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 Donald Trump said.
Today, I suspect I won't be running again unless you say he's so good, we have to figure something else out.
I don't know. I'm with that words.
We have such a great show for you today on the tapes Dan Nathan who talked about inflation, the economy that Trump is about to inherit, and all that other good stuff. Then we'll talk to Georgetown Law Schools Stephen Vladik about how the courts can protect Americans if we use them that way.
But first the news.
So, Molly, we got a barrage, a veritable cornucopia of the weirdest political appointments in presidential history. What do you see here?
Speak for yourself, man.
What have you seen to the Nine blood Sjungger the b are Yes?
That's right.
Center for Publicans just found out that Donald Trump is planning to nominate Representative Matt Gates of Florida for Attorney general.
I just want to say one thing here. I don't know.
Perhaps Republicans will grow a spine and do real confirmation hearings, and then we'll see if he can make it to ag I'll just tell you, Senator Jony Ernst told The New York Times He's really got his work cut out for him, chuckling as she spoke. Senator John Cornyn from the Great State of Texas raised his eyebrows when reporters informed him of mister Trump's choice, and then said, I'm still trying to absorb all this, adding I really don't know him other than his public persona.
Now you'll remember Matt.
Gates, who's just been re elected to his fifth term, remains under an ethics investigation. You'll remember that he went to war with Kevin McCarthy because he blamed Kevin McCarthy for that ethics investigation. Then he did a motion to vacate, and Kevin McCarthy lost the speakership this conduct. This ethics investigation included allegations of sexual misconduct, illicit drug use as opposed to non illistit drug use, sharing inappropriate images or videos on the House floor.
Imagine how bad they have to be.
To be deemed inappropriate on the House floor, mis Using state identification records okay, converting campaign funds to personal use, and accepting impermissible gifts under house rules. Mister Gates has denied the allegations as political payback and says they are built on lies. That is the person that Donald Trump wants to be the Attorney general.
Fun stuff, and then what's great is it gets worse with Fox News host Pete Hegsith, who's going to be the Defense Secretary, which I know some people thought it was going to be Mike Roda, who Matt Gates almost had a fistfight with on the congressional flour So I'm glad to see maybe their fistfight won't spill it into the White House.
Pete heg Sith hosts the weekend show on Fox Fronts Okay, Fox and Friends Weekend, not the first tier Fox and Friends, but the weekend show. It's a good friend of Donald Trump's, which is basically the main quality that's looked for in these government jobs. He is basically most famous for having been in the military. And also, and this is where it gets really interesting, he said that he has not washed his hands for ten years because quote, germs are
not a real thing. Speaking of Fox and Friends, heg Sith said the infectious micro organisms do not exist because they could not be seen with the naked eye.
I inoculate myself.
This is a person who went to both Harvard and Princeton and ladies and gentlemen. He is now going theoretically to lead the Department of Defense.
There's a lot of interesting reactions to this. I might add inside the.
Pentagon, there is no serious experience in the business of running the Pentagon or the National Security staff process. But I'm trying to retain an open mind and hope that fresh ideas. There is no serious experience there's I think he means he has no serious experience in the business of running the Pentagon or the national security process. But I'm trying to retain an open mind and hope that fresh ideas could improve things that get pretty stale or retired.
For star General told CNN that said the common denominator is clearly loyalty, and while some loyalty is essential, slavish fealty is dangerous.
I don't know.
We should just be happy that Judge Piro is not the Attorney General.
The thing we talked about last episode that's so baffling to me is they're going to have such a small congressional majority and yet Gates is another one that they're throwing away the numbers on and at least for a few months.
Speak for yourself, man, I think they're going to have I think it'll be six members of Congress that they will put in the Trump admin. So either somebody can't do math, or they have some plan to fill those appointments very very quickly.
I mean not happening with the least the Phonic seat.
Lee Zelden is not in Congress anymore, but Stephonic.
There are a bunch of backbenchers and then.
Macate molly so also he has appointed Tulci Gabbert as head of D and I.
Yeah, Tulsi Gabert.
Tolsi Gabert is most famous for I don't know, it's hard to talk about this because it's so insane. And again, like I know, I've said this before, but this is none of this is normal, right, None of this is normal. Tulci Gabert, she was a member of Congress. She's basically most famous for supporting Trump.
What are you talking about? She was Tucker Carlson's fill in for years, right.
And I just want to to you a little bit from the New York Times The news of missus Gabbard's appointment was first revealed by Roger Stone on his ex account. Mister Stone, a longtime friend advisor to mister Trump who was pardoned by the president in toy twenty posted this statement about miss Gabbard and said mister Trump had just sent it to him. None of this is normal. This is not how any of this is supposed to go. This is not how supposed to pick the Department of
National Intelligence the head of that. There are many, many, many government agencies, hardworking, nonpartisan actors who are going to serve at the pleasure of missus Gabbard. She would oversee eighteen spy agencies and would be responsible for preparing the president's daily beef. The one good part about this is that there's no way.
That Donald Trump drops the PDB, so you can put whatever you want in there and no one would care.
Dan Nathan is the host of the On the Tape podcast and a c NBC Fast Money contributor. Welcome Back, Too Fast Politics, Dan Nathan.
Molly John Fast. Great to be back with you.
You know who's wrong about the election?
Everyone?
Me?
Now me.
I can't speak for everyone. I can only speak for me. And I was wrong.
Listen, everyone was wrong about everything. And you know who else was I think wrong again? I think the Trump administrator, the Trump campaign was very surprised that they won again. And so if you think about your life over the last eight years or so, the one thing that you're routinely wrong about is Donald J. Trump. Let's just be very clear about that.
Yeah.
And actually I wrote this piece about everything I got wrong and the thing that I was struck because the polls were much closer than we thought. But what's interesting to me was that the polls were unable yet again, Donald Trump was underestimated by the polls.
Yeah, but for one reason, And I know that's probably why you had me on to talk a little bit about, you know, the economy and the like. Here, I mean inflation, inflation, inflation, And I think you know, I said this on Stephanie Ruhl's show the other night. I mean, and I've been saying this for a year. I've said it on your show. The sarrogates that the Biden administration had about the economy were so bad. If you just think about the progress that has been made over the last couple of years
as it relates to inflation. The CPI was above nine percent in the summer of twenty twenty two. It's now below three percent. Economic growth GDP is up near three percent. That's way above the pre pandemic highs. You know, unemployment is down near fifty year lows. You think about that combination here. They had a lot of really good things to talk about. They just could not break through. They
did not have the right people discussing. And I'll just say one last thing, you know, I heard two weeks before the election, Mark Cuban was on a very widely listened to podcast, Sam Harris. I don't know if you listen to Making Sense, okay, And no one's brought up Sam Harris, as they've been spending a lot of time talking about out you know, Joe Rogan and what Trump did there. He gave a master class on the economy.
He gave a master class on why inflation was, you know, elevated the way it was post one hundred year storm, which was the pandemic. You know, broken supply chains, you know, super like crazy demand for certain things. And it really wasn't in the administration's fault. It's happened globally, and so just their inability to articulate that. Why has Mark Cuban able to do it in forty five minutes on a podcast in a way that nobody in the administration or in the Harris campaign could do.
No, I know, And they didn't even contact him until someone put them together with him, but I don't know who.
And you know, before that, no one had even reached out to him.
I mean, I don't want to Monday Morning quarterback here, but I do think if Democrats are going to ever win another election, they have to go on everything all the time.
I mean, that's what Trump did.
This is a good example, though, Molly, and again, you know, going back and trying to figure it all out doesn't make a lot of sense because folks like you and me, we're super confident about what the likely outcome of this was, because if you just looked at all the momentum, if you looked at just the vibes, and again, I think the vibes are really hurting us, you know, in many many different ways here and the folks, you know, we're so focused on things that had nothing to do with
the pocketbook of most Americans, and that's the problem. And so when I go back and I look at this, and you know, from an economic standpoint, I think about inflationary pressures and make no mistake about it. You know, the cumulative effects of inflation are really hard on working class people. I get that. But they never articulated away how they were going to prove that. And here's a
great example. This was policy over politics. Okay, the politics of the Harris campaign just didn't get the message across. And the policy articulated by the Trump campaign was speaking to these people whether they're going to follow through on
any of it or not. And there's a really great argument to be made that if they do follow us through on the policy, then it's just going to reignite inflation, and it's going to hurt the very people that migrated over towards voting for Trump because they wanted help on the economy.
That's right. We don't know how long that'll take, right Well, I.
Mean, listen, here's one thing that we do know. Like promises made, promises kept. That's what they kept on saying. All right, Well, they said they're going to hit China with some very very stiff tariffs. We already have some big tariffs on China right there. You put that on exports from China, that just makes it for consumers, for manufacturers here, it makes the cost of those goods go higher for us, and therefore it's money taken out of our pockets. It's not coming out of China and going
right into our treasury. Right. They've also talked about extending the tax cuts you know, from twenty seventeen, that will basically go into the rest of this four year period, and that is also going to be inflationary, right. And then you think about the other thing about mass deportation. You take a lot of those workers right out of our economy, then you're going to see wages go higher.
That's going to get embedded in the cost of things, the cost of doing business here if you're a manufacturer or anything like that, and therefore you're going to have major inflationary pressures from those three things.
Yes, that's right.
Yeah, And so the knock on effect is also that interest rates that started to go down because the economy was doing better and the Fed was going to be able to normalize interest rates, they're going to go back up. The US dollar is at fifty two week highs right now, so it's basically going higher because of the threat of future inflation. So all the sorts of things that you know, Trump ran on about how he was going to fix
the economy. The economy was just fine. So what's going to happen is if he follows through on these policies, it's basically going to reignite inflation. It's going to be really hard on the working class people.
Right, But I was told you would fix inflation.
Well he told you that, right, and so he made a lot of promises over the course of his campaign. What really frustrates me, Molly, is that Republicans over the last twenty years have convinced working class people to routinely vote against their best interests. And it's not just economic, right. So, yeah, you could say that those those tax custs of twenty seventeen, you know, they basically borrowed a trillion a half dollars from the future. They gave it to corporations, they gave
it to very wealthy people. And you know what happened with that, corporations bought back their own stock to the tune of one and a half trillion dollars over a couple of years after those tax cuts went in effect, and it's not just you know, economic stuff. I mean, just think of the fact that one of the first things that Trump wanted to do when he got an
office in twenty seventeen, he wanted to repeal Obamacare. It was one of the most important legislations of the last fifty years as it relates to working class people and their access to healthcare. They wanted to kill that. Now they want to kill student debt relief. Right. They want to kill the Department of Education. How do you get ahead in the economy if you don't have a proper educational sort of structure, right, They want to cut Social Security.
I mean, the list goes on and on here, and I just I don't see how if they follow through on any of those promises, how it's going to be better for working class people.
Now, there's no world in which it's better for working class people at all.
Right, And so you know what's going to be a voting machine on this is going to be the midterms. Right, So if inflation's d high, if middle class or working class people don't see the sort of benefits from some of the policies that he said he was going to do, they're going to have a tough time, especially with that narrow lead in the House. Obviously the Senate is increasingly difficult,
you know, to take back. But again, I just think that, you know, the headline today is that the Republicans voted for fun to be the majority leader and against the will I guess of the Trump folks. And so maybe there is this kind of building sort of I don't know if you want to call it a firewall. We heard all about that in sixteen and seventeen, that there was going to be this firewall between you know, Trump and basically the means of you know, governing and the
like here. So maybe that's a good sign. But then if you think about all these other people that are going to be nominated for these really important cabinet positions, it seems like these are a bunch of amateurs.
Really a bunch of amateurs.
Well let's call them hacks, right like, when you think about it that way, I mean, they're just kind of dangerous.
When you look at some of the people that are being suggested for Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, Homeland Security, I mean, these people they just appear that they want to basically rule with grievance the way that he ran for office, and you think about, you know, just the level of cruelty that they want to kind of put in place when you think about mass deportations, you think
about LGBT rights. I mean, the list goes on and on, and you know what, there's not a better example of this is like the hundreds of millions of dollars that the campaigns spent on this anti trans ad right.
It worked well, it did work.
But my point is like that's how I think they're going to rule. They're going to continue to kind of use these wedge sort of issues and they're going to keep dividing the voting blocks here, you know, the people in this country. And I just kind of really frustrating me. You can see I'm kind of fired up here. I haven't had the opportunity to do this on my podcast because our people don't want to hear it. They want
to hear about the economy. They want to hear about markets, they want to hear about stocks and the like here. But this is something that you know, to me, I just think it's an accident waiting to happen again.
Yeah, oh, no question.
My biggest anxiety is that the FED will not stay independent.
Here's a scenario.
Trump puts in tariffs, Trump ends his tax Scott, it is wildly inflationary, Inflation goes up, the FED says We're not going to.
Cut any more rates, and Trump's like, okay, you're fired.
Yeah. Well, I think it's a very difficult thing for him to do that, by the way. I mean, he can fire a FED governor, a FED official for cause. You know, if you think about the way that Jerome Powell, who basically was also nominated by President Trump back in twenty and seventeen, he was his pick. Now, obviously he gave him a whole heck of a lot of pressure when he started normalizing interest rates by raising them in
twenty and eighteen. But you just made the most important point, right when you think about what is likely to happen with tariffs and tax cuts and you know, mass deportation. If Trump fires Powell and they start pressuring whoever comes in.
Place, I mean, can he do that?
Well he probably could. I mean, like, let's think about it, right, Like the gloves are off here, I mean, the norms are out the window. I mean he's showed us that again and again and again, So he could certainly try to do it. And then it's up to the Federal Reserve or FED Chair Powell himself to kind of bring a suit and think about this. You bring any suits you want, the higher and higher they go, you get to the Supreme Court, which is loaded by Trump anyway.
So like there's just you know, the guard rails are off here, and so I think we have to start thinking outside of those norms that we were, you know, very well accustomed to leading up to twenty seventeen, and they were just absolutely blown out. I think the other thing that, you know, there was this sense of inertia
under the Biden administration. You know, we just didn't get a sense for like some of the accomplishments that they were doing, and it wasn't made you know, really clear to I think most Americans, and we just thought that they were just kind of governing, you know, governing in a sort of like very quiet way. And now all of a sudden, we have a guy back in office
who's going to make noise every single morning. He's going to start to do the sort of chaos by tweet or by truth or whatever you want to call it. And that sort of uncertainty is really hard. I just want to say for businesses as they start.
Thinking about market hate that right, Well.
Yes, uncertainty about how they're going to deploy, uncertainly about the sort of countries that they're going to be able to kind of sell their goods end, where they're going to be able to manufacture their goods end, what the terrorists are going to look like, again and again. So the point about the independence of the central bank is that it just has a level of credibility that's away
from politics. Right, So, the moment that you have a political figure like the executive branch, like a president, basically making decisions on interest rates, then you have a situation where you know there's going to be a lot of businesses that are not going to want to do business here in the United States because it just seems like it's going to be on its way to a Banana Republic.
And that's not the sort of I think confidence that most business people want to have when they're doing business in a country.
Yeah, but a lot of rich people did in fact vote for and support Donald Trump.
So I mean, will they serve as a check on.
M That's a great question. Okay, I wouldn't expect it from Silicon Valley. I wouldn't expect it from Elon Musk. I think all those folks you know in the tech community and the VC community, and then folks like Elon, I think they're in it. They know what they're in for, and they're going to let this guy do whatever he wants. I will say this about Elon Musk, it's a very unique situation. Like, yes, he is the most wealthy man
in the planet. He's got three hundred billion dollars. He's got Tesla that relies on government subsidies, he's got SpaceX that relies on government contracts. He has you know, his ex you know Twitter sort of thing, which was obviously very instrumental in helping Trump get elected. But all of those they could have tremendous headwinds from any sort of government sort of action. It could be executive action, that sort of thing. So Musk on many levels has to
say on the right side of Trump. And if you think about Trump's history with most people who get close to him from a governing perspective, it usually ends very bad. Now the same is true for Elon Musk, by the way, and most of his companies is TEFLA in particular, there's been massive, massive turnover. He's a notoriously difficult guy to deal with, So I think the tech community is kind of screwed. I mean, they know what they're in it for.
The Wall Street folks. Is kind of interesting to me because you know, you look at like Howard Luck Okay, he's the head of Kennavic Sderyld. He's running this transition. He is like such a B or C player on Wall Street. The fact that he was able to work his way into this job is very interesting to me. That he gets to play kingmaker among Republican politics. You know, you won't see guys like Jamie Diamond, the CEO of JP Morgan. Yeah, he'll be on some council here and there.
Might they have some influence on Trump as he thinks about tariffs, as he thinks about you know, dollar policy, as he thinks about regulation and the like. Maybe, But we also know from the first administration that he loved bringing those business leaders into the White House, getting the photo you know, ops, and then just kind of dismissing them, you know, one way or another. So to me, that level of kind of pressure from the business community is not something that's likely to work.
Oh, I thought you were going to say it, maybe all we have.
No, I don't think so. Listen, you know, think about this. If Jamie Diamond steps on the wrong side of Trump, if you, by accident says the wrong thing, there's a tweetstorm about the largest bank in the world. Now think about this. If you're a CEO of a company like that, you have lots of stakeholders that are really important. First and foremost you're employees, then your customers, and then your investors, right, and so you have a fiduciary responsibility to all of
those groups there. And so the idea of getting involved in politics and being wrongside of one of the most vengeful sort of political figures we've ever seen in our life, besides like some of the worst authoritarian leaders we've seen over the last hundred years and developed countries. I mean, I think you have to be very careful. And it also goes back to Wednesday, the day after the election.
Did you see that Satin Nadella Sundra, but Shi Tim Cook, all these CEOs of these major tech companies, these more co all those congratulates, they want to stay on the right side of this thing, and so again this goes back to norms. He can't run again. Supposedly he can do whatever the hell he wants. He was indicted a million times after his last administration. All of those fell by the wayside. Do you think he's going to be any more restrained right now?
You're not making me feel better here, Yeah, tell me something that makes me feel a little better here.
Okay, So one thing I'll just say. So. When Trump got elected in that big surprise back in twenty sixteen, overnight the stock market, they have these futures that trade on the stock market, they were down a lot. Okay, there were lockdown limit meaning that they put limits in place that it can only go down so much when it's down, you know a lot, right, And then at one point they just started rallying in the morning and
they kept on going. And then a lot of folks just decided that all of these policies are going to be good for the stock market, it's going to be good for business, that sort of thing. So this time around, the stock market was very strong headed into this election. You could say that a bit of it had to do with the anticipation that he might win. But the economy how we started this conversation was also on pretty good footing, right, and so therefore that's why the stock
market was going up. The FED did a nice job bringing down inflation. You know, corporate profits were good. You know, we are how I mean, the best growth of any major developed country in the world. So this time around, unless there's some huge geopolitical dust up, you know, something with Taiwan and China, that would be a devastating blow to the global economy.
Right, But you feel like the economy is pretty solid.
I think the economy is very solid. I think the biggest risk is that if the policies lead to greater inflation, if inflation becomes entrenched in this economy, then we're going to have lower growth and we're going to have something called stagflation. You and I talked about this a few months ago on the pod. That will be very bad for the stock market. It will be very bad for corporate profits.
Right, stagflation.
Just remind our listeners with stagflation is because I totally know, but I think they don't know.
Yeah, higher price for goods and services is you know, well above let's say growth rates, and so you have slow in growth you have high prices, and you have economy that's kind of stuck in the mud. You have a consumer that is basically, you know, on the sidelines because they are basically worried about prices going higher, and they're worried about their and the like. Because when the economy slows down and businesses make less profits, they start
cutting people. And that's the biggest fear. Right now, we have unemployment at like four point one four point two percent, up from about three and a half percent, which was a sixty year low. The worry would be that we have unemployment going up dramatically. That will slow consumer spending. Consumer spending is two thirds of our economy, and you can see how it can just go round and around.
So if you throw inflation higher for longer, that's going to throw a huge monkey wrench into what is a pretty decent economy right now.
Right, Yeah, that does not sound good. But luckily Trump is the best minds on it, so we should be fine.
Yeah. The most brilliant people.
The most brilliant people right out of Central casting. All right, Well that made me feel much better, thank you.
Well, here's the deal, right, So we're at a position here where we know how to deal with this in some ways. And so if you think about the quality of a lot of these cabinet people, it seems much less, and maybe that ineptitude is the thing that doesn't allow them to get things done. Maybe we also see, you know, some sort of Maybe he's a dictator for a day. Maybe he exacts a bunch of vengeance on people who have podcasts that do it three times a day, and they go on MSNBC and they talk a lot of
shit about him. But maybe after that it's kind of over, you know, and then we kind of get back to some sense of normalcy. Maybe he starts worrying about his legacy. If you think about the last four years, the guy's reputation was mud. He was in and out of courtrooms and that sort of thing. Maybe he says to himself, you know what, I want history to remember me truly
as the best president, as the big uniter. You know, if you think about the demographics shifts that we saw just in this last election, I mean, maybe he does have the opportunity to kind of bring some stuff together. I'm not optimistic about it, but if you think about what he just pulled off, and he's thinking about his legacy. I mean, it's something we know he cares about how
people think of him. Maybe this is a you know, the opportunity for a turn for a guy who's probably one of the most miserable people that exists on the planet.
All Right, that don't feel better?
Thank you, Dan Nathan, Thanks for having me, Mollie.
Stephen Vladik is a CNN contribute to and the author of the Shadow Docket. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Steven.
Thanks Molly. Great to be back with you.
So I wanted to have you on as soon as Tuesday started to unfold the way that it started to unfold, I thought to myself, Okay, Donald Trump is going to be president again, and Republicans are going to win the Senate. We knew that was a fedocomplay, and I think it's almost one hundred percent that they're going to keep the House. So I'm wondering in my mind there is only one check. It is a wobbly one, which will be the courts.
I mean, I agree with that, Molly, and I think you know, there are two things about that that are worth saying in a bit more detail. The first is Trump had a trifecta part of his first term too, but he never had the margin in the Senate that he's going to have, and so he could be thwarted right by John McKay and or Lisa Murkowski in a way that won't be true. Started in January. And then the second piece of that is, you know, so many folks like us are conditioned to think that the Supreme
Court can do nothing right. But the Court actually pushed back a lot against Trump during his first term, more than we might have expected for Republican president. And I think it's not you know, it's not a given that is just going to roll over in a second term, especially if, as you say, it looks likely it's going to be all that's left.
Yeah, and I think that is where we are. So one of the reasons why I wanted you to come on is because you're so smart. But also you've written so much about this court. I mean, you are basically the person who got people thinking about and talking about the shadow. I mean, first, the Supreme Court did it by essentially using it to overturn Roe v.
Wade with SBA.
I mean, they did other stuff with it, but that is I feel like the largest, most profound change they made on the shadow docket, but by allowing SBA to stay in Texas, they essentially overturned Row.
A year book for Roe was overturned.
That's right, I mean, Molly, I would say, from a political consequences perspective, I would one up you just with the Alabama redistrict in case in February twenty twenty two, because what was so significant about the court's unsigned, unexplained intervention in that case, which put back into effect Alabama's you know, unlawful congressional district map is it basically gave
Republicans control of the House in the current Congress. You can tie a pretty straight line from that unexplained majority pit you know majority ruling to five Republican House seats that would otherwise be democratic, and that's, you know, that's
the Republican margin right now. So the point, which I mean, it doesn't matter which case you used to make it is that, yeah, this is a court that has done more and more big stuff affecting all of us with less and less explanation, and that's not been great.
I don't want to be a doomer about this Trump term. That's not to say that I want to normalize it. I think the guys that complete a democratic autocrat, But I do think that we still have checks and balances and that Dumerism is actually the enemy, and that it's much better to sort of talk through. And especially when you think about this court, which is filled with you know, Trump put in three Supreme Court justices, but I don't think they think they serve at the present pleasure of Donald Trump.
I think Donald Trump thinks that, but I don't think they think that.
I think that's really astute, and I think that's a really important point that just because the current you know, conservative majority on the Supreme Court rules in ways that a lot of us don't like in most of the cases we care about, doesn't mean that they're in the
bag for Trump. The problem I think that we run into is a problem of the court's own making Molly right, which is, you know, the Court had a really good opportunity just this summer to show us just how not in the bag for Trump they are in the January Sex Community case, and you know, five of the Republican appointees flunked. Only just as Amy Cony Barrett seem to understand the implications of the decision, that the rest of
the court signed on too, So I'm with you. I think numerism is counterproductive, and actually I think sort of feeds into the problem. And I also think that just as a matter of who they are, someone like a John Roberts or a Brett Kavanaugh or at Amy Cony Barrett, you know, they're gonna not do what I want them to do in almost all the cases that matter. But are they gonna let Trump dismantle birthright citizenship? I can't imagine they are. Are they gonna let Trump destroy the
civil service in the executive branch? I can't imagine they are. And so the fact that they'll draw the line closer to Trump than you or I would doesn't mean that they're not gonna draw a line. That may be sort of small solace to folks who are you know, rightly concerned about a Republican trifecta for the next two or four years. But I think we should not give up the ghost that it's importantly more than nothing.
Yeah, I also think that it's more important to stay in this. And I mean, I also want you to talk because I was texting the sky Perryman yesterday. We were we were talking about like how the left needs to think about this next Trump term. And we were talking about like Donald Trump has lost in court a number of times.
Will you expand on that?
Sure?
I mean, so, you know, Trump when he was president had about as poor a track record in the lower federal courts and in the Supreme Court as any president in a long time, molly, including democratic presidents right before a not very different court, you know, just to name a couple of cases. Right, So, with regard to the travel band, Trump had to do three versions of that because the first two got struck down by the courts,
including the second one partly by the Supreme Court. Trump couldn't ask a citizenship question on the twenty twenty census because the Supreme Court stopped him. Right, Trump couldn't rescind DHAKA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals immigration program because the Supreme Court stopped him. And this is a different court, I mean, right, This is a court without Ruth Badergensberg and with Amy Cony Barrett. It is a court that, since Trump left office, has decided Dobbs and Bruin and
you know, the Affirmative Action cases. But I still think that there really is daylight between where the median justices on the court are and a lot of what Trump is going to want to accomplish when it comes to the legality and the constitutionality of you know, his second term agenda.
Right, and again this is back to Donald Trump as bad as bad at courts. It really seems so far, and we just have seen very few appointments, but we've seen two big appointments, two that strike me as kind of the headlines and what he wants to do next, and those are Tom Holman and Steven Miller. I mean, it seems like mass deportation is going to be the first move that seems to me like something that is going to run a fat home the Court's very quickly.
I mean, I think that's right. And you know, Molly, I think we're going to see a lot of you know, blue states and more left winged groups taking pages from like Ken Paxton's playbook in the Trump administration.
That's just what I was thinking.
Go on, yeah, and they're going to find sympathetic lower courts, whether they're you know, in California or Maryland or Massachusetts or what have you, the same way that you know, the Republicans have kept going to Texas over the last four years. Again, right, that's going to put pressure on the Supreme Court. Right first on you know, the shadow docket, first with regard to what will surely be emergency requests from the Trump administration to get out from under those
lower court rule ins. And then on the merits. And I guess I'll just say, like you know, I spend a lot of time criticizing the Supreme Court. There's a difference between the Supreme Court getting a particular legal issue, in my view, wrong, and a Supreme Court sort of giving up its institutional responsibility as a check on the elected branches. This is where the immunity case is a real problem. But it's not the end. And I don't take it as a sign that John Roberts and Brett
Kavanaugh are done. I think it's just, you know why a lot of folks who are not inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt are not inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.
I do not want to wish cast here.
I got in trouble in the twenty twenty four cycle for my sunny optimism if.
You can believe it. But Roberts does come from Reagan world.
These people had an idea they were trying to put on the country, which they have been able to do via Donald Trump. But it's not necessarily Donald Trump's idea of what he wants for the country.
I think this is right, and I think this is why it's really helpful to separate out the six Republican appointees, not by which president appointed them, but by what their north stars are.
Right.
So I think of a John Roberts and a Brett Kavanaugh, and I think even Amy Coni Barrett as folks whose north stars are legal principles molly that have long been part of the conservative legal establishment's agenda. And I don't
like a lot of those principles. I have real problems with many of those principles, but they are principles versus I think you can more fairly level the charge at someone like a Justice Samuel Alito or Justice Clarence Thomas, or indeed Justice Neil Gorsic that increasingly their votes look like their only principle is who's winning and who's losing.
And you know, in a second Trump term, I think the first trio is going to be much more important than the second trio, because that's going to be, you know, the thing to watch. Are they going to stand up for principles in cases in which you know, Trump runs about of them, which you know, I mean, Molly, we might not know exactly which cases they'll be, but they will be cases, right.
No.
No, I think it's fair to say his first plan, this idea of doing camps. Even if you use the Alien Insurrection Act of seventeen ninety eight or whatever it is, you would need to have a foreign war. I mean, the whole theory of the case here is pretty flimsy.
I mean, folks may not remember, but you know, the first travel ban was like the first weekend of Trump's first term. The reason why that never got off the ground was because of federal judges, federal judges in Brooklyn and in California and Hawaii and Seattle. And you know, I think that's what we're in for again. And I totally understand why people are going to come into a second Trump term with less faith that the courts are
going to save us. The courts are not going to save us, but the courts might at least save themselves. And I think that's you know that means standing up for the role of the courts in our system. It means pushing back when the president does thems that are flagrantly unconstitutional. And I think, you know, ironically, Molly, the faster Trump pushes, the more push back he will engender from the judiciary.
Yes, I think that is for sure true.
And you know what I'm struck by just from the early cabinet right now is just how it seems very focused on deportation, whereas I mean, again, obviously this was about Senate confirmation. Yes, but Marco Rubio does not see so you know, he's aligned with the George W. Bush or it's not like he put Tom Cotton in there.
Indeed, although you know, the line between Rubio and Cotton may be elusive, but no, I mean, you know, I mean, I'll just say, like, if we're looking at someone like a Marco Rubio as Secretary of State as opposed to you know, someone who is an absolute lunatic right when it comes to foreign policy, right, if we're looking at you know, I saw a story this afternoon that Matthew Whittaker is back under consideration to be Attorney General. You know, I don't think Whittaker is going to go down in
the pantheon of great attorneys general. But that's still not the same thing as you know, the former gorsicch clerk Mike Davis, who's on social media talking about how we're going to prosecute everyone who's ever criticized President Trump. It's going to be really important for folks to be nuanced in how we assess the threats to the rule of law that are coming.
So there's only so much energy. And I also think that the really important it's going to be it cannot be a stylistic question. It needs to be a subpintive question, like Trump will do things that we won't like personally, but it's a question of when it does sort of mess up the rule of law or American democracy.
I mean to protect institutions.
Speaking of institutions, I want you to talk to us about the Alito Thomas retirement question.
Will they go or won't they? So I mean, I think the first thing to say is November twelfth is not the time to have this conversation, not you and me, but the public discourse around this, right, even if they've both made up their minds to retire, and I suspect neither of them have now me too, right, They're not gonna say anything until at the earliest next summer and even then, right, So, you know, I think folks that just sort of take a little bit of a breath.
I do think that both Alito and Thomas are invested in having President Trump at some point name their successors. But I also think that they both kind of like their jobs. You know, Thomas is just a couple of years away from being the longest serving justice in the Court's history. That you know, he might say publicly that doesn't matter to him. I don't believe that.
I think he said that he wants to be the longest serving.
Right.
One of the amazing things that if you've been on the core for thirty three years, people will find you saying everything.
Right but true.
I think the reality is that they will both likely, you know, sort of not worry about this until next summer, and then it becomes a live question only because you know, it will be interested in who the potential nominies are to succeed them. I was struck. There's a story in the Wall Street Journal, you know, as we're recording this about how quote sources close to Aledo unquote say he has no plans to retire. First of all, that's the exact story I would want out if I did have
plans to retire. But second, it's just too early. I think there's almost no question that Trump will get to replace at least one of them. But whether that's next year or two years from now, well we're three or four years from now. I think it's going to depend on a lot of what happens between now and then.
Yeah, but it is incredible that he will have put in so many Supreme Court justices.
The last president who got to appoint a majority of the Court was Eisenhower, and that was in a very different period. And Eisenhower's appointees included Earl Warren, who was the famous liberal Chief Justice Bill Brennan, who was like the leader of the left wing of the Court into the nineteen eighties. Right, So Eisenhower had the ability to do it, but he actually had a diverse slate of appointees. That hasn't been, of course, what we've seen from Trump.
If you had to guess a Supreme Court justice who would not disappoint you in the profound way they tend to, who would it be?
Who Trump might nominate because there are all people Trump wouldn't nominate this.
No, no, I mean people on the Court right now who might possibly be less disappointing if it comes to, you know, sort of something you know, that might break with the majority.
I don't think there's any question actually that of the six Republican appointees the first vote, who would join the three Democratic appointees in a big rule of law cases. Amy Cody Barrett, I think that became clear last term. I mean, I think she, you know, wrote separately in the Colorado disqualification case. She wrote separately in the January sixth community case. She you know, dissented in one of the biggest environmental cases of the term. She dissented in
the January sixth obstruction case. I mean, I think Molly, she really has, I think, come out of her shell a bit. Not as a more moderate justice than we expected, but again, I mean back to what we were talking about a few minutes ago, as a justice for whom the principles come first and the politics come second. You know, that's who you're going to need in a big rule
of law case. What I think is so striking about last term is that I had assumed the big cases would be the ones where she would join Roberts and the Demes, and it turned out the big cases were the ones in which, you know, she joined the Dems and descent because you couldn't get Roberts. And so, you know, that's why I actually think John Roberts would already have
been massively important in a second Trump administration. But he really, I think, will be the median in any cases that have these massive rule of law implications where the justices are in any way ideologically divided.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. There's a little bit to feel better about in there.
I spend a lot of my time in front of classrooms full of students who I'm trying to convince at once both that the law matters and that we should be realistic about it, right. And you know, to me, Molly, the message is just that the Supreme Court might disappoint us a lot, but I'd rather a Supreme Court that's going to stand up for us some of the time, right than a complete tyranny of the majority, especially given the majority we're facing in the coming couple of years.
Yeah, thank you, Steven, Thanks Molly. No, moment, Jesse.
Cannon, Molly John Fast, I'm so happy we're already getting new Trumps. We got the first buddy. Now, Elon Musk, what do you see it here?
I am seeing that Elon Musk is calling himself the first Buddy's so fucking up. I am going to let that sink in for a minute, but I just want to say that Donald Trump is getting kind of sick of it already. When he was in the House talking to Republicans today, it was reported he thanked Musk for everything he did in the election, but added quote, now I can't get rid of him. Okay, I want to point out the election was eight days ago. Okay, now
I can't get rid of him. It's been eight days of Trump having to deal with Elon and he's already saying.
That, I mean, would you last any longer?
I don't know.
And then he's behaving as if he's a co president and making sure everyone knows it. One of the people's said of Musk, and he's taking a lot of credit for the President's victory, bragging about America pack and X to anyone who will listen. He's trying to make President Trump feel indebted to him, and the president is indebted to no one. This person added, I'm sorry. This has
long been my theory of the case. You know, we talk about Democrats being a big tent, but there is no tent big enough for anti Semites, Zionists, anti vaxers, Elon and Donald Trump's ego and Bill Ackman like I think that this is going to be a very very very short lived tent.
I think the polls are already wobbling.
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