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 JD. Vance was wildly offended by a Biden gaff a mere day after he called Puerto Ricans who were offended by a comedian at Trump's rally snowflakes. So here we are. We have a show of shows today. The Great Senator Alf Frankin stops by to parse the last days of the election Psycho. Then we'll talk to Pro Publica's Molly Reddin about the leaked tapes of Project
twenty twenty five. Russ Vought talking about the Trump administration's plans if they are elected.
Somali Kamala held a rally at the Ellipse. It was almost two point five times bigger than Trump's Madison Square Garden rally. And I'm going to shock you. Triggered the snowflake known as Donald Trump.
Yeah, he has some kind of obsession with crowd size and so he stayed up late at night. True thing, very mad, he said. Kamala's speech was terrible, full of lies and nothing new. I mean, I love the way his criticism is amazing. He wrote on truth quote unquote social in the middle of the night. Where are the jobs? There are none. This is a very tight labor market.
So that's maybe not where I would go. Two hours later, so he had trouble sleeping and maybe perhaps saw his Pennsylvania internals because he followed up with Pennsylvania is cheating and getting caught comma at large scale levels rarely seen before. And then all caps. You know he's doing well when he hits into all caps report cheating to authorities, law enforcement must act Comma now explanation. The post was apparently response to a false report that Pennsylvania officials had sent
early voters home without ballots. Trump has a tendency to look you know, this is what the guy does, right. All he cares about is crowd size and not going to jail. So he's truthing about crowd size and winning the selection. Because remember Donald Trump is running to stay out of jail. Right. He has that federal case. The document's case is really an open and shudcase, and the MAGA judge did dismiss some of the cases against him. But my man has just got a lot of legal exposure.
And by the way, his biggest donor the richest guy in the world. You'll remember Elon musk Well. Wall Street Journal reported that he has had many conversations with Vladimir Putin. Also not something you're supposed to do when you have top secret clearance. So you can tell that this is a we don't want to go to jail campaign.
Yeah, I'm shocked more people don't mention that basically both of them are running to stay out of jail.
Yeah. So you can see that they have the drive of someone who it's not just about winning, it's really about that there are not other good choices.
We have to remember.
Elon even said as much to Tucker Carl So this isn't you and I'm making wild conjecture here. So speaking of mister Elon, he is talking about how we might have to endure hardship and crash the economy. What are you seeing here?
Elon has when not jumping up and down like a giant ax and buying houses or a dipshit, yes, or as Tim Wallas calls him, a dipshit, Elon has this idea And again like this is a lot of these billionaires really uncomfortable with the debt. By the way, this is a guy who made all his money from government subsidies, right, the kind of stuff that is caused all this debt. Right, government subsidies, tax breaks for him. So you know, like he could just pay down the debt and that would
actually make a lot more sense. So this guy, he says, and this is my favorite part, we have to reduce spending to live within our means, Musk says. And you know that necessarily involves some temporary hardship, but it will ensure long term prosperity. You know what that means, right, Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare. I mean, all this shit's gonna go, right, Department of Education, so that we can pay for Elon Musk's subsidies. Right, his tax breaks. And look, that's what these guys want.
They want tax breaks for billionaires. I mean, remember Donald Trump created the biggest tax break for the wealthiest people, and that expires next year. And instead of upping taxes or just you know, making them a little higher, the corporate taxes, Elon Musk and all the other billionaires want Trump to cut taxes. And remember Trump has mused about ending income tax and just doing tariffs, which would be
really inflationary. It would make normal people have very little money to spend, but it would be a huge boon to wealthy people.
Jeez Somali, this was heartbreaking to read in ProPublica today that a Texas woman died after the hospital said it would be a crime to intervene in her miscarriage. What are you seeing here?
And it may be there are more than one because in this piece it says at least two Texas women died after doctors delayed emergency care. They told her and her husband that the medical team they couldn't act until the fetal heartbeat stopped. By the time the fetal heartbeat stopped, this woman was so badly septic she died. We're seeing more and more of these stories. There is no accident
that this is happening. These Republican electeds who drew up this legislation made it vague because they didn't want doctors to be able to treat. They wanted situations like this. If these laws were clear, you would have fewer women dying. This has never been about life. This has always been about Republicans seizing power, keeping women down, making it so
women are secondary, women are property, women are chattel. It is just so disturbing, and you're seeing this woman is a woman of color, and you see that women of color are affected at much higher rates. Maternal mortality in this country is already a Shonda like, just such a terrible We have terribly high maternal mortality rates in this country. All that the end of Row did was mean that more women will die. And we're seeing this and we're going to see more of it. And you know, this
is twenty twenty four. Women do not have to die of sepsis. This woman is dying because Republican men have crazy religious beliefs. That's it.
But everyone's happy that Donald Trump turned it back to the States.
I thought, yeah, Donald Trump says, everyone is happy except for that woman and her family who died and the other women who died.
So speaking of Donald Trump and women a thing I don't like to do. Nicki Haley an avid Trump supporter. Come letely she was a little little turned off by the MSG hate rally. What'd you see here?
So Nicky Haley is like trying to keep her powder dry. I mean, she really is. She wants to if Harris wins, she wants to run twenty twenty eight. Doesn't want to alienate the base, wants to be on corporate boards, but knows that the only way she will be the heir of the Republican Party is if she doesn't alienate Trump's base but still offers something for country club Republicans. And she's trying to walk that line. She knows, right, I mean,
Nicky Hailey is not an altuist, right. She is doing this because she wants power, and she knows that there were a lot of country club Republicans who did not like a Madison Square Garden rally where medians said terrible things about black people and Jewish people, and you know where there were homages towards nineteen thirty nine, and then Donald Trump said it was a day of love. So I would just watch things that Nikki Haley does because she's pretty smart and she really wants to be president,
and she's playing her cards really carefully. And to be a Republican who plays their cards carefully is almost is pretty unusual, because most of them have just burned their boats at the shore. I want to talk about something really, really really important, this Scotus ruling. So today scotis six days before an election. Virginia had an appeal after a federal judge found that the state illegally purged more than
sixteen hundred voter registrations in the past two months. A federal appeals court had previously allowed the judge's order to remain in effect. The Supreme Court went in decided on partisan lines to throw out the votes. I'm just going to read you a guy called Steve Mazzy. He covers the Supreme Court for the Economists. Very very smart guy.
He wrote, I haven't been worried unduly about Scotis messing with this election Bush v. Gore style, But dividing along partisan lines in a partisan election dispute six days before November fifth, while providing zero explanation is a little ominous. Watch these fuckers because the Conservatives in the Supreme Court, at those six conservatives, they'll do anything to win. And we should all be on high alert about the Supreme Court. Al Franken is a former Senator and the host of
the Al Franken Show. Molly Bredden is a reporter at Pro PUBLICA. Welcome back Too Fast Politics, Al Franken Ami. We're just tearful today, so we're just filled with joy. Harris did a speech last night at the Ellipse. It was I think profoundly popular people. Really, I think she did a really good job and really threaded the needle,
and it was a wildly lauded speech. Then Joe Biden made a verbal gaff and the political press and multiple paragraphs being obsessed with it and completely drowning her out.
Well, it was again what he called the rally.
I think, and again you know with Biden you're not allowed to do this, but with Trump, this is all anyone does. I think he was trying to say that the guy who made the joke was garbage, but because he's Joe Biden, he came out that Trump supporters are garbage, which wasn't really what he said. I see people who like Jady Vance, who said that the people of Puerto Rico being told that they were a floating island of garbage, should just get over it. Jady Vance is now very offended, now.
Very offended by Biden.
By Biden, and he is hoping that this will become Hillary Clinton's Basket of deplorables moment. Even though Joe Biden is not actually running for re election, they don't care. They're just desperately trying to make it a basket of deplorables moment, and they are in the mainstream media is happy to oblige.
Do you know the history of basket of deplorables? Because she wasn't referring to the people, she was referring to the basket of attitudes they had.
It doesn't matter.
I know, it doesn't matter.
You're in the post truth ecosystem.
Right, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that leap is zero. But I mean, you know, I just feel bad for her because that may have made a big difference in the election, and she was actually kind of quoted Atticana.
Well, I mean, right, But the point is, I mean, I think the really important point here is that it doesn't matter. Right, the truth doesn't matter. Jd Vance doesn't care that he was wildly offended by this misstatement and he was telling these people in Puerto Rico to suck
it up. He doesn't care. I mean, I think the meaningful part of this incredibly annoying news cycle, which has involved various ups and downs, is that a lot of really important Puerto Rican celebrities bad Bunny j Lo, Ricky Martin, with millions and millions of followers, indoors Harris.
And Pennsylvania has a large Puerto Rican population.
Like half a million.
That's a lot. Yeah, yeah, you know what's funny about JD. Vance's just I mean just popped in my head. I mean he did say a few years ago, he did say that Trump might be the American Hitler, right, right, he said that. And a number of years ago Walls said he was in China during Kenneman Square, and he was actually it was there a couple months later, but that was made into a big deal. But not calling him Hitler. Why didn't we bring that up in the debate.
Oh, well, yes, I remember it. Well, yeah, I mean, it's just this is the thing, right, like the double standard between Republicans and Democrats and what is truth and what is untrue? I am harkened back to the Bowling Green massacre and one Kelly and Conway who said that it was really all about alternative facts.
You remember that alternative facts to me is an amazing phrase, alternative facts, because that was she first used alternative facts. I think about the size of the crowd, right. Sean Spicer said that his cry was bigger in Obamas than either of Obama's or both of Obama's biggest crowd ever. Yeah, and it just you know, it just wasn't She was asked about it the next day and she said, well, there's going to be these things called alternative facts, and that just said everything that was a day two of
the administration. We're going to be there's going to be alternative facts. And because alternative facts, that means nothing's true anymore. And the flooding the zone with shit comes from too. I mean that kind of thinking, which is we'll just flood the zone with shit and so no one will know the difference between what's true and what isn't and that's the way we want it.
Yeah, I shouldn't be surprised, and I'm not surprised. I'm not at all surprised. But you know, it's this sort of post truth thing and you don't have to you know, Trump is held to a different standard. I think it's a bit interesting that Trump has that the mainstream media has fallen so hook line and sinker for explaining Trump right, like, well, Trump didn't mean to say, you know whatever, right, America's
a garbage can. He didn't mean to say it, or he didn't say it that way, or he's Trump's being Trump. But when Joe Biden makes a gaff and there's a guy with a stutter, who's not a good orator and who's had been plagued with problems his whole life, it's like, how dare he? I mean, there is a certain amount of like even the mainstream I'm thinking of, like Playbook Today devoted many many paragraphs to Biden's gaff and very few to Harris's pretty spectacular speech on the ellipse.
Yeah, I mean, and again it's just sort of a bigger than life figure versus is America ready for a woman's and are they ready for a woman who's you know, five foot two or something? Right?
I think she's like my maybe a little shorter than I'm like five to five, but.
Yes, go on, well anyway, I mean, like Michelle Obama is almost six feet tall, right, or is six feet tall? It's so fun because the speech was very good. I just don't know if it makes a difference.
Right. So the question here is will Americans vote for an autocrat who has all these criminal charges and is a compulsive liar and it's also seventy eight years old and really slowing down? Or will they vote for a woman.
That's right.
That's where we are.
That's where we are, and that's why you and I are nervous, even though we should be confident, because we should be because we should trust the American people.
It's so interesting because it's like one of their favorite attacks on her is that she's unqualified. She's been like sex crimes prosecutor, elected attorney general, senator, vice president, and they're like, she's not qualified. Donald Trump is qualified because he was a reality television host and did four years where he allowed a million people to die from COVID or he dropped.
The ball when he dropped the ball on the pandemic. And it's interesting because he always says, are you better off than you were four years ago? And the answer is yes, four years ago, we were in the middle. We're still in this and still suffering from your lack of leadership, and people aren't necessarily dying and the economy was in the toilet at that time because of the pandemic. So are you better off than you were four years ago? Yes?
Right, but you'll have mainstream media abundanto would be like, are you better off four years ago? Well, you had to wear masks and you couldn't go anywhere getting all this money from the government. And also voters have Trump amnesia. If it were a Democrat, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say they wouldn't be like voters have Biden amnesia. They'd be like voters are pissed.
Yep. And that's the question right now. Are Americans pessed or they are they ready to embrace the future. And I think that's what the big question is in this because we know what Trump is about. We know it's about retribution, and it's about a Project twenty twenty five, which you did remarkably beautiful podcast about and reminding people of what is in that thing, and that he would get rid of the ACA. I was there when they tried to do it, when McCain put his thumbs down,
Thank god. But can you imagine the plan they came up with would have gotten rid of Medicaid expansion, So all these people who have healthcare would and all these rural hospitals who benefited from that, because now when someone came to the emergency room, if they before they didn't have insurance, now they do have insurance. The hospital gets paid, so the hospital.
Contreat and doesn't have to close. I mean that was the other thing.
Higher specialists and get the newest equipment. That's why all these states voted for it by referendum. Yeah, and red states, red states who didn't have it voted by referendum together, states like Missouri and Idaho. But you know, because they knew that medicaid expansion really helped them. It was helping people in rural states.
Yeah. I mean, the thing is, you really do have a Republican party that has terrible, wildly unpopular ideas, and then you have people like Leon Mush who are like billionaires, who are like, this is very good for me, and now Leon is trying desperately to swing this election to Trump. I think like their tax bracket trumpers, right, I mean, that's what it is.
Tax bracket trumpers. I see. So in other words, the wealthy.
You're so wealthy you don't care about fascism.
And Comma actually wants to do the op said, which is a good tax breaks to people under four hundred thousand. It's amazing. What's the difference is because his tax cut last time really benefit people at the top, and hers would benefit middle class people and working people and middle class people. And if you ask them who should be tax more, and they say the wealthy, right. And that's what I don't understand is that most of the stuff he is saying is very wildly unpopular.
Yeah, that's why they're investing so much money in disinformation, right, because if voters could see that, you know, he's going to take away your health care, he's going to raise taxes. I mean, the idea that he's going to do away with income tax, which is like the dream of every rich person because they don't want their income tax and just put put tariffs on, like you know, that's thousands and thousands of dollars.
Now, let me, can I ask you something about Trump. He must know by now that China doesn't pay for the tear tariffs. He must know that, right, but he will never admit it because he always says we can replace taxes with tariffs. That's that's that plan.
Now I'm going to go on a limb here and tell you something, my hottest take. I don't think Mexico is going to pay for the wall.
Well, that didn't happen. But the terraff thing drives me nuts because that's not how terriffs work.
No, I mean and I mean, there are other problems with this whole tariff discourse. For example, Mexico is not a major maker of cars, you know that bring Mexican cars.
Well, I think some American American companies have far making factories in Mexico.
Plans planed to Mexico, but they're not necessarily Mexican cars.
So have I done my riff on terraffs?
If you have a riff on tariffs, I want to hear.
Okay, Well, it's not a great rift, but it's basically let's say Best Buy imported one thousand TVs from China and there was a twenty percent teriff on them. Okay, and they're five hundred dollars a piece, and so they're that's what they're valued a is so the tariff would be another one hundred dollars right. So now, and who pays the tariff, well, not China, not the country sending it. What pays for it is best Buy. They have to pay the import you know, the import fee, which is
a tariff. So now they have a choice. They can either raise the price to six hundred dollars a TV or add one hundred dollars or not. But the point is is it either hurts best buy or hurts the customers who buy it or the whole point of terrorists, I suppose is discourage foreign TVs, especially Chinese TVs. Point is it doesn't raise any money. And he keeps saying We're going to replace the income tax with terrorists. Terrorists don't bring us money. China doesn't pay for the tariff.
The order pays for the tariff.
Yes, yes, two things can be true. Donald Trump can be not smart and also Donald Trump can be dishonest. Oh yes, we have two things are working together here to paint a picture that is neither true nor accurate.
But what does he think his voters are? What does he think Americans are?
Because I'm gay? What do you think I'll let you thread the needle here?
Well, just a scary though. I think the American people are smarter than that. I think that's why I think she's going to win. But I'm nervous about it. Yeah.
Yeah, we're not getting a great sense of what it will look like because we just don't have the you know, we don't know if Trump will be able to get those low propensity voters out or if they will if they are still obsessed with him, and if enough of the low propensity voters listen to THEO Voss and Joe Rogan and get out there and are registered and vote for him, and that will be the question.
Did you listen to Rogan's interview?
I listened to a little bit of it.
Then you couldn't listen anymore.
I don't mind him Joe Rogan.
No, no, I was, but he was allowing Trump to talk about the Lincoln bedroom, yes for a long time, and the wrong son who died.
I'm not convinced that that interview solved anyone's problems. I don't think undecided voters listened to Joe Rogan particularly. I think it's his people, and I think those people I don't know that he needs more of his people. I think he needs more of being normal pretending to be normal. I mean, if we're looking at history, generally you pivot to the general election and you try to pretend you're not batched. That's generally how a person would run this campaign. He has not done that well.
He did Madison Square Garden instead. That was his closing argument. And the question is you know, is that going to negatively? I mean, I love that Pennsylvania has a large Wecan population. That's wonderful and I would love that. That is what ultimately made the difference, is that vote? That joke? Do you remember Don Rickles? Yes, okay, you're you're you're old enough to remember Done Riculs.
Yes, I'm very old, not as old as you, but old.
Yes, I'm not not anywhere near as old as me. That's why I was saying. I was asking if a young person like you remember Don Richels. He was hilarious and he would insult every ethnicity and every race and he would do that, but it was an interesting thing. He had actually joke work, something called joke work, and he was funny himself, that comedian delivering that line. I really didn't get what well, and it didn't get any laughs at the concert. I'm puzzled by a lot. I'm
puzzled by. But if that is the final argument that he makes and hers is the ellipse going to find out what the American people respond to?
Yes we are, and now we wait ye outrank and thank you for joining me.
Everyone vote, everyone vote, and everybody do everything you can between now when you hear this to get out the vote.
Yep. That's all we can do.
It's gotv time get out the vote, ye, So make sure that all your friends, all your relatives, not the ones that are going to vote for Trump, but make sure that everyone you know who should be voting vote And also you can get still the time to get on and make phone calls and door knock. It's still time to do that.
Fully your college kids into voting. Thank you.
Thanks Molly.
Are you concerned about Project twenty twenty five and how awful Trump's second term could be? Well, so are we, which is why we teamed up with iHeart to make a limited series with the experts on what a disaster Project twenty twenty five would be for America's future. Right now, we have just released the final episode of this five
episode series. They're all available by looking up Molly Jong Fast Project twenty twenty five on YouTube, and if you are more of a podcast person and not say a YouTuber, you can hit play and put your phone in the lock screen and it will play back just like a podcast. All five episodes are online now. We need to educate Americans on what Trump's second term would or could do to this country, So please watch it and spread the word. Molly Reddin is a reporter at Pro Publica. Welcome to
Fast Politics, Molly, thank you for having me. I'm so excited when people are named Molly and are not a dog. Oh I got me too, like an actual dog.
Yeah, ye oh my god, there are too many.
It's so I don't understand what happened, but everyone in the world decided to name their dog Molly about ten years ago or five years ago. For those humans named Molly, it's very annoying, it is. Yes, yeah, I'm happy you share this predicament with me. Now, speaking of things that are both annoying and worrying, let's talk about Project twenty twenty five. But before we talk about it, you work for pro Publican. Propublican does some of the most important
straight reporting. It's a moment when we really desperately need this, so tell us about this story.
Well, thank you so much. And yes, what the story is about is we obtained through our reporting, a pair of videos of russ Vote, who is a longtime Trump ally, He was in charge of Trump's budget at the end of Trump's administration, who.
Was the head of the office management About.
It right, and roughly what that means? That office is responsible for sort of making sure that the money going out the door of the federal government supports the president's
objectives and agenda. But he was prepared to take that really far because there are other things obviously the federal government has to do and is obligated to spend money on by Congress, and he really wanted to take that decision making power away from Congress and away from democratic input, small d democratic and really just turn the federal budget
into a MAGA policy machine. And so part of what he's laying out in these speeches is how Project twenty twenty five and the people surrounding him and the people Trump chooses if there's a second Trump administration, can help him achieve that. And it's also mixed with a very strong ideological vision for the country that is Christianity and a very specific right wing Christianity.
I want to pause for a minute and talk about just like sort of unpack this. So Project twenty twenty five is something that Jesse and I really Jesse, though I was involved, did this documentary series on YouTube about it, and for the few of you who did not google Molly johnfest in Project twenty twenty five, but I just want to give like a quick sort of TLDR on it. It is this document website. It's a staffing directory too.
But it's also these ideas that the second Trump Admin, if we are so unlucky to get it, would be And they are largely about sort of drowning the federal government and making it so small and so useless that we no longer are able to count on it for anything so continue.
Yeah, and also just concentrating even more power in the hands of the president and really turning the federal government into an agent of his whims. And I should say, you know, Pormer. President Trump has said that he doesn't know anything about Project twenty twenty five. There's been a ton of according to the contrary and also Project twenty twenty five, which is this, you know, nearly thousand page document.
A lot of what it lays out are pretty close to the commitments that he's made on the campaign trail.
Right, but also they really do involve cutting funds the federal government in order to starve it to death. So tell us Russ Voyd, what has he been doing since he is out of the Trump Admin.
So, since he's been out of the Trump Admin, he's been running a think tank called the Center for Renewing America and they've been gathering a lot of former Trump personnel a sort of fellows to workshop and incubate ideas for a next Trump administration. You know, he has talked recently about how they are building out detailed plans for every agency to sort of you know, starve it as you put it if they don't like what they do,
or transfer the funding if they do. One thing he said in his speech is we have detailed agency plans. We are writing the actual executive orders, we are writing the actual regulations now sorting out the legal authorities for all of what President Trump is running on. So they want to be ready to execute Trump's vision really from day one.
Give me like explanation about what the videos are of?
Sure, so you know the videos are partly laying out sort of a cultural vision for the United States.
Do we know how we got the videos? Like how they were made?
I mean the videos seem to have been produced by the Center for Renewing America.
Wow, interesting and then maybe not released because they might have hurt Trump.
These videos were of russ Vote addressing people for annual conferences of Center for renewing America. And you know a lot of their befellos and cohort and donors seem to have been in the audience. They were not intended to be released publicly, and we found them through our reporting, right.
So give me a sort of what he says in them.
There's sort of two types of things he talks about. One is sort of where he wants to see the conservative movement go. He thinks it's become too secular, too globalist. He thinks they've abandoned the Constitution and allowed leftists and liberals to run roughshod over the nation's founding principles. He's very focused on what he calls renewing a consensus of America as a nation under God, really infusing a future republican government with Christian principles. So that's one aspect, and
he lays us out in really dramatic terms. He talks about this year as a year that will and this is a quote rival seventeen seventy six and eighteen sixty for the complexity and the uncertain of the forces arrayed against us. And yeah, right that struck us is really apocalyptic, really potentially dark, you know, seventeen seventy six and eighteen sixty, notably two years when the country was at the beginning of a war or right on the precipice of the
Civil War. You know, eighteen sixty was not the year the Civil War started. It's the year that the first state, South Carolina seceded out of protest over Abraham Lincoln's election. So I think it's conspicuous that he chose that year where the nation sort of fractures and not the year that the bloodshed starts.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and then explain to us kind of what else you were struck by in these videos.
Yeah, Well, the other half of what he talks about, besides sort of this cultural turnaround that he pictures, he talks in a lot of detail about certain kinds of preparations that they want to make to accomplish really specific I guess policy outcomes. So one good example of this is he talked about building what he calls a shadow Office of Legal Counsel. The Office of Legal Council exists already under the DOJ, what he wants it to do.
This has been a big priority for the Center for Renewing America and other groups involved in Project twenty twenty five. They are really interested in laying the legal groundwork, making the legal case for something. Trump has talked about a lot on the campaign trail, which is using the military domestically, specifically vote talks about using it to put down domestic protests.
And so he's talking in these speeches, which he hasn't said explicitly in public before, about really building an office that is going to rationalize on paper deploying the military against say, we wish we had done this in twenty twenty following the unrest over George Floyd's murder, and if there are protests over Trump winning the White House, we want to use the military to put down those protests, is essentially what he's saying.
Yeah, I mean, so that's sort of an amazing and also quite insane thing, which is this idea that they need, that the police are not enough, that the army needs to be used on American citizens. That is something that is kind of has, at least in the modern political discourse, become a kind of red line. So that's pretty shocking. Does he justify it in any way?
I mean, he refers to the protests as riots and sort of conjures up images, which are you know, not really accurate of pro democracy protests being very violent. One thing that was really striking to me is that, you know, there's this argument Democrats have been making on the campaign
trail calling Trump a threat to democracy. Obviously, they have a lot of things to say about Trump, but that's one of the things that they've been campaigning on, and Vote has sort of recast that as that's not Democrats calling on voters to defeat Trump at the ballot box. That is Democrats using what he calls coded language to
discourage the military from putting down anti Trump protests. He's saying they're trying to make Trump sound like a would be dictator or an authoritarian, so that when we tried to deploy the military after Trump wins, like if we find that necessary, they're not going to respond to those orders to quell the violence.
We've really hit upside down here, right. The idea is that using the military on American citizens should be good, and the reason why it's not being encouraged is because Democrats are saying that Trump is an autocrack. That's right, which is real upside down world.
Staff.
Yeah, I mean something that he sort of refers to in one of the speeches that we don't exactly detail on the piece, but during the summer of twenty twenty, when Trump did tell some of his staff that he wished to use the military, like deploy the military against protesters, General Mark Milly, who was the chair of the Joint Chiefs, essentially refused or talked Trump out of it, said like that that's a really dangerous and terrible idea and you
shouldn't do that. That's sort of what Vote is referring to here, is that he doesn't want the military to have these protomaocracy instincts.
Right, So the idea is to paint democracy as partisan, that's right, And to say that democrat saying that Trump is an autocrat actually makes them anti democracy.
Right, that it's not actually a pro democracy message, it is simply an anti Trump message.
Right. Does void think he's going to get any traction with this idea or is there a pushback from the person he's talking to.
He's addressing a crowd, he's making a pair of speeches where he's sort of uninterrupted for forty five minutes. The Vote has told people privately. Rather in July, he accidentally spoke to a pair of undercovered journalists who were hoping
as representatives of a potential donor and CNN got product exchange. Yeah, he's talked about how Trump has blessed the Center for a New in America and was very supportive of what we do, and certainly a lot of people working at the Center or with the Center remain in favor in Trump's orbit.
I want you to sort of pull back here. Why do you think that these speeches? So when were they given?
They were given in twenty twenty three, and then.
You're in twenty twenty four, and they were given to a large group of donors or.
There were some donors in the audience. There were other speakers featured on some of the promotional material include Representative Chip Roy from Texas, Deeve Bannon, Scott Perry, another representative Mark Paletta who's also a former budget officer with the Trump administration. Ken Kuchinelli who was involved with DHS in the first Trump administration. And so that is sort of sort of like the cohort he's speaking to.
Why do you think these speeches have been released now?
I think they've been released out well, first of all, because we found them, yes, right, good point, Yeah, they weren't, you know, they weren't met for public consumption. And I can see why because they put all of these fairly unpopular. You know, Project twenty twenty five is not popular, and that's part of like why we believe Trump is trying
to distance himself from it. You know, they put a lot of what Trump and his allies have been talking about about retribution and revenge all in one place in very like dark and foreboding terms. There's not a friendly frame around this. This is a really I mean, you know, we use this word and the story. It's a really apocalyptic vision for what the country could look like. And so I can see why, you know, these weren't posted on the Center for a Newing America website.
And I think it's important to realize that when people figured out what was in Project twenty twenty five, it was wildly unpopular. Right, taking away healthcare unpopular, This kind of Christian nationalist stuff. You can't get the majority interested in this. They don't like it because it's so so different than the way we live now in this country and the way we live more broadly in this century. So it's not popular. But what this does, I think,
which is really important. It threads a needle between Donald Trump and Project twenty twenty five and what it's going to look like in five days if people really like Donald Trump.
Yeah, and I think you know, to your point, once people figured out what was in Project twenty twenty five, it wasn't popular. I think it's really compelling that, you know, Project twenty twenty five, these big white papers about what we should do under our next administration. Even though Project twenty twenty five is public, it's not written for the average voter, right, they're white papers. Therefore, people expecting to be the under secretary of whatever in the next administration.
And so I think it speaks to how extreme a lot of the proposals are, that the plans have really resonated with and alarmed a lot of just ordinary people. I think it's it's really unusual that what is essentially a policy document becomes kind of a watchword for what a future administration is planning. And so that that really sticks out to me.
Yeah, thank you so much, Molly, thank you a moment sick Jesse Cannon.
Molly jung Fast. One of the things I think has not been pushed to the American people enough is the horror that RFK Junior, conspiracy theorist, crazy person of many decades, man who once stalked an event you and I through that he would be the head of the DC and technic all our lives if Trump gets elected.
What are you seeing here?
RFK Junior is a crazy anti vax conspiracy theorist who does not understand science, either because he's very, very stupid, which is what I think, or there's some other reason. I think it's because he's stupid. He does not understand how vaccines were. He truly believes that they don't work. He does not understand science. He is a moron. He made some kind of nefarious deal with Donald Trump, and Donald Trump is now saying that he's going to put
him in charge of the CDC. I don't actually think that's going to happen, because I don't think Donald Trump
really keeps his promises. But even the fact that he's offering that should make you terrified, should make you clear that this guy does not give a fuck what happens to any of us, and the idea that he would put RFK in control of the CDC is just completely in And you do see these Republicans really are at war with the federal government and trying to destroy it, and that, my friends, is our moment of fuck right.
It's a little scary with the brain worm got a bunch of his brain, and that's who we think should be running things.
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