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 Glenn Youngkin won't be able to turn Virginia into Florida. We have such an interesting show for you today, the Atlantics.
Ron Brownstein stops.
By for a late night post election analysis to talk DEM's big wins. Then we'll talk to Bloomberg Opinions Tim O'Brien about Trump's inability to behave himself in the courtroom. But first we have Washington Post columnist George Conway. Welcome back to Fast Politics.
Gimme a pee, gimme a gi, me a one.
Three early morning for George Conway and I and poor Jesse. So yesterday, Donald Trump, or as I like to think of him, the former guy.
I CALLO one one three, five, eight h nine.
He was in core. He was on the stand.
If that were your client, how would you feel to die?
I would feel relieved that he didn't, you know, commit Harry carry on the stand?
He kind of did that.
Sounded like he was very very well behaved for Donald Trump. He only screamed a few times at the judge and ranted and raved only for a few hours, so you know, I think he was relatively well behaved because we're gonna see a lot worse for him. Explain, Well, he's got ninety one counts to deal with and we have a campaign, and he cannot take criticism at all, and he certainly can't take criticism that deep down he knows to be true.
He is not as smart, not as rich, now you're as truthful, not as anything as he purports to be, and that is causes him deep psychological distress in a way that you know, all of us are sensitive to certain things and we get touchy about certain things, but a narcissist, the particular, an extreme related narcissist, really has no ability to shake any of that off. And the way they do it is by fighting back. That's why
you hear you see these news stories about him. He wants to seek revenge and he's going to use the arms of the government to do that. And those are the two reasons why, I mean, the reason why he's running fundamentally for president is he wants to stay out of jail. But part of the big struggle when you are this kind of character, this kind of evil character, like a Putin or a Hitler or you know, is that you believe that you must destroy or be destroyed.
That is his aim.
His aim is to avoid destruction and then reak destruction on everyone else. And that is why he is among others. I mean, that's really the principal reason why he's so dangerous, because he really could. You know, I don't think he would succeed in throwing Bill Barr. I mean, if you saw the Washington Post yes article yesterday where it said that he was seeking he was telling his cohorts down in Laura Alago that he wants to investigate Bill Barr,
investigate his ex lawyer, Ty Cobb. And I'm sure I'm on the this somewhere, but I didn't get mentioned because it's going to be a very very long list.
We're going to be in Getmo together, right.
No, I've been making Getmo jokes for all evil. That's what he wants to do, because that's just his nature. I don't think he would succeed in throwing all those people in.
Jail, I hope, which is a great comfort to me. Let me, just as the people who would be thrown, we're happy, right.
I do think he why and I think it would be like these protests in Israel, butor and prior to the Hamas, the protests about net and Yahoo's judicial reform. I think we would see a great deal of civil unrest at some of the things he would try. I think the country would become essentially in government. I believe that if he were reelected, had been re elected in twenty twenty, I thought, and I said at the time,
that the country would become ungovernable. And I think it's doubly so now because I think he is in a much worse psychological state. And also he understands there are a few guardrails left by twenty twenty, by the end of twenty twenty on him, but they were still and all these guys at the Justice departman who basically threatened to resign on loss. There was a White House counsel. There were a lot of people around him who said no, no, you know, who are trying to act as a break
or restraint on him. They kept him from going to Capitol. He'll even the Secret Service. I do not think those people will be around next time. So he is, you know, he's a great danger to the republic, even though he has only I think, notwithstanding these polls, I think he's only got a ten or twenty percent chance of winning. It's like a ten and twenty chance of bringing polonium tea for rest.
So right, right, a lot at stake. It's not a normal election. It's not a choice between you know, you may not love Nikki Haley, but you at least know that she is not going to destroy the country. So let's talk about this civil trial though for a minute, because it's an interesting trial in the fact that it's kind of this we're really in the penalty phase here, Like the judge already ruled.
Yes and no. I mean, there are counts that he granted summary judgment on and the issue there will be the relief, but there are a bunch of other counts that they have to find intention some kind of intentional fraud. If he were to win on everything, he'd still be out of business based upon the court's ruling thus far.
But there are still these other counts like conspiracy to conspiracy to issue a false financial statement, issuing a false financial statement, conspiracy to I forget what they are, and
those require additional factual showings. The biggest piece of those claims are that the financial statements were false, and that the judge has already ruled at the end of the day, because the burden of proof is not the criminal beyond the reasonable doubt Perry Mason level of proof, the preponderance of the events regular civil case, which means.
That right, it's a lower level of proof.
Yeah.
All you have to do is find it just ever so slightly more likely than not defendant did something bad or did whatever it is, or the plane if is trying to prove so it's fifty point zero zero zero zero one percent. If you find that likelihood based upon the facts, even based on that substantial uncertainty, you can
you can hold him liable. This judge is going to find that, and I think there's going to be based upon what we're seeing in the press sports I haven't read the transfer, there is just more than sufficient basis for him to find these people were lying their asses off about what they intended. And in fact, there are a number of concessions apparently in the record, including by Trump yesterday, and there's no way he can really deny it. It's the question is did you intend for the banks
to rely on your financial statements? And every time you sign one of these, you sign these loan papers and the low paper say I understand that the banks are relying on this. They pointed that out to him and he conceded it. You know, he still has these bullshit arguments about how every financial statement was was slapped with a disclaimer saying don't believe this, or you're a.
Fool, session don't believe what we tell you.
I joked yesterday on Twitter that again I'd like to prepare a disclaimer that he could wear around his neck.
I am a liar.
That's not going to help him. Is a legal that. I mean, this judge is going to write an opinion that is going to I mean, that's the big problem too, is he he doesn't have a jury there. I guess for some reason, Alina Habba did not ask for a jury.
It's a bizarre right.
Yeah, he's the finder of fact. And when you have a pellet review of findings a fact, whether they be by a jury or a judge, those are entitled to deference. And if there is basically any evidence in the record from which a reasonable try or of fact be that the jury or the judge can could have made the finding the finding stands, and the Pellet Division, the Pellet Court cannot overturn that. And what's worse for Trump is,
unlike a jury, the judge gets to write his own grief. Here, he's going to write an opinion and he's going to cite all this evidence, and there is no way that they are these factual findings are going to kill and there's no going to be no way that they'll be able to overturn them. That's the reason they're engaging in this program to bait the judge, either to bait him into doing something so extreme that he could get reversed, or just that leads to tartish proceedings in in the
public route. But the fact is, you know, clurishing the proceedings in the public realm might help him politically, but it's not going to help him legally. I mean, he really this goes to the reason why he's showing up every day, is that this goes to his essence of being a billionaire and businessman. He's out of business at some point after this judgment can sfirmed. Now that may take it here or too. He seems he's toast. You know, he won't need do is anymore because he'll be getting free.
Ward Cursey of the United States Bureau of Prisons, do you really.
Believe in your heart of hearts that Donald Trump will end up in jail?
Yes, I have believed five years.
I told people, you know, in twenty eighteen and twenty nineteen. I won't say who, but I told people like, this man up in jail, Okay.
I mean, I just feel like it seems so unlikely that they would put him with Secret Service guys in jail.
But why do you think that that will be inevitable?
Because he's guilty, and he's guilty six ways of Sunday, and I think after he goes through these trials, I just don't see anyway you can let him off. I just don't see that's happening. And I think the fact that he is Secret Service protection, I think that can
be managed. I think they can manage that in a good prison system, like the federal system has a lot of facilities that it can use, and the Secret Service will have less to do in to protect him because it's going to be traveling around all over the place.
It'll be cheaper for the tax bank.
Right, Well, that is an argument I haven't heard before.
I do think it's true, Like, okay, you're guarding you know, even a minimum security prison. You already got the place guarded. It's like being in a secure facility to start with. You know, you'd only have to protect them from the people who are in the air.
Aren't you worried about the larger political reverberations of putting someone like Donald Trump, who is a leader of a movement.
I'm worried about the larger political reverberations of not doing That's the big danger, that's the big public dis basically say that you can. You can be president, and you could try to disregard the Constitution and try to stay on after your term and try to basically say a guy who says he wants to suspend the Constitution and actually did try to do it in January of twenty twenty one, to say that that man walks free, that's to me, that's the death knill of.
Our republic, right right, No, for sure, either.
Way, it's you know, you have to take your medicine. But the medicine I'd rather take is the one that promotes the rule of law and that protects the rule of law. If he gets away with the things he's gotten away with. How can you put anybody in jail for stealing, classify doctors for this or that.
If you can't, it set such a terrible example.
I mean, what is interesting is the way we got here was by Trump getting away with things again and again and again.
His life has been He's managed to get away with things. And there's a lot of reasons why he was able to do that. The fact that he has married Trump really well described. If he's basically've been coddled and protected by a sphere of people of enablers his entire light and buy his money and buy his wealth, and by the fact that he believes people and makes it not worth them tangling with him. He's gotten away with that his entire life. And and that's you know, soonil later,
that comes to an end. And I believe in karma, and I think that's going to come to an end, and I think he's going to end up dying in prison. Set back, and I will again, it.
Does feel like he's really had his way with the American legal system in a way I think a lot of us did not see coming.
I don't agree with that, I just I don't agree with that, because I don't think when you get right down to legal proceedings.
Right, they've just taken a long time.
They just take a long time. It takes a long time publicated, he loses all the time. I can't think the cases that he actually wins. Basically, the only thing I can think about the top of the head is he got some lawsuit with the Stormy Daniels he wore. You know, he lost the sixty three odd cases for the election cases. He lost two big cases of the Supreme Court when he was trying to stop the congressional investigation of his taxes, and when he was trying to
stop the Manhattan DA investigation the Grand Jurian suboenas. He lost that he lost in the Supreme Court in January twenty twenty one or December twenty twenty, whenever that was. And he's getting killed in the courts today, is just getting absolutely killed. They've had enough of him. And the only place he has any success and has only marginal successes with this judge in Florida. But I don't think at the end of the day, I think she can delay the case of she's if that's what she's intending
to do. And she can take slapes of the government along the way. But I think at the end of the day, the evidence in that case is just air tight. I will see how any jury could acquit him, and how he may manage to get a hung jury somehow.
If a maga person is seef, I do it.
But they'll get retried, right, That's kind of amazing.
That's the point. To go back to the original point I made. The reason why he's running is to stop all this, and constitutionally that is correct. Even though man doesn't deserve the protection of the Constitution because he doesn't expect the constitution, I do think that he would have a strong, if not air tight. I think a compelling argument that Article two would prevent him from being not prosecuted,
but incarcerated during his time in office. He's reelected, and that the only course to get him out would be impeachment, which we've seed doesn't really work.
Right.
No, it's true. I shouldn't laugh.
The framers did not foresee the right of political parties, where that a political party would adhere to the whims of a criminal before following the constitutional obligation side.
American democracy was not ready for Trump.
The problem is that American democracy created. There's those a lot of things in hindsight that led to him just this anti government further the Tea Party, you know, I mean the Tea Party started off okay and then went off the rails.
Yeah.
I just think a lot of things been tast size and ways that I didn't foresee. I mean, it's it's not an illegitimate thing to think that the government overreaches. Often, it is not an illegit think that the government taxes people too much, that the government is too involved in people's lives. And for liberals who say, oh, Eric goes again, it's like, do you really want that? Kind of the problem with the reason why here government is because some lunatic might end up running it.
Okay, Well that is true.
You know, the very smart liberals I talked to lot, they get that I have a lot more respect for where they're coming from, and they have more respect from where I came from, precisely because it's like, Okay, we're actually fighting the same fight in different ways. Concentration of abuse, of the ability to abuse power. And I think that you know, for liberals, they tend to think that the
private sector is the bigger danger. They're not wrong in a lot of cases, but to me, it's like the concentration of government power is a big danger age.
And we focus on the different things.
I focus on economics. They may focus on physical privacy, even though I don't disagree with them on that, and they may not disagree wholly with me on my views. We just have different embassies. At the end of the day, there's more that unites us than divides us. I think that's the thing that we have to remember.
Yeah, George Conway, thank you so much. Ron Brownstein is a senior editor at The Atlantic. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Ron Brownstein, Hey, busy nights. So excited to have you to talk about these results. I can't think of anyone I would rather talk through this with, because.
You know, a lot of stuff we try.
I mean, the things that I saw that look like good look like a good night so far for Democrats is the fact that we can have this conversation right now, so.
Far, and things could change in the final hours. This
looks a lot like twenty twenty two. Yeah, where you have we have multiple polls showing that voters are disenchanted with President Biden's performance, their sour on the economy, they give Republicans lead in polls on who you think can handle the economy, all of the conditions that should be there for the party out of the White House to be racking up victories and posting very good nights, But instead the opposite, as in twenty twenty two, is happening,
that Republicans are underperforming what you would expect giving these attitudes about, you know, the way things are going in the country, And what it says is that there are clearly a lot of voters, particularly in the major metros, that is a thread running through all of these races who, whatever they think about the way things are going in the country, whatever they think about Joe Biden's performance, they
are still reluctant to entrust Republicans with power. And we are seeing that in the Kentucky governorship where Andy Basheer is winning by I think a fairly astonishingly wide margin, much more than.
Last time, right because last time was five thousand votes.
Yeah, or that people expected. The Pennsylvania State Supreme Court election looks pretty one sided at the moment. It may get tighter, but it may not. The Ohio ballot Initiative is you know, coming in right where the polling said sixty percent of the state pretty much voting to overturn
the six week abortion ban. And the latest indications as we you know, converse here that despite this enormous effort by Glenn Youngkin, Democrats are on track to maintain the state Senate and possibly take the state House in Virginia.
You know, millions of dominions.
Why the vlerating is forty percent, right, I mean, that's these set of things should not be able to happen, and it is I think a very significant result because it says that, yes.
Voters aren't happy with the way things are going in the country. But Democrats have.
Shown the ability in many key states that when they can focus a campaign and a spotlight on the Republican agenda, it can significantly offset those doubts about the Democratic performance.
But it's also I mean, Republicans aren't running on something right, They're just running on sort of trump Ism, autocracy, beating up trans kids.
I mean, when we look.
At that bscher, uh, the Andy Buscher election, we see he ran on keeping choice, he ran on you know, overturning the LGBTQ bans.
I mean he vetoed that ban.
So yeah, I mean there is a certain sent in which like you're either being offered like dystopia or normal.
You're going to pick normal.
The you know, the general trend of our politics was established before Trump, where one of the key trends was this geographic polarization where the Republicans getting stronger in small town and rural America and Democrats really consolidating an advantage in the largest, most economically productive metros everywhere, which tend to be culturally liberal places on issues like abortion and
LGBTQ rights. And this trend took one notch up under Trump, it ratcheted up under Trump, and it has significantly ratcheted up again since the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion. And if you look across the country tonight,
and you know, there's only so many races. This is not a midterm We're not examining everywhere, but whether we're talking about Louisville and Lexington, or Philadelphia in Pittsburgh, Columbus, Cincinnati and Cleveland, or the suburbs of Richmond and Northern Virginia, which both delivered probably the decisive results in the last few minutes to allow Democrats to hold the States Senate.
In all of these places, you are seeing the same thing that even if voters are dissatisfied with the economy, they are voting to block this MAGA cultural agenda and
democratic democratic backsliding. And that is just remarkably consistent across I mean, you know, you can look at these little maps that Politico or the New York Times will put up, and you will that Democrats are waning, like all of the counties that cast the most votes in all of these states, and that is the dynamic that is allowing them to survive as we started conditions that are usually really bad for the.
Party in the White House.
I mean, you know, like if you have only forty percent approving of a president, his party usually does not have the kind of results the Democrats are seeing tonight, or even even with the loss of the House, the kind of results that they posted in twenty twenty two.
I'm going to reduce something from Dave Wasserman, who is like, this is his night, right, I'm looking at these numbers, pretty evident Kentucky Republicans had a turnout enthusiasm problem today.
Talk to me about that.
Yeah, I mean that that was a little you know that David and I used to share a wall, you know, in the back to Jason offices in the National Journal Atlantic, you know, global media conglomerate. That's a little surprising, right, I mean, because the Trump era Republican Party's great strength has been turning out its base, and the problem has been losing the softer side of their the software under
their coalition among independents who usually lean Republicans. We'll see Republicans nominated a black attorney general in Kentucky, right, So, I don't know how that affected the willingness of that may have Who knows if that affected the willingness of small town you know, Republicans to turn to turn out. But you know, Basher, Basher is kind of an interesting candidate because you know, he hasn't, as you pointed out, he hasn't really uh a, you know, surrendered to the
right on cultural issues. He has focused as much as he can on economic uplift. That's certainly what Democrats are trying to do in in Mississippi. And look, abortion, as we talked about many times, did not work for Democrats everywhere.
It worked in swing states very powerfully. In twenty two and apparently very powerfully again in twenty twenty three, it was not enough to ome yeah right, but well, in Ohio when a vote directly out abortion sixty percent, you know, voted to maintain abortion rights, that wasn't enough to cause Republican voters not to vote for Mike DeWine last year, who signed the van in the first place.
And that was the difference, right, I mean, in the.
Red states like Texas, Iowa, Florida, Tennessee, Ohio that actually restricted abortion, this single issue wasn't enough to cause ordinarily Republican voters to cross over to Democrats who they think are going to open the border and you know, let loose climb and go crazy in the schools.
But the Virginia results again and the Pennsylvania, the likely Pennsylvania results, and even the results in Kentucky just continue to say that there is a tremendous metro suburban resistance to banning abortions specifically and more broadly to this Republican cultural agenda, you know, and all of this like, you know, I would not you could not argue that these kind of results erase all the warning signs that are out there, you know, for Leiden but they do show that when
there is an actual campaign and Democrats can have the can can shine a light on what the Republican agenda is, that it can offset many of these, you know, expressions of unease about the way things are going in the country.
So like it doesn't this doesn't guarantee that Biden is going to win four, but it does show you that there is a pathway for him to do better, much better than he's doing right now, because the comparison can be drawn more sharply, as these elections show than it is, you know, in a poll a year before election.
I mean, can we also say that there's some possibilities since the polls have been wrong in twenty sixteen, twenty and twenty two and now twenty three, perhaps these polls are just not right.
I mean, isn't there Well, no, look, I guess I guess I'm not in that camp because here's what I think.
I think that polling on the.
Horse racing year before the election is historically not usually valuable. I also think, as I just said, that Trump's vulnerabilities are somewhat suppressed now because people he's not really in people's face the way he was as president. But may I would say that the expressions of unease about Biden are real. I mean those are those are the feeling that he may be too old to do this for another four years, and the belief that his agenda has not made me better off.
Those are real problems. And you can't just inflation as a way.
I mean, inflation is inflation.
Inflation is causing that, right, yeah, you know, uh the uh you know. But but again, like what we're seeing tonight is what we saw in twenty twenty two. Everything I just said was also present in twenty twenty two. That you know, people a majority disapproved of Biden. Three quarters or more were negative on the economy. Most people said they didn't want him to run again. And yet Republicans underperformed in the House, only won it very narrowly and.
Gave the big right and Democrats really gave them those seats by messing up I mean New York, those New York five seeds should not have I mean they were really that was just screw up after screw up. Screw up.
Yeah right, Well, I think I think, like the big story from tonight continues to be that whatever people think about what is going on in the country.
There is still a critical slice of voters, overwhelmingly situated in major metros, who are rejecting the Maga era Republican agenda as a threat to their rights and values.
That that that is like kind of the through line in these you know, in these races. And again, like it's no guarantee for Biden in twenty twenty four, but it is a reminder that like when the choice is posed as you know, as starkly as it is in the campaign, you know, there there there's more to the story than just people being unhappy about inflation and how
much things are costing. They are happy about how much things costing at the grocery store, and they don't think you know, their initial reaction is not, yes, Joe Biden is ready to do four more years at age eighty or eighty one. But but you see in these elections the power of forcing the choice, right, I mean, that's.
So abortion as a ballot initiative in every I mean, if you're a Democrat, this shows that people still care about bodily autonomy.
Yes, absolutely, and it shows that they are not you know, as Cylinda Lake said to me, a Democratic poster said to me last week. It's not like people are learning to live with this. The status quo is unacceptable to the majority.
Yeah, I mean the.
Bigger challenge look, yes, I mean I think you know, abortion initiatives to secure abortion rights have now passed in every place they've been put on the ballot, and red states as well as blue states, and the consistent pattern, as I've written, is that they run up the score in all of the biggest communities, right, I mean, that's essentially, you know, we're watching this kind of cultural divide between Metro and non Metro America plan although you know, in
Ohio it's there's a lot of smaller places that are voting to overturn this as well. The challenge, I mean, I think that the precedent is that these things are
going to keep passing. The challenge for Democrats is going to be to convince voters that their ballots for the House, the Senate, and the presidency will also affect their you know, the likelihood of their having kind of continued access to abortion rights, because you know, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin in particular have gone to great lengths in the last couple elections to try to ensure that abortion rights remain legal
through the election of governors and state Supreme Court justices and ballot initiatives. And the risk that unified Republican control would revoke that kind of come in from above and overturn that decision by banning it on some sort of national basis is probably, in my mind, the last the best asset that Biden has in those states against any Republican nominee, but especially Trump.
And Democrats have held the Virginia Senate.
Yes, Democrats have held the Virginias and you know, look they held it in the same way that I mean, like we're watching the same thing unfold in state after state after state, right, and that is like, you know, you know, this is these are these are local elections or idiosyncratic factors, but the consistent thread is that in these big population centers, you know, in the suburbs of Richmond and in even the outer suburbs of d C, you are seeing you know, Glenn Youngkin wanted, you know,
he forced this race to be to pivot on whether voters would accept a fifteen week abortion ban, and not enough did. I mean, it's just pretty clear, especially in those big population centers, and look at those numbers seventy five percent or more voting for repeal of the ban in Ohio, in the county centered on since and Atti, Columbus and Cleveland and the surrounding suburbs of all of them, including a lot of places that Donald Trump ran well,
are also voting against this. This is not a cultural agenda outside of you know, some core and core red states, although even in there, you know, whether it's Texas or Iowa, the biggest places, the kind of diverse, well educated, info age metros are just rejecting this agenda, even at a
moment where they're broadly unhappy with the economy. I mean, that's was so striking about all this, By the way, in the one last point, because I do have to run one last point about Virginia, is that Virginia seems to me to embody kind of the national set of
ingredients the most precisely of any of these elections. Because you know, in that Washington Post George Mason University poll from the other day, Republicans led by double digits, and who could handle the economy and who could handle crime? Youngkin's approval was fifty and Biden's is now under fifty.
Even though he won the state by ten points, and.
It did not It didn't pull them over because because because voters did not want to give him the free hand to ban abortion in fifteen weeks and as well as by the way, the Democratic candidates didn't only run an abortion, they ran on other rights.
They ran on book bands right and voting rights and the idea.
You know, the way I say it, the way I wrote it today again is what is allowing Democrats to win these races is that there is a critical slice of voters who believe that Democrats have not delivered for their interests, but are still voting for them anyway because they view Republicans as a threat to their rights and values. And that was true in twenty two. That was the big story in the big swing states, and I think it is again the big story tonight.
Yeah, thank you so much, Thank you Ron.
All Right, guys, good luck.
Tim o'bri ian is the editor of Bloomberg Opinion. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Tim O'Brien.
Hey, Mike here.
We are so happy to have you. You know, you write on a lot of stuff. You're an expert on Trump's legal problems and Trump. I'm sorry to tell you, but you've also been doing this a long time. Yesterday a lot of stuff went down. There were these insane New York Times polls that started the day, and the day ended with Donald Trump screaming at a federal judge.
And in the middle we had Joe Biden going to an Amtrak station in Delaware announcing sixteen billion dollars of infrastructure, which I would not have known had I not been listening to c Span discuss well and Joe.
Biden doing the things that we want politicians to do. Whether or not you agree with whether or not Amtrak should get sixteen billion more dollar, it's a policy move. It's about trying to purpose we do stuff for the American people, as opposed to turning a man in courtroom into vaudeville, which is what Trump has done it. You know, I think there's a long learne you can trace from the celebrification of the US presidency. If that's even a word.
It's for our purposes, it is, yeah, Yeah, begin with JFK, right, like going directly to the people going around the party, and there's a lot of virtues of that.
JFK did it with TV, and Trump has done it with social but JFK was a rational, talented human being. Donald Trump is an unhinged, dangerous person, but he is very plugged into what triggers people's emotions, and an important part of politicking is emotion. It's not policy. We want, you know, that great wedded kind of thing of someone who's great on policy and also really good at campaigning like Obama was, I think, and whether or not you agree with them, Reagan was right FDR one and Trump
has no interest in policy. Trump has an interest in his burning the house down on the altar of his own mediums every single day till there's no thing lot.
Yeah.
So one of the things that Trump did, and actually Judge accused him of doing this and I think it was very much right, was that he used this moment being on the witness stand to politic and his politic thing is largely this idea that people are after him and so he needs to get back at them. And this is what the American people want. I understand the Republican primary base has been charmed and somehow they have
decided that Trump is our guy. But I just have trouble seeing this as a message that will reverberate with swingstate voters.
I agree with you, Molly. I think you're right about that, and I don't think the polls are capturing the meat of that particular election. I think the people in each party that come out in the primaries are the most passionate voters, and I think the people that respond to poles are the most passionate voter. So you've got the most passionate people saying, yeah, Biden bad on cross immigration
or impulsing the ecodomy. And now we weren't Trump. But I think that you know, in those six there's maybe seven swing states, but I think there's just six of them, and I think the voters in those states are grossed out by Donald Trump's shredding of civic norms and his
underlining of institutions. And I think these courtroom dramas that Trump worked his straight because he you know, and he's doing it particularly in this case, and he's going after Arthur and go around the judge in the civil's broad case because he's already lost that case on legal grounds, so he got nothing to lose by spoofing the whole thing.
He got everything to gain because it does get traction with his core folks but I think I think when push comes to shove and those swing states, you're going to see it. I think a different response than some of the polls may be capturing. But I qualified, I would like to be wrong, right, And I.
Mean, it is one of the things when you look at those polls and if you were to do a deep dive, and again I sort of take them with the grain of salt. But they say that Biden seems older than Trump, even though Biden is two and a half years older than Trump, so or three years older
than Trump. But you could see that there have been so many pieces written both in the right wing media and in the mainstream media, right like the but her email's kind of phenomenon when it comes to his age, and there have been hundreds of pieces written about like is Joe Biden too old? And there have been almost no muss written about is Donald Trump too old?
Well, I think because Joe Biden has the gummiest nonlinear way of speaking. He seems so overtly adult in the way that he speaks, and Trump is like always on red ball. You know, it's like it's amazing at this guy who eats bird steak and fried food and doesn't exercise. Is still this force of nature, but that's starting, I
think to change as well. You know, we've had this series of events where he doesn't know what state he's in, and he doesn't know who he's campaigned again, and he's mashing his sentences, and there's been some coverage of that. There's reason to worry about acuity because of the way he speaks publicly. But again, and I would qualify that by saying, I think he's surrounded himself the first rate team, and they've executed on a number of things very well,
and running on. Remember when Obama gave him that like what was meant to be to be a brief Rose Garden speech when he said he wouldn't run against Hillary, right, but he was still Obama's vice president, and it was supposed to be like an afternoon ebop of like four to five minutes, and twenty five minutes later he was going on and on about his vision to the American dream and everything, and he's never been able to help himself.
But I do think he sounded gummier and a little more aduled now than getting the packs.
It's funny, though, because I was listening to his speech in Delaware at that Amtrak station or wherever it was, and he actually he sounded pretty good. And I mean, again, it's reading a teleprompter, but I'm listening at one and a half as again, he's not running against the almighty right,
He's running against Trump. And I think that was something I was thinking a lot about with this primary contest, which is theoretically still going, is that if you had a Joe Biden running against someone like a Ron De Santis who's forty five years old, that's a different story.
But you don't.
I think that's right. I think he's a little more fuzzy than he was in twenty twenty. But I think the reasons that people voted for him in twenty He wasn't an ideal candidate in twenty twenty for a lot of people, but he was somebody who had spent his entire life in public service. He is not militia. He wants good things for people, and he's not a maniac at the steering wheel who's going to drive the car off the exit, wrap down into the canyon and blow
the car up with you in the backseat. And Trump is all those other things. He needs such a wild card of unknown proportion that age alone and coherency allows aren't to me the reasons you vote for against that guy.
True.
Now we have in the House a House speaker, Mike Johnson. He was in leadership sort of. He's been in Congress since twenty sixteen, so not very long. He is very religious. His first sort of shot across the bow was this Israel funding emergency aid package with of sets that included cutting the irs and growing the deficit. What do you think, where does this go? Is this too crazy? I mean still has a one person motion to vacate.
Also, remember he supported the big line that the twenty twenty election unfairly stolen. To me, what you need signifies in a big way is that trump Ism is now fully rooted beyond Donald Trump. The fact that the entire party came behind Johnson because they thought it was better to get an extraordinarily out there person at the helm
for a sign of fake unity. I guess at the expense of actually trying to steer the party away from the worst forms of trump Ism, which is irrationality, anti institutional, timetra, factual counter expertise. And I think he's just an example of the degree to which trump Ism.
Now has institutional half beyond Trump themselves, and that there aren't moderate Republicans or traditional Republicans who are willing to band together with Democrats say to just steer things in a new direction.
They just can't stomach that. I think they believe their own voters won't forgive them for collaborating with the dark side, you know, I eed, the Democrat And that may be true.
Actually, it's so interesting because one of the problems Republicans have in the House is that trump Ism does not make allowances for the district you got elected in. For example, someone like Mike Lawler, who is sitting in a Biden plus three district running for re election against Mondir Jones, who happens to be a good friend of mine, but also more importantly a Democrat and what should be a Democratic seat theoretically, anyway, he had to vote for Mike Johnson.
That in itself is sort of disqualifying, I would think.
I mean, he seems like such is zalot.
Well, I think he is a zealot. What shade of difference is he from some of the other loonies who threw their hats into the ring. Jim Jordan, like, where
where on the spectrum do Johnson and Jordan depart? And everyone felt right out of the gates that Jim Jordan was in no way yeah, that this was a guy who had never passed legislation, that he was a complete flame thrower, and that, like many others in his party, had made a name for himself by you know, pandering to Fox and social media and not doing things for
his constituent. And then after all the infighting, everyone just throws them the tonnel and says yes Johnson, and I think what you just cited is the perfect kind of granular example of how that affects people in more moderate district The party's going to have to wrestle with this, right, Like, if the Republican Party believes that Trump is makes sense for that beyond Trump himself, then we're going to wrestle with this as a country for a much longer time
regards what happens to Trump in this next selection. I think if Trump gets re elected, it's going to get Trump is some greater traction and tether within that party and in the American light than it has now. I think if he doesn't, there will still be people who want to come across any sake Trump, you know, whether that's Roder Santis or Mike Chahson.
That is the problem we saw in the Republican primary, which theoretically is still going on, and there's a debate on the day that this podcast publishes Wednesday night, but no one will watch it because the front runner is not in it. There was no one who offered of all the people who are running, the real people who are running, you know, Chris Christy and Asa Hutchinson weren't really.
I mean maybe Asa thought he was running, but Chris Christie knew he was never going to get the nomination, right, I mean, there's no way, no.
I think he thought he was there to just say either one will say the thing about Trump that no one else will, right, But.
Of course so undermined by the fact that he had gotten COVID from Trump, he worked in the Trump administration. It does seem to me that nobody who was a front runner Ronda santa just didn't have a bold vision. He just had deluded Trumpism without the charisma quote unquote.
And actually the failure of the Santas's national candidacy shows do you just can't take this buy anti woke agenda that targets corporate America and libraries and school and people of color and basically say that if you're interested in the yesterday's people of color and he actually think libraation of different kinds of books on the shelf, that means you're kind of a woke maniac and a threat to America. That didn't sell nationally, and that's a healthy that's a
good thing. And I think that comes back to our discussion about where the polls are right now and Trump and what might happen to the vote. You know, Ron Desantist was expected to come out on fire in this primary season, and part of it is that he's a weird guy himself. He's not a good campaign right. But also I can't just think that that like, you know, woke agenda garbage didn't sell. You know, Nikki Hayley is really interested in me in this context. I think she
wants to be serious about policy. I think she does a lot he bakes her up policy, but she is not an irrational plank thrower like some of the others. You know, she has now started to break out of the pack a little bit. I think, you know, in a field of also ran. He's running better than the others, but she's still and also ran herself.
It does seem to me that Nikki Haley, which she is operating in North one, which many of those Republican candidates are not. So what I think is interesting is like, if you look back on the twenty twenty election, the twenty nineteen in Democratic primary field, there was a moment when Democrats said, Okay, Biden is the guy. You may not love him, but we think he's got the best shot.
And people sort of started to get around Biden and they dropped out, even if they weren't thrilled about it, they dropped out because they said defeating Trump is more important. I mean, you know, it was really a very sort of quick thing where people kind of got in line behind the person they thought was most likely to be able to win. And you know, he picked up a lot of progressive and he got Bernie involved in the budget.
I mean, he did the things he needed to do to pay back those choices of people made from here's the question, So why were Republicans. I mean, if Republicans had all dropped out and said Nikki Haley is our answer to Trump is and we are going to support her.
She would have had a shot.
We're in an age of remarkable political powered it. There are very few people in the GOP who are just willing to say we should do this thing or the right thing, and Trump is a plague and we need to get rid of the plague if we're going to
be a purposeful party. Like Mitt Romney says that Mitt Romney's leaving the Senate, other people in the GOP said that have like they been on their way out the door, and some of the ones who still said it in office turned around on and die when the consequences saying that kind of stuff threatened their careers. Kevin McCarthy Mitch McConnell are two examples. Are after January six, thing, you know, we will drive Trumps for what it was and incendiary
and dangerous dema god within week, that's it out. Maybe not because they're terrified of the emotive powering as with his base combined with the media presence, and how quickly that can shred their career. In the euro room right now where people are baked in in media cauldrons, and you wind up with lunatics like Marjorie Taylor Green and Lauren Bobert.
Yeah, that's right, and that's where we are right now. Tim O'Brien, thank you so much for joining us from Singapore.
It is always fun being our ound. Thank you. Problem lable.
Moment Jesse Canon, Molly Jong Fast. Let's count up some wins tonight. Glenn Youngkin, He's wanted to have a big win tonight. He did not get it at all. What else did you see?
Andy Bscher has gotten reelected, maybe by a larger margin than he did in his first term. We also saw Ohio the ballot initiative codifying row past sixty plus percent. Well, where we're really seeing some fuckeray is in the great state of Mississippi. And this is how you know things are not going well. At eight fifteen pm, Brandon Presley says, if you're in line, stay in line.
You have a right to cast your ballot.
Something went wrong in the state of Mississippi, and that is our moment of fuckerray. 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.