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 Democrats have staged a historic upset in Omaha, Nebraska. We have such a great show for you today. Pawkin News is John Heilman cuts through the noise with a discussion about what happened in the twenty twenty four campaign and whether or not Biden's age was obfiscated. Then we'll talk to Wisconsin Senator Tammy Baldwin about how
we push back on Trump's many, many oversteps. But first the news.
Somali the Katari plane, the scandal is not landing at all. Trump blew his lid today in discussions about it, and he did a whole lot of talking about the Middle East today. What are you seeing here?
Look, I think this plain thing is really a good example of corruption that first of all, it cuts through the noise. Right, You've seen Trump do other corrupt things like the Trump coin and all of the sort of family real estate dealings, but this is something different. It's a very clear bit of corruption, right, Like we've never had a president and try to take a plane from a Middle Eastern royal family before, Like, it's just so beyond the pale of normal stuff that I do think
it's a standout. And if Trump were smart, he would just drop it. He would just say, who cares a wait, I'll get the plane from Boeing. I'm the president. Data da da. But because Trump is Trump, and maybe this is how he got here a little bit. Because Trump is Trump, he cannot thread the needle on this. He cannot let it go. So he just thinks that if he keeps going with this, he's going to get this plane.
But it is There's nobody in the world, I mean, even the biggest Trumper, even the bots on Twitter who are saying, well, the Americans got the Statue of Liberty, even those people know for sure understand that this is not fucking right, that this is completely crazy. So we're three days into this story or four days into the story. So this is a bad story for Trump, right, the fact that it keeps going and every time he he says, well, they are just being nice. It's smart to take the plane.
And this is my really my theory in life, when you're defending yourself, you're losing. When you're trying to make the case that a Middle Eastern royal family should give you a plane. Okay, and everyone in the world, including Republican senators, are bursting into laughter. You're losing, so just give up on the fucking plane. You're not getting the plane. Every day you do it, you look like an asshole. Like give it up, man, You're welcome.
So today there is a disastrous hearing with Christino, who many people have disastrous for her. For her, she looks pretty pretty bad in this. Many people have talked about how she's just the spokesperson for all these horrible, horrible things I is doing. And well, I'm gonna let the tape speak for itself.
Thank you, Madame Secretary. You have an important job. I think you have one of the most important jobs in the cabinet. Thank you for doing it. I want you to have credibility and be taken seriously as you do the job. And so I want to put to rest this question about mister Garcia. In this photo that the President posted on April twenty one, Madame Secretary, you agree that the letters MS and the number thirteen in Times Roman numeral font that they are doctored on this photo.
Right, Congressman Brego Garcia. No, no, I'm just it wasn't based off of tattoos.
It was off an.
Entire and accept I'll accept that for the purpose of this question.
You agree though, that this is doctor, Is that right?
The same protocols that are scary.
I want you to have credibility, and I want you to be taken seriously. Is this doctored or is it not?
I'm taken quite seriously.
Is it doctored or not? Doctor?
The importance that the President has given me.
To I understand is it doctored or nothing.
That's important to remember is that every single time a case is.
Built, we stopped at about minute one oh five. That goes on for two and a half minutes.
Of course, by the way, I love that's Eric swall while questioning her and I want you to have credibility. First of all, I'm not convinced Eric wants her to have credibility. But that is neither here nor there. No, I mean, that was just an incredible bit. Christy Nome is one of the inheritors of trump Ism, so she's what's in the pike when Trump's term is over. So that's something, well.
Let's put some more color on it. I think Congressman Robert Garcia did some amazing work here.
Thank you.
Would you commit to just letting his mother know, as a mother to mother, if Andrey is alive. He was given an asylum appointment by the United States government. We gave him an appointment. We said Andrey come to the border at this time to claim asylum. He was taken to a foreign prison in El Salvador. His mother just wants to know if he is alive. Can we check and do a wellness.
Our asylum applications are different than the granting of asylum, and I don't know the specifics of this individual case. This individual is an El Salvador and the appeal would be best made to the President and to the government of El Salvador on this. We've made that under my jurisdiction at METEM.
Secretary, you have said that you that in Ol Salvador is one of the tools in the toolbox that you have. You have said that and has been quoted as saying that you and the President have the ability to check if Andrew is alive and if not being harmed. Would you commit at least into looking and asking of Salvador if he is alive.
This is a question that's best ask to the resident and the government of l Salvador.
And I think it's I think you know very well that you could ask that question, but you're choosing to do medical secretary is disregard this young man's life, this young man's family who was given an appointment by the United States. I think it is shameful that you won't even request to see if this young man is alive. His family has no idea, has no access to lawyers. I would hope that we would have that humanity, the humanity to just check if this young man is okay.
With that, I yep back, it's shameful.
The problem that these people have is that you can't ever go against Trump. So if something is photoshopped and everyone knows it's photoshopped, but Trump says it's not photoshopped, you have to say it's not photoshopped, so right, I mean,
that's what it is. You can't she can't be like just like the people in the hearings where they would say, you know, they'd ask questions like, well, will you do what the president tells you or will you follow the law, And then they say, I can't deal with theoreticals, because what they mean to say is we're going to do what the president tells us to and we don't give a shit about the law. So that's where we are here.
That's the way in which these people are painted themselves into corners they cannot get out of.
Sob The New York Times has this blockbuster report that Stephen Miller is running the DOJ and Pam Bondy is just a figurehead that she is like an actor. And when I think of headlines, I don't want to see. That's very high up in the echelon of ones I would not like to see.
Okay, So today I've had this conversation with six different people, like what is scarier Trump at the rains or Trump slightly diminished and Stephen Miller at the rains? And yes, there is a lot of reasons to fear a Stephen Miller presidency. But just like one Marco Rubio, the guy has fifty seven jobs. Okay, Stephen Miller is running the administration, He's running this, he's running that he's running the DOJ. For sure, I'm sure that's true. That Pam Bondi is
just to pick your head. I'm sure you know if that's the reporting, I think that's probably right. But I do think that this guy can't do It's just one person, right, unless they have really sophisticated AI. There's only so much damage one person could do. Now, Canny do a lot of damage, yes, but it is only one person.
Yeah, it's just one person with really, really really bad morals.
Yeah.
Yeah, well no, I me and I think we can all agree that this is not the person that any of us want in charge. But that said, it is only one person. John Heilman is an NBC National News correspondent as well as a Puck News partner. Welcome, Welcome, John.
Hi, how are you?
Oh, I'm just living the dream.
You don't seem like super energetic this morning, Molly, What's what's going on?
I'm energetic. I went to a party last night. I'm energetic.
Or was the party?
Was it the high Line?
It was good.
American life grinds on despite the fact that our political system is in what is what do you think the what would you say this sort of word is for this moment in American politics?
Surreal? I mean just sort of terror, incognita if you want to be like Latin, this has been true in both Trump terms. This movie, it's not different, but it's just like there's just so many things for which there is no precedent, and I'm like tediously. It's not like I'm some like, you know, some great historical scholar or something, but just like I'm always like looking for some precedent,
like how do how do we evaluate this thing? Well, this has happened before, and this is how it kind of came out, so there's a guide to this, or this has happened a lot before, or well it has happened very often, but there have been times when this has happened or something like this has happened. But you know,
that's just constantly. Every day, there's like five things that there's no metric or artstick where you're kind of like, well, here's how we could we can get some general sense a how this might unfold on the basis of this thing that happen in nineteen sixty four. It's like just like I don't know, I mean, what do you think is gonna happen? John fucking Idea?
Well there is, But it does feel like with trump Ism, there's always this sort of feeling that maybe someone will do something right like the Republicans, there's sort of a wish and I mean that ship is I.
Don't have that. I don't have that feeling at all. I gave up on that feeling a long time ago.
So we talk about the guard rails. We talk about sort of I mean, their courts continue to say, hey, you can't do that.
Yeah, the courts. The courts stopped the court the courts routinely regularly. Thank God for that branch of government, because the other one's totally suphine, meaning the legislative branch. Yeah. Uh so the courts continue to operate. That is a thing for which there is precedent. The courts, you know, I continue to act like the courts mostly, and they keep Trump from doing various things that he wants to do. And I guess I here's here's the thing that's worth
thinking about. I guess in this text. And maybe you have an insight on this that I because I've just started thinking about it. It's like, if you look at what what has happened just in the last few days around the big beautiful bill. You know, there's these things that Trump, you know, campaigned on, right, you know, no taxes on tips, no taxes on overtime.
Uh.
You know, he recently, as you know, last week, came out and said, having kind of been towing and throwing about it for a while, finally came out and said to Mike Johnson, let's raise taxes on the rich. I mean, he set that he set the limit really high at two and a half million, but he said he'd be open to, he'd be He wants that, not just the he'd be able to. He wants that. That's not going to happen. And nor nor are a lot of things that he campaigned on, you know, pretty vocally, like no
tax on tips and you know, his unfeasible. It's not like but it's not like the it's not like the Republicans are standing up and saying, you know, getting in his face about it. They're just not going to do that. You know, it's the thing he wanted. They're not going to do it. He's you know, he capitulated on on
the US Attorney for uh, the District of Columbia. You know, Tom Tillis said, no, I'm not gonna this, this is fucking nuts, and Trump was like, all right, no. He put in Jeanine Perrot, you know, how long that will last, who knows. But it's like there's things where he's kind of giving up on things, you know, rather than stomping his feet and saying I must have this, I must have that, there's more things that he's willing to kind of like when somebody says no to him, he kind
of goes all right. The interesting question is like what's going to happen with the with the plane and just all of the obvious corruption, right, because there's more Republicans speaking out about that than I've heard speak out about almost anything.
Cynthia Cynthia Loomis burst into hysterical laughter when she heard about it.
Yes, I mean, you know, Laura Lumer is attacking him, Ted Cruz, Ben Shapiro, all these people are now taking are Like I said, what this is like? You can't take this plane from from Cutter. That's crazy. And you know what happens now? And here's the interesting the thing that ties the two things together for me. Do you think that Trump being willing to kind of give up on shit he doesn't really care about that much, like, you know, does he really care about like raising text
on the wealthy? You know, if Trump were really running for a third term, like really thought he was gonna that he had a political future. I think he might not take the plane from Cutter, you know, because the corruption of his really so naked, that is, it's a political If Trump were really running for a third term, he might want to like really press for raising taxes on the rich, because that's like a good band and
esque like populist economics. I wonder whether we're starting at like and both that his behavior and the fact that Republicans are starting to either just kind of ignore him on certain things or openly criticize him, like on the plane, whether what's sinking in with people. And I say this as someone who's thought for a long time Trump was going to stay in the White House until he was dead or taken out either either leave the ovalops with a toe tag or an handcuffs. Those are the only
ways you're going to get him out. I wonder whether it's starting to have like on both sides, people are kind of going, yeah, you know what, two term, Like I'm gonna we got another four years to get to do whatever the fuck I want. But I'm not gonna try to press it here and try to stick around for a third I wonder I'm right.
I mean, it is the real open question, right is how much energy does he have for the authoritarianism he is very delighted and curious by.
And that's the question, and whether he and whether he thinks, yes, that's certainly right. And I don't mean to suggest at all that the authoritarian threat is receded, but just that on certain things he just seems more exhausted, you know, than than he has in the path. He just sort of seems kind of like, you know, the answers to some of these questions, you know, than these interviews he's
done recently. He has just seemed so flaccid to me, like he's kind of like Steve Miller, still out there talking about repeal it, taking back, about getting rid of Habeas corpus and that's super dangerous. And but I just there are times when you look at Trump and you kind of go, he looks like he's just like a little like he's a little like kind of had it, you know, He's Okay. I'm just like, I just don't
have that much energy anymore. Let's just get on, like money, give me the money, let me build it, let me build the giant hotel and cutter and let my family get really rich. You can't prosecute me because I got immunity. It's just like, you know, let me give me, give me as much shit as I can get a hold of in the next four years, and I'll like go off, thank you.
And and my man is in his late seventies. I mean, this is not a young guy.
Yes, and a lot of mileage on those tires too, moy. I mean, you know, if you if you get to be that age, I don't care what kind of genetics you have, you get to be that age and you've only eaten like Big Max and not done any exercise other than what he would pass us for him playing around the golf, right, you know that body is not cannot be like in the I don't care what doctor says. That body cannot be in the best shape well.
And also he doesn't sleep. I mean, the guy looks a very frenetic, high stress life. So there's a book that's coming out that says that basically there was a cover up about Biden's age. I have yet to see anything that threads a needle for cover up. It just seems like that, you know, if I could you know, it all seems like people were you know, the things people do when other people are in power or they
want them to stay in power. It doesn't seem in my mind like there's if only Democrats were organized enough for a cover up, is my hot take.
But I'm curious.
You're talking about Tapa Thompson.
The Taper Thompson book.
Yeah, so I've read it. I haven't. I haven't. I'm going to interview those guys on my podcast and as I'm sure you are, and others or are they're going to publicize the book like crazy, I'm eager to read it. Those are two serious people with who are good reports and or well sourced. And Alex Thompson was was, you know, commendably resistant to the aggressive White House pushback on biden age and health stories.
You know, over the everybody like, didn't you read a ton of stories about how Biden was old and doddering?
And I think that you didn't know? Now, I mean, yes, you what you read was a lot of people. First of all, you've heard a lot of people on the right saying that all the time, right, I don't think that you would say that in that on MSNBC CNN and otherwise that there was a lot of like aggressive
coverage like that kind of made that point. I spent you know, we've talked about this before, I'm sure on this podcast, but you know I spent when I would say on television not like doing investigative trying to investigate this, but just would say there is a consistent through line starting in October of twenty twenty one through whatever point you were talking that the American public things Joe Biden's too old for run for a second time. I would get it, but I would say that and then get
there and get brutalized. And there were not a lot of people brutalized in social media and by Democrats, and you would get you wouldn't get a chorus of people who are like, yes, this is a giant problem for Joe Biden politically, and and why isn't the Democratic Party running a prime? Why isn't there a real primary? Why is no one taking them on that? That was not
something that you heard of. There was not something that was like uh, that was front of the center and the coverage going forward and so but your point is about cover up. So I don't know what the book alleges. So it's it's I don't want to like knock down a straw many right, you know, My sense of it is that it's a much more interesting, complicated thing. It is.
There is no doubt that the White House did what every White House always does for any income and president, which is to try to push reporters away from their political vulnerabilities and towards their political strengths.
Right, And it would be malpractice to not that's what they did.
So that's what they did. I think there were a lot of reporters who the Biden press shop, and and you know, was there openness about you know, when you started to hear things like I'll give you an example in like the fall of twenty twenty three, actually more like the winter of twenty twenty four. Was when people at who were donors started saying to me they thought it was that Biden looked really bad even in small groups.
And what was it was even for like a ten minute off the record thing with big donors was reading off a teleprompter. Yeah, I didn't see that that was not reported widely? Now was that because those were closed fundraisers? The White House obviously didn't want people to know that that's what any White House would have done to try to protect their boss on an issue of political vulnerability.
Reporters didn't seem to really super aggressively pursue it. The questions around why the Democratic Party, which is a political party last I checked, and as a political party, should be interested primarily in two things. One it's preferred policies, programs, values, ideology, whatever, but prior to that, having to win elections so that
you could institute your policies, priorities, values, and ideology. Why the Democratic Party all these congressman, senators, donors who saw Biden with some frequency in various settings and now have come out and said that they had private concerns. Why those people didn't speak up and say, hey, if we're a serious political party, we should consider you know, someone should come forward and challenge the president, like, why, you know what we have concerns about this? Why did that
raise the alarm earlier? I think that's a really good question. But I think that speaks more to the way that the system works to you know, it is the case that challenging a sitting president is really hard for a lot of reasons. It's hard because it's hard to raise the money to challenge that person. It's hard because if you challenge that person and don't win, your future is fucked in the party, And there's all this institutional stuff
that basically protects incumbents. And I think that there were a lot of Democrats who were in denial about his situation. There were a lot of Democrats who didn't want to really know the details, the kind of thought. He looked tired, but then he would give a good state of the Union. They'd be like, Okay, cool, we can get through. Trump
is fucking crazy. He's fulfilling also, And there were a lot of Democrats out there who might have challenged Biden who looked at it and said, you know the way I asked a juggernaut, they have a lot of money,
there's gonna there's really hard to beat an incumbent. Do I want to mortgage my future or risk my future as a presidential candidate in twenty twenty eight, twenty thirty two, twenty thirty six to taking on a sitting president where if I don't win, everyone in the institutional Democratic Party's
going to hate me forever. I think like there's much more like was it much more that the story here isn't so much a giant cover up in the way we think of a cover up, as a series of institutional things that led a lot of people to forget what the point of being the Democratic Party was, which is or any party is, which is You've got to win, you know, and it's as not you shouldn't mortgage your values or your preferred policies. Shouldn't you know, you shouldn't
do anything to win. That's not win at all cost, that's not stop believing. But you have to win. If you don't win, you this is what happens. You get Donald Trump for the next four years. So you know, you have to first things first, consistent with your priorities, consistent with your values, consistent with your ethics. You have to do anything you can, everything you can to win. And that the Democratic Party was not operating on that principle when it looked just as Joe Biden's poll numbers
forget about what people saw behind the scenes. If you just looked at his poll numbers, you would have said, we have a problem. Yeah, you know, for like two years you would have said we have a problem. And you know there were again we go on forever here about this, But you have some countervailing things. Biden was able to look up after the midterms and say, hey, y'all said that we were going to get killed the midterms. We didn't get killed in the midterms. Y'all think I
can't give a decent speech. I did okay at the State of the Union. He had things to point to. But again, two and a half years of polling, and what you could see, which was that without saying the guy had Alzheimer's or had dementia or had just think I was old, and he looked his age. He looked his age. And if you look, if you looked at that guy and say, looked his age, he's not his best. He's lost a lot of miles per hour of his fastball.
We probably, if we really think democracy is on the line, we probably should consider some other alternatives, because this is not who you put forward in an existential election.
But it is interesting now. So Biden was the oldest person ever to be president. Now Donald Trump is the oldest person to ever be president. And this sort of dovetails back to what we were talking about before, which is that as someone who has dealt and just wrote a book about aging parents and my experience with my aging parents and et cetera, et cetera. Getting old is not a conspiracy theory. It's what happens to all of them.
Yes, And anybody who's ever dealt with anybody in their eighties, yeah, knows that. It is not agism. Nor is it disrespectful to say people in their eighties are not who you want driving a Formula one car, you know, flying your airplane or being president of the United States. It's not They are diminished in various ways. Do they have wisdom that we don't have? Maybe sometimes yes, if they're wise, like they have certain like some of them do, not
all of them. I'm like, I'm not ready to say everyone who's eighty is wiser than me, but I'm saying some are. Some are, but they don't have the reflexes of a of a forty year old, and they don't have the energy or the stamina, and they don't have the sharpness or they don't have to recall, they have a lot of things that are diminished by that age.
And so you have to ask that question. It was, you know, to say someone is it's not like you know, you would say you know he's getting out of yours people. You know, you're saying that that people in their agies are worthless. I'm no, I'm not saying they're worthless. I'm just saying they probably are not the best person to have the hardest job in the world.
I mean.
The one thing I would say, and I'm not trying to be argumentative here, is I do think that Nancy Pelosi, as I hold of a yellow crayon, God help me, that Nancy Pelosi is pretty sharp.
Yes, I'm not saying there aren't exceptions to the rules.
Right, but there are exceptions to the rule.
Is there are there exceptions to the rule. There are exceptions to every rule. I'm just trying to say as a general thing. You know, I am very much in the John Stewart camp, which was when he first came back, and was like, both of these guys are too old
to be president. In three hundred fift I heard this all over the country, which was people would come up to me and go, whether they were Democrats or Republicans, would be like, really, two octagenarian dudes, for both of whom when you watch them, one of whom seems bonkers. That's right, And the other of whom seems like pretty as I watch him shuffle across the south lawn, Yeah, is this really the best we can do? That was what the question that people we give and I and
I was always like, that's a totally reasonable question. That's like and again, it's not a dis to Joe Biden or his years of service or the various things that have made him wise, but like you know.
At this point, it's just a truism. Yes, about twenty twenty four.
And and people who would make this point most most appointedly to me, people in their eighties who would say, I am not what I was, what I once was, I wouldn't want this job, and proas like, what are we talking about here? Was it like old? Was it like elderly? People were like you are rallying around Joe Biden constantly? They were kind of going, they we should look at someone younger.
Yeah, no, it's true. And and I think a really good point, John. I hope you will come back.
I'll always come back. Yeah, always come back back. And if I didn't tell you this story before, please I'll tell you it now. It's my last is exactly are the point were we're just on I've told one hundred times, but I'll tell it now because it was. It was literally the funniest thing that happened in the whole of the twenty twenty four election cycle. To me that Saturday night.
Anything funny happened to you during that anyway, go on yes.
Saturday night after the Republican Convention. You'll recall this weird span of time where Trump assassination, attempt a convention in Milwaukee, and then other things that happened immediately there after. So the Saturday night after the Republican Convention ended on a Thursday Saturday night, Dave Chappelle and John Stewart did a comedy set at the kind of like a freends and family show at the Apollo Theater at Harlem, and John told this story in his set. He said to the crowd,
you know, I just came back. I've been back on six months. I've been getting a lot of crap from Democrats because I came out at the very beginning it said that both of these guys are told to be president.
And you know, it's been really hard for me because how many people in the crowd have had someone in their eighties who they've had to do something hard in their family, you know, an uncle, a grandfather or a grandmother, a mother, a father, or whatever, where they've had to do something like take away their driver's license to their car keys. Everyone's hand went up in the room and Stuart said, you know, yeah, what happened with me with
my nana. My nana was in her nineties and we had to take away a driver's license and it was the hardest thing we'd ever done. It with the last shred of her independence. She just like, look, was clinging to this one thing. She was kind of like, don't take my driver's license. That's basically like putting me in the grave. But my family rallied, We did the hard thing, We had the hard conversations, and we finally got her
to give up her driver's license. It was really painful, but it was the right thing to do, but it was really painful, and you know, and then he said, now, just imagine we were trying to do that with twenty million people going. Let the bitch drive, Like that's how it s felt with me and Joe Biden. Let the bitch drive. That made me laugh and will make me laugh forever.
Yeah, Let the bitch drive. Thank you, thank.
You, bye, mollie Ie.
Tammy Baldwin is the junior Senator from Wisconson. Welcome to Fast Politics, Tammy Paldwin. It's great to be There's a big beautiful bill. Is it called one big beautiful bill? Is that what it's called?
You know, if you're a billionaire, you might think so, But this is good for the wealthy and bad for you.
And that's kind of what we're dealing with, right.
I would love you to explain to us where it is, where it's going, and a little bit about sort of how it's being put together right now.
Absolutely.
So, the way they start the reconciliation process is they tell all these committees in the House of Representatives, you got to find some cuts here, or in some cases they're saying you even have more money to spend here, like for the tax breaks for the billionaires, right, And so they instruct all these committees to do this, and this week all the major committees that deal with big pieces of this are doing their work. So they are looking at the medicaid budget, they are looking at the
agriculture budget and nutrition programs. They are looking at more tax breaks they can get to corporations, and billionaires in the various different.
Committees in the House, and that's happening this week.
And the nutrition benefits that you're talking about, that's SNAP, that's supplemental nutritional assistance. So there's an eight hundred and eighty billion dollar cut to Medicaid and medicare right, talk me through. That was like the top line number they needed to pay for the tax cuts that are already in place.
Yeah, so let me tell you a little bit about that.
That was the instruction, the goal set for the Energy and Commerce Committee in the House. I used to sit on it, so I know a little is something about this, and so they have met their goal, or that's what they are in the process of doing this week, by cutting Medicaid about seven hundred and fifty billion dollars and then making some other cuts, particularly some of the energy things like clean energy tax credits. They've taken some pieces out of other areas too. But let's talk about the
big one, Medicaid. We predict that somewhere close to fourteen million people will lose their healthcare because of the cuts that are being proposed this week. Some of those people will lose their healthcare because of the work reporting requirements that they are putting forward, which by the way, is just a scheme and I'll be happy to tell you more about that later.
And the other big group.
Of people will lose their health insurance because Republicans have turned away from a tax credit that helps people afford their healthcare in the Affordable Care Act. This is a really important premium tax credit that really makes healthcare super affordable for those who otherwise would probably choose to go without because they just couldn't afford the monthly premium.
And then there's also sort of reason more money for the military. More money, give me the kind of breakdown of where it is.
Yeah, So the places where you will see more spending according to Trump, priorities are the military, homeland security, and of course they will allow the committees that deal with tax policy to spend more in order to both continue some of the Trump one point zero era tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, but also they are looking seriously at adding some more tax cuts that benefit the
wealthy in America. And so those are sort of the three major areas where you're seeing the committees freed up to spend more money. In fact, they predict next year that for the first time ever, the Defense Department will spend over a trillion dollars. That is like unfathomable in so many different ways. But in any event, they're cutting everything else. But when you put everything else together, it
is much smaller. In order to achieve the type of savings that they're talking about to pay for their tax breaks for the wealthy, it would be.
Crippling to so many programs.
We talked about nutrition programs, snap in particular, Medicaid, et cetera.
And what I would say is that a lot of.
Republicans that I'm hearing from say quietly at this point, but are uncomfortable with the deep cuts that are being proposed for Medicaid. And I think if people keep doing what they've been doing and speaking out and sharing their stories and writing their particularly their Republican representatives, but write all of us. But I think we can make some headway in getting them to back off some of the worst of their proposals.
So you've been in the Senate a while, you know all of these people. Clearly there has to be some regret for letting these cabinet picks slide through. And you don't even have to tell me who. But I'm sure you know there are some good Republican senators right. They may not agree with us, but they're good people, largely who have gone into government service to serve and not to profit with the RFK stuff. I mean, are you seeing a little buyer's remorse here from some of these Republican senators.
Mollie, I want to answer this in a couple of different ways. You're saying, I've served in the Senate a while, I've served with some of these people. I want to tell you that a whole bunch of new Republican senators that have been elected in the past couple of cycles, and many of them are supercharged LAGA people, so you know, I'm getting to know them, but they're not the ones
we're talking about. Absolutely, there are senators who are having buyers remorse with regard to some of the confirmation votes they've cast, also for the amount of cruelty and harm
this budget reconciliation process is teeing up. But I also want to just mention one other thing that I that I'm keeping in the back of my mind because you know, every so often I have to be reminded of this both in the House as they're trying to figure out how to put together a majority to advance this reconciliation bill.
You have some who have said, and I'm not going to call them moderates, these are just maybe more traditional Republicans who have said, oh, some of these cuts go a little too far, and then have this right flank that says, we are not voting for any bill unless you cut five trillion dollars out of domestic spending, because we're not going to vote for a bill where the tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations aren't completely paid for.
Now in the Senate, interestingly, my counterpart in the United States Senate run Johnson has recently said the same thing.
He says he will.
Not vote for a measure where the tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations are not fully paid for. And so it makes for strange bedfellows, if you will that there are folks who say, I'm not going to support it because the cuts are too deep and it hurts my constituents too badly. And you know, at the end of the day, if it ends up being some super right wingers who join with a couple of more traditional Republicans, and then all the Democrats in opposing this.
Who knows what's going to happen, But we.
Have a lot of hard work to do between now as we're speaking and the houses marking up all their bills and the final votes in each House of Congress. So got a lot of work on all of our shoulders to make sure that we put a stop to the cruelest and most harmful of these proposers.
You know, I think that's a really good and I mean we saw this with the tariffs, too, right. I mean Rand Paul, who is hardly anyone's idea of a liberal, is staunchly against the tariffs, and he turned out to be a sort of ally there. I feel like what we've seen with Trump is that if you push back in a big, loud way, right, you get the attention of a Laura Luhmer or someone like that, right, one of his people, for example, cutting these social safety net stuff.
This is the kind of thing that there are populas in Trump's camp who don't like this kind of thing. And so I'm wondering, do you think that that's sort of the play. And then also I want to add, if this doesn't pass, what does that look like?
Boy? A lot of great questions there.
So I do think our most powerful tool is elevating the stories of the people who would be harmed by the worst provisions. And for the last months we've been trying to organize folks and uplift their stories, not knowing exactly what shape or form the final cuts would take. And this week is really the first week where we've seen them put things into writing and now can assess with much greater specificity, assuming they pass what's before them,
how it's going to harm people. And you know, when you're talking about fourteen fifteen million people losing their healthcare, that's something that as soon as that knowledge gets out, we have a way of fighting back through the population.
So first question is what happens in the House. We've seen this before where the more traditional Republicans are at a breakpoint with the right wing flank that is insisting on massive cuts to government spending, as they say, so they're going to have to work through that first, and we'll see it in real time as it happens over the next week or two, and that will be predictive obviously, if they can't get their act together and can't do
it by Memorial Day, which is their goal. Then they'll take another stab at it when we get back after the Memorial Day recess if they are able to come to some fragile agreement and send it over to the Senate. Again, this is budget reconciliation, so they get around the filibuster.
It only takes a simple majority vote, and there we're going to be working really hard to persuade both flanks of that Republican caucus, the ones who won't vote for it unless it's fully paid for, and the ones who think that the proposals that are out there right now are too cool and too harmful for our neighbors and are willing to help us fight.
When you cut these programs like Medicare Medicaid, they will be larger things like closing of nursing homes and rural hospitals, largely in red states where there's less state tax. There are certainly Republican senators who understand this and what is their feeling on this? So can you use this to prevent it?
Yeah?
So I think the answer is yes. Really, until we saw the specifics about the cuts they were intending, we were organizing folks who rely on Medicaid in their families because you know, they have a relative who's a senior in a nursing home, and the majority of seniors in nursing homes rely on Medicaid, or people who have, say an adult child with significant disabilities, and they rely on Medicaid for both services and healthcare. A third of all
children are on Medicaid. So we were elevating those stories. But one of the points I was also trying to draw out is there's a lot of people whose employment is paid for it by Medicaid. The people who work in nursing homes, the people who work in rural critical access hospitals, the people who work in nonprofits that serve adults and children with severe disabilities.
All of those people their jobs.
Are there and part of their salaries come from the Medicaid program. And so I think because of the nature of some of the specifics they're now proposing, we are going to be able to get a whole new group of people speaking out. Hospital administrators and nursing home administrators, but also the frontline nurses and nurses assistants who provide care every single day under very tough circumstances, you know, because they're dedicated to the health and well being of their Naghbin.
It would be malpractice if they did not ask you about the plane. Donald Trump wants to take a four hundred million dollar plane from the royal family of Qatar and use it as Air Force One. Cynthia Lumis was asked about this. She's quite a trumpy Republican and she burst out laughing, Yes, that's my question. Is me just without speech?
I know? And there's so many different ways you can respond to this. You know, this is corruption at its highest.
Is it a violation of the emoluments cause?
Absolutely, But let me give you the anecdote that I just heard from a colleague.
I'm gonna I'm not gonna give you attributes.
To who it was, but it's like, would you let the Katari royal family rebuild the White House situation room, rebuild the press conference room, rebuild the Oval office, because that is what Air Force one is. It has all of those things in it. This is so ridiculous. And then the amount of money that it's going to take to take out what the Kataris have installed in terms of communications and security, et cetera, and replace it with
stuff that we know is secure and impenetrable. Is probably going to cost more than just waiting two more years for the new air Force.
Like the conversations I had with people who's taught me in this stream, how grid are you about securing the midterms and having free and fair elections for the midterms, because this is the thing that a lot of people I know are word about.
Yeah.
So I'm looking at a whole bunch of things that I think we've seen throughout history in the demise of other democracies, are signs that something really bad is happening. And part of it is election denial, trying to disenfranchise parts of the electorate, trying to make it harder to vote in various ways. Part of it is corruption and the mass movement of taxpayer dollars to the very wealthy,
the oligarchs of a society, other types of corruption. There's hallmarks of what happens when a democracy is in trouble.
And boy, I can tell you I see.
Action after action in this administration that overreach, that cross those lines that make me very concerned, and we've got to be vigilant about it.
At the same.
Time that we're fighting to make sure that our constituents have access to healthcare and have access to nutrition programs.
We have to do it all, but we.
Have the courts, we have the Congress when it acts, we have our constituents who we are fighting alongside on all of these fronts, and that's how we are going to push it.
Things really get like a situation where you start to really panic. Do you think that there are enough Republican votes? Because I think there are, but I'm not in there enough for Publican votes to run a check on Trump if he starts doing really out of the box staff.
Yeah, I do.
I have heard a number of my Republican colleagues ask a question that almost all of my Democratic colleagues have been asking, and that is, when faced with a law that Congress has passed or a ruling of a court, would you follow that law or follow that ruling over
an order from the Trump administration to the contrary? And I heard that question asked by a Republican colleague at a Commerce Committee hearing earlier this week, And I'm hearing increasingly Republicans saying to Trump nominees, there's only one right answer to this question. It's crossing a line too far.
Now.
Is that many of my Republican colleagues. No, but if it's a simple majority vote, we only need four to stand strong. If it's something that can be decided, you know that has a subject to a filibuster, we need a few more.
Tammy Baldwin, I am so delighted to get to have you on this podcast. I hope you will come back because it's just you know, you are answering these questions. I ask these very nerdy questions because I'm like, so interested in the procedural, where I feel like most people are not so interested in. I'd well, you're making them as this is crying, So please come back, senitor, Thank you.
Thank you.
No moment fu Jesse Cannon smile.
Let's say your Health and Human Services director has just gotten back from a nice swim and some sewage.
In Rock Creek Park.
Yes, what would you like the quote for them to be at their next press conference? Because if I was in the Trump administration, I don't think i'd want that quote to be. I don't think people should be taking medical advice for me when you're in charge of medical policy.
One of my favorite things about RFK Junior is that he really does seem like he doesn't know what is going on, You know what I mean, Like he really unhinged. Like he also said earlier this week that it's because Trump gets money.
Remember that, Yes, yes, yes, we discussed that on the last episode.
Yeah, so, I honestly think he's like still kind of a Democrat secret weapon, despite the fact that he is disassembling much of the federal government. Yeah no, I mean RFK Junior, this guy, you know, he is the guy who goes to the bathroom without wearing shoes on an xplane.
You're welcome.
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.