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 Nebraska Independent Dan Osborne is pulling one point ahead of deb Fisher in the latest senepol in the great state of Nebraska. We have such a good show for you today. MSNBC contributor of Charlie Sykes stops by to roast the idea, the mere notion that Donald Trump and Vice President Harris are at all similar
in any way. Then we will talk to the Washington Post Dana Milbank about his new book, Fools on the Hill, The Hooligans, Saboteurs, conspiracy theorists, and Dunce's who burn down the House.
But first the news, Mali Jung Fast, there's forty days until election day. Harris is making some really interesting speeches in Pennsylvania.
What are you seeing today?
Harris gave a speech that focused on the economy and her economic plans. You'll remember mainstream media has been seriously, seriously offended that Harris has not released enough clear, very concise. They're looking for a three hundred page policy paper. And you'll remember Donald Trump has dropped such nuggets as childcare
as childcare. So we're seeing Harris give a really detailed speech at the Economic Club of Pennsylvania, so the must win state of Pennsylvania with its nineteen electoral College votes. Laid out a sort of eighty page policy paper that included cutting taxes for the middle class, investing in small businesses, and I think a really important top line there was she said she would not be constrained by ideology and
she would instead seek practical solutions to problems. Her speech was followed by an appearance by mister Trump in North Carolina, where he did not mention the late great Hannibal Lecter, but he did quite a lot of the usual riffing.
That's what I call progress.
That's what I call progress.
My jag fast, I saw this tweet come down the pike about these grim, grim abortion statistics coming out of the South.
What did you see there?
So two states have and they've did this before the overturning of Rob Wade, but they've been doing it even more now. A study came out to find that the number of women charged with crimes related to their pregnancies jumped the year after the US Supreme Court overturned Row So now we're seeing in these two states, Alabama and Oklahoma, women are actually being charged. They're being charged for endangering the life of their fetuses. They can be jailed. It
does two things here. What this does is it makes it easier if the state wants to take away your child, and if they want to take away your if you already have a child, that will help them with that. And then also you can end up being jailed while pregnant. And again I think some of this really is a way the state wants to maybe take away the children. Also, you're seeing people who are like deliver a stillborn baby.
An example here a story is that this woman Wendy Baker, professor at the University of Tennessee, was one of the lead researchers on this project. She said, a woman delivered a stillborn baby at her home and then she went to the funeral home to make arrangements, and the funeral home alert bit the authorities, and the woman was charged with homicide. So we're going to see more of that. But the sort of states where we're really starting to see it, and we've seen it before but it's gotten
worse is Oklahoma and Alabama. Much of this is in Alabama. You know, misogyny is not just happening with women in abortion. It's also happening with the Republican Senate candidates in Ohio.
So one of the things I think about a lot is obviously shared. Brown is an amazing candidate, But one of the gifts he's really had is that man he has run against some fucking dunces in the past, I Josh Mandel, Jim Urnassi, and Bertie Marino is telling them all to hold his beer.
Yeah, you'll remember. Bernie Marino is known most famously for having owned car dealerships. He was no one's first choice except for Donald Trumps. He is exactly the candidate one might think he would be. Marino in Ohio he mocked women for caring about abortion, and he said it's a little crazy, by the way, especially for women who are like past fifty. Mister Marino said, drawing laughter from the crowd. I'm thinking to myself, I don't think that's an issue
for you. Now you'll remember that Jade Vance also got in trouble for wondering pondering if there was any use for post metopausal women. Nikki Haley, who is not at all brave even a little bit. She did, in fact, tweet are you trying to lose the election? Asking for a friend? I assume that friend is her. She repeated this quote from Bernie Marino, which said, sadly, by the way, there's a lot of suburban women, a lot of suburban
women that are like listen, abortion is. I don't think making fun of people for what they care about as voters is going to help you win an election, but I could be wrong.
I saw that all those books I read on how to win elections just make fun of the voter's passions.
Yes, what voters care about, make fun of it and tell them they're stupid for caring about it. So we'll see what happens. Ohio is a tight state, but right now Sharon Brown is winning by a view points.
I noticed too.
One of Donald Trump's favorite things to talk about is Kamala and the border, and she's going to it.
What are you seeing there?
So you'll remember, Donald Trump actually rejected this border legislation that was cooked up by James Langford, super super super conservative Senator James Langford. You know, the whole idea was Trump wanted that Biden Harris administration to fail on this and to make it so hard for them. And Trump really did think the border was something he could run on.
So now what Harris is doing, I think this is the same as when She's shot across the stage and shook Donald Trump's hand at the beginning of the debate, which he is doing. She's trying not to let him intimidate her, so she's going to the border. Look, fundamentally, the problem with the border, and you and I both know this because we've done like a million interviews with legislators in those areas, is they don't have money. They don't have money for judges, they don't have money for deportation,
they don't have money for putting people, processing people. They don't have the money they need. So the system is broken, and it's broken on purpose to give Republicans something to run on. So I do think this is smart. Again, Republicans are going to do crazy stuff with this, But I think as long as Harris is really really focused and careful about the way she messages this, I actually think it's a winner.
I would agree so lastly, and I can't tell you how much I would like to never think about this guy ever again. We need to talk about our mayor, one Eric Adams, and the walls closing in on him.
Our moment of levity for this podcast.
You didn't tell me we had a new segment.
This is our moment of levity. Politics can be bad, but New York City politics is always worse. And I want you to just appreciate that you guys don't live in New York City, and those of you who do join us in our sadness.
We lost our police chief, now we lost our school's chancellor, and then the FBI indicted four days are acting police commissioner. It's been a very fun ride at the table of success, as he likes to call visitors circle, It's the.
Table of success. It's soon to be the table of rikers.
The poker table at record.
So anyway, Eric Adams, things are looking very dicey. But the good news is he got an absolutely ringing endorsement from a minority leader, Hakim Jeffries, who said one asked that Mayor Adams was working as hard as he can the best mayor possible, and then he added, we need Eric Adams to be successful as mayor because he is the mayor at this moment in time.
There's a voter.
He is the mayor at this moment in time. I don't know how good that is. Not great?
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We'll be at the Vivarium in Milwaukee on the twenty first of September, and on the twenty second we'll be in Chicago at City Winery. Then we're going to hit the East coast. On September thirtieth, we'll be in Boston at Arts at the Armory. On the first of October, we'll be Infiliates City Winery, and then DC on the second at the Miracle Theater. And today we just announced that we'll be in New York on the fourteenth of
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Charlie Sikes is an MSNBC contributor. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Charlie Sikes, Thank you for coming.
It's always good to be here.
We're in this interesting moment. We've got a lot going on. But you know, there are three sort of paths that it looks like they're sort of the scenario where she wins by a lot with the scenario where she wins by a a little bit and whatever happens happens after that, God knows, and the scenario where he eaks it out. Talk to me about what this looks like in your mind.
Well, let's just step back from the horse race punditry. You, I mean, you can make yourself crazy by looking at
each of the individual they're going to bounce around. But the true insanity of this moment is that there is a possibility that Donald Trump might be elected president of the United States again, despite everything we know about him that he is a chronic liar, seditionist, rapist, who is you know, openly talking about bowling the need of Ladimir Putine he had tens of millions of people are apparently looking at him and going, yeah, that's okay, let's put
him back into power. The fact that there's a remote chance that this man might win the election is I'm afraid, not a terribly flattering commentary on the state of American culture today.
It's so true, and we spend so much time talking about like how, in fact, still more people believe that he is better on the economy than she is, despite the fact that he says such chestnuts as childcare is.
Childcare, Yeah, child cares childcare and Gettysburg. Wow, I mean he I mean the thing about Donald Trump. But I have these conversations with some of my conservative friends and they'll say, well, okay, you know, he's a terrible character, you know, as the mean tweets, but I agree with him on policy, and you need to take a deep breath and point out the policy that he's talking about is gibberish. He has no interest in policy. He is
throwing stuff up against the wall. He's handing out free stuff. He's talking about these various and you could tell that there's no deep core in this man, with the possible exception of the profundity of his belief in tariffs.
He loves tariffs and.
The tariffs are not actually taxes, which is delivered, and his deep belief that by playing to the deepest, darkest racial animus of the American public, that that is a winning formula. Beyond that, it's like, hey, you know, let's not tax Social Security, let's no taxes on tips. He's just throwing shit up against the wall at this point.
Yeah, it does seem as if he will say literally anything to get elected. And I feel like this is the moment, Like, clearly he's seen some focus groups that say women are not having it. So now we see these all cap tweets that are like, clearly, this is the offer he made to all those wives, right, I will protect you all caps. You'll never have to think about abortion all caps.
The vacuousness of it, you know, never ce never ceases to amaze. And this is part of the problem of dealing with him. Do you laugh at him because he's so clown like, or are you alarmed by him because of his rhetoric? And this is the kind of dilemma. So can I just tell you that I stumbled into something. I'm getting flayed on the far right social media for just sort of acknowledging that, Yeah, a lot of Donald Trump's rhetoric sounds like that a German politician from the
nineteen thirties. I understand that people think that's over the top. And Godwin's law is that anybody that invokes Hitler, you know, immediately loses the debate. But I guess I was just channeling my inner jd Vance, who was actually one of the first guys that compared him to you know, America's Hitler right in twenty sixteen. And then we have this
weird thing where it's like he's leaning into it. It's like they are, you know, immigrants are poisoning the blood and I'm going to blame the Jews if I don't get elected and all of this sort of thing. And did you see the Mike Lindell story, the my pillow Guy story. No, this is wild. I actually thought that
this was a spoof. He's actually selling pillows and he's priced them at fourteen dollars in eighty eight cents, fourteen eighty eight, which is a white supremacist, not even a dog whistle, And of course Mike Lindell is saying, what do you mean the fourteen words are, you know, basically racist? And then eight eight is supposed to be Heile Hitler, like, don't get ye into that world. But there's this weird sort of vibe out there that we're going to troll
you by sounding as much like fascist as possible. And then if you point out, hey, you guys sound like fascists, then their reaction is look at these over the top trunch Trump derangement syndrome folks out there. So this is why we all feel like we're losing our minds.
Yeah, no, I mean I think there is a fair amount of gaslighting going on, and I think that's the goal, right, The goal is I mean, this is not something I said. This is a quote we've seen before, is that the goal, the road to authoritarianism is paved with people saying you're overreacting, right, Well.
Exactly, yes, calm down, he won't start a coup.
He's playing golf. He'll file a few lawsuits.
Humor him.
Just humor him.
What's the danger exactly? And yet this year it's not that they're being subtled. I mean, Donald Trump is telling us every single day what he intends to do. And by the way, I actually take him at his word when he says that he's going to push for a mass deportation policy, that he's going to round up millions of people, put them on trains and buses and camps
and who knows what else. And I think that people, if in fact there was a Trump two point zero, I'm just I'm kind of waiting this kind of my morbid curiosity the people who are like, wow, he really meant that.
I'm shocked, shocked.
To find out that Donald Trump is who Donald Trump has been saying is for the last nine fucking years.
Yeah, he wants to put barcodes on people, like, don't know what he wants. He said during a rally. I don't know exactly the quote serial numbers, serial numbers, right, serial numbers, but serial numbers. That's what I mean. That is literally what Hitler did. Like people had tattoos of
serial numbers on their arms. The older Jews who survived the Holocaust, I mean, as a Jew myself, Like, I mean, my family came over in the eighteen hundreds, but we had certainly relatives who died in the Holocaust, And like, you know, it's never just the Jews, right, It's never just the Haitians. It's always you know, the Haitian stuff is like, is probably scarier than anything, right, dehumanizing.
Well, let's just stick with the Haitians, Okay. So, I mean, I understand the danger of doing the Hitler chard acause they just set that aside here, although I would urge people to read Catherine Rimpel's column in the Washington Post, who says, if you're bothered by the comparisons, maybe Donald Trump should stop actually trying to sound like him. But let's leave that aside. The Haitian thing is so extraordinary
because it is so raw. He has moved on from scary rapist Mexicans to now, let's be honest, the blackest immigrants he can find, and he's decided that he's going to demonize them with lies that are refuted. But they're sticking with the line. I think the fact that they persist with the law is such a tell because the facts don't matter. As jd Vance sort of conceded. We created the story because there's this larger truth that these black Haitian immigrants are dangerous and scary and poisoning the
blood of America or whatever it is. And the other day when Donald Trump led his rally crowd in the chant of send them back, send them back, it was one of those moments where you feel like raise your hand and say, do you understand what he's doing here? These immigrants are here legally. We're not talking about illegal immigrants. We're not talking about people who broke the law. We're talking about people who followed the law, played by the rules,
who are working, working hard. The Republican governor of Ohio says, no, no, no, don't demonize these people. We need them in our economy. And Donald Trump is leading this chance send them back? Why because he wants people to fear and loathe these dark immigrants. And it's hard to come up with example of raw racism or more raw racism in American presidential politics for decades. In fact, I can't even think of any direct parallel within our lifetimes.
Yeah, and I mean I also think that othering a group of people, saying that the base is in danger from them and then pushing very conservative, extremist policies. History has shown us that that's the play for authoritarians. So this is a continual history rhymes exercise right.
Yes, and look at this is what he's running on. These things are not gas, These are not one ofs. This has been a consistent theme that he's had from the beginning. And I think it's interesting that he sort of moved on from building the wall that Mexico would pay for, which was bullshit. Then a couple of years later it was the you know, caravans coming, that we're going to overwhelm America. They were going to take your jobs, rape your women, et cetera. And now it's the Haitian immigrants.
But the through line is not subtle.
Yes, it's not subtle. So let's talk about Mark Robinson. We had more APO dumped. Maybe we don't know by who, but it was right before the deadline to drop out. Was maybe a hail Mary hoping that he would drop out. Who knows, I don't know who would think that, because the man seems completely unapologetic for anything real or that, for anything he's done or pretended he didn't do, you know, or maybe he didn't who knows, but I think he did.
But you know, that's just my opinion. But there may still be more unearthed because this person seems very, very messy. But I'm curious what you think. You know, Trump could have and again, of course he wouldn't have, but he could have said, you know, I withdraw my endorsement. He did not, but he didn't have him at his event, which I guess right.
Yeah, But you know, Mark Rebinson is such a creature of the Maga universe. The utter deplorability and then the pet shamelessness of the people who leaked this information actually seemed to believe that we were on Earth two point zero, where this sort of thing would be automatically disqualifying. It wasn't that long ago that no rational political party would
stick with somebody who is this bizarre. I have to admit there's a certain irony of the people who are now withdrawing their endorsements after it turns out that he said these wild things on a porn side, because apparently the being a Holocaust denier was not a deal breaker before that. I mean, you can be a Holocaust denier, but don't do it on a porn site. Called neod Africa.
Just I mean, we're willing to put up with all kinds of other stuff, but I'm shock shocked to find out that this clear extremist nut job was an extremist nut job and like kinky sex with his wife's sister or something like that. I mean so, but the way in which people like this are continuing to rise to the top of the Republican Party winning primaries. I mean, keep in mind that voters in North Carolina, Republican voters chose him despite all kinds of warning signs that he was bad news.
Oh yeah, I mean they did, and he is the lieutenant governor. Now there's this polling out now that shows that the attack on Tim Walls from the right is not actually working. They had worked really hard, and actually, I'm sure you saw those polls over the weekend where Harris is more as popular as Bush was right after nine to eleven. Right that she has had that kind of spike in popularity, So it shows that the attacks on her didn't work either. So make it make sense.
Well, almost nothing makes any sense, But this is actually hard. This is quite interesting because for people who don't spend a lot of time immersed in the insanity of right wing media. The attacks on walls were absolutely relentless, and they went on and on and on. They never actually made any sense to me, But I was wondering, and this is this playing and the evidence would suggest that no,
it's not. And then this was my big question mark about the month of August, what would happen to Kamala Harris's numbers when they dumped one hundred million dollars more of negative on her. I mean they threw everything at her, I mean everything, And the fact that her approval rating has gone up, I think is one of those numbers that did get my attention because it suggests that Americans are still looking at this race and going, we don't
know who Kamala Harris is. They're making up their minds about her, and the Republicans tried to define her and probably succeeded with the base, but overall it's not working. So one of the things that I think, you know, when I was talking about how insane it is that this is closed, I think the part of it is that you know, people like you and I need to take a deep breath and remember that for the vast majority of Americans, they had no idea who Kamala Harris was,
and if they did, it was probably negative. And so you know, this process of reintroducing herself, introducing herself, and defining herself is ongoing. And even though there's only six weeks left, there are six weeks left where she can do some of this, And that number you decided would
suggest that some of that's working. People are people are getting their heads around this idea, which you know, we need to keep reminding ourselves what was two three months ago was absolutely unthinkable and now here we are.
Yeah, it's a really good point. And it's interesting to me too, because Walls has this sort of Upper Midwest nice thing. It's funny because I was interviewing Governor Pritzker, and you know, he is sort of made this name for himself as a progressive hero of the laugh despite his incredible Walls. And one of the ways he's done that is by doing a lot of the same policies that Walls has done, these kind of and Jos Shapiro too, these kind of like free breakfasts paid sickly different kind
of safety net stuff. And I wonder what you think about this sort of Democrats. It's sort of almost recreating themselves as a kind of like friendly Midwestern party, the Amy Klobashah kind of trope.
Well, I think this is absolutely necessary in order to win this election. But yeah, there's no question about it. There has been this effort to say, no, we're not San Francisco Liberals. No, we're not going to We're not going to be playing that card. We understand the election is not going to be decided in the faculty lounge of Dartmouth, that it's going to be decided in places like,
you know, Pennsylvania, in Michigan and Wisconsin and Minnesota. So from my point of US and Midwestern I find it very very refreshing because the entire Republican line right now is you should really be scared of these people. These people are dangerous, dangerous radicals. And then a guy like Tim Walls comes out and he's got a very progressive record, but he does not read as a dangerous radical, and things like yeah, it's like, okay, I'm going to give
free lunches to the kids in school. Now there are conservative becom you know.
Right, you could be upset about them, but the cost of it, but not the idea of it.
Yeah, no, see, this is the thing. This is not This is not a red line kind of issue. And as Donald Trump becomes more and more incoherent on the economy, I think that there's an opening as well. But also I just think fundamental, and I said this on Nicole Wallace's show yesterday, I don't think this election is going to turn on policy in the.
End Tony either at all.
So you know what I mean. I'm thinking back at the classic question of American politics, are you better off than you were four years ago? And I think the answer is clearly yes. But I don't think that's the question in twenty twenty four. I think the question in twenty twenty four, and you can help me formulate this, is like, do you really want to do this for another four years? Do we want as a country to put up with another four years of Donald Trump? Aren't
you exhausted by this? Don't you want to turn the page? And I think that there is a small but potentially decisive group of absolutely freaking exhausted voters, many of whom were voted for Republicans, maybe voted for Trump twice, and are thinking I just can't take this for another four years. I just don't want to do this anymore. Yeah, or maybe I'm just projecting because that's me. That's me too.
You know. It's funny because it's like the conventional wisdom is that a Trump when would make people like us more important before we go to jail, but it actually is just nobody wants that because it's so scary and it's just and to watch him just torture people, it's just not worth it.
This is part of the struggle because there are days when I wake up, I'm going to confess this to you since it's just you and me, Molly.
Yes, and I won't tell anyone I think.
Is there anything that we can say about Donald Trump that we haven't said before that is not obvious? I mean, how many times do you have to say that this man is demented and a menace and reckless and clearly not fit for office? How many times can you say that? And is there any part of that that you know has penetrated to the people who need to hear it. I hope the answer is yes. But at a certain point you go, Okay, he's told us who he is. He has told us who he is over and over again.
We've seen this. All you have to do is spend five minutes listening to him, and so, you know, let's stop the commentary and get home.
With a voting.
Let's just do this. Let's just because vote is going to tell us a hell of a lot more about who we are as Americans than it is about Donald Trump. This election. At this point, it's not about Donald Trump anymore, because we know that we've done that. Okay, Now the question is who are we? And I think it was Barack Obama you kept saying, you know that, you know this is not who we are. We are better than this. Well maybe we are, maybe we aren't. We're going to find out.
Charlie Sikes, thank you, thank you. Are you concerned about Project twenty twenty five and how awful Trump's second term could be, Well, so are we, which is why we teamed up with iHeart to make a limited series with the experts on what a disaster Project twenty twenty five would be for America's future. Right now, we have just released the final episode of this five episode series. They're all available by looking up Molly John Fast Project twenty twenty five on YouTube and if you are more of
a podcast person and not say a YouTuber. You can hit play and put your phone in the lock screen and it will play back just like the podcast. All five episodes are online now. We need to educate Americans on what Trump's second term would or could do to this country. So please watch it and spread the word. Dana Milbank is a columnist at The Washington Post and the author of Pools on the Hill, The Hooligans, Saboteurs,
Conspiracy Theorists, and Dances who Burned Down the House? Welcome Back Too Fast Politics, My friend, Dana Milbank.
Molly, it is always a real treat to get to talk to you.
So we're talking about your book today, but happens to be your book, which.
Is called The Fools on the Hill.
Yes, Republicans and the House. We're happy to oblige by providing you with a lot of material. Take us through when you started this book, because there's a lot of bad Republican actors on the Hill. But what period did you start writing this book about?
So I started thinking about it just as the twenty twenty two elections were coming up. I didn't realize, of course, what a catastrophe of leadership it was about to become. But you could kind of tell with all these exotic characters that you know something was going to be up. So I talked with my editors about getting up to the hill and starting to cover it from the beginning of last year twenty twenty three and into the early parts of this year. Then we rushed to put this
in book for him. So we got all this in motion. You know, long before there was going to be fifteen ballots to elect Kevin McCarthy. Then they'd kick out a speaker for the first time in history. Then they'd shut the house down for twenty two days. Then they'd come up with the new Moses, Mike Johnson, who turned out to be a false prophet and made things even worse than they were under.
McCarthy talked to us about this speakership battle and how Mike Johnson came to be.
I mean, Mike Johnson came to be because of Donald Trump. It is as simple as that. Kevin McCarthy still be speakers today, for better or worse, if Trump had stuck by him. But remember McCarthy had said, well, maybe Donald Trump isn't the strongest candidate to have representing us in the election, And that was basically the end for Kevin
McCarthy that allowed Matt Gates to bring him down. Trump very clearly knocked down some others in there, Tom Emmer, Steve Scalise during that twenty two days of shutdown when the House couldn't function at all, he did like Jim Jordan, Trump did, but there was some opposition there and finally he got behind Mike Johnson. And Mike Johnson, like many other Republicans, originally was saying, I do not think Trump has the temperament to be in the White House. But
of course he became slavishly devoted to Trump. The most important element of his career was leading the legal effort in twenty twenty to help Trump overturn the election results. Mike Johnson has rewarded Trump in every way. Trump says, shut down the government. If you can't get this Save Act, this voting poison pill attached to the spending, then that becomes Mike Johnson's strategy. Trump says, you've got to kill this Order Security legislation to help me with a campaign.
Mike Johnson had been calling for almost exactly that bit of legislation for months, if not years, gets on board to kill the legislation, you know. And then there's Mike Johnson, you know, having a press conference outside the courthouse during Trump's hush money trial, you know, and it just sort of goes on and on, and you basically, he has one job, and that is to represent the interests of Donald Trump. And that really explains why we had so much chaos at the House.
There's no reporting, which is that Democrats are starting to be by democrats, I mean people who are concerned about American democracy.
Small D democrats.
Small D democrats have started worrying about not January sixth, twenty twenty one, but January sixth, twenty twenty five, that they have started worrying that perhaps picking the guy who helped undermine twenty election, who wrote this legal brief, could mean that when given the chance, he would not do as Mike Pence did, but instead do as Donald Trump wanted Mike Pence to do and delay certification or perhaps deny certification, or do whatever he could to kick it
up to the Supreme Court, who are very much on team Trump. You aren't a student of these people, what say you?
I think there's every possibility that Mike Johnson would do exactly that. You have to understand the extent to which he is always one tweet away from losing the speakership. Now, he may well lose his speakership anyway, because he's basically incompetent, only been in Congress for a few years, and has really no idea what he's doing. But he's always hanging
by a thread. And if Trump says one bad word, okay, that motion to vacate Marjorie Taylor Green's on the floor with their motion to vacate, and the Republicans will have to go along with that. Of course, this has already happened, and Trump did not go along with it, and not enough Republicans went along with it, so the Democrats were
able to bail him out. But you know, because he's hanging by a string there, he is almost certainly going to continue to do whatever it is that Trump asks him, whether that was, you know, shutting down the government or whether that's with border security or god forbid, attempting to overturn the election results.
Again.
Now, the other externalities are much better than they were in twenty twenty. Because a Democrat is in the White House, you won't have a failure to send the National Guarden or its equivalent this time around, so things will be different in that sense. But you know, Mike Johnson has made very clear that he is there at the pleasure of and to serve Donald Trump.
So that sounds like a yes.
I'd be highly confident that he would do exactly what is asked of him. And it's I mean, who knows what Mike Johnson is thinking, you know, in his heart of hearts. In a sense, it doesn't really matter. I mean, it is very clear he you know, one false move Trump says one bad word about him, he is out of his job. He's not shown himself to have any background. I mean, he has made Kevin McCarthy it look like one heck of a vertebrates.
Like, you know, that's not easy to do.
Tell me what it looks like sort of since the Republicans have been in power here, Like, what have the last two years looked like? I mean, you have been in DC for a while.
Yes, I like how you always mentioned that.
Molly, and you've seen many things. I'm always just delighted when I'm talking to someone who's older than I am. It just is so great. But what has surprised you?
All right?
The level of incompetence that I've seen in this Congress. It exceeds anything any of us has ever seen in our lifetime. Now, you know, I covered the Congress after the Republican Revolution of ninety four. That was nineteen ninety four, not eighteen ninety four.
That is that's my man Newt, right, that was right.
And then you know, after the Tea Party in twenty ten. So I've seen sort of high water marks of this before, but let me just put a number on it. After eighteen months, these guys had managed to enact seventy laws that puts them on course based on all recent history for you know, give or take about one hundred and thirty three, this would be the do nothing as Congress since eighteen sixty. No, no, I mean not forever, but since eighteen sixty, when the when the Union was dissolving
on the verge of civil war. It's barely one third the production of the you know, Nut Gingrich's nineteen ninety four Congress, and well less than half of the Tea Party Congress. So it's just unbelievable the lack of things they're doing. Of course there, yeah, there's a Democratic Senate, but they can't do anything without the buy in of
ten Republicans. So it's much the same problem over there, and I mean just the legendary getting hung up in their own rules, unable to pass anything, although they you know, they do pass stuff like the Refrigerator Freedom Act and the Asked Protection Act and that you know, stop unaffordable
dishwasher standards. But you know, part of what I argue in the book is, I mean we should all be thankful that they are so incompetent, because if you look at what they've actually tried to do, and that is you know, the vast majority of them have already voted
to eliminate the Education Department. The vast majority are on board with a nationwide abortion ban, and even you know, a banning if at pristone overwhelming majority of them, one hundred and seventy seven House Republicans have voted to keep the names of Confederate generals on military basis. So you've seen this, you know, a whole bunch of this white nationalism going on, a lot of social culture, war issues,
poison pills in legislation. This is all fun and games, I suppose, because we know the President would veto it. It'll never get through the Senate. But if we're looking at heaven forbid a return of President Trump and a Speaker Johnson and potentially a Republican Senate that's willing to kill off the Fster, this becomes a very different situation than all these you know, wack adoodle things that they you know, suddenly become a real possibility.
Yeah, a real possibility. And I think, you know, a lot of this really could happen. And the fact that it's not happening it's really because these ideas are so unpopular.
I don't think they see them as unpopular. That that's the thing is, you know, these guys are I mean, think of the lineup of people we've got. I mean, it's essentially the power behind the throne is you know, Miss Jewish Space Lasers from Georgia, and you've got Beetlejuice from Colorado. You've got Matt Gates, who's under an investigation.
You've got the new.
Moses, Mike Johnson. You know, we did have her all unfortunately all too little time. George Santos. You know, you've got the candy Man, Ronnie Jackson. You've got Clay Higgins from Louisiana sending coded messages to militia.
I mean, we shouldn't laugh because it's so dark.
The list goes on and on and on. There is so much insanity here, you know, violent people, people faking their resumes, ties to white nationalism. The list of characters is extraordinary, and so I don't think that they recognize that what their agenda is unpopular. They think it's terrific and this is what every American wants. The rest of the Republicans, they're, unfortunately for them, being carried along with this, but they're not being shy about the things that they're
trying to do. So I just think people need to keep in mind that if this House majority persists and Trump is returned to the White House, it's a whole different thing. There's no Paul Ryan even to try to tone things down. There are no grownups, and there's nobody who can say no to this guy.
Jesus, that made me feel good. They've done a lot of messaging bills, they've done a lot of committees, they've done a lot of trying to get Hunter Biden. What has been those sort of most.
Hilarious Oh man, that's like asking which somebody's children they like.
The most.
There were so many great days during this session, but I think maybe the best moment was when everything was melting down and then Kevin McCarthy delivers what it was called a kidney punch to Tim Burchett in the basement
of the House. This is the exact same time over in the Senate, Mark Wayne Mullen is challenging the head of I think it was the Teamsters Union to a fistfight in the committee room, and Jamie Comer on this same exact day is erupting at Jared Moscow it's in a committee here and calling him a smurf.
Yes, I remember it well. And Jared Moscow it'z has been on this podcast to recount.
Smurf Gate, indeed, and he's owning that smurf label quite a bit and does indeed like to wear some bright blue colors. That sort of captured the unraveling for me. But you know, I mean, god, there are so many great moments. Marjorie Taylor Green holding up the photographs, you know, barely blocked out of Hunter Biden engaging in sex acts in a committee room. I mean, it's really hard to beat some of this stuff. You know that the self
loathing has been terrific. Do you remember Chip Royce standing on the House floor saying, I want my Republican colleagues to give me one thing that I can go campaign on it.
Say we did.
Reading telling Bobert on the House floor she's a little bitch because she stole her impeachment.
Yeah, that was great.
It goes on and on, Matt Gates leaving his motion to vacate, McCarthy leaving a copy of it in the restroom. That's how people find out. Yeah, personal favorite Tom Tiffany, little known guy from Wisconsin attacking Attorney General Merrick Garland over the world naked bike ride. Yeah, he was blaming him for people riding bicycles naked.
Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. So these people don't seem like they can govern, but they also seem kind of like idiots. Is there a world in which, like Republicans have always had a few people like this and Democrats? I mean, I don't think that Democrats have people like this, but they have people who are out liars, right, who maybe don't believe what everybody else believes. But how do you get here? How do you get to a House Republican caucus? That is pretty much led by and staffed by morons.
I want to say, in some ways it's the way the party structured and not their fault. But of course I don't want to let them off the hook entirely for that. But there's a reason why, you know, you sort of look at the Squad. It's a much smaller group than say, it's equivalent the Freedom Caucus, right, and it polices itself.
I mean, Jamal Bowman.
Loses, Cory Bush loses, so it's actually shrinking in that sense. But I think it's structural in the sense that there are far more constructions.
Not comparing these lunatics to the squad because the Squad is totally different.
But we no, no, yeah, I mean it's the nearest ideological equivalent.
We're talking about people with different ideologies, right.
But if you look at Democratic voters, a far greater proportion identify themselves as moderate than do in the Republican Party, where the vast majority identify themselves as conservative. So the way you get ahead, the way you win. I mean, ninety percent of the districts or more are safe districts, so it's really only a primary.
The way you get.
Yourself to Congress is to be the most extreme, not as you know, Tom Massey said to be the craziest son of a bitch in the race. So what's happened? I mean, there's always been a tendency in this direction. There always been more exotic characters in modern times, at
least on the Republican side. But since the Trump era, we've sort of had wave after wave of you know, iteration of people getting trumpier and trumpier, and also through his endorsements or they're simply emulating him, and the number of characters has just expanded so exponentially. At the same time, you know, the actual grown ups have quit and disappeared and moved on. You know, you've sort of lost that critical mass of you know, normal people who are willing
to push back against it. So that's really what's happened, is it's just been It's not just that a lot of nuts were elected in twenty twenty two. They were, but this follows sixteen, eighteen twenty, and it's really gotten to a point where they now have the critical mass within the party right and so.
There's no way to sort of put the genie back in the bottle.
I don't think there is I mean, look, we need a healthy Republican party. This is going to have to change over time. But what brings about that change? You know, would an election defeat? Well you'd think so, but I mean think. I think if the Republicans God Willing lose the presidency again, I think that'll be nine out of the last ten elections where they will have lost the popular vote. So there doesn't seem to be a corrective
in there. We seem to be stuck in this. So unless some real penalty is, you know, electoral penalty is to be brought to bear, which I have not seen happen at all, I don't see how they get out of this rut, because it'd be crazies. Do in fact constitute a majority of the caucus right now.
It seems very clear, so interesting and so important. Thank you so much, Danamobank, Molly, thank you so much for having me on.
I really appreciate it.
Oh no more, sickly, Jesse Cannon, MYI I know you have children and I don't. And I know that Matty parents regret discussing the birds and bees. I regret what we have to discuss. Clay Higgins Representative Clay Higgins He said some very very nasty things today on the Twitter machine. He wrote, loll these Haitians are wild eating pets, foodoo foodoo spelled wrong, of course, nastiest country in the Western Hemisphere, colts,
slapstick gangsters. No idea what he's saying there, But damned if they don't feel all sophisticated now filing charges against our president and VP, meaning Trump and JD. Vans are saying lies about them who are.
Actually not our president. Data point, they are neither our president nor our VP.
All these thugs better get their mind right and their ass out of the country before January twentieth.
So you're saying that about legal legal immigrants is kind of something worse thinking about this is the continual racism. By the way, I would point out that it's so interesting to me that we're in this moment because we have seen that that, in fact, nothing happened, right. The Haitian immigrants who were here legally did not eat any animals that were you know, people's pets or anything that did not happen. They were not eating cats, they were
not eating the dogs. But instead of apologizing and trying to do better, these Republicans just continue to double down on the live, which is a really just such a grim place to be. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to hear the best minds in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.