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 Trump says he was too busy averting a holocaust to commit fraud. We have a great show today. The Guardian's Hugo lol joins us to talk about Trump's many legal woes. Then we'll talk to Rhode Islands Lieutenant governor so being a Matos about her run to fill one of Rhode Island's two congressional seats. But first we have the Bulwarks Jonathan Last. Welcome back to
Fast Politics. Jonathan Last.
Molly, it's good to be with you.
I love you because you are like one of the greatest editors I've ever had, so I am always such a huge fan. Though I just googled you and found out that you're not that much older than I am, which is very annoying, but still a little bit not.
That much old her, right, I thought we were exactly the same age? Are we not the same age?
Forty nine? Man, I'm only forty five and I just turned forty five, so I think I'm really forty four. For another six months, I.
Feel like I'm a really young forty nine.
I want to talk about my text exchange with Tim Miller, a friend and mine. So watch the debates. Of course got drawn into the vacmentum. Just kidding. But one of the sad things that made me think of both you and Tim and made me text him endlessly was that there was one person on that stage, and it might have only been one, maybe two. Maybe Mike Pence can be in the category two though Kenny really who was
occupying Earth one? And I don't like any of what she has to say, or I don't like her views particularly, but she did seem very much like on this planet, which for this Republican party, I was a little shocked.
Yeah, she was good, She was basically fine. She understood that the spending problems are not like just Democrats, even Republicans have been spending a lot of money since Ronald Reagan, and which is fine, by the way. I mean, there are lots of good reasons to spend money on the part of the government. And Mike Pence was was good too, And I mean, I don't know about you. I came away from that debate and I was depressed, precisely because I thought to myself, if Nicky Haley or Mike Pence
or Chris Christy or even Tim Scott. I guess their politics are not my politics, and I can quibble with you or Anasa, I should say ASA as well. I can tell you five brother reasons why they haven't gone far enough and why I wish they would have gone. But if any of them were the Republican presidential nominee, then I would be totally fine about the future of American democracy. Yeah, you know, I'd be like, great, I think Joe Biden's done a good job for president. Happy
to go vote for him. This is awesome, And if he loses, we can all wake up the next morning and just go to work and not not be But and the fact that those people combine for like eleven percent, it isn't terrifying. Like, it's not the case that the problem is that the party's just not giving the Republican voters any good options. Right No, no, no, no, no, that's
not the problem. There are plenty of good options, right, They come in lots of different flavors, and the voters do not want any of them.
Right. No, I agree, I mean that is an incredible bit of sorcery, just finding us sort of in this situation where there are actually some reasonable choices. I mean, you know, it's funny because Chris Christy gets so much credit for being a bomb thrower, and I don't think of Chris Christy as deserving of much credit, I have to tell you, especially because it seems to me like
he's quite interested in self promotion. But Asa Hutchinson really has sort of come into the fold as just trying very much to sort of protect what little is left of the sort of sane caucus of the Republican Party.
And Mike Pence too. Honestly, I thought Mike Pence was a little more hardcore than Chris Christy even but Christy did the you know, look, Christy did a thing which I've been all. I've been writing about this for two years. God helped me. I'm the one who I don't have you noticed this, but when The Atlantic, the Atlantic Monthly, one of our great magazines, when they need somebody to just praise Mike Pence, they call me, and I can't believe that this is my lot in life, Like this
is where I've come to Mike Pence. You know, again, not going to romanticize, granted, all the failures and faults and the enablement and all that he stood up and saved America when like his life was on the line, and his family's lives and his career.
Because dan Quail told him too. But yes, yes, yes, yes.
Again, grant all of it right. It shouldn't have been hard for him. And I myself did not rob a bank this morning, So do I get a cookie? I get it, I got it. I was not born yesterday. But Chris Christy said, you know, look, hey, people, we shouldn't be giving Mike our grudging support, like America owes him a debt. I was like, yes, Chris, read my article. That's right. But the fact is that the people don't want it right that this is one of Desanta's's problem,
is right, is that he's caught in that. You know, his donors really don't want him being pro insurrection, and so he tries to have it both ways. And that's one of the things, one of the reasons the Republican voters don't trust him.
I have to say to Santis has really shown us that having no charisma, no personality to speak, that just being a fascist is not enough. So let's talk about this partisanship. We've developed a political culture in which one party has affirmative policy goals and the second party is committed mostly making the first party angry. Talk to me about this idea.
Yeah, you know, I was thinking back to the I was thinking back to the twenty twenty Democratic debates, and I don't know if you remember them, but it was like the first hour of every single debate was fifteen people on the stage litigating the finest discrepancies between a bunch of healthcare plans which were all.
Basically the same, right, right, right, you want glasses, no glasses?
Yeah, yeah, you're well. You know, Pete Boodah Judge's plan would would leave two point three million people uninsured. And what we're going to do is we're going to have we're going to abolish the state market places and replace portability. And you know, it's all like, wow, these guys care a lot about healthcare. No, nobody, none of them are going to if they win, do anything about healthcare really because we've just done that, and you know, they're all
about adventures. The point is, like Democrats have a bunch of actual issues that they want to use government to enact policies and Republicans don't. And this has been going on since basically, I mean at least twenty sixteen, but maybe twenty twelve. I remember when Gingrich got really real famous just by like yelling at moderators and he shot to the top of the bowling. They just want to trigger the Libs. That's the highest, the highest goal of
the Republican electorate right now. And you see it with the you know, they don't have policy proposals. There are their policy proposals is well, I will put sharks with frickin lasers on their heads in the Rio Grande to murder migrants. That's as close as they get to a policy. And it's a weird, weird thing because when I was I don't know, when I was a kid, like the
Republican Party was the party of ideas. They were like, we're gonna have enterprise zones, and you know, like they became incomprehensible because there were so many ideas like you know what the flat tax people versus the fair tax people. But there was a lot of like and that's all gone. All it is is like nativism and we hate the Libs and we want to hurt people.
Yeah, now, I'm depressed again.
That's what I do. That's my move. Don't think O, look, you don't invite me on this show because you want to be happy.
Yeah, I mean, I think that's a really good point. And that was a sort of refreshing moment. Again. I don't want to say anything nice about Nikki Alee, but when Nikki ali said, you guys don't have the votes for a federal abortion ban, it was like the first time anyone had said, like, this is how you do
stuff here, like you you don't have those senators. I always think about this idea, and I actually wrote about this this week, which was that like Trump has tipped his base into on reality and so they're so used to being promised things. I mean, I always think about like Trump will say, like we're going to build the biggest wall, and also it's already built. We're going to
give you the best healthcare, but also it's already happening. Again, people are going to get mad at me for saying this, but I think it was a radical departure from earlier political lying. It's one thing to say, you know, we're going to cut your taxes and then not cut your taxes or where the other side wants to raise your taxes when they don't really want to raise your taxes, so they only want to raise it on the very rich.
But this is like a whole other level, Like this is the kind of lying that is easily provable, which we saw with Vivag and I feel like with Vivig lauding Trump, and then we see in his book that he's written all these critical things of Trump, like you know, denying what he said to the Atlantic, and then the Atlantic journalist has tape that kind of like brazen untruthfulness I think has really tipped the base into a new place.
Yeah, I would totally agree with that. And this is, as you say, all politicians from the dawn of time lie, you know, the Saint Joe Biden has lied like this is you know, this is what they do. But it is different. And the difference really is I think a feature of demagoguery and populism, right, I mean, that's what's different in character about it. It's like where do you find that line between a normal politician and a demagogue? And it's like porn, like you know when you see it,
you know, and that's what Trump does. That's what Vivike does. That's one of the things that Desantas has at a hard time with. Being a demagogue is a skill. But you don't just choose, like, oh, I'm going to be a demagogue in the same way you don't choose to be an NBA player.
You do.
It helps to be six foot nine, right, And Trump is really good at it, and Viveke is really good at it, and Desantas isn't because part of it is you got to be able to lie to people and get people to be in on the line and committed to it. And you know, one of the scariest numbers that I've seen recently is in the seller poll from Iowa, the gold Standard Pole out of Iowa, which showed that Trump was only at I think forty two percent or forty eight percent in Iowa. You can check me on that.
But when you went into the cross tabs, what you saw was that a very small minority I think twenty nine percent of respondents said that getting somebody who can
win was the most important thing for them. I think that again, I'm going for memory next to a couple weeks ago, but I think it was seventy two percent of Republican respondents to the poll said it was much more important that the nominee be somebody who they agree with, which means that they're in on the line and they just you know, I think, if we want to get
really deep on this, this is all decadence, right. It's when your life is so good and your Ford F one fifty raptor which you paid seventy thousand dollars for, is you know, and interest rates are basically still you know, still quite low, and the economy's good, and everybody wants a job has one, then you can afford to live in this decadent fantasy world where you are committed to a guy like Trump and you don't care about whether or not to enact any real policies.
We got to talk about Joe the Plumber. You're Joe the Plumber piece, and then I want to talk to you about something which the timing on which is so perfect. First talk to us about Joe the Plumber.
Yeah, so I wrote a piece about Joe the Plumber yesterday which wasn't really about Joe the Plumber, but about all of us. Joe the Plumber, I assume most of your listeners have heard he passed away over the weekend from pancreatic cancer. The guy was only forty nine. I don't want to speak for you, but my initial, like first two second reaction was like, well, f that guy. The obits on him from like NPR and the New York Times were very soft focus and just made him
sound like kind of a gad fly. And he was a little bit worse than that. I mean, he wrote something horrible after a mass shooting, like an open letter to parents where he said something like I'm sorry, but your dead kids don't trump my right to own guns or something something absolutely horrible. But I called myself to my credit, like after like one second, I was like, no, this guy just died a horrible death, Like you can't. What do you mean f this guy? Like, you know,
he's got family, he's got people who loved him. This is a tragedy. This is horrible. And there was just a there's a nerdy political journal called Political Psychology which just came out with a long study about partisan schadenfreud and people really just getting off on seeing not not things they like happen, but things that are bad happening to people they don't like. And this is a danger for everybody. Yes, like we can all swamp into it. And you know, a lot of people did not like it.
I had a lot of comments and people was saying like, no, well the Republicans are much worse about this than Democrats are, and I was like, Okay, well maybe they are. But the point is it's not like one side has all of it and the other side has zero. We all have to resist that. I.
As someone who's sober since I was nineteen, resentment is really the worst thing you can marinate in. I love Michelle Obama. She has a gazillion dollars. Now, when they go low, we go high. I don't necessarily think that is what Democrats should be doing. But I also think like no one should celebrate anyone dying, especially or four days, especially a cancer that we are in a time right now where cancers for younger people are going up, you know,
fifteen sixteen percent. I read statistics that you know, certain cancers are up a lot, and that I think is quite scary and not should not be celebrated. No matter who gets it.
We should all love each other. I mean, this is what it really gets down to. I mean, it makes me sound like the hippie dippy that I well, I am. I went to Quaker school. So here, let me give you the punch. I so, you know, so I write this piece and it's very emo, and it's like the only way out of this problem is Americans, we all got to hug it out and you know, be our best selves. And I fell all the time, but I picked myself up and I try to do better. Blah
blah uh. Two hours later, the fucking Rudy Giuliani thing comes out, and this is God testing me. God God is like, oh you, you're so high and mighty about not doing shot and for I look what just happened to this one.
Okay, So I just don't want to pause with Rudy Giuliani. He destroyed the lives of Shay Moss.
And her and he did not die of pancreatic cancer. This is much more like actual justice being served to help the victims of a bad person's actions.
She was passing a ginger mint to her daughter working as a poll worker, which is like one of the greatest civic duties that you, as an American citizen can do, and she was rewarded. I mean, you listen to her in the January sixth hearing that is a person who has post traumatic stress, Like you can't fucking believe she can't. Anytime anyone says her name, she gets terrified. Yeah, what's the number that makes that? Okay? A million dollars too?
I mean, what's the number that gives you your name back? I mean I interviewed Lisa Page. It was the first person to interview her. I'm friendly with Pete Struck. I mean, those guys don't have their names back.
Yeah, half is my answer? Did she get half? I think when we see something like that, it probably would be best not to like do the snoopy happy dance.
Right.
You can say, oh, this is good that this happened, because this woman deserves to be compensated and we need to terns for future bad actors, which I do think is so, so we should try and happy does. But I gotta tell you, like, I'm sorry, I did like a little happy dance, and I'm not proud, right, maybe a little proud.
I hope they get the money, is all I can say. One of the real worries here is that people aren't going to want to work in the polls. So I hope potential poll workers will see this and say, you know, okay, this is not a bad thing to be doing. Okay, I have come to another amazing bit of sorcery that I'm going to actually read to you again. I'm sorry, I'm in a reading mood today, but I actually read it to Jesse too, because I was so floored by
it and I feel like it's just very perfect. I'm going to read it to you and then you're going to have to guess who said it. Okay, Okay, I would like to remind these people that backwards ness is useless. This is a person who just lamented the backwards ness of some American conservatives, who, he said, insisted on a narrow, outdated, and unchanging vision. They refuse, he said, to accept the full breath of the Church's mission and the need for
changes in the doctrine over time. The Pope, Oh, the Pope, the Pope.
Okay, I think my answer is better. Okay, it may not be right, but I think it's better.
Is that believable?
Sounds about right, my man? The Pope, Pope tambourines.
Yeah, he's like seven years older than Biden. Also eight years older than Biden. More importantly. But yeah, the pope, my people, my people doing this, you lose the true tradition and you turn to ideologies to have support. In other words, the ideologies replace faith.
Yeah, I mean that is very close to my own experience with American Catholicism over the last seven or eight years, in which magat priests are basically everywhere. I'm Catholic, you know, I live in a little Catholic ghetto and my kids going Catholic school. I'm like one of these weirdos who has a lot of actual like personal friends or priests.
And a priest buddy of mine said to me, it's like a year ago, two years ago, we were talking about precisely this, and so my buddy, this buddy is very orthodox, and ten years ago you would have thought of him as like, oh, he's a conservative priest, but he rejected the MAGA stuff. And so even though he is still like the exact same guy and has like, he's now viewed with a little bit of suspicion, like, oh, well,
maybe he's not really a conservative ran. The way he put it to me was that he had a moment in his priestly vocation in which he realized that he was prioritizing truth over love. What the Catholic Church really calls you to do is to never let there be any daylight between truth and love, and to the you know, the extent that one outstrips the other, then that's where all the problems come from. And I think that's what Pope Francis is talking about here.
He's urged priests to welcome and minister of people who are gay, divorced, and remarried. He's called on the whole world to tackle climate change, calling it a moral issue. What happened to us, Like the country is, you know, we got this guy in Rome. It feels like such a failure on the part of the American people.
Yes, the American people are the worst.
I mean I say this as a Jew raised by atheist communists. I still feel like we created a country where our religious right went crazy.
They did. And you know, like the Catholics used to I'll just let you in a little secret, even the conservative Catholics used to look down on the Evangelicals and be like, yeah, you know, at least we're not a bunch of mouth breathing idiots like those guys. And now here we are and a lot of America's Catholic intellectuals over the last seven years have turned into mouth breathing idiots.
And it's precisely because of this stuff. I mean, you look at First Things, the magazine First Things has you know, gone insane, and the Catholic intellectual tradition has been like deeply corrupted. And you know, another priest buddy who's in Canada's Canadian and so he has an interesting, an interesting view of this, and he says, this is this is everything about Americanism, and that Americanism is such a civic religion that it eventually corrupts everything. And so like American
Catholicism has become like American first and Catholicism second. And I think there's there's probably something to that.
So interesting. I really appreciate having you here. Thank you so much. John. I hope you'll come.
Back anytime, Molly bye.
Hugo Law is a political investigations reporter at The Guardian. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Hugo loll. Hell, let's talk about Trump's legal problems. He is fine, right, He's going to be fine.
I mean, choosual problem and then make that capturization.
So you've been in Georgia, you've been in DC. I would love you to give us like a thirty thousand feet We know he has for really five sets of indictment, state federal superseding. We know he has ninety one counts, right, and then he has these civil charges, but just give us sort of that what's kind of happening right now?
And Trump legal in terms of the thirty thousand foot view, I mean, I like to think of it as in what is going to cause him the most kind of legal jeopardy? Right? So I think the biggest issue for him, well, the biggest issues for him, Number one is a classified documents case because the kind of alleged in that is getting. You know, if if you look at the superseding indictment,
it only bolsters the original indictment. You basically have Trump retaining these national security documents and at least one of those documents he admits holding on to on tape. And we didn't have the original Iran document in the first indictment, but in the superseding indictment they charged the Iran document as account. So clearly the Special Council went and found it and identified it and had you know, Grand jury
witnesses identifying that document. And also we now have this bolstered element of obstruction, which is really bad for him because you know, he goes and gets his employees to try and delete surveillance footage, but because they're so busy stumping around the bushes with flash lights, they would call themselves trying to figure out which cameras to delete.
In your legal opinion, is that bad?
In my legal opinion, I'd say that's that's a real problem.
I feel like that was a sort of unforced error.
Yeah. I mean, and the whole thing is kind of comical because his employees are also not very good at carrying out his wishes. Right, this is less water game.
More.
Let's hop in a clown car and you know, put the sirens on and say that we're coming down to mar Lago. You know, let's send shushing emojis to people and then like you know, pull.
People off to the side.
Oh, I really got to do this in one case. So it's not great. But that's really the class white document's case. So let's let's now get to the Federal of January sixth case.
The classified documents case is easily the most open and shot though I don't know.
I mean, look, I don't think any of these cases are necessarily open and shut. I think when things go to trial, when you see kind of the arguments and how the jury compositions, and you know, in the class by documents case, you also have the wild card of Judge Cannon, who has hidden very deferential to Trump's side.
I mean even in the preacher motion so far, I mean she is delayed holding a Garcia hearing, which is a hearing to form both defendants and witnesses that their shared representation, their shared lawyer could cause them not to have effective accounts at trial. That has not happened yet. And these are all delays that are going to factor into the case. And I think, you know, even the May trial date that I've been scheduled is now looking
likely to be pushed back further. And so I think the classied Documents case has its own unique right.
And that has ended up with Judge Cannon, right.
And you know, Judge Cannon is, of course, as the same judge who presided over the Special Mass litigation last year and you know, proceeded to give Trump a whole bunch jobs.
Right, She's a mega judge well.
I don't know if it's fair to say she's a mega judge, but she has shown preference and deference to Trump's legal team, probably for the last year or so.
She was appointed by Trump.
Yes, she was the Trump appointing. In fact, she was one of the last judges appointed by Trump. I think her Senate confirmation came basically December twenty twenty or November twenty twenty.
Why were you in DC on Monday?
So that was the federal January sixth case. So now we're getting onto indictment two or four, and so Judge Chuckan, who is overseeing that case, was a setting a trial date.
That's the federal and also the superseding. No, this is the federal.
The only case that we have a superseding and diamond is the class Fight doc.
Okay, so that's the judge Canon case.
Yeah.
So on Monday, Judge Chuppan presiding judge in DC, set a March trial date for the federal and January sixth case.
And again, this is a case that presents Trump with a very big problem because one of the statutes that has been charged obstruction of an official proceeding is a statute that has been used against hundreds of January sixth right defendants, and the core element in that statute is did the defendant act corruptly that for the operative language to start, basically the certification on January sixth, And there is currently a case pending before the DC what Appeals
the DC Circuit courts, where they are trying to come up with an interpretation or definition of the work corruptly. But we can look at how the statute has been a play to the hundreds of other January sixth defendants, and in almost all cases it has been interpreted as
kind of unlawful benefit or sort of corrupt benefit. And it is quite clear that Trump was seeking to obtain a corrupt benefit on January sixth, by pressuring members of Congress, by pressuring senators, by pressuring Pence, by encouraging the crowd to not go home. He was effectively trying to extract a corrupt benefit from himself through the certification not being completed. And I think that's a real area of jeopardy.
So there's so much traffic on Trump's legal calendar, how will we know who goes first and who will sort of win that?
I mean, we don't know I mean, right now, as things have been scheduled, it seems like the federal January sixth case will go first. You know, we're set for March four. Whether or not we stick to that, you know, remains an issue. Also in March we have the Manhattan A g A hush money case. I think that's March twenty fifth off the top of my head. You know, the issue with all of these child dates is that
they do tend to slip right. You know, there's delays in discovery production, there's pre trial motions and pretrial motions. You know, we call it, as we say, motion practice. And you know Trump Trump's the whole thing is to delay it as much as he can. That's his strategy.
If he can push as many of these things pass the election as he can, and if he wins, the whole idea is to either self pardon himself if he's already been convicted, or if there is a case on appeal, for instance, then he you know, the ideas he would appoint a sympathetic attorney general and have DOJ just drop the charters.
Joyce Fans yesterday was on Nicole Wallace and she was saying that Donald Trump is not going to be running for president from jail. The way that the timing on this works, that is not going to happen. Can you just say a little more about that.
Yeah, And it's fundamentally because even if he's convicted in let's say, all of these cases, the appeals won't be resolved by the time the elections. Even if we stick let's say, you know the current schedule in the federal January sixth case, I mean, if there's several weeks to trial, we will get through, you know, marsh will be at the start of April. The idea that this will go to the quart of Appeals and it will be all resolved by November twenty twenty four is just not realistic.
And if that doesn't happen, he might be convicted, but he will be out on appeal, just like Steve Bannon is currently out on appeal even though he was convicted in his conduct of Congress case. And so I think in the same vein that I don't think there is any expectation that Trump will be incarcerated and will be heaving a campaign from in Jailstone.
One of the things that is really interesting about these cases is that they are both. There are sort of intersection of politics and the league system in a way there is no historical precedent for so every judge, from Judge Cannon to Judge check In, they are in this sort of brave new world of legal cases against someone who is the front runner for the Republican nomination. Talk to me about what the tension there is.
Yeah, I think, you know, in many ways it matters, and in many ways it also doesn't matter. You know, I think because of the way these cases are coming down. Basically in an election cycle, necessarily there will be politics involved.
Trump's whole campaign for president was announced early because he thought it would insulate him or protect him from DOJ seeking indictments against It ironically kind of backfired because had it not been for his campaign launch, Merrick Garland would not have appointed as Special Council and they were not a been an officer of the Special Council with you know, sixty a round sixty prosecutors detailed to that office or
investigating him onto kind of parallel cases. It would have been you know, a handful maybe or a dozen or so line attorneys in the National Scurity Division, and and you know, in the criminalsion, and so he's kind of brought this on himself in some ways. And the response has been particularly trumpient in that it's impossible to determine where the presidential campaign ends and where the legal team starts.
It is all the same thing. In fact, I think it's better to think of it as a presidential campaign first and a legal defense team second. The constant we heard as reporters through the document's investigation, well that the lawyers are finding it difficult to work around the campaign. Always the messaging that came first. It was always the oh, but you know, we need to do this politically, or
you know, this doesn't look great optics. Why it's rather than that's treat this as a really serious kind of criminal investigation that could land Trump on the hot water and having to deal with the new reality that he is now a criminal defendant in four cases, and you know, in Judge Ricken's words, you will have to yield to the criminal process. I think that's really tough for them, because neither Trump nor anyone around him, or anyone else frankly,
has ever had to deal with this. But I think the one point that is that has become a feature in all of these cases. Is he is now subject to the judicial process, and he might not like the fact that his federal January sixth case has been scheduled the day before Super Tuesday, but that's out of his control. Become a criminal defendant, you're a subject to the wide discretions that federal judges have, and federal judges if an Article three judgements to schedule a trial in a particular day,
they will do that. And you have very very little recalls. I mean, Trump's talking about he can appeal the chrial date. That's just really not feasible.
Yeah, I mean, it is this conflict of here we have someone who is running for president while also a defendant and numerous federal, state, and civil cases.
But when you talk to Trump's advisors, they are very colonist and all the fact that Trump is now running for president in order to keep himself out of jail, and I think they feel that very keenly, and Trump feels that very keeen You know, back in November and December when he was just launching his campaign, a lot of the accusations and kind of dismissive comments are like, oh, you know, he's low energy, he doesn't really care. I mean that might have been true to some degree, but
it's not true now. And it's not true now because he knows if he doesn't win, he will not have the powder self pardon himself if he's convicted, and he will not have the patent to have an attorney general does not these cases, and so he really needs to win. And I think maybe people underestimating a little bit the lengths that Trump might go to ensure that he does win because the stakes are now so high.
Yes, And I think that is a really good point. And you'll remember he did announce very very early because he wanted to get ahead of these indictments.
Right and can as you were saying, in trying to get ahead of the indictments, he probably actually spent them up because you know, a special counsel was appointed. You know, an office will stood up. You know, people were detailed from Main Justice in the US Attorney's office, and you know in the Public Integrity Section, the National Security Division, all these lawyers came in. You know, if you have about you know, sixty lawyers investigating, you chan saw they're
probably going to find something. And so you know, I don't know if that was in hindsight the best strategic move for him if he did want to string this this war out.
Can you do two seconds on Peter Navarro?
Yeah, we are going to trial next week.
I'm watching the video of him trying to grab the Trump lost and you know it signed from a protester at his news conference, right.
And he try to grab any missed Catch us up on Peter Navarro. Yeah, we are going to trial in US vers Peter Navarro. It is the contempt of Congress case after Navara basically blew off the January sixth Committee subpoena. I mean, it's a little bit crazy that we are going to try on twenty twenty three for subpoena that was issued, you know, in late twenty twenty one. But here we are. You know, we have jury selection on September fifth. The presiding judge in this case is Ammet Meta.
You know.
Judge Meta said, you know, he expects jury section to maybe take only one or two days and so it could be very very quick. So we may go to trial on September seven, as kind of scheduled. And Peter Navarro has a big problem because his central defense and what his lawys have been saying, was Peter Navarro genuinely believed that he had an executive privileged waiver from Trump that allowed him to refuse to comply with the January
sixth Committee subpoena. The problem was it was never formally written down anywhere, and he never got a written notification from Trump to that effect. So what Navarro's team tried to do instead was to use a letter that Trump had given him with respect to the Coronavirus Subcommittee that said, you know, Pier Navarro, you must protect executive privilege to say, oh, this was you know, this applied to all of the
subpoenas he got. But the judge did not buy that. Ultimately, it hasputed as a defense, and so I think this is going to be a very short trial, and his lawyers are really prepping, like in Bannon, for a fight at the appeals core. DOJ stumbled a number of times in the pre chrial period, but I think for trial or in a pretty good position.
I just want one last question, because it's breaking news that Donald Trump has just fled not guilty in Georgia.
Yeah, I mean it's look, it's very procedural. We knew he was going to plead not guilty. The question was would he appear in person on a September six and kind of you know, say not guilty in person or would he would he fight a waiver and just do it on the barket, and you know, he's chosen the latter. It saves him from having to go back to Forum County Superior Court. It kind of save saves him in his campaign at of hassle on.
So I think this was.
Always the expected move, although I will say that, you know, and this is kind of indicative of what we've been talking about, how the political and the legal will kind of get him meshed in the same thing. His political team were considering having him actually go in person if they could figure out a way to hold some sort of event after, whether it was like a press conference or a rally or a gag. You know, they were keen to turn into a media event if they could,
even if it was hear hearted. The fact that this was being considered, I think is indicative of how much still the political campaign has an equity and everything Trump does.
Thank you so much, Hugo. I hope you'll come back.
Thank you.
Sabina Meados is the Lieutenant governor of Rhode Island and a candidate in their first congressional district primary. Welcome to Fast Politics, Sabina.
Thank you, Mollie, thank you so much for having me here.
First, you need to tell us you are the Lieutenant governor of the state of Rhode Island. You are running for one of Rhode Island's two congressional seats. Explain to us what this special election is, when it's happening, Why it's happening.
Yes, so I I'm the current Lieutenant governor, just ran last year and one four years as lieutenant governor. Then our congressmnding is Sicelini resigned this year for good reasons. He became the president of the Rhode Island Foundation. And this has an opportunity now for an open seat in Rhode Island, which you don't seem too often.
All right, since only two ceraily.
Two right, we had one last year and now a second one this year. This is a special election in it's going to be on Tuesday, September fifth. I'm running for this seed. Yes, very soon. We are less than a week away from election.
Day, Okay, And so you're running for this open seat. Explain to us who are you running against What does your race look like?
Yes, because it's an open seed. Actually, if we have a large bill.
Oh interesting, if I don't know.
We started with about thirty four candidates Jesus, but we're down to we're down to twelve, actually eleven Democrats. Right now the primary is less than a week await, and right now the race is coming down mostly to me and my opponent who is more to the left of me in this politics.
So explain to us why you accurately reperen and why your views more represent this district in Rhode Island.
Yeah, the state of Rhode Island, we're always labeled as a blue state, right in CD one actually is the most liberal of the two district that we have.
This district.
Actually, the state of Rhode Island, we have never sent a Democratic woman to Congress.
Wow.
Yeah, we had only one woman.
Say it again, man, I mean wow, Yes, that.
One woman in the eighties. She was Republican. And people think of Rhode Island as is so blue. But we have never sent a Democratic woman to Congress, and we are more than half of the population. I think this is a great opportunity for us to send the woman's voice to Congress. Out of our four members of the federal delegation, the two senators are the two state reps. We never had a Democratic woman's in Congress from Rhode Island. The state of Rhode Island also has a diversity than
we are about twenty five five percent diverse. We have a sixteen percent Latino, eight point nine percent Black, you have the Asian and Leaks race. When you add that together, we're over twenty five percent of people of color. We have never sent a person of color to Congress in the from Rhde Island.
Wow, so you're twenty five percent people of color and you've never sent a person of color to Congress.
That is correct. So this year we have this opportunity to elect the first Democratic woman to Congress and also the first person of color, a Manfro Latina was born in the Dominican Republic and have been here for the last almost thirty years. I've been in the United States.
Came here, didn't speak the language when I arrived, and I've been able to learn English, go get an education in Rhode Island College, serve my community, first in the Providence City Council, now as Lieutenant Governor and now running for Congress thanks to the amazing thing that we have in this country that is called democracy.
So tell us a little bit about your views. You have this experience of being self taught, self made, How has that affected your views and what will you do when you're in Congress.
The experience that I have of being in the local government helped me a lot to understand when needs to happen in Congress. I have been working a lot in the housing space. Being in the local government, I get to see firsthands whenever there is a fire and a family get displaced, or when the city condemns a property and there's a family that doesn't have a place to go. Most of the time they get one or two days in a by the Red Cross, putin in a hotel.
What I have found out, which is so shocking, is that a family in that situation is not a priority based on the federal definition of homelessness. The family because they have a place to state that night they staying in a hotel, they don't meet it the priority to leaves in order to help them find a place to leave. We have to make sure that we change that. Because I remember one pas in which I was helping a family and grandmother that her home was condemned. She had
the custody of her two granddaughters. And every time I was trying to call the agencies that all worked with the homelessness, I was raised with the same problem. She's not a priority. She wouldn't become a priority unless they were on the street or into a shelter. Yeah, and a family like that, if the grandmother goes to the street or into the shelter, she lose the custody of the granddaughters. So that makes sense. We have to do things in a different way. So that's the experience that
I bring to Congress. The other thing is my fight for a woman's right and for the right for abortion. We have to make sure that we protect the right at the federal level because right now, people like myself, black and Latino women tend to be at a higher disadvantage whenever our law is passed that prohibit abortion in their state.
Exactly true.
Yeah, and Rodorina, we're fortunate that we could afide abortion into law near but there are other states that don't have that, and a woman that can now afford to take time out of work to travel or don't have real resources to travel, some have access to abortion, and then now the latest court ruling that is also coming and gainst the access to abortion through the male when more than fifteen percent of the abortions are done through meditation.
That's also something that worries us and that we need to make sure we send someone that's going to fight for women's right.
I want to come back to abortion, but I first want to go back to housing for a minute. One of the big problems states like yours have, and states like New York where I live have, and really a problem in the Northeast but also in California, is that housing is just very expensive. It's prohibitively expensive for working families. We've had real trouble with legislating for that. Do you have ideas do you feel like being in Congress you might be able to help with that.
Yes, we have to make sure that we send more resources to the states and the local municipalities to build more housing. Here in the state of Rhode Island. One of the biggest challenges that we had is all we have right now, is that we have not been building housing at the pace that we needed to keep up with the popuation growth. That's one of the number one problems that we have. For the first time last year we were able to allocate out of the area funding
two hundred and fifty million dollars for housing. That's a big investment for rheinan that we have never seen before. But the problem has grown to be so big that that just makes a little bit of tend and to
the housing challenges that we have. We have to make sure that the third level once we send more resources for the states and for the local government to be able to build more affordable housing and to build housing at all income levels, because we hear we have such a big problem that we need housing at all income levels we have not been built in. But also sending resources to how families that are about to become homeless
or that suffare and emergency and become homeless. We need to make sure that we send more resources to the local level.
So I want to ask you about abortion and the medication abortion. One of the things that I have for a long time been really keenly aware of is just how much the people who suffer when you make abortion illegal are women, women of color, women who are working multiple jobs. Children are And I say this as a mother of three wildly expensive. I mean just in calculator, like the largest indicator of bankruptcy is children. So people who are barely scraping by making a possible for them
to be able to manage their own fertility. Talk to me about ways in which you feel that when you're in Congress you could protect these women.
Yeah, we have to make sure that we protect abortion access at the federal level the same way how we were able to do it here in Rwanda. We have to make sure that it's done at the federal level and now leave the till issue state to make it on the individual decision, because that is what is putting our risks right now, abortion access for so many womens
that cannot afford it. They cannot afford to travel out of this state to get an abortion, they cannot afford to take time out of work to go and get an abortion. And right now there are some states are passing legislation that they can even hard for a doctor to make the right decision right their doctor right now that may have to be thinking of checking with their lawyers before they make a medical decision. And that's what
is a risk. And if you're not concerned about the woman and the woman's think about if your child is a suffician, is a doctor and have to be put in that position that a medical decision that they may may being used to either take their license away after years of work or either may in that in jail. This is the reality that some states are doing and this is what could happen if we don't do more to protect abortions. Right at the feederal level.
It recently became Rhode Island lieutenant governor. What have you learned from your time in that position?
Yes, I became a lieutenant governor. When Gina Ramande was appointed a Secretary of Commerce, our lieutenant became governor.
So you recently got re elected to that position.
Yes, I got re elected last year. In the twenty a half years in the role as lieutenant governor, one of the things that I have learned is that going back to the housing need. At the beginning, I used to be a consult number of Providence, which is in the metro area of Rhode Island. Right is a community with a lot of needs, and I thought that the housing problem was just unique to the metro area community. The more I traveled through the state of Rhde Island.
I realized that the housing was a big problem in every community. I remember going to Block Island early on as Peutenant governor and learning about the challenges that Block
Island is having with housing. And most of the time we don't think about that when we think about Block Island or Newport, but they're having such a big challenge with housing that they're not able to attract not even municipal employees, because they're not able to pay enough for them to be able to afford housing in the island, or they real so much on seasonal workers, and a problem that they're having is that they're not housing a
foodaball housing available for the workers to leave when they're there. So it was very surprised to see how the housing is such a big problem even in communities when you didn't think it was going to be a problem.
Yeah, really interesting. I mean, housing, I feel like is one of the sort of most important things we're still struggling with for sure, and it feels like there's no way to get on it. One of the things that Rhode Island has been really famous for because it's such a tiny state and you're so affected by climate change and rising tides is legislating for climate. You have one of the absolute all stars, the ogs of climate legislation, my man Sheldon white House, a frequent flyer. Frequent flyer
on this podcast. But I'm just curious, you know, as a lieutenant governor, what kind of stuff have you guys done with climate and what does that look like for you guys.
Yeah, the State of Verrela has been a leader when it comes to the climate space, thanks in big part to senatorshelle On white House was so fortunate to have in here. But we are doing things that we have been at the forefront of the all short wind with the wind Meals of Blog Island. We had been right now in the process of the constructions the beginning of the Revolution Winds which is going to add about four hundred megawads of power to Rhode Island and also told
three hundred mayor was to Connectico. We had been working also to incentivize to add electric buses and electric bags. We have been providing incentive for dusta wants to switch from the vehicle from gas vehicle to electric vehicle. And we are making sure that we are providing also free buses which are electric buses. A new line for transportation. So this is some of the things that we have been doing here at the State of Rhode Island. The governor signed the ad on Climate which is going to
have a big impact. We want to be the leaders and when it comes to renewables and switching from pussil field to renewable energy. So I'm France feel very proud of the work that Ranana has been doing in this space.
Thank you so much. So tell us again what day your election is.
The election is going to be on September fifth, so it's the date after just a day after Labor Day. Wow, so really close.
Thank you so much. I hope you'll come back.
Thank you so much, Thank you for this opportunity. Molly, and I'll be back good.
Thanks No, no mom second, Jesse Cannon.
Molly Jong Fast. Oh. Clarence Thomas, I feel like this was kind of like a funny thing he did today. What'd you see here?
I thought that was amazing.
It's really something.
So Clarence Thomas decided finally to disclose all the stuff that pro Publica reported months ago. Look, man, I think his thing was. I don't even know what his thinking was. It was just kind of magic and for that him and his better late than never disclosure is our moment of Fuckeray, okay, wait, stop the press.
As MOLLI every year I buy you a cameo for your birthday, and this year, when it dropped on Ari Milburgh's show that Roger Stone said all that stuff about planning January sixth, I knew who I had to choose right then there, and I requested it. Then it took him a little while after your birthday. The posilla been busy, but live on air. This just happened while we were taping the Moment of Fuckery. It came in, so let's listen to what he said.
This is Roger Stone with a belated birthday greeting for Molly. Molly, I'm sorry I had missed your birthday on the nineteenth. I understand you went to see the movie Oppenheimer, Complete Propaganda. Oppenheimer was in fact a Russian spy and a Communist. I understand you have a beautiful you love politics. I'd love to invite you to one of my wild parties, but well those are long in the past. Today I'm a dedicated family man, no longer wild, but still loving life.
God bless you. Godspeed, and a belated happy birthday.
Whoa, whoa.
And the best is he was so late that they actually reflected to me, we got that for free.
Oh so bad. Oh my god.
We have so much fun.
That is incredible. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to hear the best minds in politics make sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.