June 23, 2025 • 45 mins
The Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson examines regime change and the potential for a new world war.
The Brennan Center’s Michael Waldman details efforts to protect the vote in the midterms.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds, and Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green says peace
is the answer, so nothing makes any sense.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
We have such a great show for you today.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
The Linked Project z own Rick Wilson joins us to
talk about regime change and why it always works out great.
Then we'll talk to the Brennan Centers Michael Waldman about
protecting the vote in the midterms. But first the news.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
So, Mollie, while our Democratic leadership seems pretty neutered on
the subject of opposing Trump's war with rn AOC is
saying he must be impeached, what do you see him here?
Speaker 1 (00:48):
So a lot of people think that Donald Trump bombing
Iran without asking Congress, which he's supposed to do, and
then only notifying Republicans and not Democrats is impeachment worthy.
This is the reason that I think people are so
angry at Democrats. And they come over to me during
my readings when I'm traveling and they say they're fearous,
(01:11):
and you know why they're fears because they don't feel
that leadership is as angry as they are.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Right, that's why they're mad. They want the democratic leadership
to be as galvanized as they are. You have Americans
marching on the street, you have Americans saying this is
not okay. So if you have that, then why do
you have.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Democratic leadership saying, oh, this is what Israel wants, so
we have to go along with it. I think AOC
is much closer to where are most of the democratic
base is, and you really want leadership to reflect the
feelings of the base, at least in a case like this,
So I think this is a really good example. Now, also,
(01:52):
there were members of Congress who put together a resolution
against the war because they know that no nobody wants this.
The polling on this is terrible. Literally, no one wants this.
This is like one of the dumbest. At least with Afghanistan,
you could at least make the case that nine to
eleven was somehow tangentially involved in this. But with this,
(02:14):
there is no fucking reason. But it is the dumbest,
most pointless thing, and it has nothing to do with us,
and it's just insane. Right Netnyahu has been saying that
Iran has made nukes.
Speaker 4 (02:26):
Forever thirty three years.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Right, we have never had a good experience trying to
enact to regime change. There is zero reason for this.
And let me tell you there are a lot of
members of Congress and here there are fifty forty nine
members of Congress who voted against Trump doing this unilaterally,
and everyone from Rocanna to Thomas Massey to AOC and
(02:48):
there are national security people on that list, people like
Tim Kaine. This is not a lefty or a righty thing.
This is a dummy or a smarty thing. And the
reality is the only people who supported this strike were
Trumpian sick of fans and John Fetterman, who is just
wants to make people upset.
Speaker 4 (03:07):
Well and is also staunchly pro Israeli.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
But this isn't even pro Israel. It is just stupid.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
You say, dumb versus smart.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
But I was told by jd Vance today that the
difference between past problems in the Middle East is that
we had dumb presidents.
Speaker 4 (03:21):
This one's smart.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
I think that's a good hill for him to engage
with the idea that Donald Trump is smarter than other presidents.
That I think that's the play there. I like Jada
Vance on the Sunday shows saying that we weren't at
war with Iran, we were at war with Iran's nukes.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Oh yeah, because that distinction.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
I'm sure the Iranian people will well, absolutely, that will
make a lot of sense.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Meanwhile, little Marco could not even say that Iran was
close to having nuclear power because even that was a
bridge too far for his bullshit.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
But also like regime change, Meanwhile, we have we have
ICE supporting people who are legal. My favorite ICE trope
is that they keep arresting the same people and happy
to let them go. Yeah, so our private military that
wears masks so people can't identify them and arrest people
(04:16):
who are recording them. Those guys, they had an ICE
detainee die in transit.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Okay, so that's they're also killing people. Okay. His six
children have been frustrated. Two of the children said he
had no health conditions before being detained. By the way,
that guy is going to be able to sue. And
it's not even I mean, he's dead, so his family
will be able to sue. It's just this is so
(04:42):
incredibly appalling and disgusting, and our country has just completely
lost its mind, and it's just terrible.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
No.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
We had La City Council Member Hugo Soto Martinez this
week saying that Ice was going to a battered woman's
shelter and looking for immigrants like you want to talk
about like going to the people at the worst moment
of their life. Like this is beyond the cruelty is
the point. This is just literally the most disgusting behavior
(05:11):
you can imagine that no one voted.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
For Yeah, well, I think Steven Miller voted for well.
Speaker 4 (05:17):
I mean, it is his sick mind behind all this.
Speaking of sick minds and the agenda of this administration,
the Trump administration has ordered California to remove gender identity
from sex ed.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
This is so stupid. This is like their favorite culture
war issue. Nobody cares. Nobody cares. Why do you care
what other people say about their gender? It's so I mean,
it's literally like we're a decade into this fucking thing
and all and Trump world has like three things they do,
so here we go. They're punishing LGBTQ kids. The State
(05:54):
Department receives five point eight million dollars, which is like,
that's like how much the military spends on GOM under
the program to teach safe sex practices, HIV prevention and
abstinence to high need its populations, homeless, use minorities, migrant
farm workers, incarcerated use s in foster. I mean, this
(06:14):
is like they're just punishing the most vulnerable people because
they know that that's what the base likes. I am
so depressed every fucking day, and it's like it never
gets better. Rick Wilson is the founder of the Lincoln
(06:36):
Project and the host of the Enemy's List.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Welcome back to Fast Politics.
Speaker 5 (06:39):
Rick Wilson, Molly John Fast how are you?
Speaker 2 (06:42):
I'm good enough, man?
Speaker 4 (06:43):
What good enough? Good enough?
Speaker 5 (06:46):
You're ready to face the new world we live in?
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Of h I found a very cheap dentist who works
on the weekends, and God blessed.
Speaker 5 (06:55):
That's always a it's always a benefit, right.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
So let's talk about regime change.
Speaker 5 (07:00):
You know, it always works out pretty well. As a
as a former fan of regime change, I've noticed over
the over the decades, it rarely happens the way you
think it's going to happen.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Yeah, that's what you know. It's funny because McCrystal, mccraven,
mra mc.
Speaker 5 (07:16):
McRaven, and there's a Crystal Bill there's.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Bill Crystal, there's a Crystal, Yes, McCrystal.
Speaker 5 (07:23):
M H. Stanley.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Stanley was on television talking about how it never goes
the way you think it's gonna go. Correct, when you
start bombing a country you have absolutely no business being
in for any number of reasons.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Discuss been to this.
Speaker 5 (07:41):
Rodeo, tried it before, it didn't work out. We have
case A and case B. Case A George Herbert Walker
Bush my old boss.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
And that one you were in, right.
Speaker 5 (07:55):
Yeah, that was that was the one I was. I
was around for that, for that festivity. That war was
very carefully bounded. We had a bunch of rules where
we said things like and by the way, because I
was a young, hot headed, you know, young dumb ass,
I was like, we should have gone all the way
to beg dde.
Speaker 4 (08:10):
Well then we did.
Speaker 5 (08:11):
We did that the next time around and did not
work out for us the way anyone wanted it to
or thought it. And of course Iran makes Iran. Iraq
is like the the starter level in the video game, uh,
compared to Iran. And I do think it's important we
all we all just acknowledge the Iranian government are some
(08:32):
of the worst possible abusers of human rights in the universe.
They are very, very shitty, horrible bad people, and cautioning
against Donald Trump involving us in a open ended by
the way, because it's never oh it's one and done right. No, no, no,
bless your heart, it does not ever work that way.
(08:53):
Now they get a vote. Now they get to go
out and say, huh, okay, well you did you did
to us with the B two and and these massive
ordinance penetrating weapons. Now we're gonna well up an embassy
or take hostages, or kill Americans or hijacked plane.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
But we don't know.
Speaker 5 (09:10):
They're going to do next, right, and the likelihood of
what they do next sucks.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
I want it also caution that we cannot trust anything
this administration does.
Speaker 5 (09:23):
Right the idea that Trump came out and said and
said immediately and if it was funny because I got
a text message from a former intelligence agency official, very
high level person, who said Trump giving us a battle
damage assessment within minutes after the raid is over, when
the military doesn't know yet how effective it was. And look,
the massive ordinance penetrator weapon is a very powerful device.
(09:46):
We've never used them in combat before. We don't know
what effectiveness they had at for now. They could have
done they could have wiped out the whole thing, or
they could have had an effect. We don't know they
could have. You know, look, when you're fighting uranium with
with you know you have uranium hexafluoride in the in
the refining process, you you better hope that you not
(10:08):
knock the whole fucking thing out, because if the waste
product is splashing around, that's not great either. There's a
lot of things here.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
There's a lock and go wrong. I mean, I think
the top line from smart people is a lock and
go wrong. You're opening the door to any number of
unforeseen consequences.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Uh huh, and the whole justification for doing it doesn't
make a ton of sense.
Speaker 5 (10:31):
Look, I was a admittedly I was a skeptic of
JCPOA at the time. A lot of serious people were.
It wasn't just some of it was partisan, but it
wasn't just partisan. But a lot of people looked at
JCPOA and said, oh, this is explain what j JCPOA
was the international agreement that was spearheaded by the United
States while Barack Obama was president to stop Iranian enrichment
(10:54):
of FISA materials, right, Because folks, it's easy to build
the boss part of a nuclear weapon, building the mechanical
part of the nuclear weapon, the the device is any
any sophisticated country can do it, and Iran is quite
a sophisticated country. Filling it up with all the fissile
nuclear material to make it an actual nuclear weapon is really,
(11:17):
really hard. So this JCPOA delayed that for five years,
and Donald Trump, because he hates Barack Obama and did
not want a deal with Barack Obama's name on it,
killed JPOA, hoping that it would speed up the process
of allowing either the US or Israel to strike the
(11:40):
Iranian nuclear capacity. But what it did was delayed it
so that Iran could build up its nuclear capacity. So
I'm not really sure it worked the way they thought
it was going to work. And now what we have
is the there are some indications that the Iranians evacuated
(12:01):
the ficile material that was absolutely now.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Right, that they may have gotten their heads up.
Speaker 5 (12:06):
Right, And you know, we were we the administration was
certainly flagging it to everybody who would listened for the
few days before, right, But we don't know, we don't
know how much facile material got out, like how much
they were able to exfil trait. We don't know the
severity of the damage yet. It will be severe. I mean,
(12:27):
make no mistake, this is not going to be trivial.
And the Runians are not going to be happy about
this outcome. But we don't have a super clear read
yet on on just how bad it is for them.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
And look, it's not like we have the A team
in this administration, right we have a lot of very
confident people were taken out because he got Pedro.
Speaker 5 (12:50):
Del Drunko and a bunch of these idiots. You've got
his own head of the Director of National Intelligence, Gabbert
has been completely sidelined. She's not involved in any of
the discussions or meetings. You've got Marco Rubio looking like
a hostage standing behind Trump today. By the way, I
(13:13):
don't know if you noticed this today on on CBS
Sunday CBS Show, but Marco is sporting a fabulous new
hair piece.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
I did not notice that. What I noticed was Marco
on CBS with the Margaret saying, you know, I thought
that was a great moment.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
He said.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
She said, well, military intelligence that you know had you
know assess is that they have no nukes and he says,
he's he gets very haffy and he's like, how would
you even know what military intelligence is? And then he
goes you can see the wheels sort of turning, and
then he's like, no, wait, He's like, I don't care
about military and doubt intelligence doesn't mean any public intelligence
(13:54):
doesn't mean there is no This is moving so stupidly,
and you can watch it moving through their brains.
Speaker 5 (14:03):
And all their mental processes. You can tell from it
from a distance. All their mental processes are Is Donald
going to be mad at me?
Speaker 4 (14:11):
Right?
Speaker 5 (14:11):
That's all they think. Will Donald'll be angry if I
say something that happens to mistakenly be the truth. And
you can see that with Marco today, he was very
nervous about it. I think we all have sort of
come to the conclusion. I think correctly that essentially what
happened here was bib Datna who manipulated pressured Mojo Trump
(14:33):
into doing this, and they're now all doing what they
always do. They're having to go in reverse and reverse
engineer explanations and excuses and reasons and blah blah blah
for why this was a great idea, and yeah, and
so they'll make up anything to not have to say
the truth.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
I think that's a good point about reverse engineering the idea,
because you know, it feels so much like weapons of
mass destruction now, it feels so oh yeah.
Speaker 5 (15:04):
If you don't have that same vibe, if you don't
have WMD vibes right now, you're not you haven't been
around them, around in this campfire for a while. Because
this is this is the structure, although it was different
with the Bush administration in one key element. They got
Congress to vote for an authorization, right, Donald Trump told
(15:25):
the Republicans in Congress, but not the Democrats.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Right, which is really.
Speaker 5 (15:33):
Which is like unprecedented in its duchiness.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
Imagine if a Democrat did that, but also.
Speaker 5 (15:38):
Much once again the counterfactual world of if a Democrat
did this.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
But also Mike Johnson didn't call anyone back, right, and
you had Thomas Massey. I'd love to have like two
seconds with you about Thomas Massey. Here's Thomas Massey. And
I understand that I do not agree with that man
on almost everything. What I do think it's interesting that
Thomas Massey is standing up to Trump more than pretty
(16:05):
much anyone.
Speaker 5 (16:06):
Right, He's standing up to Trump more than a lot
of Democrats to be.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
That's what I was thinking.
Speaker 5 (16:11):
Why, I mean, there are a lot of Democrats who
are much more accommodated to Trump than Thomas Massey is.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (16:16):
Why, the guy's got nothing to lose, you know what.
He's in a safe district. He's been reelected a couple
of times against Trump's will, and he's kind of a
contrarian dickhead, you know, and sometimes being a contrarian dickhead
and you end up being somebody you don't want to
have to dinner. But he is right, you know, you
got to be honest. He's not wrong about absolutely right.
(16:38):
He's not wrong about the constitutional you know principle here
that you know now way in a worn out with
Iran is out of their fucking mind.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
MAGA has launched from at CEOs a pack in efforts
to oust Massy from Congress, of course, for being insufficient
lay loyal to Trump.
Speaker 5 (17:01):
Naturally, this is my not shocked face. He's a guy
who who you know, has a lot of name mighty
in his district. He's probably not going to lose that seat.
I think that he's a he's a he's a jackass.
But you know, even even seeing one guy in the
in the GOP who's saying the words, know, this is wrong,
(17:24):
this is this is stupid, this is unconstitutional. I mean,
I'm not saying it's some sort of like blessed sense
of relief, but it's so unusual, so out of out
of the normal bounds of the Republican world that you're
kind of like, wow, this is weird.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Yeah, I think it's really important. So let's talk about
where we are right now. Trump still has legislation, the
one piece of legislation he's trying to pass. It is
wildly unpopular. It is being wildly the Senate. What do
you think now? I mean, there's a lot to not
(18:04):
recommend there, but do you think and the House is
sort of they're going back and.
Speaker 5 (18:09):
I think Trump interestingly right now has an excuse to say, oh,
we're at war now you must pass the big beautiful bill. Yeah,
and I think that may have upped its chances a
little bit. But but you know, if there are a
lot of economic externalities right now, if he closed the
straight of hormone, if Iron closes the straight of hormas
(18:30):
and gas prices start to spike and the bond market
loses its mind. There are reasons to say this may
not work out like we thought. I'm not very sanguine
for the bill as it stands right now. If we
weren't shooting game with Iran right now, the bill would
probably be in more trouble. There is a rally around
the flag effect from the anti war party suddenly very
(18:52):
excited about going to war.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
It's just so incredibly stupid. But you think that this
bombing Iran, even though it's so unpopular, the polling is
so unpopular, you think it still has a rally around
the flag effect inside MAGA.
Speaker 5 (19:08):
It does, and I, you.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Know, everybody, even though MAGA Trump ran on not starting.
Speaker 5 (19:15):
You know, I said this to last week, like early
or mid midweek last week, I guess I said to
somebody or on the broadcast or something. I can't remember
now it's all an old ones together. I said, this
will end up being one of those things where MAGA
they are absolutely positively against any kind of new war.
They don't want any of this this neocon foreign policy,
(19:36):
and the minute Trump attacks Iran, they're going to say, well,
of course we had to attack Iran. We love This
is a war worth fighting, right and they are and
and a lot of them you know, you got, You've got,
You've got a lot of these guys who on paper
are the hardcore MAGA influencer types. That's where this fight
is causing. The anxiety for MAGA is at the influencer level.
(19:59):
It's not at it's not at the base, it's not
at the like every day right, it's Tucker, it's Alex Jones,
it's Steve Bannon, and they're all like playing this game,
like Okay, shit, I hate this. But can I get
away with hating it if Trump really wants it? And
the answer is they cannot. If Trump wants a bass
is gonna say I I captain whatever you want. So
(20:23):
I think that's where we're at right now.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
Unbelievably shitty, Oh yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
And opens the door to all sorts of unknown unknowns.
Speaker 5 (20:33):
The the yes to quote Donald Rumsfeld, Yes, And I
do think, Polly, there's a really realistic chance that Iran
is going to do something truly fucking horrible, right right.
I worry about that, and I and I think I
think it was easy for a lot of these boga
guys to go, Well, the Israel's already taken care of
it and it'll be fine. Now. I don't share that view,
(20:57):
I think. I think unfortunately, Iran still gets a vote
in this fight.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
So who is keeping us safe right now?
Speaker 5 (21:06):
Rick Wilson, Well, you know, Molly, I don't know about you,
but if I was looking for a senior national security
official in the Department of Homeland Security, in the counter
terrorism space, which is of course where Iran is extremely
both dangerous and experienced, I would look for a twenty
two year old guy who was deeply inexperienced and had
(21:28):
obviously been like a waiter and a golf caddy or
something like that. That's who I would pick. Oh wait,
that wasn't who I would pick. That's who Donald Trump picked.
We are literally dealing with a Doge style twenty somethingter
dipshit who is in charge of our counter terrorism efforts
(21:49):
these days because he was picked by Sergio Gore, possible
Russian sleeper agent and Trump head of personnel.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Yes, Sergio Gore has a lot of power in the
Trump administration, a lot, and not for seemingly no reason.
By the way, I do, I am curious, like I
wonder what's happening with Elon.
Speaker 5 (22:15):
I think Elon has had a very bad week. His
rocket went boom boom again, and so he I think
has had He's having a world of no fun right now.
The ship ten blew up on the stand. It was
a terrible setback. It's going to set him back a
year or more. From what people are saying. I think
(22:35):
there's a sense in elon world that unless he can
retrain his AI to stop the Wokesters, the world is
collapsing around him a little bit. I don't think Elon's
having a good time right now.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
I just want to go through a list of things
that Trump promised during the campaign, the twenty twenty four campaign,
and I just want for two seconds. Grocery prices would decrease. Nope,
working families would get.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
A tax kis not happening.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
Entitlements, Medicaid, Medicare, social Security would be protected again.
Speaker 5 (23:10):
The opposite is true.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
Balance the budget and pay down the debt, hilarious, and
end involvement in foreign wars.
Speaker 5 (23:21):
Well how's that going? Uh? Look, I often say to
the maga types who who hate listen to my show
and your show. You don't have to like us. But
at some point you have to admit to yourselves you've
been played, that you've been you've been pranked. And I
think there is a is a an unwillingness of course
(23:44):
for them to say, yeah, we've been played. The guy.
The guys, you know, the guys lied to us. He's
jerked us around, he's lied consistently. But after a while,
you have to admit if the world is burning down
around you, if everyone is is, you know, face with
the evidence of the disaster, eventually you have to admit
(24:07):
there's a disaster. And right now for them, this is
this is exactly what they claimed they hated the most,
the liberal international order, the deep state, telling people, you
know what we're going to do in Iran or in
the Middle East. They have gotten everything backward into Trump's
(24:29):
indifference to them. They don't even They're like, it's like
he doesn't give a shit about what they think. He's
having fun right now. He's got bb Net and Yahoo going, yeah, boss,
you did it, you did it. Great work. I mean,
if you saw a net in Yahoo's remarks about Trump yesterday,
I mean it was written by a team of Israeli
(24:51):
psychologists who said, your goal is to is to fellate
Donald Trump mentally so that he obeys everything we wanted
to do forever, because it it's like the greatest president
of all time has done something no one else could
ever do. I mean madness. It was absolutely bonkers, how
manipulative it was. And you know Trump took the bait.
(25:14):
Of course, Bob said, I'm the best, the very best ever.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Thank you, Rick Wilson.
Speaker 5 (25:19):
You are welcome, my friend as always.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
Michael Waldman is President and CEO of the Brennan Center
for Justice at NYU School of Law.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
Welcome to Bad Politics, Michael.
Speaker 5 (25:34):
Great to be with you.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
So I've been on this book tour. My life has
been crazy.
Speaker 6 (25:37):
Every time I go anywhere, all anyone asked me is
how are we protecting the midterms?
Speaker 7 (25:43):
That's good because everywhere I go people ask about your book.
I read the excerpt in Vanity Fair. It's extraordinary. I
can't wait to read it.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
I can't wait offend you.
Speaker 5 (25:51):
So how will we.
Speaker 7 (25:52):
Protect the midterms? It's a good question.
Speaker 5 (25:55):
Right now.
Speaker 7 (25:55):
Of course, we're all seeing and facing this extraordinary effort
to expand presidential power, and there are things Congress can do.
It isn't There are things courts can do some of
them have. We want to make sure those rulings stick,
but ultimately, the voters have to have the last say
and have to have the loudest voice. And you know,
(26:16):
the midterm election is coming up very soon, and in
the last few years there've been really encouraging results where
groups like the Brandan Center, voting rights groups, law enforcement
others have worked with election officials and states to sort
of harden the system. The difference this time is, yeah,
we're going to still have disinformation, We're still going to
(26:38):
have threats of violence. People know how to handle that.
But now we've got the federal government and the hands
of election deniers being weaponized to try to affect and
undermine the elections. So that's what we're really focused on,
is this kind of new threat. I mean, I'll give
you two things I think you know about. There's legislation
in Congress called the Save Act, which would require you
(27:01):
to produce a passport or a birth certificate to register
a vote in the United States. And that's just something
tens of millions of people don't have ready access to.
You know, only half of all people have a passport.
And then there's old women who've changed their names because
they got married different from the birth certificate, all those
kinds of things.
Speaker 5 (27:20):
We think we have the votes.
Speaker 7 (27:21):
We think there are even though it's past the House,
we think there are the votes to block it in
the Senate. So Trump then said, oh, you know, I'll
just do this by executive order. He basically purported to
take over the election system of the United States on
his own. In addition to that stuff from the bill,
it says things like states have to give their data
over their voter rolls over to DOGE.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
That's wild, what could go wrong?
Speaker 7 (27:45):
So we and Elders went to court. We sued, and
the court did a preliminary injunction blocking the worst parts
of that. So that's one power grab. That's one way
in which they're kind of grab for outlandish executive power
and the election kind of together. The other big thing
that's new with the federal government is they've fired only
(28:06):
people who were working on election security, and so we
need to we and others. It's kind of like the
Soviet nuclear scientists. You need to find a place for
these people, and so they can a lot of these
people want to do the work of protecting elections that
they were doing in the federal government, but they can
do it outside the federal government. So it's sort of
we and others are kind of amassing an operation with
(28:29):
these folks, but it comes day after day. I read
today that they made a point a special prosecutor will
look at the twenty twenty election to try to prove again, Yeah,
nearly one. He's pretty focused on all that stuff. So
it's going to be harry between now an election day.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
Do you think we're going to have free and fair elections?
Speaker 7 (28:47):
So I would say I think we will have secure elections.
I think we will can have smooth elections. I think
we can have fair elections. But it's going to take
a really big fight to make it happen. To push
back against this new factor. And when we talk about
free elections, my colleagues always remind me that, you know,
there's a lot of ways in which they're already built
(29:08):
in discriminatory, racially discriminatory things, and other things. So we
shouldn't overly sugarcoat, you know, the elections. But I think
we can have free and fair elections. The idea that
oh Trump's just going to cancel the elections, he can't.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
Now he can't. He can't, and they won't let him
do that.
Speaker 5 (29:24):
No, No, But the.
Speaker 7 (29:24):
One thing that people do worry about is David Frumm
has written this in the Atlantic, you know, who's the
conservative author who's very crupple of Trump, that the stuff
Trump did with the troops in Los Angeles could be
a sort of dress rehearsal for saying, Oh, you know,
I see problems in the blue states around elections, and
I'm going to send the troops in there. And and
(29:45):
he said in the last week, Oh, we're not going
to enforce the immigration laws with our masked men going
in to hotels or restaurants, but we're going to do
blue cities where the voters are illegal immigrants.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
Right, So you could see of thinking there.
Speaker 7 (30:01):
I mean, you know, the troops going to the polling
places is something the state of local officials and law
enforcement and everything have to be really strong about.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
So much of this is illegal what he wants to do,
I mean, from.
Speaker 6 (30:12):
The executive orders down, it's just a.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
Question of whether you have the right people who can
push back on it, right, right.
Speaker 7 (30:21):
I mean, in some cases it's the courts, and you know,
there've been like something like one hundred and fifty rulings
on the executive power questions by trial courts that have
ruled against Trump. But now those cases are in the
appeals courts and then up to the Supreme Court, and
as we all know, those tend to be more political,
(30:42):
more ideological.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
You're thinking about like the Ninth Circuit, right, right?
Speaker 6 (30:46):
Will you explain the story with the Ninth Circuit, because
I don't think our listeners totally understand it.
Speaker 7 (30:52):
Absolutely. It's interesting too because for lawyers for a long time,
the Ninth Circuit was this kind of mythically liberal court.
It's a kind of a reminder of what the real
real deal is now in the federal court. So Trump said, oh,
there's disruption, there's people burning Waymos or whatever, and so
I'm sending in I'm federalizing the National Guard as well
(31:14):
as also sending in the Marines to as his Homeland
Security Secretary Christinom said, to liberate Los Angeles from its
political leadership. And people could say, well, wait a minute,
how can the president do that with the National Guard. Well,
actually the president can federalize the National Guard. It's very rare.
I mean, basically, the last time that a president sent
(31:37):
the National Guard into a state, took over the state
military force under his command without the permission of the governor,
without the governor requesting it of the state was in
nineteen sixty five around Selma, right, they wouldn't protect John
Lewis and doctor King on the march from Selma to Montgomery.
Although it's really interesting I've been looking into Linda Johnson
(31:58):
was so manipulated and George Wallace, the segregationist governor, was
such a skunk that, like, it's a little hard to
tell whether Wallace asked for it or not. And apparently
Johnson went on TV announced that he'd asked for it,
but he was lying. So anyway, it's since nineteen sixty five.
Gavin Newsom government. Newsom said, this is terrible. It's going
(32:19):
to inflame things. We have things, he said. Mayor Bass said,
we have this under control. The LAPD no squishes said
we have this under control. Trump said, no, I've got
the power to do it. Newsom sued, and a trial
court judge Judge Bryer, who is the brother of Stephen Brier,
the former Supreme Court Justice. Judge Bryer ruled no, the
(32:39):
law that Trump used does in fact require governors to agree.
Newsom said, I'm going to take command at noon tomorrow.
Then the appeals court ruled, and you know, with a
trial court it's a single judge, and then it goes
to a panel of appeals judges, and the appeals court ruled, actually,
Trump does have the power to do this.
Speaker 6 (32:57):
And that's because it was the Ninth circ right, which
are the very conservative A short.
Speaker 7 (33:02):
Cut, it's not so conservative, it's actually not. No, it's California,
you know, kind of in the past that used to
be viewed as kind of the hippie dippy circuit. What
was the thinking, Well, the thinking was, look, the law
gives presidents a lot of power here, and we judges
have the power to make rulings on this. Trumpet said,
(33:23):
the courts can't even make a ruling. But they said, oh,
you know, the law gives the president this power. And
it was discouraging but not entirely surprising, because one of
the things we're facing is that the laws around presidents
taking over domestic military, around the use of emergency powers,
(33:43):
the Insurrection Act, all these other very scary tools in
a present's toolbox, the laws are very weak, often in
terms of constraining the present, and it's just self restraint
in the past that has kept Presence from abusing it.
When we come out of this, we need a moment
of massive reform, massive response, massive construction. And part of
(34:06):
the answer is to fix those laws so this doesn't
happen again.
Speaker 6 (34:09):
Yeah, I mean, I definitely think this sort of anti
corruption post Nixstonian, But boss, don't you think?
Speaker 5 (34:19):
Well?
Speaker 7 (34:20):
And those laws, there was a huge wave of laws.
It wasn't just the campaign finance laws. It was the
creation of special prosecutors. It was Freedom of Information Act,
it was the Anti Impoundment Act, which is the thing
they're going to be hearing cases on this year of
Presidence cancers refused to spend money. Was a whole array
of legal protections against an out of control president that
(34:43):
were put in place after Nixon and Johnson too, in
the seventies. For us right now, it's well, what are
the problems we're seeing today, not in the seventies. How
do you deal with the world's wealthiest man paying for
the campaign of the winning presidential candidate, moving into the
way all the contracts for himself, but also being given
power to gut all the agencies. That's never happened before.
(35:05):
What's a lot to stop that? You know, the Insurrection Act. Interestingly,
and this is where you will hear me say something
you won't hear much on this podcast.
Speaker 4 (35:14):
I'm betting.
Speaker 7 (35:15):
Let me say something nice about Mike Lee.
Speaker 4 (35:19):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
Wow, Yeah, you'll remember Mike Lee.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
He recently was in the news for some really really
bad tweets.
Speaker 7 (35:27):
Unbelievable. You know, much of the time he's a principal
conservative libertarian, and then on Twitter he does these awful things.
And he made fun of the shootings in Minnesota and
said they were Marxists who did it and wouldn't apologize.
It's like he's one of these people who are two
different people, you know, when they are at social media
and they think they have to act out. But he's
really in political trouble at home because of it, because
(35:48):
it was so ugly. Anyway, Mike Lee, Rand Paul, a
number of these libertarian conservatives have worked with liberals over
the years on trying to rein in these presidential powers.
So you know, we all came fairly close to making
greater restrictions on emergency powers, restrictions on how the Insurrection
(36:09):
Act could be used, which has not been used. Yet
that gives presence like practically nearly the ability to.
Speaker 4 (36:15):
Declare martial law.
Speaker 7 (36:17):
Not fully things are so scrambled the tariffs. In all
the excitement about the tariffs and their impact economically, can
be really easy to not say, hey, wait a minute,
does the president have the power to do this? The
answer is no, that they don't anymore than they can
set the income tax rate. Trump just declared an emergency
and set an economic emergency and said he could do it.
(36:39):
So there was Among the lawsuits that were filed to
block this, one of the most important ones was filed
by a right wing group called the New Civil Liberties Alliance,
backed according to the media by the Koch Brothers and
our friend Leonard Leo and we at the Brent Center
filed a brief in their.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
Ring of Liberals Everywhere.
Speaker 7 (36:58):
A new name for my holiday card lit. We filed
a brief in their case. We thought it was a
really strong case and also that it was really valuable
when it kind of left and right and center can
speak out unambiguously on this constitutional question that's going to
be one of the big cases of the Supreme Court
is going to have no choice but to decide.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
I think when is that coming up to the court.
Speaker 7 (37:17):
So not in that case, but in a different case
also challenging these tariffs, the Court of International Trade, which
is not hugely known court.
Speaker 6 (37:28):
Yes, please talk about the Court of International Trade, because
I have read about this.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
It's an amazing bit of sorcery.
Speaker 7 (37:34):
Well you've just exhausted the entirety of my knowledge. But
it's in Lower Manhattan. It deals with tariffs, and the
Trump administration wanted these tariff cases to go to that
court because they figured, oh, they'll they won't make some
big ruling. And instead the Court of International Trade unanimously,
one judge appointed by Obama, one judge appointed by Ragging,
(37:54):
one judge appointed by Trump, said presidents don't have the
power to do this. And another trial court in Washington,
d C.
Speaker 4 (38:01):
Did the same thing.
Speaker 5 (38:02):
So this one's interesting. So.
Speaker 7 (38:04):
Michael McConnell is a well known conservative law professor. He
was a federal judge. He wrote in The Times New
York Times that this was going to be the most
important case on presidential power since the nineteen fifties. He
felt there was no way they were going to the
Supreme Court would get away with ducking it, you know,
they're trying to kind of like not make it back.
(38:24):
I have to deal with that, and of course the
impact is huge because we're negotiating supposedly trade deals with
all these countries. There's tremendous economic uncertainty. This is one
again where there's this sort of a scrambling of the
ideological you know, alignments to Wall Street Journal strongly supports
these lawsuits. Trump has decided, as he put it, that
(38:45):
Leonard Leo is a quote sleezebag who hates America or
probably hates America who helped him so much.
Speaker 2 (38:52):
The irony here is pretty amazing.
Speaker 7 (38:54):
You know, look in twenty twenty, when Trump was trying
to lie and claim that he'd really want on the
election and all those courts ruled against him. The number
of the judges who ruled against him were very conservative
judges from the Federal society deep bench, and they were
very conservative, but they weren't bailing Trump personally out. And
it now looks like he wants judges who will focus
(39:17):
on that. I mean, he's nominated this guy, Emil Bouvay, who's.
Speaker 6 (39:21):
His personal well, he's nominated Emil bouv to be on
this to be.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
A court, be a judge, an appeals court judge.
Speaker 7 (39:29):
Wow, he's running helping run the Justice Department. Part of
me thinks like, well, ye know, maybe he'll do let's
damage on the court. But you know, I mean it's
a political loyalty rather than a ideological fealty to conservative
political you know, legal about originalism or whatever. So the
courts are part of this fight. But I think it's
(39:49):
so important that we not like Congress off of the
hook and we not forget that ultimately voters have to
do this. I mean, the judges are not going to
save us. They're really not. I mean, they're going to
play a role.
Speaker 6 (39:58):
Isn't this the I mean we be of Congress, like
how we bear with Congress refusing to exert their power.
They have power when it comes to pay outs, and
also they have power when it comes.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
To the money stuff.
Speaker 6 (40:16):
You know that money is allocated by that. I mean,
they have oversight powers they're not using.
Speaker 7 (40:22):
Yeah, very much so. And as a broad mighter, this
isn't this kind of congressional abdication didn't start yesterday. One
of the reasons that the Supreme Court has itself kind
of grabbed a lot of power and then now the
presidency is also grabbing a lot of power. Is that Congress,
which is supposed to have most of the power in
our system, is paralyzed, can't act or won't act. And
(40:45):
the whole notion of checks and balances in the Constitution
is supposed to be based on the idea that there
is institutional and even personal self interest. The members of
Congress would want to stand up for their power the
present and it's going to want to stand up for
their power, and that they'll battle it out because they're
sort of set up as competing forces. And what's happened,
(41:08):
you know, in recent decades, in part, is that the
political parties have become more and more important. When people say, oh,
we have such weak parties in the United States, that's
true in a lot of ways. But in Congress, when
you're a person is in the White House, people don't
stand up to them by and large anymore. And you
would think that these freezes in spending, these cuts and
(41:30):
spending which affect universities in red states, which affect you know,
veterans programs all over the country, you would think these
members of Congress would would find a way to stand
up without breaking with Trump the leader of their own party.
But sooner or later these Republicans maybe won't happen until
they lose control one or both of the houses. But
(41:52):
they're only you know, they've only got one or two
vote majority in the House of Representatives. You would think
that some of that would happen. The one place we've
seen this play out now for the first time, where
it really is actually shaking things up, is on the
potential attack by the United States on Iran. Again, presidents
have a lot of power when it comes to war
(42:12):
and national defense, and presidence of both parties have wanted
to use it all without Congress getting involved. But there
are laws there too that say, in addition to the Constitution,
that say that Congress has to pass up resolution, the
War Powers Resolution. Remember George H. W. Bush went to Congress.
George W. Bush went to Congress. Obama did not go
(42:32):
to Congress when he started bombing. It's not one party
or another. If we're going to get involved in this
war and start bombing Iran, which is a big country
with the ability to retaliate, you would think that would
be something Congress should at the very least be asked
to approve in advance. And it very well might, you know,
and you're seeing a lot of fights among the Republicans
(42:53):
and a lot of squishings and ducking under the table
among the Democrats.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
On that, Michael, thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 6 (43:01):
I really needed to sort of chop this through without
can really appreciate it.
Speaker 7 (43:06):
Yeah, the answer to your very first question, we can
have free and fair and secure elections in twenty twenty six.
It's going to take more of a fight than it
usually does, and that's the fight we've all got to wage.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
Yeah, such a good point. Thank you, Michael Walson.
Speaker 5 (43:20):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (43:23):
No moment, Rick Wilson.
Speaker 5 (43:28):
Wellie Jong fast is it that time?
Speaker 2 (43:31):
It's that time? Tell us what is your moment of fuckery?
Speaker 5 (43:37):
You know, I think my moment of fuckery is the
fact that Donald Trump refused to brief Congress on these strikes.
Oh I'm sorry, wait, let me rephrase that. He didn't
refuse to brief Congress. He just refused to brief anyone
in the in Congress from the Democratic Party. This is not,
as the kids say, how it's done, how any of
(43:57):
this works. He went and brief the Republicans, not the Democrats. Look,
if we're going to have a constitutional order of any
kind and you want to go to war, Okay, get
an authorization because he went to war with a very
partisan mix of telling the Republicans not the Democrats here.
I mean, when this thing goes sideways. I don't know
if you've heard about this, but war is in the
(44:19):
Middle East occasionally go sideways. Yeah, when it goes sideways,
he's going to say, oh no, everyone supported me. Oh no,
you never called us motherfucker. Yeah, So that's my moment, fucker.
Speaker 2 (44:31):
Rick Wilson, thank you.
Speaker 5 (44:34):
As always, my friend. I'll see you next time.
Speaker 1 (44:36):
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear the best
minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If
you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend
and keep the conversation going.
Speaker 2 (44:56):
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 Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green says peace
is the answer, so nothing makes any sense.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
We have such a great show for you today.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
The Linked Project z own Rick Wilson joins us to
talk about regime change and why it always works out great.
Then we'll talk to the Brennan Centers Michael Waldman about
protecting the vote in the midterms. But first the news.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
So, Mollie, while our Democratic leadership seems pretty neutered on
the subject of opposing Trump's war with rn AOC is
saying he must be impeached, what do you see him here?
Speaker 1 (00:48):
So a lot of people think that Donald Trump bombing
Iran without asking Congress, which he's supposed to do, and
then only notifying Republicans and not Democrats is impeachment worthy.
This is the reason that I think people are so
angry at Democrats. And they come over to me during
my readings when I'm traveling and they say they're fearous,
(01:11):
and you know why they're fears because they don't feel
that leadership is as angry as they are.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Right, that's why they're mad. They want the democratic leadership
to be as galvanized as they are. You have Americans
marching on the street, you have Americans saying this is
not okay. So if you have that, then why do
you have.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Democratic leadership saying, oh, this is what Israel wants, so
we have to go along with it. I think AOC
is much closer to where are most of the democratic
base is, and you really want leadership to reflect the
feelings of the base, at least in a case like this,
So I think this is a really good example. Now, also,
(01:52):
there were members of Congress who put together a resolution
against the war because they know that no nobody wants this.
The polling on this is terrible. Literally, no one wants this.
This is like one of the dumbest. At least with Afghanistan,
you could at least make the case that nine to
eleven was somehow tangentially involved in this. But with this,
(02:14):
there is no fucking reason. But it is the dumbest,
most pointless thing, and it has nothing to do with us,
and it's just insane. Right Netnyahu has been saying that
Iran has made nukes.
Speaker 4 (02:26):
Forever thirty three years.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Right, we have never had a good experience trying to
enact to regime change. There is zero reason for this.
And let me tell you there are a lot of
members of Congress and here there are fifty forty nine
members of Congress who voted against Trump doing this unilaterally,
and everyone from Rocanna to Thomas Massey to AOC and
(02:48):
there are national security people on that list, people like
Tim Kaine. This is not a lefty or a righty thing.
This is a dummy or a smarty thing. And the
reality is the only people who supported this strike were
Trumpian sick of fans and John Fetterman, who is just
wants to make people upset.
Speaker 4 (03:07):
Well and is also staunchly pro Israeli.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
But this isn't even pro Israel. It is just stupid.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
You say, dumb versus smart.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
But I was told by jd Vance today that the
difference between past problems in the Middle East is that
we had dumb presidents.
Speaker 4 (03:21):
This one's smart.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
I think that's a good hill for him to engage
with the idea that Donald Trump is smarter than other presidents.
That I think that's the play there. I like Jada
Vance on the Sunday shows saying that we weren't at
war with Iran, we were at war with Iran's nukes.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Oh yeah, because that distinction.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
I'm sure the Iranian people will well, absolutely, that will
make a lot of sense.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Meanwhile, little Marco could not even say that Iran was
close to having nuclear power because even that was a
bridge too far for his bullshit.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
But also like regime change, Meanwhile, we have we have
ICE supporting people who are legal. My favorite ICE trope
is that they keep arresting the same people and happy
to let them go. Yeah, so our private military that
wears masks so people can't identify them and arrest people
(04:16):
who are recording them. Those guys, they had an ICE
detainee die in transit.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Okay, so that's they're also killing people. Okay. His six
children have been frustrated. Two of the children said he
had no health conditions before being detained. By the way,
that guy is going to be able to sue. And
it's not even I mean, he's dead, so his family
will be able to sue. It's just this is so
(04:42):
incredibly appalling and disgusting, and our country has just completely
lost its mind, and it's just terrible.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
No.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
We had La City Council Member Hugo Soto Martinez this
week saying that Ice was going to a battered woman's
shelter and looking for immigrants like you want to talk
about like going to the people at the worst moment
of their life. Like this is beyond the cruelty is
the point. This is just literally the most disgusting behavior
(05:11):
you can imagine that no one voted.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
For Yeah, well, I think Steven Miller voted for well.
Speaker 4 (05:17):
I mean, it is his sick mind behind all this.
Speaking of sick minds and the agenda of this administration,
the Trump administration has ordered California to remove gender identity
from sex ed.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
This is so stupid. This is like their favorite culture
war issue. Nobody cares. Nobody cares. Why do you care
what other people say about their gender? It's so I mean,
it's literally like we're a decade into this fucking thing
and all and Trump world has like three things they do,
so here we go. They're punishing LGBTQ kids. The State
(05:54):
Department receives five point eight million dollars, which is like,
that's like how much the military spends on GOM under
the program to teach safe sex practices, HIV prevention and
abstinence to high need its populations, homeless, use minorities, migrant
farm workers, incarcerated use s in foster. I mean, this
(06:14):
is like they're just punishing the most vulnerable people because
they know that that's what the base likes. I am
so depressed every fucking day, and it's like it never
gets better. Rick Wilson is the founder of the Lincoln
(06:36):
Project and the host of the Enemy's List.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Welcome back to Fast Politics.
Speaker 5 (06:39):
Rick Wilson, Molly John Fast how are you?
Speaker 2 (06:42):
I'm good enough, man?
Speaker 4 (06:43):
What good enough? Good enough?
Speaker 5 (06:46):
You're ready to face the new world we live in?
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Of h I found a very cheap dentist who works
on the weekends, and God blessed.
Speaker 5 (06:55):
That's always a it's always a benefit, right.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
So let's talk about regime change.
Speaker 5 (07:00):
You know, it always works out pretty well. As a
as a former fan of regime change, I've noticed over
the over the decades, it rarely happens the way you
think it's going to happen.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Yeah, that's what you know. It's funny because McCrystal, mccraven,
mra mc.
Speaker 5 (07:16):
McRaven, and there's a Crystal Bill there's.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Bill Crystal, there's a Crystal, Yes, McCrystal.
Speaker 5 (07:23):
M H. Stanley.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Stanley was on television talking about how it never goes
the way you think it's gonna go. Correct, when you
start bombing a country you have absolutely no business being
in for any number of reasons.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Discuss been to this.
Speaker 5 (07:41):
Rodeo, tried it before, it didn't work out. We have
case A and case B. Case A George Herbert Walker
Bush my old boss.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
And that one you were in, right.
Speaker 5 (07:55):
Yeah, that was that was the one I was. I
was around for that, for that festivity. That war was
very carefully bounded. We had a bunch of rules where
we said things like and by the way, because I
was a young, hot headed, you know, young dumb ass,
I was like, we should have gone all the way
to beg dde.
Speaker 4 (08:10):
Well then we did.
Speaker 5 (08:11):
We did that the next time around and did not
work out for us the way anyone wanted it to
or thought it. And of course Iran makes Iran. Iraq
is like the the starter level in the video game, uh,
compared to Iran. And I do think it's important we
all we all just acknowledge the Iranian government are some
(08:32):
of the worst possible abusers of human rights in the universe.
They are very, very shitty, horrible bad people, and cautioning
against Donald Trump involving us in a open ended by
the way, because it's never oh it's one and done right. No, no, no,
bless your heart, it does not ever work that way.
(08:53):
Now they get a vote. Now they get to go
out and say, huh, okay, well you did you did
to us with the B two and and these massive
ordinance penetrating weapons. Now we're gonna well up an embassy
or take hostages, or kill Americans or hijacked plane.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
But we don't know.
Speaker 5 (09:10):
They're going to do next, right, and the likelihood of
what they do next sucks.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
I want it also caution that we cannot trust anything
this administration does.
Speaker 5 (09:23):
Right the idea that Trump came out and said and
said immediately and if it was funny because I got
a text message from a former intelligence agency official, very
high level person, who said Trump giving us a battle
damage assessment within minutes after the raid is over, when
the military doesn't know yet how effective it was. And look,
the massive ordinance penetrator weapon is a very powerful device.
(09:46):
We've never used them in combat before. We don't know
what effectiveness they had at for now. They could have
done they could have wiped out the whole thing, or
they could have had an effect. We don't know they
could have. You know, look, when you're fighting uranium with
with you know you have uranium hexafluoride in the in
the refining process, you you better hope that you not
(10:08):
knock the whole fucking thing out, because if the waste
product is splashing around, that's not great either. There's a
lot of things here.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
There's a lock and go wrong. I mean, I think
the top line from smart people is a lock and
go wrong. You're opening the door to any number of
unforeseen consequences.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Uh huh, and the whole justification for doing it doesn't
make a ton of sense.
Speaker 5 (10:31):
Look, I was a admittedly I was a skeptic of
JCPOA at the time. A lot of serious people were.
It wasn't just some of it was partisan, but it
wasn't just partisan. But a lot of people looked at
JCPOA and said, oh, this is explain what j JCPOA
was the international agreement that was spearheaded by the United
States while Barack Obama was president to stop Iranian enrichment
(10:54):
of FISA materials, right, Because folks, it's easy to build
the boss part of a nuclear weapon, building the mechanical
part of the nuclear weapon, the the device is any
any sophisticated country can do it, and Iran is quite
a sophisticated country. Filling it up with all the fissile
nuclear material to make it an actual nuclear weapon is really,
(11:17):
really hard. So this JCPOA delayed that for five years,
and Donald Trump, because he hates Barack Obama and did
not want a deal with Barack Obama's name on it,
killed JPOA, hoping that it would speed up the process
of allowing either the US or Israel to strike the
(11:40):
Iranian nuclear capacity. But what it did was delayed it
so that Iran could build up its nuclear capacity. So
I'm not really sure it worked the way they thought
it was going to work. And now what we have
is the there are some indications that the Iranians evacuated
(12:01):
the ficile material that was absolutely now.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Right, that they may have gotten their heads up.
Speaker 5 (12:06):
Right, And you know, we were we the administration was
certainly flagging it to everybody who would listened for the
few days before, right, But we don't know, we don't
know how much facile material got out, like how much
they were able to exfil trait. We don't know the
severity of the damage yet. It will be severe. I mean,
(12:27):
make no mistake, this is not going to be trivial.
And the Runians are not going to be happy about
this outcome. But we don't have a super clear read
yet on on just how bad it is for them.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
And look, it's not like we have the A team
in this administration, right we have a lot of very
confident people were taken out because he got Pedro.
Speaker 5 (12:50):
Del Drunko and a bunch of these idiots. You've got
his own head of the Director of National Intelligence, Gabbert
has been completely sidelined. She's not involved in any of
the discussions or meetings. You've got Marco Rubio looking like
a hostage standing behind Trump today. By the way, I
(13:13):
don't know if you noticed this today on on CBS
Sunday CBS Show, but Marco is sporting a fabulous new
hair piece.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
I did not notice that. What I noticed was Marco
on CBS with the Margaret saying, you know, I thought
that was a great moment.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
He said.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
She said, well, military intelligence that you know had you
know assess is that they have no nukes and he says,
he's he gets very haffy and he's like, how would
you even know what military intelligence is? And then he
goes you can see the wheels sort of turning, and
then he's like, no, wait, He's like, I don't care
about military and doubt intelligence doesn't mean any public intelligence
(13:54):
doesn't mean there is no This is moving so stupidly,
and you can watch it moving through their brains.
Speaker 5 (14:03):
And all their mental processes. You can tell from it
from a distance. All their mental processes are Is Donald
going to be mad at me?
Speaker 4 (14:11):
Right?
Speaker 5 (14:11):
That's all they think. Will Donald'll be angry if I
say something that happens to mistakenly be the truth. And
you can see that with Marco today, he was very
nervous about it. I think we all have sort of
come to the conclusion. I think correctly that essentially what
happened here was bib Datna who manipulated pressured Mojo Trump
(14:33):
into doing this, and they're now all doing what they
always do. They're having to go in reverse and reverse
engineer explanations and excuses and reasons and blah blah blah
for why this was a great idea, and yeah, and
so they'll make up anything to not have to say
the truth.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
I think that's a good point about reverse engineering the idea,
because you know, it feels so much like weapons of
mass destruction now, it feels so oh yeah.
Speaker 5 (15:04):
If you don't have that same vibe, if you don't
have WMD vibes right now, you're not you haven't been
around them, around in this campfire for a while. Because
this is this is the structure, although it was different
with the Bush administration in one key element. They got
Congress to vote for an authorization, right, Donald Trump told
(15:25):
the Republicans in Congress, but not the Democrats.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Right, which is really.
Speaker 5 (15:33):
Which is like unprecedented in its duchiness.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
Imagine if a Democrat did that, but also.
Speaker 5 (15:38):
Much once again the counterfactual world of if a Democrat
did this.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
But also Mike Johnson didn't call anyone back, right, and
you had Thomas Massey. I'd love to have like two
seconds with you about Thomas Massey. Here's Thomas Massey. And
I understand that I do not agree with that man
on almost everything. What I do think it's interesting that
Thomas Massey is standing up to Trump more than pretty
(16:05):
much anyone.
Speaker 5 (16:06):
Right, He's standing up to Trump more than a lot
of Democrats to be.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
That's what I was thinking.
Speaker 5 (16:11):
Why, I mean, there are a lot of Democrats who
are much more accommodated to Trump than Thomas Massey is.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (16:16):
Why, the guy's got nothing to lose, you know what.
He's in a safe district. He's been reelected a couple
of times against Trump's will, and he's kind of a
contrarian dickhead, you know, and sometimes being a contrarian dickhead
and you end up being somebody you don't want to
have to dinner. But he is right, you know, you
got to be honest. He's not wrong about absolutely right.
(16:38):
He's not wrong about the constitutional you know principle here
that you know now way in a worn out with
Iran is out of their fucking mind.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
MAGA has launched from at CEOs a pack in efforts
to oust Massy from Congress, of course, for being insufficient
lay loyal to Trump.
Speaker 5 (17:01):
Naturally, this is my not shocked face. He's a guy
who who you know, has a lot of name mighty
in his district. He's probably not going to lose that seat.
I think that he's a he's a he's a jackass.
But you know, even even seeing one guy in the
in the GOP who's saying the words, know, this is wrong,
(17:24):
this is this is stupid, this is unconstitutional. I mean,
I'm not saying it's some sort of like blessed sense
of relief, but it's so unusual, so out of out
of the normal bounds of the Republican world that you're
kind of like, wow, this is weird.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Yeah, I think it's really important. So let's talk about
where we are right now. Trump still has legislation, the
one piece of legislation he's trying to pass. It is
wildly unpopular. It is being wildly the Senate. What do
you think now? I mean, there's a lot to not
(18:04):
recommend there, but do you think and the House is
sort of they're going back and.
Speaker 5 (18:09):
I think Trump interestingly right now has an excuse to say, oh,
we're at war now you must pass the big beautiful bill. Yeah,
and I think that may have upped its chances a
little bit. But but you know, if there are a
lot of economic externalities right now, if he closed the
straight of hormone, if Iron closes the straight of hormas
(18:30):
and gas prices start to spike and the bond market
loses its mind. There are reasons to say this may
not work out like we thought. I'm not very sanguine
for the bill as it stands right now. If we
weren't shooting game with Iran right now, the bill would
probably be in more trouble. There is a rally around
the flag effect from the anti war party suddenly very
(18:52):
excited about going to war.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
It's just so incredibly stupid. But you think that this
bombing Iran, even though it's so unpopular, the polling is
so unpopular, you think it still has a rally around
the flag effect inside MAGA.
Speaker 5 (19:08):
It does, and I, you.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Know, everybody, even though MAGA Trump ran on not starting.
Speaker 5 (19:15):
You know, I said this to last week, like early
or mid midweek last week, I guess I said to
somebody or on the broadcast or something. I can't remember
now it's all an old ones together. I said, this
will end up being one of those things where MAGA
they are absolutely positively against any kind of new war.
They don't want any of this this neocon foreign policy,
(19:36):
and the minute Trump attacks Iran, they're going to say, well,
of course we had to attack Iran. We love This
is a war worth fighting, right and they are and
and a lot of them you know, you got, You've got,
You've got a lot of these guys who on paper
are the hardcore MAGA influencer types. That's where this fight
is causing. The anxiety for MAGA is at the influencer level.
(19:59):
It's not at it's not at the base, it's not
at the like every day right, it's Tucker, it's Alex Jones,
it's Steve Bannon, and they're all like playing this game,
like Okay, shit, I hate this. But can I get
away with hating it if Trump really wants it? And
the answer is they cannot. If Trump wants a bass
is gonna say I I captain whatever you want. So
(20:23):
I think that's where we're at right now.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
Unbelievably shitty, Oh yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
And opens the door to all sorts of unknown unknowns.
Speaker 5 (20:33):
The the yes to quote Donald Rumsfeld, Yes, And I
do think, Polly, there's a really realistic chance that Iran
is going to do something truly fucking horrible, right right.
I worry about that, and I and I think I
think it was easy for a lot of these boga
guys to go, Well, the Israel's already taken care of
it and it'll be fine. Now. I don't share that view,
(20:57):
I think. I think unfortunately, Iran still gets a vote
in this fight.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
So who is keeping us safe right now?
Speaker 5 (21:06):
Rick Wilson, Well, you know, Molly, I don't know about you,
but if I was looking for a senior national security
official in the Department of Homeland Security, in the counter
terrorism space, which is of course where Iran is extremely
both dangerous and experienced, I would look for a twenty
two year old guy who was deeply inexperienced and had
(21:28):
obviously been like a waiter and a golf caddy or
something like that. That's who I would pick. Oh wait,
that wasn't who I would pick. That's who Donald Trump picked.
We are literally dealing with a Doge style twenty somethingter
dipshit who is in charge of our counter terrorism efforts
(21:49):
these days because he was picked by Sergio Gore, possible
Russian sleeper agent and Trump head of personnel.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Yes, Sergio Gore has a lot of power in the
Trump administration, a lot, and not for seemingly no reason.
By the way, I do, I am curious, like I
wonder what's happening with Elon.
Speaker 5 (22:15):
I think Elon has had a very bad week. His
rocket went boom boom again, and so he I think
has had He's having a world of no fun right now.
The ship ten blew up on the stand. It was
a terrible setback. It's going to set him back a
year or more. From what people are saying. I think
(22:35):
there's a sense in elon world that unless he can
retrain his AI to stop the Wokesters, the world is
collapsing around him a little bit. I don't think Elon's
having a good time right now.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
I just want to go through a list of things
that Trump promised during the campaign, the twenty twenty four campaign,
and I just want for two seconds. Grocery prices would decrease. Nope,
working families would get.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
A tax kis not happening.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
Entitlements, Medicaid, Medicare, social Security would be protected again.
Speaker 5 (23:10):
The opposite is true.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
Balance the budget and pay down the debt, hilarious, and
end involvement in foreign wars.
Speaker 5 (23:21):
Well how's that going? Uh? Look, I often say to
the maga types who who hate listen to my show
and your show. You don't have to like us. But
at some point you have to admit to yourselves you've
been played, that you've been you've been pranked. And I
think there is a is a an unwillingness of course
(23:44):
for them to say, yeah, we've been played. The guy.
The guys, you know, the guys lied to us. He's
jerked us around, he's lied consistently. But after a while,
you have to admit if the world is burning down
around you, if everyone is is, you know, face with
the evidence of the disaster, eventually you have to admit
(24:07):
there's a disaster. And right now for them, this is
this is exactly what they claimed they hated the most,
the liberal international order, the deep state, telling people, you
know what we're going to do in Iran or in
the Middle East. They have gotten everything backward into Trump's
(24:29):
indifference to them. They don't even They're like, it's like
he doesn't give a shit about what they think. He's
having fun right now. He's got bb Net and Yahoo going, yeah, boss,
you did it, you did it. Great work. I mean,
if you saw a net in Yahoo's remarks about Trump yesterday,
I mean it was written by a team of Israeli
(24:51):
psychologists who said, your goal is to is to fellate
Donald Trump mentally so that he obeys everything we wanted
to do forever, because it it's like the greatest president
of all time has done something no one else could
ever do. I mean madness. It was absolutely bonkers, how
manipulative it was. And you know Trump took the bait.
(25:14):
Of course, Bob said, I'm the best, the very best ever.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Thank you, Rick Wilson.
Speaker 5 (25:19):
You are welcome, my friend as always.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
Michael Waldman is President and CEO of the Brennan Center
for Justice at NYU School of Law.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
Welcome to Bad Politics, Michael.
Speaker 5 (25:34):
Great to be with you.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
So I've been on this book tour. My life has
been crazy.
Speaker 6 (25:37):
Every time I go anywhere, all anyone asked me is
how are we protecting the midterms?
Speaker 7 (25:43):
That's good because everywhere I go people ask about your book.
I read the excerpt in Vanity Fair. It's extraordinary. I
can't wait to read it.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
I can't wait offend you.
Speaker 5 (25:51):
So how will we.
Speaker 7 (25:52):
Protect the midterms? It's a good question.
Speaker 5 (25:55):
Right now.
Speaker 7 (25:55):
Of course, we're all seeing and facing this extraordinary effort
to expand presidential power, and there are things Congress can do.
It isn't There are things courts can do some of
them have. We want to make sure those rulings stick,
but ultimately, the voters have to have the last say
and have to have the loudest voice. And you know,
(26:16):
the midterm election is coming up very soon, and in
the last few years there've been really encouraging results where
groups like the Brandan Center, voting rights groups, law enforcement
others have worked with election officials and states to sort
of harden the system. The difference this time is, yeah,
we're going to still have disinformation, We're still going to
(26:38):
have threats of violence. People know how to handle that.
But now we've got the federal government and the hands
of election deniers being weaponized to try to affect and
undermine the elections. So that's what we're really focused on,
is this kind of new threat. I mean, I'll give
you two things I think you know about. There's legislation
in Congress called the Save Act, which would require you
(27:01):
to produce a passport or a birth certificate to register
a vote in the United States. And that's just something
tens of millions of people don't have ready access to.
You know, only half of all people have a passport.
And then there's old women who've changed their names because
they got married different from the birth certificate, all those
kinds of things.
Speaker 5 (27:20):
We think we have the votes.
Speaker 7 (27:21):
We think there are even though it's past the House,
we think there are the votes to block it in
the Senate. So Trump then said, oh, you know, I'll
just do this by executive order. He basically purported to
take over the election system of the United States on
his own. In addition to that stuff from the bill,
it says things like states have to give their data
over their voter rolls over to DOGE.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
That's wild, what could go wrong?
Speaker 7 (27:45):
So we and Elders went to court. We sued, and
the court did a preliminary injunction blocking the worst parts
of that. So that's one power grab. That's one way
in which they're kind of grab for outlandish executive power
and the election kind of together. The other big thing
that's new with the federal government is they've fired only
(28:06):
people who were working on election security, and so we
need to we and others. It's kind of like the
Soviet nuclear scientists. You need to find a place for
these people, and so they can a lot of these
people want to do the work of protecting elections that
they were doing in the federal government, but they can
do it outside the federal government. So it's sort of
we and others are kind of amassing an operation with
(28:29):
these folks, but it comes day after day. I read
today that they made a point a special prosecutor will
look at the twenty twenty election to try to prove again, Yeah,
nearly one. He's pretty focused on all that stuff. So
it's going to be harry between now an election day.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
Do you think we're going to have free and fair elections?
Speaker 7 (28:47):
So I would say I think we will have secure elections.
I think we will can have smooth elections. I think
we can have fair elections. But it's going to take
a really big fight to make it happen. To push
back against this new factor. And when we talk about
free elections, my colleagues always remind me that, you know,
there's a lot of ways in which they're already built
(29:08):
in discriminatory, racially discriminatory things, and other things. So we
shouldn't overly sugarcoat, you know, the elections. But I think
we can have free and fair elections. The idea that
oh Trump's just going to cancel the elections, he can't.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
Now he can't. He can't, and they won't let him
do that.
Speaker 5 (29:24):
No, No, But the.
Speaker 7 (29:24):
One thing that people do worry about is David Frumm
has written this in the Atlantic, you know, who's the
conservative author who's very crupple of Trump, that the stuff
Trump did with the troops in Los Angeles could be
a sort of dress rehearsal for saying, Oh, you know,
I see problems in the blue states around elections, and
I'm going to send the troops in there. And and
(29:45):
he said in the last week, Oh, we're not going
to enforce the immigration laws with our masked men going
in to hotels or restaurants, but we're going to do
blue cities where the voters are illegal immigrants.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
Right, So you could see of thinking there.
Speaker 7 (30:01):
I mean, you know, the troops going to the polling
places is something the state of local officials and law
enforcement and everything have to be really strong about.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
So much of this is illegal what he wants to do,
I mean, from.
Speaker 6 (30:12):
The executive orders down, it's just a.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
Question of whether you have the right people who can
push back on it, right, right.
Speaker 7 (30:21):
I mean, in some cases it's the courts, and you know,
there've been like something like one hundred and fifty rulings
on the executive power questions by trial courts that have
ruled against Trump. But now those cases are in the
appeals courts and then up to the Supreme Court, and
as we all know, those tend to be more political,
(30:42):
more ideological.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
You're thinking about like the Ninth Circuit, right, right?
Speaker 6 (30:46):
Will you explain the story with the Ninth Circuit, because
I don't think our listeners totally understand it.
Speaker 7 (30:52):
Absolutely. It's interesting too because for lawyers for a long time,
the Ninth Circuit was this kind of mythically liberal court.
It's a kind of a reminder of what the real
real deal is now in the federal court. So Trump said, oh,
there's disruption, there's people burning Waymos or whatever, and so
I'm sending in I'm federalizing the National Guard as well
(31:14):
as also sending in the Marines to as his Homeland
Security Secretary Christinom said, to liberate Los Angeles from its
political leadership. And people could say, well, wait a minute,
how can the president do that with the National Guard. Well,
actually the president can federalize the National Guard. It's very rare.
I mean, basically, the last time that a president sent
(31:37):
the National Guard into a state, took over the state
military force under his command without the permission of the governor,
without the governor requesting it of the state was in
nineteen sixty five around Selma, right, they wouldn't protect John
Lewis and doctor King on the march from Selma to Montgomery.
Although it's really interesting I've been looking into Linda Johnson
(31:58):
was so manipulated and George Wallace, the segregationist governor, was
such a skunk that, like, it's a little hard to
tell whether Wallace asked for it or not. And apparently
Johnson went on TV announced that he'd asked for it,
but he was lying. So anyway, it's since nineteen sixty five.
Gavin Newsom government. Newsom said, this is terrible. It's going
(32:19):
to inflame things. We have things, he said. Mayor Bass said,
we have this under control. The LAPD no squishes said
we have this under control. Trump said, no, I've got
the power to do it. Newsom sued, and a trial
court judge Judge Bryer, who is the brother of Stephen Brier,
the former Supreme Court Justice. Judge Bryer ruled no, the
(32:39):
law that Trump used does in fact require governors to agree.
Newsom said, I'm going to take command at noon tomorrow.
Then the appeals court ruled, and you know, with a
trial court it's a single judge, and then it goes
to a panel of appeals judges, and the appeals court ruled, actually,
Trump does have the power to do this.
Speaker 6 (32:57):
And that's because it was the Ninth circ right, which
are the very conservative A short.
Speaker 7 (33:02):
Cut, it's not so conservative, it's actually not. No, it's California,
you know, kind of in the past that used to
be viewed as kind of the hippie dippy circuit. What
was the thinking, Well, the thinking was, look, the law
gives presidents a lot of power here, and we judges
have the power to make rulings on this. Trumpet said,
(33:23):
the courts can't even make a ruling. But they said, oh,
you know, the law gives the president this power. And
it was discouraging but not entirely surprising, because one of
the things we're facing is that the laws around presidents
taking over domestic military, around the use of emergency powers,
(33:43):
the Insurrection Act, all these other very scary tools in
a present's toolbox, the laws are very weak, often in
terms of constraining the present, and it's just self restraint
in the past that has kept Presence from abusing it.
When we come out of this, we need a moment
of massive reform, massive response, massive construction. And part of
(34:06):
the answer is to fix those laws so this doesn't
happen again.
Speaker 6 (34:09):
Yeah, I mean, I definitely think this sort of anti
corruption post Nixstonian, But boss, don't you think?
Speaker 5 (34:19):
Well?
Speaker 7 (34:20):
And those laws, there was a huge wave of laws.
It wasn't just the campaign finance laws. It was the
creation of special prosecutors. It was Freedom of Information Act,
it was the Anti Impoundment Act, which is the thing
they're going to be hearing cases on this year of
Presidence cancers refused to spend money. Was a whole array
of legal protections against an out of control president that
(34:43):
were put in place after Nixon and Johnson too, in
the seventies. For us right now, it's well, what are
the problems we're seeing today, not in the seventies. How
do you deal with the world's wealthiest man paying for
the campaign of the winning presidential candidate, moving into the
way all the contracts for himself, but also being given
power to gut all the agencies. That's never happened before.
(35:05):
What's a lot to stop that? You know, the Insurrection Act. Interestingly,
and this is where you will hear me say something
you won't hear much on this podcast.
Speaker 4 (35:14):
I'm betting.
Speaker 7 (35:15):
Let me say something nice about Mike Lee.
Speaker 4 (35:19):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
Wow, Yeah, you'll remember Mike Lee.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
He recently was in the news for some really really
bad tweets.
Speaker 7 (35:27):
Unbelievable. You know, much of the time he's a principal
conservative libertarian, and then on Twitter he does these awful things.
And he made fun of the shootings in Minnesota and
said they were Marxists who did it and wouldn't apologize.
It's like he's one of these people who are two
different people, you know, when they are at social media
and they think they have to act out. But he's
really in political trouble at home because of it, because
(35:48):
it was so ugly. Anyway, Mike Lee, Rand Paul, a
number of these libertarian conservatives have worked with liberals over
the years on trying to rein in these presidential powers.
So you know, we all came fairly close to making
greater restrictions on emergency powers, restrictions on how the Insurrection
(36:09):
Act could be used, which has not been used. Yet
that gives presence like practically nearly the ability to.
Speaker 4 (36:15):
Declare martial law.
Speaker 7 (36:17):
Not fully things are so scrambled the tariffs. In all
the excitement about the tariffs and their impact economically, can
be really easy to not say, hey, wait a minute,
does the president have the power to do this? The
answer is no, that they don't anymore than they can
set the income tax rate. Trump just declared an emergency
and set an economic emergency and said he could do it.
(36:39):
So there was Among the lawsuits that were filed to
block this, one of the most important ones was filed
by a right wing group called the New Civil Liberties Alliance,
backed according to the media by the Koch Brothers and
our friend Leonard Leo and we at the Brent Center
filed a brief in their.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
Ring of Liberals Everywhere.
Speaker 7 (36:58):
A new name for my holiday card lit. We filed
a brief in their case. We thought it was a
really strong case and also that it was really valuable
when it kind of left and right and center can
speak out unambiguously on this constitutional question that's going to
be one of the big cases of the Supreme Court
is going to have no choice but to decide.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
I think when is that coming up to the court.
Speaker 7 (37:17):
So not in that case, but in a different case
also challenging these tariffs, the Court of International Trade, which
is not hugely known court.
Speaker 6 (37:28):
Yes, please talk about the Court of International Trade, because
I have read about this.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
It's an amazing bit of sorcery.
Speaker 7 (37:34):
Well you've just exhausted the entirety of my knowledge. But
it's in Lower Manhattan. It deals with tariffs, and the
Trump administration wanted these tariff cases to go to that
court because they figured, oh, they'll they won't make some
big ruling. And instead the Court of International Trade unanimously,
one judge appointed by Obama, one judge appointed by Ragging,
(37:54):
one judge appointed by Trump, said presidents don't have the
power to do this. And another trial court in Washington,
d C.
Speaker 4 (38:01):
Did the same thing.
Speaker 5 (38:02):
So this one's interesting. So.
Speaker 7 (38:04):
Michael McConnell is a well known conservative law professor. He
was a federal judge. He wrote in The Times New
York Times that this was going to be the most
important case on presidential power since the nineteen fifties. He
felt there was no way they were going to the
Supreme Court would get away with ducking it, you know,
they're trying to kind of like not make it back.
(38:24):
I have to deal with that, and of course the
impact is huge because we're negotiating supposedly trade deals with
all these countries. There's tremendous economic uncertainty. This is one
again where there's this sort of a scrambling of the
ideological you know, alignments to Wall Street Journal strongly supports
these lawsuits. Trump has decided, as he put it, that
(38:45):
Leonard Leo is a quote sleezebag who hates America or
probably hates America who helped him so much.
Speaker 2 (38:52):
The irony here is pretty amazing.
Speaker 7 (38:54):
You know, look in twenty twenty, when Trump was trying
to lie and claim that he'd really want on the
election and all those courts ruled against him. The number
of the judges who ruled against him were very conservative
judges from the Federal society deep bench, and they were
very conservative, but they weren't bailing Trump personally out. And
it now looks like he wants judges who will focus
(39:17):
on that. I mean, he's nominated this guy, Emil Bouvay, who's.
Speaker 6 (39:21):
His personal well, he's nominated Emil bouv to be on
this to be.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
A court, be a judge, an appeals court judge.
Speaker 7 (39:29):
Wow, he's running helping run the Justice Department. Part of
me thinks like, well, ye know, maybe he'll do let's
damage on the court. But you know, I mean it's
a political loyalty rather than a ideological fealty to conservative
political you know, legal about originalism or whatever. So the
courts are part of this fight. But I think it's
(39:49):
so important that we not like Congress off of the
hook and we not forget that ultimately voters have to
do this. I mean, the judges are not going to
save us. They're really not. I mean, they're going to
play a role.
Speaker 6 (39:58):
Isn't this the I mean we be of Congress, like
how we bear with Congress refusing to exert their power.
They have power when it comes to pay outs, and
also they have power when it comes.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
To the money stuff.
Speaker 6 (40:16):
You know that money is allocated by that. I mean,
they have oversight powers they're not using.
Speaker 7 (40:22):
Yeah, very much so. And as a broad mighter, this
isn't this kind of congressional abdication didn't start yesterday. One
of the reasons that the Supreme Court has itself kind
of grabbed a lot of power and then now the
presidency is also grabbing a lot of power. Is that Congress,
which is supposed to have most of the power in
our system, is paralyzed, can't act or won't act. And
(40:45):
the whole notion of checks and balances in the Constitution
is supposed to be based on the idea that there
is institutional and even personal self interest. The members of
Congress would want to stand up for their power the
present and it's going to want to stand up for
their power, and that they'll battle it out because they're
sort of set up as competing forces. And what's happened,
(41:08):
you know, in recent decades, in part, is that the
political parties have become more and more important. When people say, oh,
we have such weak parties in the United States, that's
true in a lot of ways. But in Congress, when
you're a person is in the White House, people don't
stand up to them by and large anymore. And you
would think that these freezes in spending, these cuts and
(41:30):
spending which affect universities in red states, which affect you know,
veterans programs all over the country, you would think these
members of Congress would would find a way to stand
up without breaking with Trump the leader of their own party.
But sooner or later these Republicans maybe won't happen until
they lose control one or both of the houses. But
(41:52):
they're only you know, they've only got one or two
vote majority in the House of Representatives. You would think
that some of that would happen. The one place we've
seen this play out now for the first time, where
it really is actually shaking things up, is on the
potential attack by the United States on Iran. Again, presidents
have a lot of power when it comes to war
(42:12):
and national defense, and presidence of both parties have wanted
to use it all without Congress getting involved. But there
are laws there too that say, in addition to the Constitution,
that say that Congress has to pass up resolution, the
War Powers Resolution. Remember George H. W. Bush went to Congress.
George W. Bush went to Congress. Obama did not go
(42:32):
to Congress when he started bombing. It's not one party
or another. If we're going to get involved in this
war and start bombing Iran, which is a big country
with the ability to retaliate, you would think that would
be something Congress should at the very least be asked
to approve in advance. And it very well might, you know,
and you're seeing a lot of fights among the Republicans
(42:53):
and a lot of squishings and ducking under the table
among the Democrats.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
On that, Michael, thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 6 (43:01):
I really needed to sort of chop this through without
can really appreciate it.
Speaker 7 (43:06):
Yeah, the answer to your very first question, we can
have free and fair and secure elections in twenty twenty six.
It's going to take more of a fight than it
usually does, and that's the fight we've all got to wage.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
Yeah, such a good point. Thank you, Michael Walson.
Speaker 5 (43:20):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (43:23):
No moment, Rick Wilson.
Speaker 5 (43:28):
Wellie Jong fast is it that time?
Speaker 2 (43:31):
It's that time? Tell us what is your moment of fuckery?
Speaker 5 (43:37):
You know, I think my moment of fuckery is the
fact that Donald Trump refused to brief Congress on these strikes.
Oh I'm sorry, wait, let me rephrase that. He didn't
refuse to brief Congress. He just refused to brief anyone
in the in Congress from the Democratic Party. This is not,
as the kids say, how it's done, how any of
(43:57):
this works. He went and brief the Republicans, not the Democrats. Look,
if we're going to have a constitutional order of any
kind and you want to go to war, Okay, get
an authorization because he went to war with a very
partisan mix of telling the Republicans not the Democrats here.
I mean, when this thing goes sideways. I don't know
if you've heard about this, but war is in the
(44:19):
Middle East occasionally go sideways. Yeah, when it goes sideways,
he's going to say, oh no, everyone supported me. Oh no,
you never called us motherfucker. Yeah, So that's my moment, fucker.
Speaker 2 (44:31):
Rick Wilson, thank you.
Speaker 5 (44:34):
As always, my friend. I'll see you next time.
Speaker 1 (44:36):
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear the best
minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If
you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend
and keep the conversation going.
Speaker 2 (44:56):
Thanks for listening.
Host
Molly Jong-Fast
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