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 how's GOP unveils a plan to raise the debt limit by four trillion dollars. You'll remember that's the party that pretends to care about financial responsibility. We have such a great show for you today, talking Fed's own Harry Lippman stops by to talk about how Trump's corruption in broad daylight can be litigated in the courts.
Then we'll talk to Run for Something's own Amanda Lippman about her new book, When We're in Charge, the Next Generation's Guide to Leadership. But first the news.
So Molly, Jake Tapper, and Alex Thompson have this book. Everybody's touting is going to be all the rage of gossip through the whole early summer about how President Biden had no idea where he was and that he's out to watch. So the first excerpt from it has come out and it's not feeling that exciting. Right.
Look, the right really wants there to be a conspiracy here, that there was some kind of setup, and the reality is, and we've talked about this on podcasts before, and we're going to talk about it again, and we may end up talking about it again and again and again. Getting old is not a conspiracy being an old guy. Again. When you read John Allen and Amy's book about Biden's election, you see that he had gone to Europe twice and then he had come and done this debate and had
been a disaster. This is the old guy. Being old is not a conspiracy. And I'm going to point to a man called Donald Trump, who is now the oldest president ever, who twice today wandered off after giving a talk. Right, Trump gave a little talk and then forgot to sign the executive order he was going to sign, so they had to bring him back. And there was another time when he did something similar to too old to hold elected office.
Now is it a conspiracy? No? Is it a conspiracy in the fact that American politics is Democrats are too polite and they let people stay too long, and they don't I mean, everything I've read so far, and i haven't read the book, but I've just read excerpts of it shows people who are too polite to tell Biden the truth. Is that a conspiracy? It's a conspiracy in the fact that it is just infuriating to me, Right,
I find that infuriating. But what the right desperately wants is some kind of cabal that kept Biden in charge as opposed to a more likely scenario. And again I wasn't there, so I don't really know, but my guess is a more likely scenario of polite people trying not to upset someone, which in itself is infuriating. Right. I almost would rather have a secret cabal of people trying to keep them in power, because at least it would show a kind of intentionality which I do not think
is there. I just want you to realize this story is being used by the Right as a way of maligning Democrats, and I just think that should be something you think about when you think about this story, is what is the purpose of this, Why is this out there? And what is the play? And that I think is something that you should think about very strongly when you
read this book. And look, I just don't think I wish the Democratic Party were capable of doing such high level operating, because then none of us would be in this situation. But they're not, and that's why we're here.
Solid point speaking of not the best strategizing and things not really going well. Representative shre Thnadar today introduced impeachment of Trump into the.
House, right.
This is why it is a group that can't shoot straight. And that's what we're talking about here. So there's no numbers to impeach Trump. They don't Democrats don't have the votes. It is absolutebolutely insane. It's just crazy. Right, This is what it is. There are are members of the House, they want to do something, and they're right to want to do something, and we want them to do something.
But since there aren't the votes for impeachment, what will happen if you start the clock on this is it's just going to fail and it's going to help Trump. And again, talking to Harry Litman, you're going to hear this on the podcast. We're talking about this. And I actually wonder. I have a theory I've concocted which I think may actually be right, which is that focus on the illegality around Trump because that is often more blatant. And there's a reason that Rudy Giuliani is in the
place he is right now and everyone else around Trump. Right, Michael Cohen went to jail. All of this happened because the people around Trump are doing similarly illegal things. Anyway, the point of this is that this is not the moment for impeachment proceedings. Moment for impeachment proceedings is, hopefully when if Democrats win the House, and when and if Donald Trump does something that is actively impeachable, which I'm sure you will, because let's be honest, it's not safe.
Bet if I've ever taken with Yeah. So, in addition to all this debt raising in the GOP budget, we also have Medicaid work requirements, which is a cursed phrase I hope to never say. But what are you see in here?
So here's the deal. Republicans need to cut eight hundred and eighty billion dollars in Medicaid. And they don't need to. They want to. They want to do it why so that they can keep these tax cuts for very rich people, perhaps pass more tax cuts and make it look like it makes financial sense. It is very hard to cut eight hundred and eighty billion dollars for Medicaid. Again, do I think the tax cuts. I think they should let the tax cuts expire. I think the tax cuts. I
think it's really disgusting. I think that they should raise taxes on very wealthy people. It's just my take. By the way, my favorite thing. Last week, Donald Trump pretended that he wanted to raise taxes on people who make over two and a half million dollars a year, a group that can heartily and absolutely afford to pay more taxes, and then he was like, no, it would be bad. Then Democrats can say, read my lips new to taxes.
No.
The truth is he can't do it because the people who put him in office are like, you're not going to fucking raise my taxes. We put you in here to not raise our taxes. So look, I think that when Democrats get back into power, prayer hands, that that happens. They must create a bracket for people who make over two point five million dollars a year. That is like not even a question. That should absolutely happen one hundred percent.
And the fact that that was even floated at all in a Republican administration means that Democrats must do it asap. Hard to find eight hundred and eighty billion in medicaid, they're going to try low hanging fruit, which is like work requirements and this and that. Look, they're not going to get there from here. Okay's those are big cuts. By the way, they can get that money from the Department of Defense, which will now be spending one trillion dollar.
The Department of Defense budget is going up. Okay, so more money for Pete hegsath and it just the whole thing is completely FORGOCTA. Again. The only good part of this story is that it will be bad for red states, which will be bad for elected Republicans. I don't want anyone to suffer. I don't want red state voters to suffer.
I don't want blue state voters to suffer. But I do think there is a particular irony and the fact that a lot of these people who will be kicked off healthcare, and if they do this, we will see the number of people with health insurance down by more than eight million by twenty three four.
So, Mali, the latest state of play if the Trump administration versus the courts is now is a lot of veiled threats, And by veiled, I mean there's probably a lot of rips in the veil. Are Stephen Miller basically threatening the court what he talked about getting rid of habeas Corpus last week, and now we have Trump basically trying to bully them as well.
So the Trump administration keeps losing in court, and they keep losing in court because they want to do illegal stuff. Okay, they keep losing in court because the illegal frameworks they're trying to use are wartime frameworks. We are not at war, we are not even in some kind of cold war. There's nothing. There's only Trende Aarragua, which is a Venezuelan gang that literally no one had heard of before twenty twenty four when Donald Trump read about conspiracies that they
had taken over a apartment building in Aurora, Colorado. You remember that from season two? I sure do. Yeah, So this is a gang that is Venezuelan. It's not that many people all Donald Trump has decided it's the major danger to American life. It is not. This is a fucking bullship premise yet again to try and get people to get the judiciary to sign off on some of
Trump's dumb stuff. And I think that it's important to remember that Trump has really as much as the Supreme Court is installed by him, filled with conservatives who align with him, he has squandered a lot of their good will through attacking them and through just these very stupid cases. The reason that they're looking at the birthright citizenship case, and again you can say they're playing three dimensional chess,
and maybe it's true. Maybe they're doing it to shoot it down to show they're not complete craven sycophans to Trump. But either way, the birthright citizenship case, they're not going to take away birthright citizenship. I mean, that's just I don't think that's how this is going to go. So he has really kind of squandered what lot of positive feeling there was towards him. We're going to see just
more Trump attacks on the courts. And the reason only Trump is attacking the courts, and I think this is really important to remember, is because this is the only checks and balance that's checking him. Right. The Congress has rolled over and played dead. They're not interested. The Republicans are too scared, the Democrats are not in the majority, and a little bit too disorganized. So there are a few who are really doing a good job. This is what we're going to do here. They're going to try
look some of these lines. I want you to just I'm going to reach you a line about Republicans wanting work requirements. And you tell me if you don't see where this is going.
Okay, okay, okay, show me, miss clear, show me the future.
Right exactly, Washington can't afford to undermine the program Medicaid further by subsidizing capable adults who choose now to work. You can tell that's the best they could think of for this. So look, and Josh Hall everyone's favorite.
Oh, definitely mine.
But here's the thing, Josh Holly, Okay, this guy is a super big Republican, very sort of read in on the world of Republican politics. His wife argues him friend the Supreme Court. He says, slashes to the safety net would be morally wrong and politically suicide. Harry Litman is a former US attorney and the host of the podcast Talking Feds. Oh Yes, Oh yes, oh yes.
It is the latest Molly mashup Talking Feds and Molly Jong Fast for Fast Politics, where I pose her political questions and she retorts with legal ones. But today I want to start not exactly either, because Mollie John Fast is everyone in America I to know, has a new book coming out in next month. You want to take a moment to explain a little bit about that. First of all, congratulations a new book. Wow. Second, let's hear about it.
So I wrote a book called How to Lose Your Mother. It's a book about the worst year of my life and how I got through it. And I wrote it because I wanted people to be able to live through something that feels unlivable and get through it. And that is why I wrote the book. And hopefully people will like it. The early reviews are very good, but who knows.
Yeah, I mean a lot of it is about family dynamics. But I'll just say to people who don't know, which may be nobody, both your mom and your grandfather, you're really from a writer's family. And that's a big part of the backdrop here. What do you got?
So much of this seems as non as a non lawyer to be illegal. Trump has this The Supreme Court has basically given him a broad, sweeping immunity to do crimes or whatever, things like the cryptocoin the taking the four hundred million dollar plane from the Qataris what is illegal here and what is not illegal? And what is the recourse?
Yeah, that's the big question, the last one, and it is crimes or whatever. So he is a walking Emolument's clause violation. He wasn't his first term, but that was chump change all the stuff with his hotels, four hundred million dollar palace in the sky as they call it. That's some serious, groundbreaking historic emolument clause violation right there
in the Constitution. So much of what he's doing, Mollie, if you had to give a broader theme to it, is just completely eviscerating any role of Congress to decide things. And we're in the Constitution. It says in black and white. Is that in parchment paper that it's got to go through Congress, for example, the Emolument's clause, Then it's as illegal as can be. You put your finger on it. Though when you talk about remedy, because at least there if we want to stick with plane, it's patent that.
What the Framers had in mind is Congress should decide we don't want some big national political debate, will use Congress to make the judgment is this fair game or not? You know, Lincoln wanted this fancy elephant. They said, no Obama to turn down the million bucks for the Nobel Preprize. What Trump has to do and is not doing it is patently illegal. Is serve this up to Congress and says right there in the Constitution and in general, there's
many things he's violating. And I think you're right. The court has given him a free pass on crimes, but that doesn't mean a free pass on illegalities. For instance, in immigration the interpretation of the Alien Enemies Act, but this one totally illegal. But what's designed as a congressional
remedy you do have. In fact, let me turn this back on you, though it wasn't my thought, I do think here you have cruised this morning saying I don't know man Katar Saudierra, Yeah, you have certain what you need. The Martin nomination just went down. He starts with a pretty close margin, and it does seem like maybe there's this much daylight beginning to form between him and the Senate,
him and the Congress. What do you think about that at the political level, which my final answer to you is so much of it rests with Congress, and they've made it clear to date they're not going to do anything.
So I actually interviewed Tammy Baldwin and she said there are Republican senators who believe in the power of the Senate. So what has to happen here, I think is that Democrats have to win back the House. Number one. We have to protect our elections, and Democrats have to win back to the House. I think Trump is now a monarch. I don't think he can be charged with anything. I
don't think. I think that's a fool's errand, but I do think people like Stephen Miller and people like you think about the people around Trump who are doing things that are illegal. Maybe Stephen Miller know, but certainly there are people who are violating. I'm thinking about Pam Bondy. She got one hundred and fifteen thousand dollars a month from the Katari government as a lobbyist. So are there emails between her and the Qatari is is it on
her private email or her public email? Does it look like extoration, you.
Know, or at least a quid pro quo, which I think both politically and legal, that would be a real inchpin, right. Yeah.
I have to wonder if some of the mistake of Trump one point zero was that maybe instead of going after Trump, they should have gone after every single person around him. Because going after Trump was seen. I don't think it was true because the guy did all these things that were illegal, but it was seen as political, whereas going there's clearly she has encouraged a certain lawlessness that well, he can't be torched with it. The people around him can. And I think that supply gotcha.
It's a really interesting point because like the big indictment by Smith, he made a point of Trump only I think for speed. But you're certainly right, everyone you know meadows on that has gotten a walk.
And you also see when you look at like the Rudy case or the Rogerstone, the people around Trump tend to do stuff that's really not okay.
All right, you're turned.
I wonder sort of when you think about the DOJ, the Republicans. There's a lot of stuff they're doing at the DJ right now, which is they're stopping prosecuting some white collar crime because they want to be focused on the border. There's not a huge amount of stuff going on at the border right it's the numbers are down to the lowest they've been a long time. Is there any way to get the DJ to do its job and not to nor crimes.
I think the short answer to that is no, and I'm overall seguin about our endgame here, which we can talk about if you want to. But I think the DJ is beyond repair, beyond reclamation. This is from talking to people in there. It's like a post apocalyptic zone with a few zombies kind of wandering around dazed and confused. They have really brought the hammer down. People who haven't done the kinds of cases they want or are being fired. That's sort of unheard of. Everyone is being it's coming home,
right ed Martin just turned down. But meet the new boss, same as the old boss. You're going to have someone who is just as much takes this view that's just like against It's not a little off, it's against DOJ you know, Bone Marrow, DNA, that they are the president's lawyers and not the constitution and rule of law. Lawyers hold hartments are being eliminated, civil rights, voting sections, public integrity.
Just today we learned about a really important prosecutorial entity that you had them in every office for organized crime and drug stuff. So I think everyone's keeping their head down. Everyone's scared to talk. People are trying to figure out is this a good time to go on in the market, which is actually saturated with other DOJ types, Bondie and Bovart disasters, who you know lie daily about the supposed politicization of prosecutions under the old regime and they're doing nothing.
But here, I think inside the place, it's a real disaster zone included, but also outside because judges maybe juries. We don't know yet, But it used to mean so much to you. It's so much of a tailwind when you stood up Molly John Fast for the United States, and that's really be eroded. In general. I think the calculations I make with the DOJ is will it ever be the same? How long intel norms norms, for example involving the White House, you know, politicizing things and telling
them what to do. How long will it ever be right again? But I think of it as basically a wasteland as long as you know Trumps president in BONDI is ag. I'm not monolithically pessimistic across the board, but DOJ is just fucked, I'm sorry to say.
But can the other states do stuff to hold them in check? Because California, Yeah, talk to me about like con democratic ags sue the DOJ. I mean, is there a world where that happened.
You know, it's funny. So the different one, we were just talking about a monument's clause and there was a big lawsuit by state ags before saying when you take the when you do these violations, it has I think you put your finger on it. And your listeners probably know about this stuff. Everyone's taking a crash course and
a low as they're standing. The short answer is some courts will say yes, some courts will say no, and there is ability by and large I think of the sanctuary movements and stuff for the states to assert themselves, for the states to actually regulate. DOJ say hey, wait a second, that's against the law, you can't do that, or even I want this case not UFBI. The play is really narrow. I think federal law enforcement is not doing bad stuff, but not doing good stuff basically for
as long as as Trump is around. So look, that's part of the solution. State if everything goes awry, if the court lets them go, if Congress stays supine, is state in federal power. But really it's you know, popular discontent and unrest. And you know you've pointed out, actually let me let me turn things now, because your recent Vandy fair article is about Americans turning against Trump somewhat,
and that's the true. Let me just say, not even as a partisan, but as an objective commentator, they don't seem to be turning toward, you know, Democrats, or they're they're turning away from doesn't seem to augur a real you mentioned can the can the Dems take the House? That seems pretty pretty uphill battle. What's your thought about A, why the losses for Trump are not don't seem to
be true? Well, A, if it's true, and B, if so, why the losses for Trump, he's now at the lowest of anyone after this amount of time of president since they've been doing polling, are not translating into commensurate or anything like commensurate gains for Dems.
I think Democrats can win back the House. I think what happened in in Wisconsin with that judicial election is pretty clear case that the Republican brand is not good. By the way, you know whose brand is the only person who was really a much worse brand than Trump is our friend Elon mush who really I mean, if you look at that, if you go in and look at those exit poles, like only five percent of voters were more likely to vote for the Republican because of
the Elon endorsement. I mean, completely crazy, and that was a very expensive race. So I think Democrats can win back the House. I think the reason the brand is in the Crapper is because I'll give you the sort of the reasons. People are mad, right, they are not happy. They do not feel good about the twenty twenty four cycle. Yeah, I think on the Democratic side they feel I mean I ask them all the time, and from what I understand this is they feel angry that Democrats are not
doing more. Though really, what can they do? Right? They have a mic, they have a sort of they can draw attention to things, but they can't necessarily, you know, they can't hold rooms, they can't really move things. They can't legislate, they can't do this, they can't do that. But what they can do is they can you know, do things like the Philibuster. Like people loved that Booker Philibuster. Millions of people loved it. So the question is do
they love Corey Booker's very centrist policies. Maybe not. I mean, like all of these Democrats, I mean, if you think about the if you ask people who are in the party, what they who they like. They'll say AOC Bernie Chris Murphy, Corey Booker, Jasmine Crockett. Here are five people who have almost no you know, their Centrists, their leftists, they're socialists. There's no unifying governing principle except another one Pritzker is they are team fight. So team fight people like, and
team cave people don't like. So I would say, if you're going to fight, I think there's a place for you in the Democratic Party. If you're going to cave and that and interesting like there are a bunch of senators who are retiring on the Democratic side, like Gary Peters, people who maybe in a normal democracy you could have
the temperament for the Senate. But if Trump leaves office when his term is up, which is a real if if he does, there will be a reconstruction of American democracy, which will be loud and painful and really a lot of people screaming at each other at best and best and the people who are on the Democratic side and on the Republican side, but on the Democratic side are going to need to really have a spine.
Yeah, that's a great point and sort of what I was thinking about DOJ, I'm overall sanguine, but man, oh man, the cleaning of the stables after it's going to be rough hurriculean.
My question is what are people doing in the Trump DJ right now that is illegal?
Okay, So it's a really good question because first you got to think about abnormal. When I hear about certain things, my head goes three sixty degrees. But it's not technically speaking illegal for the White House to do certain things. I think they are violating the nineteen seventy eight Civil Service reformat right and left. They're firing people. Tell you can't do that. You've got they get certain due process.
They're doing things specifically in violation. You could either say the First Amendment, Fifth Amendment because people take certain positions, righteous positions, you know, the Adams prosecution, whatever, and they're getting fired for that. The big thing they're doing mind very effectively, but you know, will there be remedies? Is hollowing out the department all that sort of knowledge of the place. The way it works is there are anywhere sort of handful of people, You come to them, you
work through them together. They're all gone, they've been demoted to you know, asset forfeiture in Kentucky or whatever, and the culture of the place that's been so comprehensively denuded and is so making it ineffective. Then I think there are some flat out violations of lawn in general. You know, I'm a fraud lawyer, and when you lie about stuff and make a scheme, this is what Trump was charged
with before he had immunity. That can be a crime, and a vigorous Department of Justice will never see it will never happen even later, would construct certain things that Bove is doing and Bondie is doing, because all they're trying to do is serve his political interests, which do
not coincide with the law. But the bigger stuff, I mean, look, there's an overall less and a bitter lesson of the last few months or even you could say last eight years, which is that at the end of the day, the government runs on norms, good faith, integrity, ways of doing things that people have different views accept and it's really that that they've totally raised and so the impact is terrible.
And then in addition, I could maybe make some US versus Bondie arguments, US versus bov argument but the real terrible damage is sort of at the cultural functional level. All right, I want to throw you a it's not it won't be a curveball for you, but a curveball in our conversation because I just had a long talk with Jonathan height t you may know from NYU, and his big spiel is how terrible social media has been for younger voters and what a disaster it is for
younger generation. And you on the on your on the Zdeo podcast, you really the hardest working woman in podcastree, I must say try and said the fundamental problem with Democrats among the older generation is they can't get online, which is kind of the very opposite of his diagnosis, at least for younger Dems. So I thought that was pretty interesting and I wanted to ask you to splash that out a little.
The problem is communication, right, Nobody will argue, maybe they won't, but they're wrong. Joe Biden passed a lot of legislation, really good legislation right on shoring manufacturing, chips and sciences, the thing that Donald Trump just did a whole fuck up about right on shoring manufacturing. Biden actually passed something that would have and has to some extent, got semiconductor chips going in the United States making semiconductor chips. This
is seismic stuff. The reason why Biden was unpopular was inflation and an inability to transmit what he was doing. Nobody knew. In fact, you know, there's these Google searches of election Day where people went on their computer to see who was running for president because they thought Biden was still running for president. So this is a big fucking problem. And it comes from the supposition that politics runs downstream of culture. This is a Andrew Breitbart ism.
Andrew Breitbart, right wing lunatic died. That guy said politics runs downstream of culture. And what Donald Trump did was he got into the bloodstream of the culture, and so he won the presidency. What Democrats have done studiously is completely stay outside of the culture. And they've done it, I think because they're being advised by people who are
terrified of their own shadows. So this is why sometimes you will have a elected who you'll get on your podcast and you'll ask them a question and they'll say ameer Ca because it's Emera and it's c and you'll think this doesn't make any sense, and what the fuck are they doing You've had those elected, and that is the consultant class getting in their brains, making them think
that saying nothing is better than saying something. And the reality is the more democrats say nothing, the more they open the door to a Donald Trump to another Donald Trump to And that is how we got here, and that is the only way to get out of it is to have people who run for office, who say English words and are real people and say things like this is what I'm gonna do and this is what I'm not going to do, and really let you in or at least pretend to enough. Anyway.
Thank you, Always good and always fun talking to you, Molly. Good luck with the book and see you next month.
Thank you. Amanda Littman is the co founder of Run for Something and the author of the new book When We're in che The Next Generation's Guide to Leadership. Welcome to Fast Politics, Amanda Litman, Thanks Molly.
Always delighted to chat.
Let's talk about this book, tell us everything.
So the book is called When We're in Charge. It's out this week. It is the Next Generation's Guide to Leadership. And I would say the like one sentence summary is it's how to be an effective leader in this moment without being an asshole to the people you lead.
Ooh, so what does that look like?
It looks like what does it really mean to be authentic in a way that is not about ego but about serving your team and how you can show up for them. It's about transparency, It's about work life balance. It's about being like a better parent as part of your work, and how you can think about your caregiving responsibilities. It's about your career and ambition. I really I heard someone describe it as like unlike any other business book you've ever read, in a good way. And I like that summary.
Right now as actually reading an article you were quoted in today in The Atlantic about these retirements and that they're actually kind of a good sign. So talk us through why you think that. So.
I think it is a good thing that we have older democratic leaders retiring. I think they open up space and competitive primaries where the party can really decide what we believe. I think we get to celebrate these leaders' legacies in a way that I think is good for them. When they retire. They get to go out the front door, as I like to describe it, get to like to
find their legacy really be celebrated. If they stayed in, almost certainly all of them would be getting challenged, and then they would have to get into a really nasty campaign that would often center about their personal failings. I don't think that would be fun for anyone. So I'm glad to see folks like you know, Gary Peters, Tina Smith, Dick Durbin, and others step aside because it means we get to really like, look at them as patriots. Is putting public service above their egos.
Yeah, I think that's right. Trump Is polling is bad, but so we're Democrats, right, their polling is also bad. It seems as if it's largely cave versus fight, not an ideological hostility. The voters are having more of a they don't feel like their people are doing enough for them. What do you think? I mean? I've asked a lot of elected what they could be doing more of. You are pretty versed in all of this, So what do you think they should be doing more of?
I think there are things like not confirming any of Trump's nominees through the Senate.
So talk us through how that would work.
Well, I am not an insider when it comes to Senate procedure, but it was for what I have read, there are mechanics procedural moves in which they need Democrats to vote to approve many of these nominees for things like the Justice Department, some of the judges they want
to move through other Senate confirmed positions. Democrats just don't have to give them the votes that we can put sand in the gears in a way that at the very least slows it down because floor time is one of the only resources they cannot get back at some point they have to close out the session. So if we can grind the gears down to a halt, even if we can't ultimately stop some of the harm they're doing, you know, that makes a difference.
Do you think it would have been a good idea to shut down the government?
I think it's hard to say. I think it would have been a good idea if we knew we were going to vote to keep the government open to have gotten something for that, But that's what I and you have, like extracted any kind of pound of flush in exchange for it. The problem was that Schumer put up a strong posture up until the day of and then was like, oh, just kidding. Here you go, you get my vote, you got a couple others, godspeed, at least get something for it. My dude.
It feels like Democrats are still not quite hard enough on Republicans. So we have Chris Murphy has been out there just a ton, which I think has been really good. And then we had Corey Booker do this filibuster which was pretty epic. But a lot of Democratic senators we just haven't seen out there. Am I missing anyone? I mean, obviously in the House we've had AOC, We've had Bernie Rocket, Maxwell Frost, But what would you like to see Demko
sort of what's your dream to see? You know, if you could say to Reuben Diego, who's a guy with a lot of ambition, like what I'd like to be seeing you doing?
Or you know, I think actually Chris van Holland modeled something good here where he has like used his physical presence to push the needle, like going down to El Salvador demanding a meeting with a Brago, like putting out photos and explaining how the photos that they put out were propaganda.
Like that's good.
More of that, I would say we had in Worcestern Massachusetts. One of the city council members there, whose name I'm going to butcher because I've only ever read it and never said it. So comes a woman adal A Jaj I think who has a run for something, alum who literally put her body in front of ice trying to detain a young woman and her child, Like, put your body on the line, make it, make a spectacle. Spectacle
is good. Spectacle gets attention, Attention gets reached, reach gets votes ultimately eventually.
Yeah, that's a really good point. What I think is interesting. So for example, Trump is wants to get this plane from the Qatari royal family. It's a four hundred MILANDAR plane. There are a number of reasons why Trump shouldn't have his plane, right from the emolument's cause to the national security problems.
Going to be chock full a spyware. What do we do when there.
At every point this is an insane idea. It's so insane that Cynthia Lumis when asked about it, burst out laughing. Okay, Cynthia lumis pretty trumpy, burst out laughing. So question is here, what can Democrats do? Like is there a legislative push, Like what can Democrats do here can they get hearings going? I mean, what can what's the play?
I think, drawing as much media attention to it as possible. I know I was talking without this so so and is sort of like divorced from politics yesterday last night, and they were trying to explain to me, like it feels so obviously corrupt that it can't be true. It's almost ludicrous, like, of course, you can't take a four hundred million dollars million dollar plane on a foreign government that you can then keep after it. That's that's like
so quid pro quo corruption that it feels ludicrous. But I think for most people that are like, well, it can't happen, but we got to keep just calling attention to it, Like I want to see members of Congress standing in front of clodiums, going in front of town halls, storming podcasts, talking about how you know, you don't feel getting feel safe getting on a flight right now because he fired all those air traffic controllers, he's taken a
four hundred million dollar jet from Qatar. That I mean, pretty compelling storyline even right now, forget about the corruption, Like we don't feel safe getting on a plane he's getting on one funded by the Qatari government.
So we are coming down the sort of the beginning of the runway for the midterms is going to be probably the most consequentrol mid terms of our young lives. I love that I'm making it sound like we're this image. What since we're both in our early thirties, what are you hearing? What are you seeing in Run for Something world? And what is giving you hope?
So Run for Something has had more than forty five thousand people raise their hands to say they want to run just since the election. That's six months. That's more than we had in the first three years of Trump's first term. So huge ways of young people saying I want to run for office. I eyve even a handful of them, more than a handful really do get on the ballot in twenty twenty six, which I expect you
will see. They are going to change what the Democratic Party looks like, both quite literally, They're going to be
a different kind of Democrat. They're going to communicate differently, They're going to show up in different communication channels, they're going to use the Internet differently, and so many of them are running on things that are really practical to folks like affordable housing, stopping book bands, spanning health care access, and also being able to tell the story of how they've been fired or gotten screwed over by Trump and Elon.
I think it's really personal stories in a way that drives a good store of the narrative or a good campaign. I do think housing is going to be the thing on the local level more so than anything else, because it is the thing that is directly affecting people's cost of living, and Trump's going to crash the housing market, which is already really bad.
Do you feel like the people you're getting are people who are angry about the status quo, about what democrats have done? What does it look like the people who are coming to you.
It's definitely a lot of folks who are like, why are my leaders not fighting for me? Where are the folks who are like, really going to pay attention to
how this is affecting my life. I am really inspired by the people who are looking around at the kind of harassment attention that some elected officials are getting and saying I'm going to do this anyway, Like I'm going to be brave enough to change my life and change my career, think, Oh, we're hearing from a lot of folks that they are running on representation in kind of a different way than you might think, Like it's not
just you know, there's no women, there's no people. Call it all that, like, there's no one who understands what it's like to be a normal person right now, no one in this body of government will understands what it's like to be a renter, who understands what it's like to have kids in childcare, who understands what it's like to you know, have your fellow ship gate defunded by the federal government. It is really sort of like a
lived experience failure on behalf of our elected leaders. And the finolopiece i'd say is we're getting a lot of people who are like, I am so angry. Why is my leadership not as angry as I am. They're making me feel gas lit, They're making me feel crazy for being this nad and they shouldn't, like I'm right be pissed. So I think that's a good thing.
Ted is a good thing. I want you to say more about the housing stuff.
One of the things that runs for something civics, which is our c three ARM is going to be doing over the next couple of years. Hopefully is be trying to get more renters to run for office. Ninety three percent of elected officials are homeowners. Thirty five percent of Americans are renters, and that number is going up as the housing market gets harder and harder to enter. In some states, the number of rent of homeowners. I think it's only one state within where homeowners breaks fifty percent.
Among young people, we go under thirty five. It is so hard right now if you are a twenty or thirty something to buy a home. Invent is getting more and more expensive everywhere, urban environments, rural environments, suburban everything in between. And you know, I am a big believer in that every story is a housing story, kind of like you know, New York, every story is a real estate story. Every story is a housing story. The loneliness
crisis is about housing. Build. The return to office situation is about housing. Childcare is about housing because if you can't afford to live where you want to live, you can't afford to live how you want to live. It's about autonomy, it's about the American dream. Housing is all
of it. So one of the reasons that we want to make sure we're getting more renters to run for office is because we need folks who personally understand how it feels to be a twenty or thirty something entering the housing and rent market right now, and two who come in with a different lived perspective on why we
need to build more housing as homeowners no offense. I don't know if you own your apartment or when where you live by like homeowners psychologically don't necessarily want more housing to get built because it may lower the value of their home and that's usually where most of their wealth is. That's a problem because we need to build more. So I'm really excited about this effort and excited to
keep talking about it. And I think is important to raise the identity of renter or tenant as part of your political identity because it changes the way you think about how you show up at the polls. Who's fighting for you as a renter.
That's interesting. There's been a lot of talk about it is a democratic tea party. It strikes me that Democrats had a chance to stop a Democratic tea party and they didn't, and that what they're going to see in the midterms is going to be the kind of rage is going to be because they were insufficiently hysterical about trump Ism, and that had they been a little more twenty sixteen ish, they wouldn't be losing their jobs the way they're going to in the midterms. Do you think
that's right, and say more totally. I think that's right.
I think being an incumbent is such an advantage, Like it's really hard to unsee an incumbent in a primary and in a general, but especially in a primary. You have every possible political connection, you can raise a fuck ton of money. It's just it's so beneficial that if you are feeling afraid for your job, if you feel like a primary challenge is actually threatening you, it's because you're not doing a good job, Like you have every
possible advantage. If you lose a primary, it's because you have failed to meet the moment in some meaningful way. They could have fixed this early on. Now there's candidates all across the country who have already launched campaigns and aren't preparing to launch campaigns against incumbents. I think those will be good because the incumbents that win, great, They're going to move on to the general, and the ones that lose weren't doing it doing it right to be in the first place.
So when you look at the map right now, in the twenty twenty six map, I think a lot about a candidate in Nebraska called Dan Osborne. He rejected the Democratic moniker. He said he was an independent. He may run again. Talk us through if you think there's a future in red states for candidates like that.
I definitely think that there is an opportunity for candidates to set themselves apart from the party. There's certainly a challenge in terms of ballot access and how it works in any given state of a kind of infrastructure you're able to access as an independent, but it's so place and race specific. But I think certainly positioning yourself as an outsider or a challenger against the party is a good thing in many places.
But is there room for a kind of populist wing of the party. One of the things that Trump was able to do was he was able to secure white, non college educated and also some minority voters. I think it may not be the numbers which were advertised, but so he got a share of the working class that Democrats maybe gave away, maybe because they felt they couldn't promise them things that they wanted. Do you think there's an opportunity for Democrats to connect with that working class voter?
And if so, what do you think the things they should be doing are.
I think it's really messenger specific. I think that there are candidates who can outperform the top of a ticket and who data worn to tap of the ticket in a meaningful way. I also, I'm really curious to see in twenty twenty six how many of those folks fall away from the Republican Party when Trump is not on the ballot. That's not to say I don't think Democrats shouldn't fight for them, shouldn't make a case for them,
should be present. But you know, Trump is kind of an anomaly, not in his necessarily his policies, but in the brand that he has built. You know, the entire party holds his beliefs at this point, but they don't always win when they espouse them. And we've seen this in like the Republican primary process in twenty twenty four. You know, Ron DeSantis tried to be Trump Junior or Trump light rather, and it doesn't work because if you don't have his Chrismon. You don't have his brand, you
can't stick. So I'll be really curious to see, with Trump never being on the ballot again, which he will not be, what happens with the Republican Party. Actually, I don't think we talk enough about that of Trump's a lame duck while watching his cabinet members sort of position themselves already. JD. Vance is not going to walk into that primary without a fight. It could be fun to watch them eat their own Can.
You imagine, like JD. Van to v Marco v. DeSantis, I mean against Christine Nome. Don't forget her little police barbide Christine Nome. Jesus Christ. It's hard to imagine there's a clear front runner in that crew.
No, and I don't think it'll be easy for any of them because while they're all shameless and bi get it in their own right, none of them can do it in the same way that Trump can do.
Not envy their futures, yeah, h I do not either a man, and also I don't envy any of our futures. Well, Amanda Litman, I hope you'll come back.
I will always come back. Thank you for giving me a chance to talk politics and also remind me able to pick up my book, which is now out in stores when we're in charge wherever you get your books.
No moment, Jesse Cannon.
My so, over the weekend Trump enacted price controls for drugs and I was told during the twenty twenty four presidential campaign that that was downright communist and comrade Kamala Harris doing that or Burnie, Oh my god, what are we thinking? And then now Trump has done it. RFK Junior, though funny enough, has a theory. What's behind this?
Yes, tell me more.
President Trump was taking money from the pharmaceutical industry to the way they think, you know, one hundred million dollars. He can't be bought, unlike most of the politicians in this country, and he is standing here for the American people. I don't know what you know. There's there's writers like my Lord Elizabeth Warrener Robert Reichler just saying that President Trump is on this side of the oligar.
What of eloquid speaking to see where his head is at? You know, this is a man who swims in Rock Creek Park. Damn. I was going to get to that. Ladies and gentlemen, everyone's favorite. Look, I don't know, maybe some of that Rock Creek water is true telling serum. Oh that's a great philosophy.
Sodium pedothal in the sewage water?
Yeah yeah, yeah yeah, the best Heliody Impede all in the sewage order.
Right, sounds like one of his conspiracy theories. Truth be told.
Listen, man, it's not surprising, but it is insane, like everything in this administration. 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.