Ian Dunt, Ashley Parker & Ian Ward

the Federal Society's newest turns and twists. But first we have the host of the Origin Story podcast, Ian dunt. Welcome back to Fast Politics, fan favorite and my personal favorite. Ian. Thank you very much, thank you, thank you for having me. I special correspondent from the UK. Wait, that doesn't this mean I've been demoted because last time I spent to you, I was the hold of fucking Europe. But now apparne,

I'm back to just the UK. That's right. No, no, our special European correspondent, We'll give you Italy and France and Germany. Sure you can have them. Oh good, thank you. No, no, let us not save me and things about those countries of which I have sold my memoir because I might have to go and try to sell them books. Ian, what the fuck is happening over there? And why do you guys seem to be getting worse? Oh, I'm not sure that we are getting worse. I think, Oh well, congratulation, Yeah,

we've been. We're sort of just stumbling along the bottom

of the barrel. Now. Really, there's there's no real sense of you know, if you were to take our previous prime minister, Is Trust, or our prime minister before that, Boris Johnson, they were they were probably worse than Risci Sunak, the guy that we have now, you know, they were in the real let's just strip naked, poor gasoline everywhere and just set this whole fucker on fire sort of category, whereas Rishi Sunak has like a little bit more sense to him and a little bit more moderation. So we're

not strictly improving, but I think probably we're not declining anyone. Congratulated, Thank you, thank you very much. So would you say which he seed up? I mean for those of us who need to make conversation with our European friends, or is he better than Liz Trust? Yes, but then you've got to remember that Liz Trust was only in office for a few short weeks, and in that time the Queen died and she destroyed the British economy. So as a sort of set of achievements, she's not hard to

hurdle over. Really, he's a very odd fish. She's seen act so the way he likes to present himself, and I think the person that he truly is is a kind of mid level European technocrat. That's really what he is. You know, he's not particularly charismatic. He likes to pride himself on fixing problems. He's incredibly nerdy and genuinely nerdy. He's not putting it on, and so lots of the stuff he does is sort of tolerably okay. I mean, in any kind of rational country, he certainly wouldn't be

Prime minister. He would be a sort of ambitious young junior minister in a minor department. But nevertheless, you know, he is Prime Minister, and he's better than any of at least the three people that have preceded him. So he sort of sets out some of these Brexit problems and it comes back. He's come up with a solution with the Europeans to the Northern Irish issue, which is sort of bedeviled the Brexit arrangements for some time, and

it's sort of tolerable, it's sort of allowable. Pretty lukewarm stuff, but okay, can you explain what it is? Yeah? So, and the big problem that we had with Brexit was, you know, you're going to put out of the regulatory system and the custom system of Europe and that would sort of work out geographically if it wasn't for the Republic of Ireland, which is still within the European system. This has really been thought out well, yes, exactly exactly.

So the peace process requires there to be no border on the island of Ireland, so between the UK's Northern Ireland and the European Republic of Ireland. That meant you couldn't put the border down the middle. So what Boris Johnson did when he pulled Britain out of Europe was to say, we'll find so we'll put the border in

the Irish Sea. And what that did was just car of a whole right through the middle of the UK's territorial integrity and of course explode the really quite sensitive emotional and religious tensions around Ireland and around its relationship with the UK. This deal supposedly fixes that. I mean, it does it through a very very EU system, which is the sort of crazily protracted legal process of vetoing

new laws on regulations when they come in. You've got countries like Norway, they have similar who also have quite a distant relationship to Europe but are close to them. They have similar systems in place. Europe always likes these systems because what happens is you go, oh, look, you can complain about a new law if you want, but just for the record, if you get rid of that new law, then you're going to be blocked out of

that part of the Single market. And if you're blocked out of that part of the Single market, you will take economic damage. So what happens is people never ever veto the law, like Norway occasionally acted like it might over a sort of immigration things like that, but they never veto because the consequences are so great. And that's

basically what Richie Soona came back with. There was a hint of a sort of Tory Brexitter rebellion led by our old friend Boris Johnson, but it kind of pissed itself away into nothing really and any teams to have gotten away with it. So on that side, it seems like it's pretty sensible stuff from Richie Soonac. But now take this other bill that he's done, completely insane. It's called the EU Retained Law Bill, and this is what it does. It says, we've had forty years of relationship

with Europe. We've got European law all over our statute book. So what we're going to do is, on December the thirty first of this year, we're going to switch it all off. We just we don't even know what it is. We can't tell you what it is. We're just going to set an arbitrary deadline to switch off a bunch of laws. So when people then ask the government, so which laws are you talking about? Which ones you know? They're like, well, we don't really know what they are,

so we're going to start counting them. They counted, they've got a few thousand. Later they found a few more thousand. They now have confirmed. They know that they do not know. Sorry to go with Donald rumsfold on you. They know that they don't know or the law that are going to get switched off, but they're going to switch them off anyway. And basically just throw the whole regulatory system, the country's basic legal system, into complete disarray for no

reason whatsoever. Now that is like classic Brexit lunacy. So she's seeing like at the same time, he's the clever technocrat fixing broadrams, and he's also the arsonist that's just going to burn the house down because he feels like it. And it's quite unclear which of these personalities is going to come to the fort on any given day. That sounds incredible. Can you explain? So is Brexit? I mean, are we still dealing with this? Like is there any

kind of fix here? Now? Everyone just wants it to go away, and you can't have it go away though, Yeah, it just can't. It can't go away because it's too big. I mean, it's really about your laws, your trading patterns, the deals you do with other people. It's it's ultimately also about the fact that this is a pretty small country and we're right next to the largest consumer market in the history of mankind, the largest single market history

of mankind, and the most sophisticated one. So on that basis, you will get remorselessly pulled into its gravity. You know, it's not you just no matter what the Brexits say, you can't make Europe just go away, you know, you can't row the island away from the European mainland and pretend that it's not happening. And so it just keeps on coming back. So now everyone's board of it. Remain as a board of it, leave as a board of it. But it just won't stop happening because it's just too

big an issue to leave. By the wayside. Can you explain to me why they can't just do another vote and go back to normal. That is just poison at the moment, that whole idea. So people hurt myself, and that's obviously what I want, and it's what everybody wants. Right well, now it's what half the people want, which are the people that voted to stay, you know, all of us that lost, We obviously want to play the

game again, you know. And there is at the moment very strong and persistent polling that shows that most people think Brexit was a mistake, we shouldn't have done it,

and we should go back in. However, and I know this sounds counterintuitive, but that doesn't translate into people thinking we should reopen the issue because they know what it means, and they're right to know what it means, which is that we will spend another six years having all the same insanely boring debates again about regulatory divergence and custom standards and phyto and phytosanitary checks, all of the most tedious political questions known to mankind. We'll have all of

that again. All the families will fall out again over Christmas dinner and you're arguing with your father in law, and everyone will hate each other again, And so they just don't want to do it. It's basically just this sort of really pussy spot that you can't bear to pop because I think it's just going to hurt too much. So for the time being, neither of the parties wants to reopen it. Even Labor, which is supported by remainers populated entirely by remainers. They just won't go ahead and say.

What they'll do is say we're going to build a closer trading relationship. And my suggestion is that will last for five, six, seven years and gradually will just become closer and closer to Europe until we're sort of back in. Yeah. Oh,

so you think eventually you'll just ignore Brexit away. Yeah, it'll be slow and tedious, and I think the best way who would have thought and the best way of doing it will be to try to extract it from the culture war element, the sort of oh, you know, the lost metropolitans and the cities versus the real people in the rural areas and the towns, and just to have it as this sort of technical process which is

about trade. And from our point of view, if you can do that, you can secure your place back there without any of the toxic poison that we unleashed over the last few years. So I think ultimately will happen. It's the direction of travel, and even just demographically, I mean, if you've been to university, if you're under the age of really kind of like fifty five sixty years old, you were typically pro European. So each day that passes

this is not a nice point to make. Demographically, the system improves for remainers because more of the people who truly opposed it, the older people shuffle off, you know, life's mortal coil, and more young people come online into the voting demographic who would vote in the next referendum, So you know, the direction of travel the sort of destiny element of it is pretty clear, but it's going to be a long, slow, slow process. Can you explain to me why Boris Johnson is in trouble? Yeah, because

he's fucking Moro on this time? Yeah, you know what I wish. You know, it's weird having this at the sort of twentieth anniversary of the Iraq War, because Tony Blair's reputation was completely destroyed by deciding to support you guys over Iraq. Hey, Hey, hey, not me, baby, We all have to date responsibility. You do so, Lena now. And you know what that was like a catastrophic, highly preventable decision, which he deserves to be massively criticized for.

And yet at least it was a big cool you know, at least it was like a moment of sort of world shaking significance. You take Boris Johnson, what does his career get ruined by him because he had to have birthday parties during lockdown in his house like that. It's like, you're just devolve into the status of a child, and

this week he finally got his come uppance. This is a guy that has been lying his entire life, you know, his first jobs in journalism, he got sacked from for just basically transcribing work from other people and putting it in his copy. Throughout his political career, he just lied and lied and lied and died, not least about Brexit. Then now it's like he finally got caught right. He said there were no parties, He said the rules were followed at all times, he said the guidance was followed

at all times. And then a series of photographs videos come out showing him at parties with a drink in his hand, no one social distancing, blah blah blah. The trouble is he said all those things about their not being any parties and the rules being followed to the House of Commons, and that means that he's in contempt of the House of Commons, that he's misled the House of Commons. You can do that in two ways. You can do it intentionally or he can do it recklessly.

But either way he would be considered in contempt of the House of Commons. And so there is now an

inquiry into his behavior. If that inquiry by the Privileges Committee finds that he is guilty of that, he could be sanctioned by ten days suspension from the House of Commons, and if that happens, it triggers a recal petition from his local constituents who can basically say, well, we want to get rid of him, we want to have a vote to get rid of him, And that opens up the possibility that what's happening now is the end of

his political career. So this week he sat in front of the committee and answered questions, and that is the fate that is staring him in the face at the moment. Why would that be the end of his political career because you'll probably lose. He could come back, I mean, that's perfectly possible, but he would probably lose that by election fight, so he would be thrown out of the Commons.

Quite an extraordinary thing, by the way, for a prime minister with a huge majority at the beginning of the parliament to then finish the parliament actually getting booted out of the House of Commons even as an MP. But something else interesting happened during that day that sort of signifies it. Right, So he sat there, he's answering questions. He comes across like a really angry, petulant, entitled child, just sort of shouting about this is all nonsense. How

can you question me like this? To the MPs? His stories are preposterous, you know, I mean, just not even a child could believe all he was saying. But halfway through that testimony, MPs went off to vote on Rishie's Sunac's Brexit deal, this Northern Land Protocol element, and Boris Johnson had come out against that. Now, once upon a time Boris Johnson comes out against something, he's going to add a whole mass of Conservative MPs behind him. It

means that the government's in real trouble. This time just over twenty of them voted with him, hardly any at all. It was like a drop in the ocean. He doesn't actually have that many allies left to him, so it's

this kind of pitiful spectacle. He was firing his guns, he was doing all the things, all the bluster, all the sort of mock Bonhomy charisma that he can deploy, and none of it was working, and his parliamentary support was falling away, and he was engage in a process that could well see him thrown out of Parliament altogether. So the way it looked this week was it was

the final days of Boris Johnson. I have trouble believing that Boris will ever leave us, especially because even if he's not in office, he still will have a sort of shadow or journalistic career. Right, Oh, yeah, no, he will. He will. But you know, something interesting happened, which I think is like it's sort of like the definition of the distinction between Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, which we've spoken about before actually, which is that Boris Johnson lost

his base. He was unable to keep people with him throughout this. So yesterday they had question Time, which is the sort of flagship BBC current affairs program. It's terrible. I mean, it is fucking dreadful, but but it is. It's the flagship debate of lots of people screaming at each other for no reason. I'm sorry, but I don't understand why we don't have that in America. Well, actually, the fun part of it is just watching members of the public get to scream at cabinet secretaries and that's

actually quite a rewarding emotional experience. But nevertheless, it's not the place you go to for forensic, detailed political debate. And in the audience by a long distance, the audience had voted for Boris Johnson in the last selection more than any other single party that were available. And they were asked yesterday by the host, can you put your hand up if you believe Boris Johnson, And not one

single person in that hall put their hand up. That's sort of the key distinction to me of like, you know, Donald Trump can come out and say it about the election or about whatever else and a set amount of people will follow through with him. With Boris Johnson, he lost those guys. He lost his base. And because he lost his base and now he's losing his support in

the Parliamentary Party. Yes, he'll still be writing pieces for the Telegraph and still be writing really badly researched books about Churchill and which he pretends that he's his modern day representative, but he won't have that political strength. And at the moment I have to say throughout, for the first time in my lifetime, you would say that his star is significantly on the decline. And it feels like we're closing page on his influence on British politics, his

heavy duty influence on British politics. Jesus, poor Boris, No, don't say that. How can you even say that terrible guy, so he could really be brought down by party gad. Oh yeah, yeah, well, I mean he sort of already has been, right, I mean, he already lost his position in Downing Street. You know. The thing that I think is going to kill him is this again, in a pretty Trumpian way, He's gone down constantly trying to discredit and malign and corrode the basic democratic institutions around him.

So the Privileges Committee is established by the House of Commons according to rules that are set by the House of Commons. It is a parliamentary body and Boris Johnson has spent the last few weeks calling it a kangaroo court, claiming it was rigged against him, claiming everyone's biased and they're changing the terms of reference and basically questioning the integrity of all the MPs who sits on it, including

five Conservative MPs. His allies in the media like Nadine Dorries, is arguably the stupidest woman in British political life, have been doing exactly the same sorts of attacks, same with Jacob Brice Mark. So it's been a really sustained assault on the committee. Now. The interesting thing is during the committee hearings Towards the end, the MP started asking him about this comments, and they were doing it in a way that demonstrated their absolute abject anger towards him for

what he had done. I suspect if he had not tried to do this, if he had not tried to corrode the way that Parliament worked, they would have said, yes, you misled the House, Yes it was reckless, but we're gonna put a sanction on you of less than ten days. If it was less than ten days, it wouldn't trigger the election that could see him lose the hold of

his political career. But because he's behaved this way, because he's tried to bring the standard system down all around Parliament, they actually seem like they're going to be sterner, and I suspect it will be because of that. But he'll find himself in hotter water than he might otherwise have been. All of which, frankly, is morally really quite reassuring and enjoyable. And I'd be lying if I had the spend a huge amount of this week just laughing and laughing as

I watched the process. Ian, I hope you will come back to tell us what is happening across the pond and make us feel a little better. That's good. I will endeavor to do that. That's right. We'd like to think of you as our shot. Ashley Parker is a White House reporter for The Washington Post. Welcome Too Fast Politics, Ashley Parker. Thanks for having me. Very excited to have you in this at the end of the weirdest newsweek ever. I mean, I guess whenever you're covering Trump, you're always

unprecedented times, but this feels more unprecedented than usual. Yeah, I think that's true. I mean, for at least covering Trump in his presidency, right, A lot of it was, you know, as a White House reporter, was responding to the latest thing he did or said or was trying

to do. And this is actually in again. We've certainly been following what he's been putting out on truth social but this has been this kind of weird waiting holding period, waiting for something that would be potentially unprecedented in modern times to happen, which is a former president getting indicted. Will you explain to me because I think it's relevant. This entire news cycle started on Saturday morning, almost a week ago, with the truth from Donald Trump that said

I'm going to be arrested on Tuesday. After that, two hours later, there was follow up from one of his spokespeople who said, maybe now he kind of made that up, right, I mean, can you explain. Yeah, so we all see this, and of course it does exactly what Trump loves doing, which is Sunday sort of not just reporters, but the entire country, the entire world into a frenzy with him

squarely at the center. And then you know, when everyone reaches out to his team in his campaign and people in his world to figure out, like, what does he mean? What does he know that we don't know? The sort of answer that comes back is, oh, we don't know either. We didn't know he was going to send that. We

don't really understand where he got that from. I mean, I've talked to some people since who sort of claim that he got that idea from, you know, the sort of New York Police tried to coordinate potential security logistics with the Secret Service and something leaked and Trump got

wind of it. But that feels more like a conspiracy theory than you know, anything we'd feel comfortable like nailing down and putting in the paper, right, right right, And there clearly were a lot of whispers, but not a lot, you know, because there was some sense from the Manhattan Age that they were going to go right. Yes, the Post we have sort of been pretty careful about how we've been phrasing this. I don't believe we've said, you know, a likely or an expected indictment the way some other

news organizations have. But and again I'm not a legal expert, but yes, the indications are sort of Historically, Trump was invited to testify before the grand jury, and that's often something that happens at the very end when a case is wrapping up, right, So it was a very clear signal that this case was wrapping up. And that's also something that often but not always, happens shortly before an indictment. So reading the tea leaves people could kind of feel

comfortable making that assumption. We at the Post did not. But it was very clear that something was going to happen either way, that this case is coming to a close, whether it ends in an indictment or not. I mean, what's happened now seems kind of extraordinary because nothing has happened. Yeah, sorry, but do you find a point on it nothing has happened yet, and we're all sort of still waiting with bated breath, right, I mean, I think we ever and else has news coverage plans ready to go for any

outcome and any contingency. At every day we sort of show up at work ready, ready to launch and report on whatever has happened, and then like every day we go home and are like, Okay, let's like let's do it again tomorrow. To just look at this in a slightly different way, there would be no way to not cover that. I mean, you couldn't say, like, I mean, you couldn't say, wow, not cover this. It does seem

like all the evidence points in one way. Yeah, I mean you would sort of be negligent as a news organization if you didn't have coverage plans, frankly, for all conceivable outcomes. I think that was something a lot of news organizations learned on election Night twenty sixteen, that anything that anything can happen the thing you expect and the thing that all signs point towards, and the thing that many people for whatever reason did not expect. Right. Yeah,

So yeah, it's a huge story. No matter what happens, It's a story you know, with not just potential legal ramifications, but also this is what I've been focused more on, with potential huge political ramifications. So let's talk about those political ramifications. I want to game this out for you. Right now. He is raised, you know, more than a million dollars, probably at this point more like two million dollars. Right now, this has been I think a big win

for him. Do you think that's right? I mean, it sort of depends on what context and the truth is. I don't think we totally know. Yes, it has been a huge fundraising way right. He is always good at what he has portrayed as under attack or as a victim. That is always a bood for Trump fundraising. Yes, that's true.

His team has come around to the idea, and not just his team, but a lot of Republicans, including a lot of Republicans who don't like him and would like to see him go away, and even some Democrats to this idea that this is something they believe that very clearly helps him in the short term, especially in shoring up his base and a Republican primary, and even maybe again it's worth noting his base doesn't actually need to

be shored up, right like those people are going. But yes, it shows up his base right, like probably the crowds and a waygo this weekend will be maybe even bigger and even more fired up in this current moment than they would have before, but also potentially in the short term and show enough some of these Republicans who maybe voted for him twice but we're curious about a Dessantist

or the Tim Scott or whoever. But there's also a view and again we just don't know the answers to these questions yet that it certainly could hurt him in a general election, which is ultimately like the final test that matters. It's it's really nice to when your party's nomination, but it's like even cooler to in the White House.

That's the main goal. So you know, among these kind of more moderate Republicans, these independent voters, these Democrats who maybe have some concerns about Biden but are certainly not going to vote for Trump again, you know, these like forty thousand people basically in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. This

is the sort of thing that does not help him. Yeah, and it also it's worth noting, I mean I spent I guess there was probably last month or so, but I spent a couple of days interviewing more than thirty six voters in Pennsylvania, and the posted a huge project where there are five of US reporters out across the country interviewing more than one hundred and fifty voters told him all who had voted for Trump, often both times, and even among them there's a sense of sort of chaos,

exhaustion and fatigue. And even though they don't blame him, they like him. They generally like his policies as president. And they'll say, look, these things are witch hunts, right. The media is out to get him. The Democrats are out to get him, the Ryno Republicans are out to get him, and never Trumpers are out to get him. They don't blame him for this, and they'll certainly put you anything that comes out of the Manhattan DA in

this category. They also say, but at the end of the day, we really want to beat Biden or whoever the Democrat is. At the end of the day, it might just be better to have a candidate who's not been so unfairly persecuted, right, right, So it doesn't even help him necessarily with all Republican voters. Is there a world in which voters make a decision that says, I mean,

this is the thing I'm the most focused on. Is there a world in which voters decide like, for example, if you were and again you've gone into my head now, so I apologize, But here's this opportunity right this week, and and say you were a Republican who wanted to win, which obviously they do, right, I mean Kevin McCarthy, Like Saturday, Saturday, right after Trump truths, he says like this is a partisan which hunt right, Like a few hours later he

immediately is like, whatever it is he our guy didn't do it. Republicans had yet another opportunity to break with him, and they were like, no, well not just Kevin McCarthy. I mean, look at what's more interesting to me is look at his twenty twenty four Republican primary rights people who are either already declared running against him or we know are very likely to run against him. Right, what about Ron de Santis, Yeah, run de Santis. Mike Pence, Yeah.

The vig Ramaswanni Nicki Haley, Mike Pence came out and basically said the same thing Ron de Santis stood kind

of a three step, right. First he was quiet, then he came out and attacked that Manhattan Da album Bragg you know, again, sort of saying this is a political persecution, but also took the opportunity to very clearly repeat the fairly sorted issue at the heart of this indication, which is, you know, Trump paid money hush money to a porn start, right, and noting that like he would know nothing about how that sort of thing, right exactly, which fair most people

don't are not in the weeds about money to a porn star. You know that they've sort of made this calculation in theory, this should be a vulnerability, right, former president potentially getting indicted, and they have made a calculation that this is not the moment to try to deliver a knock out blow and if anything, if they don't stand behind him, a certain portion of the base will

punish him, which is a fascinating moment. I mean. The person who maybe made sort of the most accurate point in certain ways was Governor Chris Christie, who was in a very different mold. If he ends up running for president, you could see him sort of kamikaze style trying to destroy Trump in the same way he did to Rubio on that New Hampshire debate stage right, right right. But Christie's point was sort of like me, you know, maybe Trump's right where he likes to be, at the center

of turmoil and chaos. Maybe this helps him in the short term. But like, I think we can all agree on some general conventional wisdom that like, in general, getting indicted is like not in that positively. I mean, I almost wonder if it's like almost so echo chambered that they no longer are able to see even a sense of like a normal non MAGA voter, who could you know, the PERSUADEA Alls might feel. Well, what's interesting is I

just had a story on this. There's been a lot of discussions, both from other Republicans running or expected front in twenty twenty four, Republican strategist posters Republican groups of sort of how do you defeat The first challenge for them is how do you defeat someone like Trump in a Republican primary? And the base on the whole does not want to see him attacked, right right, because his strongest when he's a victim, when he's an outsider, when

he's fighting against the man, the establishment, the swamp. They're sort of learning the lessons from twenty sixteen. They're also learning that, you know, what worked in a general is not what works obviously in a Republican primary. And what they've sort of alighted on is this idea and they

haven't perfected it yet. Of Look, he did he did a lot of good things, right, but like almost coming at him from a place of disappointment, you know, like we were so excited he was great in twenty sixteen, you know, but he said he was going to build the wall and he just did him right. And he said Mexico was going to pay for the wall, and

they just did right. And and you know, we just he's great and it's not even his fault, right about all these political persecutions, But we just like we need to be Biden and it's just time to move on from all these distractions to a new generation of leaders. So I think that's what you are going to ultimately hear. Yeah, I mean the thing about all of this stuff is it might work if you had a normal person, you know, if you had a Debia or you had a Reagan.

But you don't have a normal Republican. Trump is not going to say, Okay, I guess my time is over. He's going to say rob to sanctimonious. But he's certainly not going to bow out right or halt his campaign. But I do think one thing you're seeing is one thing they learned in twenty teen, in twenty twenty, and throughout his entire presidency very clearly, is that attacks on his character don't work because love him or hate him, who Donald Trump is is just fully baked into the cake.

And frankly, you knew that when you went to the polls in twenty sixteen, right, the idea that one more controversy or scandal or woman coming out of the you know, coming out to allege something against him, will change anyone's mind, it simply won't, Right, So that's why you're not really hearing arguments about can you believe that he might have paid hush money to a porn star? Everyone's like it's like I was like, yeah, like we can believe that,

and it either bothers us or it doesn't. But it's more the sort of again the like chaos, exhaustion, fatigue, like wouldn't it be nice to have a candidate who's not just facing this investigation, but we should note three others that we haven't you know, we haven't even talked about and haven't even drawn to a close. But I want to just talk about this. Caitlyn Collins tweeted this from truth Social. Trump indicates that there could be potential

death and destruction if he's charged. It seems like the base, for whatever reason, is less, and perhaps it's because many of them went to jail for January six seemed less interested in causing violence in his name, including his truth Social about a week earlier about you know, protest and take Back our Nation as well. It all just lands in a very different context after January sixth, Right, sort of the thing people thought could never happen happened once.

And so what you have seen in this truth that Caitlin tweeted just came out kind of twelve hours ago. But if you look at the one about protest take Back our Nation, you very clearly saw Republicans up and down the board sort of saying like nothing but peaceful protests, right, either trying to claim that that's what Trump meant, or calling for that themselves in the site idea which you

know it was actually funny. It was a quote, background anonymous quote I put in a Washington Post piece after the election before January sixth, that gets resurfaced like every three weeks, but from a Republican saying, look, we just need to give him a little time to like send some tweets, go golfing. Yes, it's not like he's trying to overturn the election. Yeah, and then he'll and then

he'll leave. That notion is gone. And sort of every Republican understands or seems it is behaving as if they know they want to do their part to say this is not going to happen again. And you're seeing that in all of their responses. When an anonymous Republican told you that quote, were you like, oh, this is a throwaway quote, or did you think like this will continually haunt us next. I probably shouldn't admit this, but when I mean, I knew it was a good quote, and

that's why I put it in the story. But at that moment when this person told it to me, it seems outlandish. Of course, in hindsight, right after after the deadly January sixth attacks on the US capital, but at the time this person was articulating what was widely believed in not just Republican circles, but even in people in the Trumps. Right. You have to remember at that time, we were chasing rumors that like he was going to go tomorrow lago for Thanksgiving and just never come back,

you know. Yeah, right, so it wasn't I mean, again this hindsight twenty twenty, this quote resurfaces literally like every fortnight. Yeah, but at the time I didn't think, wow, this is you know, gonna seem very embarrassing, and yeah, it felt like a totally reasonable, reasonable point of view in that moment. Here we are back in this sort of weird, trumpy

news cycle. Do you think there's a chance And again this is like I'm asking question that's like your opinion, but I'm not going to ask you your political opinion because obviously I don't want to be me and I just had Charlie to have a John, so I know I have to you know, good with this straight reporters and not try to get them to have opinions. But thank you for not getting me fired, Molly Well. John Allen is always like I will not weigh it if

you want to say something, but I'm just curious. I mean, do you think that there's a world in which the Manhattan DA doesn't go first and that this just you know, the DOJ goes first or Georgia goes first? I mean, or do you really think that because of what happened this week, the Manhattan DA will go first? So this is really just a gas on your part. But and

you can add the caveats you want. Yeah, no, I mean I will say, like, based on and again this is not my reporting, but based on my colleagues reporting and my kind of consumption of it and discussions I've had, it seemed like at least initially, the Manhattan DA was going to be first in drawing to a club. I don't know that that means an indictment, but the Manhattan DA, in inviting Trump to testify, seemed ahead of schedule of

these other investigations. But again, like you can have a pain as much attention, but you can look at Fulton County where they were staying down there that there should be you know, announcements kind of imminently, right, So I mean the truth is I just I don't know, and I don't really know what those final outcomes or announcements will will be nobody does right, No, exactly right. I mean that is and you know that is something. I feel like that, just the concrete of it, it's like

we've lost a little bit of sight of that. Really, nobody, including Trump or his people or Jim Jordan, really even know what is. You know, until we see paper, we don't know anything. Really. Yeah, I mean these investigations are supposed to be leak proof. That's how they're supposed to work. You know, there's tea leaves people are trying to read here and there, But I sort of I think we'll know when we know. Yeah, Thank you so much, Ashley Parker,

thanks for having me. Ian Ward is a reporter of Politico. Welcome, do you fast politics? Ian, thanks for having me. Jesse read this piece in Political magazine. He's like, you got to get this guy. And we agree, which we often mostly do. But I'm going to read the title because I feel like that's the beginning of this whole interview. The Federalist society isn't quite so sure about democracy anymore.

I mean when I read that, I was like, yeah, but I was also like, really, talk to me about where this, Talk to me about I want the whole story here. What were you doing where you came to this conclusion, etc. Yeah. Sure, So I've been covering the conservative legal movement for a while now, and I went down to Austin at the beginning of March for the Federal Society's National Student Symposium, which is an annual gathering at the Federalist Society host for its student law chapters.

So mostly right leaning law students, and it's sort of a weekend long together the pop kilt parties, panels, networking sessions, and you know, these are students who are coming from mostly elite law schools, right and they get together sort of to discuss ideas and have debates, and you know it's they invite a lot of conservative lawyers. Federal judges are there. It's a big opportunity for law students to

meet future employers. But I mean the main, the main meat of the symposium are these panels where lawyers get together, lawyers and judges get together to debate sort of what's up with the conservative legal movement. And the theme of the symposium this year was law and democracy. Ironic, I want to just pausors in it. So this is like sepack if the people who were part of it actually mattered. Yeah. It's kind of a nerdy seepack, right, you know, sepack

the crowd this year. I mean you saw the reports coming out of it. Sepack with smart people. Yeah yeah, see pack with smart people and everyone's wearing a student tie, you know, and went to Yale Law School uses their

salad for before or other flock. Yeah yeah, yeah. So, I mean the theme was law and democracy, which is a sort of pregnant topic, to say the least for the conservative legal movement right now as it sort of figures out how to navigate the post Dobs world and navigate its role in the country now that Conservatives have a majority on the Supreme Court and after the Trump years have gotten lots of federal judges on the bench, and there's a tension there with law and democracy, and

there always has been within the conservative legal movement. I mean, the Federal Society at least was founded with this sort of dual mandate, which was you know, they say it's emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is, not what the law should be. Right, that's kind of aping the marboring first medicine thing. But you know, and they'll acknowledge to you that those things

can kind of be intention right. On the one hand, they are tasked with reading what's written in the Constitution, right, and they apply sort of originalist framework to that, trying to make sense of what the document meant at the time of its founding. But at the same time they've championed this idea of judicial restraint, which is that judges should in general defer to the democratic process and trying not to intervene to directly and not make the law,

just understand it except when they want him too. Yeah, And it's changed over time, and that was part of

the big takeaway. And the piece was I actually talked to Eugene Meyer, who's the president CEO of the Federal Society, and he says, you know, he told me they've always been the tension within the conservative legal movement, but that over time, and in recent years especially, the group has moved away from sort of an idea of judicial restraint really you don't say, yeah, more assertively towards an idea they say reading the laws written, you can quipal with

that as you want. Yeah, So that was sort of the general tone that the organization is moving away from judicial restraint and embracing a sort of more assertive role. I have to tell you, I feel like it's like, brilliantly, I'm on a great there, moving away from judicial restraint.

Really you don't say, yeah, I think judicial restraint made sense for the conservative legal movement, you know, in the eighties and nineties, two thousands, when they really saw the courts as pulling the country to the left and as more progressive than the general population. And it made sense in that case to say, well, you know, judgicition and intervene in the legisure process and so on. But now that the tables are turned, I think their commitment to

that other principles is being tested. Yeah. Now it's just every lunatic for themselves. So talk to me about some

of the other ideas you saw coming out of there. Yeah, I mean, there was a panel on election law where the idea of the independent state legislature theory came up, which is in the Supreme Courts considering now and more b Harper, and that's the idea that state legislatures should have more Some people say total, some people say just more control over the execution of federal election, and it seems unlikely that the Court's going to adopt that idea in its most radical form, and many of the people

at the conference were skeptical about it and noted that this would be incredibly disruptive to the American electro system. You know, there's a bit of tension within that movement because the judges who have flirted with that idea on the High Court, you know, do have ties to the Federal Society and are sort of poster children for the conservaive legal movement. So I don't want to give the impression that like the Federal Society is a single entity, right,

or that the conservative legal movement has no fissures. You know, there's a lot of politics within those organizations. But so some some members you know, are really hesitant to adopt the uh you know, independence of legitis there, and some are more willing to play around with it. But it's in that world and people in that world are talking about it, which when you look a sort of at the details of the of the theory, is a sort of alarming thing, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, Can you explain

why it's alarming? I would recommend, you know, going to read some of the some of the things that've been written about the independent state legislature there. But I think, as we saw in twenty twenty, if state let's just have the opportunity to exert more power in federal elections, I think we basically know how that would how that would play out, right right, right, you know, I feel like we're in the forefront of conservative judiciary kind of like they've sort of caught the car and are trying

to figure out what to do with it. They have a kind of power that they've never had before, right because they control the Supreme Court. Now, what was your sense on how they are going to use this power? Yeah, I mean I think that really is an open question. I think part of what compelled me to go to the conference was that it's a forum for young people within the consort of the legal movement to share their views. And I do think there are some emerging generational divides

within the conservaive legal movement. OH explain that A good example is the conservative jurisprudence towards what's knows like the administrative state or the executive agencies. So for many years conservative lawyers have of being critical of the court's decision as known as the Chevron Doctrine, which gives pretty broad latitude towards administrative agencies to interpret law and an apt

law and the way they see fit. Conservatives traditionally not like that because they think it, you know, empowers the bureaucracy too much and takes the decision making power out of the democratically elected officials hands and puts it in the hands of sort of like Washington egghead bureaucrats. But there's a sort of grumbling and some movement among younger conservatives who say, you know, maybe what we want to do with the administrative state has not gut it and

take away all the power from it. Maybe what we want to do is use the power of the administrative state to advance, you know, our vision of what the country should look like. So there's some younger legal conservatives who are kind of doing a one eighty on the Chevron doctrine. I mean, that's one of them. I wrote the piece back in December about our growing movement led by an academic at Harvard named Adrian Vermuele who calls himself a post liberal. We're gonna die. He and Patrick

Denine is the big spokesperson for those those academics. You know, he is kind of articulating this vision of a legal theory called common good constitutionalism, which basically throws out the window all the presuppositions of the conservative legal movement and says, you know, we don't want to do originalism, we don't want to do textualism, we don't want to do judicial restraint.

We want to use the law not to protect individual rights and liberties, but to instantiate a common good, which in his definition is a pretty radically conservative and catholically inflected vision of American politics. And he's gotten a lot of traction among young conservatives. So that's another fault line. Can you give us an example of what that would be. He has advocated for this sort of funny but banning pornography, right, Wow, good for them, that's a wildly unpopular watch them lots

of luck. Yeah, but right, that runs a foul of sort of traditional conservative views on First Amendment problems, right, which is that there should be sort of free speech absolution. He says, no, you know, pornography is a is a social ill, and conservatives should use the power of the state to ban it. Good luck, team Yeah, but you know stuff like that, you know, really restrictive abortion laws,

bands on homosexuality and gay marriage, things like that. That's another fault line with the within the conservaive legal movement. I think it's aligned a lot of the time by some of the coverage of the conservative legal movement, which can assume that they sort of all walk in lockstep and that they're all on the same page and that they're basically just doing the bidding of the GOP. And I do think there's a lot more factional disputes that

are worth paying attention to within that world. That's pretty interesting. I mean, it does seem to me like conservatives have really figured out how to choose their judiciary in a way that liberals, you know, they don't have the same infrastructure, right, Yeah, I mean there have been sort of a board of efforts over the years to build quote unquote a left wing federalists society that has failed. I mean as the

American Constitution Association. I think that's the name, but it's not the same thing, and that has to do with all sorts of things. Primarily, I think the right has much deeper pockets when it comes to funding the type of organization that is the Federal Society. I think they figured out how to use judicial power well, but they also underneath the execution of judicial power there is a lot of dissent and debate and disagreement about, you know,

exactly how that power should be executed. And I don't think it does anyone a service to ignore that. Yeah, no, no, I think that's I mean, I think if anything, that's sort of the biggest game in town that no one's

talking about is the incredible. I mean, it's from what I understand, and I you know, I'm very I am friendly with someone who was very involved in the Federal Society, George Conway, and so I mean, from what I understand from younger lawyers too, their tentacles are long and they kind of groom people in a way that I don't think liberals even understand how to get involved in. Yeah,

I mean I've seen people. These are ambitious people, right, you know, they are gunning for federal clerkships and positions in high powered legal firms. And you know, a couple of people, since me being a member of the Federalist Society is unnecessary credential if you want a clerkship with a powerful federal judge. So and you know, these people at the conference were you know, anywhere from just undergraduate in their early thirties, and they have chapters on undergraduate

campuses and law school campers around the country. So yeah, its tentacles are very, very, very far reaching. There seems to be to me a connection between Catholicism and this conservative legal movement. Like if you look at the Supreme Court, there is a like they're all Catholics. Have you seen sort of an overlap between that and the federalist society. Well, I'll just give a quick anecdote. I mean, I know it's a dicey question, but it's sort of interesting, isn't it. Yeah,

I know it is interesting. I was EPICS conference, which was on Friday and Saturday night, and I overheard a couple of the lawsuit on Saturday evening saying, hey, we got to dip out early to hit Saturday Mass before you know we had home on Sunday. I just thought that was funny, because, yeah, there is a pretty strong catholic I think there are legal theorists on the right who lean explicitly into the Catholicism. Adrian Vermuel is one example of that, if you think about the makeup of

the Supreme Court, there's a religious component to this. I mean, whether or not it's a chicken or an egg, right, we don't know. Yeah. I think thinking about the question of religious liberty and the concerned legal movements view towards religious liberty over the past ten years a sort of

instructive in this front. You know, there used to be a sort of let people do this they want attitude that religious liberty was not interfering, was creating sort of neutral spaces where people didn't explicitly practice their religion, but you know, weren't compelled to by that any sort of

religious faith. And that shifted a bit. Now you're now seeing cases like last term, that was a case involving a high school football coach who parade on the field, and the conservative majority ruled that that was allowed in the name of protecting religious liberty. And they construed protecting religious liberty God is creating religiously neutral spaces, but is creating positive protections for people to express their faith in

public forums. Right. So that's a sort of shift within how they're thinking how the right's been thinking about religious liberty that I think is sort of instructive about their brother goals. Yeah, so so interesting. I really appreciate you joining us, and please come back. And I think, like, you know, what you're doing is really interesting, I mean, sitting through those Thank you so much for joining us, Thanks for having met Jesse Cannon Trump, possibly the greatest

non intentional comedian of our time. Let me read the most ironic quote of all time. Trump told his supporters in Waco, Texas, I am your redemption. And ironically, this is on the thirtieth anniversary of the Waco standoff, right as that documentary dropped on Netflix. And all I have to say is, yes, sir, you sure are their redemption. I mean, yeah, if redemption is whatever making everything worse

is pretty amazing stuff. Today this weekend, Trump did a rally on the thirtieth anniversary of Waco Waco, which is you know, saying the quiet part loud behind Trump was footage from January sixth, So in case you were wondering if they indorse it, they indorse it. And for that that moment where they started to play January sixth coverage, that is this, well, I think that was a sort of step further than I've ever seen, and so that

is our moment of fuck Gray. I saw somebody on Twitter say that there's no way that someone who went to jail for January sixth doesn't speak at the yard seat this next time. Don't you agree? Very likely? Very like. 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.