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 House Speaker Johnson says there's no path for a third Trump term.
Oh wow? Is he allowed to say that?
We have such a great show for you today as the world churns.
Andy Levy steps by to.
Talk about Trump's plan to distract and also to destroy America. Then we'll talk to Senator Ed Markey about the government shutdown and its costs to the American people.
But first we have the news.
So, Molly, we've now reached the reports on private calls where there's unrest of the clockus because the Republicans are starting to feel the pain of the shutdown. Do you feel the pain?
I didn't know they were allowed to disagree with Trump.
Many people are saying the tide is turning.
This is a new development.
Republicans who theoretically serve the voters and not President Donald J.
Trump, though they don't think that. They think they served rosement Donald J. Trump.
So there was a GOP conference call this afternoon. They did this call because in case you're wondering, they are not in session. That's right, they are out of session, as they have been for almost a month. Of business day is not in session. The calendar is empty. So here we got Dan Crenshaw adding himself to a list of growing lawmakers questioning whether or not they should be home in their districts as opposed to at least pretending to want to solve the government shutdown. So this shutdown.
Republicans control the House, the Senate, and the Congress. Now they shut down the government because Democrats would not sign off on what was happening with the Obamacare subsidies, which of course, obviously I think they were right to do, because the polling shows that people still blame the Republicans.
Republicans are saying they won't come to the table. A lot of people are saying that the appropriators, the people like Don Bacon, the people who work in appropriations, are saying that Democrats shouldn't make a deal with Republicans because Donald Trump will just come in and run ropshaw over
it anyway. And that is a real tension here because as we saw in this really good piece that you should definitely read by Annie Carney in The Times this weekend, donald Trump believes that he is the Speaker of the House because Mike Johnson is just a supplicant for him. So it doesn't matter if you make it unique. You can only make a deal with Trump. And here's the thing about Trump, he changes his mind all the time.
Yeah, speaking of Trump changing his mind all the time. Senator John Kennedy, person we know for playing dumb often.
Who has the best selling book right now? Did you know that I did not?
But I will say that I keep my literature to thoughts a little more advanced to that. Anyway, he's calling just Dan's fance and saying to him that he would really really appreciate it if Trump stopped to talk about the filibuster and all these wacky things.
So John Kennedy, by the way, who sounds stupid but is smart. He's like one of those he had been a Democrat, he went to Oxford. He pretends to be fog horn like Horn, but he actually is quite smart.
Clay Higgins, that's where you get the real foghorn leg hordeshit, unadulterated pure Basically.
Trump is repeatedly called on senators to end this tradition of allowing senators to block certain judicial nominations for the states by refusing to return their blue slips. This is like one of these Senate traditions. This is a way to block a nominee. Now here's the problem. Donald Trump doesn't like it. And since Donald Trump basically styles himself as a king, he doesn't like this stuff. So Kennedy had called Vance because he's furious about this fans, you know,
who's got a very strong moral character. Equivocated, admitting the votes were probably not there to make the changes anyway, but express frustration with the Chambers dysfunction.
Why is the Senate dysfunctional? But why?
It's certainly not because the president is holding them all hostage.
New it is not.
It's not as if the president isn't shielded from the citizens yelling at him all day and the senators don't have to deal with it and have their staff get calls all day and here complaints about it.
This is my favorite thing. He argued that Democrats should own the growing shutdown chaos, and that the momentum was with the GOP. First of all, by the way, Senator Kennedy's staff who leaked this Bravo Team vo. But more than that, he argued that Democrats should own the growing shutdown chaos. Okay, obviously you would like them to own it, right, but they don't because here's the thing.
From a ten thousand foot view, all anyone sees is.
A Republican House, or Republican Senate or Republican president strong agree.
So may We've done a lot of interviews with people from the CFPB, and under previous rules, they stood up for consumers' rights. You'll be shocked to hear that in this administration, where it is the feature to fuck over consumers, that Trump's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is trying to stop states from like being medical debt from your credit report. This would be another thing that is detrimental to the economy, as people will not be able to get loans to
open businesses, buy houses and all sorts of things. And feels another one of those well sometimes we say the Trump administrations shooting themselves in the foot. This feels like they're taking a M sixteen to their whole entire lower body.
But it's also just.
Like they obviously have some rich downer who's like, we love medical debt, don't let them erase it because we want the pores to drown in debt.
So we can make our money.
Well as well. They get higher interest rates when they have worse credit ratings.
Right, but obviously that's the move here, Like what Trump World. One of the many things I love about this administration is they just don't give a fuck about anyone who's not them. So, like here, we're going to have these people drowning in debt. Those are voters, you assholes, like these are voters. I'm sorry, they're voters. They will issue guidance tomorrow prohibiting states from wiping medical debt from consumers credit rating. This is so fucked like this is. No
one voted for more medical debt. No one voted for more medical debt. This is Donald Trump said he was going to make things cheaper, and here's what he's doing, making sure that you drown in medical debt.
Good work.
Nothing like having to pay off that medical debt instead of putting it into local businesses and the economy and bolster our economy. Great, great, great stuff.
Good work everyone.
Yeah. Okay, so here's an interesting one. It sounds like there's a little trouble in paradise, if we could call HHS paradise for some reason. Stephen Hatfill, who's a huge COVID vaccine critic has been ousted from the HHS.
I'm shocked.
I'm kind of actually shocked. This seems a little weird. What are you seeing?
I mean, this is the thing like that I think everyone should remember, is like Trump has lots of people who should be fired. He just didn't want to fire them because he knew it would look bad.
And like who should be fired?
Heg SATs should be fired, Cash, I live in Las Vegas should be fired.
All these people should be fired.
You know, Christy, we spent one hundred and seventy five million dollars on private planes. Like, these people all should be fired. But Trump doesn't want to fire people because he knows firing people creates leaks, and firing people is how he got that big wall. Remember Rachel Maddow's wall of fired people in the first administration. Like Trump thinks that keeping everyone hired will somehow keep the ship running. But like it's so it's so incredibly clear that this
whole organization is teetering on the brink of disaster. So here's the question with this story, is did Stephen J. Hatfeld, a biosecurity expert who was publicly backed Health Secretary of Robert F. Kennedy Junior. Do you think that he was fired over the weekend because he was too crazy or because the administration was too crazy? And think about that for a while, because it could be either one. That is an interesting quandary, right, and it's a little scary, right, Like,
here's an example. He's a one time Army biodefense researcher. In a recent appearance on Steve Bannon's podcast, he asserted without evidence that mRNA COVID shots are more dangerous than it is to contract COVID nineteen. So that's not true and be hospitalized with it also not true. He said he was accumulating data justifying mister Kennedy's decision to cancel
five hundred million dollars in contracts for RNA research. Now all of this is true, right, We just saw reporting that shows that mr and A Research is like this miraculous thing, that it will soon be solving cancer and this and that. But I bet you he didn't get fired because of that. I bet there's some other even stupid. Always Andy Levy is a host of as the world churns.
Welcome to past politics.
Andy, I'm welt let's talk about how great everything is going. Everything is going great, It's going great.
Yeah, you know, I was. I was sitting here because it's been like a month or maybe more since I've potted, and I was like, all right, I gotta get my head back in the game. I wonder what we're going to talk about. And I was like, there's just like every ten minutes there's something new.
So we're in this government shutdown. We're almost a month of like business days into the shutdown. Okay, Donald Trump is on his second trip. He's in Asia. The administration has decided they're not going to fund food stamps for children. It's like people are like, stop talking about the East wing. The east wing isn't where it is, no everything you have, It's like it's one of those things where you have to I feel like the situation is.
You have to focus on all the things.
Yeah, nothing is a distraction. Everything is happening. They are doing everything they're doing for a reason, and it's all the same reason. It's all in service of sort of getting us used to this authoritarian style of government. And you know, whether it's shutting the government down, you know, to I don't even know what they're latest whatever their latest accused is as an attack on trans people, which is what it seems to be half the time.
Just speaking of attacks on trans people, we just saw a transwoman at Bennington, who at Middlebury, who killed herself. One of the is, lest you think that abandoning trans people is merely a question of like electoral politics, it's actually a moral impairtive.
One hundred percent. And I was there to say I've been saying that for a while, but I have been saying that for a while. And you know, going back a few years in talking to people, I would occasionally have someone say, why why are you so hepped up on the issue of trans rights? And there's two reasons. One is, you know, it's a cliche, but when you say something like, you know, ex rights or human rights, whether it's trans, gay, black women, whatever it is, it's
true because nothing ever stops at a certain line. And so even if in some kind of adult brain you're like, I don't care about trans people, or you know they they creep me out, or oh there's so few of them, what does it matter? It all matters. It should matter just because they're people, and you shouldn't be sitting there saying, oh, these people, you know, their rights don't matter. But even even if that's the way you see the world, then please realize that you're next and stop, you know, stop
thinking you know you're safe, because you're not. And the other thing is, I think what's happening to trans folks is is in my mind, it's always been sort of the nearest parallel to the Jews in Germany. People will say, oh, well, we don't want to take away their rights to exist, they just shouldn't play sports. Yeah, because that's how it always always starts with one thing. You know, we're not saying we're gonna put Jews in camps. We just think
they shouldn't do, you know whatever. And it always starts that way. And we're really seeing now it's so far beyond the sports thing. And you know, the sport thing was always a stalking horse for people on the right, even if there were a Centrists and you know, some liberals, you didn't get that.
But I also think more than that, like trans right is like one of these issues that there has been polling that shows that some people are uncomfortable with it, not the majority, but a vocal minority, and so this is how we got here, right, and it is just so appalling. It's morally wrong, but I also think it's politically just disgusting. But I want you to talk about being a veteran for a minute, because you and Pete
heg Seth. You'll remember Pete hegg Sath as being a very handsome guy who loves beer.
He just likes beer, like Brett Kavanaugh.
You may remember Brett Kavanaugh from the famous Kavanaugh Stops. Also a beer drinker, also a weekend Fox News host like you discuss.
Okay, First of all, I was never a weekend Fox ghost. I'd like to get that straight. Second of all, it sounds like you're blaming beer for all of this, and I don't like that. I don't like that you're doing that. There's a lot of good beer out there, and you know, I don't think the bad beers. We shouldn't say that all beer is bad.
You know.
Look, Pete Hegseth is he's a goober like I was. I saw the story earlier today where he talked about there was a story I think in The Independent that talked about him allegedly refusing to meet with bearded soldiers.
Yes, he's very true. He's very looks conscious, my man. Yeah, and you know it makes sense because looks are really where it's at for him.
Yeah, Like if you had, if your.
Looks were such an enormous part of your past, you know, if the package was ninety percent looks and five percent something else and five percent competency, you would care very much about looks.
You know.
So I saw that story and I just like, he was refusing to meet with bearded true, and I just like, I don't know why. I don't can't remember the last time I used the word goober, but it just popped up too. I was like, what a goober? And my second thought was as someone who served, and who served overseas and at some point we had some high level official come visit, I think I was like Camp Casey in South Korea. It's a drag. Nobody wants those people there.
It's a drag for the troops. It's like parades. We hated it. It's you had to be forced into doing parades, and you had to be basically ordered to go meet with these high level officials who come in and generally have no idea what your day to day situation is. Like, but are there to somehow impart their wisdom? But everything that he is doing, like it's it's amazing to me. I mean I but I say this every day, the fact that he still is Secretary of Defense and not
Secretary of War. As again this independent piece that I saw the British newspaper kept referring to him as the secretary of war. You're not, he's not the secretary of war. Or why why are you saying that you got him? You got to tell how do you rank them? How do you rank them?
How do you rank who is who is the least competent? Yeah?
Okay, so I'm gonna go with I think he said is the least competent?
I want And in fact, I'm going to.
Ask you a question about this, because like, if you are a sergeant or whatever, the highest level is a lieutenant colonel, and you're in Japan, okay, with your staff of five ten people who are with you, you're doing some kind of high level, really important mission, top secret. Nobody knows. Maybe it's whatever. You're called back to d C. Virginia.
You and all your people all go back, and you were called back to a speech about facial hair and then a campaign speech by Trump like are you then, like, these are the people I'm really glad I work for?
Are you then?
Like?
Right?
I mean as someone I've never served, so tell us what the vibes there would be.
Look, I was a lowly enlisted man, so it's hard. I can't really get in the head of a general or an admiral someone at that level who would have been summoned to Washington for that insane. I wouldn't even call it. It wasn't a meeting. I don't know what you would call it. It was like a It was like an Amway type thing, is what It struck me as like it.
Was some kind of ironic because Amway, there are people involved in Amway, Like who are involved in this administration?
Oh?
Absolutely, it struck me as some kind of MLM type thing. But I'm sure they were pissed off. I'm sure they were just you know, on the plane rides home, sitting next to each other, going what the fuck was that? Like, I cannot imagine. And look, there are people who rise to various ranks in the military who shouldn't be there. So I'm not saying that aren't some generals or whoever who thought that this was like, you know, yeah, this
is the gung ho shit we need, you know. But I have to imagine the vast majority of these guys, who have spent twenty thirty years in uniform, taking what they do seriously. I cannot imagine that they were in that meeting and thought, Okay, well, you know what. I was skeptical before I went, but hey, that was really good. I feel much better about my job now. I feel much better about our operational readiness. No, I mean that was that was absolutely it was a pathetic joke, is what it was.
There's so many moments in this administration where they have sort of squandered goodwill. And if you think about like when Trump came in, he had sort of this bump right now, the kind of thing you didn't have the first time. He had this sort of bump where people are like, maybe this will work.
I don't know what they were thinking.
But now, after the trade war, the government shut down, snap benefits that all of the insanity. Now he's finally polling the lowest he's ever pulled, which is still somehow not zero.
I know, I know, every time I see that, I'm like, Okay, that's low, but.
Really did the other people not exist? Like what happened?
I don't know. I don't know. That's one of the reasons, by the way, I don't think you say anything is a distraction, because the idea is they are trying to do as many things as they can while they can. And you know, I mean, look, we'll see what happens going forward with elections, but there have to be there has to be some sense, you know, among the smarter
people around him. And you know that's on a sliding scale, obviously, g that this is not Mussolini, this is not Stalin, who's going to be in power for you know, decades or whatever.
And it's saying.
That the oldest person to ever become president is old or how dare you?
All I know is he passed his dementia test or so he claims, like we don't even know whatshy.
By the way, and he had it ever, right, let's talk about this. So my man is giving a speech and he's like.
You know, I had an MEMRII and they didn't find anything there was in his second physical of the year. Do you remember his second one and the one that was four months later than his first yearly physical it said advanced imaging, and some people who we know were like that this is the advanced imaging.
The White House was like nothing, like how dare you lib.
Tard think that we you know, cock owned the real enemy is the left.
And then he's like, oh, yeah, I got an MEMORI.
Well look, the only thing I'll say, because we don't know what the MRI was.
For, probably for nothing, as people get them all the time. I mean, I got one just an hour ago.
But the thing is, if, as someone was a relative who's going through this, if you have a cognitive test, which is what he took, not an IQ test, it's the Montreal I forget the status that the complete name. If you have that test and an MRI close to each other, there's a good chance there's one thing that they're searching for, you know, that is dementia. You know again, I don't know. Maybe he had an MRI of his hand where he has that weird you know.
Whatever for his ankles, the ankles.
But I'm just saying, if you have an MRI, an undisclosed MRI, and by the way, if you have it on a joint or whatever, you usually say, yeah, I had a shoulder, Amri, I had a risk, Memori. The only time you say I had an MRI in that position and you don't say what it's for to me is it's probably your brain.
I think what's most important now about this like Trump discourse, is that, in fact he is not doing like even any autocrat like Vladimir Putin. These guys like they give a carrot and a stick, so they give a carrot. We have yet to get a fucking carrot. Where is the goddamn carrot. Well, see he has discovered something. He has discovered that if he gets the carrot, there's a group of people who are like, right on, right, we're getting the carrot.
Right, that is true.
Like the Katari plane, it was like own de libtards, Right, we got this free play and.
That's costing the taxpayers a billion dollars.
Yeah, we're converting the East winging into a ballroom. And apparently there are people out there who go, he's doing this for us, This is for me. He is helping me by building this ballroom, by getting this plane, by you know, pardoning the or commuting the sentence of the Binance guy.
Because that finance guy, he's a man of the people of China, but.
There are there's like a solid I would say, I don't know fifth of the country that just believes that somehow. That's a not a bad base to start from, where you know, there's anything, you can do anything, and you can say this is to make America great again, and they're gonna go, you know, America, Fuck yeah, he is. We are so much stronger now because we have We're going to have a ballroom in the East Wing. So I think that's what he's figured out, is that the
carrot can just be for him and his people. And you know, his people are the ones that own Twitter. His people are the ones that own the Washington Post, Yeah, and the list goes. His people are the ones who now own Paramount and CBS and maybe soon we'll own Warner Brothers and CNN. And so as long as he helps those people and gives them the carrot, like he has sort of figured out that there's that may be
all he has to do. Hopefully he's wrong about that, but I think that in his mind, you know, that's where the carrot is. It's not for us, Molly.
So the question is on Sunday, Zoran was in forest Hills at lot at this like lovely stadium.
I'm sure you've been there. It's a beautiful Forest Hills stadium.
Yeah, Molly, I saw the band Asia there.
Okay, what it's that?
That was a huge band heat of the moment back in the day.
Come on, I don't know anything, but it was like thirteen thousand people New York Mayor's race.
No one has ever.
Given a fuck about the New York Mayor's race. It's likely no one ever will. Again, they were chanting tax the rich. Now we have the richest cabinet ever in history, Donald Trump's cabinet. Literally everyone there's like one person who's one hundred millionaire.
That's the poorest person in the right, right.
You see any connection between these two things are now, well.
I don't know, Molly, what do you think? Yeah, of course there's a connection.
I mean, I'm just saying I'm not seeing a lot of people putting it together.
Sod no.
But look, and I'm you know, spitballing on the number here. But if you figure there is like there seems to be a solid twenty percent of the people who no matter what Trump does, they love him and they think he's doing it for them. There is the flip side of that, which are the people. You know, first of all, there were the people who have always said was it tax the rich or fuck the rich or eat the wrench or eat the rich. Well, there's a solid percentage
that have always said that. But I do think that's spreading to more. I guess, for lack of a better word, normis, you know, not not the people like us who force feed this information into our brains every day to our great detriment. But the people who actually have lives is who I'm talking about here.
You have to.
Wonder if the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich, from the middle class to the rich, this skinny Obamacare repeal and these cuts to Social Security, medic Caid and also to various other things might have something to do with this.
Yeah, no, absolutely, Look, it's just too bad that Democrats didn't have a candidate in twenty sixteen and you know twenty twenty who was sort of saying things like these. But enough about Bernie.
Well, let's talk about this.
Populism is clearly popular and Americans are clearly very mad, So one would think that Democrats might want to hear the message of Zorin instead of fear the message of Zorin.
Yeah, I just think most Democrats are not temperamentally suited to that. And I think you know, You're You're Hakeem Jeffrey is, your Chuck Schumer's is, and all those folks are. They are as terrified of left wing populism as they are of right wing populism, if not more so. Sometimes
it really does feel like it's more so. And you see it when they occasionally try when Chuck Schumer posts something on social media that's vaguely populist, it just reeks of you know, Candra, Yeah, And it's just that's not who he is, That's not who most of them are. And I think that's unfortunate, and I think that's not serving the Democrats very well in this age that we're in, where as you said, there is so much anger. And you know, the thing is, it's always the question of
who are you angry at. Are you angry at the rich people who are paying no taxes and who are paying really low salaries to the rest of the people, if not eliminating their jobs completely, or are you mad at the people who don't look like you? That's the
fundamental difference between left and right wing populism. I'm obviously I'm simplifying things here, but you know, the right wing populace are the ones who want all the immigrants gone because they believe falsely that the immigrants are taking their jobs. It is the fault of immigrants that their life hasn't
turned out the way they wanted to do. They never sort of make that connection that, No, it's the fault of the people in charge of the of the you know, whether we want to call it an oligarchy or whatever,
but to me, that is the fundamental difference. And it feels like there are times when the Democrats are more comfortable with pandering to that group of people, whether it's on the trans issues like we discussed, whether it's on immigration, where the Democrats have always been at best republican light. Kamala did not run an open borders campaign. Now she ran up basically, let's do everything that you know we've been doing, but maybe be a little a little nicer about it.
Yeah, a little nicer. Andy Levy, will you come back.
Yes, okay, yes, I had I had to hear from my people.
Ed Markey is the junior senator from the state of Massachusetts.
Senator Marking, welcome.
O great, agree with you.
So the government of shutdown.
When people hear this, it'll be day twenty eight.
Talk us through.
This shutdown looks a little different than other shutdowns because of the administration's refusal to fund snap benefits.
Talk us through what you're seeing in the Senate.
Well, again, the.
Senate now operates under the rules of Godfather the Poplin.
They've all been given an offer they can't refuse by President Trump, and they've all been told not to do anything without his express permission or Steven Millers, so their perallel and by the way, they've all internalized the lesson of Tom Tillis back when we were debating earlier this year, when he said he would be concerned if the healthcare cuts would harm rural hospitals in North Carolina, and twenty four hours later he was told by Donald Trump he
could not run for reelection in twenty twenty six. So the other Republicans have internalized this, and as a result, there's no movement. Let's be honest. The House of Representatives, led by Speaker Johnson, they've been out for five weeks. They're in a national political Witness Protection Program. They're out there somewhere. Well, they haven't come to the negotiating table, and as a result, we can't talk about SNAP.
We can't talk about premium.
Tax cuts, benefits for healthcare policies in our country, Medicaid cuts, we can't talk about anything because they're not here.
So we have the SNAP benefits issue. You guys are still doing votes even though the House is out, So what are you guys doing in the Senate.
We're using the platform that we have here to talk about the fact. So, for example, a message use it's one million people are going to lose their staff benefits on November first. So in Massachusetts, for those one million people, which is essentially about one sixth to one seventh of our population, it's about one third or young, one third or old, and one third of the same are going to lose their supplemental nutrition benefit, which they need just
to not be hungry to stay alive. So that's one state, Massachusetts, and the story is going to be true across the rest of this country, and I think it's going to
ultimately wind up boomeranging on the Republicans. One that they will legislate on this, but two that the President will not use the five billion dollar fund that exists at the Department of Agriculture to pay for staff benefits on this Saturday and every Saturday after that in order to make sure that people have the food which they need. Trump will not use his power to use that five billion dollar reserve fund. So we have a very very real problem, and we are taking votes here as Democrats.
We're talking to the people across our states and across the country about what the Republicans are doing. And as each day goes by, I think it's a bigger political catastrophe for the Republicans than they have experienced in years, and it's only going to grow in its intensity.
What are you hearing on the ground, Like, when you talk to people, what are they saying? It seems as if voters are furious, But I've seen that some places and not other places.
I mean, what are you seeing? What are you hearing?
Well?
In Massachusetts, we just had one hundred thousand people at a No King's rally on Boston Common, and Elizabeth Lawre and I we stood next to each other and we talked to those people on the Boston Common and they
are furious. They're up in arms. The American Revolution started right there two hundred and fifty years ago, and these are ladder day revolutionaries, following upon the actions of those minute men and minute women and on the world to the abolitionists of the suffragette movement, the civil rights movement, the same sex marriage movement, the universal healthcare movement, all of which began in Massachusetts. So we're up, and people
are angry, they're mobilized. There were another thirty or so rallies across the strait, across the state on that day. I spoke to three thousand people on the election in Green where the American Revolution began, with a shot grind round the world was fired, And that's what happened in Massachusetts.
There was a shot that was fired in order to raise people's voices to protect democracy and to protect all the programs that have been passed in a democratic fashion, to protect all American families.
So we're up.
We think that with the example for the rest of the country. And I also think it's a preview of coming attractions for the Republicans next year at the ballot box across our nation.
So I want you to talk about this movie that is called The House of Dynamite. It's written by Noah Oppenheimer, who comes from News World, and it's about the nuclear codes.
And you wrote about it in an op ed.
And I want you to explained to us why this situation of having just one person who can destroy many lives with the nuclear weapon, why this is something that needs to be addressed well.
Congressman and Ted lu and I, we have legislation that says that no president, no one person should have the right to determine when the United States launches nuclear weapons if we have not been attacked by nuclear weapons. And it's a very important principle that we have to establish in our country. Secondly, Congressman Lu and I, we were actually successful last year in having our legislation adopted in the Biden Defense Build which will prohibit the use of
AI to launch nuclear weapons. We have to continue to move forward on those issues. But this movie also demonstrates that the defense technologies which people think will work to shoot down incoming nuclear weapons, they can destroy American cities. There's no guarantee that it will work, and the movie itself now makes that very very clear. As Donald Trump is promising to build a golden dome over our country
to protect us against incoming nuclear weapons. But we know that what will happen is the Chinese and the Russians and others will just build more nuclear weapons to overcome that golden shield that he wants to build, and the world will only become more dangerous. So this movie by Catherine Bigelow is really like a Cassandra like warning that the only way to protect against a nuclear war is
through negotiations. It's through arms control, it's by countries working together not to increase their arsenals, but to reduce their arsenals, because otherwise we're just heading towards a catastrophic conclusion. And the least that we should be able to say is that we try, We really try to avoid a catastrophic nuclear war on apples in it. And I just can't tell you how great this movie is. And I can't congratulate the writers, the producers and out for the work which they did.
I want you to explain to us about the tariffs. You guys signed this. It was like a legal brief that's gone to the Supreme Court. All the Democratic senators signed it. Trump probably does not have these emergency powers he needs in order to get a sort of legal approval for the tariffs. It probably doesn't matter because the Supreme Court is in the tank for him. But talk us through what you guys did as Democrats to try to help Way in there.
Trump is relying upon a nineteen seventies piece of legislation that gives the president powers and emergencies to be able to act. But that law never talked about tariffs, and it never for sure intended for our president to substitute for the congressional responsibility of voting on tarrors. It's reckless, it's illegal. And what I've done a couple of times on the set of floor so far is I've called up my bill to exempt all small businesses in America
from his tariffs. He's turning Main Street into pain Street for thirty three million small businesses in our country, and the Republicans continue to get up and to object. And what's happening is that these small businesses are the ones who cannot just ride out a tariff wark Big companies they can do it. Small companies cannot. So what's happening with these tariffs is that the Quanians, the Rotarians, the
main street businesses in every red state Republican district. They're the ones feeling the pain and the increased costs for their business offer their customers from these tariffs. So the Supreme Court will be, you know, hearing the case. But ultimately, as you said, it appears that the Supreme Court is just in the tank to the President, even when he's acting in an unconstitutional way, usurping powers which the Congress has never given to him. So I think it's a
dangerous path that the President's going down politically. The Republicans are following him. Electricity rates are skyrocketing, healthcare costs are skyrocketing, costs for food, cost for clothing, the cost for just the the ability to do business in small, small town America all skyrocketing. And I just think they're creating the conditions for a political revolution out there to dump the Republicans next year.
So it certainly seems like it.
And when you watch Man Dami on Sunday, it's hard to see a lane for Democrats who are not real populous. So you are running for reelection, you blew the other candidate out of the water last time, What is your plan this time?
I continue to run as a progressive champion. It's not your age, it's the age of your ideas to actually determine where voters go and is energized as I've ever been. I wake up every morning ready to fight whatever the craziest idea Trump has come up with that morning, and it's in response to that that keeps me going.
My father drove a truck with the Hood Milk Company.
Delivering milk, do it adu and the United States Senator and growing up in Malda, Massachusetts, I could see the opportunities have opened up caught me. I still live in malde Massachusetts. It's still a blue collar a town, but now it's a quarter Black, a quarter Wide, a quarter Asian, a quarter Latino. And what Trump does is he brings out the mald It in me every day to fight for those families, to fight for those kids. They have the same opportunities which I was given, educational from a
healthcare perspective, breaking down discriminatory barriers. So that's who I've always been and that's who I'm going to be throughout this race and for as long as I'm given the honor.
Of representing Massachusetts in the United States Senate.
You are running against someone Seth Maulton, who is not as lefty as you, but who has returned a PAC.
Motiney.
A PAC has become a huge divide in the Democratic Party for any number of reasons.
Talk us through where you are with this.
Well, I don't take APEC money, but I also don't take corporate donations. I'm also a big supporter of repealing Citizens United and getting dark money out of our Baltics. That's how I ran in twenty twenty. That's how I'm going to run this time. Okay, I'm going to run just saying that we need a better political system in our country in terms of it financing.
How do you think that is transmitted to the rest of the party, Because like, there clearly is a divide between Democrats who are comfortable with certain things. And again it's like I'm very conflicted because it's a difference between you know, you're not going to necessarily have candidates who check all your boxes and you need to win. But the electorate seems furious and they are as opposed to
twenty sixteen. They seem furious with everyone. They're more furious with Trump, but not by that much.
I think they should be curious.
They should be outraged at the conditions in our country right now, and that's what I have been channeling. That's where I was in my twenty twenty race as well. Trump right now is dismantling all of the programs that we were successful in putting on the books to fight climate change. And that's just a Green New Deal that Alexandro Ocassio, Cotez and I introduced in February of twenty nineteen. That just changed the game, and it came from young people.
It came from activists just demanding that the Democratic Party respawn. And that's the way politics really works. In twenty sixteen, not one reporter asked Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump a question about climate change. We introduced the Green New Deal will solved that problem so that we would have a real debate about climate change in our country. And that's what we're doing right now again with regard to all of these issues. It's coming from young people, it's coming
from activists. It's coming from people who are angry and who are marching, they're chanting, they're raising their voices, and they want a Democratic Party who will stand up and fight.
And we have to.
Make sure that we rally around this healthcare issue, and we have to guarantee that this is a fight about them, for them, about their families, and about the futures that they hope that their children will be able to enjoy.
How are you guys going to protect the midterms?
Like Trump is already talking about election monitors? Are their plans on the Democratic side of the state legislature to send in because you are entitled to election monitors as well right the state.
Well, we have every right to be concerned when Trump brings in five hundred generals and admirals and says to them that he wants them to practice in American cities for what they'll be doing overseas. My fear, and I think Americans fear that what he wants them to do is practice for what he'll call upon them to do on election day next year in American cities, in minority communities across our country, in the deployment of troops.
So we have to.
Begin earl to ensure that we raise our voices to protect against him illegally using military troops to suppress the vote in our country. And we also have to make sure that we have thousands of lawyers who are ready to go into every single city where they are working to impose their authoritarian regime policies on election day next year. And it's going to be a challenge for us because Trump is talking about a third term, which is illegal
and unconstitutional, but it's who he is. And we have to also understand that once he loses the House and set it that there's going to be a flood of subpoenis going to every agency and every person who's done business with the trouble administration in their first two years. And Trump really will do anything to preclude the House and Centive from having that kind of power. So you're right, we're going to need the monitors, We're going to need the personnel.
We're going to need to work very very hard. Otherwise, what we saw with him in the Jimmy Kimmel case turning the FCC into the Federal Censorship Commission, he's going to try to do the same thing to our democracy in general.
Why you think people don't assume that he'll do what he's always done, Like, why do you think people are always sort of optimistic that he won't do stuff like that this time?
Well, again, I think his MAGA supporters do believe that he will do it, and they're going to give him a permission slip to do it. What we have to do on the Democratic side is just to continue to work harder and get everybody up with an energy level that increases our turnout.
This is a turnout battle.
Next year, we have to have the highest off year turnin out that we've ever had in American history. We have to raise these issues, make it clear that democracy, healthcare, education, climate, civil rights are all on the books. We can't agonize. We have to organize. That's what this has to be about. And it's on Democrats to do that organization to have the highest turnout in history next year. We're not going
to win by just being a middle fiddles here. We're going to win by being in the mushing middle and trying to convince people that we're well like them. It's going to be an increasing the trade out and if we do that, then we're going to have a historic picture.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for joining us.
Oh glad to be with you, Thank you, Thanks for having me on.
No moment pfectly Jesse Cannon, one of your favorite characters is in our Moment of Factory. It's one Ken Paxton, Oh.
The best I think you mean, Senator Ken Paxton.
Well maybe, I mean, you know, let's see if you could get that primary over the finish line. So Texas is suing Tailanol's makers claiming they hid the autism risks.
Right. Meanwhile, let me just say that Thailand all should be suing Texas for slander because none of that is right.
None of it is true, and they know it's not true.
It's just up bullshit because they wanted to find a cause for autism, and so they decided talent all was it.
I seem to recall tail and all pretty big owners, pretty big Trump owners. If I don't recall, yes.
They are so who knows how mad they probably are. No, the whole thing is fucked.
Sorry, y'all you decide to go to the leopard eating party and guess what.
Congratulations.
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