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 the Democratic primary to fill Arizona's seventh congressional district seat vacated by the death of Representative Raoul Grijalva has been won by his daughter, at Elita Grihava. We have such a great show for you today. The Nation Zone ged here stops by to talk about how Trump's economic chaos is affecting the market and our upcoming
war with Canada. Then we'll talk to Congressman Jared Moskowitz about the BBB and how the GOP is twisting itself and not trying to defend their unpopular legislation, and Trump's possible Epstein cover up. But first the news.
So, Molly, I love this chart front of the show Justin Wolfers made where he shows Trump Ruber's about fire Jerome Powell making the market crash and then him saying I'm not going to do it and that the market goes back up. Is a real, real, great picture of the stupidity that goes on with this volatile, volatile man.
So Trump wants to fire Drome Pal why does he want to do this. Also, does he remember that he in fact hired Drome Pal in his first administration.
He does not, judging by his remarks today, he does not.
He wants to fire him because he wants to lower interest rates. He wants to lower interest rates because he wants a Banana Republic, and also because he thinks it'll juice the economy. Here's the big problem that Trump has. Trump cannot fire drome Pal, and he's sick of fans at the Supreme Court who will pretty much sign off on anything. Thank you Dahlia for explaining that to us last episode. Will not and they put a little note like you can't fire You can do anything you want,
but you can't fire drome Pal. Well, that crew has said he can't do it, there's no legal justification for it, and he can't do it now. That said, he wants to do it, and telling Trump he can't do something is a pretty good way to get Trump to do something. So he wrote a letter about a sort of Dear John letter to Jerome Pale. He showed it to Republicans in Congress. By the way, I just want to point out, like everyone involved in this story is of is both a coward and a moron. So I don't want to
put too fine a point on it here. But Republicans in the House have completely forgotten that they're a coequal branch of government. So they're just scared that Trump is going to fire Jerome Pale, which he can't do, so Bloomberg reported this. CBS reported that Trump is circulating the idea to Congressional Republicans on Tuesday because those are his buddies, right, the dumbest members of Congress. Trump wants a three percent point rate cut. It will be so, I mean, already
are dead. Okay, we have huge debt in this country. We borrow it at the pleasure of being this currency. You can see a world where the skittish bond market says, Okay, Trump's going to be an emerging market dictator. That's fine, We're going to treat your debt like emerging market debt.
And that means, you know, it becomes significantly more expensive to borrow to pay off the debt that we can never pay off as a country, And it means that we just are crushed under American debt because servicing the debt gets more and more expensive and we get more and more fucked. We are just running head straight into a brick wall, as often we see in Donald Trump, and I want to reduce something which I think is
like so trumpy. Right, Andrew Jackson's were with the Second Bank of the United States in the eighteen thirties is how we got here. Right, This Treasury Fed a court of nineteen fifty one that delineates the roles of the two institutions at managing government debt. But you know, Trump
doesn't like checks and balances. So the guy who has neutered the judiciary, who has you know, created a Congress that is basically just a you know, a bunch of guys who don't do anything well that he now wants to get rid of the last kind of check and balance. It's going to be terrible for the economy. And by the way, part of why this is coming is because Trump sees this inflation data which shows shockingly that the thing we said about the tariffs, which was always true,
which is that their inflationary, is actually true. They are in fact inflationary. He sees that tariffs are growing inflation. He realizes that the FED is never going to cut rates the way he wants them to, and so he's trying to go around them. But what is so stupid is that the reason the Fed won't cut rates is because they don't want more inflation. Like there's actual reasoning behind what they're doing here.
Sobley RFK Junior or another person who's really stable, genius is what comes to mind when I think of him. He has more shakeups at the staff at the Health Department. I'm really shocked to hear this.
Yeah, you're I'm shocked to hear the people hate working for the guy who does not believe in in basically any of the normal tenants of medicine. Yeah, so he is firing people, They are quitting. You know, he's fighting with the White House. I don't know why the White House is fighting with him. We've got the biggest measles outbreak of modern you know, since there was a vaccine caused almost entirely by his terrible misinformation. So this week his chief of staff and deputy chief of staff for
policy are both fired, according to CNN. By the way, I just remember why there's so much stuff about this administration, and we talked about it a couple episodes ago. But like the everyone is leaking. Okay, everyone in this administration is leaking. You're if you're unhappy with your you know, like the FBI is leaking. This one's leaking. That one's leaking. So you'll see tons and tons of really bad stories about Kennedy coming out, and quite frankly, you should. Yeah.
So in other stories about not being able to maintain staff the Trump administration, their Supreme Court lawyers are quitting. In mass almost seventy out of one hundred and ten have quit.
Yeah.
So this is one hundred and ten lawyers in the federal branch, sixty nine have departed or signaled their intention to depart. I'm not a math person, but that seems like a lot.
As a math person up and say, it's a lot.
You're coming from an administration where you did things like fought discrimination and fought, you know, for clean water and fought for people's rights, to an administration where you are fighting to jail people, fighting to send people to countries they'd never been to, you know, to deport Mexicans to the South Sudan. There's a reason people keep quitting. It is because this administration is asking them to do things
that are morally incorrect. And again this goes back to this whole idea that people work in the government are not people who couldn't get better jobs. Those are people who work in the Trump administration. People work in the government are people who consider the government's work to be important, and so they take less money because they want to serve their country.
And what I.
Think Trump world does not get is that these people can just go get better jobs, and that is what is happening everywhere.
Yep.
So, speaking of friends of the show, Josh Marshall is a very big regular here in his uh out at TPM has an amazing investigative reporting article on the contracts that show millions of dollars diverted from disaster resources of Florida. We're used to build Desantas Alligator Alcatraz that is already a disaster waiting to happen.
Yeah, so, my god, detention camp in Florida in the Everglades, a place with a lot of flooding, a lot of alligators, very hot. So it turns out that money that was meant to be for disaster relief. By the way, it is herhurricane season just about to start.
What could happen?
Right?
What's the worst.
So hurricane season's about to start, and Trump has said he's going to you know, eviscerate FEMA. Basically that's part of Project twenty twenty five. You can see where this is going, right, Florida tax payer money being spent to create Alligator Alcatraz. Why because Desanta's wants Trump to love him, and because DeSantis knows his only path to ever being
president is to go extreme maga. So there's a part in this that Talking Points memo has in here that says they've identified contracts and invoices totally about nineteen million dollars in the Florida Accountability tracking system.
By the way, I love that.
You know, there's still like this weird tech thing where they're like, we're going to show what we're doing. But you guys like it's cute that you want to show what you're doing, but you're doing crimes, right. I mean, there's no world in which this is okay to use money for disaster or relief. I mean, maybe it's not crime per se, it's certainly Malfeasan's right almost twenty million dollars to issued to nine different firms. In one instance,
the chief executive of a company contacted by TPM. Was he was unaware that his business products were being used for the detention camp. Yeah, sure, I'm sure there'll be more on this. It was completely clear that that was what this was going to happen, that this was how it was going to go. So DeSantis, of course, and Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who you may remember is being herself, said, they are essentially packed into cages wal to while humans
thirty two detainees per caved cages in a high flooding area. Yeah, this is going to end in tears. Geet here is a contributor to the nation and the host of the Time of Monsters. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Geat, good to be on the show. Are we going to war with Canada?
Possibly? Although I actually what I'm hearing now is a more likelihood, for better or words, of going to war with Mexico. There's a pretty good reporting and I think in a Mexican newspapers that there's a lot of chatter in Washington that Trump wants to make an excursion into Mexico and he's asking Republicans and as is there want the Republicans in Congress are saying, yeah, go for it.
You know, really, I didn't see this reporting, but I don't like it.
Yeah, yeah, I could send it to you, but I was in a Mexican newspaper. But it's for somebody who's like a very well regarded curious And there have been this chatter before, I mean like Trump, and Trump has said so before, like he wants to send in you know, he's the Marines against the cartels. So Canada is a possibility, but I think Mexico is also like all the neighbors.
Greenland New York magazine had a big piece about how much Canada is mad at.
Us on the level of public sentiment. Yes, there's a lot of Canadians that are are mad. Now. I have to say the Carnegie government has been like being cautious as I think a lot of the Europeans are where I think they're trying to see how much they can flatter. Yeah and yeah, and I think a lot of that's acts. He's driven by Ukraine, where they I think they may maybe have had some success in trying to get him
to reverse his policies. But yeah, I mean, like on the level of public opinion, yeah, I know, I mean I don't think i've seen every seen anti Americanism this high. I mean, I think the longer run trendancy beyond like this manipulation strategy. I think it's just a short run
thing to see what they can get. I think in the longer run, you know, what you're hearing in both Canada and in Europe is people talking about like, you know, like a sort of post America future, the globe, the global mail, which is like a very like Canada's New York Times is a very sort of conservative business complication. But they had an op ed saying, well, you know, kind of I should look towards China as a future trading partner and it's more reliable than the US at
this point. You see that with like like Brazil and in France, like there's been a lot of sort of talking the sort of the technocratic policy elite about you know, weaning away from NATO. What we're seeing right now as a short trend of you know, let's see how much like with the Taco stuff, you know, you feel like a lot of people feel like they can manipulate Trump
and get them to do it. But the more long run thing is that this is you know the fact that Trump was elected twice as a sign of irresponsible country and that if you were thinking about, you know, was you know, what other options are are there out there?
Always good to hear that that our country is regarded well overseas and that our electorate is considered to be quite moronic and stupid by our peers. Thank you, gee, good reality checks there to talk about.
Jeff App Yes, the New York financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Yes, perhaps you've heard of him, Jeff App Like, this is not the way I thought Epstein would unraveled Trump discuss.
The thing is, I think that there actually has been if you go look back, this kind of rift has always been there in the sense that it was a qute on people and people like Vance who like really talked up Jeffy Epstein thinking you know, like not without justice, that this is a good way to be an anti establishment person and to really, you know, go against it. Trump has always been a little bit more cautious, like if you go back, remember you know Gislayne Maxwell.
Right, I wish her well, he said, like, I.
Wish her well. Yes, And apparently, according to reporting in the Daily Beast, like you know, he had to even thinking about giving her, a part of which is like a really remarkable thing. Even more recently, like there were like these interviews why which like you know, thank you CBS. Uh, they did not see air it at the time, but where like you know, Trump was saying, you know, like he wasn't sure they would release the f Steve fileser,
you know, like keep being asked. I think there's that famous interviewer.
Right, that's right, they edited, yes, say more on that.
First of all, Like there's a news where the.
So Trump sued CBS for editing a question that Harris got by sort of editing to a clearer answer. One part they played was her sort of more gargled, and a different show they played her clearer answer. Now it turns out that there was the same thing. They did the same thing with Trump, and there's a whole sort of a couple of minutes of him being like maybe I would, maybe I wouldn't, I don't know what I would with Epstein and that stuff never got shown. And aka, Harris should sue CBS.
She should because CBS also, I mean, the other kicker on all this is that like they basically surrender to Trump. They're gonna like give him like a huge payout for like standard journalistic procedure. But the Trump thing is like much worse candalous than like editing for clarity, which like journalists always do. With the Trump thing, you know, like
it was a newsworthy thing. And there was like another interview that did at the air where he was asked, like jeff he said, sure, where were released at UFOs? Oh yeah, absolutely Jeffrey Epstein. He said, well, I don't know about Epstein, you know, yeah, so he'd always been reluctioned to do so. And I think, you know, like
there's a number of obvious reasons why. I mean, like when can you know rehearse the fact that he and Epstein were like on both accounts, very close friends for like a decade and a half from sorry, from the late nineteen eighties, still around two thousand and two. I believe Jeffrey Epstein actually had like a was a member of mar Lego and like would stay there all the time. There's a famous video of them partying. Trump told The New York Magazine in two thousand and two, Yo, Epstein's
a hell of a guy. I mean, like beautiful woman almost as much as I do sometimes on the younger side, you know, like it's just like to.
Be right sometimes on the younger side. Yeah.
See, it's just like the incredibly damning statement, you know, given that this guy was later convicted the trafficking in young women and as well as you know, all the connections with kislne Maxwell. But even in addition to like Trump himself, Like, you know, one thing we know about Jeffrey Epstein is that he's very well connected with like
the American financial elite. I don't know if you know this, but you know who Jeffrey Epstein's next door neighbor was, you know, because Jeffy had like one of the biggest mansions in New York and he had a next door neighbor. So that is like the guy who's doing all the terrifs lit neck Oh yeah, who now owns Jeffrey Epstein's house. Then after his neighbors and now is the owner of the former Epstein estate.
Did he buy that house? Yeah?
Yeah? Why not?
Like what why not?
Yeah, buy this house where all these creepy things happened, and that there were secret recordings in the Furthermore, I mean Trump would know in his social circles, especially if Epstein had been a member of mar Lego and then you know, like often kept company with New York financial people.
Trump basically would know. I would have to guess, like, you know, fifty percent at least of the people on any sort of like Epstein a Black Book list or whatever you want to call it, any any sort of like network that you drop of who was Epstein's inner circle, that would be pretty heavy with people that Trump would know. And I think that in and of itself, in addition to whatever personally incriminating things happened, Trump has a lot of reasons for not wanting to release US, and so
it's actually put him into conflict with his base. And Political have a good art article about this, But like, this is one time where I think the Democrats are doing the intelligent thing. Who are because they have fully that shows that Trump's base is actually very upset of this. They actually had believed that against all reasons, like why would you think Trump with all people, would release any incriminating stuff on jeffy Epstein, But they actually believed that,
and so like now it's actually going forward. I don't know if you saw in Congress they have Republican They're gonna they're gonna get others to have their Democrats unified, so they will be able to get like a very strong statement from Congress to release all the Epstein files with with you can redact the names and information with the victims, because that's how what we're conservatives, right, We're
concerned with who Epstein knew. So Trump it's an incredible self owned and I think that one reason it's a cell phone, and one reason I think that it has like a deeper damaging thing is that the way people like Vans were using Epstein was very much in keeping with Maga ideology, which is a sert of anti systems politics, to say the whole system is corrupt. We're the only honest guys. This is like sort of Qune on Maga at its most like you know, philosophical level, like this,
this is what they actually believe. And then to suddenly turn around and suddenly say, you know, like oh yeah, there's nothing to see here, you know, like Epstein, who's that guy? Why are we still talking about Epstein? That does not sit well with you know, at least enough people. And I think that, yeah, I think that like Trump
is actually quite vulnerable on this. Actually a little bit uncomfortable to even talking about this on a political level, you know, like the whole TYPECD is like incredibly sick and twisted, and we should actually know the facts. We should actually know who he was concerting with, who he did business with. And I think the line now is that like there was no trafficking and there's no blackmail.
But like to believe that because Epstein, when he was in jail and he died under whatever circumstances, he was like on charge for trafficking, and Gislam Maxwell was like convicted onto trafficking charges. So you have to believe that these people were trafficking, but not trafficking to anyone it was like except themselves, Right, It's absurd. I mean, even beyond that, we know, like we actually have very specific
cases where Bill Gates his divorce. We know because this came out in interviews and testimony, Epstein had released some information to Bill Gates's wife and that led to the doors. So so so to be that indicates that like of course Epstein was trafficking and information uh and using it like to whatever advantage he could have. So so so this is like there's actually a real legitimate public interest in knowing this, even if no one goes to jail
or Phy don't have to convict this. I lows this is like a bit like the GfK assassination stuff, where like you know, like, are you gonna find a smoking gun? Is just gonna like incriminate Trump or other people. I don't think that's a relevant question. The relevant question is does the public have a right to know this stuff? Right? Because we now know, you know, this is one thing that Trump actually did and actually Biden did to some degree.
You know, we know we have a lot more information about the Kennedy files, and we know that the CIA was lying to the American people like until like now, like they've been lying for sixty years about now they've been lying, and they actually gave a medal to the guy who's the chief liar, who was like the CIA agent who's involved with the fair play for committed with various Cuban organizations and who had been monitoring Lee Harvey Oswald along with like apparently like fifty other CIA agents.
We're like keeping crack of Oswald before he committed the assassination. So that's actually you know, whether there's a smoking gun or not, it's actually really worth knowing, you know, like how how closely the CIA was monitoring him and whether they like messed up or anything else happened. So in the same with this situation, like there's actually a really pressing public interest to know, you know, like what what
what was this Jeffrey Epstein thing? Like it's just like it stinks to high even and we should know as much as one the one can legitimately know. And to suddenly say like you know, like yeah, Trump's literal thing is like move on. And you you actually hear this from like Charlie Kirk saying like whoa you know, Trump said there's nothing here, and I crusted the Trump administration like why like how is not a legitimate position that someone in power says, you know, there's nothing here, move on?
Right one? The boy is you know you elected him to bring down the deep state. He is now the deep state.
Absolutely, He's absolutely the deep state in the I mean, you know a lot of ways I would argue, you know, he's always kind of been the deep state. I mean Trump is part of the elite system of elite immunity as much as anyone is.
Yeah, I'm for sure.
So I mean That's why that was always the absurd feature of not that people were wrong to think, like, you know, like it would be great to have a president who takes on the establishments, like that's a legitimate thing. The joke was at the time Donald Trump, of all people, was going to be that hero. So actually, I think in that level, this is actually very significant and like a real point of vulnerability because it really goes to
it's his kryptonite. It is like this is the thing that like can illustrate to not all but many Trump believers like wait a minute, this guy is not quite who he said he was, you know. So yeah, I think, yeah, like, uh, it's been great. I mean like just you know, like I think, you know, the way that Trump has messed us up, as you said, like you couldn't even begin
to imagine. We're not even talking about the the cover up with they released this video of like the jail cell, and like you know, like now it turns out there's like almost three minutes missing from that, Like well you know, like right.
Yeah, that didn't solve anyone's problems. That was the metadata shows three minutes lost, yes.
Yeah, yeah, So I never want to say like oh yeah, we got old Donnie now. But yeah, like I think it has always been a sort of you know, one of these like boxing midges, like Ali versus Apartman, where you gotta keep punching, you gotta keep punching, and I gotta say, if that'll knockout, it's a strong punch, right.
And it also is it's sort of the end of the line, right. You see him trying to obfuscate and pivot, and he's saying things like this is Comy by the way, Okay, sure, I don't care, never liked Comy.
It makes no sense. Like, okay, let's say, like Obama and Kobe fabricated the stuff the file did, why did they use that?
Look?
You know, yeah exactly, and they did use it. And I think so you have you have Trump blaming Obama and Comy. You have this sort of reflexive you know, it's a hoax, just like Russia, Russia, Russia. What's so interesting about Trump two point zero is besides the fact that we just our lives are passing us bar and we've spent all this time writing about the dumbest person
in the world. I mean, just I mean, don't you feel like as a writer at the beginning of Trump one point zero, you thought, wow, this is so insane. It's sort of interesting, like it's terrible for all of us, but it's so interesting. And now you're just like, oh, it's just it's stupid. He's gonna do something stupid. Here's what's going to happen, something stupid.
Yeah, I know, I mean, I mean, I know. The circus has lost its thrills a long time ago.
And people don't tune in for it because they know it's just going to be stupid, Like you might as well just watch Love Island.
No, absolutely, absolutely don't know. It's also that the limits of his act reappaired intellect Yeah. Yeah, like he's kind of really stuck in the past in a way that fight. You know, like he is still very much, you know, a creature of prevents, still obsessed with stuff that happened five ten years ago. He's ever like willing to let anything go. And also like it's totally these are all irrelevant things, Like it's actually not like resting. This is to do with rest.
Yeah, it's nothing, not even a little. So let's talk about just for a minute here. There are a number of big problems that Trump has right inflation, wants to fire the chairman of the Fed. The Ukraine stuff. He told PUNI had fifty days again Putin. Supposedly, there's some Putin had said you needed another fifty days, right like that. There's some sense in which maybe Trump is not I'd be shocked to hear this acting on the level when
it comes to Putin. Tell us what you sort of think, the kind of you think it's more sort of obfiscating and heading into more trade wars. I mean, yeah, I.
Mean, or whatever the hell this is. I don't know if you. I mean, it's sort of like trade wars and then not trade wars.
And infrastructure remember infrastructure week.
That's very exactly Yeah, yeah, I know. I mean he's just like he likes to kick the ball down the road a little bad, you know, like he's kind of really tready. I mean that he basically ran again out of revenge. His ego had been heard by losing to Viiden. He could never accept the fact that he lost to Vidin. You know, he came back to show that he could
come back. And he has a bunch of these obsessions, like let's make a deal with Putin, and let's do trade wars, I mean, and but a lot of it, the stuff that he's doing that way, he's had I wouldn't say success, but it's done a lot of damage.
Is where he can offload it to someone who does care, like Steven Miller really does care about like you know, creating Mickey America as white as possible and like deporting everyone and so so yeah, Miller's in charge of immigration, doing immense amount of damage on the trade stuff he has. Trump has his preferences, but he still keeps going back and forth on all this, you know, Like so I think a lot is gonna be credit water and on the rush, on the Ukraine, on on foreign policy in general.
He has no idea, no clue, so he'll just like waiver back and forth between different factions of his government, you know, some of whom want to withdraw from Europe and some of whom are like, you know, like want to keep going. And it's the same as amilies. So it's gonna be it's he started like flaying a lot. I mean, I actually think that on the issue that he's like done the most is also the most vulnerable,
which is immigration. Well, I think a lot of sort of middle of the royal people did think like, oh, he's just gonna get rid of the bad people, the gang members and whatnot. And yeah, like you know, every day we're seeing like, you know, like just ordinary you know, people who've been there for ten twenty years, have lots of family here, I've been working here, you know, being
deported and it's it's you know, it's number one. Immigration are like terrible, and support for like amnesty, powerway immigration has never been higher. I'm a little bit puzzled by like why some Democrats have really step out of the play, but a lot of them are like reluctant on this, and I think that's a mistake because you know, as Carl Rope taught us, you attack your enemy on where they're the strongest. And Trump had used to be the
strongest on immigration. And if you can really hammer home that he sold the Bill of Goods on immigration and he's like watching this and on the trade stuff, then I think, you know, he and the propokas are very vulnerable.
Yeah, cheat here least come back.
Yeah. I was happy to be a Yeah, yeah, I could become a war for their Trump does play and does lots wear against CANDADALLC.
Congressman Jared Moskoodz represents Florida's twenty third district. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Congressman.
What's going on, Molly? How you doing good?
What's happening with the Epstein files? Let's talk about that first. Let's start with that.
Well, I don't know what you're talking about. Is has been in the news.
No, it has not been in the news. But if it were to have been in the news, why can't you just get over Epstein?
Because I'm weak in listening to the Democrats, right, That's why I mean, first of all, let's go let's go to the beginning, right, Yes, people forget when he was running against Hillary, President Trump was the one who brought up Epstein. He was when he was running against the other Republicans in the primary. He was saying, well, you know, it's being very bad for Bill Clinton because you know, he went to the island just to ask Prince Andrew, right,
and that's kind of where where it all started. And from that day on, right, he's been talking about, you know, Epstein and his whole movement's been talking about the deep state. How you know there's a list and how they're how they're gonna take it to high society and that it's all these Democrats, including the Clintons on this list, right, and they're gonna expose it and they're gonna go after the deep state and take it down. Now, you know, there's other people that thinks like, oh, the CIA is
involved or foreign countries involved. Right, And you got Dan Bongino and Cash Mattel who made it, you know, you know, made their career online with this stuff.
They wind up government gangsters, government gangsters.
They wind up in the administration, in the in the Department of government to go after this. Pam Bondi, who was the Attorney General of Florida who dealt with Epstein there, becomes the attorney general here. She's dealing with Epstein. What does she do. She releases binders with nothing in them, beautiful nice white binders. I have one for you if you'd like one.
Phase one, Phase one, Phase one, what was gonna be phase two?
Well, this is like this is like the Avengers movies, multiple phases. Okay, So so she does this binder there's nothing in them, complete embarrassment. You would think at that point maybe pivot, maybe figure out how to land it. Nope, she comes on Fox and she says, the list is on my desks, right as if there was a list and it was on her desk, and now that then they do a memo and she says, guess what, no list and no desk. I don't even have a desk.
So let's just pause for a minute in the interests of just dis secting the stupid heir, what do we think you think she was talking about the phone book like there has been a follow.
At this point, who the fuck knows? Right, Look like I have no idea?
Okay, yeah, member of Congress here, man, what member of our government?
Yes, well most members of Congress probably, yeah. But at the end of the day, I mean, we have no idea what's going on? This has been a one eighty that is not just confused Democrats MAGA themselves have no fuse and bewildered. I'm watching Benny Johnson, Mike Flynn, the guy from VERITASO Keith, like they don't even know what
to do here. They're still siding on you know, they're still opposing the president, wanting to release because they feel like this pedophile who hurt children had people from high society and that there are names, there.
Are a lot of reasons to want to release this.
Now Trump says that this is all the Democrats fault, where the one who came up with this, We're the one, I mean talk about projection, I mean the Lord. So now this now he's trying to get people to believe like for the last several years, this hoax that they've been talking about, this conspiracy theory that they talked about that they believe in, either is either true or a hoax. The Democrats created Biden in the basement. Clearly Barack Obama
were still blaming him for stuff. Yeah, okay, and James it is and Komy it is absolutely wild. But this is really the first instance we're seeing where the MAGA base ain't buying it. They're not buying it, right, And so you have to ask yourself a question. Were they lying then or are they lying now?
Right?
Is there is there no there there and it was all a lie? Or is it so bad? Is so bad that it would take down the president and other people in the government.
On Earth one where we I guess live. It's the federal government in a normal federal government. The reason why they wouldn't release a list of anything, and we don't even know if there is a list. Clearly, we know there's a phone book because we've seen reporting of people calling the numbers in the phone book, so we do
know there's a phone book. But if there was something like that, the reason why you can't release something like that, if you're not going to press charges, is because you are then liable for all you know, ruining these people's lives, and they can sue you.
Right, yeah, one hundred percent. But also we got Jilane Maxwell in prison. Yeah, she's in jail. The Department of Justice is asking the Supreme Court to deny her appeal. There are Republicans who want to bring her to Capitol Hill so she can testify. The administration opposes that.
Why and let let's get back for a second, because yesterday you guys in the House brought explain to us what happened yesterday and why Republicans blocked it, and who the Republicans were who blocked it.
Sure, so there was a there was a rule vote in the Rules Committee with an amendment. Only one Republican voted for that, Ralph Norman Okay, which would have forced the release of the Epstein Files or other Republicans on the Rules Committee voted against it. Then there was a previous question where this language was tied in okay, and Republicans voted against it. In fairness to Republicans, they would never have allowed us to win the previous question. Anyways.
These are like rule fights anyways. But yeah, it was the first time to put them on the board. Now you have a discharge petition with Thomas Massey, Marjorie Taylor Green and Democrats. What a weird soup of that.
You have the numbers for that to get to pass, right, because Thomas max do.
In fact, in fact, the rumors are they're gonna send us home. Before we actually signed the petition.
Johnson just said yesterday, release it.
Yeah, listen, Like Mike Johnson, he's a nice guy, he's a pleasant guy to have a conversation with. He's not in charge of the House, Molly, okay, he can say whatever he wants. But this is Trump's house, okay. And and so at the end of the day, I don't care what Johnson says to Manu, right, I care what the President is saying. And that's what you have to listen to. And the President's telling is move on, Move on the guys. The guy's dead. Forget about it. There's
no there there. It was a hoax, it was Russia Gate, it was you know, the the Steel dossier. Good god, that's gonna go away. Telling people like, if you still believe in the Epstein thing, I don't want your support. Your weak He's willing to burn his own base over Epstein. And so look, I was never like a big believer in this whole thing. Obviously this Efstein was a terrible person. That he rotten.
Hell.
We obviously have to make sure his victims are protected, of course, but the over the top protection of by the president from that's what is intriguing strange. That is what is intriguing people.
And there is also alex Acosta giving him this sweetheart deal the first time, and that costa goes into the Trump admin.
That's right, it's.
Not, this is not There is definitely a lot of smoke here.
Oh, there's definitely a lot of smoke And we know that Trump knew him and had a relationship with him, and Trump's probably all over a bunch of stuff, right that we know that's been well well reported. They knew each other for a long period of time. What we don't know is who went to the island. That's what. Who was there? That's the list, right, But even if it's not a one sheet of paper, list, right, who
are the people who went to the island? And that's what people want to know, and that is what At this point it appears the President is trying to protect that list of names. But why don't we let why don't we let her come testify, Let her come testify to Congress. Let's see what she has to say.
But there are also hundreds of videos, thousands of videos and documents, and I mean.
If it wasn't destrip Molly, if it wasn't destroyed, Hold on a second, there were at some point we were told videos.
FPI sent it to the DJ, didn't they? So she said, so she.
Said, okay, we I mean, you know, if you look at the poli, the American people don't believe a word that's coming out of DJ on this. So look, as Donald Rumsveld used to say, there are unknown unknowns, right, May he rest in peace.
I don't want to say you're my favorite member of Congress, because there are members of Congress that I am actually very friendly with. You are but right now you are my favorite member of Congress.
It was the Donald rumsveld quote that got you. Love that, oh, love that corupt You ever see the letter he sent to the I R S about his taxes by the way, no, oh, you've got go google it when we're done. He sent a letter when Donald Rumsfeldt one year sent a letter to the I R S. And the letter, the gist of it was something like, you tell me that I owe X amount of dollars this year. I'm gonna send you that amount of money, but I actually think you're wrong. I owe you more. You have no idea. You have
no idea how much I owe you. I really have no idea how much I owe you. I'm gonna send you what you're telling me. It's a very funny letter.
It is about to be hurricane season in Florida. You guys climate change. I live in New York. We just had flooded subways, very scary, lots of flooding. We've seen a lot of flooding already. Your governor Ron DeSantis may have spent quite a lot of there's reporting from Talking Points Memo that he may have spent quite a lot of FEMA money on Alligator Alcatraz, not FEMA money, but state money for hurricanes. Now we have this hurricane season coming.
Trump is trying to dissolve FEMA. Talk us through this incredibly bad situation that's about to hit Florida.
Sure, so let me go through the whole thing. So on Alligator Avatraz, there's a grant that's within homeland, about six hundreds that's in account that FEMA is going to process for reimbursement. So the governor is spending state money while he will then wait for a FEMA reimbursement. Who knows how long that'll take or if it'll come at all, Right, because FEMA, FEMA is reimbursing at the crosshairs. Still is right possible? That being said, the state of Florida has
the money. We're not Alba or Mississippi or Louisiana. They do have the money. So from a fiscal issue, right, even though they have spent way too much money building Alligator Alcatraz, right, it will not impact the state's ability to respond in a hurricane.
But let's talk too, you think, but also is this legal to move around these funds like this?
Well that look, I don't know the fund that it's rumored that Homeland is using was actually a fund that they froze that was being used being used to reimburse New York for that for the immigration issues there that they then criticized and fired someone at FEMA for reimbursing New York. But now they're taking the money and reimbursing Florida.
Is it legal? It appears to be a legal grant right and having FEMA process it is also legal, although cumbersome, and so you know, from a federal government grant perspective, it appears to be legal. What Florida is doing with Alligator Alcatraz is a whole different story. But I want to I want to folk on FEMA because the situation can't be more dire. Molly okay. I believe FEMA is in worse shape than any other agency in all of the federal government right now. It started with talk about reform,
FEMA reform, FEMA reform, and the agency. The industry has known, We've needed FEMA reform for years. Democratic, you know, FEMA administrators, Republican FEMA administrators, the industry, everyone knew FEMA needed rough form. One of the reforms is to get FEMA out of Homeland to get out of this big bureaucratic mess. Homeland has been disabusing FEMA for years, making FEMA run all of the grants of the other twenty two agencies there and bogging FEMA down in bureaucratic red tape rather than
getting them to focus on response. In fact, I have that bill for the last three years to get FEMA out of the Homeland Security Department. What does Christy Nome do. She doesn't do reform, she does deletion there. Okay, she's literally dissolving this thing from within. Twenty percent of the workforce is gone. They're holding ten They're holding ten billion dollars worth of previously declared presidential disaster aid for billion
dollars for just Florida. They got rid of BRICK, which was a program that helped counties and cities and states build resiliency. There's a federal grant that helped states build capacity emergency management capacity. Right, they're holding that grant money back, so they're saying, build your capacity, but we're not going to send you the money to do that that we usually send you. Got They forced people to take buyouts, some of the most senior people with the most amount
of experience took those buyouts. You've got regional offices that are twenty thirty percent empty, right, and we have.
The phone number problem right with Texas where they couldn't did.
The resign the contracts. Yeah, they didn't resign the contract with the call center. With the call centers, they're not putting people in the field to go door to door, which is what they usually do. So in the in the year of doge E efficiency, they've actually made FEMA slower and less efficient. Okay, we got an administrator with no FEMA experience at all, this guy, David Richardson. I can't even remember a time in the history of FEMA where the FEMA administrator didn't go to a disaster area
that the President and the Homeland Secretary went to. David Richardson wasn't there. He didn't come for several days later. Why he knows nothing, and he couldn't add anything to the equation, but I could. It's unimaginable. And then what you have in Texas, Christy Nome didn't activate the swiftwater rescue crews for three days. FEMA would usually just start
pushing those crews. They would get them, get them on the road and reposition them so when then when they were needed and ready to go, that it would only take an hour or two to get them in the water. Okay, this is unconscionable. I don't care what they say. This is the fastest response in the history of not Okay, this is the slowest response since Katrina.
Slowest response since Katrina's pretty damning. There's also a problem with the weather balloons, right well.
Yeah, they're they're not doing the weather balloons anymore because they defund.
It so that it would be your first line of defense against a hurricane, right well.
Making sure we have accurate information to know the intensity of the hurricane, the track of the hurricane. There are dramatic concerns right that that information is not going to be reliable. You get a change in the track, and we've talked about this. I mean, look, I'm the former director of Emergency Management from the state of Florida, right for a Republican governor, Which shows you that I don't look at this in a partisan way when it comes
to emergency management. This is the time to help Americans and their time of need. Hurricanes. Don't care you know how you vote it but there's a real sense that you know, hurricanes could shift and they do it, you know, fifty miles this way, sixteen miles that way, that changes evacuations, that change flood models. We may not have the same data, reliable data that we've had in the past.
Yeah, so it seems like this is spiraling towards the disaster.
Look, my hope now, obviously is that we have a light hurricane season and we have time to rebuild FEMA. Because even though that we have great people there, first responders, fantastic peop will care about this, FEMA is not ready, okay. And states that rely on FEMA to assist them that don't have big emergency management departments, like California or Texas or Florida, they're not ready to do this without a
FEMA okay. Yeah, And so we should be concerned. We should be worried that if we get a big disaster into a state that needs FEMA help, that this situation will be a disaster within a disaster.
Yeah.
Yeah, it seems like the weather stuff, the FEMA stuff, but it doesn't seem like there has been an event like that. You would think what happened in Texas where obviously had they had more a better, more organized warning, less people would have died.
Right, I mean so similar to like the shooting at my high school, right Martin Stoneman Douglas, where a bunch of kids were killed and teachers. When an event like that happens, we have multiple levels of failure and in this is in this instance in Texas. The reason you do you do an investigation, you do an after actor review, is to learn what worked what didn't work to make those changes. Right, there are gaps in time between that last warning please go, you're gonna die versus when they
started evacuation. We need to know, We need to know what worked and didn't work. We need to know where the gaps were, right, Right, I think you're gonna find that there were gaps at the local level. There's gaps at the warning. We might find gaps with FEMA's response.
Right.
It's not going to be one silver bullet how did this happen. It's gonna be a lot goes wrong town, and some of it may be as simple, Molly as this was in the middle of the night, and they couldn't reach people in the city, in the county, and they couldn't reach the first responders, Right, they weren't ready to go, and that's why from four four am in the morning till seven am, they didn't start evacuation until seven am.
Right.
It may have just been you know, this is not this is a r rural area.
Right.
There could be some just regular stuff that got in the way. I was on a city commission at county commission, and they're not just like sitting around waiting to go. Was it a volunteer fire to apartment?
Right?
Were those were those folks worried about their families? I mean, there's a lot of different moving pieces. That's why you do an after action review.
Are they not doing it?
I don't know, But I've called for investigation. I've called for hearings. That's what I want to do in both Homeland and Transportation, which has oversight of FEMA.
Right.
For me, this isn't about gotcha. It's about did something different in FEMA? And what were what was the repercussions of that?
Right?
Did it impact it? It did it not impact it? We we don't know. Okay, what I can tell you is it didn't help Molly. Clearly wasn't a positive.
Yes, Trump still seems like he's pretty interested in getting rid of FEMA.
No, they're pivoting. No, okay, yeah, yeah, they're pivoting. So there. I actually believe there's a disconnect between the West Wing and Christy Nome on this interesting. Yeah, I think it was all fun in games, like you're gonna get rid of it, and she's like, yep, mister presient, we're gonnat rid of it. We're getting rid of it. Now now they're pivoting. No, we're going to rebrand it. We're going
to reform it. We're getting rid of it as you previously knew it, like you know the artists formerly known as Prince.
So it's going to be FEMA two point Oh it's actually.
There's a great room symbol. No, no, you're gonna love this. There's a rumor going on, you know what, you know what some people are saying it's gonna be called what the National Office of Emergency Management. You know what the acronym is NATO No no, oh no, yeah no, yeah, yeah, anyways, back to Earth one.
Yeah, that would be amazing, amazing. I mean, I can't believe post do. But everything is like at all points in this administration.
Yeah, I mean, by the way, I did have a thought like maybe the swift water rescue crews that we were waiting for, maybe they were on Pambondi's desk.
Karen, Yes, will you come back?
Of course, I'll always come back.
Okay, good.
Moment.
Jesse Cannon Smiley.
A few weeks ago, Josh Holly, he was putting up all this resistance to Medicaid cuts. Some of our people who do punitorary like us said, maybe we can get him to be a Democrat, and you and I on an episode said, well, Josh Holly does what he is best for him. And here we have another case of that where he's introducing a bill to repeal the Medicaid cuts in the big bullshit bill that he voted the pass.
You know, this is the thing about all of this. These people, and this is true with the people like in the Freedom Caucus too. All these people are full of shit.
Right.
They want to seem like moderates, but when it's time to stand up for stuff, they will not. So don't let yourself get played these people. All they care about is winning their primaries. All they care about is not getting Trump's people calling them on the phone and saying mean messages.
Could I add though, I think Josh Holly has an added third one, which is that he still delusionly believes he'll be president one day.
Sure, they all are like this. Susan Collins voted against this bill because they knew they had the votes. Okay, she is not a good person who's disturbed. She is just a craven politician like the rest of them. By the way, Lisa Murkowski voted for the BBB, you know why, because they figured she could get reelected in Alaska. This has been gamed out, like you can't believe. So none of these people are trustworthy. None of these people are good people. None of these people are moderates. Okay, we've
been down. This has been almost a decade of trump Ism. There are no moderates here. Everyone is a you know, either a craven opportunist or absolutely pathetic sickophant. 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.