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 a Democrat won the special election to fill the seat of assassinated Minnesota lawmaker Melissa Hortman. We have such a great show for you today in the Nation's gene here stops by to talk about Cash Betel's jaw dropping congressional hearing. Then we'll talk to the Financial Times editor Ed Loose about how Trump's immigration war
is hurting our economy. But first the news.
We got a hotbed of RFK fuckery in our first segment today. First off, shout out to doctor Susan Monarez for being so good in this testimony, and really shout out to her for being a great American, being brave and saying what she needed to say in this hearing.
Yeah, look, that was really a great hearing. She gave a great speech. She talked about in integrity and again like this is this question of here are all of these billionaires, all of these captains of industry, lawyers, fancy people caving and then you have just she's just a doctor and she says what I think should be our watchword for this moment in American life. She says, I would have gone along was what RFK wanted, but then
I would have given up my integrity. And the only reason that I'm doing any of this is because of my integrity. It's worth listening. And you know, we had Senator John Cassidy. He is the reason we are in this nightmare. So I don't have a lot of pity for him, but he's understood what he's done. And look, Democrats were worried that Susan Manair's would not be able to stand up to RFK, and she did. She stood
up to arf Kay. She stood way up to arf Kay and Nat I think is really a testament to doctor Minera's and if nothing else, like she is a brave woman that we should all kind of being off of.
I will go out of the lim and say when history is written of this time, what they'll talk about is some of the details of how she described the fealty he wanted and how she would not push back on it. That will be a detail that we will see over and over again in these hearings as this administration tries to make everyone bow to them.
Yeah, this moment we're in will not last forever. Yeah, and we will look back on this, and we will look back at the people who caved and the people who spoke truth to power. There were a lot of moments in that hearing it's really worth going back to because during that hearing we also saw urf Case had a lot of really unhinged stuff to her. He said that the CDC vaccine recommendations are based on science. That's not true. He just said a lot of things. He
said the CDC is killing children. Not true. By the way, measles has killed two children. He really is probably the most dangerous member of Trump's cabinet. And again, vaccines are an eighty twenty issue. They are an eighty twenty issue. Trump maybe has decided that he thinks that RFK is good for him, but I think it's really worth realizing that RFK could really be the one of the many things that unravels this administration.
Yeah, and now he wants to end mental health screetings in schools, which you know, in a mental health crisis, where all everybody talks about all day is how our children, us, every person of any status is not doing the best with mental health. This seems like one of the dumber ideas coming out of this administration.
I mean, it's so hard to pick this one dumb idea to come out of this administry. I don't know if you have if you are familiar with how this administration works, but there are quite a few dumb ideas that this crew has.
I wouldn't want to be the person wriking a top ten like David Letterban used to do of the top.
Ten dumbest things.
And the other thing I think it's worth realizing about Mineras is that doing these here and she and John Cassidy are doing these hearings right now because this week the group that RFK Junior has put together to make these new vaccine suggestions are going to make some pretty I think, probably pretty insane guidance for childhood vaccination, just
like they did in Florida. So I think that what we're going to see, and we're already seeing it, is a lot of states blue states are getting together and having their own health groups.
We see it.
We're seeing insurance companies saying that they will cover these vaccines. These are not hugely expensive vaccines, but they're going to cover them even if the recommendations are changed. Which it looks like they will be. What's happening here is we're seeing a kind of soft secession, right. We're seeing blue states say like, we can't trust the health data we are getting from the federal government, so we're not going
to use it anymore. There becomes a question of like large percentage of our tax dollars go to fund what is now like rfk's kind of personal fife job. And there's a real question about when you go down the road of this, where does this end? And I do wonder about that, SAMAI.
The Fed cuts rates zero point two five points, and, reacting to the weak job numbers, tear.
Ups have successfully weaken the economy to the point where the Fed is dropping interest rates. Trump wanted the Fed to drop interest rates because he thought it would turbo charge the public markets. What they're doing is dropping interest rates because they have to. Again, that works until it doesn't, right,
and you still have inflation as a real thing. So in the eight months that Donald Trump has been president, we have gone from a economy that was the envy of the world, a soft landing, to an economy that is dabbed by both rising inflation weaker job numbers. And labor market. So here we are.
So there's a bunch of handwringing on the different sides about Luigi Mangioni getting his terrorism charges thrown out, which I think is an interesting ruling by Justice Gregory Carroll. What do you think, Mollie.
Look, there's a lot of wanting to kind of make everything something, but my sense is that this is not a terrorism issue. This is a guy who targeted an executive because he was unhappy with his healthcare git here is a contributor to the nation and the host of the time of Monsters.
Jen here.
Welcome to Fast Politics.
Sali Young Fast thanks for welcoming to Fast Politics.
And from your perch in Canada, the fifty first state. It turns out that by calling Canada the fifty first state, he has enraged almost everyone in Canada and not so easy to do.
Yeah, no, absolutely, getting Canadians bad is difficult, but he has a tie, great feet. I think even more remarkable actually is he got the Danes mad, which is even harder.
I mean, those guys are like frozen icycles.
But we but I digress. Let's talk. So we are in the middle of these hearings about these cash Battel hearings and Cash. Battal is the head of the FBI for now. He is a complicated fellow who lives in Las Vegas, which already is interesting because the FBI is in lack Lay, Virginia, so that already is perhaps a question.
Uh.
And then he's tasked with basically the two biggest stories of the news cycle, Epstein and the political assassination of Charlie Kirk. They're basically all anyone's talking about, right at least when it comes to law enforcement. And he has watched both in incredible way that only the Trump administration can discuss.
Yeah, no, I I mean the Epstein stuff. We saw some of this at the sort of like the hearings yesterday. This guy like does not know what's going on.
Now.
I have to say I have like a particular thing with Castel, which is that he's a fellow South Asian male, He's a brother.
You know.
I think there's an expression that we have in Punjabi called shanda for the gam that is to say, if it's.
Pretty sure that's ours and not yours, but yes, go on, I won't I.
Won't fight over a copyright here, but.
Which is to say that if you see like you know, the South Asian you're doing well, you know, winning a Pulitzer Prize, do you feel proud? And yeah, if it's someone like you know, Denise de Susa going to jail or Castrattel doing all the clownish stuff that he's been doing, it fills it with a particular type of it's hard to explain, like he's like you feel like, you know, bad personally yourself, like he has brought shame onto your community.
Uh so.
So so this is like a very personal thing for me. And it is partially because you know, this guy, uh his only qualification for being head of the FBI, I was writing a children's book praising Tunneald Trump as a king.
So yeah, we were the Epstein hearings. You know, like you know, very sort of forceful questions that they busted all along terms of you know, like saying what files, offering explanations they can't explain, like very simple questions, and he just sort of like blusters and starts yelling and he has this kind of weird bud eyed thing, which I also, I mean we were talking about like you know, sort of shame and cringe.
Is it just it does not look good, brother.
But look, let's work on the little public appearance stuff. So the questioning yesterday I thought was important for a number of reasons. Democrats have this has been we are a party in the wilderness right there is you know, it has not been a great couple months for Democrats. So I was really heartened by some of the questioning. There was questioning that was like bombastic but broke through
like I'm thinking of Corey Buoker. But then I actually think the more effective questioning was the less dramatic questioning that just drew him out. So the freshman senator from Vermont is a guy, Peter Welch. He was a folk musician, as many senators are. And he gets Cash Bettel going on the FBI private jet, and he gets him talking about how he went to all these sporting events with
Mel Gibson. So he says, you know, mister Patel, I see you took the private jet from Virginia to and he says, I fly out of Andrews and not out of Reagan, which saves the tax bears money. So clearly already you see see the guy knows this is not a great look. And then he says, well, you know, you flew to Las Vegas to do this fight with mel Gibson. And he says, well, I live in Las Vegas, okay.
And he goes, well, you flew to Miami, you flew to like and he goes through New York and and you know, and and it gets to I think the gestault of it, which is that on the day that they were trying to find the killer of Charlie Kirk, he was at Rio's with Bo Didle in New York.
You know, I mean, this is uh that there is something like kind of amazing that this guy's ahead of the FBI, and he's kind of treating that as like, you know, of the Behine Hustle podcast that he goes into like an iridy or whatever, we only act less serious than a podcast, just like a remarkable kind of thing.
I also think, like in terms of his kind of reresponsibility, I mean, I thought one thing that really struck out was that been all sorts of stuff circulating on the right trying to link the trans roommate with the alleged killer of Charlie Kirk, and I saw cash for tail, like actually tweeting out one of these reports which is from a Fox News reporter but on her like Twitter account and something that actually, like as far as I can tell.
Has not actually been verified.
And I was actually like really troubled by that, Like the head of the FBI should not be like so circulating, you know, like rumors on Twitter in general only Charlie Kirk investigation. I mean I do think, like, you know, the one thing was, as with the earlier case with Luig g you know, the fact that they had a video and then family and friends recognized. I mean, that was the thing that turned it. But otherwise he was like stumping all over the investigation. They were like saying
stuff that was not true. Actually, like very early on he was saying that we had a subject and thank you for all the great work, which is you know, someone who was Actually they had two people that were
like totally not involved with the thing at all. One was a local crank who was to all political events, and the other one was actually like former Heritage intern who happens to be from the Middle East and had a released turned flag on his shirt, which is a case of racial profiling, so right, and he was like at the time treating us the case is closed so this is all like incredibly like like bumbling and shameful.
I mean, the one thing that I think we should just segue here is that the Supreme Court has recently ruled that racial profiling is okay if it is in the service of harassing Latinos, a group that had voted for Trump.
I was gonna that's gonna keep quick, because I'm looking at all the pulling of Latinos and there used to be like a huge amount of buyer's reverse there.
But imagine why that would be, why you would have remorse from that?
Yeah, yeah, you know, like you know, like obviously.
Like you know, like you know, as a principal person of the left, I you know, like racial profiling is bad. But I have to say, if you've got to be racially profiling minority members of the Heritage Foundation.
You don't know, I mean, it does. You know. So much of this administration and so much of the moment we're in here is like this inability to learn the lessons of the past, And I'm struck by like racial profiling. I'm old enough to remember after nine to eleven, when people, you know, when there was a sheikh who was murdered because they thought he was you know, like I'm old enough to remember the reason we don't do this is because it doesn't because it doesn't work, and because it ultimately,
you know, tramples on civil liberties. Now, this administration not super big on due process or civil liberties.
But still yeah, but but still, I mean, they have not learned any lessons. I mean, it's interesting there there is a kinder tension a little bit between the more gun home members of the administration patl and Stephen Miller.
I think, like, you know, in some ways, I mean, the Trump is almost the moderate of his administration because occasionally some I've be were seeing this with the case of the car plant in Georgia, where it seems like actually like they were, as is often the case, ICE was going in to go after Latino employees and they saw all these like Koreans and they said, like, you know, we're.
All like legitimate visas and we're there to trade Americans.
And you know, the state of Georgia spent a huge amount of effort to try to get the spot brought into their state, and southern really it's like this great you know, like as with a large patting ally for seventy years and now like you know, like basically, you know, like everything is going down the toilet. Now. I have to say, like Trump himself seems to like be thinking, like wait a minute, this is not actually something we should be doing, because he has these rich business friends
who tell him that. But like as well as like you know, like someone like Stephen Miller, this is actually, this is actually what he wants.
South Korea is an incredible story and I cannot stop talking about it for a number of reasons. But one is, you put the tariffs in place so that people will manufacture in America. So all you want is people to build plants in Georgia. Georgia's a red state. Donald Trump Republican governor. He is killing himself to get this investment. They are training Americans for high paying jobs, right not working, you know, not picking strawberries, but like really, job is.
What everybody wants, is what Democrats were.
Let's manufacturing job, good manufacturing jobs. And they arrest the people who are training them. They put them in they disappear them, okay, in a facility. Then they put them on a plane. Then they can't decide whether to send them back because remember this is always Keystone Pomps. They're back and forth whether or not to send them back. These people just want to go home because they are
like successful professionals. They go on to South Korea. They do a media blitz where they have photographs of them being mistreated. They have bruises, there's a pregnant woman. I mean they are on the news twenty four to seven. The South Koreans now are talking about that they want some kind of like hey go like thing for this, that this may have been their right.
Violation of like there you would right.
So I wanted us to look at the pictures because as far as I can tell, those people actually were done perfectly legitimate.
Reason them to be in Jorgia.
Yeah no, I mean I haven't no geophilitical genius. Maybe like alienating one of America's closest allies in a region where you think it's going to be the sort of battleground of the twenty first century where you're gonna try to create an online system against China. Maybe that's a good policy. I don't know, but maybe there's a like five dimensional tails I've seen here. Maybe I should give him the benefit of the note.
The other thing is that, And I think that we should talk about this in a minute. Tariff's inflationary, right, Trump gets back into office basically because voters, I mean, there are a number of other crosswinds, but voters are mad about inflation. Biden administration says inflation is transitory. The voters are like that not good enough. Okay, fast forward here we are, Okay, tariffs are inflationary, groceries going up. My man is not doing anything about it. And his
I mean, the economist known woke paper. The economist has him down negative seventeen. Yeah yeah, and he's finally negative in the state of Texas.
Yeah yeah, yeah.
He goes back to this, I mean, and I think that Texas stuff was particularly driven by what we just mentioned, which is the Latino vote, which had gone for Trump.
It is like an amazing thing.
And this is actually I'm like, you know, you're talking about the Democrats being a straight but like I look at the polling number and I'm actually thinking, like, like, I'm actually puzzled by, well, you know, why they aren't more aggressively challenging Trump on every front because he is actually quite weak politically, and I feel like this is a uh they're pulling up training like I think he's actually lower now than he's ever been, which is kind of like amazing.
And it goes back. I think I'd love to go back for a minute to this idea of Target. So Target went anti woke and they got you know, they said, we're not going to do performative allyship, We're just going to do no allyship. They were riding trump Ism, and they just did terrible numbers because people just were like, we're not going to go to you. So here's a question for you. It's not popular, right, it's not. It's not popular. Yeah, it's getting less popular. It's everything's getting
more expensive. People are unhappier. This is just going to get I mean, if Nixon, if Nixon and the Fed is any history which we never learned from, but we will repeat and again and again. It looks like Trump pressuring the Fed to lower interest rates will likely get us very much, you know, into spaculation.
Yeah, no, absolutely, I think that that's kind of where we're heading. And again, I I do think that given all those things, I actually think like I was a bolder strategy against Trump and then more you know, more forthright willingness to speak out against it. The thing I think, like Target and all these other companies is I think that they're not driven by like polling or what is
even popular. They're driven by fear, you know. As for Trump has both the ability and has shown the willingness to like you know, like Target anyone who sees as a political fo you know, no pun intended with Target, Yeah,
and that like HERD companies. So I actually think, like, you know, all the stuff we're seeing with all the CEOs continuing to sort of butter up Trump, all the institutions and continuing now with like you know, the the academic institutions, like surrendering to him and providing lists of professors as they did in California.
That's like such a short sighted thing.
They're basically thinking about, you know, what's our like you know, future, the next two three years. But with your tires off with like this guy who's hu's the unpopular and there will be a reckoning.
There will be a reckoning, like you know, like.
Post Trump, and like we were like, uh, we'll remember, I hope, like all the people that were cowards.
And I and I also think I think the add on here is like the the reason why Trump is focused on crime and sending the National Guard into cities, and the reason why the right all they want to talk about is crime is because they know that they're losing on everything else. Right, if he were winning on immigration, he'd be like, let's talk about immigration. But he knows. You know, you got these farmers in states, have no one to work for them. You have an inflation with
the labor market. You have you know, these videos of people being dragged out of there, I mean Christine knows, oh yeah, yeah, poppy killer Christie.
Actually show that immigration is not more popular legal immigration, say that immigration is good for a Verica. The Stephen Miller position, which is basically like you know, it is not increasing, like you know, like let's have a fortress, let's not let them in.
It is like you know, like send them all back. That is like hugely unpopular.
That's right, Yeah, I mean that is you know, Trump has made immigration popular and Stephen Miller has done it. The other thing that I think about when we're looking at this is that they just seem unable to get their footing and the Epstein stuff, The fact that they can't get a message on Epstein, which has been around now forever, right, Yeah, I mean this is like we're going on twenty more. The Epstein case has been going longer than Donald Trump has been president, and they can't
get their footing on this. They can't get a story straight that's cohesive. And like I was shocked with Patel where he just couldn't he had no answer, and even like there was a question from Kennedy from Louisiana, like, my man is not a liberal. He said this thing, this very specific line about how Epstein didn traffic these women, which is obviously untrue. But also if you are the Trump Bays and you are looking, you are looking for answers, like you could not be less satisfied.
Yeah, no, absolutely, I mean I mean the thing with like the FSC thing is like a kind of classic case where they got themselves in their own trap because they were they used it to try to like delegitimize the Democrats, And I mean that was interesting. The podcasters
were more interested in this than Trump himself. Trump himself like you know, the and he had used Epstein initially in twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen, but after that time he became very quiet about it because he kind of knew that, like there are really no good answers and on that point of Keptley not doing trafficking, and what's this like you know for mainstream people as well, like someone like Ezra Klein saying like, well, you know, like I know
Epstein hung out with these famous, powerful people, but like, you know, did they know about what was happening with the young women? You know, like maybe these two parts of Epstein's likee we separate.
Like like we actually have many many birthday cards from like rich and powerful people to Jeffrey Epstein, and they all somehow have these incredibly weird and creepy pictures of Epstein with like young girls, and they all are making like these illusions to things that like basically do as they sound like incredibly predatory abusive children.
So like it's kind of like how does that even like fly anymore?
If nothing else? The birthday book is a shocking revelation.
Gee, it was at the kind of shock like like I just thought maybe these guys were speaking code. They don't like no, it's like no, I'm gonna draw a little picture of my friend Epstein surrounded by young guy offering balloons to young girls.
It's like what is with the dates and their ages? So if you're wondering, they're not trying hard to hide it. Jeet here, will you please come back.
I'm always happy to be on this for Go.
Financial Times, Chief US commentator and author of Ziggernou Brazinski, America's Great Power Profit. Welcome to Fast Politics, ed.
Lous Calamony, lovely to be with you. As always, I'm.
Such a fan of yours and I always am delighted when i get to talk to you on television, and I'm always delighted when I get to talked to you in podcasts and even in real life. So let's talk about this piece you wrote for the FT about sort of I think really about where we.
Are right, yes, I mean where we are post to Charlie kirk killing. Yeah, but where we are more generally, I mean a lot of what we've all been saying since his killing, We were saying and could have been saying, just in slightly different ways before his killing. It's just
a moment of shock, but it's actually nothing new. How the right of reacted to this nothing new whatsoever, which is to become champions of cancel culture, to weaponize language to I mean extraordinarily, any criticism of Charlie Kirk now is considered to be incitement to murder. This is by no means a First Amendment stance.
Yeah, now, Donald Trump is going to the UK talk us through what's happening here.
He was flattered by KOs Dama, the British Prime Minister, back in February. If you're remember, he handed Trump this invitation slightly sort of cringe worthy moment where he is saying, this is personally handwritten by King Charles and it's unprecedented. You're the only president who's had two state visits, which of course amazing. You know, with all the coaches and horses and pageantry, all of this will flat of Trump.
And that's clearly the British strategy. But my problem is I understand why foreign countries flat of Trump, because you can avoid ten percent on your bottom line just by pure sucking up. But other countries, and I'm thinking of Canada in particular in terms of Western ones, and countries like India, have follow up strategies, which is to hedge against Trump, against the flattery wearing off within a few days and Trump trump volcano erupting again. And so what
worries me about Britain. Is Britain has a mega problem.
Right they really do. So talk us through that, because that's a real thing.
So there was a march last Saturday called the Unite the Kingdom March in London, somewhere between one hundred hundred and fifty thousand and straitors far right, I mean, led by this guy called Tommy Robinson, who is a favorite of Elon Musk. He's an ex football who loore going. He was jailed for assulting a police officer, jailed for fraud jail, I mean he was. He's been convicted seven times. He is a fascist street thug and this was his march in his name, and Mask addressed it and said
violence is coming to Britain. Get ready do violence to the people who are doing violence to you. It's a sort of transposing of the Charlie Kirk aftermath onto the British debate.
What do you think about that moment with Mask? Because I saw that quip and I was pretty horrified, and I wondered, he is the richest man in the world. Still, I wonder what the thinking there is.
So masque, you know, whatever the psychological origins of him turning on liberal democracy, and you know, parties that support liberal democracy, whether they be Democrats or the Labor Party or any of the non fascist parts. He's in Germany. What the origins are of that, or whether ketamine is a bigger explanation, I don't know, but is a very weird story because you know, he was the guy who was delivering the future to liberal car buyers the EV.
I mean, it's just a baffling situation.
Right, It's very baffling. I mean, one thing is, you know, he felt snubbed because Biden had an EV summit to which Musk was conspicuously not invited because by that stage in early Biden he'd shown many of the obnoxious signs that we now no one loves so well. He'd you know, he'd tormented that school teacher in Thailand. You know, he'd been going off the rails a lot, and so Biden probably slightly unwisely didn't invite him. But nevertheless, it doesn't
in any way explain the rage. The fact that he has a daughter while a son who has transitioned that sort of clearly triggered him. And then I think that the Biden administration turned down his offer of Starlink providing rural wife, basically rural connectivity to America. That pissed him off. But I mean of which remotely explains or justifies going full blown fascist.
Rain and also encouraging. But the question I wonder with urging people to violence is there's a reason very wealthy people don't say things like that, And isn't there some culpability if somebody gets hurt?
There is, and there are limits to free speech even under the First Amendment, inside the violence, shouting fire in a crowded theater, etc. I would submit that under American law, urging people as he did a year ago, when Britain had these horrible sort of race riot around the killing of three girls allegedly by a refugee. It turned out it wasn't a refugee. But there were mobs seeking hotels, hostels, looking to burn them. There's hostels with families in them.
Mask was egging on people like Tommy Robinson, whose accounts he had restored to x they'd been banned from Twitter for very good reasons. They were directing mobs, bloodthirsty mobs, to these hostels. That surely is not protected speech. That is incitement of violence. And what he said last Saturday by video to this crowd in London was I believe incitement, which is they are coming for you and therefore preemptively, which is an exact replica of what we've heard in
the wake of Charlie Kirk's murder. I'm not suggesting he you know, he'd be prosecuted for that, but he should be persona non grata in any self respecting liberal democracy that has a spine well.
And also I think there's a larger question of like is he culpable, like financially like if somebody gets hurt because they are attacked by someone who does what Elon just told them to do, what does that mean.
Here's where the Trump visit and the Trump sort of the trade UK US trade agenda intersects with this whole issue of magg Yeah please, And that is the real Trump line with Europe and with Britain is get rid of regulation of digit get rid of any rules on online speech and any constraints on big tech. Essentially, you're just trying to harm America and our champions, and eat On Musk is one of them. Sam Oltman is another.
That is of course an attack on any consequences for incendiary so the violent inducing hate speech like ones that Musk is specializing in nowadays, I mean, seems to be really quite addicted to. You know, every day Trump wants Britain and the European Union to scrap and Canada and we're where he's had some success to scrap any limits on what you can do online and both commercial behavior and speech behavior.
And then you'll give them trade good trade deals.
Well then he just gives them less worse ones. All they're doing is avoiding bullet worse but bigger bullets. You know, there's no upside, is just to limit the downside to Trump. But that's the game.
You know.
I'm just not confident that Kiirs Darma's government, or indeed the French government, or I am quite confident in Mark Carney. Yeah yeah, but most of these governments, Britain included, I have little faith in stealiness. And you need to be steely. We need to stand up to this.
I do just think happened with the trade stuff because like at this point, we have these humongous trade humongous tariffs, biggest ever right basically since the Great Depression, and with these huge tariffs consumers are paying for them, some of it. Companies are paying for some of it. Some of it's just not priced in yet. Right the markets public markets have decided they're ignoring it largely. Do you think at some point we enter reality or do we just stay in this weird unreality.
So the markets would be the sort of clearest administerers of reality. And Trump the phrase Trump or Taco Trump his chickens out comes from the bond markets. There is a real puzzle amongst economists as to why the markets still seem relatively happy. The dollar, by the way, been falling steadily for three months.
Do you want to explain why that is?
Yeah? So I think that politics around the FED, the reduction and probably extinction of the Fed's independence in the coming months, has strongly reduced confidence in America's full faith and credit as the sort of chief sopeign credit in the world.
So what we're watching is something called dollar flight.
On a flight, and we're also of coursing a downgrading of American growth prospects. I mean, to most Americans it feels like a recession. The macro numbers don't show that because there is growth in AI and the markets, you know, are partly the markets are being held up by that. But I think the markets have got a bet going here, which is because the Fed's going to lose its independence, We're going to have an era.
Of easy rally.
Yeah, we're going to have just easy money, and we'll get inflation down the line. We're already seeing some, but we'll get real inflation nineteen seventy style on the line because the last time the FED did what it was told and provide easy money was with and that created the statsay stagflation.
Yeah, I mean that is clearly and we talk about it all the time on this podcast. Because I was born in the late seventies, so much of my early childhood story is like my parents having these brown and Mercedes as with enormous gas tanks. The whole trunk of the car was a gas tank, so you didn't have to wait online for gas as long. I don't know how that is not a fire hazard, but I guess it's the seventies, so nobody cares. It's funny because it's
like it's so many points Trump is doing. It's not always true, but it's often true that Donald Trump does things that Nixon, These sort of Nixonian problems. And you know, we've seen this how this worked with Nixon, and now we're seeing Trump do it, you know, I mean, this is just straight out of his play.
We are. I mean, I think the difference at the moment is that Nixon was held to count and it was really his own party, and it was it was some key Republican legislators switching led to Nixon's resignation. I can't see that right now from any serious Republican and if it did happen, it would be an act of suicide at this point, of political suicide at this point.
And what we've seen in the media I sort of think, I think reflects politics that you get kill Mead, you know, saying we can basically kill homeless people, and he gets away with an apology, and we see people contributors on the non Fox channels saying really basically speaking the truth that Kirk was not a lovely human being.
Right, something Spencer Cox said, right.
Right exactly. And I think, you know, politics reflects that You've got Democrats playing by the rules and like the Queensbury rules, and you've got the other side that has no rules. They'll bring out, they'll bring a you know, a machine gun to a sword fight. And there is no chance at the moment that that we'll see a Nixon ending to this. That I mean could change. If America really plunges into genuine official recession. You know, you could see some Republicans regaining their spine. But at the
moment I'm touching at straws, I just don't see. I don't see Republicans. I think they're terrified of Trump, and I think they're terrified of MAGA, and I think they have reason to be.
Yeah, I mean, it does strike me that there's going to be a moment when this all terms. I mean, I don't know if it's six months, six years. If anything, If we've seen anything from the last ten years and the backlash to backlash to backlash to backlash, it's that there is going to be a moment where the American people are like, what has happened?
Yeah, And last time it was COVID. You know, before COVID struck, Trump was cruising to reelection. I mean, the numbers showed them way ahead. So COVID was a big game changer. But because you can't predict all better on clobal pandemics and you certainly a wish for them.
COVID did get us into a real moment where I mean a lot of how we got here is COVID.
Yeah, and it both got rid of Trump but also seeded his return. Yeah, I agree with that. COVID is complicated. I mean, I think we can agree on it was a massive event we still don't fully understand.
And RFK would not be destroying national health were it not for COVID.
I think that's absolutely correct. I mean, I do think, and you know, I know some of them because my daughter's friends and stuff. I do think there are some young people who were and this surprised us how many young people voted for Trump last November, but who had had sort of really dead souls a year or two of not really learning in the zoomers, who got somehow turned off by teachers, unions and CDCs and regulators. When Trump was able to weaponize that into vote, and it
really did take us by surprise. And I guess the maestro of that on TikTok was Charlie Kirk. Charlie Kirk was really good at reaping that harvest.
Right. The fundamental problem was people went to the Internet for news and people who were producing news on the internet. Some were of the left, many were of the right. They were able to sort of game things to be stickier and have you know, part of it is talent. I mean, these guys all had talent and they connected with people. I wonder if we could just talk for a minute, sort of like, I don't think you get to this moment without a real consolidation of news media
and print media. You know, we write for the FT. UK has a lot of newspapers. They're like America but in some ways not have a lot of newspapers. You have a lot of news, you have a lot of writers, you have a lot of it's just very culturally different, smaller, but more media. Do you think you guys are better off?
I would hesitate to say that. I mean, I think there is still one factor that keeps the debate within slightly less insane parameters, and that is that the BBC is something everybody uses, have local news. And you have them arguing over representation on BBC, the right and the left, but they're arguing about their position in the same public square. There is no public square. There are many, many different squares,
semi privatized squares in America. There isn't that sort of old fashioned network era that is totally dead in America. So in that respect, I mean it's a very negative plus point. But in that because the BBC is being sort of it's punch drunk, it just gets beaten up left right and center, particularly right they included because they got criticized Farage on so many shows. They boosted him in kind of the same way that Trump was boosted in twenty sixteen by having all is rallies film from
beginning to end by CNN. And so you know, it's not really not an ideal counterexample to Britain. I really liked what Governor Cox of Utah said last week that social media is a cancer on our society and we know this, but we can't ignore it. We have to play in that space. But we're aware it's utterly top sick and it's bringing out the worst in this and slicon Valley and making out like bandits by algorithmrizing our
most reptilian side of our brains. And we know all this is happening, and hopefully as time goes on, we'll grapple with it better because if we don't, then it's going to get.
Worse ed loose.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, such a delight money.
No second, Jesse Cannon, I jump fast.
So you know, one of the things, as we've heard about how the left is the violent party from people like Elon Musk, these studies, in fact show a totally different story, which is that the right wing, even when the DOJ is broken it down in a way that a lot of us question, which is right wing left wing in Islamic, the right wing wins by miles.
Still, Yes, I did see that. It's funny. I saw that too, and I was right wing left wing Islamic. I was like, hmm, yes, I did see that.
You know, would you clock it by amounts of attacks? And then a lot of people will be like, oh well, if you clock it by only measuring three weeks ago, then the left wing wins. It's like, okay, yeah, sure, every score can be divvied up by a different time. Thank you very much. But really, what we've seen is that this movement grows increasingly more violent, and now the DOJ is showing no study for it anymore.
Yeah, it's shocking that the facts that do not care about their feelings they are getting rid of. There was a moment during the Cash Betel hearing when a Democratic congressman asked him about Dylan Roof and he did not know who he was, or he said, I'm sorry, Dylan Roof, can you give me more information? And the member of Congress, a woman called camal Or Doves, said, you're the head of the FBI, and you know, look, my man has been spending a lot of time at MMA fights, spending
a lot of time with Mel Gibson. But that guy Dylan Roof was in fact a white supremacist who killed him on people at a black church. Yeah, he may or may not know who Dylan Roof is, but it behooves him to pretend not to know because then he doesn't have to answer. You know, remember Cash Batela is doing all of these hearings for an audience of one.
Yeah, this is like me not knowing how many calories are at a stake.
Yeah. Correct. 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.