Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics, where we discussed the top political headlines with some of today's best minds, and a PBS NPR mayrist Paul shows that Trump's support among rural voters is declining. Can't imagine why we have such a great show for you today. Talking Points Memo's own Josh Marshall stops by to talk about how Trump is failing to emulate Victor Orbond's playbook. Then we'll talk to Minority Whip Catherine Clark about how
Dems continue to try and fight back against Trump's agenda. Plus, we have a special bonus from our YouTube channel with the Bulwarks Great Willsomer on the Mega Media clown Show being invited to the White House press room. But first the.
News Smiley, we got to see Trump's budget. When I imagine the stupidity that awaits us each day, just the sheer grazing over this thing. The stupidity exceeds my expectations, which were are.
Okay, this is your way of saying, there are five ways in which Trump's budget will affect everyday Americans. Now disclaimer here, high likelihood this budget will not get passed, will not get passed in this way. But if it were to get passed, it would fuck a lot of the people for whom Trump is their mango tinted god king. So I think this is really important that we go through this for a minute, and we are going to start. Look,
this is all Project twenty twenty five. You'll remember Project twenty five as them slashing domestic spending, and that's where we are Trump enacting twenty twenty six. And so here are the ways in which this budget will completely fuck over our people, and especially people in red states. Number one is education. You'll remember tends to be red states have lower state taxes, and that means less money for education from the state, which means more money for education
from the federal government. Well, guess what Trump's budget would decrease funding for programs meant to increase equity and education. By the way, equity means poor people, right, it doesn't mean white people, It means poor people. So that means forty nine million from the Education Department's Office of Civil Rights, which would be about finding racial quality but also economical quality.
Funding underfunded schools, four point five billion for K to twelve and Title I programs by the way title I poor schools, schools where poor kids go, schools in red states where poor kids go. I bet you a gazillion dollars that many of those schools are in Trump districts. So then there's health. The big picture of the proposal would add five hundred million to Health and Human Services under Robert F. Kennedy Junior, and then three point five billion in cuts for the CDC. I'm going to say
that again because that is fucking humongous. Three point five billion cuts to the CDC seventeen billion and cuts the National Institute for Health, so twenty five reduction from the past year. That means the cancer drug trials getting cut, the Alzheimer's drug trials getting cut, the melanoma trials getting cut. I mean, this will be huge, mangus. It will mean there will be much less scientific research conducted in America,
and on and on and on. Another thing, which as RFK Junior is supposedly sober, he's cutting a billion dollars in substance abuse in mental health services. And then the veterans, of course get the shaft, and why wouldn't they, and Trump three point three billion in funding for veterans healthcare services, cut two point one billion to move medical records. Cut, cutting state rental assistance which would help poor people, cutting low income home energy assistance which helps poor people pay
for heat, all the things you would think. And remember this is being done to pay for Donald Trump's tax cuts for very wealthy people. So if you are not enraged, you are not paying attention.
Yeah, speaking of reasons to be enraged, Trump is calling for Democrats to be removed from Congress over their calls for impeachment of him.
Yeah, I mean, look, Trump does not like it. He's an autocrat, right, He's like Kim Jong, but not as good looking, and so that's an incest. Jesus, Kim Jong is a young and fit man in the prime of his life and happens to be a cousin. This is the same as that he doesn't like him. When people say stuff he doesn't like, it makes him upset. This is a case of that. So there's a Michigan Democrat
introduced seven articles of impeachment targeting Trump. Now, the reason why no one in the Democratic Party in the House of Representatives is trying to impeach Trump is because they don't have the votes, right, They don't even have the votes to make an impeachment go. So the idea of doing this, and we've seen Algreen kept doing it in Trump's first two years, from twenty sixteen to twenty eighteen,
he kept introducing articles of impeachment. But until you have the numbers to get there, you don't have the numbers to get there. So this is sort of a fool's errand but Trump is still sensitive. He doesn't like being impeached. He doesn't like the poor poll numbers. Maggie Haberman writes about this really well this week. She wrote a lot about it. You talked about NCN. Trump is bothered by this stuff. He's an egomaniac, so he is not happy with all of this negative stuff and he would like
to punish the people who criticize him. Thank god, we do have a first Amendment and as much as Trump doesn't like it, it still exists.
YEP.
So this week was rattled with the usual competence are they in they out that comes with the Trump administration, where we thought Mike Waltz was fired for a minute, but now he is the investor at the UN It's said, but one of the underdiscussed details was that in the cabinet meeting. He was using a signaled knockoff.
In Israeli, a fake signal chat in Israeli company, which is easier to spy on. So let us say that it seems very likely that Israel is spying on Mike Walls. I think that's a fair assessment. Mike Walls is a moron. I think we can all agree that he is a moron. He accidentally added Jeff Goldberg to a group chat. At every point, my man has done the dumbest possible thing. Now, Trump does not want to fire people like the last administration.
This is clearly what's happening here. Right. He keeps, you know, saying you're not going to get a scalp. You're not going to get his scalp. So now he's decided he's just going to move him to the job he was going to give to Stevanic. Now here's the thing about this United Nations job. Trump doesn't care about it because in New York, okay, But he also just doesn't really care about how government works. So he's like, we tried to give it to Stevonic. We can't give it to
Stevonic because we need her vote. So let's just put walls in there. They're not the same job, right, It's just he just doesn't want to fire walls because he doesn't want it. He feels like firing walls will give his critics his scalp. And so here we go. He's going to put walls in this other job, which I guess he thinks is less important. Again, I think this
all says more about Trump. Also, I just want to add that he keeps not firing people, and then he gave Rubio the job because Rubio seems like he's the least incompetent, which could actually be true.
I think it actually is true.
Yeah, can Rubio do all the jobs in the federal government? Maybe? Uh well, we'll see Health and Human Services secretary is next.
Mister Trump. He always changes things around Washington. Let me tell you, you know, these ambassadorships, they used to be for big donors. Now it's like the consolation prize you get when they make you lose a congressional district at an election to save face.
It's good, good stuff, good stuff.
I'm sure he learned this on the Apprentice. Anyway, So Trump, another feature of his presidency is total lawless and stupid executive orders that are crossing borders that he's not supposed to cross. And here we have that with him saying to cease federal funding to PBS and NPR.
All these executive orders are the dumbest use of anyone's time because they keep getting overturned in court. You'll remember Chris Krebs has been targeted by one Mark Elias. If you're on this podcast, you basically get targeted by a Trump executive order. It's kind of the present, no, I mean, so here's one where he and again this goes back to Trump not liking being criticized. Right, He's seen pieces in NPR and PBS which tell the truth. He doesn't
like that, and so he wants to defund them. But again, this is why, in a world filled with Columbia you want to be at Harvard, is that this is not going to work. Right, There's no world in which he's going to be able to do this the way he wants to do it, and it's going to be in court forever, and by the time it gets through the court, he'll have lost the House and Democrats will be impeaching him. So again, like, I see that what he's trying to do here, but it's not going to work. Josh Marshall
is the editor of Talking Points Memo. Welcome to Fast Politics, Josh.
Marshall, thank you, thanks for having me here.
We are day ten billion of Trump's second term discuss I.
Feel like sort of the fates are going to come down on me, or at least a lot of my readers or doomers are going to come down on me. But I think we've actually seen some positive developments over the last ten days or so. I did a post just kind of sharing with readers my sense of the situation, and I think that Trump is kind of already lost. Frankly, Now that doesn't mean that like this is over. I think it's going to get a lot worse.
Crashing the economy has maybe not.
On so many other things, on so many, so many things. I mean it simply in this sense that Trump's plan in this second season of the series is basically to impose a Victor Orbon system on the United States. Victor Orbon the longtime prime minister of Hungary. And I think in that effort to impose that kind of system, or even an Orbon like system, something not Batriconian Orbonic as we see orbonic. Yes, yes, I think that game may
already be over. That's not to say again that it won't get a lot worse, that there won't be a lot more damage. But I don't think he's going to succeed at that aim. So that is a positive thing in my mind.
So let's talk through this because this is a very good thing that I actually want to talk about. So Republicans decide of Victor Orbon was a genius to be emulated. There's a book called Erica First, all about how much Republicans love dictators and how this has actually been like that they've always loved dictators, and that like you can trace their Republicans who loved Franco. You know that at every point they've been like, these guys have great ideas.
So it makes sense. And they did bring Orbon to sea pack they had him do little talks. But what I think they didn't realize was that Orbon was ruling over a country the size of New Jersey.
Yes, and that is a very big deal. And he's also ruling over a country that has had a couple brief periods of democratic governance, not lasting more than a decade or two, and that's different. Now there's an argument that you hear with some people saying, hey, we've been at this for almost two hundred and fifty years. The roots of democracy are super deep here. It's not like other countries. And that's true, but that doesn't mean things can happen. But that is a factor I think what
people don't think enough about. And again I'm not saying it's a guarantee by any means. It's not that it can't happen here. It can, but you need to understand some of the reasons. And it's not just a matter of that, oh, people follow the Constitution, because obviously you've seen that doesn't necessarily apply anymore. And it's certainly not
like the norms of government. But something I've been thinking a lot about recently is that they're One of the things about American political culture is there's something really deeply rooted, which is a basic I can say what I want, yeah, right, And that is something you see across the political spectrum, and you see it at what political scientists referred to as articulate communities, and that we're not talking here about like you know, what kind of the vernacular you use,
but people who speak in big speak right and talk about the First Amendment and all this kind of stuff. And it also applies to just people like, hey, no one's going to tell me what to say. I can say what I want and I can show up at a town hall. And if you're right wing left wing, that makes all of this more difficult. And paradoxically, it tends to be elites that are a little more cowable.
Right.
That's sort of the big law firm that brings in billions of dollars and they're all kind of plugged into the state apparatus and stuff that they've got a lot on the line, and they can be calible. But average people tend not to be as cowable. Now, everybody's different, people have different places in society, but that basic impulse and that basic unfamiliarity with the idea that you might not be able to kind of sound off about what you think is something that is pretty deeply rooted in
American political culture. And at a basic level, what Trump is trying to do is to say, Okay, here's some new red lines. You can go out to what restaurants you want, You can do this, you can do that, you can say I'm awesome, can root for different baseball and football teams, but in the political sphere, aside from saying I'm awesome, no, right, and that's a hard sell in this country.
Yeah, I mean, I would say, like, if we're just looking at where we are in this moment, it strikes me law firms really did shit the bad in a way that almost no one else did. That Law firms Columbia. Those guys every day look like bigger and bigger cowards. That's my take. People who've left the country because they're scared this is Trump is a we can push back in a peaceful way against it. And also these people are morons.
I have always been on the skeptical end of the spectrum about whether Trump can pull this off from before the election and everything, but skeptical not saying it couldn't happen by any means. And what has kind of pushed me into this camp is, you know, to peace about this. A few days ago, kind of making the point that I've just made before that I think he's kind of
already lost that fight. And a reader wrote back to me and was sort of saying, Oh, I've been thinking along the same lines, and the reader managed to summarize what I had said much more concisely than I had which is that there's a way you could turn this country into an autocracy. This ain't it. This is not how you do it. You don't crash the economy. At the same time, that's really basic. One other point, everybody talks about the authoritarian playbook, right and how it gets imposed.
This is a thing that is out there in our political discourse now, that playbook that exists, and it does exist. But what doesn't get talked about a lot is there's one chapter that clearly Trump didn't read, but also a lot of the anti trumpers didn't read, and that is you got to keep the economy moving nicely during the transition,
and you have to keep key constituencies onside. And those constituencies are I mean as they as they used to saying kind of in Eastern European or like Soviet Russian terms. You keep the pensioners and the power ministries on side, right, the old people who need to get their checks, and
the military and the security services. He's doing that with Ice, but he's even antagonized what you know, our version of the security services and the military, and he certainly antagonized old people by like trying to blow up social Security. So there's an aspect of this. You can't go to war with everyone at once, right, you have to be
strategic about it. And so paradoxically he's actually doing domestically what we are seeing is not working internationally, which is that you might say, oh, okay, we're going to really, you know, crack down on you folks in China, We're going to put big tariffs and blah blah blah blah blah. But you need to have get other countries to go along with that. And if you're doing it to every other country at the same time, it's all going to fall apart. And in a way, that's what he's doing domestically.
Oh yeah, if you were going to say there's one moment where he really fucked himself, I think it's the tariffs because you have people like Ken Griffin, right, Ken Griffin the largest donor to Republican politics that isn't a Trump donor, and he's on there going he's ruining the American brand. Now, is he doing it because he's disappearing grad students? I think so. But why Griffin is saying
that is because he's killing the economy. I mean, so I do think he is on the fast track to alienating many of his allies.
Yeah, he is.
And there's another kind of allies. And this goes to kind of like don't tell me what I can say kind of stuff that when you have people in parts of the country who are very red parts of the country, and they are very red sectors of society, rural America, a lot of what remains of you know, manufacturing, you know, the kind of the more male parts of the manufacturing economy, fairly trumpy, in some cases, extremely trumpy. When when you start kind of breaking those parts of the economy, you're
gonna quickly get down to that true true believers. And there aren't that many true true believers. It's interesting you see this as some of the Wall Street people, and in some ways these are the most telling that you get people saying, man, I do love Trump, but this seems kind of messed up. But we sure about this, you know, you see it in the sort of the
acman types. I mean, that guy is so all in yet and he's like, uh, I love Trump and Trump is a genius, but I feel like someone must be giving him bad advice because you know, like, okay, good good, good job Bill.
Are you ever sort of surprised at how were they just a sleep for the last time he was president? Because I seem to remember like Bill Ackman being like what the fuck? Like, we've lived through twenty sixteen to twenty twenty and it every point there'd be moments where we'd be like, nah, he's not gonna do that, that would just be stupid, And at every point he has in fact done that very thing.
I think if you were paying attention to politics in the first term, and you were paying attention to things that, well, if you're paying attention to politics at all, you know that. But you've got a lot of these two things. You've got a lot of these guys, like the whole kind of crew around Elon Musk and guy or what is his name?
It sucks, right, it sucks, But we can pretty much say socks because a fucking guy. One thing you see, is it not all venture capitalists are smart.
Yes, One thing you see is a lot of these guys they found out about politics in like twenty twenty two. And beyond what you and I may think about bad views are wrong views. They're really ignorant about politics. They don't know things that happened even a few years ago. So that's one part of it. The other part of it is, and I think this is something that liberals and anti Trump people have not been cognizant enough of, is that if you looked at the economy, Trump inherited
a good economy. He juiced it with a big tax cut. Tax cuts have other bad things, but they do kind of rev the economy. He didn't really interfere much in the economy. I mean, he did do some things, but nothing like this. And so I think if you're really kind of on Wall Street and that's your world and your view of politics is just are they in our hair at all?
Didn't seem so bad.
Kind of like he basically just let the economy move along. He did a lot of deregulations, formal and informal deregulation stuff. And you know, there's a broader permutation of this, and that is if you just turned off the news in term one before COVID, right, if you just literally didn't listen to the news, people like you or I might be saying, oh my god, this is happening, Oh my god, that's happening. But like if you were just living your
life absent the news, most things seem fine, right. I mean, there are some sectors of the economy where things we are of the country or communities we're thinks. But for most people you could just sort of kind of yeah, he's this kind of weird dude, and like whatever, not my problem. That is different this time. I mean, things are happening that you may never listen to the news, but you know, you see the most striking thing you see and it is a reality regardless of what happens
to the real economy. People are really worried about losing their jobs right now, really worried about the economy, And those are the kind of things when you get people that worried, that takes on a reality of its own. If everybody gets worried and stop spending money, that's a recession right there, kind of regardless of what got you there. That's political. People don't like being worried, and whoever they blame for it can be in in you know, in real trouble.
No, I know, and I think that's a real question. We are out of time, unfortunately, but I hope you will come back because this went by so fast.
I always love coming back. It's so much fun.
Catherine Clark is the Minority whip and represents Massachusetts fifth Congressional District. Welcome to Fast Politics, Representative.
Clark, thank you, it is so good to be back on the show with you.
First, we're going to start by debunking there was a story in the Bulwark today that the Minority leader had said that he didn't want people going El Salvador anymore. This has been debunked already to me privately, but I'm curious if you'd like to talk about that.
I have not seen that report. Tell you that. Listen, we feel that we can do lots of things at once. We can talk about the importance of the economy of rise and costs for people, how they are being betrayed by this administration and the Republicans here in Congress. And we can stand up for rule of law in the fact that when you are denying to process anyone that
impacts everyone. Those are the values that we hold and that we have to meet the full spectrum of the corruption and the unconstitutional behavior we are seeing from this president and make sure we're talking about all of it and that includes sometimes showing up in places to show people that we care and that we're going to continue not to forget about these people, because it all comes back to what we're fighting for for families, and that's
a fair shot. And if you are giving up the rule of law, if you are giving up their shot at the economy, then then we are not doing our job and speaking up against the many atrocities of this administration.
I really do, and I've argued this before, that the Democrats can walk into gum. They can point out that the tariffs are bad, and that not giving people to process also bad, that it's not choice.
That's right. This is a whole American dream that is at stake. And you know, these all are interconnected. So we can't just say, oh, you know, we're not going to talk about this piece, or we're not going to emphasize this. We don't want to get sidetracked into deep arguments over the Gulf of Mexico being renamed. But these fundamentals to the safety and security of the American people, you bet we're going to show up and talk about that.
A lot of the stuff now we are Trump is a little more than one hundred days there were some pretty devastating polls released that showed that he's pretty much squandered any kind of mandate he had. Do you think that this will make a Republicans stand up to him, the fact that they are all up for reelection, at least in the House in twenty six.
His approval rating in some polls is down around thirty nine percent. If we want to give him a high, it's at forty four percent. But he's underwater, and he is the lowest at this point in his administration in recorded history. So I certainly hope that that gives the strength of conviction to some. We only need five at this point, five Republicans to say none of this taking away healthcare, veterans benefits, defunding public school, dismantling social Security,
taking away headstart food programs. One of this is good for folks at home. None of this is good for my voters, and none of this is going to be good for my reelection. Because he is the one. Donald Trump is the one who is leading their whip operation, who's bringing on their votes. It is the power of his personality. It is fear of him turning on them that is driving this zombie like adherents to him and these incredibly damaging and dangerous cuts that we are seeing
across the board. So I hope that as his political power arose with the very voters who voted for him in twenty four that this is going to finally give a handful of them, because that's all we need, the courage to stand up and do what's right.
Disappearing grad students, Well, you saw video Massachusetts of a woman being disappeared by playing closed ice agents. There's this Garcia case, but then there really are these grad students, a lot of whom are locked up in Louisiana. I know there was one released. Do you have an insight into what's going on there?
This case of Ramesa Ostok Toughs is in my district.
Yeah, that's what I thought.
She's a Fulbright scholar. She's studying the highly controversial topic of early childhood development. She is studying the impact of trauma on kids. She's kind of exactly who we want coming to our country, taking part in academia and contributing back. As far as we can tell, and people have looked into her background, the only thing that could be at the heart of this is that she co authored an op ed piece on divesting for the Tough Student newspaper.
I mean, she does not even have a parking ticket. And I think what is so powerful about it is that we do have video and we can see that this isn't a deportation process, This isn't exercising the state department's rights over student visas. This was an abduction. She
has been disappeared off the streets of our country. And as appalling as that is for her, if you can watch that video and not have a chill down your spine about where we are in this country, it is the ramifications and the implications for every single American when she has been sent to Louisiana, they've just gotten an extension on having to return her to Vermont, where they quickly moved her to avoid jurisdiction from a Massachusetts court.
But this has implications for every single American because we have a president who is now also expelling American citizens and has threatened to do this same process that we saw in her case, that we saw with people sent to Al Salvador to a facility that is basically a
torture camp without any due process. And I don't think that Americans disagree that if you illegally are here, if you did not go through an asylum process, if you're not a legal resident here or a citizen, and you have committed a serious crime, that you should be deported. I think people agree around that, But what strikes them as completely out of line, unfair, unconstitutional is deporting people without any way of appealing return ticket, without any proof
that they are who he says he is. They may be gang members or they may not. That's why we have due process, so people have a day in qirk. And when we start erooting it for people that we're unsure of that we don't like their political opinions. We don't like a student op ed peek is that somebody wrote without any accountability. Then it gets very very dark quickly, and it's really hard to say we are going to stand up for American citizens, especially when Donald Trump is promising their.
Next Oh giving me so bad.
I am no longer welcome at dinner party's.
Connelly has stepped off oversight. He is not well. He is an incredible member, stalwart, very great man. Now you have oversight, there is of race for ranking on oversight. Oversight is an incredibly important committee because part of what Oversight can do is get out what Democrats are doing, get the message out right, because these hearings are really they're televised, they're important, And I think a really good example is the Doge hearing. We saw representative from New Mexico, Stansbury.
She did an absolutely great job on the Doage Committee. And what happened was there was real virality for some of those quotes and she was able to give as good as she got when it came to Marjorie Taylor Green, which is not nothing. So now we have Oversight, there's going to be a question of who is ranking member. There was a lot the public, not just me, feel that the party is not doing enough to elevate young people, not so much because they're young, but because of the
communication issues that younger people tend to be. And this is not always true, but certainly on Oversight, the younger people like AOC and also Jasmine Crockett are really capable when it comes to social media in a way that maybe some of the older members aren't. So what do you say to Democrats who are frustrated that they feel that there's not enough of an effort to elevate younger
people in these leadership positions. I think ultimately the big question is really just who can get the message out there louder, more than whether or not you know, sort of anything else. But you know, it is this idea, if we are in a democratic emergency, which I think all of us feel, should there really be an emphasis on trying to elevate people who can transmit that in a public forum.
And so I'd love you to talk about that. Yeah, listen, I would say that we agree. And part of what I love about our caucus is that we really do reflect the American peaceeople, and when I look across the aisle, I don't see it. We are the most diverse caucus in the history of Congress. We look like people look, and we are of all ages, and I think there
is a role for all of it. But I think you can look at we have internal elections for our communications team, the folks members of Congress that are part of the leadership team that really help us think about better ways to innovate, communicate using new media. You know, it's we are so beyond the newspaper cable news world. We have to be on YouTube, on social media, on podcasts,
meeting people where they get their news. And that's why we elected Maxwell Frost, that's why Lauren Underwood is there. These new voices are very important, and those are just two examples. You know, Robert Garcia another really critical voice that sits on our leadership table, and Jasmine Crockett as well, like these are voices that are so central to our success.
We want young people and we want every age, every American to be able to look at Congress and see themselves reflected back, not just in the policies, but because they see people talking to them who share their life experience. Because that's the idea that we come from different parts of the country, different ideologies, and different life paths and different glide paths, different ages, and we come together and
we make a better product. And that is something that we take very seriously, and especially in these roles around communication. There has been a real elevation of those who who are younger, who are just very comfortable and understand social media and way that if you didn't grow up with it is a different understanding. And frankly, we just have some incredible political talents that happen to also be young members. So let's elevate them. It doesn't mean there isn't room.
I am part of a leadership team that just moved in and relaced a very long so I think the Democratic Party is not only open to this, we're actively using our younger members and promoting them and strategizing with them.
Yeah, Trump is crashing the economy. Tariffs are a real problem. There are legislative blocks to Trump's tariffs. They have the numbers in the Senate to block the tariffs. Do they have the numbers in the House. I think they probably don't. But I'm just curious if you think there's any sort of hail mary on the tariffs.
There was a brief moment there when these years in the stock market was in an absolute free fall. I mean the fact that numbers came out today, our economy is actually contracted, and we know that over eleven trillion dollars has disappeared out of Americans pockets because of the actions that Donald Trump has taken. But it's far more than just the stock market going down. Even though that impact on four to one kes like, I am not under estimating that and that is a very real loss.
But it's when I talked to like the small and micro businesses in my district that are so terrified to watch everything they have built feel is just slipping through their fingers. We did a round table last week with Hispanic small business owners in my district and the story is about the construction firms that have been built, but now their bids don't make sense anymore. They're not profitable, and they're locked in because the price of aluminum and lumber has all gone up and the job they bid
is no longer going to make them money. Talking to a local fashion designer about how she needs to not only sell her beautiful designs, she needs to sell a story that makes people want to invest in her clothes instead of buying something mass produced. But when you are spending all your money on the increase in her inputs, in her fabrics, in the things she needs to make her clothes, she doesn't have a marketing budget anymore, and that is how she is able to sustain her business.
And so these these tariffs are having impacts on the largest international companies that come and meet with me, but it's also affecting our main street. And my real concern is that with all of this, it is not an on and off switch that we can say, well, wait till Donald Trump is out of here, or wait till we win the midterms, and then we'll just turn it back on. One example, Molly from my district, I am
so fortunate to sit in this cradle of innovation. We're the best in the world at taking ideas out of the academic lab and putting them into the marketplace, and that means delivering hope and cures for Alzheimer's, for cancer, for diabetes, for als.
So you're affected by the NIH grants, the NIH friend.
And we are going to lose these scientists to other countries.
The NIH grants. From what I understand, Elon decided to cap indirect funding at fifteen percent because he didn't like the idea that these grant recipients were getting indirect funding that could be as high as eighty percent of the grant because he didn't maybe understand how grant funding works and didn't understand that this indirect funding is for microscopes, and you know the kind of people work in the labs and upkeep of the labs, et cetera, et cetera.
Now a lot of doge has been reversed. People have been rehired. Has that happened within AH funding or is it just frozen or where is it?
Yeah? I mean that is an excellent question because a lot of it is in limbo and we have these champions historically on the other side of the aisle who've
just gone mute. I mean it has been Republicans on Appropriations, which is committee I sat on for years before coming into this leadership position, who really understood that those you know we talk about indirect costs, they're really facility costs, and they are part of what we have decided as a federal government is good for making that investment and fundamental research that then we can partner with private entities and make sure that we are delivering cures, that we're
delivering hope and research and technology that then we sell globally. So this is it's good for people, it's good for families searching for some cure for their child's cancer diagnosis, and it is good for our economy. Why would we seed that? But this is exactly what DOGE did. They came in, they broke things in order to rob you of that funding, and there was an absolute carelessness and
casual cruelty to it all. That comes with people who are insulated by great wealth from anything bad happening to them or their family. And that the way they went in not only into our private data, but just treated things like clinical trials. We have heard stories of constituents who were scheduled for surgeries that have been canceled. So while they say, well, we're going to you know, this funding is technically may come once this court case is resolved.
That surgery is over that trial. It's over those scientists. And there was a poll today of sixteen hundred scientists in Nature magazine. Seventy five percent of them are looking to move abroad because they can't see the future here. And that's what I mean by these impacts could be generational.
And why would we take that innovation economy that Americans have always been at the cutting edge of and give that just give that away for some you know, ill conceived, not thought out, not data driven, set of hackers following Elon Musk into our systems, into the programs that people rely on. And this research and using research dollars as a way to sort of get into a power struggle with the universities around the country is just so misguided. And the impact of all of this comes back to
people at home. To people at home are working hard and they frankly don't feel like the system works for them now, and they're looking for people to say we're going to do better, but breaking everything, holding up research dollars because you don't like a political opinion, abducting people off our streets, taking away jobs, ruining contracts for agriculture,
and farmers facing great uncertainty. None of this is about building the American dream, about creating opportunity, about creating efficiency in the way we serve people. And it's just such a cruel, calculated assessment. We're going to take this away from you. We are going to create cynicism around government programs because when they break, they don't work well, and then we'll either privatize them or just cut them. And who is the only one who benefits The very, very wealthiest,
the most powerful people. They'll be getting a tax cut that the rest of you are going to pay for. I mean, it's as dystopian as it comes. We have to look at who we are, and we've got a fight for this country, and we have to make sure that everything we do is centered around folks at home. You know, the ninety nine percent of us who work for a living and who feel real frustration about they
work hard and they're not getting ahead. But they're certainly not going to have better luck if they don't have healthcare, if they don't have their veterans benefits, if social security is dismantled, and all these fundamental needs that people have to take it away in order to make the winner circle so small in this country for those who already have great wealth is so upside down in perverse and we just every day we are showing up and fighting back.
Thank you, Representative Clark, thank you, thank you, thank you for joining us. That was great.
Thank you.
Mollie will Sommer is a reporter at The Bulwark. Welcome to Fast Politics.
Will Sommer, Hey, thanks for having me.
We needed to talk about what the fuck is going on because the maga media industrial complex is so in the zeitgeist at this moment for a lot of even more dysfunction than the usual dysfunction. So I would love for you, I think of you as the guy who knows about the mega media complex to explain to us where are our favorite or in this case, least favorite players. Where do we find them in twenty twenty.
Five, they're thriving for the most part. I mean, I think they're enjoying more influence than we ever could have imagined. I mean, the White House now this week has held three influencer briefings where they kind of bring me three. Yeah, and they're probably another one, you know, another one coming this week. I mean it's like day to day and so they'd bring in you know, sort of a sideshow freak show.
If I could say as much, it's Sobiac, it's who else.
Well, they have a new cast every day, and they have a new at least one of them will have some sordid backstory, you know. Be They had a woman on Monday who this Texas woman who is most famous previously for thinking the moon disappeared. She had tweeted, anyone seen the moon in a while? It went away? Yeah? Yeah, we got Jack Pasobic. We've got c. J. Pearson, who's kind of like a young Naga guy. We've got this guy named Dom Luker who's like a conspiracy theorist who's
very popular on Twitter. He famously was banned from Twitter for posting child porn. Uh you know that he got back on. I mean it's it's a real it's a real Rogues gallery.
So this crew they do the MAGA briefings. And are they are the MAGA Briefings any different than the regular.
Yeah, I would say the tone is different. I mean the you know, Caroline Lovitt acts like, you know, she's going over to her best friend's house. I mean, she's just she says, oh my gosh, I could go around with you guys all day. We're having so much fun. And then she poses for pictures with them, and they asked these questions, like you know, the famously I think the one a lot of people saw on social media with link Lauren, who's kind of like an RFK crony.
He looks like Draco Malfoy, so he's got like the like the platinum hair, and he got up there and he said, you know, Caroline, like, you're such an inspiration for American moms by comparison.
Yeah, I saw that.
Yeah, so many parents were killing themselves under the Biden administration because he was such a bad president. How do you do it? It's a lot along those lines.
But they also have during the regular briefings, they have a new media seat, which is a MAGA influencer seat to explain what that is.
Yeah, so the new media seat is this seat such as it is that they made, and it's weird, right, it's right by the press secretary. They claim it's to you know, open things up. But traditionally or you know, what it's been so far is I would say eighty to ninety percent maga, either from a right wing outlet or you know, even you know, more ridiculously, just like
someone with a Twitter account or an Instagram account. And then every so often they'll put in like they put axios there the first day, they put the Philly Inquirer a few days ago, the Fame like two hundred year
old newspaper. But like clearly they're trying to make it not just all maga, so they have a little plausible deniability, and so then those people ask questions like Timpoole famously was in it last week and he said, you know, wouldn't you say that, like, you know, the media is a bunch of scumbacks essentially, and that they're they're so rude to me and the rest of the new media crew. So you know, this is what we're what the press operation looks like at the White House.
These days, timpoole like he's clearly losing his hair. Just we know the Beanie is not fooling anyone.
He's not the first guy to go bald. And you know, it is fascinating that he's sticking with the beanie. I mean, he wore it Tamara Lago to some like gala. So he's wearing like a tux and a beanie and he doesn't even have a formal beanie. It's like always the same beanie.
So summer, I feel like the Beanie when it hits summer, like you gotta there's no one else wearing a hat a winter hat.
Right, I mean yeah, someone pointed out, like when he was at the White House wearing the Beauty, the temperature in DC was like eighty degree.
I mean, it just doesn't make a lot of sense. So let's talk about what sort of where we are with this crew. We have Laura Lumer, who is pretty much in and out of this White House as far as I can tell. Mike Walls, I don't know if he got fired or if he left at his own volition, but he is out as we tape this. Talk to me about sort of Lumour's influence here.
Yeah, this is an interesting one. I mean, so Laura Lumer has been on this campaign for a month or so to purge elements of the National Security Council. This was this started a few days after Signal Gate kicked off, and she was really successful and she got a bunch of people fired. She maybe got the head of the
National Security Agency has also fired at the time. That's nice, and I mean she met with Trump to do all this stuff and then you know, and what's not saying to me is like, this is someone who a few years ago, even with Mago World, was like persona non grata. I mean, she chained herself to the door of Twitter. She did all these really desperate stunts that even those people were like, oh boy, I don't know, I want
to associate with this person. And now she's I don't know, the most powerful person in the national security apparatus outside of government. I mean she so so today she got well who's to say why. We don't really know yet quite why Mike Waltz was fired, but his deputy now he.
Was fired or do we think he just laughed.
I don't think it's confirmed, but I think it's probably fair to say that he was fired his deputy, Alex Wong, who was Lumer's number one target, and so she tweeted Scalp. So she, obviously, I think, is trying to take credit at least for Wong getting fired. There's so much like criminology that goes into what's going on here. I mean, how much is she acting on behalf of like a rival faction within the Trump administration? Are they digging up this stuff? You know, it gets very complex, but we
have to speculate a lot. But I think, you know, the idea that she has any sort of influence over the administration, especially this much influence, is really wild.
It is wild.
Wild is the word.
So I just want you to kind of explain to us there is this same group of media influencers. There's a certain kind of trumpy. There's like a lot of money making going on here too. Can you talk us through like meme coins. You know, there's a lot of like Liberty I saw Liberty Financial has gotten involved again. I remember them from Seapack. Like, it seems like a lot of people are making money on this admin in ways they maybe didn't the first administration.
Yeah, I think that's right. I mean the one that's top of mind is The Times just has an article now about how Trump coined the Abu Dabi government is going to do a deal for two billion dollars involving trump Coin, involving the cryptocurrency change finance at the Times that like even in there's one and of course the guy announcing this it's the fun though wit cough So the Time says, you know, even within this sentence, there are so many conflicts of interest in this one or
two lines that he said describing this deal. It's true. I mean there's just every which way. I mean, it's almost hard to keep your eye on all the conflicts of interests and all the grips. But I agree with you that it seems, you know, in the first administration, we were talking about like our foreign government buying rooms at the Trump hotel, and so what is that bringing in hundreds of thousands of dollars? And now we're talking about potentially billions of dollars.
It seems like a lot more money. And it also seems like this crew is more embedded than they were last time. Wonder if you could talk about that, Like in twenty sixteen, there was a maga media, but it didn't have it was not as developed, and there still was a mainstream media. I feel like now there isn't as much mainstream media, and the mega media is so developed that they don't it's almost like they don't need the mainstream media anymore. So talk to us about that.
I think that's right. I mean, I think the Trump White House is being very smart about giving a just a huge amount of access to these right wing media figures. You know, we mentioned the influencer briefing, but they're also bringing them in, I think at least twice a month at this point, bring people in to just interview cabinet secretaries and just do these kind of like very like
messaging type things with radio hosts, Instagram influencers, whatever. I think the administration is sort of trying to edge out the mainstream media and just sort of issue more pronouncements through outlets that they control. And so you know, we're seeing that also. I mean a lot of these people literally in the government. You know, the FBI director Cash Bettel was a big right wing media figure, Dan Bongino, the deputy FBI director, I mean, Pete Eggsath, right, I
mean there's so many examples of this. I just had a story today about Armie Dillon, who is sort of famous as like a maga media legal figure who's now the deputy of the or the head of the DOJ's Civil Rights Division and seems to spend most of her day just tweeting about you know, TWR followers about you know,
what she's up to. In a way, it's like these right wing mediafigures are still in they're in the government, but they seem to still see themselves as rightly media figures with audience that they have to feed and stuff like that.
I have two questions about Hamid Dylan and also Cash Patel. These guys were media people. Are they doing their jobs now like it seems like Cash Patel seems I mean, we probably shouldn't say it is, because we're all gonna end up in GIMO, but he seems awfully quiet.
Yes, he does well. Famously, he doesn't live in DC. I believe he lives in Las Vegas, right and it's sort of commuting such as it is. You know, a lot of these people, I think they are they're doing the eye did the job with kind of an eye on the right wing audience and the MAGA base. You know, I think about Pam Bondi handing out those Epstein binders to the right wing influencers, supposedly because she felt like, you know, she she hadn't wooed them enough, which you
know is like a legitimate concern for her. When we see that Laura Lumer can kind of chop heads off on the NSC, you know. Similarly, you know someone like Dan bongee know, who is constantly posting like, you know, stop bugging me. We're working on it, you know, just
around the corner, big results ahead. So you know, these people are really like forward facing towards the public in a way that you know, he told all the FBI Field office directors that they need to get on social media, and so now they're all all these like old white guys in suits are recording like short form video content.
How much of this is the actual job? Media influencer and the Civil Rights Division don't seem like a Venn diagram with a lot of mutual.
You would think, I think traditionally, you know, I was thinking about it, and I was like, well, how did the previous heads of the Civil Rights Division act? And obviously it's no one we've ever heard of.
Regrets.
But when you think about I mean, in Harmy Dillon's case, I mean, she is turning this office into you know, what was once about police brutality, voting rights, et cetera, and now it's going to be about you know, focusing on quote anti Christian discrimination, trans women in sports, this kind of stuff. And so you know, it's more right wing culture war. That's why roughly half the lawyers are expected to quit there. So I think, you know, if you look at it from that perspective as like, how
can I get on Fox News? How can I do podcasts? I mean that that all makes sense. She tweeted at one point, you know, okay, like first week on the job, what podcast should I go on? You know, and and a lot of her bands said, you know, hey, you're supposed to be sending Hillary Clinton to Guantanamo Bay. What are you doing?
Yeah, it does seem like there's a real tension there between doing their job and delivering from MAGA. One of the things we're talking about these Epstein binders. When Bondi gave the Epstein binders to the influencers, some of them were actually pretty disappointed about what was in them, So talk us through that.
Yeah, I mean, you're exactly right. I mean there is a tension between they. I think the conservative base and the audience, and these personalities as well has been raised and taught to that they can basically whatever they want, and if they don't, it's because the deep state is betraying them, or the rhinos are after them or whatever. You know. We saw this in the in the twenty twenty election, where Fox is saying, oh my gosh, you know, we have to tell them the election was stolen because
our audience is so that they believe it is. And so in this case, let's take the Epstein binders. I mean, Pambondi claimed at one point the Epstein client list was on her desk, but we're all getting ready to release it, you know, everyone who's familiar with Epstein and step says, well, actually, that client list probably is mythical, that doesn't really exist. So instead she gets some documents they're kind of already public or whatever. We can look at our Robert F. Kennedy,
who is obviously a big anti vaccine guy. Then suddenly two children die in Texas of measles, and he has to come out and say well, yeah, I guess you should. You should take the measles vaccine, although he's now walking that back and saying, well, you know, it's reasonable for people not to want to take the vaccine, and you know, we need to take care of them in other ways, and maybe it's not that big a deal.
That's sort of where I'm getting too with this. I would love to get back to this just the Epstein stuff.
First.
There is no there there. I mean, there's there there, but there's no new information there right as far as you can tell.
Yeah, I mean, I think it's sort of like the JFK files. I think there's material that could come out that would be interesting. People who have followed the case really closely. It'say, oh, you know that that adds sort of a new detail we didn't know. But I think that that in terms of like yeah, right, I mean, they're expecting like Oprah and Tom Hanks and all these other people to be on this list. They expect like
every prominent liberal to be on the list. And you know, so in Pam Bondi's case, I mean that means she has to you know, what's she going to do? I don't know. I mean I think she has tried to delay this as long as possible. You know. Recording from our reporting from our colleague Noah Shackman claims that the prosecutors in New York have basically all been detailed to redacting these files and getting them ready to release such
as they are. You know, at the same time, we have someone like Anapoline a Luna and Congress the Republican putting pressure on and saying like, hey, Pam Bondi, it's time to put out the files. So, you know, I think Pam Bondi's in a tough spot there.
And this is the RFK stuff. They're all in an impossible situation, right, RFK. Clearly we saw this today. They're making moves to try to go after vaccines. There's a new placebo testing way to test a vaccine, completely unnecessarily meant to make life harder for vaccine companies. It strikes me that that RFK Junior anything less than taking away vaccines will be a failure on his part, right, I think that's right.
I mean, look, I mean, the the people have been taught that vaccines are you know, killing people and all this stuff, and so then the government to say, well, I don't know, maybe we'll just make the vaccine development a little slower. But yeah, the poisons took about, I mean,
it doesn't make any sense, you know. I've been reading, you know, these RFK supporters and how they're grappling with it, and one of these influencers was saying, you know, well, RFK maybe doesn't have the political cloud to ban ban vaccines, but maybe he can kind of nibble at it around the edges, which sort of makes sense, I guess. But at the same time, I mean, if this situation is as dire as they claim it as, you would think that,
you know, they'd be more aggressive. I think a lot of the anti vaccine people are also concerned that he's focused too much on these more palatable political goals like danning artificial dyes and foods, and from their perspective, like they couldn't care less about that. I mean, why did they care if you know, hot cheetos are a little less bright. I mean they think this is kind of this like huge struggle in terms of vaccines.
Is there stuff getting accomplished on the foodside, the food die side.
Well, it's very bigue. I mean, there's been a lot of you know, it's kind of a very Trumpian, you know. I think about the tariffs and that the oh we have a deal, No, we have a deal to discuss a deal, this kind of stuff, and so in the same way our case saying well, you know, I'm maybe meeting with these food companies and you know, meanwhile absolutely slashing the budget for researching and you know, finding out new medical cures and stuff like that.
Yeah, just tell me what you're watching at this minute in MAGA, the Megamedia Industrial Complex.
I'm always inn in these influencers that the White House
is elevating. I think that that's interesting. I feel like there's there's going to be an appetite for as clearly if Trump sticks with the terrorists, I think the administration is about to hit a really rough patch, and I'm looking out for if there's going to be a new q Andon type thing that really takes things from the from you know, kind of Fox Move talking points into like a realm of new reality where you know, we can say, well, the real reason Trump is failing is
because of this sinister cabal or something like that. Because I think obviously Trump will lose supporters, but I think the kind of the hardcore base is going to look for something that is so crazy that they can just ignore what's going on. And so what that looks like, I don't know, but I'm looking for it.
So interesting.
Thank you, Will somer Hey, thanks for having me no moment.
Jesse Cannon, Molly Jungfest.
So it's been a while since a profile really rocked the political world the way this one did today. Bed Terris first up, he's for New York magazine. Bed's a friend of the Pod.
Of course, and used to be at the Washingbos.
Yes, he did a profile where he talked to a lot of former John Fetterman staffers, and I have to say the tail it weaves does not sound good.
Yeah.
Again, I don't know what's happening with John Fetterman. But what this story seems to talk about is how much he is just not himself, right. I think that's that he's not the person he was, and that he's just not back to normal in the way that I think a lot of us hoped he would be, and just that he's had a real personality shift since his stroke. Again, I I don't know what happens now. I don't know what the story there is we hope that he gets better.
We hope that he doesn't hurt himself or anyone else. That's it for this episode of Fast Pollings. 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.