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 Bernie Sanders says, these are the scariest times of my life.
We have such a great show for you today.
The New Abnormal co host Andy Levy stops by to talk about how great.
Things are going with American democracy.
Then we'll talk to Congressman Sujas Subramanyum, who is a congressman with the most federal workers' cup I don't but first the news, Molly.
So, one of my things during the Biden administration is everybody go, they're going to shut down the government. And I'd say, Kevin McCarthy and Mike Johnson are owned by the banks.
There's no way they're going to do that. This time. We have a whole new set of rules.
And Chuck Schumer, he says that setate Democrats will reject Geopeace funding bill as the shutdown draws near.
Yeah, you know, good for Chuck Schumer. A lot of us did not think that he would do this. This is like really an impossible situation. Democrats are in because they don't want to shut down the whole Republican ethos is to shut down the federal government and then kill it, right, I mean, that's what they want to do here. They want to cut it and cut and cut it. This is the only thing Democrats can do at this moment. They do not control the House, they do not control
the Senate, they do not control the presidency. All they can do is put sand in the gears for Republicans.
And look this bill.
I want to talk about this CR because this CR has in it something that makes it so that Congress will no longer.
Have power over tariffs.
You know, tariffs, the thing that's fucking our economy right now. Well, Congress is giving over its tariff power to Donald J. Trump, which is insane. Donald Trump has already stolen so much power from this Congress. The fact that the Republicans are, like you know, Patty Hurst with Stockholm syndrome, ready to give them anything else they have left.
Is just completely crazy.
And it's and again, I understand that these Republicans are scared of Donald Trump. I understand that they have just given up on trying to do anything but rubber stamp his agenda. But still, this even in itself, is like kidnapping yourself and waiting for yourself to bring ransom to yourself.
It is quite silly, and I really hope that the Democrats give them no help here whatsoever. Despite as much as I don't want there to be a shutdown, this is pathetic.
You and I both agree and also think that this is impossible, right because the thing is shutting down the government is what the Republicans want. So if Democrats shut down the government, they will be blamed for shutting down the government and be deliver what Republicans want, which is
to hobble these government agencies. Even more, if I were Chuck Schumer, which I'm very much not, Thune is not insane, right, fun is like a normal guy, and I would try to get Thune to take the tearff stuff out and then pass the cr. I would be like, no one wants a government shut down here, take out the tear off stuff. See if there's anything you can do with the money that's an impoundment, right, See if there's anything you can do to stop Trump from impounding money that
Congress has allocated. I would make the pitch to Thune that we have this opportunity to put a little bit of a break on this guy who is just running Rockshaw over the federal government, and then see if that works, and see if you can get Thune on board with that.
I do think there.
Are publican senators who are pretty fed up with how this is going.
So I do think there's an opening there. Now.
I'm not convinced that Schumor will take it, but that would be in my mind what I would do.
Yes, So I have to give the listeners some education here. We as influential people who are on podcasts, sometimes do this thing called it we call spon con, which is sponsored content, which means that somebody has paid us to make content for their product where we sell it. But we might just say this is sponsored by very Fast and then you just see an ad from us, whereas yesterday Donald Trump did sponsored content for Elot Musk, Shitty Tesla Cars.
Good point.
He got one hundred million dollars for that spat con. You know how much money we've gotten for our spont Con is not one hundred million dollars.
What is our aged doing?
Joey, oh, Joey. No, it's a good point.
Look, we would like to get more money for spont Con.
This is real.
This is really yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no listen.
So Donald Trump sold Teslas yesterday, by the way, not the first time my man was compared to a used car salesman, but certainly not.
The last, right, but the most accurate, but the.
Most sort of on the nose. He was out there reading.
We saw the car, you saw the Reuter's picture of the car that had you know, this one's thirty five thousand, this one's forty five thousand.
I think this is important.
This is why I think it's important, besides the fact that the Hatch hack to be damned, that these people have completely given up on any kind of ethics.
I mean, what might say that it took a hatchet to the Hatch act.
Yeah, makes Nixon look like Lincoln. But what I think when you watch this is like, clearly Elon is worried about Tesla. Right, his market share is way down, the sales are way down. There's a reason that CEOs of public companies don't espouse highly inflammatory political rhetoric.
And this is why.
Right because a Tesla is no longer Tesla, Tesla has a vote for Elon, and most of the people who buy electric cars do not love the straight armed salute. Oh that's what we're calling it now. So I think it's a really good point that as tacky and distasteful and immoral as this is, I think it's really important to remember that this is also just desperate.
My I do want to add some history here.
I don't know if you remember, all the way back to the campaign when Donald Trump was doing all this podcasts that a influencer on the right named Aiden Ross with very questionable views gave Donald Trump a cyber truck with the assassination attempt as a rapper on it. But then Donald Trump couldn't accept it because of FEC violations. He actually listened to the law for what's there. But so that now Donald Trump has bought a ninety thousand
dollars Tesla with thirty seven recall notices. It gets it cuts, that's what you're getting when you're getting the Tesla.
Baby.
Yeah, I don't know about that, but that does not sound good.
So as well, since we're not done with all the favors Donald Trump is doing for first buddy Elon, if you vandalized Tesla property, the White House will prosecute you as a domestic terrorist.
Yeah, of course, does this surprise you at all.
It does not surprise me at all.
So President Donald Trump warren protesters targeting eln Musk that his administration will treat any attack on a Tesla company as an act of domestic terrorism against the United States.
That makes no sense.
Standing on White House the White House lawn, next to a line of Tesla's and flanked by Musk, nodding in agreement and likely wearing a ridiculous hat, Trump vowed to bring the full power of his office to bear on anyone breaking the law in an effort to interfere with his administration's official cost cutter in chief. Those people are going through a big problem. When we catch them, they're going through a big problem. They're harming a great American company.
Tesla's become a lightning rod for anti Musk sentiment. We already know who some of them are. Trump said, I don't know. His quotes are always amazing.
I think they're gonna go for the people who have organized this Tesla takedown protest. But this is coming after people for protesting it. I have to say, if you go out after people for protesting Tesla, x's next, and there's a lot of vulnerabilities.
There the whole thing is completely insane.
It's insane.
Andy Levy is the co host of The Daily Beasts, The New of Normal. Hello Andy Levy.
Hello, Molly john Fast.
Here we are back again.
How many years has it been since we've been on a podcast together?
Two years, three years, seventeen?
I think seventeen years.
Yeah, no, I think it was two years ago, two and a half. Maybe I don't know.
I don't know, but a lot has gone wrong since then. Things have not gone great.
Are you saying it can be traced to that?
Yes, obviously the two of us not being podcasting together is why by laws and why Harris lost, and why Donald Trump has somehow gotten reelected yet again.
I heard about that. Yeah, is this your fault?
It's our fault. It's our collective fault.
Well, I mean, if you want to get technical, I'm not the one who left the other. Oh, so it's your fault, is what I'm saying.
Yes, Okay, So Jesse wants us to talk about what's going on right now, or at least I feel him getting agitated. We communicate with telepathy. As far as I can tell. Trade wars are good and easy to win discuss.
Yeah, especially when you start and stop them every weeks.
Well, when they're driven largely by mood, markets love uncertainty.
We're in a vibe war and I'm not. And the vibes, the vibes are bad, and the vibes are bad.
It is absolutely wild and just every day I have to wake up and see if the prices of my electronics are going to go up by twenty to twenty five percent or not.
I have no idea.
And I love that there's all this push to blame all of this on Howard Litnik.
I cannot believe you're defending Howard Lutnik, But go on, I want you to defend him so I can debunk you.
Oh, I would never defend him.
I just always find it hilarious when one of these schmucks gets involved at a high level with.
Donald Trump and thinks that it's going to end up well for them.
Oh, yes, no, for sure. I mean we are watching this man devolve.
I actually watch this morning a clip on Fox from Fox Business. You are a veteran from the cable news Wars. I am still fighting myself, you know, with my little pig.
I'm on disability from the cable news Wars.
You're at the VA getting your cable news.
When I'm watching him.
He did this thing where he was talking to one of these anchors that looks like Larry Cudlow, but isn't right, right, the guy who's like the British Larry Cudlow.
You know that guy, Stuart Varney.
Yes, Stuart Varney. Yeah, you know him really well, right, like you did a show with him.
I was a guest on his show several times.
Yes, I apologize, I mean, and by I mean apologize, I apologize that I made you say that.
Yeah, other people to hear it.
So you hear Lutnick talking, you can almost hear like normal for a minute, and then he breaks into Donald Trumps, the strongest, greatest leader ever and he knows everything, and you're like, oh, yes, North Korea, we live here now.
My favorite thing was so there was a Politico article I think got Tuesday talking about how everyone is blaming Lutnik now, and one.
Of the things it said that the people around Trump.
Are exasperated with Lutnick because his television appearances suggest a lack of understanding of even the basics about hows and the economy work. And I thought, well, yeah, but I think as opposed to Trump. Right, it's just absolutely wild that all of these people think that they are the chosen ones and that they are in the inner circle, and they are every single one of them is literally thirty seconds like Trump, if he gets a bad burger at McDonald's, your ass could be gone.
Oh, no question.
I mean, but I do have to say watching Lutnik, it's true, and I think we need to have another second to just talk about what you just said, because I think it's really important.
Right.
No one remembers twenty sixteen to twenty twenty. Nobody remembers those four years. Like we're sitting there going like you got Lutnik, you got Elon jumping up and down with his shirt riding up.
Just get him longer T shirts.
I don't know what wife he's on, but whoever you are, just get him longer T shirts.
This is not is a very solvable problem.
I think he has nothing but xes now.
And you know, exes may not be the ones who want to tell him to make himself look better. So I feel like this might be a little conspiracy among his exes. Maybe they maybe they're actually telling him no, the short T shirt looks good on you.
The only bright spot in our current crisis, our current whatever this is, our gentle slide into authoritarianism, is that the ex wives are having the I mean, they're not having the last left, because no one is having the last left as far as I can tell. But the ex wives are at least like you see all this sort of billionaire x wives, or at least like sort of doing nice things with their money. You could sort of feel the relief that they don't have to be married to those people anymore.
Yeah, except you know, they would like to get child support apparently in that.
Well yeah, well those are Elon's X wives. I'm thinking you have more like Bezos's X wives.
Gotcha, gotcha? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's interesting to think about Elon. Is like when we talk about the people who get close to Trump and then get burned and next her on the outs. I've been thinking lately that it might be too late for Trump to try to get rid of Musk. Like Musk I think may have more power than him at this point.
Well, that is the real I was gonna say, Sophie's choice, Yeah, but it feels too close to home. So I'm going to say, that's the real problem, right, because the only thing that makes me think that maybe Trump could get rid of Elon and not vice versa is that Elon is just his stock is cratering, right, Like he's losing percentages of his net worth every day. And like the fact that they had a Tesla, that they've turned the White House into a Tesla showroom.
That is because Elon.
Is real worried, right, Like, you don't do that if things are going great.
No, of course not.
But the fact that Trump did that for him, like makes me think, I think this is the kind of power that Musk has over Trump.
At this point.
He can basically say to Trump, you know, hey, you need to do a sales pitch for my car. I think about all the data that Musk now has access to.
Through his little doge cribs.
Yeah, and it just makes me think, you know, he's got like like information is power, and he now has access to all this information about so many people.
And it just makes me wonder if like Trump.
Advisors can get pissed at Elon all they want.
And I just don't know. He may. He may.
The scheming vizier may have too much power for the emperor to get rid of him.
I want to go back, though, to the Tesla showroom white house thing per second, not just because I think it's very pithy, but because if you look at the Trump Tesla situation, it was like a very clear quid pro quoil. Right by the way, if you guys can find the picture that he has written down where he's like, that's amazing, it's amazing. This car is the model t is thirty three thousand, the model as is. I mean literally somebody wrote down for him how much these cars cost.
But at the exact same time he did that, Elon said He's going to do another one hundred million for Trump's political organization. So I do think like Donald Trump is and this is the electeds who have been able, the state heads who have been able to figure out how to deal with him, have done this thing where they have, you know, you suck up to him and then you offer him stuff.
So like the fact that Trump did.
This for Elon, in my mind, this is like just what he does, like very transactional, so that I don't think is necessarily as much of a tell. And remember, like Trump knows that he needs Elon to stay solvent right, because that's how he runs his organization. And remember, like yesterday, all of these Republicans voted for the CR right, they
voted for a CR. And the way that Mike Johnson, who is not a vote whipper, who basically cannot do as far as I can tell any math who has failed and failed and failed again on votes right, like even rules votes, the way he got to the number he needed with his very razor thin one seat majority
was that Trump and Elon. Maybe not Elon, but certainly Trump and his people have whipped votes for Mike Johnson, like we keep seeing this happen, right, And the way they whip those votes is by bullying these people and saying like, if you don't vote for this, we're going to you know who knows, right, But part of it is we're going to fund primary challenges. I do think that like Trump sees that Elon's money is critical for this organization, which I guess makes your point.
Yeah, no, exactly. You know.
My point is that I wonder, and I'm not saying it's true, but I just I have started to wonder if Trump needs Elon or is Enthrall to Elon more than Elon is enthrall to Trump at this point. And yeah, you talked about the threats and everything. I mean, look at what's going on with you know, poor Thomas Massey.
That's a sentence that no sentence has ever been more cursed.
I mean we should just like you should just wash your mouth.
That was so.
I'm actually wearing a T shirt that says.
Poor Thomas math Yes, a cursed T shirt.
It's like the start of a poem, Yes, a bad poem. Yeah, but this is a guy, deranged right winger who has been there.
His wife wrote.
A mass he died this year, and I think he said something to the effect of, like that was sort of so incredibly weirdly just so crushingly awful. Yesterday, my high school sweetheart, the love of my life for over thirty five years, the loving mother of our four children. Oh that's too many, the smartest kind of woman I've ever known, my beautiful and wise queen forever went to heaven.
I think he's like not doing great.
Like I think he's had a very tough I mean, we're really feeling bad for Thomas Massey here.
But I was going to say, so, you're you're saying poor Thomas Massey.
I kind of feel bad for him.
Also, Thomas Mansey, like you know, he went to Mit, he had solar powd.
I don't know. Let's not go down this rabbit hole anyway, go on.
Yes, continue so well, no, now that apparently we have to be nice to Thomas Matthew, I don't even want to go on.
I mean the point is that he's actually being really treated terribly as everyone is.
Yeah, and this again is going back to the Lutnik thing that we started off with.
It's the same playbook. It's like, you know, you could be with.
Them one thousand percent, and the second you deviate from something, or the second someone decides that you're upstaging Trump or whatever they.
Do again having your own feelings.
The Fries didn't have enough salt on them.
So he's he's angry and they turn on you, and you see it online. I mean, I'm not on Twitter anymore, but I've been reading about, you know, Maggot just going after Thomas Massey. I mean, this is one of their greatest champions, and this is what they're doing to him.
But and Amy Cony Barrett's.
A great example.
Yeah, it's just wild over and over again, and yet all of these people seem to think that, well, that won't happen to me.
I can change him, Molly.
It's a horrible ending to this. Yes, yes you can. No, I mean I think that's right. I once had a job. I'm going to tell a story.
Really.
Yeah, it wasn't the one job I've ever had. It was a long time ago and I wasn't there for very long.
But the person was a narcissist, and they would talk about an employee before you and talk about how that person was bad.
But you're good, and you're going to be able to figure out.
Do you see what I'm saying. Yeah, And clearly that's what happens here. He must sort of lull you into thinking that, like those other people are bad, but you're good.
Let me answer your statement with a question, and.
It was Donald Trump. Who No, I'm just going I haven't told me one until now.
Marco Rubio is still Secretary of State by the end of the year.
You know, Marco Rubio seems to have a real appetite for humiliation.
It's a kink. It's a kink, right, Like he was.
Sitting that picture of him sitting on the couch in the oval, looking like the smallest person ever. Reminded me of that him sitting in the chair, Remember when there was that picture of him sitting in big chair looking small. I think he has an infinite appetite for this kind of humiliation. And the man gave up his Senate seed, right, It's not like he gets to go back to a Senate seat. I think he stays as unless Trump really like does something.
No, I think he stays. I bet he's there all four years.
Okay, you're looking at this the opposite way that I am. I'm looking at this as not that he's going to it that he's going to be fired.
Oh yeah, I mean everyone.
I mean, certainly there will be a lot of being fired by tweet kind of stuff.
For sure.
I think Marco's high on that list.
Somebody's gonna get scapegoaded, and my guess is it'll be someone like Lutnik. It'll be the loudest person first. I mean, what's amazing about Elon? Just to go back to this is like what you said before about like how Trump can't necessarily get rid of Elon, which is clearly clear right that Trump is sort of stuck in this thing, and Elon Km's doing these interviews where he's keeps saying like,
we're going to get rid of Security and Medicare. Right, Like the entire Republican Party is based on the idea that even though they want to do that, they have to pretend not to.
Right.
And then you have this one guy who's like, you.
Know, we're gonna do all this stuff we lie to you about doing, We're going to do it.
Yeah, And look that's the kind of thing.
You know, you see all these people talking about how they're mad at Letnik for getting out in front of Trump, but Must keeps doing these interviews and can't nobody stop opera.
The way you put it is absolutely right.
It's like Republicans are dying to get rid of Social Security and Medicare. They've just had to you know, they've had to lie about it for decades now.
Right because people hate Yeah, it's like the one's the one thing they want to do is the one thing the.
American people don't want. Right, But Musk doesn't care. It must Musk doesn't care what the American people want except to the extent that he wants them to buy his broken ass car. I mean, but Musk is not going to stop doing these interviews somebody again. I suspected his exes are telling him how great he is in these interviews and that, you know, if only he just needs to jump higher.
I think that's what that's what they're telling him.
No, no more, show more bellybatten. That is the last word on this. Andy, Will you please come back and visit me in my sad podcast world where I have no co host, it's.
Just me, just me.
I will take it under advisement. I will meet with my team.
Can you talk to your chief of staff?
I'm going to talk to my chief of staff, will strategize and we'll figure out the optics and the metrics, and we'll circle back on this.
We'll circle back on this.
Does your chief of staff? I'm an assistant.
My chief of staff has four assistants and will not tell me their names.
Andy Levy, always a pleasure talking to you.
Molly love you, Sue has superman Yum represents Virginia's tenth congressional district.
Welcome Representative Supermanion.
Yeah you got it.
You are a member of Congress.
You represent the district with the most government workers.
So tell us about your district.
Yeah, you know, we've got Bela Sarapor for about thirty or forty minutes outside of DC. I've got one of the best commutes in Congress. We've got between contractors and federal work and people who serve those people. I mean, we're very much entrenched in government, and I like to say that, you know, our region serves the rest of the country.
They do really great work.
They could be making a lot more money in the private sector in most cases, but they decided they wanted to serve their country and do critical work to keep people safe and secure.
Yeah.
You know, it is interesting, and by interesting I mean very annoying that this Republican Party seems to think that these government workers that they're sort of getting these easy jobs that pay a lot, when in fact, these are the sort of jobs you do because you're patriotic, not because because you would ultimately make more money in the private sector.
Yeah.
I talked to a lot of people who were working these jobs. They work quite hard, actually, and they get
paid a lot more. But most importantly, you know, they went from the private sector of the public sector one because they cared a lot lot about the work they're doing, like keeping people healthy and safe and to you know, there was an extent of job security as well in the public sector, and you know now we've lost that, and so how do we expect now to keep the best and brightest talent when there's no job security, there's less pay, and they're just being demonized by a lot
of people, especially on the right. It's a hard sell now to attract. And one of my jobs in the Obama White House when I worked there was to attract the best, rightest tech talent. And you know, those folks have all resigned in large DROs if they haven't been fired. And now we've got issues with cybersecurity and issues with protecting our critical infrastructure because we've let go of we're lost a lot of those really important people that did.
Great work at a discount basically.
So I'm wondering if you could sort of explain to us what you know, what we've seen from the outside is that there's been a lot of elan like trying people and then lot of you know, fork in the road emails, a lot of this stuff did a Twitter, and then a lot of rehiring or trying to rehire,
or maybe rehiring or maybe not rehiring. So tell me kind of what the experience is about, you know, with the people in your district, and give me sort of a broad sense of what the people in your district are, sort of what they're like, what parts of the government they work in.
Yeah, I've heard enough stories.
I've observed this enough to come to touple conclusions. One, you know, let's stop the throw clearing about Well, I want to make government better, more efficient. This isn't the way to do it. This effort, this DOGE effort, is not about making government more efficient or more effective or better. It's doing the opposite actually, and it's actually hurting taxpayers
and wasting taxpayer dollars. We had a story someone said of DOGE staffers moving into a government office and then you know, buying Ikea furniture and even paying twenty five thousand dollars per washer dryer that costs two thousand dollars if you just go online. And so this is not efficient or effective. They're also canceling contracts that for instance, maybe it may have cost US ten million dollars. We're five million dollars in halfway done with the project. They
cancel the contract. We're out five million dollars plus the project doesn't get done. I mean, this is the least efficient way of trying to make government more efficient, and it's going to hurt every American And then those are That's just one part of it. The second part is there's a brain drain in our government because of this. So again we're losing the technologists. We're losing the scientists, We're losing the highly skilled workers who were taking less
money to serve our country. It's going to hurt us in so many ways that it's hard to put a value on how difficult this is going to make things for our country and for government. And I think that doge people realizing this and realizing their own incompetence, and so they're trying to walk back some of these things
and call them mistakes. And you say you can't bat a thousand, Well, in government, you got to bat as close to a thousand as possible because people's lives are on the line, people's benefits won't get delivered, things won't get done, or country won't stay safe if you don't bat as close to a thousand as possible. And it's pretty clear from the stories I've heard that they are doing a terrible job. If their goal is to make government more efficient and get rid of waste, road and abuse, do.
We know are they rehiring people in some places the state or hiring people?
Are you seeing that in Virginia are now?
Yeah?
You know, we have a governor that's sort of on board with this whole effort. I think he has feature national ambitions, Glenn Youngkin. So the state hasn't done a lot. The legislature here has, but I would say, you know, bigger picture, they're rehiring people when there's pressure. And this is what I've told people is when you speak out, don't be afraid. This is the time to seek out a lot of civil servants, a lot of government workers
have been trained to not be partisan. Doesn't matter who's president, you just serve your country. Well, this is a different time right now, and there's a lot on the line. Now is the time to tell your story, talk about the incompetence, talk about how this is going to hurt the American people. And when I've seen people do that, when I've shared their story myself, you start to see the doge folks in the administration walk things back. And that's why that people have a lot of power. We're
not helpless in this fight. We're not helpless in this effort if you just speak up and use your voice.
Yeah, Congress has basically been stripped of its power by don't right. What can you do? You're in the minority, but you do. They have a very small majority. Is there anything that Democrats can do in Congress to gum up the works? To express I mean, obviously Democratic voters are furious. Is there anything you guys can do to express this, to get publicans to have some interest in their own power of the person responsibility.
I'm new here. I'm two months in.
I came from the state legislature where very few people paid attention to what I did. But now I'm in Congress, and what I found is, you know, yes, I've introduced bills, i have a build called the Leash Dough Jact, and I've got other you know, letters that I've done. There's things you can do, but that stuff's not going to get hearings, right, We're not going to move it. What I think is different about my job now is I've got,
you know, a way to amplify people's voices. I've got the House floor, I can go to every day if I want and just speak about what's going on. And so I've used sort of my office to share stories, to allow people to be almost like people's tip line, right, to share their stories about what's going on, how's affecting them. I see my job as a member of Congress and the you know, the opposition party right now and the wrong side of a try effect to connect what the
administration is doing to how it's affecting everyday people. And I think the more we do that, one, the more the administration backtracks and Doge back tracks, but two people start to understand that this is a problem, that some of these issues, some of these moves are going to hurt every American. And it's not just about federal workers. It's about the work the federal workers did and how it's going to affect people. It's not just about the
people who are on Medicaid. It's going to raise premiums for every person, regardless if you're on Medicaid. Like I can keep going, right, The point is that I see it as my job to amplify the voices of people and connect the bad policies with their impact on everyday people.
One of the things we're seeing is that a lot of Republicans are not holding town halls because they're getting a lot of negative pushback, because they're doing a lot of unpopular stuff.
Do you think Democrats should be holding town halls?
Absolutely?
I mean I'm going to be holding more town halls, at least two next week. I've had a couple of really big ones already, and it's good. I want people who disagree with me to come too. I don't mind it. Right, we should be learning from our constituents, hearing what they have to say, regardless of whether they agree with us. That's democracy, that's how it should work, right, And so we shouldn't be dodging our constituents and the people we serve.
And so I think it's obvious that they should. And you know, I remember when the Tea Party was rising. I was working for a Member of Congress back then, and she did town halls, even with Tea Party people yelling at her, to her credit. And so I think that it's incumbent upon us to listen to our constituents and look them in the eye. If that's what they want, give them an opportunity.
Yeah, they have a very slim majority.
Is there any sense in which maybe some of these special elections could move the majority or is it just they're just unwinnable.
I remember after Trump first got elected, John Ossoff ran for the first time in a House seat, and he lost, but it was a close race and Republicans had to spend a ton of money and a race very similar to these special elections. I think a lot of good came out of that race. It was a signal to everyone that things were shifting, and it was also signaled to vulnerable Republicans at the time that this isn't business as usual and that the president didn't have a mandate.
So if we have a great performance and these special elections, and we send a signal to vulnerable Republicans that they shouldn't just be towing the Trump line, then we can pick off three votes for different agenda items, right, We can actually chip away at some of this agenda. And so I say that we do everything we can to make these a close race. Even if we don't win them, there may be a moral victory in sending a message to the country.
Right exactly. And I think that's a real thing. I often think of, like how we got here, right, Trump has won for a second time.
He had all these indictments, so many spots in which it seemed impossible for him to win, and then he won anyone the popular vote. What do you think, like if you were to look at sort of the Democrats. This is for my own edification as much as anything. What went wrong.
Yeah, there's a anti incumbent movement across the world right now, right, and we had to own a very difficult recovery from COVID, and so I think the economy was a big part of what went wrong. And then it was easy to blame Biden for all the problems in the world, even if Trump's solution would make that problem worse, Right, we'd think of like foreign policy and what's happening now he's
made things worse and every part of the planet. But at the time, you know, Biden was the fall guy all the problems, all the wars, right, So you know, I think that was the combination of what went wrong, and I think it's important not to blame everything.
Certainly there was a little bit.
There's more we can do as a democratic party on all sorts of things like messaging on you know, relating to American people being everywhere. But I don't want to overthink that, oh, well, all our policies are bad, then we needed to go back to the drawing board on all our values. Right, That's not what we should be doing.
But do you think it was a policy problem or do you think it was a politics problem.
It was a politics problem. It was a very difficult cycle to run as an incumbent, and then we had our incumbent drop out basically one hundred days before the election, and we had the vice president having to introduce herself in a very short period of time and be easily defined by the other side. So there's a lot that went into it. I would say we are where we
are now and learn the lessons. I think one lesson to me is that we need to have a positive vision as well, and not just be anti Trump, but too we need to connect Trump's agenda to how it's hurting the American people, because it is, and not just let him blame Democrats for anything that goes wrong anymore because he owns it now. So I think there's things
we've learned, and people have different ways of expressing themselves. Right, Al Green stood up on the floor, right when Trump spoke, and then you know, we've got Senator Fetterman going out there with a different message. All that is okay. As long as we're speaking up right, and as long as we're pointing out the problems and the policy failures of this administration, then people should speak in the way that their constituents like and that they think will break through.
Thank you so much for joining us.
Yeah, thank you, This is great.
Jesse Cannon Molly jumped fast.
We were going to get a lot of wackiness with RFK Junior cavid to HHS's office. I didn't really know that he'd be sitting there eating at a steak in Shake with Sean Hannity and talking about Trump's diet these days. But he also said it would be better if everyone got measles.
So I want to just point out earlier, Jesse and I had an argument about seed oils.
Which this.
Argument is strong.
We need to know about our disagreement on seed oils, which ended would neither of us really knowing what we were talking about or also.
Caring that's correct.
Yeah, But anyway, the point is RFK Junior said that, I mean, by the way, this is so insane that this person is. It's like it's funny, but it's also just a fucking nightmare. Right. We have a perfectly saved vaccine for measles. It's been going forever now. Because Republicans don't understand math or science, they would like us to get measles. Here is RFK Junior, my favorite.
Here we go.
It used to be when I were a kid that everybody got measles. Yes, that's because you didn't have a vaccine for it, and the measles gave you lifetime protection against measles infections, except if you died.
The vaccine doesn't do that.
The vaccine is effective for some people for life, but for others it WANs Okay, I mean you could also die of the vaccine. I mean of the not of the vaccine. You could die of measles. Right, You could die of measles, or you could get vaccinated. The measles MOUMPS and rubella vaccine offers a ninety three percent protection against measles if the recipient has one dose and ninety
seven percent after two dose. Or you could just get the measles, which obviously is way better because what anyway, I don't even want to say anything else except that there's no reason for you to ever get measles, Like there is a perfectly safe vaccine and you should take it and also eat seed oils.
I have one last thing to say, which is the listeners haven't watched this clip. The best part is when the restaurant sends over a giant milkshaked RFK and he's like, no, no, it's not for me, it's not for me.
Wait, why can't he drink milkshakes.
He's making America healthy again, Molly, you but.
He's eat he choose chewing tobacco.
I think he does a lot of things that aren't healthy, much less healthy than that, like eating roadkill and.
Yes, well there's a roadkill.
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.
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