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 majority of Americans have a negative view of billionaires spending more money to buy elections, according to a Washington Post IPSOS poll. We have such a great show for you today. Author of Evil Geniuses Kurt Anderson stops by to talk about Trump, saying the
Democrats should be hung. Then we'll talk to Aten ben about her run for Congress in a swing district in Tennessee.
But first the news, Milly. Let's remember the Heritage Foundation are not known for being very woke. They wrote Project twenty twenty five and particularly they really really really do not like immigration. Guess what. They're not happy with mister Trump.
Yeah, they are not happy with mister Trump. This is a really interesting phenomenon because we talk a lot about the Trump administration being bad at what they do. We don't talk a lot about the Trump administration being so bad at what they do that it being the only thing standing between us and complete disaster. This is extremely important.
The Trump administration is being blasted by the Heritage Foundation for how little they're deporting people and we see this with Christy Gnome, is that they're very interested in the optics of deportation, but they're not so interested in the actual deportation. And so we find ourselves in a moment where the only thing that is helping us, the poor, sad American people who are being pretty much we're sort of victims of this Republican admin is the fact that
this crew is really bad at what they do. And in fact, it's like an amazing thing, what Heritage says. And by the way, I am in no way endorsing Heritage, really, you me certainly not says. I mean, this is like some good writing. I respect good writing. The American people voted for mass deportations, they're getting mass communications instead, ha ha. Mike cow the Poet Laureate of the Heritage Foundation, Samali.
One of the things I think is funniest about the Trump administration is basically, since like let's call it day two, they've been like, we need a little patience with this economy. Yesterday we had JD. Van saying the thing that I had asked for the American people is a little bit of patience. Why do we need patients? Because Crypto, which apparently our whole economy is built.
On now pretty much.
It wiped out four hundred billion dollars in wealth this week.
I am just completely shocked that crypto is so unstable. You know how many people we've had on this podcast where they've been like, you know, crypto's just a scam. And by the way, I say this to my husband, who's very smart, I said, crypto is basically a scam, right, and he goes, well, so is the dollar. So I mean, I guess you could go back and say that.
You're not doing well in your argument with it's what about.
ISA, Yeah, exactly, though we like it. It's not just Bitcoin though, virtually all coins. All of these fake currencies are crashing at the same time. So it turns out I wonder how trump coin is doing. I'm sure trump coin is much much more stable because it's backed by the United States of Trome our King.
I was going to say, for as long as the Saudias are making money on oil, I feel like it's a little more stable than many others.
Now, all of these coins are crashing because they're and and by the way, let's just add in someone who knows what they're talking about. This unlimited fun. CEO Bob Elliott notes Friday morning, the selloff and bitcoin is mirroring recent weakness and stocks with much more extreme action because it's so unstable. But in fact, this is possibly the beginning of more of a bear and less of a ball. Mark.
Yeah. I can't imagine when you withhold jobs reports, why people lose faith in the economy and want to hold their money from silly things. I can't imagine.
The September jobs came in better than expected. Nobody knows about October or November, but September good for September. That was months ago.
Smike. When we last left Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, he seemed a little shook. I may have made some disparaging comments about his demeanor. Well, it seems that I was picking up a cent of lack of confidence because he's going to make it harder for discharge petitions to happen.
Yeah, so this is like he's so spiteful. I like his pettiness. First of all, I think let's just remember that discharge petitions are extremely hard to get past. In fact, Marjorie Taylor Green during their press conference, said that there is a four percent chance of getting a discharge petition which succeeds.
Look at you quoting your best ee.
Oh shut the fuck anyway. But the point is they're very hard to get to succeed because basically you have to go around the leadership and they're set up in a way to have trouble succeeding. Now, Mike Johnson is pretty mad because he got God right, like Thomas Massey and Rocan were able to get him. They were able to get this piece of legislation around him, and now he's he's salty, he's bitter, he's mad. And again it's worth realizing, like Mike Johnson is not good at this.
Mike Johnson got this job because Donald Trump needed someone who would just sign off on all his bullshit, right, because there were other people who were in line for this job who were insufficiently sycophantic, and those guys did not get this job. And so we find ourselves in this situation. I think that it is very stupid that Mike Johnson wants to go after discharge petitions. Now, Mike Johnson is also doing this because he he's the writing on the wall Hall. This is like such a function
of him being a bad leader. There's another discharge petition that just hit the two hundred and eighteen signature threshold. You have to like basically a veto provement. It's not quite a mutail proof for Jori, but you need to have two hundred and eighteen. You have to have quite a lot of Congressmen sign on to this in order to work. And now there's another one. A discharge petition is two hundred and eighteen and it's led by Jared Golden.
Jared Golden is this rural Democrat who's not running again. He is very concerned with working people, and so it would restore union rights for thousands of federal workers. It has only and again this is important to realize and also a function of Mike Johnson. Only seven discharge petitions have successfully signed into law since nineteen thirty five, but three of them have come in just last two years.
Wild So you might remember Trump's loyalty question for federal workers. Federal workers are now asking a judge to block them on their application questions. Because you'll be shocked here, this is pretty fucking silly.
This is like not what we do in this country. And this is one of the problems that Trump World has is that they're constantly trying to figure out a way to do like these like low key authoritarian things
in an American democracy. And this is a great example of how it doesn't work for them, Like there is no world in which judges are going to be like, yes, you can do loyalty oaths and again like this is a problem with Trump World, is that they constantly are trying to do things that are like not within the norms and institutions. Kurt Anderson is the author of Evil Geniuses and Fantasyland. At Kurt Anderson him Molly, I'm going to read you a quote about hanging democrats. Let's start
with this Reuters. This is a tweet from Ed o'keith at CBS per Reuters all caps. Trump does not want to execute members of Congress, Comma white House says, discuss.
Well and in their in their walk backs, such as they were from miss Levitt on it's it's always been no. But which is to say, you know they were, Yes, they were basically traders and horrible is as awful.
First of all, so this comes from Donald Trump saying retweeting tweets that said he wanted to x write it is this from a retweet or is this from well he said.
He said they were seditious and treasonous. These senators and congress people got together who who were military veterans, some of them veterans, saying, you know, we're just reminding everybody in the service and they are all trained on this from you know, not just officers, but enlisted people that you know, there are such a thing as illegal orders
and you are obliged not to follow them. Now, So that's how they were doing, and you know, you know, good, all right, and and he wasn't saying, you know the thing And then the thing is about that McCallum on Fox which you're interviewing Jason Crow said, well, there were any specifics, what were your specifics that they should disobey, Which is just a stupid question on so many levels, because of course they're not going to say and here are the specific things that Trump may do that you
should disobey the words so and if it said well the specifics of like maybe you should rethink, maybe you're going to be in trouble for blowing up these random votes in the Caribbean, that would be worse, much worse, and interfer you with an ongoing military operation. So anyway, it's ridiculous, it won't happen. It's just it's just more dangerous, extreme crazy bullshit that it could indeed inspire.
Someone someone to do something really bad, to.
Do something terrible. It is one more thing that we are supposed to jump at and go, oh, my god. And of course, in this case, because it is in the realm of to me, his most horrific and frightening instincts, which you know, we must take literally as well curiously, which is this militarization of American life and American politics, an American governance, and American everything else. He is serious about that, obviously. And so this particular thing isn't going
to happen anytime soon. But it shouldn't it by itself, as seeing I should not have a long life as a thing we talk about.
I want to direct you though, to the idea here, which is that members of Congress who served in the military did this video saying don't do a legal stuff you're not supposed to, which seems like an obvious kind of thing, but is very necessary when Trump is operating the federal government and Donald Trump says it's edition the answer to sedition would be not now. But it used to be that that was a crime punished by punishable by some kind of military execution. And Trump is saying
this because he's angry. Now. I wonder if you could talk about the world in which a person like this comes from, because you have covered this world nauseum, especially during the time that Donald Trump was becoming Donald Trump. It feels like something from someone who has studied at the foot of a guy called roy Cone.
Absolutely, And I was thinking of somebody else connected or at loose to contemporary roy Cones when I was thinking about Trump and this stuff today, which is who that will get into our other conversation.
That I think, you know, wait on Moley, but be scary was really effectively part of the roy Cone advice, along with deny and attack, attack and all those things.
But be as scary as you can. And so I mean he has said before. I mean, this is really not the first time he's gone to these places like General Millie that you know, Charmer and the Joint Chiefs. Under Trump in his first term he has said should be hung as a trader. And this the other thing
about this, it's not new that he does this. What's new, of course, is the last ten months where he's sending ice certainly and also uniform military people into cities to hang around, to scare, to show he's a strong man. So I barely want to get into the political ramifications of him doing this, which is to say, well, well, it won't this drive some people that think like he is not we've got to get rid of him. Maybe, but we'll see. I don't know, but it is. It is,
as you say, it's purely his angry thing. He saw this video. It's a well made, serious ad short and to the point, doesn't mention him, doesn't mention this administration, doesn't mention any specific things that this administration has done in terms of sending military in the cities or blowing
up random boats that are ostensibly drug traffickers boats. But it goes without saying so, and that he knew, he understood where it was coming from, and I'm sure he understood how potent it is, how affective, how these National Security CIA veteran people from Lysislock into Mark Kelly and Jason Crow and all the rest are really effective, you know, non weak, non left wing democratic lunatics in any sense speakers, so he felt it and good. I'm glad he did,
because it's it's a good thing. And again it was whoever came up with this idea to me, among those Democrats, it was brilliant, brilliantly conceived and brilliantly done.
So let's talk about the origin story of trump Ism for a minute, because we find our man in, you know, obsessed with cats, obsessed with Phantom of the Opera, obsessed with the world, and which he comes oh.
Interesting, interesting choices, which is you know, and I don't want to get into any kind of homophobia on this, but it is, it is these theory is important. And indeed this kind of strong man view of I am King, which you know, back in the day it's my magazine, we used to make fun of him for imagining a
kind of kingly superhero, among other things, you know. And I think of his origins and coming of age in the nineteen seventy sixties and seventy eighties, and I think of the dictators of the time, the people who actually did do these you know, send in and execute people
who shoot down protesters and all those things. I think of their esthetic because of what he's done in these last weeks and months of tearing down the East wing and putting up this, and putting up these gold do dads all over the Oval office, and now putting up gold dude ads in his new residential Hall of Fame on the west Wind Colonnade, which is insane on many levels. But it's in addition to itsself moarification. You know this, this shiny golden metal sign and the shiny golden do
dads around the portraits of presidents. And by the way, why do you a need it b need to call it a hall of fame? Well, presidents are all famous. I could go on, but it is so typical of these kinds of Middle Eastern Southwest Asian worldwide, the dictators who build giant palaces to themselves, right, and you know the esthetic of the super gold rococo shiny golden thing is his esthetic. You know. Look, from the beginning eighties
is when we started spy magacine. Right, apologies for ranting, but it's it's you're treating me into my into recovered memories. But you know he finishes Trump Tower eighty four, moves into his incredibly lavishly golden, cheesy vulgar triplex which is one of the one of the main sources of what we started calling him again and again and again and again back in spy Magacine, which is short fingered Bulgarian
Donald Trump. Right, it is this eighties rich guy of a certain kind, of a certain old you know, it's not just Long Island, but you know Long Island Queen's kind. And you know he buys mar A lago In at eighty five and starts, you know, tarting it up more he becomes. And this is the thing I always have thought about him. In connection to this gets back to
the Roy Kohane connection is Liberaci. You may be too young, Molly to remember Rocchi, but he was this extraordinary Las Vegas pianist singer who had been famous for decades, really famous at a really big Vegas star and incredibly campy, and of course was not an out gay man, but was a high league gay man, you know, big hair, new and fancy clothes and gold and everything. Played a golden piano on stage. I encourage any listeners who don't know who he is to get images of him and
his surroundings and ooling and interiors. It's very Donald Trump. It is extremely Donald Trump. He died in nineteen eighty seven, right shortly before he died as as by the way, as Roy con was also dying, Trump went out of his way to become friends with him, gave him a
condo at Trump Tower, went shopping with him. I mean they were buddies, shopping buddies, and you know, and again not just to say, oh he's vulgar, Well he is, but it also has struck me all along and in the Trump presidency, says part of his authentic seeming connection to a large part of his builder base is this. I know it's elite of me.
But rich. Yeah, I know.
It's one bit of popular authentic populism. Yeah, cheesy taste.
Right.
So anyway back to strong men, and they're aesthetic, you know, I think of the the Golden Palace dictators who are what happens to them? Then oh they're deposed and they're good regime.
Right. But I'm gonna I'm gonna prevent you from going there, and just we're going to just talk about for a minute what the sort of mentality is. So we have a seventy nineyear old Donald Trump. He comes from Roy Cohen, he comes from a world of when they attack you, you punch back twice as hard because you're a gangster, right, because you're a gangster. So I wonder, you know, clearly this is not working on a broader scale. We see this in America, right, they just got creamed in the
twenty twenty five cycle. We'd see you know, people like Marjorie Taylor Green going like, maybe this is not what I signed up for. Like this strikes me as the sort of third act of this play. So I wonder if you could inform us with some of the things that happened in the first act that you think might in some way shed a light on how this goes. I mean, my man is seventy nine, it's been along, you know, the last forty plus years have been rough for all of us.
Well, in the first act, I mean he again he was who he is then in terms of the bully, the lies, the gaudiness, the exaggerations beyond anything imaginable. All that in his first act ended with his bankruptcies and being close to personal bankruptcy. But certainly, you know, bankrupting several of his casino businesses. So it ended with that,
and he was caned out of the picture. Except as a guy who would attach his name to, you know, apartment complexes around the country until he got his TV show, which was of course, his The Apprentice, which was his second act. So he went down and he was real, He really went down. And you know, in a more you know, an easily alter timeline, he would have disappeared in the nineties and oughts, and you know, he was Whatever happened to Donald Trump would be a thing said
in this century. It worked out differently because of reality TV, which is, you know, in a larger sense, one of the horrors of our age.
Do you think do you think the original sin of trump Ism is reality television?
I think reality television was doing bad things to American culture. That was part of the softening up the ground for Donald Trump too, finally, after flirting with and saying he was gonna run for president in nineteen eighty eight, in ninety two, and ninety six, in two thousand, like he was part of the softening up the ground to allow
that to happen and take place. Sure, the blurring of reality and fiction into an indistinguishable mess was and and was part of it, as was the ultimate American thing which had started decades before which is being famous for being famous. He became famous for being famous. He never Yeah, he built a couple of buildings in the nineteen eighties, you know, as New York was coming out of his bankruptcy.
Well good for him, but that's what he did. I mean, you know, you know at starting with any who, you know, he did it for nothing, well virtually nothing, four hundred million dollars back then, which was a lot of money.
Yeah.
But reality TV is you know, made him what he used today and even beyond that terrible piece of collateral damage of reality television was from from when it started at the very turn of the century through this century, but especially those first ten to fifteen years of this century, you know, of net very bad thing for America. I had no problems with, say The Bachelorette, but right, yeah, you know reality TV is no good.
Yeah it's true.
But before you let me go, I have I have to give you my my again my or my full reverie on the strong Man and what happens to them and if so, if this is the third act, and and and what I hope will happen, what I believe will happen, is he will leave office and be more of an angry lame duck as the three years gone. God knows what he will do in the meantime as he acts out and slips into whatever mental neurological abyss he's He has always been on the precipice up, but
he will be out. However, there are many worst case scenarios about how this might and could all end. And again I don't hope that it ends in any any way but the normal, constitutional, lawful way. But I think just in terms of a I don't know, almost fictional, novelistic, poetic parallel about these other strong men with their palaces in Saddan, who's saying when you know fell and we had weeks of looking at these golden palaces and Kada
after him and Assad a year ago. Almost now we're almost at the anniversary of Asad being driven from what his palace is by his army failing to protect him in his government regime.
Colepsic, Kurt Anderson, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Jin Ben represents the fifty first district of Tennessee's House of Representatives since twenty twenty three and is running in the twenty twenty five special election for Tennessee's fourths congressional district. So welcome to Fast Politics.
Thank you. It's excited to be here.
We're excited to have you. So talk to me about your race, what you're running for.
Yeah, So this is for a special congressional election in Tennessee, the Tennessee seventh. It is the last flippable red to blue district in the entire country. For your listeners and your audience, Nashville was a consolidated Democratic district and following redistricting efforts in twenty twenty, they cut it up into three Republican.
Districts and this is one of those.
And so the opportunity is in front of us in that this is an R plus twenty district and we have been able to close the margin, shrink the margins by six points, which was last month, and our early vote data is coming back and it shows us within four points.
Wow. Yeah, that's crazy. So how did you do that?
It's an amalgamation of things. One, the momentum, right, So, two weeks ago we saw Democrats running on affordability be successful across the country, talking about issues that relate to the cost of living. In the chaos of Washington, and on that momentum we've seen just so much interest in a state like Tennessee. Too, is that I'm a community organizer, and so I spent the last decade building the ecosystem and infrastructure we need to leverage to actually win elections
in this state. And so I was the indivisible organizer for three years in Tennessee and built all these indivisible groups that are now knocking do orders and contacting voters to get us cross the finish line. And then three is the Republican agenda. Economic agenda has not delivered for working people in Tennessee. And there's a lot of fragmentation and fracturing we're seeing right now with the Republican Party.
And I think people are very sick of the chaos of Washington and the cost of living, and they're giving a candidate like me a.
Chance unbelievably cool, like I'm even without words. So you started these invisible groups, so you people know you in Tennessee and activists know you, and just explain to us how it works, because I think people don't quite understand how you can do something like this.
When Trump was elected the first time, I decided to move back to my home state of Tennessee, and I got a community organizing job.
Wow. I want to pause for a second because like, I don't know, did you ever know like the Arena that group the Arena, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. They used to always say like go back to where you're from. And around Trump's election the first time, I too had that same kind of thing where I was like, holy shit, my whole life, like how did I let this happen? So anyway, so talk us to what happened then.
Yeah.
So I was actually working at the un when Trump was elected or just come off a contract in Europe and decided to move back to Tennessee, and my parents were super upset, and I was like, mom, dad, I want to get involved in Tennessee politics. And my mom so upset she had to be escorted out of the restaurant.
And the job I got was for a nonprofit law firm that just got money to hire an organizer because of the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid cuts the twenty seventh Medicaid fight, so I was out in the hollers of the seventh District raising awareness about Medicaid cuts to rural hospitals, talking to public healthcare officials about what would happen if subsidies for the Affordable Care Act or cut lo and behold, it feels like groundhog Day because now
those cuts are actualized through the passage of the Big Ugly Bill, which is why I decided to jump into this race. But the important I think art here, especially in the South, is we've experienced historic disinvestment because oftentimes funding at the national level is tethered to progressive electoral outcomes, right, but in a stately we're oppressively jerrymanderd there's anti and we live in under an anti democratic regime.
It's hard to have those types of wins.
But this election, in my campaign, is a testament to all of that base building that we've been doing the past decade to get to a place where we are out organizing our opposition. And it is incredible to watch. And now this is a twenty point race, now a four point race.
And it makes sense because if you think about like those numbers in New Jersey and in Virginia, we saw shifts that were that big.
Yeah, even more and I and and in Tennessee there hasn't been competitive races, right, So like everything is going our way, and I would not be going across the state losing sleep to tell folks that we are ten points behind because.
We are so close, like we are so close to quitting this.
And it would send a message to Washington that people are done, they're fed up, We've had enough, We're tired of begging for crumbs, and it's time to send a message to the federal administration as we is, our Republican super majority that y'all have y'all not delivered for working families in Tennessee.
When is this special election? Special elections are weird? Who is it for?
I'm gonna ask you to do your own research about Representative Mark Green. But the representative there was some nefarious activity and then he decided to take a corporate job and left Congress after.
Voting for the Big Ugly bill.
So he left in August or July August, and it thus catalyzed a special election in Tennessee.
And it's the last red blue district in the entire country.
So that is amazing. And who is your challenger and what does the race look like?
Yeah, so I'm a pissed off social worker. I'm a social worker turned community organizer and now a state legislator. I represent Nashville, which is some of my district is overlaps with the congressional district. And my opponent has basically been groomed for this moment. He is a West Point grad. He served a few terms in Iraq. You know, he's not the issue, it's the people behind him. He's a
puppet to the puppet masters of the universe. And I think what's become increasingly clear in this race is one the impact of dark interest special interest money bolstering his name ID to get him across the finish line in the Republican primary, and then right now the Republicans have spent almost a million dollars or over a million dollars in our race when they didn't want to be pulled
down to this fight. So it just shows you how much we're outworking them, out organizing them, and they only can respond with, you know, the commercials about me, which you'll see them eventually, but that's all they have. And while we're knocking doors, you know, they're sending texts comparing me to Nancy Pelosi, and it just doesn't hit in the same way that it used to.
And ten years ago that is wild, but also it sounds like the district is actually like pretty urban.
It's tricky.
I mean, these districts were designed to be uncompetitive, right to.
Be districts, but their overreach.
The district includes the highest turnout precincts in Davidson County, which is Nashville, and then it goes all the way up to the Kentucky border and includes our purple County Montgomery, which is where Fort Campbell is there's a lot of veteran families, and then all the way down to the Alabama border. But there it includes a few counties where there are large concentrations of Democrats. So this is just a mobilization race. It's who can get their people out
to vote. And there was reporting showing following the Republican primary the Republican turnout is down eighty percent.
Wow, I've seen other statistics that say that. And also because it's as special and it's at a weird time, you're not going to have the same low frequency voters. Right.
Our polling shows that for the most motivated voters in this race were virtually tied.
It's fifty to fifty.
So the people who say ten out of time, I'm going to vote, it's fifty to fifty. It's the ones that are the sporadic voters that need more information, that need an extra boost to get to the polls.
But because this has become a.
Nationalized race, a lot of voters are receiving postcards, they're getting phone bangs from across the country, and I knew this is exactly what would happen, and it is. It is materializing in a big way, and it's getting our people to the polls, which is what's going to win this race.
If you win, what would that make the numbers in this Congress.
Yeah, the margin's very close.
I don't know the exact number, but obviously I think Speaker Johnson's margin is within three or four. And there's analyzes that I've read that said that it would It would just totally. I mean, it would undermine whatever power he has right now, just because another addition to the to the minority is not helpful for him. So more importantly, I mean, winning in a Trump twenty.
District would be the message that.
It's over, Like it is over.
This political project that you've been working on for forty fifty years is culminating right now. It's not delivering in the way it's supposed to be delivering unbelievable.
If you go to Congress now, you'd be in the minority, which is of course the worst, as everyone says, But there are opportunities. And like, I'm not just saying this because I like Robert Garcia, but I think Robert Garcia on oversight has done a really good job. And like, because everything is so crazy right now, there are actually opportunities to do things. I'd love you to sort of talk about what you feel like you could do in Congress.
Steve in the minority, Well, I have experienced because I'm a state legislator and a Republican TRIFECTUS super minority and a ninety nine per body there are twenty two of us. In fact, we could leave the state and they could go on legislating without us. That's how little power you have. All I'm used to that, and I have actually been able.
I've been very successful. Actually passed a bill of a partisan bill my first year as a freshman lawmaker, and two organizing so I use my legislative seats to file legislation that may not be passed the first time. It creates a vehicle for me to organize. And so in Tennessee, we have one of the highest grocery tax rates in the country, plationary cost of groceries in the country, and I, with my colleague in the state Senate, ran a bill to end the grocery tax by closing corporate tax loopholes.
And for the past three years, that is all I've been doing is organizing around it, and it has really shifted the paradigm one towards economic justice and a conversation about corporate power. And that's what I would do in Congress, is I would file legislation that obviously resonates with my district, but then use it to organize and build the constituency and the coalition I need to then maintain a rplus twenty seat in next November.
Yeah, this is a moment where those numbers don't mean what they used to mean, especially after that twenty twenty five cycle, like things could be very different, right.
Yeah, and especially once again in a state like Tennessee that has is not a battleground state, so there's not a lot of money spent it is we've been kind of left behind, and I think this race speaks to that, in which you have this political project of the Republican trifacta at all levels, and once again they are not
They're not fulfilling the commitments they made to Tennessee. And so I think what we have tried to do on this campaign is to build a coalition of the disenchanted, build a coalition of.
The pissed off.
If you are upset about the chaos and Washington and the cost of living, I am your candidate, and I will never fight for the puppet masters. I will always fight for the people in my district. And that message is absolutely resonating. The other thing I'll say is, I mean, as a lot of other states are in an affordability crisis. We can't afford rent, we can't afford utilities, we can't
afford groceries and healthcare. And so as a healthcare organizer, as someone who's always fought to make healthcare more affordable in the state, the paradigm is shifting for I think, especially Republican and maybe independent leaning voters to say, you know what, like you all have been advocating and lobbing against the Affordable Care Acts for a decade, and like, what do you have to show for it? You don't have any solutions, and that's what my opponent is offering is a whole pile of nothing.
Oh yeah, there's something really cool about people moving back to where they're from. Can you talk for a minute about the experience of moving back to where you're from.
I was someone who always wanted to get out of East Tennessee, and I think I had a reckoning like a lot of people November of twenty sixteen, not recognizing the place I came from. I mean, I had a wonderful childhood. I loved growing up in East Tennessee. I love Appalachia, and I didn't understand why this state had become so hostile and what happened to my community in
which they looked at President Trump as the antidote. And I think organizing across Tennessee and Kentucky in the South for the past ten years, it's provided a glimpse into that, into an answer, which is people feel like the status quo is not working. It is not working for that and I think, you know, last election was one about those that believe the institutions we have are working for them and those that aren't. And I'm a candidate who
has always checked power. I have someone that is always I'm not the chosen candidate by any party, and I'm someone that has always just used the golden rule and always centered the most impacted in my policymaking and my organizing.
And I think that's coming across, which is why my Republican opposition.
Right now is having such a hard time kind of pinning me to a wall and navigating this race.
Yeah, I'm sure that's true, and it has got to be really interesting running for this race. When is your election and just give us a little more about what people can do for you.
Early votings started last Wednesday and it goes until the twenty sixth, and then the election is December second, So we've got less than two weeks and the election is December second, And like I said, it would be one of the most profound upsets in the political upsets in recent history. And I'm just deeply honored to be the Democratic nominee at this moment in time and see at the national level.
Yeah, that's so cool. Well, congratulations, looking forward to seeing you in Congress.
Bears Cross's Yeah, it's been a wild ride, but I never thought I'd be running for Congress in the year twenty twenty five. But I think this moment demands a contagious courage and with the skill set to organize through this crisis, these compounded crises that we're going through, And I think inspiring thing, is inspiring the next generation to lead and hopefully will come up behind me and take back our country.
Yeah all right, well, thank you, thank you, great to have you. Hopeful to see you soon.
Pleasure well hopefully well once again, big fan, thanks for all you do. It's been wonderful watching your ascendants. So just really honored and thanks for covering this moment in time.
Thank you.
No mo.
Jesse Cannon smiling.
You know, nothing says Keystone Cops and just total outright disregard for the law, like Ice losing Kia evidence one day after being sued.
Yeah, I mean again, is it Keystone Cops or is it just dis I mean again, Are they incompetent or are they corrupt? This is like the game we need to play in Trump world. Are they incompetent or are they corrupt? And so four of four media reports said after ICE's broad View detention center outside of Chicago was sued October thirtieth for allegedly abusing detainees. The agency said that two weeks of video footage could not be shown, could not be found. They wasn't found in the system.
And that's of course where we have it. Of course, that's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear the best minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going. Thanks for listening.