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 Judge Cannon has rejected Jack Smith's request for a gag order against Donald Trump in the classified documents case. We have such a great show for you. Former presidential candidate Tom Steyer stops by to talk about his new book, Cheaper, Faster, Better, how We'll win the climate wars. Then we'll talk to the New York Times
is David Leonhard about neo populism. But first we have MSNBC columnist and contributor and friend of mine Charlie Sykes. Welcome back to Fast Politics. Charlie Sykes.
Well, things are going so well, aren't they.
We were just before this. I was like, tell me, honestly, when does American democracy? And okay, but this is like democratic hand ringing. I want to point out something that I was writing a piece about polls, and so this fact came back into the vernacular and I want to talk to you about it. Donald Trump actually underperformed all of these primary contests, despite the fact that he was running again to no one.
Well, that's right, and even though Nicky Haley was Nicky Haley, as we should have known she was going to be. That doesn't mean that she's going to change the dynamic of what you'sa on the primary is that there are a lot of Republicans that just are not at this point willing to vote for Donald Trump. Now, you know, I mean, the big question is do they all come home?
Do they consolidate? Is there this process of normalization where Nicky says, well, of course I'll vote for Donald Trump, you know, And then you get the various CEOs who decide that tax policy involving passed through interest is way more important than any of these other issues, like to like democracy or whether or not people have just made the decision that Donald Trump is just too deplorable. This
is the mind blowing thing. I don't know, if you read my piece in The Atlantic where I talked about airsickness, where it's disorienting, it's vertigenous to watch Donald Trump, to listen to Donald Trump, to see how he behaves, who this man is, and that not just millions of voters, because I mean, you know, I've decided that it's okay, but you know, people who know better in the Republican Party.
So we're going to find out whether or not we have the replay of twenty sixteen where they all hold their nose and figure that, you know, tribalism is more important than democracy, or whether or not we're still going to have ten twenty percent of Republicans saying yeah, you know, screw that, I'm not when we're not getting on the Trump train. Who knows?
Yeah, And nobody knows, and anyone who tells you they know doesn't know. And in fact, even you know, Nate Cohen from the New York Times, who's a polster, wrote a really good piece about just how difficult it is to measure a shifting electorate. Right, the electorate who voted in twenty sixteen will make Trump president again. That is a very shaky electorate that hadn't voted in any other election ever, And so they may not come out in twenty twenty four and.
We won't know for money and moms, And this week is going to be rather significant, right, I mean, this is going to be a pivotal week. We're going to get the you know, as you and I are speaking, they're they're concluding the you know, the final arguments in the Trump hush money trial, and we're probably going to get a verdict one way or another. It's either going
to be guilty, not guilty, or a hung jury. I think it's very unlikely it's going to be not guilty or split charges, and of course you know within that subset you have split charges. The big question of twenty twenty four, as it has been feels like for the last eight years, is does anything matter? Will anything make a difference. I'm in the camp that says that until proven otherwise, a felony conviction is not a plus. That doesn't mean it's going to be decisive, but it is
not a plus. It makes it even more cringe worthy for all the Republicans to gather here in my hometown in Milwaukee and nominate a convicted felon. That seems problematic to me. But then I'm old school.
I agree that a criminal conviction does not help Donald Trump, and I think that again, I feel like, what happens with punditry, and you tell me if I'm wrong, is there's so much thinking that people start to like game out different insane scenarios and all of a sudden, you're like, Trump didn't win the primaries because he got indicted. He won the primaries because nobody ran as anything else but mimeographs of him.
You're right, there's so many aspects to all of this. It is still remarkable. It is still amazing that Donald Trump is is going to be the Republican nominee. But you're right about the pundit brain. I've actually been trying to step away from that because you know, you have your face pressed up against the screen, you know, pressed up against that, you know, fire hose of speculation, and
the answer is, we don't know. So you know, what I'm trying to do is step back and say, you know, what's actually happening to the country, and what are the stakes? And I wish the media would focus less on the horse race than the stakes. But the problem is is that there are so many rabbit holes, and they're so tempting to go down, and with the best of intentions, every once in a while, I'll realize, how did I
get here at the the rabbit hole? Why have I spent now hours speculating about something that a week from now we'll know the answer one way or another. I mean, we will know whether Trump is convicted or not. So we could spend hours talking about like what was the effect of Costello's cross examination or how did Michael Cohen do? Okay, you know we're going to find out pretty soon, you know, so maybe take a deep breath. Everybody needs, all of America needs to take a deep breath and decide where
do we want to go as a country? Are you really going to do this again? And frankly, I'm not interested in having a debate about tax policy right now. It's like this, this is the reality facing us.
I think that's a really good point, and I do think that one of the things that I'm struck by is if you don't follow politics at all, you like Donald Trump, but if you read newspapers you don't so like. Clearly there is an infration vacuum here that is I think created by technology companies, or at least exacerbated by technology companies, that is interesting, destructive, and quite scary.
Can we talk about that.
We can blame the media for this, but I also think that there's something that's happened in American culture that is perhaps underappreciative, or maybe maybe we're faced with it every single day that you know, there had been an assumption that we understood what the American character was what the American people wanted, how deep and broad our sense of a consensus about liberal constitutional democracy was. And maybe that's all wrong, you know. And as I said, pulling
the lens back, I was reading something this morning. I think it was an old quote from Bill Clinton, of all people, who said, basically, in American politics, people want the strong person, and they don't want to vote for the weak person. And right now, Donald Trump, again, keep in mind, you and I we follow this. We know what Donald Trump tweeted, I mean, bleeded out on one more. We know what Donald Trump says. But let's pull back
to people who are not that that engage. They see Donald Trump right now as a stronger and more dynamic figure, and they see Joe Biden as sort of weak and struggling to become more relevant, which is again kind of the mind blowing thing. The man's the president of the United States, and yet he is overshadowed by this clown figure who is facing felony charges in New York. And I think this is part of the problem that Joe Biden has. And I think the cliche, of course, is
to focus on Biden's age. It's a fill in for this larger sense of like, what is he doing? What does he stand for? Is he up for it? Is he the strong leader who is going to solve all of these problems that we face here. And I think that that's something that I get the sense the White House understands that. I think you're seeing these attempts, but it is difficult. I think you know that Donald Trump is painting with these broad, crude, you know colors, you know,
garish colors. You know that I am the leader, I am the change agent. And you get a much more mixed, more nuanced message from Joe Biden, which in our culture has a much harder time breaking through.
It's so depressing.
I mean, whatever, we shouldn't despair because we're just months and months away. But the thing about having the world's longest election is that Trump has been running for president now since a week after the midterms.
Yeah, it feels like we have been in this campaign now for eight years. I mean, it feels as if and this is this is part of the disorientation, you know how I mean, I remember back in twenty fifteen and twenty sixteen thinking, you know, how disastrous it would be if Donald Trump was elected and yet we had no idea. We had no idea the effect that he would have. I think you could find things that we
wrote that said we thought we did. But the degree in which he has changed the media environment, the cultural environment, the moral environment, what is considered ecceptible, what is considered disqualifying.
And the Republican Party.
Look, there's no question about it. There were people who thought the Republican Party would change Donald Trump.
It did not.
Donald Trump changed the Republican Party. And we see that on a daily basis.
Yeah.
I mean I was at this dinner in DC and a person who's a you know, very smart writer, editor genius, was saying the thing that just made me want to die. I was thinking about the day to day corruption that Trump normalized. You know, we were talking about Scott Pruitt. Remember Scott Prewit, Yes.
I do.
I actually see nobody else, Yeah, with.
The tactical pants who went to Cafe Milano every night. I mean, there were so many, you know, sort of this low level corruption in government, which already Americans had anxiety about, got so exacerbated. It was just I don't know, just thinking about it makes me shudder.
But here here's the bad News Molley, and we're going to look back nostalgically upon that era because a Trump two point zero presidency is not going to be peopled by even quasi normies. You look back on the Trump cabinet. Actually I did this the other day. Go back to look at the Trump cabinet in early twenty seventeen. Now, we were all hair on fire about what it represented, but that was a you know, by current standards, and this,
by the way, shows how the window has moved. You look back and go, that was a pretty normal cabinet. You know, by and large, those were actual grown ups who had who had accomplished and said. But one of the things that Donald Trump has learned, he's the lesson he's learned is I don't want those grown up normies around me. I don't want anyone who's going to say, I don't want a vice president like Mike Pence, who may be you know, slavishly loyal, but but has you know,
still a little bit of integrity and principle left. I have to make sure that all of that is gone.
So yeah, yeah, we have.
The low level sort of discrudity and the grifters, like like the Scott Prewitz of the world. What's coming, I think is going to be much much worse.
But what is interesting when you look at these dat ballot right is Republicans have a very good Senate map for them, but they don't have great candidates.
No, they have done this again and again over the years, nominated bizarre, unelectable candidates. And this goes back as long as I can remember him in the Sharon engeles and I mean, who can forget Christine O'Donnell i am not a witch or Todd Aiken talking about legitimate rate in the before times, those comments, you know, that kind of behavior was automatically disqualifying, And of course Donald Trump says or does something almost on a daily basis that would
have been disqualifying for any other generation of candidates. So they're testing the proposition about whether or not those standards exist now down ballot as well, whether or not they're going to blow these races as they have in the past, or whether or not the moral window has shifted so radically that people will go, yeah, we just don't care about that crazy shit.
It does seem to me, though, while the Republican Party has gone along with Trump, these Senate candidates. The thing that unites all of them is that they are most of them are self funders, right, because that money needs to go to Donald Trump's criminal cases, his criminal lawyers, so that money is not for candidates. But then also so they're largely self funders, and then they also tend to be carpetbaggers. So you got Dave McCormick flying from
Greenwich to Pennsylvania. Right, You've got Eric Hovdy, he's got a weird mustache, he owns banks in California. You have flying to Wisconsin. I mean, that's clearly a thing they're doing, right.
That's right.
You know, McCormick is probably the closest to the normy candidate that Republicans would like. I just don't know whether or not carpetbagging carries the way that perhaps once would have. We have a long tradition of people, you know, moving around. You know, Eric Hovedy in Wisconsin is an interesting case because he has been almost completely absent from Wisconsin politics
since his last Senate bid. I know the guy, I've had lunch with him, and let's just say that he does not lack for healthy self regard guard I mean, really healthy self regard. But having said that, I would love an explanation for why he's wearing the seventies porn stash. I just I don't quite get that he's one of those candidates that I don't think is going to wear well, even though he's been polling reasonably well. But those are the candidates that I think, at least on paper, they're
not the Carrie Lake type candidate. And Carrie Lake is an interesting person because Arizona is very much a swing state that ought to have been top of the target. And here once again you see the Republicans who apparently are at least conceding that one seat. Whether that's going to make a difference, but I think that we need to go into this election with the assumption that there is going to be a Republican Senate just because of the map what's going on, you know, in West Virginia,
because that's almost an automatic pickup for the Republicans. And so this is what also makes the prospect of a Trump presidency so dangerous, because I don't know whether Republicans are still telling themselves quietly, Okay, this is bad, but we have to go along with it, because at least he's not Joe Biden, and we will be able to control him. How bad could it be? Well, when's the last time that we actually saw the Republicans effectively act
as a check on Donald Trump? And does anyone really believe that a Republican Senate would turn down the more egregious appointees. I just I'm again, the default setting has to be the Republican Party will always cave to Donald Trump when it comes to things like personnel and judges.
Right, And I think that's a really good point. There's not going to be any checks and balances. That's what it is. And I think there weren't that many checks and balances the last time.
Mitch McConnell would every once in a while toy with it and play with it, but then would cave in. But speaking of checks and balances, I just can we focus on one positive things? One positive thing? Over the weekend Trump's appearance at the Libertarian convention.
Oh yes, And that didn't get that much news. And it was amazing.
That's why I want to mention that it was amazing. Now, now the Libertarian Party as opposed to libertarianism, I I'm open to libertarianism. Libertarian party has been kind of taken over by crackpots a long time ago. I mean, this is an eccentric group. And so one of the questions was have they become so crackpotty that they would be open to an RFK that they would actually think that Donald Trump is a libertarian? And I don't know what
they were thinking. I mean, this is a really interesting question. What were the Trump folks thinking. What did they think was going to happen when he showed up at this libertarian convention? Because they bowed the shit out of him. I mean they chump. I mean, it was it was a make Rick Wilson says, somebody's going to lose their job over this, and you think so, I mean, he's got to come off the stage and going did anybody
know it was going to be this bad? Because people, everyone knew it was going to be this bad, and there it was, and they're like hippocrid, hippocrede, hippie grip. So it was one of those rare, rare moments where Donald Trump has stepped out of the bubble of his own rallies. He does travel in a bubble except when he has to course no face his felony charges. It was interesting to watch how he handled and of course he snapped them and said, well, you know what you want your three percent.
Of the vote.
You know you want to lose that sort of thing. You know how to win friends and influence people. So it was a reminder how Trump kind of melts down when he's confronted with people who are calling out his bullshit. And basically, you had an entire convention basically saying Trump bullshit. You've had your shot. You're not a libertarian, you don't represent liberty. And I think in the end he got out of eight hundred votes, I think he got six
right ends, which is Chef's kiss. So much moved, but Molly was also interesting watching people like Mike Lee go on television the next day and implying that this was great or the usual turd polishers suggesting that maybe it wasn't so bad after all, And of course Donald Trump is pretending it's not so bad after so they have gotten so used to this gas lighting of like, don't you know, pay attention to what actually happened, what you saw with your own eyes. I'm going to tell a
completely different story. They have become a addicted to gas lighting. But also it shows how much contempt they have for the voters that they honestly think that they can tell the voters, no, what you just saw happen did not happen. I am going to create my own completely bogus reality, and you are dumb enough or gullible enough to believe it. That contempt for the voters, I think, well, it certainly
doesn't speak well of their respect for American democracy. And we'll see whether or not their lack of confidence is justified.
Charlie Sikes, you are awesome. I appreciate you so much.
And you are a great American. Milling good talking with you.
Spring is here, and I bet you are trying to look fashionable, So why not pick up some fashionable all new Fast Politics merchandise. We just opened a news store with all new designs just for you. Get t shirts, hoodies, hats, and top bags. To grab some head to fastpolitics dot com. Tom Steyer is a former twenty twenty presidential candidate and author of Cheaper, Faster, Better, How We'll Win the Climate War. Welcome to Fast Politics, Tom Steyer.
Molly, good morning, So.
Let's talk about this book. I know I feel like I know why you wrote it, but I want you to explain to us sort of why you decided to write this book your trajectory, since you've always been in the climate space, but explain to us why you decided to write this well.
I wanted to write this book because I think the two prevailing theories about where we are in the energy transition are both wrong. The first one is that we rely on fossil fuels. We've always relied on fossil fuels, and we must always rely on fossil fuels, and that's not true. And the second one is that the climate is changing, it's changing fast, We've lost control, We're doomed,
and that's not true. What I wanted to say was something diametrically opposed to both of those points, which which is, yes, the natural world is changing faster than most people understand, and not in a good way. But the technology and our ability to solve that problem and to basically create
a better world is much greater than people understand. And so why don't we acknowledge that we have an issue and do what Americans do best, which is when there is something serious to be dealt with, we come together. And solve it together. And that's what I'm proposing, is why don't we just win? Why don't we go back to coming together and winning together instead of either one of the two memes that people seem to believe, neither of which is true.
My long suffering spouse was an academic and is very very smart and wrong about a lot of stuff, but smart. But he's really right, or at least he has the same exact theory of the cases you do, which is we're blowing through that one and a half degree change, right, I mean, we're going to miss all our numbers when it comes to Paris climate. I mean, talk to us about sort of the state of where we are right now.
Sure your description of it perfectly fits the United States of America, because what the people in running Paris, which was the UN group, said that we should not go through one and a half degrees see change celsius change. Of course, no one in America lives in celsius.
No one knows what that means.
That is absolute gobbledegook. Secondly, people are saying, you know, we are terribly scared about carbon dioxide. What you can't touch it, you can't smell it, you can't see it. No one knows what they're even talking about. And people are going like this is terrible. It's like what Yeah, So let me say this. What we've seen that scientists and people focused on this problem notice, is that we're
getting warmer, faster than scientists had predicted. And what the people in Paris in twenty fifteen said is, don't go through one and a half degrees celsius, which is somewhere too between two and three degrees fahrenheit, which is where we all live, right And they said, if you go through that, you're going to start taking a lot of risk.
And if you go through two degrees celsius, which is three point six degrees fahrenheit, you're going to get into a lot of trouble right now if you do the last twelve months, The last twelve months were one point six degrees celsius hotter than pre industrial So those are all just numbers that scientists care about. They are going faster than people expected, The impacts are greater than scientists predicted, and so yes, we have a real issue on our hands that is worse than the un expected or all
these scientists expected. Having said that, yeah, that's why we have. If it weren't a real thing, I wouldn't be spending a ton of time trying to work on it and invest in solutions and come up with solutions. But the other thing that's true is I can look at those solutions day to day and say, Wow, that's great. We not only have the ability to win this, we are
winning it. We're definitely going to win it. So why don't we do that together and do what Americans do, which is pull together in a crisis.
One of the things that I'm struck by is it seems like people, for example, we just had someone on this podcast to talk about Florida. Florida is feeling the effects of the climate crisis on the regular Right, they have tornadoes in ways they've never had, but also their insurance has gone up percentages that are like a joke, right, the double tripled, quadrupled. So you know, it's unsustainable to have people paying hundreds of dollars of thousands of dollars
of insurance every month. So I'm curious, like, why do you think it's so hard for people to put together massive flooding with climate change?
Well, first, let's take a step back. MALLI, which is this. I mean, I know that everything in the country is being politicized, every issue, and this is one of them. But let's take a step back before we talk about that, and that's this. If you pull registered Republicans, they get it. If you ask them, should we have a stronger climate response from the federal government, they say yes. No, one is unsure about what's going on because everybody is seeing
the impact. As you said, you know the most Republican, the reddest states are kind of in arms way more than anybody else. Or to Texas, Louisiana, you know that whole Gulf Coast. Yes, so people actually know it. But if you look at Republican voters, they will say, yes, we should have a stronger climate response. Yes, I know this is happening. Yes, I know it's human cause somewhere. But depending on how you ask the question, somewhere between
fifty five and seventy five percent. The issue is they don't see it as a critical urgent issue from a voting standpoint, and therefore, you know, it doesn't really matter to the people they're voting for because it's not going to change their vote, and politicians care about things that change votes. But having said that. Yes, Really, what we're talking about in trying to solve this is to a avoid almost unimaginable human suffering, and we can definitely do it.
And all of us want that, and all of us, you know, want our country to be strong and to do the right thing and for America to be the leader and the that we've always been. So when I look at this, I say, sure, why is insurance up in Florida. Well, if you build a house in a floodplane and you know that it's going to flood, insurance companies have to charge a lot of money or they're
going to lose a lot. You know, Normally building a house in a floodplane is not advisable, and you can't ask an insurance company to take away the risk if the risk is really overwhelming. So we are in a situation where we need to adapt to what's changed and prevent, you know, really use the new technologies. That's why my book is called Cheaper, Faster, Better, Use stuff that is better. We're not asking people to buy stuff they don't want.
We're saying, let's win in the marketplace. Let's create the products, Let's create the processes that actually give us a better life so that people choose them willingly. And that's where we are and that's what we're trying to do. And that works for Democrats, that works for Republicans, that works for America.
So let's do a minute or two on why this is so much cheaper, because at this point you have a state like Texas. These are not left y ideologes, right, they are absolutely very The leadership in Texas very right wing. They are running largely on solar. I mean, the reason that their grid did not die this winter as it has in previous winters was because of solar. So though they're not running largely on it, there certainly are checks
and balances courtesy of solar because solar is cheaper. So make it make sense, is well.
First of all, Texas has a very special electric grid, and it's self contained and is designed to be as competitive and free market as possible, as you said, while the legislators in Texas have been saying how bad renewables are and how important it is to support the fossil fuel economy, the amount of solar in Texas is tripled twenty eighteen. It's scheduled to go up another thirty five percent this year. They have more solar than they have coal.
They're by far the biggest wind producer in the United States of America because wind is solar cheaper, and they need that for that grid because they also have had some really cold storms and they have really really hot summers, and so to protect people from really to protect their health and the extremes of cold and heat, they need a grid that's resilient. And by the way, solar and
wind are the cheapest sources of energy. So when we think about cheaper, faster, better, Texas is a perfect example because human beings are smart, and solar power used to be a heck of a lot more expensive than fossil fuel power, and so did with but you know what, people kept working on it and working on it and working on it and making it better and cheaper and better and cheaper, and now it's much cheaper. And you want to know something, it's going to get a lot
cheaper from there. So when we look at this, what we're seeing is human ingenuity. American ingenuity is better than dead dinosaurs. It's better now, and it's going to only continue. That gap is only going to continue cheaper, faster, better.
Can you talk for a minute about this sort of grid update.
So, look, one of the things that has been true in the United States is we can see how all of these technologies work, but they have to be their physical things that have to be built in the real world, which means they have to be permitted in the real world, and then they have to be attached to the electric grids so that the energy can be delivered to consumers.
And that is both of those things have proved because the approvals and the way that they pay for access to the grid are all really old fashioned and cumbersome and slow and cause incredible delays and cost Having said that, so one of the things is we need to simplify the approval mechanism for both permitting new renewable installations and also easing access to the grid, because they are both
gigantic bottlenecks. Having said which, you know, you know, we see incredible technological work being done across the board, Molly, And there's a company that I highlight in my book called Veer Technology, which is basically created a technology that allows standard power lines to carry up to five times more energy so you don't have to rebuild the grid in order to do this. That in fact, there's a technology to use the existing grid, to use the existing
footprint and carry five times as much electricity. And that's my point about human ingenuity and American ingenuity. You know the guy who started that, Tim Heidel. There are people out there looking at how to improve the world from a climate response standpoint in a thousand ways, and they are all over the place, and they're doing it from every angle and they're brilliant. And when you look at it, it's like I keep saying, let's come together and solve
this together. Because we have some great young people around the country who are putting all of their energy and all of their brain power into figuring out how to make this work in the real world. And that's very exciting to see. And we have existing incredible technology that we can deploy, but also we have so many ideas that are so great and not all of them are work, but a whole bunch of them will.
And then we have people like Elon Mosk. Yes, you use climate tax incentives to become a complete fascist. I mean it infuriates me to know.
And that is all.
Look in this people are going to do the right thing. From your standpoint, and my standpoint for a whole bunch of different reasons. And you know what, we're going to have to accept that Americans don't always agree on the reasons for doing things, but we need to agree on
what we're going to accomplish. And if people want to do this just purely to make money, and they're gonna that's all they're interested in, and it's too fine, right, who cares incentive to do things that benefit us all and to build companies that help solve this this crisis and they do things that I say, fine, It's like, we don't need people to have the perfect incentive. We
need people to work together to solve the problem. And if and they're definitely not going to agree on everything, and you know what, that's Americans never agree on everything, right, and come together in a crisis and put aside our differences and just work together. And you know what, if people do it for reasons that we don't agree with, if they're doing the work, I say, God bless them.
I think that's a really good attitude, especially in a situation like this where really we're in such a dire state. Can you do two seconds on methane? In your take on methane.
Sure, when we think about electricity, people tend to think about it in terms of cost per kilo odd hour, And if you look at it in terms of cost per kilo ood hour, by far the cheapest ways of producing energy are solar and wind are the renewables, and to be fair, in twenty twenty three last year, of the new electricity generation in the world, eighty six percent
of it was renewable. But when you talk to people who are charged with making sure that we have electricity twenty four seven three sixty five, they distinguish between the energy that is so called intermittent. So solar is intermittent because the sun is not always shining, and wind is intermittent because the wind is not always blown. But fossil fuel energy is something where it's sitting somewhere waiting to be used. So therefore it can be considered quote unquote
base load energy. And the argument that people are using now to create more methane capability or they use the words natural gas or liquefied natural gas capability around the world is for basically that base load, which they say is it's not enough to have cheap energy, you need to have cheap energy all the time. And so when you look at it, people have said that, Okay, methane is half as polluting as coal, So if we replace coal with methane, that is an improvement of fifty percent.
That's a big step forward, that's the argument.
But it makes the climate much hotter, much faster.
Right. That be true in the lab, but it's not true in the real world. If methane escapes as you're trying to get deliver it to people's houses to heat or cool, that escape. It's an incredibly powerful greenhouse gas. And if more than a couple percent escapes, it's worse than coal actually in the short run. So the fact of the matter is, and we're not sure how much escapes because but from what we can tell, it's very likely that at least two percent escapes. So it's really
not a clean solution. It is a solution that is baselok, but it's not a clean one. So if we build a lot more natural gas capability, which the United States, you know, there are a lot of people in the United States who want to do that. If we build that capability, it's a forty year capability, and that takes us that blows us out of the water from meeting any of our climacles. It's magical thinking that somehow you can keep polluting but pollution won't build up, because of
course it will. So then the question is, okay, but people realistically need to provide energy electricity twenty four to seven three sixty five, And how is that possible when you have only intermittent stuff? And the answer is, there are a bunch of ways that can happen, but the biggest one is probably batteries, because what we've seen is
the cost of batteries of storage. So yes, the sun only shines sometimes and the wind only blows sometimes, but if you then store it in a battery, you now have base load power if the battery lasts long enough, and together it's cheap enough, and the cost of battery is down eighty percent, and it'll go down a lot more. And we're in the process of a lot of people building new kinds of batteries and doing new technology and
batteries to extend duration and to reduce cost. So when we look forward, it seems to me in technology there's no nothing for certain, but it seems extremely like that we will go through a couple of revolutions in battery technology, both in terms of cost, which it's already gone through, but also in terms of duration so that you can actually store the energy long enough so that you have a safe twenty four seven, three sixty five. That's the first thing I'd say. Second thing is there are a
couple other things that may fit this bill. One is enhanced geothermal, basically tapping the earth for really hot water and steam. And the third is can we do safe, cheap nuclear. That's very unclear and people in the United States have been very scared about both parts of that. The safe art is there going to be an accident or are we going to create a nuclear waste for one hundred thousand years that's incredibly toxic and dangerous to people. So they are real issues with nuclear, but people are
working hard to see if they can solve those. But to me, the big issues are going to be, Okay, when do the batteries reach a duration when people feel like okay, that turns intermittent solar and wind into baseload,
And I think very simple. I'm a big believer in that, and I'm not a big believer in building forty year infrastructure for methane when in fact, we're going to solve the problem in this decade, that to me seems like building a problem that we can't get her out instead of trying to come up with a real solution to the problem.
Tom Steyer, thank you so much for joining us.
Totally right well.
David Leonhardt is a senior writer at The New York Times and author of ours was The Shining Future, The Story of the American Dream. Welcome back to Fast Politics.
Thanks Molly, it's great to be back.
So happy to have you back. I actually was listening to a rival podcast and you were on there, and I was like, wait, I was.
Like, that's a fair I will always come on your podcast.
Very good because you know, one of the things about having a very entitled childhood was that I always feel entitled to get certain guests, and so I was like, this is not fair. But anyways, so the idea that there's something bipartisan in this incredibly contentious moment in American politics is a and so will you talk about that?
Yeah, it was the idea of one of my editors, which is, look, we all talk about how polarized American society is, and it is polarized, but we talk about it often, sometimes we lapse into descriptions of it's so polarized that Washington can't get anything done in gridlock. And so let's keep that thought in our mind. Our country is polarized. It doesn't always feel like Washington can get things done. It doesn't feel like the parties can agree
on anything. And now let's think about this list. In the last several years, the parties under Donald Trump agreed on major COVID relief. Under President Biden, there has been a bipartisan infrastructure bill that passed, a very big bill, roads, bridges, internet, infrastructure, water,
you name it. There is a bipartisan bill in the semiconducductor industry that passed to try to build up our domestic semiconductor industry to make sure we're not relying on China or other countries that are unfriendly to the US. There's a list of like eight or nine other bipartisan bills that aren't as big on veterans' health and antiation, hate crimes and even gun violence, and the Electoral count Act. We've got Biden continuing many of Trump's trade policies and
expanding some of them. We just had another major bipartisan legislation pass on TikTok and aide to Ukraine and other allies. And we just had Democrats in the House save the job of the House Republican speaker when far right Republicans rebelled against him because of that Ukraine bill, something that has basically, according to my colleagues who cover the Hill, has never happened. You've never had members of one party
save another. And I'm not even giving you some of the fun performative examples of bipartisanship, like JD Vance saying positive things about Lena Khan, President Biden's trust busting head of the FTC. And so we look at all this and we just say, wait a second, how is this happening?
I want more on Lena Khan and JD Vance for a minute, because this is something I'm particularly interested in, and I think Lena Khan is pretty interesting, unusual person. So can you just talk about that for a second.
Absolutely, so, Lena Khan rocketed to wonky stardom. That's right.
I'm like Lena Kahan. She's a real celebrity. Yeah.
As a Yale law student, she wrote a law review article saying that the country needs to take much more seriously Amazon as a monopoly and do something about it. Got her a bunch of attentions. She became kind of an anti trust activist who got a bunch of attention along with Tim Wu and Zephyr teach Out and some other legal scholars. And Biden, despite her extremely young age, named her to run the Federal Trade Commission. So she's one of his, if not his number one, most important
anti trust regulator. She is, by any measure, one of the most progressive members of the Biden administration. She really wants to take a new approach to anti trust. And yeah, when Jade Vance recently was talking about the Biden administration, he said that he thought she was the only member of it who was doing a pretty good job. Jd Vance is, I think fairly can considered a far right senator. So how is it that someone who is a far right senator would be praising someone who big business views
as a far left regulator. And it's that fusion of right and left that I think unlocks some of the mystery of this bipartisan flur.
So that's quite interesting. Okay, So there is a place where these two worlds meet.
There is a place where they mean. And look, I don't want to exaggerate it. If someone's saying, but abortion, transgender rights, but Donald Trump's hostility democracy. Yes, there are huge partisan gaps on a lot of issues. Yes, Donald Trump threatens democracy in some basic ways. All those things are true. If we're trying to make sense of it, How is it that there's been bipartisan cooperation on these issues. I think there are two main explanations. One is foreign policy.
We really are in a competition now with China and an emerging global alliance that President Biden I think accurately calls an alliance of autocracies. They don't work together and everything, but they increasingly work together. So that's China, it's Russia, it's occasionally North Korea, and it's Iran as well as the non state groups that are on backs like Hesba, Lahamas and the Huthis. And you really do see cooperation among all these countries and groups. They all are authoritarian groups.
And I think American policy makers of both the Democratic and Republican Party, at least a significant number of them, have become really worried about this, and particularly about China. And in the same way that the Cold War in the forties, fifties and sixties sparked a whole bunch of bipartisan legislating, the Eisenhower Highway System, the post Sputnik emphasis on science education. We see some of that today. So that's the semiconductor bill, it's the TikTok bill, a bunch
of these things, I think our responses to China. It's the trade policy. And then the second thing is the failure of neoliberalism. And Molly, you and I talked about this when I came on to talk about my book about the American Dream, and you look at what neoliberalism is, which it's these set of policies that reduce regulations and shrink labor unions and increase trade and increase immigration and
basically shrink government and increase market forces. And they happened in the seventies and eighties and nineties and early aughts. And the promise was that this would deliver prosperity to Americans and it would deliver freedom to the world. And those promises just haven't been met. China isn't freer, working class Americans are not doing particularly well, and so the failures of neoliberalism have led to what I described as a rise of neo populism. I deliberately picked that term.
I know some people are uncomfortable with the phrase populism. But this neopopulism includes trade restrictions, it includes more investment in things like infrastructure and businesses like semiconductors. It basically says, yes, we are a capitalist economy, but if the government just kind of lets everything go, it doesn't work out that well. It hasn't worked out that well for many Americans, and despite what the neoliberals told us, it has not remade the world in a democratic image.
So interesting because as we're talking about this, I'm thinking, like the left and the right are pretty aligned. Again with their anti China sentiment, They're very aligned when it comes to the capitalism needs. I mean, how they want to do it is different, but you know varies by party, but both parties believe that unfettered capitalism hasn't delivered results. I mean that's what you're saying, right.
Yes, I would say I think the Democratic Party is very comfortable with that, and I think the Republican Party is torn. You do have in the Republican Party figures who are comfortable with the idea that we need to move on from neoliberalism. That helps explain how some of these big pieces of legislation like infrastructure and semiconductor's got a meaningful number of Republican votes. It explains the JD.
Anthley Nakom thing we were talking about. But there's also still a really strong part of the Republican Party that does believe basically in lasaf fair capitalism. I mean, the Supreme Court majority is basically a pro lasafe fair majority. Donald Trump doesn't seem to care that much about policy. When he campaigns, he campaigns as a populist. When he governs, he's a mix. His trade policies are populous, his tax cut for rich people is not populist, right.
I mean, he mostly wants to just do whatever's good for him.
Yes, he doesn't really care about policy details on most issues. But his rejection Trump's rejection of laisaif fair economics, the fact that he criticized trade, the fact that he stopped talking about cutting Medicare and social Security the way Paul Ryan was talking about it, did open up the republic Can Party to have more people reject the laissez fair economics of the eighties and nineties and we see more of that now.
Such an interesting point as we look at this, one of the things that I'm struck by is it seems like we're tariffs are highly inflationary. Both parties, Biden and Trump have decided that tariffs are the way to go after China.
It makes me a little uncomfortable.
But tell us why they've decided it, and if you think they're right to so.
Tariffs can be highly inflationary, and I think the kind of tariffs Trump is talking about probably would be highly inflationary because they would apply to everything in the economy. But it's also important to remember that tariffs have an incredibly successful track record of help to build up economies. I mean, the United States became an economic powerhouse in
part through tariffs to protect our early industries. China has become economic powerhouse in part through its own protectionism, the fact that other countries can't go freely compete in China. And there is a very long successful history of countries saying we want to protect this domestic industry for one of a number of reasons. Maybe it's national security. You need to be making things that protect your national security.
You can't rely on your global competitors to make those because if you go to war, you're going to lose. You also want to make sure if you identify an industry as being a growing industry important to the future, that you're going to have that kind of domestic industry. And so it's not clear to me that targeted tariffs, say on electric vehicles or semiconductors, are economically harmful. They
might be, they might also be economically beneficial. And I just think it's really important that we get beyond the kind of instinct that many of us in kind of elite circles have to, oh, my goodness, trade restrictions have to be bad. Most Americans are very comfortable with trade restrictions. They favor them the same way most Americans favorite immigration restrictions.
I know this is an overword used, but I think elites, by which I mean campaign downers and policy experts and journalists and party activists and others, I think they spent decades telling Americans, Hey, this kind of open trade, open immigration, neoliberal economy is going to be really great for you. And many Americans have looked at the evidence and they've said, no,
it's not. And so the idea that we're actually looking at something like tariffs, to me is a sign of lower case de democratic health, in which our policy makers are saying, Hey, this policy we pursued that people were skeptical of didn't work out the way we promised, and now they're hostile to it, and maybe we should not keep doing the same old thing that hasn't been working.
Well.
They're saying that tarifs is really interesting. But I'm hoping you could talk now, if we're going to go here about immigration, because while there is sort of mixed public sentiment on immigration, clearly one of the reasons why we as a country are having the best COVID recovery is because we have immigration. It's not the only reason, but it certainly helped us along. And right now our immigration
system is in such disarray. I mean, can you just speak to sort of where we are with that and what that could look like.
Yeah, I mean, when you say we've had the best COVID response, I think it's important to say that's GDP right, right, Right?
Economic GDP compared to other affluent countries.
Right, you go ask most people and not just ask them, but you look at some of the data on wages. You know, the wage recovery and COVID's been fine, but it hasn't been great because inflation has been so high. So it's not like most Americans have gotten a big raise over the last few years. I mean, they haven't, and they hate inflation for good reason. It's like a tax or a pay cut. Now, immigration isn't the reason
for that. But I think we should be clear that when Americans say that the economy has still been disappointing to them, whether that's over the last few years or certainly over the last few decades, their right to feel that way. I mean, the economic data is in line with the idea that the American economy has not been serving most people.
Well.
I think the left has made a really big mistake on immigration, the modern left, and it's not a mistake that the left historically made about immigration. A lot of parts of the left basically try to pretend that it's a free lunch, that it has no downsides, that if we have very high levels of immigration it benefits everybody, that it benefits the immigrants who are coming, which I think it clearly does, and that it also benefits American workers,
whether it's in the United States or Europe. Or Japan, or pretty much any country. Most people are deeply uncomfortable with very high levels of immigration, and we have had very high levels of immigration, and there are some economic costs to that. It expands the labor for and provides wage competition. Why do you think it is that doctors work really hard to prevent immigrants from immediately coming here
and competing for jobs. As you probably know, Molly, if you're a doctor in another country and you move here, you can't just start practicing medicine. You have to have your medical training in this country in most instances, which means if you're forty or fifty years old, you just can't really come here and be a doctor. You'd have
to spend years getting training to be certified. That's because doctors have political power, and they understand when you let in a whole bunch more people to compete with you in the labor market, it tends to hold your wages down, right. And the idea that the more elite parts of the left in our country have told workers, no, no, no, silly you, How could you ever think there are downsides of immigration. Workers have rebelled, And that's why immigration is
such a vulnerability for Joe Biden. I think it's really important to say this isn't the history of the progressive left Historically, whether it's civil rights leader or labor union leaders, or Barack Obama or you name it, Democrats were very comfortable with the idea of we need to protect the rights of immigrants, and we honor this country's history as a beacon for immigrants. But that doesn't mean that we're constantly in favor of higher and higher immigration. It doesn't
mean that we reduce border security. We are a country, as Barbara Jordan, the congresswoman and civil rights icon say, we are a country of laws, and if you don't have a border that keeps people out, you don't really have the most important kind of law there is. And I just think the left has lost that, And particularly when you consider how much of a threat Donald Trump
is to so many democratic values. I'm genuinely confused about why the Biden administration has been so slow to shore up what is a massive vulnerability it has on this issue.
But didn't the Biden administration how negotiate like the absolutely most funitive immigration bill that has been introduced since nineteen ninety one.
It did, and Trump then killed it right, But.
I mean that's not Biden's fault, is it.
No, it's definitely not. It was incredibly cynical of Trump to kill that bill and for congressional Republicans to go along with it.
And I mean that was a bill. I wouldn't have liked that bill as an elite liberal. I mean, but it was a bill that Biden was all in on. So and they bullied Chris Murphy into spending all Christmas negotiating it.
I mean with James.
Langford who asked him about his faith journey. So they really made as much of a good faith effort to do an immigration bill as anyone has ever seen. I mean, the fact that it did work.
Yes, it is absolutely true. They tried really hard. They've tried really hard over the last six months to fix this problem. So maybe I should have said, I'm confused why I took them this long. But they also helped create this problem. I mean, Joe Biden ran for office very clearly saying we are going to welcome more people. Dexter Filkins did a very good piece for The New
Yorker documenting this. People heard that message. He took office and immediately loosened immigration policy in a bunch of ways. Some of them were actual ways that changed the law, like expanding parole, which is supposed to be this gets really wonky, but it is supposed to be used on individual bases, and they basically expanded it to admit hundreds
of thousands of more people. And they just sent a message that both would be migrants and the Mexican cartels that run the transportation networks very much heard, which is it's going to be easier to get into this country than it was, and huge numbers of people came again. I think for them it's a very rational decision. For
immigrants who move here, they do very well. And so the Biden administration really does deserve significant responsibility for this huge surge in migration, and they spent a couple of years really not doing much to change that, and then yes, in twenty twenty three, they work very hard to try to solve this problem and Republicans cynically stopped it. But to me, that doesn't give them kind of a carte blanche on the issue.
I have interviewed a lot of people for this podcast, including a doctor at Planned Parenthood in Arizona who told me the story of a woman who had walked here from South America and been gang raved multiple times and was able to get an abortion before the abortion ban came. So I would suggest that a lot of these people are not coming to do better, but just to do Look, there are certainly people who come to this country and have better experiences and make more money and do better.
But a lot of these people come to this country are just desperate and are running for their lives. So in my mind, you know, I think it is important that this is not going on foot across the border. Is not an experience that I would ever want to have to try to do. So I do think there's a fair amount of these people who are really just out of options.
There are a huge number of people who are out of options, and the United States can't admit everyone who's out of options. Around the world, we can't admit close to everyone. We should remain a beacon for people who are true political refugees. I think the thing to think about a little bit is by any measure of global poverty has plummeted over the last couple decades, and by any measure, the number of people who are killed in
violent conflicts has declined. Over the last couple decades. So I don't think it can simply be the case that immigration of this country is surging because situation around the world has gotten worse by any objective measure. In poor countries, the situation has gotten better over the last few decades. And I think what many Americans look at these numbers and they say, how much of it is our responsibility to admit people around the world. And different people can
come to different reasonable conclusions about that. But the Biden administration has been in a place that most Americans are not comfortable with, and it's part of why his reelection campaign is so difficult.
I'm just glad that my great grandparents didn't have to worry about that. So anyway, David, thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you, Molly, No moment full.
Jesse Cannon my junk fest.
You know, we used to ask what came first, the checker or the egg.
Now everybody seems to be asking what came first?
Trump having bad lawyers or him making those lawyers.
Bet what are you seeing?
Yeah, so you will be listening to this podcast on Wednesday. Tuesday was the last day of closing arguments in the Trump New York criminal trial, which you may remember, Todd Blanche went sort of off the script and said some stuff that he maybe hoped would cause a mistrial. Judge Murshan,
who is a very measured guy, told that. He said he doesn't think it's an accident when Blanche told the jury that the jury should think twice before sending a man to prison, which Trump would not go to prison for this, or if he did, it would take many, many appeals. Merchand to Blanche, your statement was outrageous and highly inappropriate. Merchant's tone was tempered, but you could tell
how angry he was with Todd Blanche. Basically, Trump has terrible lawyers who are being terrible and honestly, I mean, couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. 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.