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 seniors will be hit with a ten percent cost increase with Medicare Part B in twenty twenty six. We have such a great show for you today, Ziteo's own Mehdi Hassan stops by to talk about Trump's maneuvers to get around the release of the Epstein files.
And we'll talk to Vanessa Williamson about her new book, The Price of Democracy, The Revolutionary Power of Taxation in American History. But first the news, Smali.
We are hot on the heels of the vote to release the Epstein files in the House. One person voted to not release it. One principled demand Clay Higgins.
Clay Higgins, you may remember him from you won't remember him, but he does exist.
He's got a very memorable accent.
Molly, who's just in Congress. There are so many members of Congress, you eat is too many memors of Congress four hundred and thirty five, But only one voted no to release on the Epstein transparency list, which is I think, I mean, I think it's certainly worth thinking about this because it is kind of nuts. Right, here's an opportunity to do something that is wildly popular. Everyone wants the Ebstein files released. I don't know. Clay Higgins voted no.
I was at the press conference. I heard Marjorie Taylor Green.
Tell us about your new best friend. Woke Marjorie Tailer Green.
Woke Marjorie Taylor Green. Okay, So again, I am very much of the belief that politicians do what is expedient for them. I think that Marjorie Taylor Green is doing the right thing, and I am glad that she is doing the right thing. I also think that it's important to remember these people are in fact politicians and not philanthropists, or they are in fact political actors serving political political passions and political ambitions.
I can't believe you just cast aspersions on her asparagus like this.
Right, So, during the press conference, you had first Rocanna, then Thomas Massey, then Marjorie Taylor Green, and these survivors got up and talked, and you could see that these survivors really did feel And again, I'm not saying Marjorie Taylor Green is not responsible for doing a lot of bad stuff. I'm just saying you could tell that they felt that she was fighting for them. They felt that she cared about them, because you could tell because they
looked at her and they were crying. And so again, I am in no way vouching for the character of Marjorie Taylor Green, but I am telling you that these
women clearly felt that she was fighting for them. What else I thought was very interesting was that there was a sense in which Marjorie Taylor Green, like you could tell she was very upset that Donald Trump had called her a trader, like she was truly emotional in a way, AOC said, And AOC is probably right that Marjorie Taylor Green is doing this because Trump didn't back her senate run. She wanted to run for senate, and certainly that is
absolutely possible. But I did get the sense that Marjorie Taylor Green felt being called a trader was somehow next level, was some kind of demarcation, had crossed some kind of demarcation line, and she's pretty upset. I want to say two things about this. One is that these are politicians, and you do yourself no favors when you ascribed to
them anything other than political motives. That said, these political motives dovetail to enact the same thing, which is the release of the Epstein files, which all of us want. So now these files they passed the House, now there's a lot of pressure on the Senate to pass them. Rocanna and Massy both said that they want to avoid Foon adding something that would make it harder to get the information goes through the Senate, it will then go to Donald Trump's desk, where I think you will sign this.
I don't think he will reject it. I think he'll sign it. And then I think what will happen next. I think this DOJ will try to obfuscate and fight, but I think eventually some some of this will get out.
Yeah, they'll just be about Bill Clinton and Larry Summers and that is it.
Yeah, Okay, So while this vote was happening, we did have a pretty disturbing press conference where Donald Trump was in the White House with MBS. And sometimes Trump says dumb things. Sometimes Trump's haysn't distracted. Sometimes Trump is reckless with his words. But I would say what happened with him at ABC was really not good. That he did not like a wne of questioning and he really lost his shit.
Yeah, So the reporter asked Mary Bruce asked a question, and he said it was fake news. And then he said, it's not your question, I mind, it's your attitude. I think you're a terrible reporter. You're a terrible person in a terror reporter. And then he's theorized that the leaders at ABC News were psyching boosts up to ask Trump a leading question about Epstein. You know, Epstein is the only case going on right now, so I mean it's basically the only story. I mean, it's the biggest story
right now. And if you had a White House reporter who gets a question, why would you not ask that question? Like it would be malpractice. You know, she doesn't work for MAGA News one two three. She works for a real newspaper, and when you work for a real newspaper, you have to ask real questions. I think Trump has gotten a little too comfortable with his sycophantic group of fake reporters, and so he doesn't like real reporting.
I mean, the fact that he's been asked so infrequently about his relationship with the MBS and what MBS did to Jamal Kashogi really is a bad indictment of the media and seeing this today was a great sign of great work. But getting their broadcast twice and is threatened not good.
Not good. And I think it's worth remembering that this is the first time MBS has been back since Koshogi has been murdered in twenty eighteen, so like, this is actually quite relevant and important, and so asking questions about that is not so unreasonable. In fact, it's really, you know, the only thing in town. So yes, it just is mind boggling. Is stupid, this whole fucking thing.
So my, we saw a funny thing.
And if this was the way everything got left to stand that a judge's blocked the new Texas congressional maps favoring the GOP at the jerrymandering that they're trying to use to get ahead of the midterms.
If for some reason this.
Stood, it would be amazing.
It really would be basic.
Remember Texas gave Trump five seats because Trump said he wanted five seats and Abbott was like, you got it. So now we have this bipartist. So now we have and that kicked off California doing this vote to give five seats to Democrats, So here we are. This was a three judge panel, and one of the judges was
a Trump appoint and they have thrown it back. Now again, you'll remember that the highest court in the land works for Donald Trump, right, So we don't know ultimately how this ends, but I do think it's worth noting this will be very ironic if this is what happens, very very ironic.
So in the opposite way, I don't think this is the best precedent, but Metas won a landmark antitrust case over Instagram and WhatsApps acquisitions that a lot of people say leaves a lot of room for the bigger tech companies to trample smaller ones with acquisitions and really really fucked up market manipulations. Because I'll shock you here, no one is at the head of the FTC that cares if you're a friend of mister Trump's.
Yeah, well, we have a special coming up with Lena Khan and the Biden administration really tried to push back against this kind of antitrust stuff because it's bad for everyone involved. You know, these companies Meta, they were donors to Trump in the inauguration. You had Mark Zuckerberg sitting there with Trump while they were swearing him in. They've donated to the Trump Ballroom. This is how this administration works. You make donations, you do the things that they want,
and then you get regulatory approval. That's not how any of this is supposed to work, right, not how any of this is supposed to be working. So this is just not business as usual, and it's really bad and it's really just Meddi Hassan is the founder of zteo and the host of Meddi Unfiltered. Welcome to Fast Politics, Maddie.
Great to be back, Mommy.
How are you?
Oh, I'm good. It's just amazing. I think this is the end of MAGA. What comes next could be worse. What could be next could be worse. It could be MAGA but with real hardcore anti Semitism, which is what I think is percolating. But the mega coalition that we once knew, the Marjorie Taylor Greens and the Lauren Boberts discuss discuss.
Yeah, I think it's very First of all, all these people are slightly deranged, so it's always hard to impose rational thinking on all of them. You know, when it comes to Marjorie Taylor Green, is it being driven by principle? Is it being driven by self interest and self aggrandizement.
Do we think anything that any of these people do is being driven by principle?
No, but I'm just getting the options of what it could because she would say it's because I'm I want transparents in Epstein and that's why I've gone against Trump on this. Yes, Others like Alexandria Cossi Corteza suggested is because Donald Trump spiked to Senate run by her. And this is her, you know, this is a scorned woman pissed off. Now she might run for president against JD. Vance.
So who knows what's driving these people? Clearly something's going on, And what's so fascinating always is Trump always makes things worse for himself, right, and he could easily win these people back, they're part of her cult. Instead what does he do. He goes and calls her a traitor. He basically incites violence against her. We had a whole month of Republican handringing after Charlie court Wisher. We need to
tone down the rhetoric. Meanwhile, Donald Trump is getting members of his own party, not just MTG, but I believe a state lawmaker in Indiana swatted at their homes after he attacks him online. So I think if Maga is breaking down, it's Trump doing the breaking of it. But I would say, Molly, it is too soon to tell. I've heard too many forecasts about the death of Maga, and it is a cult. So at the end of the day, the vast Marya people still do blindly stick
with Trump through right and wrong. And I don't think Donald Trump's going anywhere anytime soon. I think it's too early to say stuff like, oh, he's now a lane duck president. He's got violent armed rogue police raiding churches in Charlotte, like he is not weep.
Yeah, that is he does have a He's the first president of modern American political life to have his own militia. Yes, so it's important not to underestimate that. And and I do think like the one lesson that any of us may have learned and I'm not. And again you'll notice how I've coached, couched the language and may have Remember the anonymous senator who said, no one expects Donald Trump to overthrow the government. Yep, He's going to go play some golf. I think about that guy.
Yeah, there's many of them. He symbolic of many of them. But that's the problem.
Right.
There's always been this, basically on the Republican right, Molly, there's been a complacency about guys calm down, take him seriously, not literally or literally, ill serious or whatever the.
Day of the week is, basically not mentally.
Yeah. And then on the kind of liberal I want to call it MSNBC wing, the Hashtage resistance side, it's always the walls are closing in. Trump is nearly done for. And I think both extremes are a mistake. I think Donald Trump is a great survivor. He's definitely done things that many of us thought he wouldn't do. I didn't think he would be back for you know, a second term on January the seventh, twenty twenty one, like many others,
but he did come back. I didn't think he would win the first time in twenty sixteen, and he did. So I am loath to write him off as he's done for. Maga's gone. It's lame duck presidency. I think they've got their plans. Obviously they're having some problems with members of their party. But let's see how many other people do an MTG. Yes, but don't you think some of this is like a cloak. For like Donald Trump said he was going to make things cheaper, he got
in office and immediately made everything more expensive. Yes, you know, he told Latino voters he was going to do you know, he was going to crack down on the worst of the worst.
What he meant was anyone who looked Latino. You know, he made a lot of promises to a lot of different people, was unable to keep any of them. And now we're ten months in and people are starting to get mad at him, as they do when you make out to promises you can't keep. So like, is Epstein just a smoke screen for the underlying fractures that have nothing to do with it one hundred percent?
And you saw that with Marjorie Taylor Green. In fact, she didn't just turn on him over Epstein. She turned him over Gaza, which is another festering wound, but also turned them over affordability. She went on CNN of all places, and talked about how Mike Johnson was wrong about the shutdown and how Donald Trump was wrong about prices going down when they're going up now again, are there others who have the gut to do what MTG did? She
has an independent platform. She's very popular, she raises small donors. Yeah, she's wealthy and independently. Like, she's able to kind of stave off, at least in the short term attacks from Trump. The average Republican backbench House member can't and won't, So I'm not sure that we'll follow. You're right, the underlying
issues are the big thing here. Donald Trump made everything worse at home and abroad, even though he goes around claiming he solved eight wars, which he didn't obviously, and on the inflation side, Molly, if you've seen all these mega influences praising Trump for taking tariffs off of things, now he's like, he put them on there. You told us they were fine, they wouldn't raise priss, and now you want us to praise him for taking things off.
Donald Trump is this classic thing where he often you often find yourself and a Trump defender defending Trump after Trump has thrown you under the bus. So yeah, a classic example is Troy Nil's the congress menage spent all weekend saying we're not going to release the Epstein files for no reason to and then Trump on Sunday said, release the Epstein files. And you're like, oh, the memo didn't go out in time. And he does that often. People go out and defend Trump and then he would
do the exact opposite of what they just said. So that's going to be a running saw for them as well. The problem we have, Molly is I was talking to a friend the other day and I see, no, we've had I think it was last month, and I said, we've had nine ten months of Trump. They went, what what do you mean? I thought, it's been more than a year, and no, it's only none or ten months. And there is his sense, and I think people quite get that this guy is not even a year in.
We're all the chaos and harm and incompetence and authoritarianism and wars are broad when now maybe going to war with Venezuela. All of that's happened in his first ten months. We still have more than three years left min minimum of this guy.
Minimum.
Don't say that it's not nice. I'm already so stressed out. No, I'm just kidding, But I do think that's right. And I'm thinking about when Donald Trump said that he had an MRI.
Oh but no, he's not sure what four right.
Yeah, this is his he was second yearly doctor's visit had advanced imaging, and everyone was like, oh, advanced imaging, Well that's odd. Also a doctor's visit once a year, except twice this year because it's And then he said, yeah, I had an MRI and they said, dude, was it your brain? And he said, I don't know.
Right.
They're like they're like, they're like pushing him into that circular what is it a little tube they put you? Yeah, and he's like, what's just for? I don't know, don't worry about it that again. I know we played this horrific game far too much, but can you imagine if Joe Biden was asked about an MRI that he had hidden from the public and then he said about the MRI, I had the best MRI ever?
What was it for?
I don't know? Yeah, I mean some insane insane that this guy can have two medical tests, two annual checks as a president. He can have weird bruising on his
hands that he doesn't need to tell us about. He can the ankles, he can disappear from public view or not do any interviews for about five six days, or allow him say why he can have an MRI and we're not told why he gets shot in the ear, and we've never actually had any official medical records about it, nor been able to speak to the doctors who treated him. And miraculously is ear heeled faster than my shaving cuts.
Yeah, no, no, now it is. It would make a person a conspiracy theorist.
I wrote. I write a Monday morning newsletter for Zeteo called first Draft, and this morning, Monday Morning's email newsletter is about how we're all Epstein conspiracy theorists. Now, how I spent my life resisting conspiracy theories on the left, in Muslim communities, anti Semitic, nine to eleven, all of those. I've spent years fighting back against those, and yet now in twenty twenty five, Donald Trump has made me into a conspiracy theorist.
Yeah, because there is no way to process this information. It just doesn't make sense, right, Like all of this stuff, it's just huh.
Oh, there's just too many smoking guns. Jeffrey Epstein sends an email to an unknown person in December twenty eighteen, saying I'm the only one who can bring him down. Seven months later, he's arrested and detained by Trump's doj A month after that, he dies in prison where the cameras aren't working. Well, sorry, what a Netflix writer's room would throw that out as being unrealistic and a little bit too on the nose.
Yeah, it's not good. It's not good.
It's nothing about our current predicament is good.
I want to talk for a minute about this pivot. So Trump World, he knew the discharged petition, Mike Johnson shuts down the entire House of Representatives, sends everyone up there if he uses a seat an elected Democrat from Arizona. Right, do you remember what the numbers are it was? I think it was a third forty day shutdown. The House was in session for four days.
Yeah, something in saying not double digits.
Yeah, he sent them home because he did not want them to sign the discharge petition or do any business or get together and talk about Epstein. So now they know they're going to lose this discharge vote. And we heard that it may be as many we had heard that it might have been as many as one hundred Republicans. We're going to vote on them vote against him. So
he decides on Sunday night. You reference this, but I think we have to talk about a little more, decides on Sunday night that he is going to just have them release the files, yeah, or have a vote. I'm releasing the file yes.
So to be clear, it's interesting how you phrased that, because let's be clear, the files are with the Department of Justice. Pam Bundy famously went on Fox in February and said they're on my desk ready to go, right, So when we talk about releasing the files, it doesn't require a vote in Congress. Now Donald Trump wants to rease the files, he can rease the files tomorrow money. It's not as if his DOJ is some independent entity.
We know that Pam Bundy is basically just to kind of, you know, like a restaurant server at this point for Donald Trump. She moves as soon as he tells her to move. So if he wants, he can just put out a truth social post. Think Pam put out all the files tonight on a website. This whole vote for it is just him trying to cover himself from an embarrassing loss, as you said, or a defection of many
members of his party. Thomas Massey, who's gone to war with aside from MTG, the Republican congressman who's been leading the charge with Rocannor on the Epstein discharge. He's said very eloquently that you know, Donald Trump will be gone. I'm not sure he will be gone. It may be gone in four years, but you'll still be around and people remember you as defenders of pedophiles. He said to his colleagues, that's obviously had some traction that reminds Yeah.
And then he went after Massey for getting remarried too quickly.
With Mary Massey, a widows wife died raight, he went after him for getting married again. And Laura Luma, his media ally questioned how Massey's wife died. I mean, there is no bottom for this Republican party.
And it is also important to remember this is like Donald Trump, who's three wives in and has numerous allegations of infidelity.
Allegedly she did on his third wife just after she gave birth.
Was a porn star.
Yeah.
Anyway, so there, so there will be a vote. Now, let's talk about this protocol for a minute. There'll be a vote now, and then it we'll go to the Senate.
And do they even have the votes in the Senate because Republican Senators there in a very different vote. They were never on the whole Epstein train, right. It was very much an MTG. Bobert, you know, a massy kind of unhinged folks in the House.
I mean.
The great irony, as I point out in my newsletter this morning, is these guys spent four years banging the druma about Epstein, jumping on QAnon bandwagons about it being a secret crazy the politicians covering up a child sex trafficking ring. Turns out they may have been right, but the ring and the cover up was on their side
of the aisle, right, correct. That's that's the problem they have now is all of these people, not just the members of Congress, but the Bune and the Cashpatel, the FBI, Derek to Devis, they all pushed this Epstein stuff and now they're in a position to really make sure that they're unable to go through with it. And we know the timeline Molly on the reporting. It's when they went
through the files. They devoted hundreds of members of the government, hundreds of members of the bureaucracy were diverted onto the task of going through the files and just doing control. F Trump control f. Trump all the way through and when you saw how many times his name appears, and Detail has put a searchable archive of all of the twenty thousand documents that were released by the House Oversight Committee. You can look at zataio dot com. You can search
them for yourselves. You will see Donald Trump's name appears more than anybody else is apart from Jeffrey Epstein. That's when they decided we can't release this stuff. We have to pretend all is fine, there's nothing to see here, Move along, move along.
Yes, I just wonder where it goes, right, because so we know that Pambondi supposedly had in our desk. Again, we don't really know because everybody's lying. I think it's fair was to agree that pretty much everybody's lying here.
My position on this administration is you assume it's alioned. Let's proved to be the true too.
But either way, we know there's a ton of information that did go to the DJ and it was videos and emails and depositions. I mean, that's the other thing that's worth's remembering is right now, all we've seen are the emails that they flooded us with from the Republicans the Oversight Committee emails, and then we've seen the emails from Bloomberg from Jason Leopold that he got from Floyd's. That is it. We haven't seen like I mean, I guess that the House released some stuff like the Michael
Wolf that long Michael Wolf article. Can we talk? Can we do two seconds on Michael Wolf here? Because so this is a guy who was like advising, writing, doing pr for Friendly.
Jeffrey Epstein one of the most famous journalists of our time. He's super famous. A lot of people in this you don't like it for good reason. I think these emails show everything that's wrong with journalism in this country, the worst parts of our kind of established journalism. And his argument just to play devil's advocate. He's arguing that I have to suck up to these people to get access. That's how I got an interview with Donald Trump. And we know that's how it works with Trump. You suck
up to Trump. He invites you in, he gives you an interview, then he doesn't like what you've written and he attacks you. We know that that's what happened to Wolf. He wrote these best selling books Fire and Fury, and I think hold three or four books, I've lost track, and he did that by sucking up clearly with Epstein.
I think it's harder for him to make that case because it's very clear from the emails that we've seen that they were friends, that he was advising him, that he was trying to spin on his behalf and giving him pr and media advice. It's kind of disgusting because let's not forget Molly important point for the context for
all these emails. Whether it's Larry Summers, who's also in the emails on how to how to move on a allegedly on a Chinese academic whose father was a Communist Party official, whether it's Summers, whether it's Wolf, whether it's God Helpers, Non Chomsky, whoever's in those emails. They all knew at that point that this guy was convicted in two thousand and eight for child sex crimes or so listening. At that point that the plea Dearly got was for
listening an under eighteen. But the point is they all knew who he was, they all knew what was guilty.
It was set he was a registered sexis predator.
At that point, he had been in prison, even if it was a kind of soft prison that he got to you every day, and so there's no excuse for any of these people to have been friendly with him, hanging out with him, giving him advice. It's truly disgusting
and de prayed. There's a real reflection of what goes on on fortune, and some of it really confirms for a lot of people go back to conspiracy theory stuff about just how intertwined kind of the most deprayed elements of our media and political establishments are.
I also think that it speaks to a kind of world. I mean, this is a world that doesn't necessarily exist anymore, right, some of it? And thank God for that ready, Like I mean, would you?
But unfortunately some of these emails are from like twenty eighteen and twenty nineteen, like this time right now, it's stuff, and these connections are still happening, pretty dark, and people give it, oh well, Bill Clinton, I'm like, yeah, nobody cares right about freaking about.
A nonpartisan exercise. You know, if and I know he's not, but if Barack Obama, who is like as close to sort of a democratic deity as one could have if he were in there, we want him out too. I mean, this is not a partisan activity.
I mean, his name is mentioned at different times in the emails. But yeah, there's no evidence that Obama of a partied with Epstein or went on his jet in the way that Clinton and Trump did. Right, and again no accusations of wrongdo we have to add in this very ligitious climate, but it looks bad. And the fact that he's tried to cover it up until Sunday night
when he said release it all. The fact that he was willing to go to what would Marjorie Taylor Green, The fact that he announced that criminal investigation into only democrats mentioned in the documents, how was I amazing? The fact, I mean again with Trump, each and every one of these things that we're talking about, for any other president
would be a multi week, multi month scandal. The fact that dog Drum just casually on Sunday told his Aney general, I want you to investigate these democrats who are in the far and she said sure, I'm an appointed attorney right now, that in itself, Molly, you and I were saying this last year. If we said this last thing, we were told it was Trump drangement syndrome, suggests that Trump would do stuff as brazenly as he's doing.
Yeah, no, it's so true. Thank you for making the time for me. I always really enjoyed talking to you, despite the shit.
I feel like when I told you and I told Earlie, whether it's on my podcast, it's like a therapy session.
Vanessa Williamson is a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institute and the author of the Price of Democracy, The Revolutionary Power of Taxation in American History. Welcome to Fast Politics, Vanessa.
Oh, thanks for having me.
You are a scholar. You have written this book. It's a little counterintuitive, so talk us through this idea.
So I think for far too long. You know, it's a real conservative trope frankly that, oh, taxation is tyranny, But the reality is almost literally diametrically the opposite. That is to say that taxes are things that free countries do really well. Elected official are really good at raising tax money, and tyrants hate taxes. They always have. So the story in my book is the story of American democracy, focusing on how fights over taxation are actually the fights
ober democracy. That's true now, and it's always been true.
Explain how it was true then, because this is like a pretty bold statement.
Well, let me start with just a story. You've probably heard of the Boston Tea Party. You may recall this event, right, So these mechanics and artisans in Boston seventeen seventy three, it's the middle of winter and they go down to Boston Harbor and they throw all this tea in the harbor.
What was that about?
Almost anyone would tell you about taxes. People hate taxes. They were high taxes. They were complaining about taxes. Well, they were complaining about taxes. They were complaining about a tax cut. The British government had decided to give an enormous tax break to the East India Company, a corporation that was deemed too big to fail. And this was going to be, as Sam Adams put it, introductive of monopolies. Right.
It was too big of a tax break for a corporation, and that is what motivated the Sons of Liberty to throw that tea in the harbor. Now, if the basic American understanding of the Boston Tea Party is wrong, it might be worth reconsidering more generally the role taxes have played in our history. And it's important to remember that taxes are two things. Right, They're the portion of our labor that we contribute to the public good. That is
why people are so proud to be taxpayers. Right, We'll always say that, oh, I'm a taxpayer, and why because they're proud to have contributed. And if you think about what the taxes go to, they are the revenue that empowers our democratic government. So if you're asking yourself, you know, if taxation is tyranny, why is Donald Trump destroying the irs? The reason is because he wants private donations to pay for things. He wants to extort things from particular companies.
He doesn't want a real tax system because taxation is something that comes in democratic societies. The freest countries on Earth are high tax countries. How do tariffs sort of feature into this? Yeah, so it's important to know tariffs. When you relied on tariffs for decades and decades and decades most of American history, tariffs are what funded the federal government. But the tariffs that we have today are not like those tariffs because they are not legislated. Right,
the Congress is not choosing the tariff rates. You know, you might think tariffs are bad policy. In fact, you should think tariffs are bad policy. It's bad for the economy. But it would only be bad policy, It would not be anti democratic, except that, actually our tariffrates are decided by one guy, apparently through tweets, right, And that is fundamentally anti democratic. And it has the effect of sort of bringing corporations into line, right, And the point of
the tariffs and countries into line. The point is not to raise revenue. It is to consolidate power. And that's how you should be thinking about the terriff frights right now, because on the one hand, we have the capacity of our own legislature right to raise revenue. That is what the founders fought for, right, the idea that the only people who can tax are elected legislators. They want state
governments to or colonial governments at the time. But what became our state governments to be the ones in charge of raising money? And they didn't think a king could do that. And now we're asking that question again. So the important thing about tariffs is not whether they're good policy or bad policies. When it comes to democracy, you know they're bad policy. Sure, lots of popular things are
bad policy. Loads of unpopular things are bad policy. But the thing that's dangerous for our democracy is putting the power of taxation in the hands of a single person, and we thought a revolution against that.
This all makes a lot of sense, but I wonder if you could give us, like your fantasy of what progressive taxation would look like America. I feel like it's been at war withood itself about like, what are the tax structure that would look like, you know, more of a sort of fair country.
That's a great question. I have part of an answer that I think most of your viewers will probably be nodding right along with, and part of an answer that might come as a surprise.
Good, especially with things like this when it can be counterintuitive. I'm always happy to be surprised.
So the first part you might expect, a high progressive taxation of wealth is really important for democracy at this point, Right, we can't have some people have this amount of money because money is power and it leads into our politics. It has for many decades, and it is now just beyond anything that can be managed within the democratic society. Right. You might not know Thomas Pain, the guy who wrote
Common Sense. Right, this is the guy who wrote the pamphlet that convinced Americans not just to fight for independence, but to fight to not have a monarchy. Thomas Pain common sense. He also a few years later, in the Rights of Man, proposed a progressive income tax, a very very novel idea at the time. It was a tax on the income from wealth. Progressivity was basically he had to like do the math and a table in the Rights of Man to explain this to people because it
was new. The top rate was one hundred percent. Now it was really high brackets.
All right, seems like too high.
Well, so it's a marginal rate, remember, So it means that it applies to all your money over a particular point, you know. And he wrote his pounds and in seven you know, in seventeen ninety. So the amount he chose is not what's important. If you update that to modern statistics,
it's about a billion dollars. So what Thomas Pain was saying was that beyond a certain level of wealth, all the additional income you're receiving, you shouldn't be allowed to keep it, because what he said was it caused corruption to elections.
Right, which turns out to be he is a genius.
Right, Yeah, he knew it was up there, guy, So I think on the one side, there's what Thomas Pain said, which is that there's a certain level of concentration of wealth that's dangerous to a republic, and taxation is one of the mechanisms. There are many mechanisms that you need. One of the mechanisms help restrain that. Right, it should
not be the only tool in the toolkit. Right. There are all kinds of things about monopolies and all other things you need to be doing, But one of the mechanisms that's really important is limiting the consolidation of wealth. The other half of what I'm going to say is maybe a little more surprising. I think it's really important to have broad based taxation because it's broad based taxation that in the long term, can fund a social safety
net that allows people to act as citizens. Right, you have to not be afraid that you're going to lose your apartment at the end of the month. If you want to be able to take the time to read the paper and go to the meetings and do all the things that citizens are supposed to do, you can't be worrying about where your next paycheck is coming from. You know, it's not just important that we limit the top. We have to keep the bottom up too, and the only way you're going to be able to do that
is with broad based taxation. I'll give you an example, Social Security. That's not a particularly progressive tax. It's actually a regressive tax. Fund social Security because it falls on the money you earned by working, not the wealth you learned by having it sit around and garner interest. Medicare too, funded by the same payroll taxes. These are regressive taxes. Americans love them. They are the favorite tax of the American people, right there with sales tax tax. People don't
mind paying their share if they think it's worthwhile. So to me, you need both of these things. You need both high progressive taxation. But you also need to recognize that that's not where all the money is going to come from. Because even when people are extremely rich like they are now, there are very few of them. You can't be balancing your whole tax system on that. You've got to have everyone chipping in. And that's part of a democracy too, right.
It's part of a democracy to have people paying their share and having their say yes.
Tariffs are obviously a tax, and there's a lot of authoritarian stuff mixed in with trump ism mostly authoritarianism. So like that you're not seeing any of the sort of good that one might get from tariffs. Now, Ueen Trump one point zero and Trump two point zero. Biden world did keep some of those tariffs on Biden World the complicated legacy, but some of the tariffing I think was smart.
This is like a question that's like goes to a particular hobbyhorse of mind, which is, for whatever reason, Republicans hate corporate taxes and loove tariffs. Corporate taxes and tariffs are the same thing. So I mean they're played by the consumer, but ultimately they're paid by the corporation. So is there a sort of way in here to tax corporations through tariffs to confuse Republicans into raising the corporate tax? Right?
I love this sort of like indimentional chess aspect of it. I may tell you a little bit about tariffs. Right, So, first of all, the kind of tariff that we're dealing with now, which is where one random I guess not very random, but one guy decides them. That is a non starter for democracy. You cannot have it work that way because it just consolidates power too much. But if you're going to talk about a legislated system of tariffs,
then okay. Economists will have a lot to say about whether it's good for the economy as a whole, right, whether it produces growthably, It depends very much on what the tariffs are. When we had very high teriff rates in the United States in the late nineteenth century, those tariffs were set upon intentionally to support monopolistic corporations. Right. They were preventing consumers and farmers in particular in the United States from being able to afford raw materials and
machinery and things like this that were produced overseas. It was a huge gift for US steel. So tariffs can be set up in a way that are extremely monopolistic. But what's interesting, I think about that story is not that we're having those kinds of teriff systems. Now we have these very arbitrary, very limited revenue tariffs that are
dangerous for totally different reasons. But what's interesting to me about the old tariff system is that consumers knew they were paying, and they rallied for an income tax in part because they believed in the income tax. It's very popular, right. Remember the Supreme Court bans the income tax. They say that income tax is unconstitutional, even though we'd had one during the Civil War. In eighteen ninety four, eight to ninety five, the Supreme Court declares the income tax unconstitutional.
So then we have to have a twenty year state by state campaign to get our income tax back, and they get it done. And part of the reason for that is because people thought that wealthy people should be paying. But part of the reason is because they knew that the tariffs that we had then were really raising prices
for consumers. And so I think that one of the really interesting things to me is whether the costs of the tariffs we have now are going to be something that people come to recognize as expensive as a part of the larger story about inflation and the other ways that the cost of living is just going up. Hm.
So interesting. So you wrote a book with a friend of the show. You know, you're on a nerdy podcast when the friend of the show is Theedra Scotch Paul, who I love so much and think is the genius. But she is like the person who saw all of this coming from a mile away, and so did you. So cannot talk about this moment in American politics without talking about the Tea Party and that we are like living there fever dream anything you can glean from that
that you think is useful for now. A good example is I was on a panel yesterday with some very crazy right wingers and they were asking the normal people what the cutoff for abortion should be, right, which is like a bullshit question you ask when you want to get people going, when you want to have afa on them. And so I said, well, let's ask the conservatives when
they believe life begins. And you know what they all said, right, conception, what sort of lessons do you see from the Tea Party or what kind of progress negative progress probably have you seen, and like what is surprising or whatever else you want to talk about.
Sure, so yeah, theta is one of my very very favorite people and it was great fun to write a book with her, and we traveled around and visited Tea Party groups around the country and there were a couple of things that were informative at the time. One of them is that the primary issue motive bating Tea Party activists was not taxes and spending, which is what sort of elite conservative and Republican groups were saying. They were
motivated about immigration. And I will say it was at a Tea Party event that I first heard this will have a two thousand and nine or twenty ten that I first heard Donald Trump floated as a potential presidential candidate. And you know, it was quite a surprise at the time because this is a man who had a reality TV show. But yeah, it was in many ways getting to see into the future of the Republican Party. I
think there are some valuable lessons. I mean, first of all, it's important to understand what was motivating the conservative base in the Obama era, because it is critical to understanding why Donald Trump was successful. But I think the lessons now, right now that I think we've all had time to digest what exactly was happening within the Republican Party. The really important lesson I think looking forward is the way that the Tea Party in opposition. Right we're going about
the first years of the Obama administration. Obama comes in with this huge approval and hope and change. He had control of Congress for a moment, you know, not very long and not very big margin, but he did and people thought, you know, I remember him being on the cover. I think it was Time magazine a picture looking like FDR right, like this was going to be a monumental change in our politics of the style of the new Deal,
and clearly it was not. But the thing that the Tea Party did in opposition to the Obama administration was unite three important forces in active grassroots. Now, Tea Party activists were mostly older people, right, It was not just a random swath of Americans by any stretch of the imagination, older middle class, upper middle class people, so they had time to protest and to go to their local meetings
and so forth. But it brought together those grassroots activists and allowed them to channel their cultural and racial concerns into a very effective opposition to a popular president with control of Congress because they were united with a active, powerful right wing media infrastructure, and elites followed their lead.
M Right. It was base driven, yes, sang well, the elites drove the base enthusiasm straight into their own priorities, right, They drove them that they drove that energy into sort of traditional right wing stuff.
So they were able to capture the enthusiasm of the base and then channel it into stuff they wanted.
Yeah, but what they did not do was distance themselves. You know, rank and file Republican legislators certainly did not distance themselves from the Tea Party, even when you know, I mean the Tea Party activists were often wearing you know, kind of wild costumes and some of them were saying
pretty explicitly racist stuff. Oh yeah, But the Republican Party did not walk away from that energy and channeled that energy, right And I think that that's a lesson that could be really valuable for the Democratic Party today to figure out how to take an extremely enthused base, enthused in opposition to the presidency, and channel that into wins. Now. I think, you know, November the elections looked like a
little bit of that being underway. But what you'd want to see, I think, is something that drives it into policy, into an agenda. And also you'd want to see elected officials celebrating the activity of their base and not trying to walk away from it.
I feel like that's pointed in humor now I'm just gidding, but yeah, so important. What you're saying, if you have the space energy, the only possible way to win with it is to channel it into the things you want, right.
Yeah, And I think that it's really important to find a way to mobilize people, not just to show up for a particular rally, because the Tea Party, you know, they had huge rallies, but there were at least reasonably large rallies. But they had regular meetings, They attended local city council meetings, they ran for local office, right And it was the combination of those things that built a moment that created a wave election the following the following year.
So those are the aspects of the Tea Party. I think that are forward looking if we're thinking about what opposition to a presidency looks like. And I think also, you know, just recognizing the seeds of the moment that we're in today, the sort of ice and the anti immigration you know how recently that was added to the
Republican Party. There's always been conservative opposition to immigration, sure, but the Republican Party had before Donald Trump, you know a few people who would sign on to some version of some sort of immigration reform. And that ended with Trump, and that really marks, I think the moment where the sort of Tea Party ethos, that anti immigration ethos came to dominate in a way that has had atrocious horrifying consequences for the country.
So interesting. Thank you is thank you for joining us, Vanessa.
Oh, thank you for having me.
This was fun.
A moment.
Jesse Cannon MARII Project twenty twenty five. It foretold many things. I looked at one of my favorite websites today, the Project twenty twenty five tracker, and it seems we are forty eight percent through the plans now. And here's a big one. They've figured out how they're going to take apart the Department of Education and split it into a whole bunch of other departments.
Yeah. I didn't see that coming, just kidding. We totally saw that coming. And Trump even said he was going to do it. I mean that's the best part I mean, and by best part, I mean worst part of this whole story is that Trump even said he was going to do it. Like none of this should be a surprise, Like this is what Trump wanted to do. This is what he said he was going to do with these guys had like dismantle the Department of Education sweatshirts. I mean,
this is like this was always the plan. So when you see stuff like this happening, when you see like Trump World doing things like this. This is what it is. This was always the plan. Will they be able to sue in court? Will Trump maybe lose? Maybe? But no one should be blindsided by any of this.
Can I take us back to a time when I'm on the debate stage? Rick Perry was asked which departments he dismantled. He couldn't remember all of the ones he wanted to dismantle. Well, now some of those departments are getting the Department of Education.
Yeah, Rick Perry.
Everyone really thought that was going to be a thing that happened, but it was just fetch.
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