November 24, 2025 • 46 mins
The Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson examines the disbanding of DOGE.
Then American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten details Trump’s dismantling of the Department of Education.
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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 a CBS poll says sixty five
percent of Americans say Trump's policies are making grocery prices
go up. We have such a great show for you today,
the Lincoln Projects own Rick Wilson stops by. We're going
(00:23):
to talk about the disbanding of DOGE. Then we'll talk
to the American Federation of Teachers Randy Winingarden about Trump's
dismantling of the Department of Education.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
But first the news, So, Molly, I think this is
pretty interesting. Actually, so we saw Zorron riz up mister Trump.
Then Trump was dressing like him the next day, which
was very disturbing. But I think it's pretty interesting. We
have Kevin Hassett saying that they will not be cutting
off aid to New York City any longer. Do you
(00:55):
think this is because they can't have any more hits
to the economy and this would be What do you
think is going on here?
Speaker 3 (01:01):
I don't know. And again I wouldn't trust what Donald
Trump says because he changes his mind all the time.
I think Donald Trump who really liked his meeting with Zoran,
feels good about New York City right now. I do
also think that Donald Trump has owns a lot of
real estate in New York and has a vested interest
and has a lot of real estate developer friends in
New York, which is another reason why he might not
(01:23):
try to completely smash our economy. But I do not
have a lot of faith in what this administration says.
And I think that at this point, a decade into
this fucking thing, people should not be taking anything these
guys say as anything but like directly relating to the
next four days, because these guys change their minds all
(01:43):
the time.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Good point, Well, there is some things where there's no
taking it back, and that is just a solito restoring
the GOP's Texas Congressional jerry mender and all right, we're
at a jerrymandering war now.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
You know, no one should be surprised that just as
Alito behaves like he's a Fox News host and not
a Supreme Court justice. This is who my man is.
It's who he's always been. You call on him and
it always ends up like this, zero surprise. Here. Here's
what I would say, Aledo. The big thing that we're
going to wait to see is what the Supreme Court
(02:17):
does on the Voting Rights Act that's coming in June.
There is a chance, and I don't know that it'll
work in time for the twenty twenty six cycle, but
it'll certainly work for the twenty eight cycle where they
strike down Article two of the Voting Rights Act and
they make it so that they don't have to have
these majority minority districts. If that happens, Democrats could be
(02:42):
really fucked when it comes to the South. So we
have to wait. I do not think the Supreme Court
is done trying to fuck around with the congressional maps
for Republicans, so stay tuned. Also, Alito is assigned to Texas,
so it makes sense that he would be the one
who would make this call.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Yeah, so I have to say by you know, I
know you're not as active on Twitter as I am
these days, but one of those weeks where Twitter was
really amazing between Marjorie Taylor, green zoron Nuzzy, all the things.
But one of the real treats we got this weekend
was Twitter announced the new feature where you can see
(03:22):
where the account was started and where it is usually
tweeting from I'm going to shock you here, there's a
lot of foreign actors boosting MEGA.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
I am just completely shocked to learn what we all
have known this entire time, which is that there are
a lot of foreign actors boosting MEGA. I want to
say two things here. There are many prominent So basically
most of Make America Great Again is from like India, Africa,
(03:52):
the global South.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Right.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Here's a great example. The account Magnation x, with nearly
four hundred thousand followers and a bio reading patriot voice
for We the People is from Eastern Europe. Another popular profile,
Avanka News in Avanka Trump fan account with one million followers,
is based in Nigeria. Another one, Dark Maga, is run
(04:17):
from Thailand. Magascope is from Nigeria, Magabacon is in South Asia. Yes,
so it turns out that a lot of the people
who are supporting the MAGA agenda are not real and
this is important for any number of reasons. One, the
Internet is not real life, right, so sometimes there's a
(04:40):
feeling that what we're watching is real when it's not.
And I think that's really important when you're on the Internet,
because there's just a lot of movement that feels like
it's one thing and is really not any so that
I think is important. And then I also think it's
important to realize that like a lot of this is
just not as popular. Trump won by engaging people. He
(05:04):
did not win by changing hearts and minds. He won
by suppressing Democratic turnout. You know, Democrats were not as
engaged as they probably should have been. As someone who
spent the last fucking six months talking about how Democrats
lost Latino voters, I don't think that's a conversation that
needs to be had now, right. I mean, Latino voters
(05:24):
do not like ice going into their neighborhoods, and I
don't think that the Democratic plan to win them back
is going to need to be super complicated, at least
at this moment.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Yeah. That with grocery prices being where they are, yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
And not with the administration declaring literal war on them.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Yeah. I mean Americans are facing down to a reality.
I went to the grocery store again this week. I
couldn't believe how much things even went up from last week. Yeah,
it's crazy, It's absolutely insane what's going on right now?
Everything I bought yesterday while going around, I couldn't believe
where we're at.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
With prices, and you were at Erwan.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Let me be clear, I was not at Arawan because
I was in New York City and there's only the
smoothies here right now. But when I'm in LA in
two months, let me tell you, I will be sipping
on that Haley Beaver smoothie because it is delicious.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
You're insane. It's going to be seventy five dollars by then.
You won't be able to do it.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
That might be true. I think when I bought two
of them last time, I was almost fifty dollars when
I bought it for you and I were on tour
in La last summer. Yeah, so Malli Cop thirty was
this week for people who don't know what that is.
Down in Johannesburg, there was a big environmental summit and
coinciding right with it, Trump is moving to reshape our
(06:41):
environmental policy by weakening the Queen Water Act and the
Endangered Species Act.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
Yeah, you should know that Donald Trump, he hates the environment.
I think it's fair to say this guy does not
like the environment. So they're going to sell thirty four
sales of leases in federal waters one point two seven
billion acre an area more than half the size of
the United States. The plan would require six sales of
leases off the coast of California. Good luck getting that past.
(07:10):
Gavin Newsome analysa oil companies may not rush to snap
up the leases because Newsom could reject the permits. I
think it's important to realize, like solar power is cheaper
to do than coal. Soon it will be cheaper than
oil because you just put up the panels and that's it.
(07:32):
Whereas oil requires drilling, requires you know, just like the tarsands,
it requires a lot to get the oil. And I
think that we are working really hard right now under
Trump administration to do every kind of polluting type of
energy production that we can. But ultimately the green stuff
(07:55):
is just cheaper. And I take a lot of pleasure
to report that. Sooner or later, these fuckers are going
to go out of business. It's like the oil companies
are like quickly becoming like cigarettes. You know, it's just
an unsustainable It's like coal so expensive that ultimately it's
not going to be the love of a clean climate
(08:16):
that saves us. It's going to be that solar is
just going to be cheaper, and ruining the environment is
going to be more expensive. As much as this is
all a big problem, I do think that there's a
real sense that a lot of the stuff Trump wants
so desperately to make happen, like coal, like oil drilling,
there are real problems, structural problems that Trump is going
(08:38):
to have with all of this. And good because this
is just awful. Rick Wilson is a founder of the
Lincoln Project and the host of the Enemy's List Welcome
Too Fast Politics. Rick Wilson, Polly John.
Speaker 4 (08:52):
Fast, a beautiful day as.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
Always in Florida where we both are.
Speaker 4 (08:57):
We're both in the Great Seat of Florida. Although we
are so far apart in Florida. It is roughly seven
hundred miles to you from where I'm at right now.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
So that's sad. But you know, what isn't sad that
you're in Florida. No, I don't care. What's what isn't
sad is that Donald Trump may be sick of winning.
Speaker 4 (09:15):
I think he might be sick of winning.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
Get to start with Doge.
Speaker 4 (09:18):
Got to start with Doge because I was told that
Doge was going to create trillions and trillions of dollars
in cuts from wasteful government spending, and as it turns out,
it was a net negative and created costs money, created
more cost than it saved, and was from the very start.
What's the word I'm thinking of musky and bullshit?
Speaker 3 (09:41):
Fraud, waste, and abuse turns out to be stuff I
don't like.
Speaker 4 (09:46):
Correct turns out to be I have an esthetic dislike
of X, and therefore I'm going not the not the
social media platform I refer to as Twitter, X being
any subject that he doesn't like, anything that's woke, and
because of his hatred of the woke, he wanted to
slash things that that included words like justice, equity, climate bias,
(10:07):
you know, the usual usual things that trigger the magi.
And in doing so, you know, he cut a lot,
but none of it's stuck in the end because he
couldn't find the quote unquote massive government fraud from the libtards.
This doesn't it doesn't.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Exist, right, And part of what I think is important
to mention here is that he did cut USAI D
so hundreds of thousands.
Speaker 4 (10:32):
That's his big win, by the way.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
Right of children and women.
Speaker 4 (10:38):
Staring around the globe now because be so proud, Elon,
be so proud.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
He also cuts some cancer research, you know, that kind
of research that is so important. He cut a lot
of that. But he also costs money. And you know
how he costs money?
Speaker 4 (10:55):
Yep? Can you money by firing people who legally couldn't
be fired. He costs money by stopping things that had
to be restarted. He costs money across the board.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
Yeah, he's out of the White House. So he was
allowed to come back for the MBS Crime Family Dinner.
Can we talk about that dinner? You know, we haven't
podcasted since last Sunday together, and I and sometimes I
want your takes on things.
Speaker 4 (11:18):
I'm happy to provide the take on NBS once again.
Donald Trump proved. He asked himself like, Okay, I don't know.
I'm gonna invite a guy who cuts up people with
bone sauce to the White House. How can I make
it worse?
Speaker 5 (11:31):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (11:36):
Yeah, how can I make the world even suck even harder?
I'll bring Elon?
Speaker 3 (11:42):
But so Elon was there, Tim Cook, was there, all
the sort of captains of industry, all of them, Tim Apple, Yeah,
they were there for MBS. MBS, you know they're going
to make a ten gazillion trillion billion dollar you know, quadrillion,
quad quadrillion dollars, you know, get into American the American economy.
(12:03):
All of this is always bullshit. He is selling them
military planes, which is something, right, We're giving.
Speaker 4 (12:10):
Them the mind can sell them thirty five okay.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
You know is that it's a very plane.
Speaker 4 (12:16):
It's a very very very effective airplane. But it is
also it is also just one more example of how
Trump's impulses are that of the of a of a
huckster in a in a in a flea market. He's
not trying to really look at American national security or
in a national security. It's always like I want to
make the say what do hey, hey, chic, what does
(12:38):
it take to get you into this cream puff today?
So I drive this F thirty five right off the
lot there.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
I want to I want to talk about why dog
is being disbanded though for a minute, because I assume
it's because they've just lost interest in it, which speaks
to a little bit of like how this entire government
is working.
Speaker 4 (12:59):
I will give you another explanation also, though I think
that is somewhat more telling. I think they got most
of what they needed already through Project twenty twenty five
and Russ.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
Vought and with the clawbacks you mean, right, and so
Socket recisions right.
Speaker 4 (13:16):
And so Elon's plaything doesn't have the same sort of
cachet it had, and and they're getting away with all
this other stuff without the kind of pain in the
ass of of of something associated with Elon. It makes
it easier to sell as a as a political item
(13:39):
than it would have other then it would have if
Elon or even the word Doge was still attached to it.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
Okay, now we're gonna have Jesse come back on, because
he has come He is the Scottvescant whisperer of this podcast.
Speaker 4 (13:52):
He loves he loves news.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
Many of us find him to be a low affect,
boring old guy, but not Jesse. Jesse loves him. Jesse,
please play the Scott bess.
Speaker 6 (14:04):
End clip thirtieth, because that's the point of my editorial
is to put the Senate on notice that the Democrats
kept the government shut down. And Ezra Klein in the
New York Times took the mask off. He said, this
wasn't about healthcare, this was about stopping totalitarianism. The Democrats
(14:24):
haven't been able to stop asn't Trump in the courts.
They haven't been able to stop him in the media.
So they had to harm the American people one point
five percent hit to GDP eleven billion dollar permanent hit.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
They don't care.
Speaker 6 (14:37):
So I believe that Senate Democrats, if that, if Senate
Democrats close the government again, that Senate Republicans should immediately
abrogate the philibuster.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
You should.
Speaker 6 (14:51):
You should ask Senator Ulbachar whether she will adhere to
the filibuster and whether she will close the government.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
Again, and she just knowledge at this.
Speaker 6 (15:03):
We will see. You can have them on January third.
Want to see this bad democratic behavior.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
A democratic behavior democrats shut down the government's Oh wait,
what I like about Scott Passant, and this is a
question for you, is besides being completely charmless, he is
also just not a very good communicator discussed.
Speaker 4 (15:28):
No, he's terrible on television. Look, he is a guy.
He's a guy who comes out of that Wall Street
private equity banking universe, right, and maybe he's okay at
reading a slide deck in a quarterly meeting, but he
is not convincing anybody right now that Oh yes, it's
the Democrats who shut down the government. Literally, no one
(15:48):
believes that. Yeah, even the Republicans know who shut down
the freaking government. So this whole thing is like, it's
Scott's got a weak hand to play. He's also a
weak player at playing that hand.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
I think that's a really good point. It also is like,
if you just look at the stock right now, the
Republican stock, it's bad. These senators do not you know,
Trump is pulling the lowest he's ever pulled in either
of his admins. Correct, Like, there's no you know, they
got no uplift.
Speaker 4 (16:18):
For Trump world right now. You know, it used to
be that you could rely on on thirty five percent
of the Republican base was going to stick with the
Republican Party no matter what and all that. Well, now
they're feeling a lot less seguine about Donald Trump, and
they're feeling vastly less sanguine about voting for Republicans. We're
seeing this number of voting intention for Democrats just rising
(16:40):
and rising and rising. That's not happening because people have
confidence in them. It's happening because people have no confidence
in them.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
Right, And I also think you have a moment here
where Thune has already said they're not going after the filbuster.
He was like, no, and you're seeing like you're seeing
their state legislature is saying they're not going to redistrict.
People are Republicans are saying no. Marjorie Taylor Green, which
we'll get to in a minute. Parations are happy's to
(17:09):
say no to Donald Trump at every place. So why
is Scott Besson coming in at the eleventh hour with
an enormous ask?
Speaker 4 (17:17):
Listen, Scott Besson and Donald Trump. One of the things
Trump has never been good at is like understanding deeper
policy ramifications of things. But sometimes he'll get something in
his craw and he'll say, I'm gonna I'm gonna harp
on this one thing. I'm gonna lay down on this
one thing. And that's what That's what the filibuster is
for him. Right now, it's like, oh, wait, is there
a secret trick I can use to fuck things up?
(17:39):
I'll use the filibuster And right now that ain't gonna work.
It's not not there for this administration to have the
number he needs because listen, I can tell you there's
one guy in the Senate who will literally be pulled
out dead feet first before he gives it the filibuster.
And that's Mitch McConnell. Say what you will about about cocaine. Mitch,
(18:02):
he is not ever blinked on that subject, and he's
done some tweaking around the edges on it over the years.
But with Trump involved, this is also Mitch's last fuck
you to Donald Trump. And he's going to hold together
the Collins, Murkowski, Rankford blah blah blah mini coalition because
(18:23):
they all understand the danger of it. Now, there are
also some other more maga Republicans who also get that
if you'd under the filibuster, then there's going to come
a day really soon where the Democrats have the Senate
and they say, oh, you wanted to get rid of
the filibuster. That's what you told us, So we're happy
to oblige. And here we are.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
And that universal healthcare, universal pre K, universal abortion.
Speaker 4 (18:49):
Free free trans reassignment surgery in churches, whatever the hell
it is.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
In free birth control. You know the whole We're going
to talk about. Your favorite for a member of Congress now,
Marjorie Taylor space Laser's QAnon, Welcome to the resistance. Green.
Speaker 4 (19:09):
You know I got to say this. This had every
possibility that it was just her playing a sort of
Maga prank, but she pulled the trigger on Friday night.
She came out and said, Nope, I'm out. I'm done,
not playing the ball game anymore. This is it. I've
had enough. YadA YadA YadA. Hey, you know what, I
don't think she's done with politics. I think she's going
to run again for something. But I think she understands
(19:31):
that Maga is a declining stock, a declining power in
the country, and as Trump declines further, he'll become more
dangerous and it will cause more damage to other people
who are who have been in that circle of Republican politics.
If she's looking to make a future for herself, then
(19:52):
we are going to see her as the alpha character
of this exodus from from Maga, not the final No.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
I agree. And it's funny because I talked to I
have like one very MAGA person I talked to. He
said he could not believe what a fuck you that
video was from Marjorie to Donald Trump.
Speaker 4 (20:12):
Solid fuck you. It was a fuck you with bells on.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
Tell us, why look, she said.
Speaker 4 (20:18):
The most important thing in that video, Molly, Well, she
came right out and she said, the president told me
he was against the elites, but he sides with the elites.
That's a fundamental message inside of MAGA. That is honestly,
that's that's where this started back in twenty fifteen. I'm
going to drain the swamp. I'm going to be against
(20:38):
the elites. I'm going to stop the powerful and the
wealthy from screwing you over. She said it right out.
He's not on our side, folks, He's with the other side.
I think that is just a devastating critique of trying. Yeah,
I think some folks in MAGA thought she was going
to throw a little hissy fit and then that would
be that. But she didn't. She went much further. She
(21:01):
went much harder on Donald Trump.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
And she did say in her her resignation, her four
page resignation letter, he struck.
Speaker 4 (21:10):
Side along for a MAGA thing. That's how much how
you're really.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
Going to read page four though? Has he sides with
the globalists, he sides with the billionaires. Look at the
people he has at his inauguration and that that is
the fundamental problem with MAGA is you have the richest cabinet,
right and you can't be a populist.
Speaker 4 (21:33):
You can't be a populist if the cabinet if you're
if the cabinet is if like the person with the
lowest net worth is like six hundred million dollars.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
Yeah, that's not how the world works. Yeah, and it's
such an important point.
Speaker 4 (21:48):
She took away that populist Bannonite edge that Trump always enjoyed.
And look, this has already been strained, Molly, because Trump
for months has been screwing working people by holding up
on these tariffs and continuing like stacking the deck for
Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and god knows who else,
but not ever producing anything that's helped middle class voters. Yay,
(22:12):
record stock market okay.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (22:14):
So also, we stopped reporting unemployment numbers. I promise you
if they were good, we would still be reporting them.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
Well, I think it's important to remember that Trump fired
the head of the Bureau of Labor and Statistics and
we never heard about it again.
Speaker 4 (22:28):
Well, and that is that is I will I will
cast some of that responsibility on our very stressed out
media in this.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
World, because the ten people who still right, the ten.
Speaker 4 (22:38):
People who still write about economics, I don't know about you,
but it feels to me like there's a growing realization
that something bad is coming economically and we're just like
trying to agree to like not talk about it.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
I think it's clear that we're in a bubble, in
an AI bubble that's not going anywhere good and the question,
and we saw that with Nvidia stock this week it
announced earnings and then ultimately went down. On Friday, it
was this absolutely insane White House meeting with Zoran and
Donald Trump. And I want to tell you that a
(23:11):
close personal podcasting friend of mine said, I'm worried that
Zorrien is going to go to the White House and
Donald Trump is going to arrest him and deport him.
And do you know what happened?
Speaker 4 (23:23):
I do. Donald Trump got a new nickname down low Donald.
He was flirting with the guy in the Oval office
like like I literally was like expecting, like, would you
like to come back to the residents and see my etchings.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
So I so I have spent all weekend on cable
news with people trying to figure out what that was.
My theory is that Donald Trump loves a winner, and
it doesn't matter what you're if the people if your
young staffers are crowding outside to get a glimpse of you.
(23:57):
If you're like a real Kennedy, like our K Senior
or JFK, and not like a shitty Kennedy like the
ones we have.
Speaker 4 (24:04):
Now, like Pervo will make a love poet.
Speaker 3 (24:09):
If you are a real Kennedy, Donald that Donald Trump
as a feminist, I will not go there that Donald
Trump has he he is not immune to the charm economy,
of which he is a product of.
Speaker 4 (24:24):
Donald Trump was flirting with him. He and Zoran we're
in that office. And Trump loves somebody who's good on television. Now,
I will say Donald Trump was doing everything except taking
the Maraschino cherry out of his cocktail and tying the
stem in the knot with his tongue. But this guy
loved seeing Mom Dommy in the White House because he
(24:45):
likes celebrity, and Domy is a political celebrity, and he
likes unparalleled in the country right now, honest answer.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
And he likes talent. I mean, this is a guy
with more raw talent than I mean. Let's talk. Let's
do two minutes on his talent. Because I know a
lot of people are worried about him whatever, whatever, I'm not,
but I would love you to talk about his talent,
because let's talk about other talented political actors on that level.
Speaker 4 (25:13):
There aren't. I mean he is unique right now in
the Democratic Party. Look they are, they are very good
candidates overall, but like he has a level of he
has an understanding of what where the politics of America
is right now. And I don't mean that ideologically. I
mean that in the fact that he communicates on social media.
I mean that in the fact that he communicates with
(25:35):
with you know, a post on substack or or or
x or Twitter or or Instagram in a way that
most people would take would be like, well, we have
to write a we have to write an essay for
the New York Times to get our message across. It
gets that, you don't. He gets to the world as
not that anymore. The world is different now, and he's
(25:57):
able to use that very effectively.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
To add one other thing though, because I think you're right,
but I also want to add he has also raw charisma.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
Part of it is social media. Yeah, because like Newsom
does that social media really well, and Newsom is pretty charismatic.
And these again we are looking at these.
Speaker 4 (26:15):
Candidates not louch on the charisma. Right, Let's be.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
Right, We're not looking at these candidates ideologically, We're just
looking at pure political talent. But I think mom Donnie
has a kind of thing that is rockstar level.
Speaker 4 (26:29):
Especially because he's thirty four years old, he has the
ability to grow in this role. Yeah, okay, And he
did something yesterday in the White House like mentioning we're
going to you know, protect people in New York from
anti Semitism, which he's he's starting to adjust that there
are things that you have to you have to, you know,
realistically accommodate no matter what your some of your base wants.
(26:52):
But his talent is letting him do that and keep
his base with him. I think although there was a
little bit of bitching yesterday that or the other.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
Day that I saw, I saw it too.
Speaker 4 (27:02):
But not but nothing nothing that really like shocked me.
So nothing that really was like like like, one of the.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
Things that's interesting about this moment is you have Mondami's
stock way up really because you know, he's not going
to be the cause of federal troops being flooded into
New York. Now, it may still happen because Donald Trump
is not you know, he changes with wind. But the
other thing, the stock of everyone who was like Mondami
(27:29):
is a gi hottest just went yeah, no, oh yeah.
Speaker 4 (27:33):
Trump cut the legs out from underneath MAGA on this
because I mean all those articles. I mean and not
just in like the crazies. It wasn't just like Breitbart
or or the Free Bacon. It was a National Review
and the Wallstreet Journal, like Abel calls the immediate collapse
of Western civilization. Well, now Donald Trump's in the office.
(27:54):
Given the guy a tongue bath.
Speaker 3 (27:56):
Rick Wilson all drug fast, will you come back as always?
Randy Winegarden is the president of the American Federation of
Teachers and the author of the book Why Fascist Fear Teachers.
Randy Winingarden, Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 7 (28:14):
I'm always honored to be with you.
Speaker 3 (28:17):
My dear Republicans, had a dream to dismantle the Department
of Education. Looks like it's starting to happen. What is happening?
You are the head of the Teachers Union. What is happening?
Speaker 5 (28:27):
Let me take a step back, because I'm watching two
different streams on Twitter, on Blue Sky on social media,
and New York Magazine that there's all this emerging research
about what we need to do to help our kids,
and it's coming out in places like, you know, Jonathan Hate,
(28:48):
the Mississippy Miracle, you know, places that you wouldn't expect it.
Speaker 7 (28:53):
This is what the Department of Education's responsibility is. Instead
of cutting the research about what best practices are, what
they should be doing is curating what we're seeing in
the aftermath of COVID, what we're seeing in the aftermath
of social media, what best practices are happening around the country.
(29:14):
And they should be prioritizing this and making this available
for parents and for teachers and for school boards and
school districts, and they should be actually making a priority
our kids' education. What are they doing instead. What they're
doing instead is they're dismembering, basically selling off parts of
(29:34):
the Education Department, so that you know, some of it
is in labor, some of it is in state, so
it's never going to be put back together again in
this kind of way.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
And what they're.
Speaker 7 (29:47):
Also doing, and this is the biggest this is the
point I really want to make, Molly, is it's an abandonment.
It's not just an abdication of responsibility that the Congress
has given to them since nineteen eighty. But it's an
abandonment of children. So if you put just this last
couple of months together, they cut SNAP during a shutdown
(30:09):
when they don't have to, and that disproportionately hurt young
people kids. They cut Medicaid as part of their big
ugly bill a trillion dollars that disproportionally hurts kids in
terms of the CHIP program, the children's Health insurance program,
and families with kids. They cut the research that universities do,
(30:33):
which disproportionately hurts kids in college as well as long
term research. And they basically made a complete mess of
the student debt program. I mean, we've have sued and
they've now restarted these programs, but they made a basic
mess of it that affects forty five million people who
have gone to college. And then, as I said, when
(30:55):
I started the stuff they're supposed to do like lift
up good practice, is I have not seen once Linda
McMahon get to a microphone or doing op ed saying
this is a promising program that we've seen, let's see
if other people can do it. So it's an abandonment
of children, and that is why I am so angry
about it. I don't care if you're liberal or conservative
(31:18):
or independent. Don't abandon children, don't basically undermine children in America.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
So let's talk through. Florida has sort of started a
kind of like homeschooling, money for homeschooling, disassembling of public education.
That is I think pretty intense and seismic. So I
would love you to talk about that first.
Speaker 7 (31:43):
You know what's happened is there's an independent audit in
Florida now about that program that have shown that they
have wasted millions of dollars.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
Basically, if you say you're going to homeschool your kid,
you can get a certain amount of money every year.
And now they don't go yeah, doubt tens tens of thousands,
tens of thousands.
Speaker 7 (32:03):
It's about I think I think it's a seventy five
hundred dollars.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
Grant, right, and then you can use it for whatever
you want and you don't necessarily need to show where
it goes, and.
Speaker 7 (32:15):
Including the fact that Disney is advertising to people use
it with us compact the world.
Speaker 3 (32:23):
So that's happening in Florida, and that's a state level problem,
but it is it shows I think it shows Florida
kind of shows where the trumpest head is at well.
Speaker 7 (32:32):
But this is what I'm saying. Look, I don't parent
wants to homeschool their kid. You know, let me use
my grandmother's Yiddish psychasant. They have a right to homeschool
their kid. If a parent wants to send their kid
to a religious school, they were right to do that.
What I'm concerned about is this every time you take
money out of the public school system and you starve
(32:56):
it and we don't actually do what we need to
do in terms of what are the best practices. So
kids are numerate, kids are literate, kids actually are engaged
instead of dealing with you know, the kids feel welcome
and safe. We know many things that actually work. We
need to have the time, and we need to have
(33:17):
the tools, and we need to have the you know,
the teachers who know how to do this stuff and
actually don't get smeared and unsupported and actually have the
time to do this. But instead they're taking money in
Florida out of public schools. So and they're making teachers
feel miserable about their jobs. And they're saying to them,
(33:39):
if you actually welcome kids in your classroom, you could
get in trouble. If you teach in a certain way,
you could get in trouble. So they're creating all sorts
of distrust and taking money away at the same time,
they're creating incentive for homeschooling. So what does that do
in terms of the country and what does that do
in terms of children? So my job is to actually
(34:03):
fight as hard as I can to get the funding
for public schools and then to make public schooling the
best it can be so that parents want to send
their kids to public schools, that teachers want to be
at public schools, and kids thrive. So for me, okay,
a parent wants to homeschool, I'm not going to substitute
my judgment to the parent, But where why is the
(34:26):
incentive to homeschool rather than the incentive being to make
public schooling the best it can be. So they want
to get me to be negative about the parent who homeschools.
I'm not going to do that. I don't that's not
my judgment. But if all of a sudden, the high
school in Florida, and we have some of these great
(34:48):
high schools, at the high school in Florida has all
sorts of really cool programs, including you know, culinary programs
and advanced manufacturing and project based instruction and debate and
kids feel safe and welcome and they like it. Very
few people are going to homeschool, So why is the
(35:08):
incentive not to help make the programs in public schooling
make them welcoming and safe and make the programs cool.
But if you don't have the money for it, how
are you going to stand up that you know, debate program,
How are you going to stand up that culinary program
And so they're they're taking money away from those programs
(35:30):
and defunding them so we don't have them.
Speaker 3 (35:33):
I would love it if you could talk about this,
so the war on the Department of Education, because they
want to do it now, I would love you to
explain what it means, like how they can do it.
And there's certain parts of it that they've already hot
while they're trying to cut like hell grants.
Speaker 7 (35:49):
Let me tell you what they are actually doing.
Speaker 3 (35:52):
It all violates.
Speaker 7 (35:54):
The laws, like it's that none, none of what they're
doing is legal. But they're basically doing a bunch of
different cuts that will effectively disable the Department of Education.
So once we won. They started this process a few
months ago. Our case is in the federal courts in Massachusetts.
(36:16):
The courts basically the federal trial court. The appellate court
said no, you can't do that. When you basically fire
half of the people. That means you're saying that you
don't want a Department of education. But this is what happened.
The Supreme Court in its shadow docket stopped the injunction.
(36:38):
So we were winning in the courts below saying no,
you can't do it. Supreme Court said, oh no, we'll
deal with this case on the merits you.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
Know, later on.
Speaker 7 (36:48):
But they no longer Linda McMahon, you no longer are
enjoined against this. So the thurdes they did, meaning they
said you can do it. The first thing they got
rid of the preliminary and function that that stopped them.
That was the Supreme Court shadow docket, the first thing
that so no decision, just very quietly doing that. So
(37:09):
the first thing that the department did, the first thing
Linda McMahon did is she took all the career tech
ED programs and put them in the labor department. There
was testimony, So have you noticed they haven't heard anything
about Career tech ED in the last few months. And
remember February of this year, both Donald Trump and we
(37:31):
love career tech ed. He made February Career tech Ed month.
Haven't heard anything, why because we heard testimony this week
in the Congress that it's totally screwed up, the Career
tech ED grants on getting to people. It's totally screwed
up because they put it in a place that doesn't
know how to do it.
Speaker 3 (37:51):
Now, why do I U say as an example, because.
Speaker 7 (37:53):
It's example, they're doing the same thing they said, Oh,
we've done such a good job with Career tech D.
We're going to move everything in elementary and secondary of
education everything title one, Title two, Title three, meaning reading,
the programs for poor kids, the programs for Limited English learners,
(38:16):
teacher preparation, we're moving all of that to Labor, the
Labor Department, which has done such a great job would
career tech ED. They're moving all of it there. So
basically they're moving it there to die. I mean that's
what they're doing. And then they're moving the full brag
Scholars program to the Department of State. Okay, I could
(38:39):
actually see that if they cared about kids. They're moving
the education for kids on Indian reservations to the Bureau Eventior.
I could actually see that because like the Defense Department
before this administration, they you know, they do a good
job with the schools that are on military basis, So
(39:03):
if they cared about this stuff, you could see those
two things. But then this is the kicker. They're moving
the programs that deal with individuals with disabilities to let
me tell you, drum roll please, Health and Human Services,
the same department that just in the last many many
(39:23):
many few days has basically said that you can't cure autism.
You're basically saying to parents with kids who are artistic
or on the spectrum, you're moving to the department that
doesn't think you can help those what like what.
Speaker 3 (39:43):
Is pretty nutty. So to have him folk, to have
him in charge of your kid's education is pretty crazy.
Speaker 7 (39:52):
So you could see in a normal administration. And look,
one of my predecessors, Al Shanker, he actually opposed creating
a separate department of education. He said, and in retrospect
he's probably right now.
Speaker 3 (40:08):
He said that.
Speaker 7 (40:09):
Keep it in health, education and welfare because you know,
before that that reorganization because he was afraid that kids
would become a political hot.
Speaker 3 (40:21):
Potato, and which they have, which they have, and so
he that.
Speaker 7 (40:26):
Was his You, he said, keep it with families, keep
everything together, so that kids were more protected, you know.
And it's been the Department of Education because Carter established it.
You know, it's been something that the Republicans have wanted
to get rid of since Carter established it. And you
and and since kids don't really have a lobbying nobody
(40:48):
lobbies for kids. Kids are lobbying for by us, by
their parents. You know, there's not anyone other than rushing
to courts, you know, who are basically saying, don't do
this to kids. But so effectively they are going to
basically get rid of those functions with exception of I
guess the Office of Civil Rights. And I'll say one
(41:10):
more thing about this, which is the Department of Education
doesn't run any schools. It's never run any schools except
for maybe the schools it has some oversight for the
schools on Indian reservations. So they are creating this setup
to eliminate it based on a lie. So if you
don't actually think that kids are doing as well as
(41:32):
they should do, right, now you're basically saying that we're
going to give it to the states who already are
doing what you don't think.
Speaker 3 (41:42):
Is very good.
Speaker 7 (41:42):
Right now, how does that make any sense? That's why
I call it abandonment.
Speaker 3 (41:46):
Is the ultimate goal here just to completely end the
Department of Education, I mean just to move everything into
other places.
Speaker 7 (41:53):
Yes, the ultimate goal is to end the Department of
Education and to basically not only move everything to other places.
But there's too many of us who really believe that
the money that states get for this from the federal
government is too important. There's too many of us where
both Democrats and Republicans that fight against them when they
(42:16):
try to you know, grant they try to take all
the money and lump summit instead of giving like title
ie to the you know, to PS one in New
York City, which is how the grant money works right now,
it goes directly to students. So there's too many of us,
both Republican and Democrats, who actually you know, fought to
stop them from doing that. So now they're just denuding
(42:40):
it in every which way they can to make it disappear,
and there will be no one that will help. If
a state decides not to use the money correctly. There's
no one other than going to the courts. They're going
to basically, you know, be the one calling balls and strikes.
So they don't I mean they literally don't care. That's
(43:04):
why I get to they just don't care about kids,
and kids are our future. But this administration is so
it looks backwards. It doesn't look forwards anyway on anything.
It doesn't think about what the future should look like.
Speaker 4 (43:18):
I mean, it.
Speaker 7 (43:19):
Basically is whatever big tech tells it to do in
terms of AI it does, and he's quite enriched himself.
As regular people life has gotten less and less affordable.
Speaker 3 (43:30):
Randy Winegarden, I hope you'll come back.
Speaker 4 (43:35):
No moment time.
Speaker 3 (43:38):
Rick Wilson, mulad junk Fast.
Speaker 4 (43:41):
Is it that time?
Speaker 3 (43:42):
It is that time. I love that at the time
of time, I know that time.
Speaker 4 (43:47):
The time and the season for loving. No my moment
of fucker. This week is the first big skirmish in
the twenty twenty eight presidential campaign, and that skirmish is
between JD Vance and the pro Putin pro Russia faction
inside the administration and Marco Rubio, who is also fairly
pro Putin, but who understands he's not gonna win the
(44:10):
presidency being that way, and Marco Rubio has busted out JD.
Vance and the pro Russia segment for taking a plan
written in Russia by the Russian Foreign Ministry. It leaks
to Axios. The administration, courtesy of Vance, reports it as
America's policy. This is a classic fucking Vance witcough fuck up.
(44:35):
The world explodes, everybody goes crazy. Marco seeing a hole here,
leaks this and JD. Vance is now taking the hit
on it. This is the first moment of the twenty
twenty eight race where their hatred for each other has
really started to come up on the surface. Vance has
been leaking the shit about against Marco on Venezuela. Marco
has returned the favor on Russia. And I don't think
(44:57):
it gets any prettier from here.
Speaker 3 (44:59):
And how does Axios figure into this?
Speaker 4 (45:02):
That's where the leak was sent. I don't know who
leaked it to Axios, but somebody sent it to Axios
because they were with it like a in a hot sun.
Speaker 3 (45:11):
This is the beginning of this sort of fracturing of
Maga or is there more to this?
Speaker 4 (45:15):
I don't think there's more to this. In that regard,
I think MAGA is going to be. What's what MAGA
is going to be. It's going to be. It will
be a cohesive part of it that sticks around as
sort of the Trump cult forever. But there will also
be a big part of it that's either goes home,
gets bored, is tired of politics, doesn't have the glue
of Donald Trump at hearing them all together in the future.
I wrote a piece today about this. I don't think
(45:36):
Trump is less dangerous because he's a lame duck. I
think it's more dangerous. I think things are going to
be more crazy and more potentially horrifying because he's a
lame duck. These guys are all starting to jockey. The
house is in a frenzy right now. Remember Grinder, Mike
cannot lose a lot of seats. He's losing another one
on January fifth, when Marge leaves, all this is going
to come down, I think to a very tense.
Speaker 3 (45:58):
And ugly spring Reinder Mike Rick Wilson, I am just
I'm listening to the joke. I am neither confirming, nor
denying nor agreeing. I am just listening to the joke.
In awe in awe.
Speaker 4 (46:13):
In awe. Cancel me, motherfuckers. Try it.
Speaker 3 (46:18):
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday to hear the best
minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If
you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend
and keep the conversation going. Thanks for listening.
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds, and a CBS poll says sixty five
percent of Americans say Trump's policies are making grocery prices
go up. We have such a great show for you today,
the Lincoln Projects own Rick Wilson stops by. We're going
(00:23):
to talk about the disbanding of DOGE. Then we'll talk
to the American Federation of Teachers Randy Winingarden about Trump's
dismantling of the Department of Education.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
But first the news, So, Molly, I think this is
pretty interesting. Actually, so we saw Zorron riz up mister Trump.
Then Trump was dressing like him the next day, which
was very disturbing. But I think it's pretty interesting. We
have Kevin Hassett saying that they will not be cutting
off aid to New York City any longer. Do you
(00:55):
think this is because they can't have any more hits
to the economy and this would be What do you
think is going on here?
Speaker 3 (01:01):
I don't know. And again I wouldn't trust what Donald
Trump says because he changes his mind all the time.
I think Donald Trump who really liked his meeting with Zoran,
feels good about New York City right now. I do
also think that Donald Trump has owns a lot of
real estate in New York and has a vested interest
and has a lot of real estate developer friends in
New York, which is another reason why he might not
(01:23):
try to completely smash our economy. But I do not
have a lot of faith in what this administration says.
And I think that at this point, a decade into
this fucking thing, people should not be taking anything these
guys say as anything but like directly relating to the
next four days, because these guys change their minds all
(01:43):
the time.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Good point, Well, there is some things where there's no
taking it back, and that is just a solito restoring
the GOP's Texas Congressional jerry mender and all right, we're
at a jerrymandering war now.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
You know, no one should be surprised that just as
Alito behaves like he's a Fox News host and not
a Supreme Court justice. This is who my man is.
It's who he's always been. You call on him and
it always ends up like this, zero surprise. Here. Here's
what I would say, Aledo. The big thing that we're
going to wait to see is what the Supreme Court
(02:17):
does on the Voting Rights Act that's coming in June.
There is a chance, and I don't know that it'll
work in time for the twenty twenty six cycle, but
it'll certainly work for the twenty eight cycle where they
strike down Article two of the Voting Rights Act and
they make it so that they don't have to have
these majority minority districts. If that happens, Democrats could be
(02:42):
really fucked when it comes to the South. So we
have to wait. I do not think the Supreme Court
is done trying to fuck around with the congressional maps
for Republicans, so stay tuned. Also, Alito is assigned to Texas,
so it makes sense that he would be the one
who would make this call.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Yeah, so I have to say by you know, I
know you're not as active on Twitter as I am
these days, but one of those weeks where Twitter was
really amazing between Marjorie Taylor, green zoron Nuzzy, all the things.
But one of the real treats we got this weekend
was Twitter announced the new feature where you can see
(03:22):
where the account was started and where it is usually
tweeting from I'm going to shock you here, there's a
lot of foreign actors boosting MEGA.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
I am just completely shocked to learn what we all
have known this entire time, which is that there are
a lot of foreign actors boosting MEGA. I want to
say two things here. There are many prominent So basically
most of Make America Great Again is from like India, Africa,
(03:52):
the global South.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Right.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Here's a great example. The account Magnation x, with nearly
four hundred thousand followers and a bio reading patriot voice
for We the People is from Eastern Europe. Another popular profile,
Avanka News in Avanka Trump fan account with one million followers,
is based in Nigeria. Another one, Dark Maga, is run
(04:17):
from Thailand. Magascope is from Nigeria, Magabacon is in South Asia. Yes,
so it turns out that a lot of the people
who are supporting the MAGA agenda are not real and
this is important for any number of reasons. One, the
Internet is not real life, right, so sometimes there's a
(04:40):
feeling that what we're watching is real when it's not.
And I think that's really important when you're on the Internet,
because there's just a lot of movement that feels like
it's one thing and is really not any so that
I think is important. And then I also think it's
important to realize that like a lot of this is
just not as popular. Trump won by engaging people. He
(05:04):
did not win by changing hearts and minds. He won
by suppressing Democratic turnout. You know, Democrats were not as
engaged as they probably should have been. As someone who
spent the last fucking six months talking about how Democrats
lost Latino voters, I don't think that's a conversation that
needs to be had now, right. I mean, Latino voters
(05:24):
do not like ice going into their neighborhoods, and I
don't think that the Democratic plan to win them back
is going to need to be super complicated, at least
at this moment.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Yeah. That with grocery prices being where they are, yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
And not with the administration declaring literal war on them.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Yeah. I mean Americans are facing down to a reality.
I went to the grocery store again this week. I
couldn't believe how much things even went up from last week. Yeah,
it's crazy, It's absolutely insane what's going on right now?
Everything I bought yesterday while going around, I couldn't believe
where we're at.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
With prices, and you were at Erwan.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Let me be clear, I was not at Arawan because
I was in New York City and there's only the
smoothies here right now. But when I'm in LA in
two months, let me tell you, I will be sipping
on that Haley Beaver smoothie because it is delicious.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
You're insane. It's going to be seventy five dollars by then.
You won't be able to do it.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
That might be true. I think when I bought two
of them last time, I was almost fifty dollars when
I bought it for you and I were on tour
in La last summer. Yeah, so Malli Cop thirty was
this week for people who don't know what that is.
Down in Johannesburg, there was a big environmental summit and
coinciding right with it, Trump is moving to reshape our
(06:41):
environmental policy by weakening the Queen Water Act and the
Endangered Species Act.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
Yeah, you should know that Donald Trump, he hates the environment.
I think it's fair to say this guy does not
like the environment. So they're going to sell thirty four
sales of leases in federal waters one point two seven
billion acre an area more than half the size of
the United States. The plan would require six sales of
leases off the coast of California. Good luck getting that past.
(07:10):
Gavin Newsome analysa oil companies may not rush to snap
up the leases because Newsom could reject the permits. I
think it's important to realize, like solar power is cheaper
to do than coal. Soon it will be cheaper than
oil because you just put up the panels and that's it.
(07:32):
Whereas oil requires drilling, requires you know, just like the tarsands,
it requires a lot to get the oil. And I
think that we are working really hard right now under
Trump administration to do every kind of polluting type of
energy production that we can. But ultimately the green stuff
(07:55):
is just cheaper. And I take a lot of pleasure
to report that. Sooner or later, these fuckers are going
to go out of business. It's like the oil companies
are like quickly becoming like cigarettes. You know, it's just
an unsustainable It's like coal so expensive that ultimately it's
not going to be the love of a clean climate
(08:16):
that saves us. It's going to be that solar is
just going to be cheaper, and ruining the environment is
going to be more expensive. As much as this is
all a big problem, I do think that there's a
real sense that a lot of the stuff Trump wants
so desperately to make happen, like coal, like oil drilling,
there are real problems, structural problems that Trump is going
(08:38):
to have with all of this. And good because this
is just awful. Rick Wilson is a founder of the
Lincoln Project and the host of the Enemy's List Welcome
Too Fast Politics. Rick Wilson, Polly John.
Speaker 4 (08:52):
Fast, a beautiful day as.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
Always in Florida where we both are.
Speaker 4 (08:57):
We're both in the Great Seat of Florida. Although we
are so far apart in Florida. It is roughly seven
hundred miles to you from where I'm at right now.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
So that's sad. But you know, what isn't sad that
you're in Florida. No, I don't care. What's what isn't
sad is that Donald Trump may be sick of winning.
Speaker 4 (09:15):
I think he might be sick of winning.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
Get to start with Doge.
Speaker 4 (09:18):
Got to start with Doge because I was told that
Doge was going to create trillions and trillions of dollars
in cuts from wasteful government spending, and as it turns out,
it was a net negative and created costs money, created
more cost than it saved, and was from the very start.
What's the word I'm thinking of musky and bullshit?
Speaker 3 (09:41):
Fraud, waste, and abuse turns out to be stuff I
don't like.
Speaker 4 (09:46):
Correct turns out to be I have an esthetic dislike
of X, and therefore I'm going not the not the
social media platform I refer to as Twitter, X being
any subject that he doesn't like, anything that's woke, and
because of his hatred of the woke, he wanted to
slash things that that included words like justice, equity, climate bias,
(10:07):
you know, the usual usual things that trigger the magi.
And in doing so, you know, he cut a lot,
but none of it's stuck in the end because he
couldn't find the quote unquote massive government fraud from the libtards.
This doesn't it doesn't.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Exist, right, And part of what I think is important
to mention here is that he did cut USAI D
so hundreds of thousands.
Speaker 4 (10:32):
That's his big win, by the way.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
Right of children and women.
Speaker 4 (10:38):
Staring around the globe now because be so proud, Elon,
be so proud.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
He also cuts some cancer research, you know, that kind
of research that is so important. He cut a lot
of that. But he also costs money. And you know
how he costs money?
Speaker 4 (10:55):
Yep? Can you money by firing people who legally couldn't
be fired. He costs money by stopping things that had
to be restarted. He costs money across the board.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
Yeah, he's out of the White House. So he was
allowed to come back for the MBS Crime Family Dinner.
Can we talk about that dinner? You know, we haven't
podcasted since last Sunday together, and I and sometimes I
want your takes on things.
Speaker 4 (11:18):
I'm happy to provide the take on NBS once again.
Donald Trump proved. He asked himself like, Okay, I don't know.
I'm gonna invite a guy who cuts up people with
bone sauce to the White House. How can I make
it worse?
Speaker 5 (11:31):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (11:36):
Yeah, how can I make the world even suck even harder?
I'll bring Elon?
Speaker 3 (11:42):
But so Elon was there, Tim Cook, was there, all
the sort of captains of industry, all of them, Tim Apple, Yeah,
they were there for MBS. MBS, you know they're going
to make a ten gazillion trillion billion dollar you know, quadrillion,
quad quadrillion dollars, you know, get into American the American economy.
(12:03):
All of this is always bullshit. He is selling them
military planes, which is something, right, We're giving.
Speaker 4 (12:10):
Them the mind can sell them thirty five okay.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
You know is that it's a very plane.
Speaker 4 (12:16):
It's a very very very effective airplane. But it is
also it is also just one more example of how
Trump's impulses are that of the of a of a
huckster in a in a in a flea market. He's
not trying to really look at American national security or
in a national security. It's always like I want to
make the say what do hey, hey, chic, what does
(12:38):
it take to get you into this cream puff today?
So I drive this F thirty five right off the
lot there.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
I want to I want to talk about why dog
is being disbanded though for a minute, because I assume
it's because they've just lost interest in it, which speaks
to a little bit of like how this entire government
is working.
Speaker 4 (12:59):
I will give you another explanation also, though I think
that is somewhat more telling. I think they got most
of what they needed already through Project twenty twenty five
and Russ.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
Vought and with the clawbacks you mean, right, and so
Socket recisions right.
Speaker 4 (13:16):
And so Elon's plaything doesn't have the same sort of
cachet it had, and and they're getting away with all
this other stuff without the kind of pain in the
ass of of of something associated with Elon. It makes
it easier to sell as a as a political item
(13:39):
than it would have other then it would have if
Elon or even the word Doge was still attached to it.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
Okay, now we're gonna have Jesse come back on, because
he has come He is the Scottvescant whisperer of this podcast.
Speaker 4 (13:52):
He loves he loves news.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
Many of us find him to be a low affect,
boring old guy, but not Jesse. Jesse loves him. Jesse,
please play the Scott bess.
Speaker 6 (14:04):
End clip thirtieth, because that's the point of my editorial
is to put the Senate on notice that the Democrats
kept the government shut down. And Ezra Klein in the
New York Times took the mask off. He said, this
wasn't about healthcare, this was about stopping totalitarianism. The Democrats
(14:24):
haven't been able to stop asn't Trump in the courts.
They haven't been able to stop him in the media.
So they had to harm the American people one point
five percent hit to GDP eleven billion dollar permanent hit.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
They don't care.
Speaker 6 (14:37):
So I believe that Senate Democrats, if that, if Senate
Democrats close the government again, that Senate Republicans should immediately
abrogate the philibuster.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
You should.
Speaker 6 (14:51):
You should ask Senator Ulbachar whether she will adhere to
the filibuster and whether she will close the government.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
Again, and she just knowledge at this.
Speaker 6 (15:03):
We will see. You can have them on January third.
Want to see this bad democratic behavior.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
A democratic behavior democrats shut down the government's Oh wait,
what I like about Scott Passant, and this is a
question for you, is besides being completely charmless, he is
also just not a very good communicator discussed.
Speaker 4 (15:28):
No, he's terrible on television. Look, he is a guy.
He's a guy who comes out of that Wall Street
private equity banking universe, right, and maybe he's okay at
reading a slide deck in a quarterly meeting, but he
is not convincing anybody right now that Oh yes, it's
the Democrats who shut down the government. Literally, no one
(15:48):
believes that. Yeah, even the Republicans know who shut down
the freaking government. So this whole thing is like, it's
Scott's got a weak hand to play. He's also a
weak player at playing that hand.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
I think that's a really good point. It also is like,
if you just look at the stock right now, the
Republican stock, it's bad. These senators do not you know,
Trump is pulling the lowest he's ever pulled in either
of his admins. Correct, Like, there's no you know, they
got no uplift.
Speaker 4 (16:18):
For Trump world right now. You know, it used to
be that you could rely on on thirty five percent
of the Republican base was going to stick with the
Republican Party no matter what and all that. Well, now
they're feeling a lot less seguine about Donald Trump, and
they're feeling vastly less sanguine about voting for Republicans. We're
seeing this number of voting intention for Democrats just rising
(16:40):
and rising and rising. That's not happening because people have
confidence in them. It's happening because people have no confidence
in them.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
Right, And I also think you have a moment here
where Thune has already said they're not going after the filbuster.
He was like, no, and you're seeing like you're seeing
their state legislature is saying they're not going to redistrict.
People are Republicans are saying no. Marjorie Taylor Green, which
we'll get to in a minute. Parations are happy's to
(17:09):
say no to Donald Trump at every place. So why
is Scott Besson coming in at the eleventh hour with
an enormous ask?
Speaker 4 (17:17):
Listen, Scott Besson and Donald Trump. One of the things
Trump has never been good at is like understanding deeper
policy ramifications of things. But sometimes he'll get something in
his craw and he'll say, I'm gonna I'm gonna harp
on this one thing. I'm gonna lay down on this
one thing. And that's what That's what the filibuster is
for him. Right now, it's like, oh, wait, is there
a secret trick I can use to fuck things up?
(17:39):
I'll use the filibuster And right now that ain't gonna work.
It's not not there for this administration to have the
number he needs because listen, I can tell you there's
one guy in the Senate who will literally be pulled
out dead feet first before he gives it the filibuster.
And that's Mitch McConnell. Say what you will about about cocaine. Mitch,
(18:02):
he is not ever blinked on that subject, and he's
done some tweaking around the edges on it over the years.
But with Trump involved, this is also Mitch's last fuck
you to Donald Trump. And he's going to hold together
the Collins, Murkowski, Rankford blah blah blah mini coalition because
(18:23):
they all understand the danger of it. Now, there are
also some other more maga Republicans who also get that
if you'd under the filibuster, then there's going to come
a day really soon where the Democrats have the Senate
and they say, oh, you wanted to get rid of
the filibuster. That's what you told us, So we're happy
to oblige. And here we are.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
And that universal healthcare, universal pre K, universal abortion.
Speaker 4 (18:49):
Free free trans reassignment surgery in churches, whatever the hell
it is.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
In free birth control. You know the whole We're going
to talk about. Your favorite for a member of Congress now,
Marjorie Taylor space Laser's QAnon, Welcome to the resistance. Green.
Speaker 4 (19:09):
You know I got to say this. This had every
possibility that it was just her playing a sort of
Maga prank, but she pulled the trigger on Friday night.
She came out and said, Nope, I'm out. I'm done,
not playing the ball game anymore. This is it. I've
had enough. YadA YadA YadA. Hey, you know what, I
don't think she's done with politics. I think she's going
to run again for something. But I think she understands
(19:31):
that Maga is a declining stock, a declining power in
the country, and as Trump declines further, he'll become more
dangerous and it will cause more damage to other people
who are who have been in that circle of Republican politics.
If she's looking to make a future for herself, then
(19:52):
we are going to see her as the alpha character
of this exodus from from Maga, not the final No.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
I agree. And it's funny because I talked to I
have like one very MAGA person I talked to. He
said he could not believe what a fuck you that
video was from Marjorie to Donald Trump.
Speaker 4 (20:12):
Solid fuck you. It was a fuck you with bells on.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
Tell us, why look, she said.
Speaker 4 (20:18):
The most important thing in that video, Molly, Well, she
came right out and she said, the president told me
he was against the elites, but he sides with the elites.
That's a fundamental message inside of MAGA. That is honestly,
that's that's where this started back in twenty fifteen. I'm
going to drain the swamp. I'm going to be against
(20:38):
the elites. I'm going to stop the powerful and the
wealthy from screwing you over. She said it right out.
He's not on our side, folks, He's with the other side.
I think that is just a devastating critique of trying. Yeah,
I think some folks in MAGA thought she was going
to throw a little hissy fit and then that would
be that. But she didn't. She went much further. She
(21:01):
went much harder on Donald Trump.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
And she did say in her her resignation, her four
page resignation letter, he struck.
Speaker 4 (21:10):
Side along for a MAGA thing. That's how much how
you're really.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
Going to read page four though? Has he sides with
the globalists, he sides with the billionaires. Look at the
people he has at his inauguration and that that is
the fundamental problem with MAGA is you have the richest cabinet,
right and you can't be a populist.
Speaker 4 (21:33):
You can't be a populist if the cabinet if you're
if the cabinet is if like the person with the
lowest net worth is like six hundred million dollars.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
Yeah, that's not how the world works. Yeah, and it's
such an important point.
Speaker 4 (21:48):
She took away that populist Bannonite edge that Trump always enjoyed.
And look, this has already been strained, Molly, because Trump
for months has been screwing working people by holding up
on these tariffs and continuing like stacking the deck for
Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and god knows who else,
but not ever producing anything that's helped middle class voters. Yay,
(22:12):
record stock market okay.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (22:14):
So also, we stopped reporting unemployment numbers. I promise you
if they were good, we would still be reporting them.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
Well, I think it's important to remember that Trump fired
the head of the Bureau of Labor and Statistics and
we never heard about it again.
Speaker 4 (22:28):
Well, and that is that is I will I will
cast some of that responsibility on our very stressed out
media in this.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
World, because the ten people who still right, the ten.
Speaker 4 (22:38):
People who still write about economics, I don't know about you,
but it feels to me like there's a growing realization
that something bad is coming economically and we're just like
trying to agree to like not talk about it.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
I think it's clear that we're in a bubble, in
an AI bubble that's not going anywhere good and the question,
and we saw that with Nvidia stock this week it
announced earnings and then ultimately went down. On Friday, it
was this absolutely insane White House meeting with Zoran and
Donald Trump. And I want to tell you that a
(23:11):
close personal podcasting friend of mine said, I'm worried that
Zorrien is going to go to the White House and
Donald Trump is going to arrest him and deport him.
And do you know what happened?
Speaker 4 (23:23):
I do. Donald Trump got a new nickname down low Donald.
He was flirting with the guy in the Oval office
like like I literally was like expecting, like, would you
like to come back to the residents and see my etchings.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
So I so I have spent all weekend on cable
news with people trying to figure out what that was.
My theory is that Donald Trump loves a winner, and
it doesn't matter what you're if the people if your
young staffers are crowding outside to get a glimpse of you.
(23:57):
If you're like a real Kennedy, like our K Senior
or JFK, and not like a shitty Kennedy like the
ones we have.
Speaker 4 (24:04):
Now, like Pervo will make a love poet.
Speaker 3 (24:09):
If you are a real Kennedy, Donald that Donald Trump
as a feminist, I will not go there that Donald
Trump has he he is not immune to the charm economy,
of which he is a product of.
Speaker 4 (24:24):
Donald Trump was flirting with him. He and Zoran we're
in that office. And Trump loves somebody who's good on television. Now,
I will say Donald Trump was doing everything except taking
the Maraschino cherry out of his cocktail and tying the
stem in the knot with his tongue. But this guy
loved seeing Mom Dommy in the White House because he
(24:45):
likes celebrity, and Domy is a political celebrity, and he
likes unparalleled in the country right now, honest answer.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
And he likes talent. I mean, this is a guy
with more raw talent than I mean. Let's talk. Let's
do two minutes on his talent. Because I know a
lot of people are worried about him whatever, whatever, I'm not,
but I would love you to talk about his talent,
because let's talk about other talented political actors on that level.
Speaker 4 (25:13):
There aren't. I mean he is unique right now in
the Democratic Party. Look they are, they are very good
candidates overall, but like he has a level of he
has an understanding of what where the politics of America
is right now. And I don't mean that ideologically. I
mean that in the fact that he communicates on social media.
I mean that in the fact that he communicates with
(25:35):
with you know, a post on substack or or or
x or Twitter or or Instagram in a way that
most people would take would be like, well, we have
to write a we have to write an essay for
the New York Times to get our message across. It
gets that, you don't. He gets to the world as
not that anymore. The world is different now, and he's
(25:57):
able to use that very effectively.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
To add one other thing though, because I think you're right,
but I also want to add he has also raw charisma.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
Part of it is social media. Yeah, because like Newsom
does that social media really well, and Newsom is pretty charismatic.
And these again we are looking at these.
Speaker 4 (26:15):
Candidates not louch on the charisma. Right, Let's be.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
Right, We're not looking at these candidates ideologically, We're just
looking at pure political talent. But I think mom Donnie
has a kind of thing that is rockstar level.
Speaker 4 (26:29):
Especially because he's thirty four years old, he has the
ability to grow in this role. Yeah, okay, And he
did something yesterday in the White House like mentioning we're
going to you know, protect people in New York from
anti Semitism, which he's he's starting to adjust that there
are things that you have to you have to, you know,
realistically accommodate no matter what your some of your base wants.
(26:52):
But his talent is letting him do that and keep
his base with him. I think although there was a
little bit of bitching yesterday that or the other.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
Day that I saw, I saw it too.
Speaker 4 (27:02):
But not but nothing nothing that really like shocked me.
So nothing that really was like like like, one of the.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
Things that's interesting about this moment is you have Mondami's
stock way up really because you know, he's not going
to be the cause of federal troops being flooded into
New York. Now, it may still happen because Donald Trump
is not you know, he changes with wind. But the
other thing, the stock of everyone who was like Mondami
(27:29):
is a gi hottest just went yeah, no, oh yeah.
Speaker 4 (27:33):
Trump cut the legs out from underneath MAGA on this
because I mean all those articles. I mean and not
just in like the crazies. It wasn't just like Breitbart
or or the Free Bacon. It was a National Review
and the Wallstreet Journal, like Abel calls the immediate collapse
of Western civilization. Well, now Donald Trump's in the office.
(27:54):
Given the guy a tongue bath.
Speaker 3 (27:56):
Rick Wilson all drug fast, will you come back as always?
Randy Winegarden is the president of the American Federation of
Teachers and the author of the book Why Fascist Fear Teachers.
Randy Winingarden, Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 7 (28:14):
I'm always honored to be with you.
Speaker 3 (28:17):
My dear Republicans, had a dream to dismantle the Department
of Education. Looks like it's starting to happen. What is happening?
You are the head of the Teachers Union. What is happening?
Speaker 5 (28:27):
Let me take a step back, because I'm watching two
different streams on Twitter, on Blue Sky on social media,
and New York Magazine that there's all this emerging research
about what we need to do to help our kids,
and it's coming out in places like, you know, Jonathan Hate,
(28:48):
the Mississippy Miracle, you know, places that you wouldn't expect it.
Speaker 7 (28:53):
This is what the Department of Education's responsibility is. Instead
of cutting the research about what best practices are, what
they should be doing is curating what we're seeing in
the aftermath of COVID, what we're seeing in the aftermath
of social media, what best practices are happening around the country.
(29:14):
And they should be prioritizing this and making this available
for parents and for teachers and for school boards and
school districts, and they should be actually making a priority
our kids' education. What are they doing instead. What they're
doing instead is they're dismembering, basically selling off parts of
(29:34):
the Education Department, so that you know, some of it
is in labor, some of it is in state, so
it's never going to be put back together again in
this kind of way.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
And what they're.
Speaker 7 (29:47):
Also doing, and this is the biggest this is the
point I really want to make, Molly, is it's an abandonment.
It's not just an abdication of responsibility that the Congress
has given to them since nineteen eighty. But it's an
abandonment of children. So if you put just this last
couple of months together, they cut SNAP during a shutdown
(30:09):
when they don't have to, and that disproportionately hurt young
people kids. They cut Medicaid as part of their big
ugly bill a trillion dollars that disproportionally hurts kids in
terms of the CHIP program, the children's Health insurance program,
and families with kids. They cut the research that universities do,
(30:33):
which disproportionately hurts kids in college as well as long
term research. And they basically made a complete mess of
the student debt program. I mean, we've have sued and
they've now restarted these programs, but they made a basic
mess of it that affects forty five million people who
have gone to college. And then, as I said, when
(30:55):
I started the stuff they're supposed to do like lift
up good practice, is I have not seen once Linda
McMahon get to a microphone or doing op ed saying
this is a promising program that we've seen, let's see
if other people can do it. So it's an abandonment
of children, and that is why I am so angry
about it. I don't care if you're liberal or conservative
(31:18):
or independent. Don't abandon children, don't basically undermine children in America.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
So let's talk through. Florida has sort of started a
kind of like homeschooling, money for homeschooling, disassembling of public education.
That is I think pretty intense and seismic. So I
would love you to talk about that first.
Speaker 7 (31:43):
You know what's happened is there's an independent audit in
Florida now about that program that have shown that they
have wasted millions of dollars.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
Basically, if you say you're going to homeschool your kid,
you can get a certain amount of money every year.
And now they don't go yeah, doubt tens tens of thousands,
tens of thousands.
Speaker 7 (32:03):
It's about I think I think it's a seventy five
hundred dollars.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
Grant, right, and then you can use it for whatever
you want and you don't necessarily need to show where
it goes, and.
Speaker 7 (32:15):
Including the fact that Disney is advertising to people use
it with us compact the world.
Speaker 3 (32:23):
So that's happening in Florida, and that's a state level problem,
but it is it shows I think it shows Florida
kind of shows where the trumpest head is at well.
Speaker 7 (32:32):
But this is what I'm saying. Look, I don't parent
wants to homeschool their kid. You know, let me use
my grandmother's Yiddish psychasant. They have a right to homeschool
their kid. If a parent wants to send their kid
to a religious school, they were right to do that.
What I'm concerned about is this every time you take
money out of the public school system and you starve
(32:56):
it and we don't actually do what we need to
do in terms of what are the best practices. So
kids are numerate, kids are literate, kids actually are engaged
instead of dealing with you know, the kids feel welcome
and safe. We know many things that actually work. We
need to have the time, and we need to have
(33:17):
the tools, and we need to have the you know,
the teachers who know how to do this stuff and
actually don't get smeared and unsupported and actually have the
time to do this. But instead they're taking money in
Florida out of public schools. So and they're making teachers
feel miserable about their jobs. And they're saying to them,
(33:39):
if you actually welcome kids in your classroom, you could
get in trouble. If you teach in a certain way,
you could get in trouble. So they're creating all sorts
of distrust and taking money away at the same time,
they're creating incentive for homeschooling. So what does that do
in terms of the country and what does that do
in terms of children? So my job is to actually
(34:03):
fight as hard as I can to get the funding
for public schools and then to make public schooling the
best it can be so that parents want to send
their kids to public schools, that teachers want to be
at public schools, and kids thrive. So for me, okay,
a parent wants to homeschool, I'm not going to substitute
my judgment to the parent, But where why is the
(34:26):
incentive to homeschool rather than the incentive being to make
public schooling the best it can be. So they want
to get me to be negative about the parent who homeschools.
I'm not going to do that. I don't that's not
my judgment. But if all of a sudden, the high
school in Florida, and we have some of these great
(34:48):
high schools, at the high school in Florida has all
sorts of really cool programs, including you know, culinary programs
and advanced manufacturing and project based instruction and debate and
kids feel safe and welcome and they like it. Very
few people are going to homeschool, So why is the
(35:08):
incentive not to help make the programs in public schooling
make them welcoming and safe and make the programs cool.
But if you don't have the money for it, how
are you going to stand up that you know, debate program,
How are you going to stand up that culinary program
And so they're they're taking money away from those programs
(35:30):
and defunding them so we don't have them.
Speaker 3 (35:33):
I would love it if you could talk about this,
so the war on the Department of Education, because they
want to do it now, I would love you to
explain what it means, like how they can do it.
And there's certain parts of it that they've already hot
while they're trying to cut like hell grants.
Speaker 7 (35:49):
Let me tell you what they are actually doing.
Speaker 3 (35:52):
It all violates.
Speaker 7 (35:54):
The laws, like it's that none, none of what they're
doing is legal. But they're basically doing a bunch of
different cuts that will effectively disable the Department of Education.
So once we won. They started this process a few
months ago. Our case is in the federal courts in Massachusetts.
(36:16):
The courts basically the federal trial court. The appellate court
said no, you can't do that. When you basically fire
half of the people. That means you're saying that you
don't want a Department of education. But this is what happened.
The Supreme Court in its shadow docket stopped the injunction.
(36:38):
So we were winning in the courts below saying no,
you can't do it. Supreme Court said, oh no, we'll
deal with this case on the merits you.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
Know, later on.
Speaker 7 (36:48):
But they no longer Linda McMahon, you no longer are
enjoined against this. So the thurdes they did, meaning they
said you can do it. The first thing they got
rid of the preliminary and function that that stopped them.
That was the Supreme Court shadow docket, the first thing
that so no decision, just very quietly doing that. So
(37:09):
the first thing that the department did, the first thing
Linda McMahon did is she took all the career tech
ED programs and put them in the labor department. There
was testimony, So have you noticed they haven't heard anything
about Career tech ED in the last few months. And
remember February of this year, both Donald Trump and we
(37:31):
love career tech ed. He made February Career tech Ed month.
Haven't heard anything, why because we heard testimony this week
in the Congress that it's totally screwed up, the Career
tech ED grants on getting to people. It's totally screwed
up because they put it in a place that doesn't
know how to do it.
Speaker 3 (37:51):
Now, why do I U say as an example, because.
Speaker 7 (37:53):
It's example, they're doing the same thing they said, Oh,
we've done such a good job with Career tech D.
We're going to move everything in elementary and secondary of
education everything title one, Title two, Title three, meaning reading,
the programs for poor kids, the programs for Limited English learners,
(38:16):
teacher preparation, we're moving all of that to Labor, the
Labor Department, which has done such a great job would
career tech ED. They're moving all of it there. So
basically they're moving it there to die. I mean that's
what they're doing. And then they're moving the full brag
Scholars program to the Department of State. Okay, I could
(38:39):
actually see that if they cared about kids. They're moving
the education for kids on Indian reservations to the Bureau Eventior.
I could actually see that because like the Defense Department
before this administration, they you know, they do a good
job with the schools that are on military basis, So
(39:03):
if they cared about this stuff, you could see those
two things. But then this is the kicker. They're moving
the programs that deal with individuals with disabilities to let
me tell you, drum roll please, Health and Human Services,
the same department that just in the last many many
(39:23):
many few days has basically said that you can't cure autism.
You're basically saying to parents with kids who are artistic
or on the spectrum, you're moving to the department that
doesn't think you can help those what like what.
Speaker 3 (39:43):
Is pretty nutty. So to have him folk, to have
him in charge of your kid's education is pretty crazy.
Speaker 7 (39:52):
So you could see in a normal administration. And look,
one of my predecessors, Al Shanker, he actually opposed creating
a separate department of education. He said, and in retrospect
he's probably right now.
Speaker 3 (40:08):
He said that.
Speaker 7 (40:09):
Keep it in health, education and welfare because you know,
before that that reorganization because he was afraid that kids
would become a political hot.
Speaker 3 (40:21):
Potato, and which they have, which they have, and so
he that.
Speaker 7 (40:26):
Was his You, he said, keep it with families, keep
everything together, so that kids were more protected, you know.
And it's been the Department of Education because Carter established it.
You know, it's been something that the Republicans have wanted
to get rid of since Carter established it. And you
and and since kids don't really have a lobbying nobody
(40:48):
lobbies for kids. Kids are lobbying for by us, by
their parents. You know, there's not anyone other than rushing
to courts, you know, who are basically saying, don't do
this to kids. But so effectively they are going to
basically get rid of those functions with exception of I
guess the Office of Civil Rights. And I'll say one
(41:10):
more thing about this, which is the Department of Education
doesn't run any schools. It's never run any schools except
for maybe the schools it has some oversight for the
schools on Indian reservations. So they are creating this setup
to eliminate it based on a lie. So if you
don't actually think that kids are doing as well as
(41:32):
they should do, right, now you're basically saying that we're
going to give it to the states who already are
doing what you don't think.
Speaker 3 (41:42):
Is very good.
Speaker 7 (41:42):
Right now, how does that make any sense? That's why
I call it abandonment.
Speaker 3 (41:46):
Is the ultimate goal here just to completely end the
Department of Education, I mean just to move everything into
other places.
Speaker 7 (41:53):
Yes, the ultimate goal is to end the Department of
Education and to basically not only move everything to other places.
But there's too many of us who really believe that
the money that states get for this from the federal
government is too important. There's too many of us where
both Democrats and Republicans that fight against them when they
(42:16):
try to you know, grant they try to take all
the money and lump summit instead of giving like title
ie to the you know, to PS one in New
York City, which is how the grant money works right now,
it goes directly to students. So there's too many of us,
both Republican and Democrats, who actually you know, fought to
stop them from doing that. So now they're just denuding
(42:40):
it in every which way they can to make it disappear,
and there will be no one that will help. If
a state decides not to use the money correctly. There's
no one other than going to the courts. They're going
to basically, you know, be the one calling balls and strikes.
So they don't I mean they literally don't care. That's
(43:04):
why I get to they just don't care about kids,
and kids are our future. But this administration is so
it looks backwards. It doesn't look forwards anyway on anything.
It doesn't think about what the future should look like.
Speaker 4 (43:18):
I mean, it.
Speaker 7 (43:19):
Basically is whatever big tech tells it to do in
terms of AI it does, and he's quite enriched himself.
As regular people life has gotten less and less affordable.
Speaker 3 (43:30):
Randy Winegarden, I hope you'll come back.
Speaker 4 (43:35):
No moment time.
Speaker 3 (43:38):
Rick Wilson, mulad junk Fast.
Speaker 4 (43:41):
Is it that time?
Speaker 3 (43:42):
It is that time. I love that at the time
of time, I know that time.
Speaker 4 (43:47):
The time and the season for loving. No my moment
of fucker. This week is the first big skirmish in
the twenty twenty eight presidential campaign, and that skirmish is
between JD Vance and the pro Putin pro Russia faction
inside the administration and Marco Rubio, who is also fairly
pro Putin, but who understands he's not gonna win the
(44:10):
presidency being that way, and Marco Rubio has busted out JD.
Vance and the pro Russia segment for taking a plan
written in Russia by the Russian Foreign Ministry. It leaks
to Axios. The administration, courtesy of Vance, reports it as
America's policy. This is a classic fucking Vance witcough fuck up.
(44:35):
The world explodes, everybody goes crazy. Marco seeing a hole here,
leaks this and JD. Vance is now taking the hit
on it. This is the first moment of the twenty
twenty eight race where their hatred for each other has
really started to come up on the surface. Vance has
been leaking the shit about against Marco on Venezuela. Marco
has returned the favor on Russia. And I don't think
(44:57):
it gets any prettier from here.
Speaker 3 (44:59):
And how does Axios figure into this?
Speaker 4 (45:02):
That's where the leak was sent. I don't know who
leaked it to Axios, but somebody sent it to Axios
because they were with it like a in a hot sun.
Speaker 3 (45:11):
This is the beginning of this sort of fracturing of
Maga or is there more to this?
Speaker 4 (45:15):
I don't think there's more to this. In that regard,
I think MAGA is going to be. What's what MAGA
is going to be. It's going to be. It will
be a cohesive part of it that sticks around as
sort of the Trump cult forever. But there will also
be a big part of it that's either goes home,
gets bored, is tired of politics, doesn't have the glue
of Donald Trump at hearing them all together in the future.
I wrote a piece today about this. I don't think
(45:36):
Trump is less dangerous because he's a lame duck. I
think it's more dangerous. I think things are going to
be more crazy and more potentially horrifying because he's a
lame duck. These guys are all starting to jockey. The
house is in a frenzy right now. Remember Grinder, Mike
cannot lose a lot of seats. He's losing another one
on January fifth, when Marge leaves, all this is going
to come down, I think to a very tense.
Speaker 3 (45:58):
And ugly spring Reinder Mike Rick Wilson, I am just
I'm listening to the joke. I am neither confirming, nor
denying nor agreeing. I am just listening to the joke.
In awe in awe.
Speaker 4 (46:13):
In awe. Cancel me, motherfuckers. Try it.
Speaker 3 (46:18):
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday to hear the best
minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If
you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend
and keep the conversation going. Thanks for listening.
Host
Molly Jong-Fast
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