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 Congresswoman Elise Stavonik has both dropped our bid for governor of New York and she is not running for reelection. We have such a great show for you today, the Nation's GDR stops by to talk President Trump's demented rants. Then we'll talk to California gubernatorial candidate Tom s Dyer about his run to be the
top official of the great State of California. But first the news, Molly.
We have a new episode of our Project twenty twenty nine, a reimagining series on regulation. It features Lena kah Alvera Badoya and many others. It's over on our YouTube channel. I'm thrilled, how about you.
We are really psyched about our Project twenty twenty nine YouTube series, and let me tell you why. Because what we do is we outline regular We talk about how to legislate a lot of the abuses of trump Ism, how to prevent them, and it is very We worked really hard on it. It's so nerdy, but we think that you will learn a lot from it. Come up with ideas which you can bully your legislators into adopting.
I like this theme of the podcast Bullying Legislators.
That's basically our jobs now are to bully our legislators.
Pro Bullying Legislator podcast.
You know, right, if you see an elected you know what to do, bully them.
Well, speaking of you really teed me up. There is a lot of people in the Democratic Party that are very mad at the DNC and Ken Martin right now as they withhold their autopsy report.
Yes, yes, yes, here's the poor Democratic Coms Director said. By the way, I know this woman, she's fine, but like I like what she said on Twitter because you know that everyone is full on freaking out about this. Let's stop looking back, Let's look forward and continue winning. No, honey, we gotta look back. Dan Pfeiffer said, this is a bad decision that reeks of caution and complacency that brought us this moment. He's right, even Democrats, this is such
a terrible idea. This is such a bad idea. And I would like to point out that when Martin won the campaign to become DNC chair this year, he pledged to conduct a review. So this is so bad and stupid and shortsighted.
It seems like the popular theory is that this is to protect the consultants because it's going to show how useless all the money spent on them was, particularly allegations from David Hogg, who is a part of the DNC for a very brief amount of time.
Yeah, David Hogg. Again, it's just terrible. This guy has such problems already, people are mad at him. It's just an insane way to do it. It's a huge mistake. I do not think that this is a good idea. I think it's terribly stupid and short sighted and a huge mistake. I don't think it makes any sense. It's really bad.
So the Trump administration has set a goal to denaturalize thousands of US citizens in twenty twenty six.
It's so trumpy and crazy because it's like, this is so stupid. It's going to be a total nightmare for them legally. But you know, it's part of it is just you know, they want people to be scared. You know, this is like the kind of thing they love. Setting a quota for denaturalization is vicious and cruel and designed to send a message of fear it's just so stupid and it's what they do always in this admin. What do you think about this, Jesse?
What we've seen this week is a very new thing with Ice, which is there is so many headlines of accusations, there's a death and a nice facility in new work. So what I think now we're moving to is they're going to try to see if they can do the more aggressive but polite maneuverings to reach these psychotic immigration was because Stephen Miller's thirst for cleansing America of anyone not as pale as them must go on.
Right, And it's also but it's like it's stupid because it's not popular. People are going to be so mad about this. It's just so stupid. It just doesn't make any sense to me. It's just moronic and gross. I don't think it's going to work, and it's like so little bang for the buck. There are real problems in this world. It's just stupid, and I think they're going to have real problems with this, and I don't think it's going to work. I don't see a way through this.
Like it's not going to work. They're going to end up with lots of you know, lawsuits and lawyers and angry people, and it's just stupid, Like it doesn't get anywhere it's going to be. It's like if they wanted to deport lots of people, this is not the way to do it.
Yeah, So you know things are going well and you're really a competent, competent government that's acting with respect to the law. When you get a headline like this, top lawyer for military joint Chiefs told Chairman that officers should retire if faced with an unlawful order.
Here's the deal, request to retire and refrain from resigning in protests, which could be seen as a political act or picking a fight to get fired. These are different ways to deal with getting an unlawful order. I think that we should pull back and wonder why we're spending so much time talking about what to do when someone asks you to do something illegal, right, Like, we are spending so much time on this because we know that this administration is doing a lot of illegal stuff. And
I think that's really important to realize. It's like, you don't have conversations like this if things are normal. You have conversations like this when things are not normal, When you have a military that is scared and vaguely under siege. So I think that that is really important when we talk about this, is just to talk about how this is the product of living in a lawless society. And it sucks. It's so incredibly it's stupid and it's bad, and it's also quite scary, you know.
No, I mean, then these checks and balances are here for a reason, and you know, we have laws and order around this stuff, so we don't do reckless shit that gets Americans.
Killed, right, And that's where we are. And so it's just stupid. And it's not even that it's stupid, it's that it's scary. It's dangerous. It's like what happens when you're you're like, you've transitioned from a democracy to an authoritarian regime, so in such short order, and so we we find ourselves in this situation and it's so incredibly I don't even want to say that it's shitty. It just shows how far we are from how things are supposed to be.
So our long national nightmare, and by long, I mean well over a year is over, and the TikTok sale is complete, and Larry Ellison's oracle will now be the controlling partner in it, which means I think TikTok is going to burd to the ground.
You're probably not going to get a lot of gaz.
At the contents.
My guessing you're gonna stop seeing the war in Gaza. My guess is you're going to start to see a lot of like why is IDF so great content?
There's a great joke that actress Odessa's zion his career has really ascended right now after her star turn on I Love New York, but that she's about to lose her entire career because no one's gonna be allowed to say the word zion anymore on TikTok. Yep, that may very well be true anyway. To be serious, for people who don't understand this, it is very very well known that Larry Ellison, who's Oracle, is very zealous and a lot of people have already seen signs that there's a
lot of censorship happening on the app. And Larry Ellison just loves mister Trump.
Yeah he does, And I mean Larry Ellison loves mister Trump, and mister Trump has done a lot for Larry Ellison, who even knows what they're going to do with all of this. This is where we are. Since there's no regulation for technology in this country at all. We have no idea what he's going to do to the algorithm. We have no idea what we see, why we see it, how we see it. It's just going to create a very not transparent world.
So, Molly, I have a feeling that what you asked for for Hanukkah was for these Epstein files to be released, and I regret to tell you they're not fully released, and they're very redacted.
They are not fully released. They are very redacted. You know, they're not even just read to me what we have because I think it's all just blank pages.
Right.
Everything I'm seeing being people saying on the internet is that it is basically what we got from the Kennedy files, but worse.
Representative Rocanna, Democrat of California, says he believes that the Department of Justice is trying to comply with the law requiring the release of the trope of documents, but he urged the Justice Department officials to explain why they are not able to release all of the documents and to explain every production fun stuff we have exciting news over at our YouTube channel. The second episode from Our Project
twenty twenty nine series is out now. It's a reimagining where we examined what went wrong with democrats approach to politics and how we can correct it and deliver changes to help people's lives. The first episode dove into the very sexy topic of campaign finance reform, and our second episode deals with an even sexier topic, antitrust and regulation. We look at how antitrust and regulation can protect American citizens and make America thrive in an era of rampant
corruption and predatory crony capitalism. We talk to the smartest names in the field like Lena Kahan, Elvero Bedoya, Elizabeth Wilkins, and Doha Mecki. Republicans were prepared for when they got the levers of power. We need Democrats to be too. So please head over to YouTube and search Molly John Fast Project twenty twenty nine or go to the Fast Politics YouTube channel and find it there and help us spread the word. Jed here as a contributor to the
Nation and the host of the Time of Monsters. Welcome to Fast Politics. Jeed here to be on the program American Democracy. We are killing it discuss.
Well, I don't even know where do we begin.
I don't either where do we begin.
This is a little bit of like a minor thing, but I think it's very indicative, which is the hall of fame that is in the White House with these clacks and Donald Trump, you know, like I guess it shows you that he is not actually as sleepy and as out of it as he might appear, because he apparently wrote many of these clacks. There's a go go in doing the White House whichever remind people is the people's house it is. It belongs to the citizens of
the United States. And there's a you know, you see photographs and paintings of the president, and for Joe Biden, they have a photograph from an auto pan. Yeah, and it's there's a long plaque, plaque and.
Hideous.
Do you want to read it like because you apply it's been verified that like Donald Trump wrote these things. I want to just say, like the Biden thing is very funny. I want to see what Donald Trump has to say about Millard Fillmore or of the nineteenth century presidents.
Does he weigh in on Millard Fillmore. Let's say, I.
I haven't seen that yet. But I mean read the Biden one.
READI the Biden one. Sleepy. Joe Biden was comma, by far kamma the worst president in American history period. We've heard him say that line. Yeah, by the way, even if you are the biggest partisan going and then there is a picture of an auto pen two thousand and twenty one to twenty twenty five, even if even if you were to say like you were such a partisan, I don't see any world in which Joe Biden is the worst president.
No, no, no, but I mean this is this is I mean, I think the plex everach thing is the view of his American history from the point of view of Donald Do you want to go on? But I mean, I think people will get the kind.
Of just event taking office as a result of the most corrupt election ever seen in the United States, by oversaw a series of unprecedented disasters that brought our nation to the brink of destruction. His policies caused the highest inflation ever recorded. That is demonstrably not true, leading the US dollar to lose more than twenty percent of its
value in four years. Also not true, his Green new scam, which never passed surrendered American energy dominance and by abolishing the southern border again at best, hyperbolic, at worst, a lie Biden led twenty one million people from all over the world. I like the world. I like the odd capitalisationac right pour into the United States comma, including from prisons, jails, and mental institutions and insane asylums period.
Quite at statement. Yeah, And the thing I want to like maybe emphasize is that this is like a government funded thing, Like this is like a public thing and a kind of institution which you know, like it's it's a bit closes off now, partially because of the construction, partially because of security concerns, but actually, you know, the White House, you know, it's the people, though it belongs to the American people, and you have like you know,
this devented uh trump lulatic Trump version of history, and I mean it goes to the whole like you know, remodeling of destruction really.
Of the East wing.
But he's really treating the White House, the you know, the Presidency as his own personal hobby, uh you know, like as if like he's a businessman and this is his private corporation, family health corporation, and he could do
what he wants. I mean, what's interesting is I actually think a lot of this stuff does kind of like resonate with people where there's kind of like, you know, like a dawning sense even about like you know, people are conservative and might devoted for Trump, like you know, wait, he's supposed to be the president of the United States.
You know, he's not supposed to be. Actually, I also something that's why the you know, the horrible post about Rob Reiner and his wife Michelle as he resonated with a lot of people, because I think there is a kind of sense in which, like you know, even much more so than ever, Trump is not behaving like like a public figure, like someone you know, who was elected
like to serve and serve like the broader public. And so I think that that is interesting, like the way in which I you know, it took a long time, it took you know, this should have been so many of us, was obvious even before he was president. But actually, like it's it's been interesting to see how this resonates.
I think, like in.
Part because he's a little bit unchecked, because he has a lot of enablers around him for the second term, but he is actually, you know, like he's got to the point where even people who support him, this stuff isn't being hidden from them. They can actually see it, and they actually draw the kind of logical conclusion which is like, you know, like I voted for this guy so he could like break down prices and that's what's happening,
you know. Yeah, and foreign wars, he's just like all this massive vanity project.
Speaking of ending foreign wars, this has been a bad week for ending foreign wars, partially because we seem like we're in a position to start a foreign war in the Caribbean Sea because and I'm quoting Chris Murphy here who said, not only are they not bringing in fentanyl, it's cocaine that's going to Europe.
Yes, yes, there's yeah, No, I mean the trumble versition, their whole claim. There's a little bit. There's a Washington Wall Street Journal article, which is one of the bad Wall Street Journal articles that seems like an obvious right wing scamp but saying that like there's a cocaine that's being sent to Europe to fun by g HOTI groups and then going to Europe. And I have to say, like, you know, like if you're America first, Like, why is.
That your problem?
Let's deal with that, you know, you know, like it doesn't evolve the un It's like alcohol. And also it's also nonsense.
I mean, like you know, it's nonsense, agreed, if you're America. First, why are we stopping cocaine in the Caribbean? Yeah?
Going to Europe? I mean it goes to a larger issue of like I mean, it is a war on drugs wrapped up, And the only thing I'll say about it on a policy term is, you know, the word on drugs was started under Richard Nixon, the creation of DA And one way to measure its success is the price of drugs and the price of cocaine and of like many other drugs, is what's lower now, Like it's the most successful anti inflation program the United States has ever carried out, is the war on drugs because like
you know, like in the early seventies, you have to be fairly wealthy to get cocaine.
You have to like, yeah, you know, right, baby, the drug.
Of the elite.
I believe you or your mom might have even written some novels about this.
But I might have written some novels about this.
Yeah, but now it's not the drug of the elite because it's actually like eighty ninety percent lower now than it was in nineteen seventy three. So in my mind, this kind of indicates that the war on drugs actually has not worked, and that to double down on it and to use American form fellasy. I mean, Azzie shows the fraudulence of all. This is not really about drugs. I don't think it's ever been about drugs. It's about
the assertion of American power and hedgemony. And the other thing is like nothing they're doing by their own accounts makes sense. Because I'm sure you have talked about this before. But you know, there's an interview or multiple interviews in Vanity Fair by Susie Wilds.
Yeah.
That yeah, and she she says, I mean, she said something very interesting about the book in the cribbon. She said that this is like actually designed to make Dureau cry uncle. And she says, you know, like people above my pay grade think it'll work, which is what you say when you think, like, actually, this is what does actually make any sense at all? You know, like Marco Ruby wants it because it does he does not make
any sense at all. That like blowing up these ships or even I think it's actually like the policy in Venezuela, Like I'm not quite positive, Like i'd really like a little and terrified if I thought, like, is it possible that Trump thinks that like a ground war in Venezuela
is a good idea. But you know, like this, this is actually like Venezuela is not like you know, Grenada, like it's it is like a nation with an actual air force, with an actual military that is aligned, you know, with Madero, with people who even if Maduro left, benefited greatly from the nationalization of oil and you know, would resent the stated policy the United States covered up Trump, which is who you know, the oil belongs to us, the oil of the United States and America is gonna
take it back, Like like I actually don't now, but I think that what Trump and has been sold on this is the idea like Madero is like it's a house of cards. You just scare them enough, you blow up a few votes, you send the armada down there, and he's gonna crumble. And I don't think he's gonna crumble. And the real danger is that like this will keep escalating and you know, you could have some sort of like accident or triggering event, a Gulf of Tolkien type event,
which actually does lead to a serious work. Because I don't think Trump wants an invasion of might not necessarily one invasion of Venzuela. But Marco Rubio, I don't know it, doesn't believe in this, but she wants to facilitate it, because that's.
Her, because she's a facilitator. It is such an interesting moment. And I also think that what is interesting about watching these guys is that Trump did run yes on ending foreign wars. I mean, I know, ending foreign wars and making things two things that he seems expressly uninterested in doing. Yeah that he's president.
Yeah no, And it's actually like, you know, to give it credit, it's actually causing like tensions within the MAGA coalition.
I mean, in the case of Venezuela, like like actually, you know, like the American public is overwhelmed, like I guess said, and including like Republicans, like nobody wants this, and but people also, people like Tucker Carlton are speaking out against it, you know, like not my favorite guy by any means, but like Trump is actually I mean, you know, you really do if you paid attention to right wing media. There's a lot of people who are saying, like,
wait a minute, this is what we wanted. You know, this is not doing we didn't actually like you know, wam the zonked out vanity president who's like you know, just wants to have these plaques and basically do a defolition of the White House to turn it into like a Trump product, while you know, like letting his like crazy underlings lead America into like more wars. This isn't
what we signed up for. And so as actually I think like politically, like as dire as things are, and this is like you know, the end of the air. But actually, like you know, you see a lot of signs of crack up, and I think that's good. I actually think that the sort of you know crack up on the right, you know, the fact that the you know, they need to keep bringing out Charlie Kirk, you know.
Yeah, I want to just talk about like this Maga cracking because I think that is really the under reporting story of the week, which is the House is a great example of watching MAGA cracking. So the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, she has completely lost control of the situation once again, multiple discharge petitions, including one from Leader Hakim Jeffries, who I like to be critical of, but he offers a clean extension of Obamacare premium tax cut for three years, puts it on the House as
a discharge petition. It's going to have Republican votes now, and in fact, Mike Johnson gets so agitated that what happens, he sends everyone home his favorite Yeah.
Yeah, no, no exactly, Yeah no. I mean, like I I you know, like we've had a lot of dysfunctional governments in the House, like over the last like twenty thirty years, usually Republican ones, I have to say, but I do think, like, you know, like Mike Johnson, I've never seen House speaker that has so little control of his caucus where things are you know, visibly falling apart. I mean, the epsteam thing was like maybe one of the early signs of it, but now you're seeing it everywhere.
And you know, people like Marjorie Taylor Green who's like in seat of leaving, but she's like sort of you know, like she's hopefully saying, like, you know, I don't think Mike Johnson's gonna be able to last and it's really hard to see their ability to lost, especially since I mean,
like the love of incompetence is really something special. Yeah yeah, and actually I mean, like you know, like some of it is again to talk about the sort of maga crackop this other U. I saw you tweeting a lot about it, and I'm sure you've discussed but like a lot of the gender lines as well, right, because you missed when yeah, the women, because like Jason is like you know, like you know that he has an ideology. It is that sort of you know, Southern Baptist evangelical,
like the man is ahead of the household. He and his wife were on a podcast he had this whole thing.
Yes, like they were on the podcast of I would love to talk about this for a minute because I love this so much. So Stephen Miller, who is I think, at best a fascist and worst Nazi.
Yeah, yeah, no, I think that's that's a spectrum. It's like Mussolini Hitler.
Yeah, he's got a Mussolini traits. He's got Hitler traits. That guy has a wife who overtweezes her eyebrows and has a podcast. Yes, and in our podcast of overtweet eyebrows. She has members of Maga world come on and humiliate themselves.
Yes, discuss that's right. And uh, Mike Johnson was on with his wife and they had this whole thing about how men can men's.
Brains, Yeah, waffles, waffles.
Men's brains are like waffles, and women's brains are like spaghetti. I know you got it wrong because you have a spaghetti brain, whereas my waffle brain can keep these categories in.
Yes, congratulations, waffle brain. Congratulations is all I can say. Enjoy that waffle brain.
And so the interesting thing is like there's a lot of Republican women, but they do have like, you know, like roughly thirty female members of Congress. And like the guy who believes that men have waffle brains and women have spaghetti brains, you know, like does not. I don't think there's a single elected Republican women that holds a
chair in the House. And so like this other Marjorie Taylor Green has said publicly, and it's some of our female colleagues have said, like off the record, but like, you know, like they're basically roadblocked at least, are not you know, like these are not glorious Stein of type women, right, they're not Erica Jean women, but they actually you know, like they're typical you know, Republican professional women who you don't want to be able to advance in their careers.
And you know, this guy who has like incredibly retrograde gender politics is like in charge, and so he's unnecessarily I think, like, oh, yes, just give people a few jobs. You just have to give them a sense that they can advance, right, But like he's so ideologically committed to his sexism and it's not just him, like it's it's
a wider thing on the right. Like you know, one of the big articles that had a huge kind of thing was in Compact by yeah this women Helen Andrews Uh, you know, basically how women are ruining the workplace and rad Ross do that? Did it write up in the Times? And this is like you know, this is the ideology of the larger right that like you know, which is not even you know, like it's not even the old like you know, we don't need affirmative action, but people
should rise on their merits. It's like no, no, like like men should men rule women? Drul uh, which isself is like you know, like you know, causing like real U divide. I mean, there's one reason why Taylor gree kind of wonderfully screwed though, Run run again.
One of the things I love about this situation is that you really do see that women have they have only so much tolerance for the kind of retrograde nineteen fifties sexism that is so profoundly shitty. And to watch Marjorie Taylor Green and to watch Nancy Mace, who seems like a complete nutter, and to watch these women just be like no. And I think it's important to remember we have all there are all these committees in the House, and only one is headed by a woman, and it
is Virginia Fox. And she was a holdover from a previous like he did not put a single woman in a leadership position.
Yeah, no, no, it's absolutely the case. I think there's one woman that he's sort of close to, McCain from I believe Michigan. But she himself said, like, you know, he said about her that if I wanted someone to make a turkey dinner, she'd be the one had yet, so this is this is like tons of people. I think that's also like a very underreported but like very
interesting Republican crackup. Yeah, I mean this. I think this is a party that is like having a lot of deep divisions, which I think is the one good news that we can kind of offer, Like, you know, like, I think it's going to be harder for them to implement any policy.
For sure, get here, please come back. Tom Steyer is the founder of Far Lawn Capital and a candidate for governor of the state of California. Welcome back. You've actually been here before to fast politics tom Steyer. Well, it's great to see it's running for governor of California. It's like mayor of New York. It's a hard job.
Well, it's a hard job at the best of times. And we're in a time where we're going to be. We are right now revenue challenged, and as a result of what Donald Trump and his cohort have done in Washington, d C. We're going to be more revenue challenge going forward. We're gonna have some hard decisions to make.
For sure.
Tell me why you're going to be more revenue challenged to a state.
I think everybody's going to be because I think the Republicans and the Trump administration passed a bill that basically did two things. It lowered tax rates for rich people and big corporations, and it paid for it by taking away healthcare benefits from working Americans and food benefits. So that hits everybody in America, and specifically, in our case, it hits us California.
It's pretty darn hard.
You are a rich person, and I say this as someone who is not so rich, unfortunately for me, but comes from a similar background. How do you make sense of what the Trump administration is trying to do? You know, I have a pretty clear sense of why I think it's morally wrong and also financially stupid to lower taxes on the wealthiest. But I'm curious, as someone who benefits, probably as do I, from these tax cuts, why they're so wrong.
Moley, let me take a step back and say why I want to be governor of California, because it directly addresses your question. The problem in California right now is that the people who live in California, the working people who've built the state, who make the state run, cannot afford to live in California. Everything is too expensive to fit into their budget, starting with rent, the ability to buy a house. We're talking about electricity costs, insurance costs,
and specifically healthcare costs. So when I look at where we are, the whole reason I'm running, I see California as having a chance to create an amazing future where we succeed together as a state, with the understanding that the success of the state in terms of creating new businesses, creating new industries, reinventing the world in many ways, is
going to be shared for everyone in the state. That success having the top few people in the state make inordinate amounts of money as a result of creating new ideas and new businesses is not success. Success is when the whole state moves forward together. The people who are making the state run, who are working their hearts out, who are giving to the state through their jobs and
their lives, participate in that. So, when you say to me, how do I feel about the idea of increasing the division in our country, of advantaging the people who least need advantages at the expense of people whose needs are not being met, whose dreams are being dashed, do I think that that is okay? That's the opposite of what I'm trying to do, the opposite of what I believe
to be okay. And as you said, look, there's the idea of what are we trying to do, what is the right thing to do, what does our society stand for, what should our society stand for? What is the vision we have of success? And then there's just a question of is there any intellectual idea that this works or
is it just plain stupid? And what we're seeing, and we're seeing it very clearly in terms of employment numbers that came out, how many people are working in America, in terms of cost of living numbers that have been coming out, is that the tariffs have failed, that the Big Beautiful Bill has failed. We are seeing unemployment going up very consistently for six months. Those numbers are new,
but they're just out. And we're seeing a failed administration whose policies are doing the opposite of the grandiose promises that Donald Trump made in the campaign, and we're not seeing there's no response from the administration. They don't have any idea of how to cure the problems that they've caused that are continuing and we can see are going to accelerate.
Correct.
So let's talk about California is the fourth largest economy in the world probably too big, even bigger than many many countries. It strikes me that you guys have a unique set of problems, from the economy being so big, to the climate change stuff, to the fires. I wonder if you could just talk to us about what you think the sort of biggest problems facing California right now are.
But the biggest problem, there's no question about of mine.
The biggest issue in California is that the majority of Californias can't afford to live here. You're saying we have unique problems, we have unique strengths. I'm incredibly optimistic about what can happen in California because of the dynamism and the creativity and the risk taking of the people in California. We are a very data driven, incredibly hard working group of people. And you can see that because in fact, if you lump us all together, on average, we are
crushing it. Half the growth in the United States is coming from California. This is a state which, if you put us all together, looks like we're doing fantastically well.
And we are.
But then when you separated, you can see that most people are living paycheck to paycheck, that most people are struggling to make rent that most people don't think they'll be able to afford a house. So the issue here is much more about how do we succeed together. How does this society, which is the state, which is incredibly dynamic and incredibly creative, how do we make it so that everybody moves up together so that it's not people
creaming the top. So we have a system, we meet the needs that people have, We give them the opportunity to live their their dream and as a result, we have a picture of success that is not just good on average, but is actually good from top to bottom of society. That's success. That's what we're going for. So when you say we have problems, I can talk to you at length about insurance. I can talk to you about how to avoid catastrophic fire. There are a million
things we need to do. There are new ideas and new technologies. We're going to have to do things in a new way. That's why I'm running for governor is because there are answers to this. It's going to take some new approaches. We're going to have to go after some special interests who have loopholes in the tax law that we're going to have to close. We're going to have to meet the needs and bring down costs and build again, actually succeed in the three dimensional world, not just the cyber world.
Right, We're going to have to do all those things. Those are all possible.
This whole idea, that's what we're going to have to show is you know what, Let's get back to the idea of knowing we can accomplish things. Let's get back of getting things done, succeeding and show the world this is what success looks like when a society moves up together and actually does not just the parts of it that we're crushing it right now, but we make sure that everybody gets taken care of along the way.
So I think of you as a climate guy, which is I think a very good thing for California, because California feels uniquely situated to benefit from the kind of clean energy that Trump has shut the door on. So let's talk about what you could do as governor when it comes to clean energy in California.
So let me say this, Molly, when I talk about and I am specifically talking about dropping electricity rates by at least a quarter, because that's an affordability issue for families. It's a competitive issue for companies that work are located in California and compete with companies outside the state or outside the country. When I'm talking about affordability of electricity,
I'm talking about climate. When I'm talking about dropping asthma rates for kids in the inner cities, I'm talking about climate. And when I'm talking about participating and leading the energy transition that is going on very rapidly worldwide and is a gigantic business opportunity, I'm talking about climate. And so I don't know if you know this, and let me say that it's a great Christmas gift, so you may
want to buy several hundred copies. I wrote a book, yes two years ago, Cheaper, Faster, Better, And what I'm saying is this, when we talk about the energy transition, about giving people what they want right now. Better products, seaper, faster better. We're also cheaper faster better. I don't put in the word cleaner, but at this point, cheaper energy is renewable, faster cars are electric, better solutions are technologically devised, but they're to reduce.
Energy consumption overall.
So when I'm talking about giving people a better deal and selling them things that they want or selling them the same thing at a much cheaper price. I'm talking about an energy transition that's a huge business opportunity, that's a huge job creation engine, and which this administration, which Donald Trump has decided our answer is the twentieth century.
We're going to go.
Back and do caddies with big tail fins that get three miles to the gallon.
It's like, the answer is, no one wants those, dude.
Right, Oh, it's wild. I mean, just the way we're closing the door on green energy and then we see energies up ten eleven percent this year and we're just shutting it down. I mean, I don't know what the thinking there is.
Okay, I think the thinking there, Molly, and I don't want to be too simplistic, is let's hurt our enemies.
Yeah, let's go own the libs.
Let's attack people we don't like, regardless of the impact on Americans, regardless of the impact on American prosperity and growth. And when he says, let's you know, drill, baby, drill. Just to be clear, I don't know if you've been following the cost, the price per barrel in West Texas of a barrel of oil, but this morning was fifty six bucks a barrel, and the lifting cost for a marginal barrel of oil in West Texas is over sixty dollars.
So last I checked, putting the nation's economy based on an oil business that has negative gross margins is not what you call smart.
No, I want to ask you a question because this oil thing gets me thinking about the many ways in which Republican administrations have incentivized oil companies and bad businesnesses, tobacco companies, the way in which they've put their thumb on the scale for companies that are profoundly morally and
environmentally corrupt. And I'm wondering if you have any thoughts about the idea of using tax incentives when it comes to local news, when it comes to reporting, when it comes to my personal situation.
So I don't know if you know this, Molly, but when my mom left Minnesota and came to New York City, she worked for NBC and she ended up producing part of the NBC evening news in the early days of TV. She had a sense, and I grew up with a sense with the news as not something that was built around profits. But the news that was built abound responsibility. It was almost the calling to deliver the truth to the American people so they could be good citizens and make good decisions.
That is how my mother saw the news.
That was the job of a newsperson was to deliver the truth to American citizens. And so when we talk about do I think that that's a critical function?
Absolutely critical?
Is it going to get delivered over different media right now?
Yes it is.
And understanding that and enabling that, trying to give Americans an ability to discern truth to make sure that they're not being misled, seems to me to be a critical function of government.
Let's talk about California. Like, one of the things that I know is my brothers in the movie business. They are not filming in California right now. Everybody is filming in Toronto. I was with a bunch of actors. They were talking about how much they hate Toronto. It's such a pain to get there because it's gold and it sucks. The reason they're not filming in California is because the tax incentives are much better in Toronto. That seems like really a lot of money that is going to lie.
Look Traditionally, the creative industries around film and around TV have been located in LA and there are a lot of people are trying to poach those away. And I think there's a couple of different things. The way I understand it, Molly around this part is about overregulation, so that the demands, the legal demands to film in LA are extremely and extremely expensive. So it's not just that Toronto's giving subsidies, they're also making it easy to do it.
So the first thing I can say is, let's stop making mistakes. Let's stop making the perfect. The perfect the enemy of the good. And that's something that's been true where in an attempt to do everything perfectly, we've stopped things from happening at all. When I say we're we're going to build a million houses, part of it is it's been impossible to get permits to build houses. It's been impossible to meet zoning requirements to build houses. So as a result, we have way too few houses, which
means rents too high. That is a huge affordability issue concommonly in the movie industry. Taking away the expensive blocks that are unnecessary and studying it. I'm not someone is against regulation, but I'm someone who's strongly against overregulation. And
then the second question is about subsidization. Look, this is an industry which is incredibly important to Los Angeles for a number of reasons, and making sure that there are no roadblocks to them competing successfully there is something that's got to be incredibly important. But to me, the first question is what are the things we're doing that are free to change that make it better? And that's the
first thing I'd look at. And the second thing I'd look at is, Okay, from a competitive standpoint, how is it possible we're not winning that? Because you don't have to fly to Los Angeles if you live in Los Angeles.
Right.
I'd love to talk about the fire step for another minute, because we have a sort of problem with Alta Dina, all the places that have been just destroyed by fire and sort of the questions of rebuilding the environment, what the groundwater is like, what the soils like? Give me a thought on what you think. I mean, obviously it's an unsolvable question, but where you are.
With that, it's not an unsolvable question. So let's take a step back and talk about fire in California. Please, So obviously California's ecosystem is a fire ecosystem. There have been fires burning in the force of California for tens of thousands of years. We're not trying to end fire in California. We're trying to end catastrophic fire in California, the kind of fire that is uncontrollable and threatened people's houses.
And so how do we actually talk about that. There's a whole bunch of things we can do to end catastrophic fires. Part of it is by good forest management, which we didn't do for a really long time, which includes controlled burns, making sure that we do, in fact have the kinds of fires that reduce the possibility of
catastrophic fire. Secondly, we have an ability to monitor those forests with drones on a real time basis, so that in fact we can be much more aware of when something happens, what the threat is and are able to respond much quicker with much better technology. So that's the
second point. The third point is this ability to quote unquote arden houses, to actually put in sprinklers and a series of other not particularly expensive things has a much better than ninety percent chance of saving a house in.
A catastrophic fire.
And when you put those three things together and you say this is obviously unsolvable, it absolutely is not unsolvable. It is absolutely solvable. The issue is going to be to make sure those things happen and to make sure that the insurance companies take into account the hardening that families do so that their houses are basically fire resistant, fireproof.
Because look, we're.
The biggest housing market in the country, were the most valuable housing market in the country. They have to want to come here and write homeowners insurance. They just don't want to write homeowners insurance at a loss. And so we've got to do the job of bringing down any likelihood of catastrophic fire and insist that insurance companies take that into account, because we're talking a completely different risk
reward for them. We want to insist that they do the work because when you see people do that kind of proactive work in insurance, you can drop those insurance costs by up to ninety percent. And that's what we need to do. We need to manage this system as opposed to throw up our hands and let the insurance companies throw up their hands.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Tom Stier, Paulick, what a treat to talk to you.
No normal, Jesse Cannon, Mike, we keep seeing Maga splintering.
It really is the end of the year story. And at the Turning Point USA conference this weekend, everybody was just expecting it to be singing we Are Charlie Kirk all weekend, but it turned out the girls are fighting. And by the girls, I mean Bed Shapiro and Tucker Carlson.
I mean they're really fighting over MAGA. And I don't like anyone involved in any of this at all. So here we are, We're in Phoenix. They are all together at Turning Point. They're basically fighting to be whoever is the heir apparent to Maga. And by the way, I mean I don't like Ben Shapiro, but he calls out commentators blasting Candace Owens. Tucker calls and Meghan Kelly and Steve Bannon as frauds and grifters as opposed to Ben Shapiro.
Mike, can you remind me who got Candace Woan's her platform again?
I seem to remember Candice Owens being discovered by Ben Shapiro.
Mm hmmm, mm hmm and Turning Point USA before that.
Yes, and in fact, You liked her when her crazy rantings were aligned with you, but now that she's doing anti semitism or not, you don't like it so much. But you know it was always this was always going to get to anti semitism.
Yep, and you know where it's gotten her. She was the number one podcast all week this.
Week, right, No, no, I mean they created a monster and now she's going to destroy.
Us all yep, they created a monster and they don't see that. They're going to keep doing these things because this is what they're discs testing, rhetoric, breeds.
And I don't think anyone should be surprised. This is where we are and they did this, and now Ben Shapiro is upset because when you go down this rabbit hole, this is what happens. None of us should be surprised. 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.