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with some of today's best minds, and Michigan has become the first date in sixty years to have right to work laws repealed. We have such a great show for you today. Politico's Rachel Baide gives us an update on the never ending chaos in Congress. Then we'll talk to on the tape host Dan Nathan about what's happening with our economy. But first we have the editor of Balls and Strikes, Jay Willis.
Welcome to Fast Politics.
Jay, thank you so much for having me to talk about Taylor Swift at the Super Bowl. I wasn't expecting an invitation to talk about this, but I can go for two hours, three hours? How long do you want to do this?
So it was fixed?
Right?
Yes? Okay, clearly?
Oh shit, wait, people are going to listen to this right.
Explain to me what's happening in Fulton County right now?
Well, boy, so, the prosecutor in Fulton County, Fanny Willis no relation, has been leading an investigation into Donald Trump's efforts to Sorry for the legal jargon here, but fuck with the vote count in the twenty twenty presidential election in Georgia, Donald Trump unquestionably did like some very bad
things in there. He you know, was on the phone with the secretary of State, the Republican secretary of State in Georgia, urging him to and I'm quoting here find the votes or threatening him with some sort of like vaguely defined criminal prosecution. I have no idea what Trump was referring to. I kind of assumed he didn't know what he was referring to either. But this is the sort of thing that one does not do without incurring
the wrath of a prosecutor. The problem is that this particular prosecutor apparently had an affair with someone in her office, which is just like deeply misguided on several levels. But what it's led to is Trump's defense team basically arguing that the whole case needs to get thrown out, that it is tainted by this scandal, and he might prevail
on that. I really know yet, but generally speaking, when you're a prosecutor and things are on the rocks because of who you slept with, it's not going great.
Yeah, what is the larger implication for this?
I mean, so there are several parallel investigations into Donald Trump's various alleged forms of criminality. Right, this case is being brought by a local prosecutor. It is independent from, for example, the criminal investigation into Trump in DC, which is not to be confused with the civil investigation into Trump in New York and so on and so forth.
But I think the real damage here is sort of in the way that Trump is going to start spinning this sort of thing if he can create a narrative among his followers and among people who might be susceptible to being his followers, that it is in his best interest to sort of lump these different criminal investigations together.
And if he can use Fanny Willis's misconduct in one particular investigation to sort of smear all of the criminal investigations against him as tainted, as biased, as Democratic hit jobs, that's good for him, which is exactly why he's trying to muddy the waters here.
Yeah. The other thing that it does, right is that it aids one of Trump's biggest legal tactics, right, which is delay.
That's right for both legal and practical reasons, Like, legally speaking, if he is the nominee and wins election and becomes the president again, he suddenly has a whole lot of control over the federal investigations into him. I mean, setting aside the obvious issue of whether or not the president should be directing Department of Justice investigations. Of course, not like it's not like Donald Trump gives a shit about that. He would presume just take action and kill that on
day one. But then also, just like practically politically speaking, if he is president, I think it becomes a whole lot more fraught, for example, for a local prosecutor like Fanny Willis to prosecute him. So he is doing everything he can in this investigation, in other investigations to just run out the clock. I don't know if he's going to be able to run out the clock on every
one of them. But again, the more he is able to narrow down the scope of legal problems he faces, the better his odds are of wriggling out of it.
One more time. I want to just unpack this for another minute. So basically Trump is doing two things here. He wants to discredit this investigation by sort of spreading salacious gossip about Fanny Willis right that she was cheating on her spouse or she actually wasn't married but her boyfriend was cheating on his spouse. By the way, the irony here, the thrice married adulter who has his problem where he paid off a porn star and that's one
of his many legal challenges, is sort of rich. But basically what he's trying to do here is try this case with his people, his fans, right, that's right.
A lot of this is effectively going on in the court of public opinion. I mean, what's happening with Fanny Willis is a part of like functionally more of a pr campaign than anything else. Right, If he can portray the prosecutor who is investigating him as tainted, as biased, as just as mired in scandal, is he is, that's a victory. Like he doesn't necessarily have to rise above it, right, dragging everyone else down to his level creates the same result.
I will say, Like, if you're a prosecutor, like, come on, it's so easy not to sleep with one of your colleagues. You got to not do that. One of the clearest through lines of the legal system in this country is prosecutors fucking up and doing something dumb. At the worst possible time. But like at the same time, it's not like that changes what Trump did. So again it's the creation of an additional salacious story to the salacious story
that landed Trump in court in the first place. And the last thing I'll say about this is if a judge disqualifies Fanny Willis Fanny Willis's office, the case could go forward still. But again, as you say, it's all about delay. Reading about reporting this morning, there's only a few other das in Georgia who have the bandwidth to take on a case like this. So if Fanny Willis gets booted, suddenly we're looking for somebody else, like who has the manpower, who has the bandwidth to do this?
Maybe there is someone, But how long does that process take? The longer it takes, the closer we get to election day, and the closer this gets to practically speaking.
Not mattering, right, and that's the golf for Trump. But also it would take a long time for a Fanny Willis replacement to get read in on this case, right, Can you talk about that? Because the preparation it's month to month.
And month sure, I mean, nothing in the legal system ever moves in like sort of the expeditious timeline that we're used to that perhaps we would like to see for purposes of the news cycle, for purposes of on election. That is very much fixed on the calendar. And a prosecutor, even someone who wanted to take this case, even if they could take it on, like, they can't go into court tomorrow and start freely discussing the subject matter. They have to get read up on it, just like Willis
has been over the development of the case. So yeah, it's not just a matter of designating another lawyer. It's designating another lawyer, another da I mean, who can then begin the arduous process of reading in on the file enough to actually be able to do something with it.
But also today Trump had another legal snaffo. Can you talk about this?
So yeah, the case in New York is going considerably different than the one in Georgia, very different. Tenor no prosecutors sleeping with other prosecutors to the best of our knowledge. And in that one we actually have a trial on the calendar. Now the judge says the hush money trial is going to go forward on March twenty fifth. That is a case in New York State Court. So it's not something that if he were to become president he
could do anything about. Yeah, the specter of this man being in court again, in a courtroom passing notes to his attorney on the rare occasions he constrained together more than three or four words written down, that'll be fun.
I do think that Trump is not happy being a defendant.
I go back and forth on that question, sort of the perils of trying to psychoanalyze a man whose brain consists mostly of cottage cheese. I do sort of think sometimes that, like me, he doesn't think that any of this will ever result in meaningful legal consequences for him. He has derived that lesson from living his entire life, in which there have never been any meaningful legal consequences
for anything. If you sort of take him as someone who is running for president largely because he has nothing else to do, and also it seems like probably the
best weapon he can wield in his legal fights. I sort of think he does like being able to frame himself as a victim persecuted on multiple fronts in multiple states, in different courtrooms, which is why, again, this Fanny Willis thing is such a godsend for him, because what is the George of prosecution about again who knows, right, we're talking about the personal lives of the prosecutors now, not the stuff that landed Trump there in the first place.
It's of course, like benefits him. That's exactly what he wants.
Right, exactly, But it is silatious and it's legal, and it's coming. So just give us an update on where these are. Other cases are the immunity case, will you explain to us what an ongoing bonk is and what that means and if that's happening.
Yes, so, in the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, Trump has asserted that as president he has absolute immunity against criminal prosecution for any acts that he committed as president. If you want to like go a level or two deeper, His argument is that as president, to basically, impeachment is the only method of holding him legally accountable. Therefore, unless he was impeached and convicted by the Senate, he has
immunity from criminal prosecution for it. Today, there are sort of a number of problems with this, namely that it resolves the issue of the president's criminal acts entirely to like the ability to marshal a two thirds majority in the Senate, which, like, I don't know if we could get two thirds of the Senate to agree on anything,
much less convicting a president on impeachment charges. Fortunately, the DC Circuit rejected Trump's claim of absolute presidential immunity, and he is now asking the Supreme Court to sort of.
Block that ruling to do him as solid.
Yes while he seeks what's called en banc review, basically asking the entire DC Circuit to hear the case rather than the smaller three judge panel that issued that decision on bank review is sort of the last step before appealing the merits to the Supreme Court.
Would you think the Supreme Court will go along with God, King Emperor Trump or now?
I do not think that they will want to set a precedent of presidents can never be prosecuted criminally for anything they do in office.
I think the only.
Question is exactly how they how they try and dispose of it to make as few waves as possible. I don't think there's any way they can do it without making waves. It's just how big are those going to be? And what could they be the easiest thing they could do is just decline to hear the case, right to just let the DC Circuit's opinion speak for itself and to allow the which would functionally allow the prosecution to move forward.
But Alito and Thomas seem like such partisan hacks, and also Gorsage and also Kavanaugh. Do you really think they would do something like not help out their guy.
I've been wrong a bunch before, I'll probably be wrong again, But I do think that's probably a bridge too far. Like these justices had the opportunity to get involved in the twenty twenty election if they so wanted, and that was not a fight they're willing to do. The reason control of the Supreme Court is so important for the Republican Party and the conservative legal movement is the legal system has sort of this unearned veneer of legitimacy.
So they would compromise that.
That's right. They have a lot more to gain by not giving Donald Trump everything he wants here in future cases, in future issues that are much bigger than any one person's political career, any one person's presidential aspirations. This is one where they can save a bunch of political capital, burnish the court's reputation, and fight another day, fight a lot more days.
Jesus so interesting. Also, we're all going to die. Thank you for joining us, Thank you.
For having me. Let's save the Taylor Swift conversation for next time. I look forward to it.
Did you know Rick Wilson and I are bringing together some friends for a general election kickoff party at City Winery in New York on March sixth. We're going to be chatting right after Super Tuesday about what's going on, and it is going to probably be the one fun night for the next eighty days. If you're in the New York area, please come by and join us. You can go to City Winery's website and grab a ticket. Rachel Bade is a senior Washington correspondent of Politico and
author of Unchecked Welcome Back, Too Fast Politics. Rachel Bade, thank you, Mollie.
I've missed you.
Glad to be back.
I missed you, and I'm excited to have you back because I think of you as someone I mean, first of all, Congress Historically it can be a slightly sleepy beat. Sometimes what is happening right now doesn't it feel unprecedented? Yeah?
Absolutely, the chaos is. It's definitely ranting supreme. I can tell you that going into this year. My being thought was like, Okay, the Hill's going to be quiet, the campaign triot is going to be interesting.
I'm going to ignore Congress for a while.
No, I keep getting dragged back to my old stomping grounds, the House of Representatives, because I mean, the Republicans right now are just you know, eating each other alive. And the thing that's most shocking to me in recent weeks is the level of hypocrisy that we are seeing from the GOP right now. I mean, in a cosey, it's Washington, They're all I mean, this is we become cynical as reporters.
I mean, I think it's important just just couches. You are not a partisan, absolutely not it. You come from Congress, you work at politicos, so you're really here to just say what you're seeing. But what you're seeing ishpocrasy.
Yes, I mean, I've covered the Hill for over a decade, especially Republicans have a lot of great relationships with them, and they will tell you some even on.
The record, that the level of hipocrasy or here.
Is just uncanny. I mean, I'm thinking first of all about what happened with the border deal recently, so.
Talk us through that just for the people who are not completely right in.
The White House obviously wants to send more money to Ukraine. They've been asking about this for months now, and Speaker Mike Johnson initially put up a requirement that, Okay, if we're going to fund Ukraine, first we have to deal with our defense here at home. We need to crack down on the border. So this was a Speaker johnson initial push right after he became Speaker, and he basically said, look, I want to buy partisan border deal. It takes four months.
Lawmakers go into this rabbit hole in the Senate and they come out and they have a bill that gives Republicans a whole bunch of conservative policy wins.
Democrats get very little in terms of immigration.
It's not so far from HB two, right.
So HR two, which is the House version, just the House version of like a border crack down. It definitely goes further. But these are not policy changes that Democrats
would want for free. It's like pulling their teeth here, and it's all because they want Ukraine money, right, like increasing Sanders or asylum, giving new authority to expel migrants, basically ending what Republicans call catch and release, you know, making it easier to detain people and not release them but actually keep them in house while they're waiting for
their asylum cases. Anyway, a lot of conservative policy wins, and Johnson blows it up, says no because Donald Trump pressures him not to give Joe Biden a win on the border, which is clearly one of his biggest political problems right now. A lot of people do not like how Biden's handling the border issue, and Johnson follows suit. And then after the Senate just a few days ago, passes this Ukraine assistance package without the border. Since Johnson said no to what he originally.
Requested, they send it to the House and.
Guess what the speaker says now, he says it doesn't address the border, so we can't accept it.
It's just like, oh my.
Gosh, right, it's not a great look to say the thing you gave me I don't want. And also I won't help you unless you give me the thing which I just rejected.
Yeah, and like, look, I know we always talk about how during a presidential election year, like I wish we were talking about at the beginning, Usually it goes dark. Not a lot gets done. All the votes are usually like very sort of posturing votes. Messaging, yeah, messaging, but like, you know, there's a real need on the border right now.
It's a top concern for voters.
And you know, you had people like me McConnell in the Senate who were really championing and cheerleading this for a long time until they saw the writing on the wall and then they backtracked. It was just a stunning, sort of embarrassing thing on Capitol Hill recently. I will also say that, you know, Speaker Mike Johnson, a lot of House Republicans were excited about his ascension. Now, a lot of them, and I just wrote about this in Playbook a few days ago, a lot of them are
pining for Kevin McCarthy again. And that is saying something people like Thomas Messy, who is a conservative libertarian esque member from Kentucky. He has long been a top critic of Kevin McCarthy, never been a good fan of him. He said that after Republicans tried and failed to impeach may Orcists just a few days ago, and it's sort
of an embarrassing display. He was like, you know, getting rid of McCarthy was a huge mistake, and people are starting to say that Republicans are saying that a lot behind the scenes right now.
Not a great look for mad Gates, who was the driving force behind getting rid of McCarthy.
Yeah, you know, that's actually a really interesting point.
I should probably find him on the hill and catch up little Buyer's remorse. I'm sure he will never admit it, right, I mean, I think this is like Gates's crowning achievement that he got rid of somebody he completely despised. But look, it's showing that maybe the issue wasn't McCarthy so much as the fact that they have a slim majority in Republicans larger so divided right now between like the Magawine
of the party and the more traditional Republicans. Obviously the Magawine is winging out hardcore right now, and that's a problem when you know, the functions of Congress is to govern and pass legislation and compromises needed, and that is very out of fashion right now.
It's one of the things that I think makes your point really well is that they lost a sixth procedural vote on salt. I know Jesse loves to talk about but it's a sort of like the state and local adoption. Republicans from New York, and I think, quite smartly, believe that if there's any chance of them keeping their seats, they need to try to pass this solid deduction. Can you talk us through what's happening there?
Yeah, absolutely, So these are a lot of Republicans in New York and Biden districts. They're worried about their.
Seats in California too, right.
Yeah, California too, absolutely, and a lot of their constituents high cost areas. Right, they want to be able to take the state and local tax deduction. They want the sort of cap on that to be higher. So basically a bigger tax break for the fact that they're paying all these other state and local taxes at a much bigger rate than the rest of the country is. The centrist
Republicans were pushing Johnson to allow vote on this. He said he would allow it, but it didn't even come to a full vote because before you have the vote on the legislation, you have what's called a rule in the House of Representatives. It's basically just governing the debate for them considering this bill, and usually it's up to the majority. To carry a rule two passage, they need to get a majority of the House. Usually it's the majority of Republicans are the ones who are supposed to
carry this. Instead, eighteen Republicans voted against it. All Democrats voted against it. The rule went down and it.
Never got considered. And the thing to know about this is it's it's the sixth time this has.
Happened since Johnson began Speaker, and that is more than I believe something in like half a century, Congress has not seen a rule go down or fail on the floor this often, and more than half a century. And I will also note former Speaker Nancy Pelousi never lost
a single vote on the House floor. Johnson has lost more than a half a dozen, including an effort to try to impeach the DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorchis and try to fund Ukraine to Israel, which is a largely bipartisan issue on Capitol Hill, but the way he did it pissed a lot of people off and it went down.
He like did this sort of weird hell Mary pass where he's like, we're going to do Israel funding with no offsets, which would mean just like more money more foreign a. Politically, there's a lot of popularity for it, and it died too, and the Israel people were like, don't do it this way.
Yeah.
So initially he had put this money up for a vote months ago, but with these controversial offsets, basically targeted a bunch of democratic priorities to cut spending there and move that money to fund this new assistance for Israel. That pissed off a lot of Dems. They said, no, this isn't easy out. Now he sort of moved forward getting rid of those offsets, just doing what they call a clean bill that doesn't include sort of these partisan policy winds. But it came right after Johnson killed the
border bill. And what's important to know about this is that the White House has been asking for a national security package that includes money for Israel, money for Ukraine, and money for Taiwan. They want to keep them all together because the belief is that the medicine goes down with a little sugar, right, So you know, people who don't want to vote for Ukraine, maybe they vote for
this package because they do want to support Israel. Johnson sort of carved that up, took Israel out, and tried to pass it what is known as under suspension of the rules of the House. This means it requires two thirds of a majority to actually pass, not just a simple majority. So a lot of Republicans and Democrats needed. A lot of Democrats or pissed that he was trying to curve off this money just on Israel instead of
also addressing Ukraine. And then he had also flip flopped on this notion of offsetting this funding, so a lot of Conservatives who wanted to see this money paid for were pissed at him too. So it's just the thing I keep hearing over and over about him by Republicans in the House is that he's all over the place. He's flying by the seat of his pants.
With McCarthy, they said, at least he had a strategy.
Not everybody liked it, and a lot of people accused him of lying all the time, which was a big problem for him. But he had a strategy, he pitched it to his members, and oftentimes he stuck to it. With Johnson, it seems like his mind is changing depending on you know, the week, and you know he's doing one thing with Israel, then he backtracks a couple weeks later,
his members get mad. He's telling members that he does support helping Ukraine, but then refuses to put Ukraine money on the House floor because of the threat from the magawing and some of his members like Marjorie Taylor Green saying they will oust him a speaker if he allows such a vote. So he's all over the place and that's really angering a lot of people, whether they're Conservatives, modern Republicans, Hawks, or even doves in the House right now, and it's not a good place for him.
I want to ask you about retirements because one of the things that we're seeing Republicans in the House and Democrats do, but the Republican ones have gotten a lot of attention. Mark Green, who's the Chair of Homeland Security, is leaving after only six years. And these are like young Gish people for Congress anyway, young I just was hoping you could talk about that.
Yeah, Mark Green still has a brown hair, so yes, that's not that's not the majority in Congress. It's a huge deal Chairman leaving, and what it says is that Republicans are not confident about keeping the House number one. Well, obviously the majority is very slim right now. When is it like a three C.
Wait, I found the people are resigning, So with Kay Granger, who voted to Keith McCarthy, Ken Buck, who's been actually very vocal about the majorcist stuff, Blake luke Meyer. Right, but these are all sort of twenty ten. I mean Greg Pence, we knew, Mike Bence's brother. I mean, if you look at the numbers, and then Kevin leaves, Kathy McMorris Rogers, Mike Gallagher, they're sort of young ish and sort of ambitious and leaving right.
Yeah, No, I mean CMR Kathy mc morris Rodgers once in Republican leadership herself. Yeah, I mean, she's got a powerful committee position that she's wanted for a long time. Gallagher has very much been seen as sort of an up and comer. He's super young. I don't think he's gonna be like in his what lordies, No, not even I think he's like in his thirties, actually maybe forties. He yeah, the case closer to my age, but I could be totally warm about that. But again, he has
brown hair, which is not the norm in Congress. But two things that this says. Number one is thirty ninety nine.
Wow.
Okay, he's older than me, I'm just saying, but still very young. It says two things.
It says that people are number one, there they're pissed about Congress not working anymore, and like, you know, Republicans are in the majority, and you don't hear a lot of them talk about this on the record, but basically every one of them will admit this to you, either on background or you know, in a private conversation, that
they're a shit show right now. They don't know what they're doing, and the party's all over the place, and they think it's going to get worse because Donald Trump is going to be the nominee and there's a big fear of him also pulling down Republicans. But like, if you come to Congress, actually pass legislation, get things done, and like you have Republicans openly admitting that they're not putting a solution on the floor because Donald Trump wants to keep that problem to run on in twenty twenty
four read the border specifically. That's frustrating to a lot of members. And so you know, people are sort of looking at the ready on the wall. They think they're probably not going to be in the majority again in twenty twenty five. And look, they're just saying this is they're looking at their time and saying that they'd rather be doing other things.
So it's pretty telling.
Yeah, talk me through Maorca's this impeachment now starts. It means that the Senate can't do anything right.
Yeah, No, the Senate they can if they want, but they have to do this trial.
Right.
That's actually been something that I've been doing some reporting on. There's a number of ways Democrats can try to get out of the trial, and there are conversations happening right now in the White House and also among Senate Democrats
about how quickly can they make this go away. There is definitely a feeling amongst Democrats, and by the way, a lot of Republicans in the Senate, in the sort of legal constitutional scholar braining act community too, that sort of leans to the right, that this impeachment was not merited. It was not high crimes into misdemeanors. The Founders talked about whether they should allow impeachment to be done for policy issues, and the Founders completely rejected that debate and
decided that no, they didn't want that yet. That's exactly what the House did, so there's a feeling amongst Democrats that they want to get rid of this. There's talk right now about doing what's called emotion to dismiss, basically after the articles come over to the Senate, which will happen next week. It's going to happen right after the Senate comes back from their President's Day recess. They can basically vote right away to try to get rid of
the articles dismiss. They can also allow for opening statements. But by the way, if they do that, that means Marjorie Taylor Green is going to be presenting on the Senate floor talking about Biden and the border.
That was my next question. Tell us who these impeachment managers are, because this is amazing.
The one that obviously stuck out to me was Marjorie Taylor Green.
And this is not someone that the White House is going to be wanting to give a huge microphone too.
So again, this is why Democrats are looking to end.
This or maybe they should.
Well that's actually a good point because I did have that thought too. But also she could say a lot of things that are not exactly true. During a trial, you can't just rebut her, right, the managers present, and then the defense presents. You can't interrupt and say objection, this is not true, So it's basically giving her like a free rate to say what she wants. They can just dismiss it at the front. They can do opening
arguments and then dismiss it. And then the thing that a lot of people are talking about right now is actually referring these impeachment articles to a committee. This has been done with non presdential impeachments in the past, things like judicial impeachments, where they basically send it to a committee, the committee investigates it and then recommends that the full Senate vote up or down. In the Senate votes up
or down. So the problem with this though is even if it goes to a committee, we could see hearings on this matter. And again I think the White House wants this to go away asap. It'll be interesting to see what they do, but definitely don't expect like a long drawn out process.
So so interesting making Marjorie Taylor Green an impeachment manager. The theory of the case here with Republicans, I think is that the base loves Marjorie Taylor Green and the rest of us or the sort of persuadable voter, of which you know there are fewer and fewer that they will grow to love her. But if you're trying to keep the House, is this a brilliant play?
Absolutely not, I would say there are.
I know from conversations with Republicans on the Hill a lot of them know that she is a loose cannon and that it will very much blow back on them politically. The reason she is in this position is because of the power she wields in the House. I can tell you you know, when they were doing these Biden and impeachment hearings a while ago, just to give you some insight into this, there was a debate about whether the achiachment should be going through the House Oversight Committee or
the House Judiciary Committee. There was a couple hearings in the House Oversight Committee that were frankly embarrassing or Republicans where their own witnesses said that what Biden had done or these allegations of gets Biden again were not.
Liberal turally right, yes, yes, exactly not so liberal, but definitely very conservative.
And so there was talk about, Okay, Oversight.
Doesn't know what they're doing. Jim Jordan is the chair of the Judiciary Committee. Let's just move this over to Jordan. A lot of Republicans were telling me they wanted to do this. The answer, however, was no, because of one main reason. Marjorie Taylor Green is on oversight and she wants this and if we take it from her, she will get pissed, and nobody wanted to piss her off in leadership. So the reason she is getting this position is not because Republicans think she's a great messenger. They
know she's a very flawed one. The reason she's getting it is because they're trying to praase her. And if they don't give her this position when she's been lobbing for it considerably behind the scenes, then they're going to be in trouble. And that again, it's not a place that these chairmen or Republican leaders be in right now.
So it's yet another Republicans being held hostage by their crazy.
By the bar right by the mataway, yes, and against what they know is their best interest in their own political gut instincts.
So it's really interesting, really interesting. Thank you so much, Rachel.
Happy to be on while I get to see you.
Dan Nathan is a panelist on Fast Money as well as the co host of the podcast on the tape and Okay Computer. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Dan Nathan.
Thanks for having me back, Molly. It's one of my favorite podcasts. You know, I have a few of my own, so therefore I have to put it in one of my favorite but I love Fast Politics.
Oh your best. So I'm very happy to have you here. And first I want you to explain to us because it's sort of an interesting week in the public markets, not getting a ton of like non market related press. It has not carried over into the news cycle, but a little bit interesting. Talk to this about what happened on Monday and is sort of market volatility that followed.
Yeah, so we had a situation where all eyes were on this CPI report. This is an inflation reading that a lot of market participants follow very closely, and you know, expectations have been and for the last year that a lot of the effects of the Fed's monetary policy was to bring down the level of inflation. We saw it get as high as nine percent in twenty twenty two, and therefore, you know they have this two percent target. They've been speaking about it every time they have the
opportunity to do so. On the administration has been touting the fact that inflation has come down dramatically from those lofty levels in twenty twenty two. So we got a reading for January inflation on Tuesday morning, and it was a little hotter than expected.
Three point one for the year.
Correct three point one percent year over year, and so a lot of I guess economists or strategists were expecting possibly a two point something reading, right, getting closer to their two percent target, which would give the Fed the ability to then lower interest rates, right, And so that's something that markets have been keying off. The stock market just made a new all time high with the S and P five hundred at this nice round number of
five thousand. Well, there we were, we close there on Monday. And on Tuesday, with that hotter than expected reading, which is pushing out the Fed's ability to lower interest rates,
the stock market sold off pretty aggressively. It has since recovered over the last couple of days, but a lot of economists, a lot of investors, a lot of strategists are starting to price in the fact that maybe the Fed will not be able to lower interest rates sooner than some had expected, which is something that buoy's stock market valuations, which is one of the main reasons why the stock market from its October lows has rallied more than twenty percent.
Right, weill unpack that number for us, because it's actually a little bit misleading.
Right, Yeah, a lot of folks have been like arguing for a very long time the way that that CPI is calculated. You know, it just doesn't incorporate a lot of things that a lot of regular Americans feel, whether it be a hump and whether it be food, whether it be auto insurance, whether it be certain services that we all have to pay for, And so that reading
is a little funky, you know. It's also one of these things where it seems like every sort of economic reading that has the ability to kind of move the stock market as it relates to what the Fed might do with monetary policy, there's always some folks who just want to tear them apart and say they're not actual good readings. There's a lot of stuff in the employment data that speaks to the same thing. And that's another thing. You know, we can talk about inflation, but that January
employment report was really hot too. Write it's showing that wage growth is really good at a time where unemployment is that fifty year lows, basically all time lows. So you can speak as much as you want about inflation coming down, right, But you can also talk about a very hot jobs market. You can talk about you know,
upward pressure on wages. That is also a big input as it relates to inflation, so you know, and then you've got to go back to, Okay, well, if the employees are making more money year over year, right, and if inflation is still higher than the Fed would like it to be, if that inflation rate is below the wage growth level, right, that should be good for consumers. So there's all these sorts of ways that kind of
parse this out. But the upshot of this week and some of the data that we've seen unemployment over the last week or two is that the economy is still really strong. And as long as the economy is strong, then the Fed doesn't really have much case to lower interest rates. And that very high interest rate is the thing that could put the US economy into a recession, and that's the thing that a lot of people are fearful, right.
So there's a circular logic here, and also even more than that in those inflatiary numbers, wasn't the sort of the largest uptick in real estate?
Yeah? Right, So one of the things that you think that with you know, interest rates going higher, mortgage rates going higher, the ability to kind of for people to to kind of move it has been hindered. So you've had this kind of really unnatural situation where you know, like housing prices have stayed very high because people are
not willing to move out of their very low mortgage rates. Right, So we've seen mortgage rates as high as they've been in the last year or so in many decades or so, So you know, you have asset prices that are very high. So you have housing, you have the stock market, you know, a whole host of other things. And so the Fed again what they're trying to do with these high interest
rates is kind of tamp down demand. Right. They want the economy to cool a little bit because they don't want inflation to become entrenched in the economy because then it's a situation where like in the seventies and Mally, you and I you don't really remember you the idea of stagflation, right, where you have a low growth environment, but you have high prices and therefore it just that that's the sort of thing that would weigh on risk assets.
So the FED is not ready to drop the mic and take a victory lap and say mission accomplished just yet.
And that's the one thing, going back to your original question, that cause volatility in the equity market, because on the CPI report, you saw interest rates move higher and you saw stock market prices go lower, and that's the sort of thing that if that were just kind of you know, if investors were starting to think that, oh man, we are not going to get to that two percent in a target, and the Fed's going to keep interest rates higher,
meaning more restrictive on the economy, then the longer that goes on, is that the greater the likelihood that we have to go into recession. And just so you know, as we're recording this today, two of the headlines that I saw is that the UK pushed into a recession over the last quarter, and so did Japan. So we're starting to see this in some very large economies around the world.
Right, UK and Japan both countries that said no to immigration, thus having a tighter labor market, thus having more inflation, US tipping into recession, not necessarily why they tipped into recession, but certainly Brexit is not helping.
Yeah, I mean this situation. I mean, we know that Japan has this massive demographic issue and it's been going on for a very long time. Their economy has been really stuck in the mud for a long time also, But when you think about the UK and obviously the break from the EU, you know, the EU is probably the next shoe to drop, as you know, as it
relates to a recession. You know, the war in Ukraine has obviously been a bit of a headwind for the European economy and so you know, it brings us back to the US a little bit, and all the kind of fiscal wrangling that we have about aid towards Ukraine. I mean, the situation in Ukraine was one of when Russia invaded, was one of the major issues that caused that inflationary spike. In twenty twenty two. We were just coming out of COVID, We're dealing with a lot of
the supply chain disruptions. A lot of that came from you know, China and the like. But then all of a sudden, we saw it with energy. We saw it with grain, and so this is one of the reasons why I just don't get the Republican stance towards aid to Ukraine if you think about just the potential bottlenecks
that it has with the global economy. The other aspect that I just mentioned is obviously an expanded war in the Middle East, and we already know what's happened to shipping routes in the Red Sea right causing the US and the UK the bomb you know, the Hooti rebels who are causing a lot of disruptions there. You know, that
is inflationary. And then throw into the fact that on the flip side of this, we have further you know, wrangling about you know, trade situations with China which are obviously inflationary at a time where the Chinese economy is actually in the opposite situation, it is deflationary. And you could make the argument, while we have inflation in the developed world, you know, a deflationary economy in China because so much of the world relies on China rights as a as a place to you know, kind of do
business with them. That's a really, really bad situation in my opinion, so not being priced into the stock market here in the US at all time highs in my opinion.
Yeah, those hooty rebels, God forbid you disrupt shipping lines. America is not going to tolerate that. I'm not taking the side of the hoosy rebels. I mean, whatever is going on there is.
Not a good stance. But you know, one of the things that I am routinely, you know, as I sit on the desk at Best Money on CNBC and the podcast that we do in the life, there's a little bit of a conundrum playing out here right now because when I think about the stock market at all time highs, I think about consumer confidence at pretty decent levels. I think home prices where they are, right, I see, you know, households.
You know, we're starting to see the savings rate tick down a little bit, consumer credit tick up considerably, but consumer confidence is pretty high. We have, again, we have decent waves growth above four percent year every year. We have unemployment below four percent at all time highs. We see you know, inflation, while this is a measure of year over year, so at three point one percent, it's still high, right, that's a cumulative sort of level here
things seem okay for the economy. We avoided a recession that the stock market in twenty twenty two was pricing in in twenty twenty three. The thing that I can't figure out is that why registered voters, right and even Democrats feel so pessimistic about the economy in this election year. And it's one of the things that I'm going to be you know, I'm going to be really trying to figure out for most of this year because we see how the Biden administration, how poorly they rank when it
comes to the economy. And given everything that we know about Donald Trump and the chaos that he causes with just the kind of world order, the comments that he made about NATO, that should be one of the scariest things. If you are a US multinational company and you do a lot of business in Europe, you do a lot of business in Asia, you do a lot of business
in the Middle East. What he has to say about NATO is massively disruptive, in my opinion, and you should be scared shitless about that, right, And so nothing is being priced into that now. I don't want to talk about Donald Trump every day like we had to in twenty sixteen or like we had to in twenty twenty, at least from my standpoint as a market show. But I feel like the markets are really underestimating this sort
of thing. And at some point the Biden administration has to start leading with their successes that they've had on the economic front. Right, at some point it has to kind of plow through to the voter.
I'm going to blow your mind here when I tell you that. In fact, Joe Biden and even in Axios yesterday, Axios in a piece about how the Inflation Reduction Act is actually creating these mini booms in states that have not had any investment. I mean, I agree, and I think they have to take it to the road. But I just want to point out that the road. For example, I was with a bunch of smart people and they were like, why doesn't Biden go out there. He's out
there literally every day giving speeches. They are not being covered because people find it boring unless he gaffs. So you do see, I mean, I have seen and the I mean these guys you kind of get them too. I mean, you cannot get them to shut up about chips.
Well, they need better surrogates. I mean, like it's really simple. I mean, I don't know if you watched John Stewart's return to the Daily Show the other night, it was a pretty brilliant piece where he came out on that Thursday night press or he was unhappy with you know, like the you know, the categorization of him as a well meeting elderly man with a bad memory and John Stewart's bit. And I'm so glad he's back. I really
missed him. I actually honestly think that if he and Colbert had not gone off Comedy Central in twenty sixteen before the election, I think that Hillary would have won. I'm not blaming them. I go, like, kudos to those guys,
but I'm glad he's back. But the point there is that, like he had the opportunity to come out, be force full, stick to the message, be combative with some of these fox a holes, and then he just couldn't let it be and he had to come back and remind everybody that he literally in twenty twenty campaigned from his basement in Delaware. He will not be able to kind of
deliver the message on his own. Kamala Harris will not be able to deliver the message on the areas that they need to be strong on, whether it be the economy, whether it be you know, his legislative agenda that was very successful in the first term. So I don't know, man, I think we're kind of like whatever the bad def con is, you know what I mean, I don't know one or five, but we're getting close to that one.
And when folks, you know, John Stewart and his return to the Daily Show, you know, put a very fine point on it. We know who that audience is, and we know the sort of messaging they have. They need better sarrogates, that's how they get covered.
Yeah, if we're going to open the door. And does John Stuart make a great point by making fun of Biden for his age? I mean, okay, I mean I don't know. I've watched a lot of Biden's speech shoes And is the man a gifted orator he gifts a good speech? No, he never was.
You know, let me tell you something. I'm going to point you to a podcast that my friend Wilfred Frost did that his father did with Joe Biden in nineteen eighty eight, and it's in the podcast stores. It's called the I Think it's called the Frost Files. And this was a never before released interview of Joe Biden when he was running for president the first time in nineteen eighty eight. And go listen to this. He sounded like
an absolute fighter and a rock star. And I get it, it was a long time ago, but you know what's crazy. As I was listening to this interview, Okay, this was David Frost and Joe Biden, it sounded like Gavin Newsom
in twenty twenty four. And that's the sort of fighters that we need out there, you know what I mean, like kind of like making the case against Trump right now, against against Maga politics, against you know, like isolation is sort of stuff that that couldn't be worse for our country's future as we think about this kind of rhetoric, as they know, and the economy, if the economy is doing well, then they need to make a better case
for it. If Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are not the people to do it, certainly Janet Yellen's not the person to do it, then they need to find those people, and they need to find them fast. Because I'll tell you this, Molly right now, and you get me a little fired up here, okay. Is that the economy's okay
right now? Okay, So if we think to November fifth, Okay, if we think about that date, they'll likely and if we want to look at the probabilities, okay, whether the economy is much better than it is right now or much worse, Okay, I'm kind of leaning towards much worse as we get longer into this year, okay, And that
will be an absolute disaster. And it also brings me back to twoth Zoan and eight and that election year where the McCain thing was sunk because the economy fell apart, right, and obviously he was not doing a great job on the campaign front and everything like that. But I get
really nervous about that. And so as bad as Biden is polling right now in the economy, and the fact that all this stuff as it relates to Trump, all the stuff that's in the news, and all the gas and all the nastiness and all the cruelty and all the demronic sort of things that he says, that Joe Biden is still pulling the way he is on the economy in this environment. It's just crazy to me, and I don't think it gets better from here.
So let's talk about the tight labor market for a minute. Labor markets still tight. No immigration passed yet again, because why legislate, I mean, what is the solve for that?
Well, the hard part here is that until they actually get any credit for putting some policy in place, and I know that they wanted to do this bipartisan deal on the border, the border is the thing that's going to actually get all that headline.
I mean, it'll get all the right wing headlines.
But it's crowding everything else out. And so when you think about immigration, and you started talking about this as it relates to unemployment, we're talking about that data, you know what I mean, Like, look at the demographic problems that a country like China has. They have over you know, one point two billion people some estimates, by twenty fifty, they're going to have eight hundred billion people. They have
a huge problem. So, like the whole idea that China is our big advisary right now over the next few decades, that just might not be the case. But fixing our border in a bipartisan way, in a humanitarian way, you know what I mean, And then doing the sorts of things that I think Democrats want to do the way that they view immigration, and you know, for you know, our economic well being, we can't do that until we
fix the border. And that's obviously another place right or wrong that this administration and the party in general, they rank very poorly on.
I'm going to blow your mind here, which is you know that the Republicans blow up the border?
Do you know that? But like when you think about who are the people that are going to dictate who wins this election in November, it's from four or five states. We know the states very well, okay, we know the economic sensibilities of those states. Again, you and I on Fast Politics or whatever, we have these sorts of conversations among the people that we generally agree with. We can talk about it until we're blue in the face. But
I'll tell you this, I'm gonna blow your mind. A lot of very left leaning people that I speak to who are in business or in Wall Street or or related industries who actually vote against their economic best interests for social reasons as it comes to democratic politics, are really freaking worried right now. Okay, And I don't think there's enough of that you know, trepidation in the public scene right now among Democrats. I think it's a huge problem.
So we're all gonna sit here and make ourselves feel better about like how we align on certain social issues, how we align on geopolitical issues. But we're going to lose this election. Okay, we're going to lose this election if we really don't get our act together, become a bit more vocal about some of these really important points that I don't think between now and November they're going to rank better on the economy. I don't think they're going to rank better on the war in gozep between
now in November. And you can talk to about to me about gun control, you can talk to me about abortion and all those sorts of things that they have won elections on over the last few cycles, and they're not going to matter this time because these other ones are going to be more important, and it's going to be in my opinion, it's about messaging and it's about choosing the right fighters.
So you're getting this off polls, well, you tell me. I mean, I just saw New York's third district where Democrats won by eight points. It was this sixteen points in Nassau County. It was a Republican seat.
They never should have lost that seat.
You can Monday Morning Gorter Rag And in fact, when you listen to the voter interviews, the voters were One of the things Swazi did, which I think is quite smart and Democrats need to do, is he said there
was a border deal. The reason why you believe and a lot of New York people believe that migration even though it's down for the last two months, but okay, is because the Republican governor from Texas is busing migrants into New York City, and the New York Post, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch, who is a reactionary fascist and who would die for another Trump presidency, is running
pictures of migrant crime all the time. So I go to my dermatologist and she says, what are they going to do about the migrants because we have a manufactured bomb here. Fine, okay, tight labor market. So I have complicated feelings about demonizing a group of people desperate for
a better life, like our grandparents and great grandmars. But okay, but I'm just saying, if you look at what Swazi did, which was smart and is A really good template was he went to voters and he said, look, Democrats made all these compromises to get a border deal. Donald Trump told Speaker Mike Johnson not to take the deal. And there is no orderdale and so these people have no path to make money. There is no legal way for
them to earn money. They cannot pay Social Security taxes, they cannot work, and so they live on the doll.
Yeah, listen, iimus is sympathetic to all of that. Okay, Like I live in New York City, I see what's going on. I give to a whole host of things, you know what I mean, And I try to be extremely empathetic to all that.
So you don't even need to be sympathetic. This is economic sense to have people work in the labor market.
You and I are on the same page. But what I'm saying is is, like we have the potential to maybe win back the House, the potential to hold the Senate, right but like the strong potential or the probability right now is that we lose the White House, and we know what's going to happen. He didn't give a crap who owns what House or the Senate. Like things are going to get really nasty here. And so my point
is really happy about this, you know, special election. He's going to have to run again in November, right like then we need more people voicing those sorts of messages in a way that that's kind of relating to the people. Listen. I live in New York City. I canceled the New York Post in twenty sixteen. You know, I read the Wall Street Journal. I don't read the page, but I read the New York Times. Read the same things that you do, right like every morning, and I don't read
the ruper burdock crap. It is busting through you know what I mean? Oh yeah, Bubble, I agree with No.
No, it's a good point. Thank you so much. I didn't mean to be combative.
No, I love it. Let me tell you something. I'll leave you with this. Okay, if we on this side don't have these sorts of battles right now, we are literally going to be in for it, man. Because if you thought twenty seventeen, eighteen, nineteen twenty and into early twenty one were bad, just wait.
No, and I agree. And the truth is like the road to Hillary Clinton losing was filled with a lot of smugness.
Yeah. I talked to a lot of people like you, Molly, who have big voices in bullhorns and the like, and everybody has just coalesced around the fact that this is the team. It's Biden Harris and I get it. There's not this you know, you can't challenge them. You're never going to have a future in the Democratic Party. The DNC's rigged it. There's not you know, primary apparatus in place.
But man, if this guy you know, trips over a podium like his, I guess Defense secretary and his immobilized, I mean, its lights out because Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket, that's not winning. And you tell me how you get a you know, Gavin Newsom Witner ticket that dog hunts. I'm just telling you that Doug
hunts right now. But listen, I'm going off here. But I think more people need to start to speak up and figure out what a plan be is because we're right about ready to be in a very difficult situation and not so distant future. Thank you, Dan, all right, MOLLI seea thanks.
No moment Jesse Cannon Hi jug fast.
There is a lot of exciting clips coming out of the Fanny Willis trial today, what'd you see here?
I'm enraged about this trial. First of all, it's not a trial, it's a hearing. The Republicans are trying to get Fanny Willis. The Fulton County DA kicked off of this case because she had before the indictment data. One of the lawyers on the case, by the way, she's no longer with him. And it was an entire four or five six hours, a bunch of hours of them trying to sully her and imply that she was somehow
doing something improper. It was like yet another time when I've watched Maga World try to target a woman, in this case, a woman of color with like a low, sleeezy innuendo, and it's funny because it's like, it's not funny, it's infuriating. But if you think about it, the Republicans, this is all in service to one Donald J. Trump, who in fact did pay a porn star when his third wife was pregnant so that she would not rat
him out during his run for president. I mean, all of the CD innuendo, all of the sleazy crap that these lawyers are trying to pin on this woman because she wants to hold Donald Trump accountable. Well, all that stuff,
by the way, Donald Trump did it. So to sit there and watch really a professional, smart woman, who with a really accomplished career, who had had all of these very accomplished jobs be sullied by these disgusting lawyers in service to Donald Trump, it gave me real flashbacks to some of the many, many times we've seen Trump sick of fans do disgusting things to women in the name of Donald Trump, and those fuckers they're my moment of fuckery.
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.