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 Trump's White House has taken more than eighty percent of Trump's transcribed remarks off the White House website. We have such a great show for you today as the world journs. Andy Levy stops by to talk about all the chaos and corruption in Trump world. Then we'll talk to Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont about how
he's navigating Trump's aggression towards the Blue States. But first the news, BALI.
Many people are saying last night was the most corrupt night in our history as a nation. That was because Trump posted a one hundred and forty eight million dollar allegedly fundraised US crypto dinner, and some people are calling it the orgy of corruption. I don't want to picture those people anywhere near that word, but make of it what you will.
The of this crypto dinner is someone who is called Justin Son. Son who saw a twenty twenty three fraud case brought by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. He saw that dropped in February in the new Trump administration. Also, he is one of the biggest buyers of Trump's crypto coin. In fact, he won the first place in the dinner contest with an eighteen point five million dollar US wallet.
So he also advises this sketchy, trumpy bank called World Liberty Financial, which, by the way, I remember World Liberty Financial from going to Seapack. That was one of the major sort of funders of Seapack.
It's really one of those names that rings grift.
Yeah, everyone in this dinner has just paid to try to get Trump's influence. We're going to have next week and we've had before, but we're gonna have more talk about crypto. There are a couple people will cover really well, and everyone you talk to in the end, you know, they're sort of like, it's it's really just a kind of grift. It's really just not a real thing. And it's also, by the way, a currency that is terrible
for the environment because it has to be mined. So there are so many different reasons why crypto is a skin. But crypto has this bill that is working its way through the Senate, which is a you know, a non regulation of crypto bill, and crypto spends this industry spends you know, they're sort of the if anything, they're kind of the big oil of this century.
Right.
They are spending on senators and congress people, and they are spending on their advertising for them. They are creating super packs. They are doing you know, just what Exxon or just what camel cigarettes used to do in previous decades. And it is really they just have a vice grip already on our elected And it didn't take very long at all, No.
It sure did not. So in addition to this, then after this big old festival of corruption, because I'm not using that word again, what we saw as Trump started re escalating his trade war again. Some people said, maybe this is because these people didn't come to the dinner and bribe them enough. Maybe some people say, you just woke up on the wrong side of the bed. What are you thinking to hear Bally, he's attacking Europe, He's attacking Apple. What's your thought here?
So this is like real mad king kind of stuff. Yes, you know that was when I thought. So basically he got up and look, you know, with Trump, it could be he's mad at someone. It could be he's trying to distract from something. It could be he wants Tim Cook I mean, it could be as simple as that he just wants Tim Cook to open a factory and deluse You know, it doesn't necessarily. One of the things I think people do wrong about covering Trump is describing
more meaning than is to the things he does. So I'm just going to read you a little bit of the truth. But the net net of it is the truth quote unquote, The net net of it is twenty five percent tariff on Apple. If the tech trient does not shift manufacturing in the US, I don't know how they would do that. And by the way, is want
pull back from it. And remember that there was all this reporting that if they were to make Apple iPhones in the United States, it says if an iPhone, this is from grac Who's always right, an iPhone We're made entirely in the US. Analyst estimates the cost could be significantly higher, reaching between thirty five hundred and even thirty thousand to one hundred thousand, due to factors like higher labor costs, logistics, and a need to rebuild the supplydget.
So the point is a tariff cannot fix this problem. Like so many moments in Trump world, we have this problem which is you cannot rewrite history that anyway, that is the story with that. And then also to tariff the EU. Who knows why he's mad at the EU. But the point is a fifty percent tariff would damage the EU, but it would also damage us because we get a lot of stuff from the EU. And remember
he's still fighting with Canada and Mexico. So we have this situation where we have this president who is just out of control and that's where we are.
Yeah. So another one of the nice features of this presidency is hiring all the really really qualified people, by which I mean really unqualified people. We have some of the best evidence of that we've seen so far a report from Will Staken that says where they got tape of the Social Security chief talking about how they learned about their job.
It's about social security and I'm really I'm really not I'm swear I'm not living for God, and I'm like, well, what am I going to do? So I'm googling social Security, you know, one of my great skills on my great Googlers on the East Coast. But that is the headline for the post. Great Google Google are in Chief Chief and Google or whatever. Uh So by the way, I definitely at work, you know, we're allowed to lap. We're all out of that fun. We're out to know each
other's families are not to be normal of that. I'm like, okay, it's a commissioner Social Security. First, it wouldn't nobody said we're calling you a bit. It was about some of those securities. I'm trying to figure it out.
Great stuff. He's really good at googling.
I don't know, you know. And this is the thing about this administration that will hopefully save us but also probably end us, is that I really don't know how anything works. And a lot of these people got these jobs because who knows. So not great.
Speaking of not great, Christy Nome probably tweeted one of the upidest things I've ever seen, tweeted a policy. Some people are saying they long for the days of Sarah Palin's stupidity after seeing it. She's tweeting and threatening Harvard because she wants them to turn over academic records of who has been taken in for reprimendments around protesting, and Harvard is refusing. But luckily Harvard just got temporary relief from the courts.
Yeah, Christine Nome is the Sarah Pillon of this administration, though Sarah Palin number one, because we used to be less insipid. These people are so over their head. This morning they banned Harvard from taking we had I think it was Christy Nome who said that they revoked Harvard's whatever charter to allow foreign students to court immediately Harvard one temporary relief. I do think this kind of stuff is ultimately I understand that it's for the base, but
you already have the base right. The play here is get the base excited to go after Harvard. But what I think is really stupid about this is you've made things more expensive for the base. They're getting hurt by taffs, You're you know, back and forth, you're killing consumer confidence. These are the things that if you want to get the base excited. But it's like there's so much self
destruction in this administration, which thank god for that. But you know, this is going to play out and they're going to fundraise off it, and I think they think it's good optics for them. But I do really wonder if anyone, I mean it's they think it's good optics for them. It's certainly terrible for the rest of us, and it hurts research, and you know, there's so much research. These people are coming to this country to get educated.
The other thing is that it's like it hurts the world, but it also showed, you know, we're not going to be the leader in the world. This stuff where they harass people and keep them from wanting to come here. It's going to hurt all of our institutions. It's going to hurt all of our research, and ultimately they're going to lose because business. Andy Levy is a ghost of as the world churns. Welcome to fast politics, Andy Levy.
Th best, Thank you?
How are you? You're welcome here?
Good?
How heavy is American democracy right now? I mean that, you know, I know that these people are super incompetent. I get it, but it's still so just watching them just screw over every institution. I have no connection to Harvard. I am not you know, nothing that didn't go there, didn't visit there, you know, I'm no no degrees from there, nothing didn't never got in there, and in any way I never even applied there. And I actually I once spoke at the Kennedy School. That's it. And let me
tell you those that made me so upset? What is wrong with us? Why is it so depressing to watch this?
I don't know, but I feel you've got a lot of psychological baggage about not going to Harvard. After hearing that long litany of things, it's like, you know, you could just say, yeah, didn't go to Harvard, but you know you felt it necessary to uh to enumerate the various goings on.
Uh.
Look, we've known this for a while that everything that they have been using, you know, to try to claim that they're fighting anti Semitism, which is the last thing in the world they care about. When they're not promoting it, they don't care about it. That's the only two options there. But this has always been aimed at, you know, the quote unquote elite institutions like Harvard, like Columbia.
It's all more of the same.
And if the thing is like, they don't care that they're losing in court, and I think their attitude seems to be we're gonna we're gonna keep doing this and sometimes the university or the law firm or whatever is going to roll over and that's a win for us. And sometimes they're going to fight back, and if we lose that we're back where we're started. But we've got these other wins, so it really is kind of win win for them because even when they lose, you know,
all it does is keep the status quo. But when they win, it changes everything.
Judge Box of Wine, you're a friend of mine. She is now the acting head. What the fuck? What the actual fuck discussion?
Yeah, when New York Gorsearch was nominated to the Supreme Court, I was good friends with Neil and college and we the two of us and a couple other people, started an alternative newspaper at Columbia, and so people found this out about me, and I was at the time, I was working at Fox, so people assumed I was a conservative, which I wasn't, but I got so I got a lot of press calls, and I think it might have
been New York Magazine. I was talking to a reporter and he didn't use this line, and it's pissed me off to this day because it's now very relevant. And I basically said at the end of the interview, I said, look, Neil Gorswitch is sort of the best you could hope for from Trump in the sense that he's at least intelligent. And then I said, you know, what did you want instead? Justice Puro? And here we are. Was it seven eight
years later and we've got acting US Attorney Puro. And it's incredible because whatever jokes you make, or however much you think you are exaggerating or you know, being a hyperbolic.
It comes true. It all comes true in the end.
And I think about the fact that I left Fox and I could have had an.
Amazing career in government, Molly.
I could have been the head of Homeland Security, I could have been the Secretary of State or Defense, and I blew it.
Then that's all I take from this, Molly, is that I blew it.
I'm an idiot, yes, And also yes, you probably would have been. I don't know. I feel like you wouldn't have been able to do the kind of sycovancy that was needed, right, So I feel like since you would be bad at the sycophancy, he would give you like a job to punish you, like, you know, like you'd get something that he thinks of as like not a good job, because it's like, yeah, like I think a lot about where you know, Linda McMahon and Howard Lutnik were in this power struggle over who got to be
Commerce secretary, right, right, And even though because nobody knew what any of these jobs were, clearly right they were like, commerce secretary sounds better because it deals with money, whereas Secretary of Education is kids and nobody likes kids. And
then Linda McMahon got Secretary of Education. So the star contrast to Trumpell one point zero, where they did actually have someone in there who actually knew a tiny bit about education, which so it is so I think that if you had been able to stay at Pox a little longer, you probably would be Secretary of Education.
Now, I mean all I ever wanted is really to be the first Jewish ambassador to the Vatican.
Yeah, I think I could have pulled that off.
Trump's first administration. He put Newt Gingrich his wife, not even new the wife, as ambassador to Holy See.
And I think his twelfth wife, right, that's his twelfth wife.
He stepped on my joke there, baby.
Oh, I'm so sorry.
No, No, I think I think you hit the right notes there. And also I don't think I should be talking too much. But but yeah, that is a really great example of how in many ways this administration has just gone on from strength to strength.
As we say, yeah, I think some of us at least thought that the people he named in his second term would they'd be awful and they'd be evil, but they might actually be competent to No, Nope, And it turns out no, and that they're like just as incompetent as they were in Trump one point, oh if not more so, if not more so.
Now we're going to talk about one of the things that Trump has actually learned how to do really well, which is he is incredibly good at whipping the vote. He has become the Nancy Pelosi of the House Republican Caucus. You know, he is out there with his puppet Mike Johnson, and he is whipping the vote. He got the big, beautiful Buxom billionaire.
Bill, blonde blonde.
Billionaire bill, which is going to bankrupt our economy discuss.
I never thought I would long for the days of Kevin McCarthy.
Oh yeah, Kevin looks like Lincoln, right, I know.
He looks like a veritable statesman compared to Mike Johnson. And the thing is, at least with Kevin McCarthy, he had no real core beliefs, so you could push them around, whereas Johnson, Yeah, Mike Johnson does have.
Core beliefs, and they're they're awful. I mean, they are wor pretty scary.
Yeah.
Yeah, So he's a true believer and so he's out there doing this stuff. And I do think it was funny though, because I guess there was a meeting he had with people on the Senate side, GOP members of the Senate, and he told them, don't change this bill.
You know, if you're going to make changes, keep them very minimal.
And my understanding is I don't know if anyone actually laughed in his face, but the senators pretty much said, you know, I know, John Thune was quoted afterwards that no, we're going to put our imprint on this bill. So it's going to be interesting to see what the Senate does to this bill and how well Trump can whip them.
I don't know.
It feels like in the Senate there's a chance for maybe some of the awful things to be made less awful, but it also feels like there's a chance for things to be made even worse. I mean, you got people like Ron Johnson and Mike Lee out there saying oh no, oh, we need to put more spending cuts in these in
this bill. And so, you know, I would like to think that maybe there are some saner heads in the Senate, but then I remember that there are people like Ron Johnson and Mike Lee in the Senate, and I just think, oh my god, this could be even fucking worse than it is now.
I want to talk about this bill because I think of it as like the purest distillation of trump Ism, right, like a lot of this shit he said on the campaign trail where people are like, you can't actually do that is in that bill. So for example, no tax on tips that is in that bill. How the fuck are you gonna do? No tax on deps? What's the tip? What is in everything a tip? Maybe everything's a tip?
I have absolutely no idea. And then you're in a situation where and look, I'm all for servers and bartenders making more money.
That's not what this is though. I mean, it's just like I'm a hedgephone manager? Is my you know, if I make over a twenty percent return, can my you know, can I carried interest be considered a tip? Yeah?
I don't. Unlike you, Molly I am not an economist, so I guess.
As an economist, I can tell you.
So I don't understand.
This is some shit. That's what we're in, Isn't you know when I got my degree from Harvard, my economics degree from Harboro. Yes, the big beautiful boxom Byzantheum of billionaire Bellicost. That bill has in it a lot of cuts and the way it gets the cuts to medicaid. So remember the top line. I'm going to go back to Mike Johnson's when he managed to pass the Sea are and not shut down the federal government, which for him was like consider you know they they're going to
pass like three things. Okay, so the cr this and maybe they'll name some post offices. When he passed this film with the top lines on the on the budget were eight hundred and eighty billion from medicaid. Eight hundred
and eighty billion dollars for medicaid. So the way they're going to get there is it going to make it harder to get medicaid, so like you're not going to be able to call you just like this is elon Musks, Like wait, what you know they're going to get rid of waste fraud and abuse by making it impossible to get the government service.
Yeah, that's been there.
Their sort of mo like you said, since the beginning of Trump two point zero, is you know, we're going to completely get rid of anything we can, and if there are things that we can't completely get rid of, we're just going to make them. Like like you said, we're going to make the process to get those benefits so arduous that a lot.
Of people won't be able to do it.
And what do you know, it'll be the people probably who need it the most. It'll be the elderly, It'll be you know, the people who maybe can't afford super high speed internet to go online, to try to go to you know, SSA, dot gov and places like that.
This is absolutely what they want to do. It's just wild to see that side by side with things like raising the no tax floor on the on estate taxes to like fifteen I think it's fifteen million for single people, thirty million for couples, so you can you can leave, if you're a couple and you want to leave money to your kids, you can leave thirty million dollars to them tax free. And you know, I know for for
people like you, Molly, the one percent. You know, this is the kind of thing that you have been calling for for years, if not tickets, but for ordinary for hard working Americans like me and the listeners of fast Politics. You know, this is a real slap in the face.
I love you and think you're funny again. Trump had this coalition of working glass voters.
Right.
Supposely he had gotten these working glass voters to come to him because he said to them that he was going to fight for them, he was going to get them stuff. Those are not people who have parents leaving them thirty million dollars. You know, they are not. So he is fucking the very people who put him in office. Part of the story makes me so upset because I think of here are Democrats who maybe there's some level of incompetence, maybe there's some level of whatever, but you know,
ultimately and maybe they're being too much good guys. They don't want to fuck over working people. Like it's just so simple. One party wants to fuck over working people to help crypto people and wealthy people benefit from tax cuts, and the other party wants to you know, grow the social safety net, give you know, I mean, I just remember Bernie Sanders, you know, saying like just wants to make it so that glasses are covered by you know that kind of thing, the dentist is covered by the things.
And then you have Donald Trump being like, no, What I thought was the sort of single most interesting moment the last couple of weeks was Donald Trump said, you know, we should have a bracket for people who make over two wait five million dollars a year. Okay, so two point five million dollars a year. It's one thing to be like poor rich two point five million dollars a year. Once you make over that you're in a completely different world. Right, You're fine, you can pay more fucking tax.
Right, And he says, you.
Know, that's a great idea. Again, did there was there any world where that was going to happen. No, there was zero fucking chance that was ever going to happen. But I do think it's worth realizing, like that is the winning message. That is the fucking winning message. Tax very rich people. People should not you know, you don't have to tag them at eighty percent, you can tag them at sixty percent, but you should people shod not
be making one hundred million dollars a year. I mean, that's a that's a country, not a person.
I mean, look, you've even got you know, in the last couple of weeks or a month or so, you've got people like Steve Bannon going out there and saying we should probably tax the rich more. But the point is he's you know, an awful human being, right, and but he's not stupid, and he sees that just a yeah, just from a pure you know, political standpoint, and from an electoral standpoint, you don't want to be the party of the millionaires and the billionaires. And that is what
the Republican Party is. Trump has been able, as you noted, Trump has been able to fool a lot of people who are not willionaires or billionaires twice twice and you still hear. You know, we've talked about this on the podcast I co host As the World Churns, available wherever
podcasts are sold and also on YouTube. But we've talked about what is it going to take for the people who are out there, the working class people, the people who are not you know, the one percent or even the ten percent, but who continually say things like he fights for me. What is it going to take to make them realize that he has never fought for you a day in your life, and he could not give.
Less of a shit about you. And I don't know, Like I don't.
I'm not one of those people that thinks it's you know, well, Trump is going to crash the economy. He's going to do all this, and it's unfortunate. You No, it's necessary. We need to happen so that people wake up. I don't want that to happen because a lot of people who didn't vote for Trump are going to get hurt in what's coming, what's already started, and what's going to continue to grow. But you do sit there and you think, how is this not where everyone realizes Trump doesn't fight
for them? But I have said that so many times in the last you know, eight nine years that I have no idea where that line is. I have no idea what Trump has to.
Do for the majority of the people who voted for him to realize that not only does he not fight for them, he is actively working against them and always has been.
Correct Andy Levy, maybe someday you will come back when I can talk.
I would like that.
I'm also willing to come back when you can't talk.
Ned Lamont is the governor of Connecticut. Welcome to fast politics, Governor of Lamont, Hey Roley, Governor of Connecticut. You've got a federal government that is out of control in a lot of ways. We've seen some really amazing pushback from there are Blue states governors. I'm thinking about Janet Mills. How do you threaut this need all of being a big, important state with a lot of people and a lot of bonds, but having to sort of work with this federal government.
First. While I love Janet Mills from Maine, I was sitting next to her at the White House that day mining your own business, seventy years old, ready to retire. President Trump looked around, where's that governor Maine and let her have it. Said I'm going to see you. She said, I'll see you in court. And they paid a price for it. The White House has tried to jack they're funding a couple of times. So here's how it works for a state of Connecticut. I've got a Senator Chris Murphy.
Every day he's letting the president have it and say this is what's in state America. I have an aury General William Tongue who every other day brings suit and tries to protect some of the resources we're supposed to have from the federal government. I, as a governor, maya I sort of pick my battles. Let's say I think Medicaid is incredibly at risk. If I make it all about Trump, I won't get any red steak governors to
help us out on this. But if I go to the red state governors and I say, you're more at risk than we are because you're rural hospitals, of which there are many more, this is someplace maybe we can work together. This is we all worked in our own different ways.
Do governors really work together in a nonpartisan.
Way in private?
Yes?
And public no. I'll be a little less facetious so being.
It's not fanciass accurate prey true.
Actually, we work together a lot on a regional basis, publicly and privately. But even you know, if you go around the country a little more, where you tend to break in the different casts privately, there are a lot of positive conversations. The governors are pretty good. They know what's the right thing to do. But if look, if you're a red state, you know republican governor, you got
to watch out. If you can't risk a primary, they're scared, but privately they can fight for their own residents, just like we do it all to re aligned.
What are the things that are really affecting your day to day sort of running your state? Like I think of Trump's war on fema, like, is that something that's affecting you? Is that something that you're watching and what are the parts of it that are affecting you.
First of all, Dose says they're going to get rid of waste, fraud and abuse. I think those was a fraud. I really they're going to go after sort of medicaid abuses and upcoting in a lot of ways that they should go after these. They didn't do that. They just want to shove costs down to the state and that in terms of Medicaid you mentioned that. In terms of FEMA, snap benefits very much. You know, look at the Republican bill. They're not saving anybody any money. They're not doing anything
more efficiently. All they're doing is saying, govers, you figure out how to pay for it.
Do you think it's it's funny because I think I think of you and Annie as coming from VC world, right Bench capital World and my father in law came from VC world, and my father in law was one of the first bench capitalists, right, I mean very early. And one of the things they did was they wanted to grow the country. They wanted to grow businesses, they wanted to go to the country, and they were very philanthropic and involved in sort of being on the right
side of things. There are a new crop of vcs and Elon is very much aligned with this where it's a completely different value system. What do you make of that?
Look, I'm a pro growth democrat, and I think that we were an economy here at Connecticut that was slow growth for a long time. We paid a price for that. Now we're growing. I don't do it by recruiting great, big companies. I do it by starting hundreds of small businesses, even smaller than the businesses your father in law was involved in. But I think you're right. Everybody who's gotten a lot more transactional and mercenary started with the tech
bros out there in Silicon Valley. Their maunder used to be doing no harm. Now it seems to be how can I get a little bit richer? And they're all suing each other and claiming monopoly and it's not the innovative economy that has made America special for the last fifty years. Little credit. Elon mu is an amazing entrepreneur. I mean, look what he's done in space and evs and as such. But you got to focus on what
you do, right. I think him getting in trying to say God is really simple to cut two trillion dollars out of our federal budget. Look where we are today. I mean they're about to pass a reconciliation build the Republicans that make, you know, through their drivers into bankruptcy as a country. They're worried about Woke. I'm worried about his going broke. That's what they're doing.
Let's talk about your smartphone legislation. Because I have a lot of children. You know, everybody's got something going on. But one of my kids went on to the student council and he started trying to legislate against cell phones because he thinks that it's turning people into zombies. Now, they did try to impeach him, but he did survive the impeachment. I'm just telling the story to show the headwinds that you see when you try to legislate technology. Talk to me about this.
I got into this two years ago. I said, a smart our phones make you stupid, especially if in the classroom, an incredible distraction, creating a lot of performance fighting and things in the hallways. And I said, get them out of the classroom. I'd say they're out of ninety plus percent of our K through eight classrooms right now. Then I had anxious generation come and they said, not good enough. Out of the classroom. You want them out of the schools.
You want to have at least eight hours a day where the kids are with each other and focused on each other. And we're making real progress there as well.
And mother.
Look, there was a lot of pushback. The parents were upset, Hey, I won't be able to stay in contact with booboo all day long. And that's okay. We worked it out so they can call the central office. Some of the students, as your older students, said, look, you've got to respect us. We've got to know how to manage this ourselves. But certainly in K through eight it's working in After a week, the students say, I kind of like it.
So let's talk about pre K because that's another thing really important for any number of reasons, mostly because it gets people to school on out of poverty and families. What are you doing for pre K. It's expensive, it's hard to manage in a big state. So explain to us what you're doing there.
So we're doing the biggest expansion of our early childhood ever. We're going to make sure it's free for all families earning less thane hundred thousand dollars. We're not going to do it tomorrow, but we'll get there over the next three or four years. Really hopeful about that. Look, there are very few things I do may like virtually nothing where business, labor, young families, liberals all are aligned. Early childhood is one of those places business licen because it
helps mom and dad get back to work. I love it because it gives kids the very best head start in life. Every kindergarten teacher I talk to says, I can tell that kid became from a early quality early childhood program. Parents honestly love it because they can't afford it. So it's one place where we actually have consensus.
Yeah, I wonder if you can sort of talk us through this idea that sort of doing more for education helps the state it's probably.
Our best calling card. I'll just give you an example. I mean when I visit India, which I just did on a trade mission, and I boast about our location and housing, and you know, they say, I understand you have a really good education system. That's very important for us. That's the reason why perhaps we want to relocate some people here. It's one of our calling cards. When a
business comes there, they often talk about the schools. You think they're talking about taxes or labor or something like that. You often talk about the schools because we have some of the best in the country, and that's one of our calling cards. Makes a big difference.
Trade. We have these tariffs. They're coming down the pike again. We were in a moment with China where it was really like a mutual destruction. Now he's brought the tariffs down, but it's still going to have big effects. You know. We have all these stories about the trade was way down in the Port of Long Beach and I feel a lot of anxiety. And maybe it's because I've just heard Paul Voker speak too many times about this idea that we may get caught in this stuyflation moment. Are
you seeing that on the ground in Connecticut. Are you not and can you do anything to protect these small businesses?
The rollout of the Trump tariff strategy was an absolute, unmitigated disaster. The one thing we need is coming out of the business world, there's a little bit of certainty. I'm not going to invest one hundred million dollars a twenty year investment. Why don't they know what the world's going to look like in twenty days? And that's what
hurky jerky tariff proposal did. I will say we've done sort of a round tripper, and after we lose two trillion dollars of market value, the markets are coming back as Donald Trump brings down the tariffs more or less to where they were before and more focused on China, less focused on our allies. First state of Connecticut. Yeah, it was a bit of a hiccup. Our sales tax r not as much as we hope before. We'll see whether things that stabilize now, Bratt Whitney, they make gen engines.
Let's say they bring in five billion dollars apart from Canada. Are they going to be subject to the terroriffs? Yes they are, No, they're not. That uncertainty is hell for economic growth.
Yeah, I mean that's a real question. And I wonder too, is the administration working on cutouts with Canada for stuff like parts and manufacturing?
Yes, this is a great time to be a lobbyist down there. And why should you see the swamp? There must be thousands of them just doing carve outs just for tariffs right now.
Yeah, and that's true when it comes to some of the regulation of other instruments like bitcoin too.
Right, absolutely, don't you think it's shocking. I'm going to set up the Lamont Bitcoin and if you spend a million dollars, you can come and have a dinner with me and I won't tell anybody who it is. I mean, it just shocking the way they're playing this game.
Shocking, but it is also this is who they are. Right. How worried are you about ice has been popping up in Massachusetts disappearing grad students. We haven't seen that in Connecticut. How worried are you about that? And what can you do to prevent it?
Am terrified? Be my hispanic students talk about schools again? Are terrified? Many fewer of them to school today than they were even a year ago. And that's when we were coming out of COVID, so it's terrible. They're really going after Massa. Juss particular, Boston very loud. Sex City just a little louder about where they are. I think on the issues Connecticut we're a little dull. We're a little quieter, our heads down a bit. I don't go
out of my way to pick a fight. Like I said, I have a DEI officer, but if you want me to call her the opportunity officer, I'll do that if it makes you feel better. But she's going to keep doing exactly what she's doing, even more diligently. They're coming in here too. They just hauled away a young guy going through the normal process that immigration court. The other day, Free Ice guys came in taser them. You were the shouts coming in from the courthouse. And how much you
can do about that? We're at risk because this is federal buildings. I will. But how I play it though, which is we're getting criminals off the street. I work with DAFBI ice whoever it is to get criminals off the street, whatever their documentation. But I don't sit around when I have guys who are jaywalking, is shoplifting or speeding things like that. We're just trying to keep the place safe. I'm not getting in the immigration there, so there's no way we can play with ICE on that.
We just don't have that information, nor are we going to get it.
You have one of the greatest universities in your state when my husband went, one of the great and it has one of the great hospitals. Yale New Haven Hospital is one of where I participated in the COVID vaccine trial. But it's also the major major employer in the state. So I'm wondering if you could talk about these NIH grant whatever is happening there with the administration trying to take money away from the university. I know it's complicated
and multi layered, but there certainly are capping. There's capping on indirect grants. There's a lot of sort of financial fuckery going on with the federal government trying to punish these institutions for whatever crime's real but mostly imagined. Talk to me about where the university is and the hospital and the research facilities are in the federal government and sort of what that looks like.
I thought probably that Republicans opposed big government and supported freedom of speech and academic independence. Instead, we have big government coming in putting a boot on the throat of some of our best research universities. Again, Harvard up in Massachusetts, part of Boston. We're going after them a lot harder than they are Yale and some of our research universities here at Connecticut. What is the dumbest thing you can do?
France and other countries have created a research funds. They're going after the very best from the brightest of our researchers, saying you don't have the freedom to do it at Yale. If you don't have the freedom to do it at Yukon, come to Canada, come to Europe, come to China. Think of the AI smart people that are going to China. You know, we're fighting, we're widget factories here in Connecticut or America, and we're losing the next generation of AI talent to our enemies.
Yeah. Do you think that ultimately some of that money is going to be unfrozen and it will go back to the way it was supposed to be or do you not have insight yet?
I think only because they pull all the funding for public health clinics, then the money comes back. But there's something a little more cultural about going after the Ivy League. It's not about the money. I just think they want to pop the elites in the nose.
There's a lot of drama in the bond market right now. Right there, we're at this moment where there's a real question about the level of debt that the federal government has and servicing that debt, and what it is doing to the larger financial picture of the country. Among the things that you worry about personally, you know, I go to sleep, bring about democracy, but I also worry about five other things. Where is dollar flight on your level of anxiety?
Well, I'm a Connecticut governor, so I probably are a little more potholes oriented here in my state.
Yes, it is really dangerous, Molly.
I mean day China can say I'm gonna stop buying American bonds and then you have a flight on the dollar, and then you see not only as their credit rating collapse, but we have no way to refund what we've got to do to keep our government going. They've made us much weaker and much more vulnerable by playing these games with the deficit. Is if deficits don't matter, they do matter.
This Republican build these so called physical conservatives. You're about to pass a bill that's going to create another three trillion dollars in deficit over the next years. Moodys is looking at that. Investors all over the world are looking at that and putting America much more risk. That's part of what stagflation is.
Yeah, tell us sort of what you're excited about that's happening in your state.
Here's what I'm excited about, Malli. All that noise for why intends to dominate the conversation and well with us. But fundamentally, I think, as I just told the Trinity graduate spoke there the other day, this is not the Middle Ages. You're graduating into the Renaissance. The same way that I was transformed for my generation, artificial intelligence will be TRANSFORMEDI for you. It's a great time to be graduating.
And by the way, you're going to know more about AI than your boss, so you hit the grave running. That's a good place to be. My old businesses like insurance we have here with life sciences at Yale, and fintech, they're all going to be transformed by AI. That's what I'm excited about. That's the old private sector guy in me talking.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Governor lamont I. Hope you'll come back.
See you so min like great to see you again.
No, no moment, Jesse Canon Smiley. Right as we were making our last episode, Trump did this absolutely Banana's press conference with South African President Ramafosa. And you'll be shocked to hear that when he showed this ridiculous movie that promoted white genocide, that there is a whole bunch of bullshit.
In Yeah, I'm shocked the images of the white farmers, which is so he played this video of like all of the sort of fevered swamp of right wing fantasy about what was happening in South Africa, and the images of dead white farmers actually came from not South Africa. Yep, that's right. It came from the Congo, which is not
in South Africa. You will be shocked to hear that the Congo is not The video was taken from the Democratic Republic of Congo as part of what Reuters and then these were Routers videos from Congo, and then he presented them as evidence of mass killings of white South Africans in South Africa. So again, this is a president of the United States bringing another president to the Oval office and showing them things that aren't through and being mad at them for things he thinks are happening in
their country that aren't. Again, I understand that a lot of Trump World operates in a post truth environment, but the rest of the world does not. So the rest of the world understands that we are being held osage by a madman. And I think it's worth remembering that the rest of the world sees what's going on and they are not involved in whatever weirdness we have gotten stuck in. So it's something. That's it for this episode
of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear the best minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going. Thanks for listening.