,
except is smaller but more corrupt, but also more annoying
for any numberle reasons.
Speaker 7 (14:19):
Look, he's also the guy who is in charge of
in the White House crypto and AI. And we know
two things about this right now. We know that crypto
is on a free fall right now, But I was
told it was going to be the best thing since
prepared mustard for people and our economy. Not so much apparently.
Speaker 6 (14:36):
And the other thing.
Speaker 7 (14:37):
He's doing is AI, which is increasingly people are figuring
it out. The reason we're doing AI is to fire everybody.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
Right. Well, that in itself is bad, but even worse
is that it seems so far what we've seen is
that it just it has, as far as I can tell,
almost no use except like sloppy photos and bad search.
Speaker 6 (15:02):
Well.
Speaker 7 (15:02):
Look, I mean, we're only going to invest one point
five trillion dollars right through the government, by the way,
as what helps Sam Waltman, that's what it does.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Yeah, imagine if they spend that money on like healthwarding healthcare.
Speaker 6 (15:19):
Fuck healthcare.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
I mean, yes, we spend that money in healthcare, but
like reporting or.
Speaker 7 (15:26):
Like imagine Molly, if they spent that money in education
and just straight up education for American kids, right, I mean,
imagine that for one second.
Speaker 6 (15:36):
You know, all the arts, all.
Speaker 7 (15:38):
These all these studies that are coming out this week,
Like you know, people no longer view college as a
worthhole investment. Well, of course they don't, because now you know,
you're talking about spending one hundreds of thousand of dollars
and AI is about to suck out the very life
out of every job sector that that doesn't involve, like
turning a wrench or wiring a circuit.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
I think that some of this sayah stuff is really
exaggerated and so like, because I see a lot of
shit that's just.
Speaker 7 (16:06):
Your lips, for God's ear. But I still have very graves.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Let's move on to whiskey Pete, my.
Speaker 6 (16:15):
Man, whiskey, love our boy Pete.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
It turns out that active alcoholism is not I say,
this is someone who's been sober since I was eighteen,
not not the best qualification for doing.
Speaker 7 (16:28):
You know, I think, I think there are a lot
of people who have held that that is the case
for some time now, that being a you know, five
a day drunkard is not where you want to be.
If you're any secretary of defense. Having known a few
secretaries of defense, they generally are are men of probity
and discipline, and they are not crazy people who spend
(16:49):
more time on social media than they do working to
defend the country.
Speaker 6 (16:52):
But that's whiskey Pete. Right there, let's just talk about this.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
He basically tweeted that he does war crimes.
Speaker 6 (16:59):
Fucking you.
Speaker 7 (17:01):
The answer was, I do war crimes. Fuck you.
Speaker 6 (17:03):
Yeah, what are you going to do about it?
Speaker 1 (17:05):
But not so unlike Secretary Christie, who was on the
Sunday shows saying, I defy court orders. What are you
going to do about it?
Speaker 7 (17:16):
Yeah? By the way, christinome appears to increasingly be made
out of some sort of synthetic material.
Speaker 6 (17:23):
I like it.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
We don't criticize plastic surgery on this podcast.
Speaker 7 (17:27):
Listen, everything everything in its place, and everything that's measure right.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
But second Christie, she certainly had a lot of.
Speaker 7 (17:34):
Basically, she basically came out today and was in a
position of saying.
Speaker 6 (17:38):
Oh, well, I don't care, right, I do work.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
I do work crimes, right, Yeah. I mean the question
of whether, like notice the SYMPI I do war crimes,
whiskey Pete. What I mean the reporting we saw today
is that after they had blown up the ship, they
may have, whiskey Pete, I have ordered for them to
(18:02):
go back and kill the two other people that they
thought may or may not.
Speaker 7 (18:06):
Here's the thing, and I'm just I'm just gonna summarize
this right off the bat. Everything that they say about
the President has never issued in an illegal order or
the or the administration has never issued an illegal order
that was an illegal order, that was an illegal order.
There is no such thing an American military doctrine in
the Uniform Code of Military Justice that says no quarter
(18:29):
given just doesn't exist.
Speaker 6 (18:31):
It doesn't exist. In fact, we are required.
Speaker 7 (18:34):
And the example that is cited in the Manual of
the Uniform Code of Military Justice in this country. The
example that is cited says uses a case of what
if people are on a boat and they're and they're
injured and out of combat, and what do you do?
Speaker 1 (18:49):
Then?
Speaker 7 (18:49):
Are you allowed to kill them?
Speaker 6 (18:50):
And the answer is.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
No, except if you're whiskey p and then the answer
is yes. Even though you're not in a war, right
you've declared war whatever, right you're you're not in a war.
Speaker 7 (19:03):
But you're in a you're in a imaginary conflict with
supposed drug dealers who are allegedly taking these boats that
have like a two hundred mile range, and they're they
have to stop to refuel like seven times if they're
gonna get to America. But you better you better shoot
him out of the water right now, because obviously Donnie
(19:25):
will be unhappy unless you do.
Speaker 6 (19:27):
Let's talk about what else we're seeing here.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
So we have this poll that came out today that
was pretty fucking devastating. It was, I mean that the
morning console you saw that.
Speaker 7 (19:40):
Yep. Look, Trump's numbers are basically cratering. They're not coming back.
There's nothing he is doing, and frankly, nothing he can do,
Molly to make this thing change. It's not gonna change.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
Right.
Speaker 7 (19:55):
He has killed his presidency. Anybody who doesn't get that
by now he's not paying attention. He has killed his
presidency economically and politically and temperamentally and morally and from corruption,
and it's all going downhill from here. It is never
going to get any better. This is not a world
where where people are gonna wake up tomorrow go You know,
(20:17):
Trump's had a really chaotic one hundred and ninety seven
days or whatever the number is now. But you know,
I'm really gonna give him a chance now because obviously
this is a guy who really, really, he's putting it
all out there, he's really doing his best.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
He's not. But it is interesting to me that we
have gotten ourselves into such a moment here where there
is so we have these these these cratering numbers we have.
He's underwater on everything. Yep, Affordability continues to be this
(20:49):
sort of.
Speaker 7 (20:50):
The bleed underneath everything with him is affordable right for
economy is kill laying him. And here's the funny part
of this. You know that thing we always talked to
in the first administration, like there wasn't a lot of
adult supervision, but there were occasionally people who would go, sir,
we can't take this argument because no one will buy it.
Speaker 6 (21:08):
Right right now, when he.
Speaker 7 (21:10):
Says the economy is the best it's ever been, were
the hottest country in the world, every single person in
that White House it says, yes, sir, you're absolutely right.
There's no there's no dispute. Here's a poll that says so,
and it's it's all a lie and they're doing him
a massive disservice. But I'm here for that.
Speaker 6 (21:27):
Can we do carry on, Susie Wiles?
Speaker 1 (21:29):
Can we do a minute on what the problem the
Trump's big problem here because it is you know well,
but it's also he has an unreality problem. Right His
polls are he says his polls are great. He says,
his numbers are great. He says, the economy is great.
Speaker 7 (21:47):
And that's why we definitely haven't released the numbers because
they're so great. We can't release those numbers.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
But it is like when you have problems like that,
when you get into a sort of unreality problem which
his president has, there's no way out of it. Explain
to us what that is about.
Speaker 7 (22:03):
Yeah, Molly, A big part of this problem is once
you've decided, once you go all in on the bullshit,
once you go all in on saying the sky is
purple and not blue, you know, and Donald Trump, you know,
weighs one hundred and seventy five pousies more fit than
an AVC, and all the other garbage, all of that stuff.
It eventually adds up to where when you have to
(22:26):
tell the truth about something, even if it's something that's
actually good for you, nobody buys it. This is the
boy who cried wolf over and over and over again.
And unfortunately for Trump, you know, being the boy who
cried wolf, it runs directly up against the actual economic
realities of every American. Every American family knows the economy sucks.
(22:47):
They get it. They see it. They know their groceries
are more expensive. They're in the grocery store, they're swiping
that credit card to that ATM card in the grocery store.
They're paying those prices at the gas pump.
Speaker 6 (22:57):
None of that.
Speaker 7 (22:58):
You can't bullshit people away from what's really happening in
their actual lives.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
One of the things Trump does, though, which I think
is interesting and I'd love you to talk about, is
he'll say, well, maybe we'll do a check, a dividend
check for techs. Sure, right, there's no way he can
do this, right, there's this one.
Speaker 7 (23:18):
There is zero mechanism for doing this. And I will
tell you one other thing that I've heard over the
weekend from a person who was involved in the first administration. Yes,
told me that when they did the COVID checks, the
stimulus checks for COVID, that was one thing. There is
no appetite in Congress now at all to do a
(23:40):
fake tariff check. He could not get it through the House.
There are enough conservatives in the House. And I mean
that in the old way, the small sea way in
the House. Who are they going to go, oh, no, oh, no,
we're not spending X billion dollars to give out or
trillion dollars to give out two thousand dollars checks.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
Which gets us to the Mike Johnson problem, which is
Donald Trump does not have a Speaker of the House
who is a Mitch McConnell. He doesn't even have god
Kevin McCarthy. He's got a man who basically has At
this point, we are in discharge petition paloozo, which means
(24:20):
a discharge petition is when the House decides, fuck leadership,
these are things we want to vote on.
Speaker 6 (24:27):
We're just going to bring them up ourselves.
Speaker 7 (24:29):
We're just going to deal what we want. I mean, really,
it is. It is the end. It is the end
of the traditional speakership, all right, it is. It is
a It is a total departure from what used to be.
You know, remember, the House already decided, at least the
Republicans said they're not going to be a part of
the traditional tripartite government of having a legislative branch. They
(24:52):
already decided that, they already said.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
Up their power because they let Trump and Russ Vought
take over.
Speaker 7 (24:58):
That is correct, And because of that, we're now in
a position where no one in the House can say
no to Trump. Right, No one in the House can
say stop it, you're being crazy, or we won't do this.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
But can I just say, no one in the House
leadership can. But Republicans in the House who are not
in leadership, with these discharge petitions, have very vocally said,
we don't have a fuck what Donald Trump wants.
Speaker 7 (25:25):
I mean, there's a number of people that are supporting
these discharge petitions. Is rising, not falling, This is not
It's not going to ever get any easier. And in
terms of the spending to do the imaginary doze checks
or the imaginary tariff checks would require them to pass
a spending bill, as we have seen, they are not
(25:45):
great at passing spending bills.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
Right, No, now, they are very much not great at
passing spending bills. I think that is a great a
mild way of plate, a mild way of placing.
Speaker 6 (25:58):
Rick Wilson, Maud John Fast. Will you come back?
Speaker 7 (26:01):
I sure will.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
Kate Compton Barr is the founder of Can't Win Victory
Fund and a candidate in the Republican primary for North
Carolina's fourteenth congressional district.
Speaker 8 (26:16):
Welcome to Best Politics, Kate bar Time, Ollie, thanks for
having me.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
So glad to have you. You're running for Congress and
you're definitely gonna win. Absolutely, explain to us what the
play here is.
Speaker 8 (26:29):
Yeah, So I'm running for Congress in North Carolina's fourteenth
congressional district, which is super jerrymanderd.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Who's the candidate you're running against? And what beliefs does
he have about women?
Speaker 8 (26:41):
Go? Yeah, So I'm running against the Republican incumbent Tim Moore,
and I'm actually running in the Republican primary against him.
So I changed my letter in order to run in
the election that counts in our jerrymandered district.
Speaker 9 (26:57):
Tim is known as a bit of a woman.
Speaker 6 (27:00):
I would say. He actually got sued for.
Speaker 8 (27:02):
Alienation of affection by the husband of one of Tim's girlfriends.
So I don't know, folks should go look at a
picture of him and decide how they feel about that.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
Oh yeah, can you explain what that is?
Speaker 6 (27:17):
Yeah?
Speaker 8 (27:17):
So, alienation of affection basically means stealing someone's spouse in
the South and out to be a thing you can
get sued for down here.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
So embattled North Carolina House Speaker Tim Moore to run
for Congress. So he already had some problems back in
twenty twenty three when he originally ran. So he's only
one term congressman. Yeah, and he has a lot of ladies.
I think it's fair we don't talk about the way
(27:49):
men look here because we don't want to objectify them.
Speaker 6 (27:52):
Yes, correct, not hot though not.
Speaker 8 (27:55):
Twing to do the opposite of objectifying him. He is
a one term congressman, but he was actually the leader
of the state House, and he did about five terms
in the North Carolina State House.
Speaker 6 (28:07):
And there he met lots of women. Apparently he did
meet a lot.
Speaker 8 (28:11):
Yeah, that's him there he is, because we're not talking
about appearance. I also should throw out there that he's
shorter than me. Just I mean, you could be seven
feet tall.
Speaker 6 (28:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
And also he could have a lot of game, do
you guys.
Speaker 9 (28:26):
I mean, he clearly has a lot of work in there.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Yeah, because the fact that he has multiple girlfriends, so
much so that ex husbands are suing him.
Speaker 8 (28:36):
Yes, this has hurt. He drives a maserati. So maybe
it's about the car.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
Oh does he come from money?
Speaker 8 (28:43):
Well, he has been a government employee for quite some time,
and I think he's just done really well for himself
in the stock market.
Speaker 6 (28:50):
If you know what I'm saying. Wow, Wow, all right,
So here we go.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
This is Tim Morris. You run against Tim Moore. He
has been a member of Congress for a year and change.
Why are you running in a Republican primary in an.
Speaker 6 (29:05):
R plus eleven ish? Yeah? Tell us why?
Speaker 1 (29:10):
So?
Speaker 8 (29:11):
I don't know if y'all saw North Carolina got further jerrymandered,
Like our state legislature drew new congressional maps a few
weeks ago, and we already had jerrymandered maps, so they
just like pushed it farther to try to get yet
another congressional seat. And basically what that means for voters
is that there's no competitive congressional district in our state
(29:34):
when you look at the general election, and we have
to run where the competition actually happens, which is in
primary elections. And in order to run in a primary
election that matters, I have to be a Republican because
the Republican primary is what will determine who goes to
Congress from my district.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
What does your Republican primary look like? Is in an
open primary? What just sort of explained us the math
of your North Carolina primary, Because like I feel like
things are so bad for Republicans. I'm going to caveat this,
and anyone who listens podcast knows this. But things are
so bad for Republicans that plays like this would seem
(30:12):
insane could theoretically work.
Speaker 8 (30:15):
Yeah, the math is really interesting here. So in North Carolina,
we have a partially closed primary, meaning that folks who
are registered Republican can vote in the Republican primary, and
folks who are registered unaffiliated can pull the Republican primary ballot.
Speaker 6 (30:30):
The primary is on March third.
Speaker 8 (30:32):
And North Carolinians are pretty smart and so the majority
of North Carolinians, especially in my district, are registered unaffiliated
because they know how this game works. The district has
five hundred and forty four thousand people in it, and
our estimated win number, because primary turnout is so low,
is thirty three thousand votes.
Speaker 6 (30:51):
And that's where it gets kind of nuts.
Speaker 8 (30:54):
And why someone like me who's running a completely progressive
platform could win a Republican prime.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Wow, what would you need? You would need how many
votes to win?
Speaker 6 (31:06):
Thirty three thousand? Wow?
Speaker 8 (31:08):
Yeah, so tell me how you do this. So the
district is thirty eight percent unaffiliated. Plenty of those folks
are left leaning. A tricky piece of all of this
is I'm kind of a woman with no party because
the Republican Party obviously is not supporting my candidacy in
any way. And then I'm not a Democrat, so the
(31:29):
Democratic Party is not supporting my candidacy in any way,
which means we don't have any builtrastructure infrastructure.
Speaker 9 (31:37):
But that's also kind of awesome.
Speaker 8 (31:39):
So we're going to go deep old school grassroots, like
Neighborhood Captains a lot of lit drops. We are going
to do like holiday gift bundles with hot chocolate and
a cookie in them and some vote for Kate Barr
stuff attached to it as part of that lit drop.
I'm hoping to do something called drunk dairymandering out in Gastonia.
Speaker 9 (32:03):
What does that mean? In January? What does that mean?
Speaker 5 (32:06):
Yeah?
Speaker 8 (32:06):
Yeah, So drunk dairymandering is when we invite people who
are funnier than me and musicians who are more talented
than me to come and be awesome, and then in
the middle of it, I get kind of drunk and
try to give everyone the history of jerrymandering.
Speaker 9 (32:23):
So it's like hiding vegetables inside a grilled cheese.
Speaker 6 (32:27):
Right, Yeah, does that work? Yeah?
Speaker 9 (32:31):
Surprisingly, people will show up for a thing like that.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
No, I meant hiding the vegetables and the grilled cheese.
Speaker 9 (32:36):
Oh, it works on one of my children, but not that, right, Yeah,
my daughter is.
Speaker 6 (32:40):
Way too smart for that. I mean my kids.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
I'm not allowed to talk about them, but if I were,
I would say that that has never worked. But also
I've never cooked for them. So the question here is
someone in a blue state of blue city far away,
what's appetite like for this? So far, it seems pretty high.
Speaker 8 (33:00):
I mean, I've been running this for two weeks now,
so it's early days and this is going to be
a real sprint. But we had a town hall on
Wednesday night and I booked a room that would hold
twenty five people and we ended up with fifty folks there.
So people are really curious about what's going on. We're
also in this moment, at least my opinion, like we've
(33:22):
used to think about politics on this continuum from Democrat
to Republican and people kind of fell somewhere on that.
But I think there's a different continuum happening, and that
is status quo to disruption, burn it down, And I
don't think that is as related to party so much
as it is to frankly age and life experience. A
(33:45):
lot of folks in this district are in a burn
it down place, and this candidacy is exactly that.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
I think that there's a lot of burn it down
going on here. And let me rephrase that. I know,
just anecdotally, that there's a lot that people are very mad,
and that they are mad at Trump for sure, but
that my man, Chuck Schumer and the rest of the
(34:12):
crowd there, they are not you know, it's not twenty sixteen,
it's not Orange Man bad retweet if truth.
Speaker 8 (34:18):
Yeah, yeah, it's really true. And I mean, I frankly
share that feeling.
Speaker 6 (34:23):
I think a lot of us do.
Speaker 8 (34:25):
Yeah, and we're but we're in an opportunity where, you know,
we're at the start of something new and it feels
like chaos because it is, but we also have the
chance to build something better. That's what I would like
to be a part of. That's what I want to
keep thinking about. It's not about party affiliation. It's about
what does a better version of democracy look like on
(34:47):
the other side of this, And I think that's a
really interesting conversation to be having with folks.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
Yeah, I think that's right. So let's talk a little
bit about how you do this. So you do you
do grasps roots? You come from grassroots World. Tell us
your background a little bit.
Speaker 8 (35:03):
Yeah, So I have a master's in public health, studied
all the commie community organizers, and then I worked in
behavioral science and persuasive communication for twenty years. Most of
that was remotely for the University of Michigan, trying to
help people make healthier life choices. So my experience is
(35:25):
trying to get people to quit smoking or eat vegetables
instead of sweet treats, which means I am great at
convincing people to do things that maybe feel uncomfortable to
them or that they don't want to do.
Speaker 6 (35:36):
And then for a little bit and there I ran a.
Speaker 8 (35:39):
Company just because I have add tell us about your organization. Yes,
So in twenty twenty four I ran first date Senate
as in the general election as a Democrat, and I
ran what we call it can't win campaign where I
just announced that I lost the day that I filed.
And that means it was like a protest against jerrymandering
(36:02):
the whole way through because in a Jerrymander district. The
outcome is decided before votes are cast. It's just about
how that district is drawn. And my plan was to
go back to my day job at Michigan as soon
as that election was over. But when we started pulling
the data, it looked like that campaign had actually been
successful in terms of driving up voter turnout the reddest
(36:26):
part of my district. That county was actually one of
only eight counties in North Carolina out of one hundred
to turn bluer in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 6 (36:34):
I flipped some our.
Speaker 8 (36:35):
Votes to D votes, about five hundred of them by
our count and I outperformed other state Senate candidates. And
we were like, who knew that telling everyone you were
a loser would actually motivate them to show up for you.
But it kind of made sense, right. These are people
that have not had any politician show up for them historically.
(36:55):
Knocked on one woman's door. She'd lived in that house
for forty years, she's eighty years old, and no candidate
or Canvasser had ever knocked on her door. And she
literally tried to give me a puppy in gratitude. And
so they don't a real Pepper, a puppy, a little baby.
It was like an English spaniel.
Speaker 6 (37:15):
It was very sweet. It's name was Many.
Speaker 8 (37:18):
My daughter's never forgiven me for not bringing that dogs.
That's like I almost never forgive you. I know, it's terrible.
I mean, my husband would have filed paper. So I
did prioritize the family or the puppy, but it.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
Was touch and go.
Speaker 6 (37:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 8 (37:32):
But because that campaign actually had positive outcomes for reaching people,
we launched something called the Can't Win Victory Fund, which
is a political nonprofit that supports candidates running in Jerrymander
districts that it's really hard to get support when you
run in one of those districts, whether it be from
a party or donors or whatever, because you're going to
(37:53):
lose and everybody's focused on the winnable races. But that's
like the democratic obsession with instant gratification. That's not a
plan for the future. So what we do is make
sure that awesome candidates have the skills and tools and
like websites and social media experience and communications training, all
(38:14):
that stuff that they need to run high quality campaigns
even though they can't win.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
So, do you have other places where you're doing that
and what is that?
Speaker 6 (38:26):
Yeah?
Speaker 8 (38:27):
Right now we're focused in North Carolina because North Carolina
filing deadline is December nineteenth, so that's coming right up.
We have been asked to work in Texas and South
Carolina and Tennessee. We had been asked to work in Utah,
but their maps look a little better, so we're going
to kind of see what happens there.
Speaker 9 (38:46):
And we'll just keep growing, frankly, as much as we
can afford to.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
Can you do just like a minute or two on
like when your primary is and how it would work? Yeah,
Republican primary in North Carolina.
Speaker 8 (38:59):
Yeah, so the Republican primary is March third, and Republican
voters and unaffiliated voters will have the opportunity to register
for me.
Speaker 6 (39:11):
Is their prevent and just is it just you and
the incombent? That's it so far?
Speaker 1 (39:17):
Okay.
Speaker 8 (39:17):
If there are Democrats who want to be able to
vote for me, they have until February sixth to change
their voter registration to unaffiliated and they can do that
either on the North Carolina DMV website or down at
their local Board of Elections. It's super easy. It takes
about two minutes and you can change it right back
on March fourth, if you want to.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
Right, that makes sense. I mean, being affiliated doesn't necessarily matter,
especially if it's so jerry mandard.
Speaker 8 (39:43):
Yeah, Actually being unaffiliated is a powerful voter tool if
you don't plan to run for office. If you want
to run for office, you have to be registered to
either party or go collect signatures. Is an unaffiliated But
being unaffiliated is a powerful voting tool for folks in
this state because you can pick your primary ballot, so
you can vote on the ballot that's going to determine
(40:05):
your leader.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
You really have been in it with the jerrymandering. We
talk a lot about the idea that maybe this ends
up backfiring, that this ends up giving them a dummy mander.
Does that feel possible?
Speaker 8 (40:17):
It does, And especially in a couple of districts like
the Texas twenty eighth and thirty fourth, which are like
right on the southern border.
Speaker 9 (40:24):
Places like that, right, the thing that still gives me pause.
Speaker 8 (40:28):
This is like a feature of jerrymandering that we don't
talk about very much. Jerrymandering reduces the number of competitive districts,
which makes voter suppression more efficient and economical because you
have fewer places that you have to suppress the vote
to get the outcome you want.
Speaker 9 (40:47):
And so as I look at the places that we
have ice.
Speaker 8 (40:50):
And border patrol going, those places perfectly align with districts
where we would be concerned where rather not we those
districts perfectly align with places that Donald Trump would be
concerned Latino voters would vote Democrat. So the whole state
(41:11):
of North Carolina, because we have a really competitive Senate
race in twenty twenty six, is.
Speaker 9 (41:16):
Ripe for voter suppression tactics.
Speaker 8 (41:18):
We even saw just two days ago the Greenland, Greensboro
AT and CA and T. The Guildford County Board of
Elections is closing some of the early voting sites in
the student communities and in communities of color, beding that
they don't have resources, but really really right. So the
thing that makes me worried about counting on dummy manders
(41:41):
or on a blue tsunami is that, even if we
have the will for that, I'm worried we're gonna have
a lot of.
Speaker 6 (41:47):
Voters who are afraid to go to the polls.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
Kate Barr, I hope you'll come back.
Speaker 9 (41:52):
I would love to. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
No moment soon Rick Wilson, Well, I junk fast, you
are an amazing assistant.
Speaker 6 (42:05):
Now I'm reading these.
Speaker 1 (42:06):
On On did a really good piece about this in
The Times about how if the fancier you are, the
less you have to know how to spell or punctuate, which.
Speaker 7 (42:14):
By the way, I'm not unfancy, but spelling and punctuation
is not Jeffrey Epstein's trunk suit.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
It's not his milieu. But speaking of which, he did
spend a lot. He wrote a lot of emails to
a lot of people, including.
Speaker 6 (42:28):
Steve, our good friend, Steve scablrd Bannon.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
So let's talk about these emails.
Speaker 7 (42:33):
Well, he's helping Steve do travel arrangements from Europe. He's
giving Steve advice on dealing with European political leaders because
Bannon wanted to set up his Nazi Hogwarts school over
in Italy.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
Oh right, remember Nazi Hogwarts. I forgot about that from
season one.
Speaker 7 (42:48):
Oh I remember it very well because I played a
small role in killing Nazi Hogwarts.
Speaker 6 (42:52):
Michell.
Speaker 7 (42:53):
Tell the story another time, but.
Speaker 1 (42:54):
Yes, heartwarming. But in this story, you have a lot
of emails between the two of them. There's a lot
of let's see, Bannon wrote, there's a crazy jihad against you.
I've never seen anything like it, and I've seen a lot. Yeah,
I don't know.
Speaker 7 (43:11):
That there is you know what, I'm just going to say,
Brother Steve has a lot more explaining to do than
he would like to admit.
Speaker 1 (43:18):
By the way, every time he saw Trump criticism, he said,
it's apo, dude, I do this for a living. The
pieces are dropping are deeply researched anyway, So go on.
Speaker 7 (43:27):
Yeah, well, okay, Steve, thanks for talking the lingo, Steve. Strangely,
these people on the right who are hyperactively obsessive about
all things regarding any Democrat, even vaguely adjacent to Jeffrey Epstein,
there's been a massive wailing silence when it comes to
(43:47):
his sloppy Steve and his buddy Jeff who when you
read those emails, folks, Steve Bannon is helping him, and
he said it to him, I can give you MAGA
as a shield. I can help use MAGA to protect
and re form your image. Guys, at this point, we
knew who Jeffrey Epstein was as a human being. This
is moments before he gets arrested on federal charges, and
(44:09):
Steve Bannon has had a total skate on this because
he's on the fucking speed dials of a lot of
reporters and he gets a good quote.
Speaker 6 (44:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
I also think that we're going to see a lot
of stuff. We're going to see a lot of emails,
and we already saw Larry Summer's resign. I think, and look, Democrat, Republican,
lock them all up. We don't care. It's a non
partisan activity.
Speaker 7 (44:32):
If it is Bill Clinton in there, so be it.
Speaker 6 (44:35):
That's it, so be it. Yeah, go for it. Moving on.
Speaker 1 (44:40):
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear the best
minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If
you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend
and keep the conversation going. Thanks for listening.
Host
Molly Jong-Fast
Popular Podcasts
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.