October 6, 2025 • 47 mins
The Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson examines Stephen Miller’s continued efforts to cast Democrats as terrorists.Then Senator Chris Murphy details how Democrats are fighting back against Trump’s aggressions.
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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 according to analysts g Elliott Morris,
Trump's net approval among people age eighteen to twenty nine
has declined thirty five percentage points since November twenty twenty four.
(00:22):
We have such a great show for you today. The
Lincoln Project's own Rick Wilson joins us to discuss Stephen
Miller's continued efforts to cast Democrats as terrorists. Then we'll
talk to Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy about how Democrats can
fight back against the Trump administration.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
But first the news Somali.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
We know that Democrats always have an uphill battle when
messaging because of the media environment these days. But it
seems that Trump is facing more shut down blame. But
it still seems way too close to me. In these
polls about who gets blamed for.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
This, most Americans disapprove of how Republicans and Trump are
handling the shn Thirty nine percentage of percent of Americans
blamed Trump and Republicans for the for the shutdown. That's
versus thirty percent, So that's actually it was a little
bit better for Democrats when it started, half of Americans
(01:15):
disapprove of how Trump is handling the shutdown. Here's a
big problem for Republicans about this is like healthcare is
an eighty twenty issue. Okay, So the majority of Democrats, Independents,
and Republicans sport extending those enhanced tax credits that Democrats
demand being included in the government funding. So that's an
(01:35):
eighty twenty issue, right, ninety percent of Democrats, eighty percent
of Republicans, eighty percent of Independence, sixty percent of Republicans.
So there it is. People want those enhanced tax credits.
They don't want to lose their health insurance again, even
if you I think that that is sort of the
most important aspect of this. Now, it's worth remembering there
(01:59):
are Republicans. There were, like not insignificant number of Republicans
have had quite a few in office who want this too,
because they know that this will be a major inflationary
pressure that will hurt voters before the midterms, that will
maybe make them lose their seats. You have tariffs and
(02:21):
then you have health insurance going up. You know, there's
only so much inflation that the American people can take right, like,
you know, your groceries are more expensive, your health insurance
is more expensive. You elected the guy because he said
he was going to make stuff less expensive. So I
don't know, you know, I do think I think that
extending these Obamacare subsidies is just good business. But it
(02:45):
is interesting that both parties are getting a blame. In
earlier polls, we saw that it was more Republicans getting
the blame than Democrats. Usually the party in power gets
blamed for the shutdown. It doesn't matter if start up
the government this week. If this goes on for thirty
five days and you have federal employees eating at food banks,
(03:08):
that's going to be very different kind of thing. So
we have to see sort of what this shutdown ends
up looking like.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
So another thing we have to see what it looks
like is Gavin Newsom is going to sue the Trump
administration for sending California National Guard to Oregon.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
So in this episode of Fast Politics, you're going to
hear my interview with Chris Murphy and what And I
think Chris Murphy is really smart and one of the
things he said in this interview was and that surprised me,
and sometimes a lot of times a Democratic collected don't
really surprise me. I'm sorry to tell you, but this
(03:46):
I thought was really surprising and interesting, which is he
said that he got a lot of faith from the
fact that Newsom was planning to do this redistricting of
the five seats, and he said it showed that you
can push back against trump Ism. And so this makes
me think of that Newsom is going to sue Trump
(04:07):
for sending California National Guard troops to Oregon. We already
saw that Trump had no right to federalize the Guard
when it came to California. My guess is that this
will also be deemed illegal. And I sort of point
out again and again, and this is something that Pritzker
said to in his public comments. They keep I think
(04:28):
it's really important. This White House is out there with
a press release as soon as humanly possible, and they
are working it like for example, in this piece, it
says zoom in President Trump exercised his lawful authority to
protect federal assets and personnel in Portland following following violent riots.
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement to Axios,
(04:50):
there are no violent riots right so that's fucking bullshit.
And if you're going to use statements that have lies
in them, should you be putting a verbatim statement like
that in a new in any kind of news, Like,
clearly that is not true, right. I think Newsom will win,
(05:12):
And I think this is illegal, and I think that
if you're axios, you should not put these statements that
contain lies in them in your reporting.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Maya.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
I think we're seeing here in some research from the
Goop Maker Institute what we assumed would happen, which is
when you ban abortions and make it very hard for
women to have abortions, they have less abortions.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Yeah, and now they have less abortions, But what's the
second order effect? So much of trump Ism is a
lot of like poorly thought out ideas, a lot and
very little trying to figure out this second order effect
when things happen. So I'll be curious, like who's having
these babies? And what you know? Are these teenagers having babies?
(05:53):
Because like when I was young, we had a teen
pregnancy epidemic. We even had that because we had abortions,
we had morning after pill, we had things. It was
just a very different world and we didn't have a
teen pregnancy epidemic the way we do now, or we
may now. We don't know, so, I mean, I think
(06:15):
I'll be curious to see the second order effects of this.
For the first full In the first full year after
the DABS decision, about one in three abortions in the
South and one in twelve nationwide happened in Florida. Now
Florida doesn't have abortions anymore, so they you know, so
(06:37):
I don't know where people go. I mean, this is
the end. It turns out maybe they don't and they
have more children than they can't afford or care for.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
So, Molly, I find this case to be a really
important flashpoint because it often shows which way the wind
is blowing with how Trump pushes back. And what we're
seeing now is Kilmar Brego Garcia may have been charged
because of Trump administration's dendictiveness. A judge's founder.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Everything we're going through is because of the Trump administration's vindictiveness.
I mean, you know, we wouldn't have ice in Chicago,
we wouldn't have this, we wouldn't have that the whole
you know, when Trump kept saying like I'm gonna, you know,
pay back my enemies and and you know, extract retribution.
Everyone be like, no, you don't really mean that.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
He'd be like, yes, I do.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
Uh yeah, he does, so uh. They so they were
not going to return him. Remember they sent this guy,
this poor guy, he's a Maryland guy. He was not
in the country legally, but he did live in Maryland.
They said, they deported him. Then they had to bring
him back.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Remember they had.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
All those people in that They had all those people
in that jail. By the way, we still don't know
where the out the Alligator Alcatraz people are, right, They're
just somewhere else in the system. I mean. The thing
is like, we know people are dying in this we know,
but we don't really they know, like what the numbers are,
(08:02):
but we certainly know. And I mean, because the mainstream
media is so small now, there's just so much that
we're missing. Like if we had the media we had
in twenty sixteen, we every day would be horror stories.
But so much of this is going on reported because
people just don't have the they don't have the lawyers,
(08:23):
they don't have the infrastructure, they don't have the things
they need to do that report in Rick Wilson is
the founder of the Lincoln Project and the host of
the Enemy's List.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Rick Wilson polydn fast.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
I'm going to read you a tweet. We're going to
just start right with a tweet.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
You ready, I'm ready, strapdad, Ready to go.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
The core purpose of the organized terrorist attack on DHS
what where is there an organized terrorist attack is to
reverse to assault, and it's an assignation the twenty twenty
four election mandate to expel millions of illegal aliens at
biten a minute, Okay.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Yes, look, this is another thing that Steven Miller cranked
out in his goon cave somewhere in his house, where
he gets this enormously baroque fantasy in his head that
somehow anybody who opposes Donald Trump.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
On any dimension is a terrorist.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Anyone who speaks against Donald Trump is a terrorist. Anyone
who funds a Democratic candidate is a terrorist. The problem
with this is that the people engaging in the terrorist acts,
by and large in our streets are a bunch of
massed goons who are now arresting and abusing US citizens,
who are assaulting journalists and whatever the cause, killed.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
Two people right or one or two people have.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Been whatever the cause that started the public opposition to them.
It's because of Stephen Miller's desire to expel all the
brown people from a America. Let's not lie about what
it is. He is an eliminationist. He does not just
want to get rid of illegals. I promise you it
will not stop there. The next phase will be, well,
(10:11):
these Mexicans aren't culturally like us. They're not real Americans.
I mean, hence the whole bad Bunny attack. He's a
Puerto Rican, He's not really an American.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
Well, I mean, part of it is that, but I
also think this is it. I agree Steven Miller, but
I also think it's really important to just like talk
about this for one second, which is they are doing
all this messaging because they know it's not working. And
I feel like what I think Pritzker said this thing
(10:41):
last week that or last week a couple of days ago.
Maybe it was like a day ago, but it feels
like ten years. Pritzker said this thing where he said
videotape everything, because everything, because I think he really did
have this realization, which is like there was a moment
when Donald Trump saw the little girl crying over her
shoes when he was like, I'm a TV guy and
(11:03):
this is not how I want my presidency to look.
And Pritzker is in many ways trying to get that
moment to Donald Trump. Agree, disagree, No, I agree.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Look, Trump is a primarily visual thinker. He is a
guy who sees the picture. He is a guy who
sees what's on the TV. I mean, he's the Chauncey
Gardner of our era, only evil. And because these pictures
are increasingly not of ice arresting the imaginary, you know,
terrorists of trendi Agua, but in fact abusing and assaulting
(11:39):
and hitting and gassing women, not children, American citizens to
the ground and kicking in the door of American citizens
without a warrant. Yeah, and arresting elected officials who asked,
just asked the question do you have a warrant? The
Chicago alderman who was arrested the other day just asked,
do you have a warrant? They said, you're under a rat.
(12:00):
Do you have a warrant? We just want to know,
do you have a warrant. There was no violence, there
was no assault, there was no call to harm. For them,
it was a simple question that every American citizen has
a right when they are dealing with law enforcement at
any level, do you have a warrant?
Speaker 1 (12:18):
But even non citizens have rights, like the whole idea.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
That yeah, well yeah, And I'm bifurcating this problem a
little bit here because non citizens still have the right
to do process under our constitution. Yes, I'm sorry if
the Republicans today don't believe in that, but I'm sorry.
That is hard black letter law in the Constitution. It
is not a debatable matter that even non citizens have
(12:45):
certain constitutional rights. They don't have every single protection that
we do, but for due process they do. For interactions
with the criminal justice system, including ICE and DHS they do.
The declaration of a phone national emergency it does not cover,
is not legally sufficient to give ICE the power to
(13:07):
go and decide. Oh, a journalist asked me a question
I didn't like. I'm going to knock the fuck out
of them and hit him on and knock them to
the ground. Oh. Someone someone was was in my way
on a public sidewalk. I'm going to bear mace them.
Speaker 4 (13:20):
Now.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Look, there was one of these cases where the woman
was armed. They shot her. I don't know the whole
details of the story. None of this is an argument
for violence against these ice guys, right, but there is
an argument for accountability for them well.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
And I think that's what's so important about what Pritzker said.
He said he didn't say, like he said, videotape it
put it online.
Speaker 4 (13:42):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
Let that, you know, let people see what's happening. And
I think that really is, you know, be peaceful. But
videotape didn't put it online. And I think I think
that is this really the only way it's going to work.
I you know, I keep thinking back back to when
I was on a stage with this guy, Scott Jennings
(14:07):
from MSNBC but from CNN, and we're sitting there and
he's saying all this like really inflammatory stuff, like on
climate change. He says, we're in war with China and
that's why we have to build lots of power plans
so we can win the AI war. And I just wonder,
so much of this ethos of trump Ism is really
(14:29):
just like getting people upset. And I just think at
some point the American people, don't you think they reject this?
Speaker 4 (14:38):
No, sadly I don't. Here's why.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
Yeah, the American people broadly have already rejected Trump. Two
thirds of the American people for our Mogel listeners, I'm sorry,
but these are math concepts you have to get used to.
Two thirds of the American people do not want these rates, right,
they oppose it. Donald Trump is eighteen to twenty points
underwater on every economic cluster, sure, and he's the immigration
(15:02):
He's ten to fifteen points underwater on immigration. Nothing he
is doing that he claimed he would be good at doing.
He is good at doing.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
And I think, will you talk about immigration for a minute,
because that was the one where he was okay, like
talk to about.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
That was his final That was the sort of final
boss of Trump, right right. He always was believed to be,
even by some more conservative Democrats, the right guy to
seal the border and stop illegal alien crime and all.
Speaker 4 (15:29):
The themes they used.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Now those things are real issues. By the way, there
are people here from other countries who commit terrible crimes,
and you know what, they should be deported, or they
should be or they should be tried and put in prison.
Either way, I'm fine, But the focus of what they've
done is not on lawbreakers. It's on people who just work.
Gardeners and nurses and home health care, aids and farmers
and constructions. So this idea that that immigration was going
(15:54):
to be Trump's like main thing, was predicated on, Oh,
every day we'll catch a human trafficker. Every day, will
get a murderer, every day, We'll get ten thousand drug
dealers from trendy Arragua. Those people are gone already, but
I supported a lot of them.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
Right, But I also think it is important to realize
that now that Trump is president, immigration, just like regular immigration,
is as popular as it's ever been.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Yeah, the stupidity level.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Do you know what the polling on that is.
Speaker 4 (16:27):
I'm going to dig it up for you right now.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Yeah, the stupidity level of this.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
The point is we don't need to know the exact number,
But the point is that Donald Trump has done more
for immigration than Democrats. Legal immigration much more popular than
Democrats could have ever.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Right, Donald Trump ended up causing so much damage throughout
the economy that now the public polling is much more
favorable to a legal immigration structure and system than it
was even when Joe was present. And what Trump has done,
I think he's actually weirdly done a service to the
(17:06):
immigration debate because when the imaginary debate is they're all criminals.
They're all from third world hell holes here to steal
your wife, beat your dog and cat, you know, and
burn your community down and put a taco truck on
every corner. It's easier for Fox and for the MAGA
infrastructure to demagogue this thing and go crazy on it.
Right when it's Wan the gardener, or Rosa the home
(17:29):
healthcare nurse or Carlos the rufer, it becomes a lot
more difficult to make this case. And the and the
majority of the people that they are deporting, the vast, vast,
vast vast majority, something like ninety five percent of them
are not hardened criminals, are not in MS thirteen are
not in trende is a. It is a deminimous number.
(17:52):
And they they've had now nine months to do this.
They've had nine months. Are you telling me that this
panopticon government, with all the data of Palenteer and everybody else,
can't round up the bad guys in nine months?
Speaker 1 (18:08):
But I also think the probably the reason why they're
having so much trouble making these quotas is because there
aren't enough people like they're you know, they have this idea,
there's twenty million illegal quote unquote, but it's not, and
that's why there'd be so much, right find it?
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Wait is it's like it's like yeah, okay, it's like this.
It's like those things when the Russians used to say,
like the beat harvest will be fifty thousand tons, right,
they're only growing like five thousand tons of beats or
whatever the number was.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Right, Well, it is with Trump really, I mean the
thing with Trump that you really do see and he's
got and he started doing this with numbers too, you know,
like they they're writing as checks for ten trillion.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Dollars, seventeen trillion dollars. It's been so far, I.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
Mean it is. But the thing that with this shutdown,
like the larger question is who's running the show, because
like clear Russ Vaught and Steven Miller like running the
show outsourcing going on this.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
Let me tell you what I'm what I'm given to
understand by people around the Trump orbit right now, Steven
Miller and Russ Vaught and JD. Vance have formed a
sort of loose governing alliance inside the White House. Susie
Wiles is checked out pretty much. She's in the background now.
She does the administrative stuff, not the strategic stuff. She's
(19:28):
not in the room for the big strategic plays anymore.
She's she's a smaller character than she was, and she
was the one nor me, me that everybody was like, oh,
thank god, Susie Wiles is there. It's grown up in
the room. It's now Miller and Miller's hold over Trump
is very simple. He says to Trump every day, Well,
the base wants us to do this. The base wants
(19:48):
you to do that. If you don't do this, the
bass will be angry with you. Donald, right, And and
so you see that that Vaught, Miller, Vance and Vance
is doing this because he's trying to get that jump
on twenty twenty eight, right, that that coordinated little group
is pushing forward and trying to make the immigration stuff
(20:10):
as hot as they can, as ugly as they can,
as as pressing as they can as an issue. I
don't think that it's working. The numbers are not great.
And the other part of this thing is, you know
Trump's inability to stay focused on anything for very long. Yeah,
it always he always drifts off to something else. Now
(20:31):
he wants to invade Iraq or Iran. Now I wanted
to go back to Afghanistan. Now I wants to New Nicaragua,
Venezuela or whatever it is. This, yeah, all of it.
If he was every day out there messaging from the podium, right,
might be a different case. But I don't think he
can do that anymore. I don't think he has the
cognitive ability to do that these days. I think I
(20:52):
think he's in a it's sort of a quicksand right
now when it comes to that.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
So some of this stuff, I mean, he did some speeches,
he talked today, and he talked, he did a helicopter
spray and he definitely was not you know, right, I.
Speaker 4 (21:10):
Haven't seen that.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
I haven't seen the footage of that yet, but I
I look his decline. I know we've been saying this
for a while. It is not subtle anymore. It's much
harder to pretend that he is not. I mean that
the jd Vance thing that somebody around Trump World literally
said to me, it's legacy.
Speaker 4 (21:29):
Planning right now.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
They don't want to get caught short if Trump dies
one morning, you know, on his second filet of fish
and JD.
Speaker 4 (21:36):
Vance has to step up. They don't want to be short.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
So that's why vances up doing all this populous raw
raw uglie bullshit.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
I mean, Vance is a he is a uniquely terrible politician,
so so bad it will be a fascinating I mean
he really is, like he is like Stephen Miller. I
mean he just it's like, why is this person screaming
at me?
Speaker 2 (21:59):
And yeah, and and and look. And the worst part
of it is with Stephen Miller, you know, he's psychotic.
You know, there's just some evil brewing in the heart
of Stephen Miller. With Vance, it's just ambition, which to
my mind makes it much less forgivable.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
I remember saying that Advance was never Trump.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Was JD. Vance used to be on all of our
email chains back in the early days of never Trump.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
Fuck that Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, I mean yeah,
jad Vance found that there was no place in the
Republican Party for never Drump.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
And the obvious solution is to leave the party. That that,
But apparently, you know, JD was never quite you know,
structured enough in his moral thinking to get the fuck out.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
This was much easier.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
I Mean, the.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
Secret about trump Ism is that if you just are loyal,
like that's all you need. You don't have to be smart.
You don't have to be cool, you just have to
be loyal.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
Look, I think I think you were seeing As like
to call it. This is the early stages of the
Hunger Games of twenty twenty eight. These people are going
to rip each other to shreds. Right now. You're seeing
in the Mugga Influencer class them ripping each other to shreds,
like and who oh, Laura Luomers after Tucker Carlson.
Speaker 4 (23:14):
Now you know.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
She's not because he's.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
Trson, you know all the you know she's a and
you know you've got you've got all these different people
racing around trying to be the one racing around trying
to be like the person covering.
Speaker 4 (23:31):
Antifa and all that of their garbage.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
Yeah, Benny Johnson, armed up, are tooled up in in
border patrol, is level four, sappy plates on his on
his load bearing vest, running around Chicago now like he's
under gunfire.
Speaker 4 (23:46):
The fuck out of here.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
Rick Wilson, what do you think you know? Jesse Oas says.
This smart thing he says, which is like the worst
kind of podcasting is asking someone to predict the future.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
But well, about twenty billion years from now, the sun
will begin to cool.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
But I mean, do you think like when you think
about Trump right now and you think about like it,
I'm thinking about where we are in this admin versus
and I'm trying to sort of think of like we're
you know, they're trying. They're doing a lot of really
scary stuff. They're moving really fast and breaking things. But
(24:24):
it doesn't feel it just feel it still feels like
the American people. I mean, it doesn't feel as scary
as it did to me six months ago.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
He does not have a mandate. Yeah, he does not
have the mandate of the people. They do not like him,
They do not like what he's doing. They assess him
on the most important single valance to voters, the economy,
as a complete and utter train wreck, failure, fuck up.
He is the worst president on the economy in this
country that anyone, including his own partisans, could have conceived.
(24:59):
All the things he claimed that Joe Biden was screwing
up on, he has made so much worse. He has
done such a poor job on. He has caused worse inflation,
He has caused worse job loss. And it wasn't because
of something that Biden did it where choice. It was
because of choice as Trump made, and people know it.
He does not have a mandate. The novelty of Trump
(25:20):
for a long time has been fading. It has not
faded in the political media class right who still overscore
his ability and his influence in this country. He is
a dangerous, dangerous man, but he is also a crumbling edifice.
He has also never been smart. He is also constantly
(25:42):
obsessed about the things that he knows he's done in
the past, like the Epstein stuff, and he is he
is flailing around right now in a way that's not
going to build public trust or confidence. It's not going
to No one's gonna wake up in the morning and go, well,
thank God, we're covering up the Epstein files. God, I
like Trump now, Rick Wilson, we come back as always,
(26:05):
you know me.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
Chris Murphy is the junior senator from the state of
connect Welcome to Fast Politics. Senator Chris Murphy.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
Hey, thanks for having me back.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
I feel like I've interviewed you so many times, and
I read you, I watch you, and I watch the
way you've changed to this moment in American life, like
going from a safe blue senator with aspirations to a
person who is just really worried about where we are
in this country right now. And I feel like it's
(26:40):
very clear to me that that you've become like really
a moral conscience of this moment. What is the sort
of emotional journey you've been on in a way. I mean,
I know you're your senator, but like you clearly are
meeting the moment in a way that a lot of
people are not.
Speaker 5 (26:56):
It's like a really wonderful backhanded compliment. I will accept
the fact that I used to be worse and now
I'm better.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
You were good before, but you know, like what you're
doing now is like full time twenty four to seven,
just talking about what's happening.
Speaker 5 (27:10):
Yeah, So I mean, listen, I don't know why I
have sort of seen the threat with clarity, but I've
seen the threat. I was confident from the minute he
was sworn in that he was cooking up something fundamentally
different in this term than from the first term, and
that we were going to be in a fight from
the moment he showed up in that office to save
(27:35):
our democracy. A part of that, Molly is that you know,
I did spend a bunch of the last four years
kind of digging into the pseudo intellectual underpinnings of MAGA.
And you know, there are these two ideas that have
become very much mainstream inside Donald Trump's orbit, and they
are that democracy is really not worth it any longer,
(27:55):
that it's an Peter tal yes. And the second one
is that you know, progressives the left represent an existential
threat to the national identity, which to MAGA is a
white Christian, male dominated identity. And so you know, they
don't really care about getting rid of democracy because it
(28:16):
serves their end, which is to eliminate progressives in the
left from the body politics. So I just think you
have to understand that, you know, that sort of anti
small d democratic sentiment inside the Republican Party, which maybe
was a bit fringe in twenty sixteen, is now mainstream.
(28:36):
And so this is a serious moment, perhaps the most
serious moment this country has faced since the Civil War,
and we have to treat it that way.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
Yeah, Like, I feel like you lose a democracy in
tiny ways and in it, you know, slowly and all
at once. And I feel like you have been very
clear about some of those moments. So I would love
you to sort of talk about where you think we
are right now, Well.
Speaker 5 (28:59):
I think we're almost there, right. I mean, I think
we're much closer to losing the democracy than people think
we are. And I do think there's this fallacy whereby
people are waiting for this one seismic moment.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
But that's not.
Speaker 5 (29:14):
Really what happens in the story of democracies that disintegrate,
Elections don't really ever get canceled. There's not normally a who.
What occurs is that the space where political descent just
gets contracted so badly that the minority party of the
opposition party can never win a national election. And I
(29:35):
think we have this tendency to only live in one
news cycle at a time, and we forget on Tuesday
what happened on Monday, and we don't have the muscles
to be able to understand the cumulative impact of everything
that he has done. But this has been systematic, the
way he has gone after law firms, gone after college campuses,
(30:00):
going after states with governors who you speak too meanly
about him, using the power of the purse to reward
loyal states and punished states that have leaders who criticize him.
The consolidation of the media happening as we speak right.
Trump allies now on the verge of owning CBS, TikTok Meta, CNN.
(30:22):
This is the story of how a country like Hungary
or a country like Turkey slipped into illiberal democracy bordering
on autocracy. And if we don't understand that times are
running out for us to make a stand, we may
have an election in twenty twenty six.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
Trump's supper rands.
Speaker 5 (30:41):
Might be at thirty two percent and Democrats will still
lose because our base stays home because they just gave up.
Our donors run for the hills because they don't want
to be grasped by Trump. The media just doesn't tell
the true story. They platform maga content, but they don't
platform criticism.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
That's a restled bee for disaster.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
None of this is particularly popular, Like we're talking about
Project twenty twenty five, the Unitary Executive Executor theory that
Trump should be sort of a god king and that
every branch of the federal government should serve his desires
not popular, but being implemented not popular.
Speaker 5 (31:21):
And I think there is a conversation happening here in
DC whereby you know, some of my colleagues are some
pundits saying, well, you know, you shouldn't really talk about
democracy because you know, democracy didn't win the election force
in twenty twenty four, and so let's not talk about
it now. I don't think that gives voters credit, right,
(31:41):
they know that this is a different knowledge than twenty
twenty four. I mean, they've seen what he has done.
There's a new poll that shows eighty percent of Americans
believe that we are in a political crisis, and that
for the first time ever, over fifty percent of Americans
worry that their ability to speak, for that the freedom
of speech is being a bridge to the point of
(32:04):
potentially being destroyed. That's exceptional, and so I think people
are ready for us to elevate this question of the
rule of law, to come after him for his belief
that he's a king. You know, just because we didn't
win in twenty twenty four, talking about democracy doesn't mean
that we can't win now. People know the circumstances are different.
They know this threat is real, is present.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
Is clear because he's doing it, because he's been president
for nine months and we've seen like just seis rollbacks
of our rights. So this gets me to a question,
which is, like, I'm friends with a lot of these
people in leadership, and I talk to their offices. And again,
this is not like me criticizing because I think I'm
(32:44):
you know whatever. It's me criticizing because I'm genuinely worried
that we're in a five alon fire. Why is it
so hard for leadership to message that, well, I.
Speaker 5 (32:54):
Mean, this is not I guess for me, like right now,
in the middle of a shutdown fight, I'm not super
interesting in internal critiques. I just want everybody to start
fighting the totalitarianism. I do think though, that for people
that are more comfortable talking about, for instance, healthcare and
healthcare premiums that are going up, these are the same story,
(33:14):
right right. So Trump is doing these super unpopular things,
robbing from people, taking their health care away in order
to pad the pockets of billionaires. And the only way
that he gets away with something down unpopular is by
also destroying your ability to protest. And so if he
gets away with the destruction of democracy, then he's going
to be able to more easily just take stuff from you,
(33:37):
your kid's education, your healthcare, money for street improvements in
your neighborhood, and hand it to corporations and billionaires. So
the only way that you protect yourself and your ability
to manage your budget.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
As prices are going up.
Speaker 5 (33:52):
Is to fight his totalitarianism, is to fight what he
is doing to try to destroy our democracy. Because that's
the other feature of these countries that have slid into
illiberal democracy is that the separation between rich and poortges
get bigger and bigger and bigger, because they become totalitarian oligarchies,
not just totalitarian states like Russia.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
I mean, the polling show is that the base is
furious that there are a percentage of Democrats that are
so incredibly angry, and it's created a kind of complicated dynamic.
Do you feel like there's a way to tap into
that and do you feel like those people can use
that energy for you know, what needs to happen right now.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
Well, some of that is.
Speaker 5 (34:39):
Due to Trump's successful, you know, strategy and approach. I mean,
he He's engaged in this sort of dizzying attacks on
free speech, attacks on people's pocketbooks. It's a new story
every day, and for a lot of people, you know,
they retreat in part because it's just all too overwhelming.
But for other people, they are retreating because they worry
(35:00):
that Democrats are powerless. That's why, you know, probably the
most important thing that has happened on our side in
the last few months is Gavin Newsom's moved to a
redistrict in California because it sort of showed a pathway
of power. It showed that we had options, tools at
our disposal that.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
We could use.
Speaker 5 (35:16):
This is one of those tools right now. Right the
leverage that Democrats have to say, here are the conditions
upon which we are willing to vote for a budget.
And I think people want us to do more than
just say we want healthcare subsidies turned back on for
twenty two million Americans. I think they also want us
(35:37):
to say we are not going to willingly fund a
budget that destroys our democracy. I'm not going to be
a sucker and vote for to fund a DOJ that
turns around and hunts me and my political palt Why
on earth would I do that? And if we do it,
(35:57):
it makes us look impotent and weak, and it causes
more people out there who hate what Trump is doing
to just pull back from politics because they don't think
that there's any use in voting for an opposition party
that doesn't use all the tools that it has at
its disposal to fight all of the illegality and the corruption.
And I'll just say this, I'm not unrealistic about this
(36:19):
when I say that we should fight to preserve democracy.
I'm not saying that we're only going to sign on
to a budget that eliminates all of Trump's corruption. But
I think we're going to make some progress. We've at
least got to throw some sand in the gears to
try to slow down on the illegality and the corruption.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
So Republican members of Appropriation have said that it would
be I mean, this was reported, you know, under the
cloak of anonymity, as all Republican criticism is, but that
said Democrats would be crazy to sign on to any
kind of budget because of the pocket recessions, because this
administration is not good on its ward. Democrats are coming
(36:54):
up against the problem that foreign countries have, which is
you can't trust Trump literally, figuratively, metaphorically period.
Speaker 5 (37:03):
You know, it is worth just noting what an odds
system we have here. You know, we are essentially in
coalition government with Republicans because our rules require democratic votes
for a budget. In you know, other parliamentary systems, it's
just the majority party that has to deliver the votes here.
They need our participation, which means they have to present
(37:26):
as good faith partners. They cannot bring us to the
negotiating table say yeah, we're going to agree to this
much money in New York and Connecticut, and then once
we give our votes, we find out that none of
the money in the budget is being spent on our states.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
Trump's doing that right now, right he.
Speaker 5 (37:42):
Is brazenly canceling projects only in democratic states as a
means to, I guess, try to bully us to the
negotiating table. There are things that we can do in
this budget that would at the very least make it
harder for Trump to get away with that kind of
sort of pulling the rug from under democratic priorities. Provisions
(38:02):
that would make it absolutely clear that he has to
spend all the money in the budget, not just in
the states that he deems to be loyal to him,
and would give you know, my governor an easy rights
to go to court to get the money turned back on.
So you can't stop him from acting illegally, but you
can make it a lot easier for the victims of
his illegality to go to court and get a pretty
(38:25):
quick injunction, and that's what we would be looking for
in this budget.
Speaker 1 (38:28):
That seems like something that would be sort of easy
to slip by Trump world because they're not so detail oriented,
with the exception of Rastavant, and something that Republicans might
agree to because they don't necessarily like this appropriations fight.
They have lost the power of the purse and the
power of oversight. Do you think there's appetite there for
(38:49):
that or no?
Speaker 5 (38:50):
Well, I listen, I don't think it makes a lot
of sense to negotiate the details in public.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
I just for.
Speaker 5 (38:57):
Now, we need to say, and this is my recommendation,
we need to say that if you want our votes
for this budget, there are two things you got up do.
You've got to stop people supreams from going up by
seventy five percent fundamentallyum moral that you are robbing people
of health care in order to have the pockets of billionaires.
And you've got put constraints on Trump's illegality. You've got
(39:17):
to give us a shot to have a free and
fair election in twenty twenty six and twenty twenty eight.
And I think we're talking about constraints on his ability
to seize spending power. That's important, but there's a number
of other things that we could talk about, including the
way in which he is using federal troops to be
deployed to our cities, that could be on the table
as part of that conversation about protecting our democracy.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
So, yes, there are a lot.
Speaker 5 (39:40):
Of options we have at our disposal, and I think
a lot of that can be fleshed out at a
negotiating table.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
These blue states are paying more money into the federal
government and they're being denied the money back. I mean,
some of these governors, like you know, California, it's the
fourth largest economy in the world. Are the conversations about,
like what power the states have when it comes to
federal funds.
Speaker 5 (40:08):
Obviously, there are a set of much edgier techniques that
are on the table at our disposal to try to
arrest this slide away from democracy. Whether it's states taking
unilateral action about the money they send them to Washington,
whether it's the you.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
Know, vaccines we saw that, Yeah.
Speaker 5 (40:31):
Tech techniques that have been used in other fights like
general strikes. My feeling is this, we have leverage right
now through the ordinary political process to try to fix
these problems. And so before we go to those edgier techniques,
which I think just have to be on the table,
those edgier tactics, let's try to use the sort of
(40:53):
conventional route, which is using our power as a minority
party to say, if you want us to sign on
to this budget, and right now they need us to
sign onto this budget, you have got to put our
democracy back on a healthy pathway.
Speaker 2 (41:08):
So I think that's where the focus needs to be
right now.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
You've been in DC a long time and you do
know a lot of these people personally. Do you think
that Republicans understand how different this is that Trump two
point out is to Trump to one point out or
are they just still hide bought in?
Speaker 5 (41:23):
No, I mean, I do not think Republicans are going
to save us. There are a handful in the Senate
who know this is wrong, but it is a shrinking number,
a number that is shrinking almost to the point of irrelevancy. Again,
it is just important to remember what I said at
the outset that the mainstream Republican thinking right now is
(41:44):
that democracy is not worth it if it elects democrats
right period.
Speaker 4 (41:49):
Stop.
Speaker 5 (41:50):
They want power, and they want power at any cost,
and that is the view of now the sizeable majority
of Republicans in the House and in the Senate, and
so well, yes, we have an ability right now to
sort of force them to do the right thing because
(42:10):
they might lose their seats if they raise people's premiums.
They're only going to come to the table because they're
worried about their election. They're not going to come to
the table again. The majority of them are not going
to come to the table because they actually know what
he's doing is wrong.
Speaker 2 (42:26):
That ship is kind of sailed.
Speaker 5 (42:28):
As dire as things are, we saw what happened with
Kimmel that people stood up and canceled their subscriptions and
forced it. So like it is still within our power
to stand up and mobilized. And yeah, I'm worried that
people are losing faith in the Democratic opposition. My hope
is that by standing our ground right now for people's healthcare,
for our democracy, we can show folks that were relevant
(42:51):
and that we'll have big turnouts in the fall elections.
We'll get some momentum going. We'll be back out on
the streets for the no Kings protests on the eighteenth.
Sometimes I can, you know, be a little bit of
a downer because I'm just trying to be realistic with people.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
But there's a lot of.
Speaker 5 (43:03):
Promise, a lot of hope, and a lot of power
in what we can do in the next couple of months.
Speaker 1 (43:07):
I agree, Thank you, thanks.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
Thanks mind a moment, oh fuck, Rick Wilson, Well, I
drunk fast.
Speaker 1 (43:18):
We are at that moment, the moment of fucker.
Speaker 2 (43:21):
Y, the moment which the fuckery begins.
Speaker 1 (43:23):
That is right, what would you what is your moment
of fuck right?
Speaker 4 (43:27):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (43:28):
Look, I think the moment of fuckery was little Pete Hegseth,
a man who wears more hair product than the two
of us combined and more makeup than than the average
drag queen, prancing around the stage lecturing eight hundred senior
flag officers and senior enlisted figures from the military on
on warrior prowess and and and martial skill in combat
(43:53):
and toughness. When he is a Fox News weekend host
and a chronic drunkard. This this went over as you
might have expected, like a wet fart and a hot
car on a first date. It was what it was
a complete train wreck.
Speaker 5 (44:09):
What were what.
Speaker 1 (44:10):
Were people saying in the room?
Speaker 4 (44:12):
Well, it's what they weren't saying that matter.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
They weren't applauding, they weren't yelling who, they weren't jumping
up and down.
Speaker 4 (44:19):
When he finished that speech.
Speaker 2 (44:21):
The very best moment of the entire thing, He's like,
we're the Department of War, Go get them. And he
looked at that audience and he waited, and he waited
another beat, and then another beat, and he looks down
for one second. You could see his whole face collapse
for one second, then looks back up and walks off
the state. I know it's a little thing, but those
eight hundred generals and admirals in that office, in that
(44:43):
in that room, in that auditorium, and the and the
and the dozens and dozens of senior enlisted folks in
that room, in the Trumpian climate, the right thing would
have been to clap, stand up, you know, let let
the pit powers that be see you being on their team. Yeah,
not one of them did it. And not one of
them stood or clapped for Trump, not one, not one,
not once. And it was it was, to my mind,
(45:07):
the fuckery of Trump and Hexeth trying to rally or
get those people in the rooms so they could have
a Trump campaign rally was pathetic and dangerous to the country.
And and the great thing about it was this time
their fuckery failed. It blew up in their face and
it embarrassed this White House and the embarrassed Secretory defense dramatically.
Speaker 1 (45:26):
My favorite part of it was that Trump wouldn't let
heg Seth have the photo ops, so he came like
that is as someone who's from a family of performers,
Like I get that so hard, Like I get it man,
Like you're calling all the generals back. They're not gonna
see you know, like you may think you're the you're
(45:49):
the main event, but you are not right.
Speaker 4 (45:52):
You know that.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
That's a really good point. And Trump's ego drove him
over there. I also heard that Vance was pushing him
to go over there to make sure Hegseth didn't get
a solo show. But you know, with Hegseth on the stage,
it was everything but him holding his camera up and
doing a selfie and then and the duck face for
with the crowd.
Speaker 1 (46:11):
It was amaz telling you the the game of throwing
stuff with Heg Sas and RFK and JD. Vance and
like it is Marco and all of the yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (46:25):
Rick Wilson, Hey, Mollie, John Fast. I will not speak
to you again until next weekend about this one issue.
But it's Nobel week.
Speaker 4 (46:34):
What are your what are your? What odds you taking that?
Speaker 2 (46:36):
On Friday we're gonna hear that Donald Trump is the
nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Speaker 1 (46:40):
I think that Donald Trump is likely to get a
Nobel Prize as I am there you go, all right, good,
No pleasure to report because I would like a prize.
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear the best
(47:02):
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 according to analysts g Elliott Morris,
Trump's net approval among people age eighteen to twenty nine
has declined thirty five percentage points since November twenty twenty four.
(00:22):
We have such a great show for you today. The
Lincoln Project's own Rick Wilson joins us to discuss Stephen
Miller's continued efforts to cast Democrats as terrorists. Then we'll
talk to Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy about how Democrats can
fight back against the Trump administration.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
But first the news Somali.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
We know that Democrats always have an uphill battle when
messaging because of the media environment these days. But it
seems that Trump is facing more shut down blame. But
it still seems way too close to me. In these
polls about who gets blamed for.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
This, most Americans disapprove of how Republicans and Trump are
handling the shn Thirty nine percentage of percent of Americans
blamed Trump and Republicans for the for the shutdown. That's
versus thirty percent, So that's actually it was a little
bit better for Democrats when it started, half of Americans
(01:15):
disapprove of how Trump is handling the shutdown. Here's a
big problem for Republicans about this is like healthcare is
an eighty twenty issue. Okay, So the majority of Democrats, Independents,
and Republicans sport extending those enhanced tax credits that Democrats
demand being included in the government funding. So that's an
(01:35):
eighty twenty issue, right, ninety percent of Democrats, eighty percent
of Republicans, eighty percent of Independence, sixty percent of Republicans.
So there it is. People want those enhanced tax credits.
They don't want to lose their health insurance again, even
if you I think that that is sort of the
most important aspect of this. Now, it's worth remembering there
(01:59):
are Republicans. There were, like not insignificant number of Republicans
have had quite a few in office who want this too,
because they know that this will be a major inflationary
pressure that will hurt voters before the midterms, that will
maybe make them lose their seats. You have tariffs and
(02:21):
then you have health insurance going up. You know, there's
only so much inflation that the American people can take right, like,
you know, your groceries are more expensive, your health insurance
is more expensive. You elected the guy because he said
he was going to make stuff less expensive. So I
don't know, you know, I do think I think that
extending these Obamacare subsidies is just good business. But it
(02:45):
is interesting that both parties are getting a blame. In
earlier polls, we saw that it was more Republicans getting
the blame than Democrats. Usually the party in power gets
blamed for the shutdown. It doesn't matter if start up
the government this week. If this goes on for thirty
five days and you have federal employees eating at food banks,
(03:08):
that's going to be very different kind of thing. So
we have to see sort of what this shutdown ends
up looking like.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
So another thing we have to see what it looks
like is Gavin Newsom is going to sue the Trump
administration for sending California National Guard to Oregon.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
So in this episode of Fast Politics, you're going to
hear my interview with Chris Murphy and what And I
think Chris Murphy is really smart and one of the
things he said in this interview was and that surprised me,
and sometimes a lot of times a Democratic collected don't
really surprise me. I'm sorry to tell you, but this
(03:46):
I thought was really surprising and interesting, which is he
said that he got a lot of faith from the
fact that Newsom was planning to do this redistricting of
the five seats, and he said it showed that you
can push back against trump Ism. And so this makes
me think of that Newsom is going to sue Trump
(04:07):
for sending California National Guard troops to Oregon. We already
saw that Trump had no right to federalize the Guard
when it came to California. My guess is that this
will also be deemed illegal. And I sort of point
out again and again, and this is something that Pritzker
said to in his public comments. They keep I think
(04:28):
it's really important. This White House is out there with
a press release as soon as humanly possible, and they
are working it like for example, in this piece, it
says zoom in President Trump exercised his lawful authority to
protect federal assets and personnel in Portland following following violent riots.
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement to Axios,
(04:50):
there are no violent riots right so that's fucking bullshit.
And if you're going to use statements that have lies
in them, should you be putting a verbatim statement like
that in a new in any kind of news, Like,
clearly that is not true, right. I think Newsom will win,
(05:12):
And I think this is illegal, and I think that
if you're axios, you should not put these statements that
contain lies in them in your reporting.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Maya.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
I think we're seeing here in some research from the
Goop Maker Institute what we assumed would happen, which is
when you ban abortions and make it very hard for
women to have abortions, they have less abortions.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Yeah, and now they have less abortions, But what's the
second order effect? So much of trump Ism is a
lot of like poorly thought out ideas, a lot and
very little trying to figure out this second order effect
when things happen. So I'll be curious, like who's having
these babies? And what you know? Are these teenagers having babies?
(05:53):
Because like when I was young, we had a teen
pregnancy epidemic. We even had that because we had abortions,
we had morning after pill, we had things. It was
just a very different world and we didn't have a
teen pregnancy epidemic the way we do now, or we
may now. We don't know, so, I mean, I think
(06:15):
I'll be curious to see the second order effects of this.
For the first full In the first full year after
the DABS decision, about one in three abortions in the
South and one in twelve nationwide happened in Florida. Now
Florida doesn't have abortions anymore, so they you know, so
(06:37):
I don't know where people go. I mean, this is
the end. It turns out maybe they don't and they
have more children than they can't afford or care for.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
So, Molly, I find this case to be a really
important flashpoint because it often shows which way the wind
is blowing with how Trump pushes back. And what we're
seeing now is Kilmar Brego Garcia may have been charged
because of Trump administration's dendictiveness. A judge's founder.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Everything we're going through is because of the Trump administration's vindictiveness.
I mean, you know, we wouldn't have ice in Chicago,
we wouldn't have this, we wouldn't have that the whole
you know, when Trump kept saying like I'm gonna, you know,
pay back my enemies and and you know, extract retribution.
Everyone be like, no, you don't really mean that.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
He'd be like, yes, I do.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
Uh yeah, he does, so uh. They so they were
not going to return him. Remember they sent this guy,
this poor guy, he's a Maryland guy. He was not
in the country legally, but he did live in Maryland.
They said, they deported him. Then they had to bring
him back.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Remember they had.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
All those people in that They had all those people
in that jail. By the way, we still don't know
where the out the Alligator Alcatraz people are, right, They're
just somewhere else in the system. I mean. The thing
is like, we know people are dying in this we know,
but we don't really they know, like what the numbers are,
(08:02):
but we certainly know. And I mean, because the mainstream
media is so small now, there's just so much that
we're missing. Like if we had the media we had
in twenty sixteen, we every day would be horror stories.
But so much of this is going on reported because
people just don't have the they don't have the lawyers,
(08:23):
they don't have the infrastructure, they don't have the things
they need to do that report in Rick Wilson is
the founder of the Lincoln Project and the host of
the Enemy's List.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Rick Wilson polydn fast.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
I'm going to read you a tweet. We're going to
just start right with a tweet.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
You ready, I'm ready, strapdad, Ready to go.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
The core purpose of the organized terrorist attack on DHS
what where is there an organized terrorist attack is to
reverse to assault, and it's an assignation the twenty twenty
four election mandate to expel millions of illegal aliens at
biten a minute, Okay.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Yes, look, this is another thing that Steven Miller cranked
out in his goon cave somewhere in his house, where
he gets this enormously baroque fantasy in his head that
somehow anybody who opposes Donald Trump.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
On any dimension is a terrorist.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Anyone who speaks against Donald Trump is a terrorist. Anyone
who funds a Democratic candidate is a terrorist. The problem
with this is that the people engaging in the terrorist acts,
by and large in our streets are a bunch of
massed goons who are now arresting and abusing US citizens,
who are assaulting journalists and whatever the cause, killed.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
Two people right or one or two people have.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Been whatever the cause that started the public opposition to them.
It's because of Stephen Miller's desire to expel all the
brown people from a America. Let's not lie about what
it is. He is an eliminationist. He does not just
want to get rid of illegals. I promise you it
will not stop there. The next phase will be, well,
(10:11):
these Mexicans aren't culturally like us. They're not real Americans.
I mean, hence the whole bad Bunny attack. He's a
Puerto Rican, He's not really an American.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
Well, I mean, part of it is that, but I
also think this is it. I agree Steven Miller, but
I also think it's really important to just like talk
about this for one second, which is they are doing
all this messaging because they know it's not working. And
I feel like what I think Pritzker said this thing
(10:41):
last week that or last week a couple of days ago.
Maybe it was like a day ago, but it feels
like ten years. Pritzker said this thing where he said
videotape everything, because everything, because I think he really did
have this realization, which is like there was a moment
when Donald Trump saw the little girl crying over her
shoes when he was like, I'm a TV guy and
(11:03):
this is not how I want my presidency to look.
And Pritzker is in many ways trying to get that
moment to Donald Trump. Agree, disagree, No, I agree.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Look, Trump is a primarily visual thinker. He is a
guy who sees the picture. He is a guy who
sees what's on the TV. I mean, he's the Chauncey
Gardner of our era, only evil. And because these pictures
are increasingly not of ice arresting the imaginary, you know,
terrorists of trendi Agua, but in fact abusing and assaulting
(11:39):
and hitting and gassing women, not children, American citizens to
the ground and kicking in the door of American citizens
without a warrant. Yeah, and arresting elected officials who asked,
just asked the question do you have a warrant? The
Chicago alderman who was arrested the other day just asked,
do you have a warrant? They said, you're under a rat.
(12:00):
Do you have a warrant? We just want to know,
do you have a warrant. There was no violence, there
was no assault, there was no call to harm. For them,
it was a simple question that every American citizen has
a right when they are dealing with law enforcement at
any level, do you have a warrant?
Speaker 1 (12:18):
But even non citizens have rights, like the whole idea.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
That yeah, well yeah, And I'm bifurcating this problem a
little bit here because non citizens still have the right
to do process under our constitution. Yes, I'm sorry if
the Republicans today don't believe in that, but I'm sorry.
That is hard black letter law in the Constitution. It
is not a debatable matter that even non citizens have
(12:45):
certain constitutional rights. They don't have every single protection that
we do, but for due process they do. For interactions
with the criminal justice system, including ICE and DHS they do.
The declaration of a phone national emergency it does not cover,
is not legally sufficient to give ICE the power to
(13:07):
go and decide. Oh, a journalist asked me a question
I didn't like. I'm going to knock the fuck out
of them and hit him on and knock them to
the ground. Oh. Someone someone was was in my way
on a public sidewalk. I'm going to bear mace them.
Speaker 4 (13:20):
Now.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Look, there was one of these cases where the woman
was armed. They shot her. I don't know the whole
details of the story. None of this is an argument
for violence against these ice guys, right, but there is
an argument for accountability for them well.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
And I think that's what's so important about what Pritzker said.
He said he didn't say, like he said, videotape it
put it online.
Speaker 4 (13:42):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
Let that, you know, let people see what's happening. And
I think that really is, you know, be peaceful. But
videotape didn't put it online. And I think I think
that is this really the only way it's going to work.
I you know, I keep thinking back back to when
I was on a stage with this guy, Scott Jennings
(14:07):
from MSNBC but from CNN, and we're sitting there and
he's saying all this like really inflammatory stuff, like on
climate change. He says, we're in war with China and
that's why we have to build lots of power plans
so we can win the AI war. And I just wonder,
so much of this ethos of trump Ism is really
(14:29):
just like getting people upset. And I just think at
some point the American people, don't you think they reject this?
Speaker 4 (14:38):
No, sadly I don't. Here's why.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
Yeah, the American people broadly have already rejected Trump. Two
thirds of the American people for our Mogel listeners, I'm sorry,
but these are math concepts you have to get used to.
Two thirds of the American people do not want these rates, right,
they oppose it. Donald Trump is eighteen to twenty points
underwater on every economic cluster, sure, and he's the immigration
(15:02):
He's ten to fifteen points underwater on immigration. Nothing he
is doing that he claimed he would be good at doing.
He is good at doing.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
And I think, will you talk about immigration for a minute,
because that was the one where he was okay, like
talk to about.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
That was his final That was the sort of final
boss of Trump, right right. He always was believed to be,
even by some more conservative Democrats, the right guy to
seal the border and stop illegal alien crime and all.
Speaker 4 (15:29):
The themes they used.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Now those things are real issues. By the way, there
are people here from other countries who commit terrible crimes,
and you know what, they should be deported, or they
should be or they should be tried and put in prison.
Either way, I'm fine, But the focus of what they've
done is not on lawbreakers. It's on people who just work.
Gardeners and nurses and home health care, aids and farmers
and constructions. So this idea that that immigration was going
(15:54):
to be Trump's like main thing, was predicated on, Oh,
every day we'll catch a human trafficker. Every day, will
get a murderer, every day, We'll get ten thousand drug
dealers from trendy Arragua. Those people are gone already, but
I supported a lot of them.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
Right, But I also think it is important to realize
that now that Trump is president, immigration, just like regular immigration,
is as popular as it's ever been.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Yeah, the stupidity level.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Do you know what the polling on that is.
Speaker 4 (16:27):
I'm going to dig it up for you right now.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Yeah, the stupidity level of this.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
The point is we don't need to know the exact number,
But the point is that Donald Trump has done more
for immigration than Democrats. Legal immigration much more popular than
Democrats could have ever.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Right, Donald Trump ended up causing so much damage throughout
the economy that now the public polling is much more
favorable to a legal immigration structure and system than it
was even when Joe was present. And what Trump has done,
I think he's actually weirdly done a service to the
(17:06):
immigration debate because when the imaginary debate is they're all criminals.
They're all from third world hell holes here to steal
your wife, beat your dog and cat, you know, and
burn your community down and put a taco truck on
every corner. It's easier for Fox and for the MAGA
infrastructure to demagogue this thing and go crazy on it.
Right when it's Wan the gardener, or Rosa the home
(17:29):
healthcare nurse or Carlos the rufer, it becomes a lot
more difficult to make this case. And the and the
majority of the people that they are deporting, the vast, vast,
vast vast majority, something like ninety five percent of them
are not hardened criminals, are not in MS thirteen are
not in trende is a. It is a deminimous number.
(17:52):
And they they've had now nine months to do this.
They've had nine months. Are you telling me that this
panopticon government, with all the data of Palenteer and everybody else,
can't round up the bad guys in nine months?
Speaker 1 (18:08):
But I also think the probably the reason why they're
having so much trouble making these quotas is because there
aren't enough people like they're you know, they have this idea,
there's twenty million illegal quote unquote, but it's not, and
that's why there'd be so much, right find it?
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Wait is it's like it's like yeah, okay, it's like this.
It's like those things when the Russians used to say,
like the beat harvest will be fifty thousand tons, right,
they're only growing like five thousand tons of beats or
whatever the number was.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Right, Well, it is with Trump really, I mean the
thing with Trump that you really do see and he's
got and he started doing this with numbers too, you know,
like they they're writing as checks for ten trillion.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Dollars, seventeen trillion dollars. It's been so far, I.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
Mean it is. But the thing that with this shutdown,
like the larger question is who's running the show, because
like clear Russ Vaught and Steven Miller like running the
show outsourcing going on this.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
Let me tell you what I'm what I'm given to
understand by people around the Trump orbit right now, Steven
Miller and Russ Vaught and JD. Vance have formed a
sort of loose governing alliance inside the White House. Susie
Wiles is checked out pretty much. She's in the background now.
She does the administrative stuff, not the strategic stuff. She's
(19:28):
not in the room for the big strategic plays anymore.
She's she's a smaller character than she was, and she
was the one nor me, me that everybody was like, oh,
thank god, Susie Wiles is there. It's grown up in
the room. It's now Miller and Miller's hold over Trump
is very simple. He says to Trump every day, Well,
the base wants us to do this. The base wants
(19:48):
you to do that. If you don't do this, the
bass will be angry with you. Donald, right, And and
so you see that that Vaught, Miller, Vance and Vance
is doing this because he's trying to get that jump
on twenty twenty eight, right, that that coordinated little group
is pushing forward and trying to make the immigration stuff
(20:10):
as hot as they can, as ugly as they can,
as as pressing as they can as an issue. I
don't think that it's working. The numbers are not great.
And the other part of this thing is, you know
Trump's inability to stay focused on anything for very long. Yeah,
it always he always drifts off to something else. Now
(20:31):
he wants to invade Iraq or Iran. Now I wanted
to go back to Afghanistan. Now I wants to New Nicaragua,
Venezuela or whatever it is. This, yeah, all of it.
If he was every day out there messaging from the podium, right,
might be a different case. But I don't think he
can do that anymore. I don't think he has the
cognitive ability to do that these days. I think I
(20:52):
think he's in a it's sort of a quicksand right
now when it comes to that.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
So some of this stuff, I mean, he did some speeches,
he talked today, and he talked, he did a helicopter
spray and he definitely was not you know, right, I.
Speaker 4 (21:10):
Haven't seen that.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
I haven't seen the footage of that yet, but I
I look his decline. I know we've been saying this
for a while. It is not subtle anymore. It's much
harder to pretend that he is not. I mean that
the jd Vance thing that somebody around Trump World literally
said to me, it's legacy.
Speaker 4 (21:29):
Planning right now.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
They don't want to get caught short if Trump dies
one morning, you know, on his second filet of fish
and JD.
Speaker 4 (21:36):
Vance has to step up. They don't want to be short.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
So that's why vances up doing all this populous raw
raw uglie bullshit.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
I mean, Vance is a he is a uniquely terrible politician,
so so bad it will be a fascinating I mean
he really is, like he is like Stephen Miller. I
mean he just it's like, why is this person screaming
at me?
Speaker 2 (21:59):
And yeah, and and and look. And the worst part
of it is with Stephen Miller, you know, he's psychotic.
You know, there's just some evil brewing in the heart
of Stephen Miller. With Vance, it's just ambition, which to
my mind makes it much less forgivable.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
I remember saying that Advance was never Trump.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Was JD. Vance used to be on all of our
email chains back in the early days of never Trump.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
Fuck that Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, I mean yeah,
jad Vance found that there was no place in the
Republican Party for never Drump.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
And the obvious solution is to leave the party. That that,
But apparently, you know, JD was never quite you know,
structured enough in his moral thinking to get the fuck out.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
This was much easier.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
I Mean, the.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
Secret about trump Ism is that if you just are loyal,
like that's all you need. You don't have to be smart.
You don't have to be cool, you just have to
be loyal.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
Look, I think I think you were seeing As like
to call it. This is the early stages of the
Hunger Games of twenty twenty eight. These people are going
to rip each other to shreds. Right now. You're seeing
in the Mugga Influencer class them ripping each other to shreds,
like and who oh, Laura Luomers after Tucker Carlson.
Speaker 4 (23:14):
Now you know.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
She's not because he's.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
Trson, you know all the you know she's a and
you know you've got you've got all these different people
racing around trying to be the one racing around trying
to be like the person covering.
Speaker 4 (23:31):
Antifa and all that of their garbage.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
Yeah, Benny Johnson, armed up, are tooled up in in
border patrol, is level four, sappy plates on his on
his load bearing vest, running around Chicago now like he's
under gunfire.
Speaker 4 (23:46):
The fuck out of here.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
Rick Wilson, what do you think you know? Jesse Oas says.
This smart thing he says, which is like the worst
kind of podcasting is asking someone to predict the future.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
But well, about twenty billion years from now, the sun
will begin to cool.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
But I mean, do you think like when you think
about Trump right now and you think about like it,
I'm thinking about where we are in this admin versus
and I'm trying to sort of think of like we're
you know, they're trying. They're doing a lot of really
scary stuff. They're moving really fast and breaking things. But
(24:24):
it doesn't feel it just feel it still feels like
the American people. I mean, it doesn't feel as scary
as it did to me six months ago.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
He does not have a mandate. Yeah, he does not
have the mandate of the people. They do not like him,
They do not like what he's doing. They assess him
on the most important single valance to voters, the economy,
as a complete and utter train wreck, failure, fuck up.
He is the worst president on the economy in this
country that anyone, including his own partisans, could have conceived.
(24:59):
All the things he claimed that Joe Biden was screwing
up on, he has made so much worse. He has
done such a poor job on. He has caused worse inflation,
He has caused worse job loss. And it wasn't because
of something that Biden did it where choice. It was
because of choice as Trump made, and people know it.
He does not have a mandate. The novelty of Trump
(25:20):
for a long time has been fading. It has not
faded in the political media class right who still overscore
his ability and his influence in this country. He is
a dangerous, dangerous man, but he is also a crumbling edifice.
He has also never been smart. He is also constantly
(25:42):
obsessed about the things that he knows he's done in
the past, like the Epstein stuff, and he is he
is flailing around right now in a way that's not
going to build public trust or confidence. It's not going
to No one's gonna wake up in the morning and go, well,
thank God, we're covering up the Epstein files. God, I
like Trump now, Rick Wilson, we come back as always,
(26:05):
you know me.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
Chris Murphy is the junior senator from the state of
connect Welcome to Fast Politics. Senator Chris Murphy.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
Hey, thanks for having me back.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
I feel like I've interviewed you so many times, and
I read you, I watch you, and I watch the
way you've changed to this moment in American life, like
going from a safe blue senator with aspirations to a
person who is just really worried about where we are
in this country right now. And I feel like it's
(26:40):
very clear to me that that you've become like really
a moral conscience of this moment. What is the sort
of emotional journey you've been on in a way. I mean,
I know you're your senator, but like you clearly are
meeting the moment in a way that a lot of
people are not.
Speaker 5 (26:56):
It's like a really wonderful backhanded compliment. I will accept
the fact that I used to be worse and now
I'm better.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
You were good before, but you know, like what you're
doing now is like full time twenty four to seven,
just talking about what's happening.
Speaker 5 (27:10):
Yeah, So I mean, listen, I don't know why I
have sort of seen the threat with clarity, but I've
seen the threat. I was confident from the minute he
was sworn in that he was cooking up something fundamentally
different in this term than from the first term, and
that we were going to be in a fight from
the moment he showed up in that office to save
(27:35):
our democracy. A part of that, Molly is that you know,
I did spend a bunch of the last four years
kind of digging into the pseudo intellectual underpinnings of MAGA.
And you know, there are these two ideas that have
become very much mainstream inside Donald Trump's orbit, and they
are that democracy is really not worth it any longer,
(27:55):
that it's an Peter tal yes. And the second one
is that you know, progressives the left represent an existential
threat to the national identity, which to MAGA is a
white Christian, male dominated identity. And so you know, they
don't really care about getting rid of democracy because it
(28:16):
serves their end, which is to eliminate progressives in the
left from the body politics. So I just think you
have to understand that, you know, that sort of anti
small d democratic sentiment inside the Republican Party, which maybe
was a bit fringe in twenty sixteen, is now mainstream.
(28:36):
And so this is a serious moment, perhaps the most
serious moment this country has faced since the Civil War,
and we have to treat it that way.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
Yeah, Like, I feel like you lose a democracy in
tiny ways and in it, you know, slowly and all
at once. And I feel like you have been very
clear about some of those moments. So I would love
you to sort of talk about where you think we
are right now, Well.
Speaker 5 (28:59):
I think we're almost there, right. I mean, I think
we're much closer to losing the democracy than people think
we are. And I do think there's this fallacy whereby
people are waiting for this one seismic moment.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
But that's not.
Speaker 5 (29:14):
Really what happens in the story of democracies that disintegrate,
Elections don't really ever get canceled. There's not normally a who.
What occurs is that the space where political descent just
gets contracted so badly that the minority party of the
opposition party can never win a national election. And I
(29:35):
think we have this tendency to only live in one
news cycle at a time, and we forget on Tuesday
what happened on Monday, and we don't have the muscles
to be able to understand the cumulative impact of everything
that he has done. But this has been systematic, the
way he has gone after law firms, gone after college campuses,
(30:00):
going after states with governors who you speak too meanly
about him, using the power of the purse to reward
loyal states and punished states that have leaders who criticize him.
The consolidation of the media happening as we speak right.
Trump allies now on the verge of owning CBS, TikTok Meta, CNN.
(30:22):
This is the story of how a country like Hungary
or a country like Turkey slipped into illiberal democracy bordering
on autocracy. And if we don't understand that times are
running out for us to make a stand, we may
have an election in twenty twenty six.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
Trump's supper rands.
Speaker 5 (30:41):
Might be at thirty two percent and Democrats will still
lose because our base stays home because they just gave up.
Our donors run for the hills because they don't want
to be grasped by Trump. The media just doesn't tell
the true story. They platform maga content, but they don't
platform criticism.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
That's a restled bee for disaster.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
None of this is particularly popular, Like we're talking about
Project twenty twenty five, the Unitary Executive Executor theory that
Trump should be sort of a god king and that
every branch of the federal government should serve his desires
not popular, but being implemented not popular.
Speaker 5 (31:21):
And I think there is a conversation happening here in
DC whereby you know, some of my colleagues are some
pundits saying, well, you know, you shouldn't really talk about
democracy because you know, democracy didn't win the election force
in twenty twenty four, and so let's not talk about
it now. I don't think that gives voters credit, right,
(31:41):
they know that this is a different knowledge than twenty
twenty four. I mean, they've seen what he has done.
There's a new poll that shows eighty percent of Americans
believe that we are in a political crisis, and that
for the first time ever, over fifty percent of Americans
worry that their ability to speak, for that the freedom
of speech is being a bridge to the point of
(32:04):
potentially being destroyed. That's exceptional, and so I think people
are ready for us to elevate this question of the
rule of law, to come after him for his belief
that he's a king. You know, just because we didn't
win in twenty twenty four, talking about democracy doesn't mean
that we can't win now. People know the circumstances are different.
They know this threat is real, is present.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
Is clear because he's doing it, because he's been president
for nine months and we've seen like just seis rollbacks
of our rights. So this gets me to a question,
which is, like, I'm friends with a lot of these
people in leadership, and I talk to their offices. And again,
this is not like me criticizing because I think I'm
(32:44):
you know whatever. It's me criticizing because I'm genuinely worried
that we're in a five alon fire. Why is it
so hard for leadership to message that, well, I.
Speaker 5 (32:54):
Mean, this is not I guess for me, like right now,
in the middle of a shutdown fight, I'm not super
interesting in internal critiques. I just want everybody to start
fighting the totalitarianism. I do think though, that for people
that are more comfortable talking about, for instance, healthcare and
healthcare premiums that are going up, these are the same story,
(33:14):
right right. So Trump is doing these super unpopular things,
robbing from people, taking their health care away in order
to pad the pockets of billionaires. And the only way
that he gets away with something down unpopular is by
also destroying your ability to protest. And so if he
gets away with the destruction of democracy, then he's going
to be able to more easily just take stuff from you,
(33:37):
your kid's education, your healthcare, money for street improvements in
your neighborhood, and hand it to corporations and billionaires. So
the only way that you protect yourself and your ability
to manage your budget.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
As prices are going up.
Speaker 5 (33:52):
Is to fight his totalitarianism, is to fight what he
is doing to try to destroy our democracy. Because that's
the other feature of these countries that have slid into
illiberal democracy is that the separation between rich and poortges
get bigger and bigger and bigger, because they become totalitarian oligarchies,
not just totalitarian states like Russia.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
I mean, the polling show is that the base is
furious that there are a percentage of Democrats that are
so incredibly angry, and it's created a kind of complicated dynamic.
Do you feel like there's a way to tap into
that and do you feel like those people can use
that energy for you know, what needs to happen right now.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
Well, some of that is.
Speaker 5 (34:39):
Due to Trump's successful, you know, strategy and approach. I mean,
he He's engaged in this sort of dizzying attacks on
free speech, attacks on people's pocketbooks. It's a new story
every day, and for a lot of people, you know,
they retreat in part because it's just all too overwhelming.
But for other people, they are retreating because they worry
(35:00):
that Democrats are powerless. That's why, you know, probably the
most important thing that has happened on our side in
the last few months is Gavin Newsom's moved to a
redistrict in California because it sort of showed a pathway
of power. It showed that we had options, tools at
our disposal that.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
We could use.
Speaker 5 (35:16):
This is one of those tools right now. Right the
leverage that Democrats have to say, here are the conditions
upon which we are willing to vote for a budget.
And I think people want us to do more than
just say we want healthcare subsidies turned back on for
twenty two million Americans. I think they also want us
(35:37):
to say we are not going to willingly fund a
budget that destroys our democracy. I'm not going to be
a sucker and vote for to fund a DOJ that
turns around and hunts me and my political palt Why
on earth would I do that? And if we do it,
(35:57):
it makes us look impotent and weak, and it causes
more people out there who hate what Trump is doing
to just pull back from politics because they don't think
that there's any use in voting for an opposition party
that doesn't use all the tools that it has at
its disposal to fight all of the illegality and the corruption.
And I'll just say this, I'm not unrealistic about this
(36:19):
when I say that we should fight to preserve democracy.
I'm not saying that we're only going to sign on
to a budget that eliminates all of Trump's corruption. But
I think we're going to make some progress. We've at
least got to throw some sand in the gears to
try to slow down on the illegality and the corruption.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
So Republican members of Appropriation have said that it would
be I mean, this was reported, you know, under the
cloak of anonymity, as all Republican criticism is, but that
said Democrats would be crazy to sign on to any
kind of budget because of the pocket recessions, because this
administration is not good on its ward. Democrats are coming
(36:54):
up against the problem that foreign countries have, which is
you can't trust Trump literally, figuratively, metaphorically period.
Speaker 5 (37:03):
You know, it is worth just noting what an odds
system we have here. You know, we are essentially in
coalition government with Republicans because our rules require democratic votes
for a budget. In you know, other parliamentary systems, it's
just the majority party that has to deliver the votes here.
They need our participation, which means they have to present
(37:26):
as good faith partners. They cannot bring us to the
negotiating table say yeah, we're going to agree to this
much money in New York and Connecticut, and then once
we give our votes, we find out that none of
the money in the budget is being spent on our states.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
Trump's doing that right now, right he.
Speaker 5 (37:42):
Is brazenly canceling projects only in democratic states as a
means to, I guess, try to bully us to the
negotiating table. There are things that we can do in
this budget that would at the very least make it
harder for Trump to get away with that kind of
sort of pulling the rug from under democratic priorities. Provisions
(38:02):
that would make it absolutely clear that he has to
spend all the money in the budget, not just in
the states that he deems to be loyal to him,
and would give you know, my governor an easy rights
to go to court to get the money turned back on.
So you can't stop him from acting illegally, but you
can make it a lot easier for the victims of
his illegality to go to court and get a pretty
(38:25):
quick injunction, and that's what we would be looking for
in this budget.
Speaker 1 (38:28):
That seems like something that would be sort of easy
to slip by Trump world because they're not so detail oriented,
with the exception of Rastavant, and something that Republicans might
agree to because they don't necessarily like this appropriations fight.
They have lost the power of the purse and the
power of oversight. Do you think there's appetite there for
(38:49):
that or no?
Speaker 5 (38:50):
Well, I listen, I don't think it makes a lot
of sense to negotiate the details in public.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
I just for.
Speaker 5 (38:57):
Now, we need to say, and this is my recommendation,
we need to say that if you want our votes
for this budget, there are two things you got up do.
You've got to stop people supreams from going up by
seventy five percent fundamentallyum moral that you are robbing people
of health care in order to have the pockets of billionaires.
And you've got put constraints on Trump's illegality. You've got
(39:17):
to give us a shot to have a free and
fair election in twenty twenty six and twenty twenty eight.
And I think we're talking about constraints on his ability
to seize spending power. That's important, but there's a number
of other things that we could talk about, including the
way in which he is using federal troops to be
deployed to our cities, that could be on the table
as part of that conversation about protecting our democracy.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
So, yes, there are a lot.
Speaker 5 (39:40):
Of options we have at our disposal, and I think
a lot of that can be fleshed out at a
negotiating table.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
These blue states are paying more money into the federal
government and they're being denied the money back. I mean,
some of these governors, like you know, California, it's the
fourth largest economy in the world. Are the conversations about,
like what power the states have when it comes to
federal funds.
Speaker 5 (40:08):
Obviously, there are a set of much edgier techniques that
are on the table at our disposal to try to
arrest this slide away from democracy. Whether it's states taking
unilateral action about the money they send them to Washington,
whether it's the you.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
Know, vaccines we saw that, Yeah.
Speaker 5 (40:31):
Tech techniques that have been used in other fights like
general strikes. My feeling is this, we have leverage right
now through the ordinary political process to try to fix
these problems. And so before we go to those edgier techniques,
which I think just have to be on the table,
those edgier tactics, let's try to use the sort of
(40:53):
conventional route, which is using our power as a minority
party to say, if you want us to sign on
to this budget, and right now they need us to
sign onto this budget, you have got to put our
democracy back on a healthy pathway.
Speaker 2 (41:08):
So I think that's where the focus needs to be
right now.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
You've been in DC a long time and you do
know a lot of these people personally. Do you think
that Republicans understand how different this is that Trump two
point out is to Trump to one point out or
are they just still hide bought in?
Speaker 5 (41:23):
No, I mean, I do not think Republicans are going
to save us. There are a handful in the Senate
who know this is wrong, but it is a shrinking number,
a number that is shrinking almost to the point of irrelevancy. Again,
it is just important to remember what I said at
the outset that the mainstream Republican thinking right now is
(41:44):
that democracy is not worth it if it elects democrats
right period.
Speaker 4 (41:49):
Stop.
Speaker 5 (41:50):
They want power, and they want power at any cost,
and that is the view of now the sizeable majority
of Republicans in the House and in the Senate, and
so well, yes, we have an ability right now to
sort of force them to do the right thing because
(42:10):
they might lose their seats if they raise people's premiums.
They're only going to come to the table because they're
worried about their election. They're not going to come to
the table again. The majority of them are not going
to come to the table because they actually know what
he's doing is wrong.
Speaker 2 (42:26):
That ship is kind of sailed.
Speaker 5 (42:28):
As dire as things are, we saw what happened with
Kimmel that people stood up and canceled their subscriptions and
forced it. So like it is still within our power
to stand up and mobilized. And yeah, I'm worried that
people are losing faith in the Democratic opposition. My hope
is that by standing our ground right now for people's healthcare,
for our democracy, we can show folks that were relevant
(42:51):
and that we'll have big turnouts in the fall elections.
We'll get some momentum going. We'll be back out on
the streets for the no Kings protests on the eighteenth.
Sometimes I can, you know, be a little bit of
a downer because I'm just trying to be realistic with people.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
But there's a lot of.
Speaker 5 (43:03):
Promise, a lot of hope, and a lot of power
in what we can do in the next couple of months.
Speaker 1 (43:07):
I agree, Thank you, thanks.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
Thanks mind a moment, oh fuck, Rick Wilson, Well, I
drunk fast.
Speaker 1 (43:18):
We are at that moment, the moment of fucker.
Speaker 2 (43:21):
Y, the moment which the fuckery begins.
Speaker 1 (43:23):
That is right, what would you what is your moment
of fuck right?
Speaker 4 (43:27):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (43:28):
Look, I think the moment of fuckery was little Pete Hegseth,
a man who wears more hair product than the two
of us combined and more makeup than than the average
drag queen, prancing around the stage lecturing eight hundred senior
flag officers and senior enlisted figures from the military on
on warrior prowess and and and martial skill in combat
(43:53):
and toughness. When he is a Fox News weekend host
and a chronic drunkard. This this went over as you
might have expected, like a wet fart and a hot
car on a first date. It was what it was
a complete train wreck.
Speaker 5 (44:09):
What were what.
Speaker 1 (44:10):
Were people saying in the room?
Speaker 4 (44:12):
Well, it's what they weren't saying that matter.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
They weren't applauding, they weren't yelling who, they weren't jumping
up and down.
Speaker 4 (44:19):
When he finished that speech.
Speaker 2 (44:21):
The very best moment of the entire thing, He's like,
we're the Department of War, Go get them. And he
looked at that audience and he waited, and he waited
another beat, and then another beat, and he looks down
for one second. You could see his whole face collapse
for one second, then looks back up and walks off
the state. I know it's a little thing, but those
eight hundred generals and admirals in that office, in that
(44:43):
in that room, in that auditorium, and the and the
and the dozens and dozens of senior enlisted folks in
that room, in the Trumpian climate, the right thing would
have been to clap, stand up, you know, let let
the pit powers that be see you being on their team. Yeah,
not one of them did it. And not one of
them stood or clapped for Trump, not one, not one,
not once. And it was it was, to my mind,
(45:07):
the fuckery of Trump and Hexeth trying to rally or
get those people in the rooms so they could have
a Trump campaign rally was pathetic and dangerous to the country.
And and the great thing about it was this time
their fuckery failed. It blew up in their face and
it embarrassed this White House and the embarrassed Secretory defense dramatically.
Speaker 1 (45:26):
My favorite part of it was that Trump wouldn't let
heg Seth have the photo ops, so he came like
that is as someone who's from a family of performers,
Like I get that so hard, Like I get it man,
Like you're calling all the generals back. They're not gonna
see you know, like you may think you're the you're
(45:49):
the main event, but you are not right.
Speaker 4 (45:52):
You know that.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
That's a really good point. And Trump's ego drove him
over there. I also heard that Vance was pushing him
to go over there to make sure Hegseth didn't get
a solo show. But you know, with Hegseth on the stage,
it was everything but him holding his camera up and
doing a selfie and then and the duck face for
with the crowd.
Speaker 1 (46:11):
It was amaz telling you the the game of throwing
stuff with Heg Sas and RFK and JD. Vance and
like it is Marco and all of the yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (46:25):
Rick Wilson, Hey, Mollie, John Fast. I will not speak
to you again until next weekend about this one issue.
But it's Nobel week.
Speaker 4 (46:34):
What are your what are your? What odds you taking that?
Speaker 2 (46:36):
On Friday we're gonna hear that Donald Trump is the
nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Speaker 1 (46:40):
I think that Donald Trump is likely to get a
Nobel Prize as I am there you go, all right, good,
No pleasure to report because I would like a prize.
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear the best
(47:02):
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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