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. Donald Trump has rescinded almost all of Joe Biden's executive orders. We have such a great show for you today, Samophoores, Dave Weigel stops by to talk about what is going on in American politics, Donald Trump and his inauguration. Then we'll talk to Faiz Shakir about his run to head the Democratic National Committee. But first the news.
So Mali yesterday, so much happened.
We basically have to just pick up where we left off and start talking about some more of the things that are.
Unfolding before us.
The first of which I will shock you is changes to DII and I don't mean Don Eric and Evanka.
Nobody has never thought it was Don Eric and Evanka.
So what are you talking about? That's what it.
Is, Donald Trump. I can't believe you anyway. That's like the worst dad joke ever, Donald Trump.
That's why I did it.
Yeah, has declared war on DEI. Now again, this is all this Christopher Rufo stuff about fighting against diversity, fighting against inclusion, fighting against equity. Think about how insane. It is that somehow, this affluent white guy who has been born into money is trying to make things more fair by taking away one of the little bits of things
that we have in this country. To try and protect people of color anyway and people who are from diverse backgrounds, he has put all ordered all all US government staff working on DEI to be put on immediate paid administrative leave. So that means people who are like working on DEI in the army, that means people who are tangentially related to DEI. In an executive order issued on Tuesday, Trump called for an end to dangerous, demeaning and immoral programs.
I mean, George Orwell would be so jealous of the kind of double speak that Donald Trump engages in on the regular and since re taking office on Monday, the President has acted swiftly to use his executive orders to target diversity, equity, and inclusion. Because that's just the kind of guy.
He is.
Great stuff, really really happy all this is happening.
Yeah, oh yeah, hitting it on all for cylinders. Yes, continue, let's turn that around.
So yesterday, at the Washington National Cathedral, the episcopal Bishop Reverend Maryann bud gave a speech that let's say it means JD Viz, Donald Trump, Malania and nushevit's uncomfortable. What I would say is the snowflakes seemed very triggered.
Yeah, they really did. I just want to point this out. What made them uncomfortable was her saying, you have felt the presidential hand of a loving god, the name of our God. I ask you to have mercy. This is literally what she's saying that's getting him so upset. I'm asking you to have mercy on the people in our country who are scared.
Now.
This okay, I'm asking you to have mercy on the people in our country who are scared.
Now.
This is the thing that got them so upset. I'm sorry, but really, that's the thing that got everyone mad.
Molly, you're missing something. What the president said. She was in nasty in tone, in not compelling or smart. You know that thing offends him.
What offends him?
Wouldn't people say things in nasty tones and are not compelling or smart, right?
Not compelling or smart. Yes, he does not like it when people have a nasty tone. Even though the sixty five year old is the first woman to serve as the spiritual leader of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington. She led the diocese since two thousand and eleven. She worked in the Episcopal Church in Minneapolis. She's an alumni of the University of Rochester. She's quite smart, She's not particularly
partisan anyway, She's going to end up in Gimo. God bless you, Bishop Bud, and take some hair products with you to Cuba.
Oh boy.
Well, speaking of going to foreign countries, Trump has authorized ICE to target courthouses, schools, and churches.
So he had talked about this during the campaign. Here's the problem with cruelty is that it doesn't play well on television. So Trump has a problem. Now he has a base that wants him to be cruel, a base that he has promised he will be cruel too, right, and then everyone in America now has a all most not obviously everyone, but a lot of people have phones, and a lot of those phones have cameras, and a
lot of those phones take video. So we're going to see so many videos of children being pulled out of schools, of crying mothers being pulled out of hospitals and churches. You tell me if the reality television president enjoys the programming of people being pulled out of schools, hospitals, and churches. I think that this is going to be incredibly hard to square, especially when he has these new corporate overlords.
I am right there with you speaking of other things that I don't think are going to go as well as they planned. And really we already have evidence of that on day two of the presidency. DOGE is shaping up to be not so hot ah Doge.
DOGE is not without its problems. So here we are in doge Land. It's a group that is focused on government efficiency and also making a meme a government office.
Well a meme coin.
It's also it's both a meme and a coin and a meme coin. Congratulations ladies and gentlemen. DOUGE is run by the first Budy one, Elon Mush. And what's pretty interesting about DOGE is that it is so efficient it's already gotten rid of its COHD Viveke Ramaswami. Now the stories of why a Veke left are still coming to the foreground, but it was not without its problems. Correct.
What it seems really is is people always forget that egos in a room only have finite space and the room was not big enough for everyone's egos.
Yes, let me tell you what else is going on here. So first we have the Veke is gone, he's back in Ohio. He's going to run for governor in two years. But this is sort of how they're spinning it. But now Elon is the boss, and he seems to have already. The reporting is that he has a White House email address already, which is pretty exciting for the first Budy. He also has a lot of clearance and information, and there are people who suspect that maybe he has more
clearance and information than he should. But he's spending his time, as we would hope, still on Twitter, because really where else should he be but Twitter? And the good news is on Twitter. He is fighting about open Ai because Elon Musk doesn't get along so well with the open Ai crew. So shortly after President Donald Trump announced a massive AI infrastructure investment from the White House, by the way,
with soft Bank. You'll remember in season one of the Trump Presidency, Donald Trump also did a big thing about something he was going to do with soft Bank. Soft Bank definitely loves Donald Trump, so they don't actually have any money. Musk wrote on his social media platform formally known as Twitter. SoftBank has well under ten billion dollars secured. I have that on good authority. Aitherway, Elon could just
write a check tomorrow. But okay, Trump said the investment will create a new company called Stargate to grow artificial intelligence infrastructure in the United States. The leaders of SoftBank, Open Ai, and Oracle, which is also owned by a Donald Trump Megadnor Larry Ellison, stood alongside Trump during the announcement. The company's will invest one hundred billion in the project to start. Okay, Elon Musk writes in a tweet, they don't actually have any money, and then he follows up,
SoftBank has well under ten billion secured. I have that on good authority. Now. Sam Altman, who is the guy who runs open Ai and is also got very good, funny hair like Justin Bieber, wrote a tweet wrong, as you surely know want to come. Is it the first site already underway? Question Mark, this is great for the country. I realize what is great for the country isn't always optimal for your companies. But in your new role, I hope you'll mostly put America first. And there you have it.
News being made in real time by tech billionaires communicating to each other on their platform. Makes the cuckles of my heart war. Dave Weigel is a reporter at Semaphore. Welcome back to Fast Politics.
Dave, Hey, you going to be back. Thank you?
Tell me where you are right now and what's going on.
Oh, I am in the capital right now, Gus. There's some echo. That's the reason why. And I've been talking to people about various Trump executive orders from their perspective, obviously no one in Congress is and make it an amazing position to Gallon's these things, but trying to cover the implications of what Trump is doing with his pen.
So you're just sort of in post executive order.
Hayes, No, not a Hayes, just trying to reford on what's happening a lot.
So let's talk about what There were almost one hundred on Monday, is that correct?
Close to one hundred, Well, actually so seventy eight that were just about undoing various Biden executive orders. That wasn't the conclusion of that. There have been series of orders since then, the undo what Biden did, what the previous presidents did on some of the different priorities. Like getting ready to be the.
E and then tell me what the other ones were. There were some that were trying to rewrite the constitution.
I think you're referring to the.
Fourteenth Amendment one, the birthright citizenship.
That's a good one to focus on because this is the difference between the first Trump term and the second. Trump talk about doing that for a long time in the first term. I think really two years of that term elapsed after he talked about it, but now were actually acted. And then the idea behind the second term was He's going to come in with a great idea what to do. This would have happened, I think Eddie
one in twenty twenty. There are a lot of these orders that are also picking up balls that were dropped the end of his sort of term. There were new staffers, more i would say, more magas staffers, people who were more idy allegedly aligned with him, because you know the basic story, there were all these Republican veterans who weren't on board of the agenda, and by the end of the term and certainly after the election, and tons that were on board with the agenda. Their old life is
his agenda. So you pick out a lot of that, and that this furk relationship measure. It could have been done at any time, but he didn't have a six to three conservative majority on the Supreme Court really until his final weeks as president, and this being done immediately tease it up. Have already been challenging fort by different immigrant rights organizations. This fesed up some sort of legal showdown, and the worst case scenario is that if a president
that upholds the old president. There are many good, if you're Trump, scenarios where they allow some changes because he shot the moon on this and redefined perfeatesist ship is something that would not, for example, belonged to Kamala Yris because she was born in America that needed her. Both parents at the time were full time naturalized citizens and
not natural born citizens. You can imagine the court saying, well, that's fine, but we agree that if you're just born in the country, two people have no legal status whatsoever. That is how you didn't get in to the court. You ask for a lot, they'd give you anything that would still be in advance from their perspective on what they were used to.
Yeah, it's funny because it feels like the immunity decision Trump versus United States, where Trump went in just you know and said I'm a king and they were like, they were like sure, that was a great example. And even like when Trump went to the Supreme Court and said he shouldn't be sentenced, that was another situation where Trump made a case that was well beyond the range of normal and it worked for him.
Yes, and that's you're running through a lot of democratic responses and their Republican confidence to what's happening. Had always accused of overstepping his bounds, and we wait until the court says that he isn't and he has better luck with ports than George Joe Biden, norm Barack Obama did. This is in the first term. It played point out a lot of people getting angry about extra constitutional sounding things that Trump was doing. We're in talking about the
nine O decisions. They're reversing different Obama orders. He tried to spend Dakota basically even more migrants and didn't work. That's the idea here is you have, for the first time in Conservatives memory, a six to three majority in the court. Even if you look at what they're trying to do with LGBT rights, they had a the last time, as we decided in point age twenty five to four conservative majority at three one, and so that you know
the boss Stock decision. Would that be reversed completely or would they as happened a lot with abortion adjusts the precedent, you know, casey doesn't no return row, but it limits it. Death by Falcon cuts to a lot of these civil rights law that Democrats, well, I guess the whole country it was relying on by the end. But what can you attack for one angle? And how it really can you attack it? That's a lot out of this.
Herey here, yeah, where are you right now? Are you in the house.
I'm in the house. I'm gonna hallway with some noise behind me, although not nembers of Congress or anything.
But I was watching on c SPAN today. I'm contractually obligated to mention c SPAN. I'm just kidding, I'm not, but I love c SPAN because it's so good. I was watching this c SPAN the hearing today where they were talking about this fourteenth Amendment and the range of excuses that Republicans were offering for the reasons why they wanted to repeal the Fourteenth Amendment were pretty wild.
I measure, I understand the question was what was wild?
The question is that we're seeing in the House right now, they're hearings about immigration, and they are sort of in this discourse is coming up this Trump executive order, which is basically to repeal the fourteenth Amendment or to cut it. And one of the things that I'm struck by when I listened to these backbenchers and even frontbenchers try trying
to sell this idea. I mean, obviously the American people are not watching c SPAN, but they're not unified on a message more than just let's try this.
That's true. You have to just think of these things happening on different tracks. This executive order, period before bills have been passed, is about testing these limits. The Fourteenth Amendment, Birth ray Citizenship Order is a great example of that. And Republicans don't need to They'll say this because the leg had a lot of questions about various decisions Trump made already on Vinguary six on refugees, and they said
they don't second guess them, and what about democrats. I was almost doing that by accident and saying the responsible a lot of the immigration orders, Well, what about what Obama did with DOCA DOC is something that was held
up in courts, surprising people. What would happen to another challenge in that which is actually a question Democrats have to ask themselves if they want to litigate any change in Trump with making as we speak, like, what happens when you kick this precedent of actually the you can let migrants stand in the country and definitely with this court, they don't know yet, they're not optimistic.
So let me ask you a question as we're sort of in this talk to me about what's happening with DOGE. Government agency is so efficient it's already lost its co had.
Yeah, the fight that happened behind the scenes between Elon and the ak Ramaswami fatly sits maybe a big word for it, though it did end with evapcating out of this thing, was over whether this should be an agency folded into the White House with somebody who's not an employee the government running it, or something else that would
be under different different restrictions. Elon won, and so the question that Democrats are asking there, even as they cooperate with elements of the DOGE idea, is okay, there are actually rules for what a committee needs to do, if it's put into place and it has the power to recommend change, is you need to at least what is discussed. You need to have some transparency. They're not doing any
of that. That's where it is right now. And in the Congress, Rodens have a Doge shoxus that they've invitvated Democrats to join. It exists, it hasn't proposed anything. There really isn't anything yet rolling out that is a cut or recision in government spending that Republicans are ready to pass.
If you were watching the Capital One parade rally that Trump signs orders at, he was handed the one about getting rid of anything related to the Green New Deal, and the man Hammerton said, this will stay the trillion dollars. It won't. You won't do that at all. And that made me wonder if some of the idea here is to announce giant savings, get some headlines about it, and not actually fast though okay, would probably not be that popular in the bond markets, but that's what you that's
what you're getting right now. It's no specific changes ideas about how things could be cut. You saw this with Doge and early Base one of their ideas was you can cut lots of at least for spending once you get rid of this interest on the debt and everyone can looked at bad said yes, but you need to cut things so that you don't get you But that's why we've maay the interest on it.
Right, And this is really where I wanted to go to. Can you explain to me? The DOGE has members of Congress MTG who you may remember as being completely a person who exists to be on cable news. She is in this committee right.
Even the committee. The committee is separate from the So there's a House sorry i should say a House caucus, and then there is the DOGE agency and their separate entities. Not neither has actually proposed anything yet. The House one is just it is really unclear what it's going to do. Because it's a month ago. Republicans were set really burring spending cuts and saying we're waiting for the AGD on theseulvesful willing thought, and that's still the position. It's it's
really up up in the air. It's strong I'd say less of ten than a month ago, because it's already not new and the story of it more is is this going to do anything rather than this is going to pick all our problems?
Right, So that is actually a radical departure because Elon said it would save two trillion dollars, right, and then he sort of backed off.
That's a fair way to push it. Yeah, But so it exists, it has a full time staff that's going to littlebanks. It actually the way and now is kind of a They took a pre existing government agency inside the White House and they renamed it DOJE. There have always, not always, but really since Bill Clinton and these efforts to look at waste potential ways to reduce government spending.
It's just a version of that. The actual things cut so far that are worth looking at are the orders that are shutting down DEI programs inside the federal government at every level. However, they're not shut down yet right now, they're paying DEI employees to not work and then ideally shutting things down.
That's a really good point talk to me about the sort of big structural changes from Trump one point zero to Trump two point zero. So we talked about this idea that the Republicans are really on bortant now, and we had a vank and Jared in one point zero. But besides Elon structurally, how is it different.
Because of the kinds of people being appointed to positions that were filled before by more experienced Republican hands. So you had in the last eight years a generation of Republicans either young people who had not worked in politics before, or sort of think tankers who wouldn't have been hired in the old review. I'm thinking stuff like the Quincy Institute, a kind of anti war think tank, who are now being invited into the administration. Before you would have had.
Really those guys are being invited. That is shocking to me because they are very lefty in a way.
Yeah, people who have worked with them and would have been persioned on growd up previously, but now they're allowed in. That is the wing of the movement that worked best with Trump. They don't put out a press release every single person that are in the federal government. We know it. One of the goals of the Trump campaign and of the outside Product twenty twenty five was, let's find a list of conservatives who are aligned with this agenda and
won't undermine it. Let's find a list of people we can get rid of, you know, So one thing that was being done before the election, really no matter who one was being done was the Heritage Foundation filing four requests and trying to find emails from government employees job title, things like that that would be a flag for let's say Wokeness to give Berryer fork. Well, we're looking for
every email that talks about, for example, burning people. If somebody used that, then we're going to find a way to get rid of them once Trump dakes over. There was a lot of that happening, but it's it is happening in I guess the absolute of slow motion. It's happening very quickly and without a bunch of press releases saying here's who we fired. I mean, that's frankly, that's a reporting jobs to talk to people and figure out who has been hired. That's a lot like the first
term of the differences is not chaotic. You don't have to people leaking even these executive orders. It's not just that they were ready, but the strategy of the transition and before that the campaign was to not talk that much about the specific things that would be done unless they were super popular. So you talked a lot about getting rid of gender inclusive language in the federal Code, So you ran on that who's doing it? But there was so much fairer reporting on these strategies. Who was
behind brod or twenty pay five? What was Russ the Vote saying on podcasts about what do you want to do all this? Actually, if you are watching some of the hearings, just being quoted back to the nominees, Hey, you said you said you'd do this, you said you'd ignore this law. They kind of stopped doing that during the last stretch of the election, and people who were wanted into a role because of the trauma campaign said in a disingenuous way, We're not going to hire anyone
involved with this. They were, they always were. We Rough Vote literally was helping write these executive orders for Heritage's pretty well known, but it's one of those things that I wrote about.
Well.
Russ Vote was helping work on executive orders as part of the project, but they weren't releasing them because they saw it that putting all the plans out in the Project twenty twenty five book were unhelpful because the reporters could write about them, and even just right now as I'm writing on pieces of it, I'm going back to Project twenty five. It's on the website. I can see things, not word for word, but for example, I think I'm going to focused on it today rolling back lbj's Executive
Order on affirmative Action, which so insane. Nixon changed it but didn't get rid of it, but a series who Arobic presidence left that in place. Well, that's in there too, one of the recommendations of Product twenty twenty five. So none of this was surprising. They just changed the emphasis. And you run a campaign based on what's going to get you elected, not how specific you can be about your agenda.
Right, No, that's a very good point. It's not about being specific on your agenda. It's about getting elected. And that was what was smart about Trump. So I want to get back to this Quincy Institute because I'm like a little obsessed with it, because it was this think tag that started during the first actually think it grew during the first Trump admin and it was basically a sort of combination liberal libertarian effort to avoid foreign wars.
Correct, it was, And I wouldn't overstate how many people are in the administration of this saying are people with connections to that being hired for foreign policy roles over people who are more pawkish on the record. The specific person is Michael Demino. He was the guy who'd been critical of the way he is. Reel responded to October seventh, and that's not a firing or offense to keeps you out of the door right now, because he's in line
with the Trump agenda of not new. Too much effort has been Trump but through strength, like we're going to let Israel get away with a lot. We were going to keep giving them arms, but we're going to look tough so that they're rand it and try anything as opposed to we're going to try to rechain into regime by starting war work.
The rant.
Yeah, one of the things that I think is really interesting, and I'm hoping you could make it make sense, is that one of the hallmarks of Trump's governing is that it's erratic, not ideological, and largely dictated by the last person he spoke to Project twenty twenty five. I mean, we just did a big documentary on it in July, so we've spent a lot of time studying it and talking to academics about it, and it's largely a dismantling
of the administrative state, including the federal government. Make it so small that you can drat it in a bathtub, show the people that it never worked to begin with. Okay, so how do you have and again this is the thing I keep asking, how do you have a tenth that's so big that these things run contrary to each other, don't they?
I hadn't thought about that because that's the rug and party run by Trump. Nothing is contradictory if Trump says that he knew if he changed his mind on it. The spending piece of this is the really incoherent stuff, where there is an assumption and a promise that they're going to Trump Vivis in the first term, he's going to get rid of the debt somehow, and nothing they proposed would actually was the devonstat it's all tax pets. It starts there, really, and I would say Democrats didn't
do this last time. The last presidency that was trying to find savings was the allowing presidency limited birepublicans of what it could do. So, yeah, it's not simper coherence from ideologically, it is coherent with what Trump is asking for.
Yeah, thank you, Dave.
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Beai Shakir is a senior advisor to Standard Or Bernie Sanders. Welcome to Fast Politics Fast.
Thank you for having me. Mollie.
I'm really excited to have you because I think so much about what went wrong again and again and again. I think of you as a person who also thinks a lot about what went wrong in twenty sixteen. Honestly in twenty twenty a little bit, because that should have been a bigger win, and in twenty twenty four. So that is my first question to you, what went wrong?
Or we're having a disconnect sadly as Democrats with working class people. And in my view, there's a lot of things that work into that problem. One is that on the performance are just of politics. Politics is part performance are you know, you have to get out there and embrace the friction when you're particularly when you're governing. So if you have good policies being done, I think in the four years of Biden you have walk a picket line.
You've got a lot of his agencies taken on crypto scams or Amazon scams, Amazon Google, you know, really hard fights, big Pharma. And yet if you look at that and then look over to the politics site, you know, the DNC or political operations, and you say, did did we talk about any of that? Did we embrace the friction when they were governing and fighting that fight? Did we have their backs? No? And the answer was no. It
was almost like you lived in an alternative universe. So you can't fault working class people who aren't following politics all the time and behind the scenes and know everything that the FTC is doing or the SEC is doing. You've got to get out there and embrace and tell people to fight. Trump does it well, right, He's always telling you a story about some damn fight that he's in.
Every day is a fight for him, right, And so he's engaging in fights with corporate America through tariffs and all these other stuff, and working class people feel like, hey, that guy, he doesn't care. He's ready to take anybody on. Whereas we're almost like intentionally trying to reduce the tension. Suggests that there aren't actually make your ideological problems here. They are there are the moll.
It's funny because I think so much about Lena Kahan, who is sort of one of the great fighters of this century and someone who most people have no idea who she is. Can we talk about that?
I am a huge fan obviously in a supporter, and I feel like she in just four years, thanks to President Biden putting her in that position, transformed the Federal Trade Commission from this backwater place to this zone of saying, hey, big, corporate American needs to be held accountable for price gouging us, for abusing us in all different kinds of ways. And she didn't think small, she thought big, and she said everything from Amazon to the pharmacy benefit managers too, you know,
junk fees to non compete bands. I'm going after all of the corporate exploitation I see to unrig this economy. And that is one of my major frustrations when you say, hey, what my hat is off to somebody with integrity fighting for working class people. And then I want a political operation that tells people about that, that says, do you know what big fights that we have been engaged in
on your behalf. She fought at Kroger Albertson's merger, which was about reducing you know, grocery prices for people and giving providing competition to the grocery space. And I'm sure to this day, most people have no idea, sadly that we were fighting to reduce grocery prices for them. You know, that's a killer.
So one of the things that I'm struck by, and again this is a very controversial take, which is why everyone's going to get mad at me about it, but I'm to engage in that. One of the things I was stripped by when Biden won was how little they
let him talk to the press. Now, obviously I have a horse in this race because I am the press, but also they didn't even let him do like, you know, his own tweets or his own Instagram story and even like we saw this again and again in Harris World, like they would do something that was pretty good and then the consultant class would shut it down. I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about that. And also the one I'm going to make this an annoying
question that goes on and on. But one of the other things I was struck by was like they were aggressively boring in the Biden White House in a way to try to keep the media at bay, which I understand the media didn't like them, but that made the media really hate them. And then when they had passed all this really good legislation, they couldn't get anyone to talk about it because they had been so aggressively boring or whatever it was with the mate. So can you talk to me about all of that?
Biden in his own special way. I mean, we saw this when we campaigned against him. I was running Birdie's campaign and washed him as he was out there on the stunt.
But he would say colorful.
And interesting things, Moll. He would be you know, occasionally he would tell a person who was protesting, hey, go vote for the other guy to feel that way. And what I realized over a period of time is, man, that's his charm. He's in that way, a real working class person in the way he talks, and a lot of people feel that way. It's like he doesn't like it. Yeah, he's not in an ivory tower.
He just says it real.
And I remember early on in the administration, you know, he would say colorful things like about Elon Muss member, Hey, good luck going to the moon, buddy, Or he would say things about Facebook and Facebook kills people during COVID right when he's upset about misinformation and they clamp down on him because they were worried that when he says things that are in my view, authentically him, that they
were going to cause quote unquote problems. And I'll tell you this, ma, I went in and had a you know, at one on one interview with him just recently as he was reaping up, and I asked him this question about, Hey, you know, mister president, you've never traded stocks in your life. Can you think of how crazy that is? They like for most people, they get rich in office, and you could have gotten early on so many stocks and you chose to not. Why And He's like, well, I just
think it's wrong. And I don't believe that Congress should be trading stocks. Until that point, Molly, I don't believe they or the president had ever talk let him talk about this incredible record.
Out of not And so, by the way, it's like crazy because it's one of the very few things that everyone agrees on totally.
I will say, Molly, you know I had been urging behind the scenes constantly, Hey, they should go on talks about these things, talk about these things. And you know, I get there inundated with lots and lots of things. But man, I think they robbed all of us and him of the opportunity to see what is what was special and unique about his ability to communicate. And I think too often you know I Vie Ivory Tower, you know, elites.
He doesn't talk like Obama, he doesn't talk like a lot of Buddha Jeedge or other kind of charismatic other kinds of politicians. But he has a charm of how he does speaking in and people trust in that way. And they just didn't let it go. I mean, not doing a Super Bowl interview is kind of crazy.
Yeah, not doing a super Bowl interview, shutting it down. Even when the videos were good and people liked them, they stopped doing them. I mean at every point, I think about Tim Walls, who was he did really well, so then they stop letting him talk.
And in this day and age, you know this better than most Molly that like now. Because of the media environment being what it is, you kind of have to be part entertainer. People expect of a leader that I know you, I need to hear from you. You need to tell me what you're doing, especially when you're in charge. You're not a candidate anymore.
You're in charge.
You got to tell me the story of what you're doing. So you know you mentioned like the IRA or the Inflation Reduction Act, that needs to be a story the
whole way through, from front to end. Every day, you're telling everybody, here's the fights I'm engaging, here's my red lines, here's what I like, Here's what I don't like, And you're animating those such that when people are fighting back on you and they're saying, hey, sorry, no to childcare or no to community college, you're getting out there and you're telling people, this is what I want to do,
and I got some opposition over here. That's how you build, you know, a grassroots movement for your vision.
Yeah. So here we are in this situation where we have now this DNC race for the chairmanship. Explain to us what that's about and sort of what you see the job as and why Mary and Williamson is not going to get it.
Well. I jumped in late here purposefully and intentionally because while there's all these decent people who are running, I've been heartened by the fact that there's more and more talk of being a working class party, and I'm like, that's I've been waiting my whole life here and so now our death of consensus. And I'm like, okay, so what's the big ideas? Give them to me. What are we going to do differently? And I'm like, ah, I'm feeling let down by this, So okay, I have some
views though, let me jump in and offer them. And one of it, it just starts from a north star, particularly when you have you know, plutocracy and you know rich people who I think there are people get assessed the kind of a cultural decay. When you have so much powerful influence of money, it starts to make people either check out or get greedy or selfish in their own domains. My sense is going on and people looking for an integrity of giving me a fight that is about us,
not about money. And in that way it has to be about some grassroots fission for the DNC that when you're a contributor, let's say, of the Democratic Party, what is asked of you? Is there anything more than just giving an online contribution? I think in this moment it has to be, especially going up against such power, our power has to be people, and so we have to give people a sense that we're in community with you,
not just I don't just need your donation. When you're going on strike, with you, when you're organizing you know, your workplace. We're with you. When you're fighting your utility rate hikes. We're with you. When you're going after you get trying to get insurance coverage for your LA fire
and that the introsions are stopping or fighting you. We're with you, like we're involved in these on the ground and bringing people into showing we stick our next out because our values are of economic justice, nature are aligned with them. And if we do that, if we open our doors and bring people into the Democratic Party, it's
a pathway out of this with greater strength. I do think in this moment you also have to be your own kind of digital recorder, you know, an online news source of information, and are the channels like I've been building a more perfect union now for you know, it was my own media outlet and.
They didn't realize that was you.
Yes, so build it up over three years and you know, so what I think we have one point three million followers subscribers on YouTube. By comparison, Malia, how do you guessed how many does the DNC channel have? If we have one point three million, what do you think.
This is going to make me upset, don't do that.
Seventy eight thousand, I was.
Talking about this one young congressman. He's not even that young. He's probably my age. He doesn't necessarily align politically with a lot of my beliefs, but he does an incredible job of just being out there. And I do think part of it is people want their politicians to do their own tweets, and they can tell when in someone else we think we are.
I do feel like coming out of the cycle, we got to restore a sense of conviction around what we fight for. And I tend to believe, I honestly believe that people's ideologies are so over the map you cannot pigeonhole people's left right. That is like that antiquated and out out day. That is not the way to think that people. Trans issues and immigration and policing and economic
justice issues. There're a kaleidoscope. But what I think people are hunting for is wherever you fall on this kaleidoscope, give me a sense of why you believe it, and tell me it honestly and sincerely, sincerely, And when you get criticized, I just want to hear you give me a good, strong defense, and I think that's one of the reasons why congressman are causing fortes and you know,
Bernie Sanders. There's a sense of just conviction orientation and I want to bring bash to the party, just be honestly engaging these kinds of debates, right, And.
I feel a Jasmine Crockett, Maxwell Frost. We're seeing people like that who are engaging, an even of Jared Moskowitz, who's out there fighting with represent James Comer, which I find very funny. I know that, you know, I don't know how much like public good is happening, but it's still hilarious. But I do think I mean that is when you see Trump getting into office. And this is in no way an endorsement of Donald Trump, I mean, my god, but like the fact that he's out there
doing a lot of interviews and talking to people. And I also think part of it is at this point the mainstream media is so degraded. In twenty sixteen, we had a real fullsome at least something. Now we are in such a sort of partisan wasteland. But the other thing I wanted to ask you about, and this is actually something I just have been thinking it a lot. Is there was a whole discourse and you know about
this because you've come from Sanders Land. There was a whole discourse about how the left needed its own Joe Rogan. It's one of the most annoying pieces of discourse, and I always respond to that the left has it. So I'm Joe Rogan, Joe Rogan who in twenty sixteen endorsed Bernie Sanders. So my big pet peeve now is that Democrats should always go into conservative spaces, even if the person offends them.
Yeah, you're revealing my battle scars here, Molly, because when we you know, was in twenty twenty. Of course, we not only went on Joe Rogan and got a lot of heat from people for myself for even daring to go on there, but you know we're the first to go on Fox News. We held the town hall, you know with Fox at the time, people were very very
upset about. My point was, listen, if you can gauge in politics, and I believe this sincerely that if you step into this arena, and not everyone needs to or should, but if you want to, the job is persuasion. The job is to go talk to people who aren't already with you and suggest to them that they should be with you. Otherwise you are a club, and there are good places to be a club. That's fine, you know, we like clubs and go meet and talk to people
who are similarly of your kind. And that's fine. But that's not politics that I think. If you're doing politics, you have an obligation to reach out to people who aren't already with you, make your case, and also take the push back upon you, because that's where they see and feel like, oh, you're listening, or you care, or you are engaged with them.
But it's also that Joe Rogan's voters are not watching CNN, right.
I think that's largely true a lot of people, particularly younger folks, but it's across the board. I've checked out of politics because they find it so disgusting and unappealing. When I was talking about the decay of what we see because of wealth and income inequality, I think there's a sense that institutions are broken. You look at the DNC itself, there's a lack of faith and trust that even can the DNC do anything. And in a world particularly I think this is dangerous where we get to
a place where there's a devolution of power such that. Okay, if the DNC isn't your a strong vehicle to fight for certain values in our society, one of two major political parties in America, then where does the power go. Well, it goes to super packs, it goes to places where
power and money can better influence it. So when you have the devolution of power, you don't have institutional structures to fight for people, You're gonna have just splintering in which more powerful actors control more of society.
Which is where we are now.
Yeah, I feel like a lot of people are checking out to your point of Joe Rogan viewers, Right, it's a sense of I don't trust institutions because I haven't seen them operate with integrity. And I'm like, you're right, and we should fight on this plot. We should give people a sense of hope, especially if you're quote quote a democratic party. Democratic means of people.
But as we look at sort of the post mortem of twenty twenty four, part of what happened was that, And again I think Liz Cheney has done a lot of good stuff, but that did not get the base excited. I mean, if you're going to look at a post mortem of what happened. The base did not turn out. There were people who didn't come out who came out in twenty twenty.
My sense of this, Molly is that voters and in particularly hold the Democratic Party to a higher standard than they do the Republican Party. And the reason for that is our long historical linear of being the fighter for the common person and what they feel like, particularly in moments of great wealth and in polity that hey, listen, I know that the other side is out for greed and they're on bottom line and they're crime but led by
a crime boss over there. However, I expect more of you to stick your next out and fight for us, and when you don't, the penalty on you is greater. And I think we just have to own that that is true of us and to say we can meet that bar. You know, we can meet that bar of say we will stick our next out, particularly when we're in a moment of an oligarchy, right.
And I mean that is the big question now is what happens. So what do you think the sort of move is for Democrats? What should they be doing? Sort of what should the message be? I mean, because if you can't message against an oligarchy, right, I mean, it's all the roots of people in the front brow like you know.
It also the sense that corporate power and your common belt is changing. It's the idea that Dewey defer our strategic vision and judgments people who are not of our working class orientation. They get upset about it, rightly, So they're like, hey, whoa. You know, it's fine if other people Liz Chaney and Mark Cuban whoever want to join you on your mission to fight for working class people,
that's great. You know, that's politics of persuasion. But you can't change your mission to walk away from what is the core conviction. I think that's where you get back to. And I think at this moment where I do feel as you're saying about Rogan and other places that people are checking out in, Democrats are pretty upset about it. When I sense the anger, I'm like, that's okay, because that means they still care, right. The worst thing that could happen is that they just start to say, I
don't care. Now we've got a bigger problem. If they're angry, it means that there's some emotions still attached to us because they're let down. We have to turn their heads. We have to say, hey, you're going to see us come out of this different and more aggressively in your camp on a fight. And I think in this moment particularly, we have the oligarchy running the United States. The hardest thing about the modern economy. Everyone knows it's raked, but
they don't all always know how. And one of our jobs is to help unpack when Zuckerberg is going to do all this what he's hunting the affection of Donald Trump?
Do you know what it is?
Three months from now, he was supposed to go into trial because they're going to break up Facebook. Lena's going to do that over what's to happen Instagram, and now Donald Trump will have a choice to make. Does that case go forward in three months? Well, you know, Zuckerberg putting some money down to make a bet in a different way. We have that aation on us to go and explain here's what this billioni class is hunting for in terms of outcomes that are not good for you.
That's what they expect of the Democratic Party right now.
I mean that's where we are. I'm hoping you could sort of explain to us who you sort of think of as the leaders of the Democratic Party. It's a very annoying question because obviously there's no presidential nominee yet. But it's a question I get asked that I never really know the answer to, and I'm curious what you think.
Yeah, I don't think there's an actual one. I mentioned to you that there's been more around wealth and income and equality. Bernie. Obviously that started to train a long time ago, but now I sense more people of conviction are talking about it, from you know, Chris Murphy obviously congress woman at Cause you a Quortez. Even Secretary Budaget has done some good work departner of Transportation going after
Southwest and other major airlines holding them accountable. There's you know, if you look at the Blue Dog cocause even people like Marie Glucian Camperez and Jared Golden within the Democratic Party ten are very hungry to go after corporate accountability. I think that there's like an opportunity where because there's more alignment that I maybe some people sense and feel
right now, there's a lot of alignment. There's just a hunger for who's going to step up and make the kind of moral conviction and the revealing case of who our democratic brand is, redefine it around this working class orientation. There's an opening there, right for people who want to do it, but I sense there's more interest in alignment behind the scenes of people who see the same things we see.
Yeah. One of the things that I think happened when Democrats rejected Bernie, or the democratic establishment ejected Bernie, was that there was a certain kind of like we must sort of please our corporate overlords. Lena Khan was a real departure from that, and corporations hated her. She never got the kind of publicity so people didn't know really what she did. And by publicity I mean like put Lena Khan on Joe Rogan, right. I mean, that's the
idea totally. But my question is, like, do you see a world where as we continue on here, these nominees were choices that were pushed, you know, in a certain direction. How can we just make it sort of a people first situation.
Well, I do think some of these good and I'm glad you mentioned Leonab. I'm a huge fan and you know ro hitch Opra at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Jennifer Bruso, who was at the National Labor Relations Board, even Garret Gensler was doing good things at the Security Exchange Commission. I could go down the list of really kind of people of integrity who were fighting some big
fights against you know, powerful actors. They're coming out now, right and I think that part of my you know've reached out to Lena Rohea and other people like, hey, you're the moral conscious and the information conscience of a lot of people right now because they're hunting for what can you do about it? What's an alternative scenario and how we confront power, and what are the choices that
are being made. It's going to be this great opportunity we educate a lot of folks who maybe didn't get it the first time around about the things that we were actually doing. And now Trump is gonna unlined, undo or go in a very different direction. So we'll have a second bite at that apple to do a lot of education and hopefully build the mandate of this direction.
Because you know this, Molly, but that Lena obviously took some fire, not just from conservatives and big corporations, but also some large democratic donors and I worry about the watering down of this opportunity to fight for working class people. That's why I'm out there. I think that direction that Lena and a lot of the labor folks within the Biden mitiation were doing was the right one, and we just did exercised the politics appropriately. Well, we can fix that,
you know. Let's get the politics done right to say, this is our orientation, this is what the vast majority of people in America care about. This is our historical roots and lineage of the Democratic Party.
Let's get this right.
Yeah, thank you, thank you, thank you really really so good and I so appreciate you. Thank you. No, Jesse Cannon.
So, Mai, we have to talk about our stupidest senator, mister Tommy Tuberville.
Who is still going hard and beating Mark Wayne Mullen.
At this Yeah, I was gonna say it was like Bernie Bernie Marino would like a worn Well.
Bernie hasn't that as much time to get his sea legs. So mister Tuberville's off running and what he says here is trades kids should live in fear of their parents. After Bishop Bud's remarks to President Trump.
Yesterday, yes so again. Bishop Bud is going to end up in get Mo for saying that Donald Trump should have compassion. I mean, really like we have, We're gone, We've gone really zero to sixty here. If I don't show up to tape tomorrow, you know where I am. You know, this is ridiculous. I mean the fact that these guys, I mean, Tuberville's whole shtick is just go is just that he needs to protect his you know,
Trump at all costs. Okay, but you know it's really stupid and also stupid, and also because it is Tommy Tuberville, very very very stupid. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear the best minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going. Thanks for listening.