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 Ukraine and European leaders are urging Trump not to strike a piece deal in Alaska. Without them, we have such a great show for you today. The great New Republic editor in chief Mike Tamaski stops by to talk about what a perilous position we find ourselves in.
Then we will talk to former Trump administration official Miles Taylor about what is making Trump tick during this second term and his takeover of the District of Columbia. But first the news Somali.
Something that I have observed and I always like when data backs up the things that I pretty much assume to be true no matter what, because it makes me feel real smart, which is that spending is climbing among the rich as everyone else's debt is rising and their spending is lowering.
It's important to remember that the CBO said of the BBB that it would hurt the people in the lowest twenty percent the most, it would help the people in the highest ten percent the most. So you make sense, right, The people who have the least are going to be hurt the most by this and reduction in hospitals. We're going to see Medicare insurance premiums are going to go up. Plus we have these tariffs. You know, the Yale Budget Lab estimates that the tariffs will be twenty four one
hundred dollars a year extra for American families. That is inflationary. It just seems very clear. Now. The good news is Donald Trump has fired all of the statisticians. So even though people are not spending money, and the rich people are spending in a way that does not actually support the rest of us, the good news is we won't know because all of the statisticians will be either fired or attacked by Donald Trump. I'm thinking about the Goldman
Sachs analysis. They talked about how tariffs are actually being paid for by the consumers and not the companies. I know who Donald Trump then attacked is how dare you say that the tariffs that are And by the way, I think this is a great moment to remember that this is basically the same as a flat tax, right, It's a big sales tax that people who have less it will mean it will be more of their incomes.
Every time I hear about this, and I think about this.
I just hear that.
Time he yelled, we have to slow it down about testing COVID because it's the same energy.
That's a really good point. Yeah, if you don't test, you won't know. If you don't I mean, it's like with the climate change stuff, right, if you shoot the satellites or I don't know what they take the satellites down, you won't know about the climate change. You know, if you don't fund Noah, you won't know about the bad weather. I mean, this is really really, really stupid. And the medical research. I mean, we're just literally in the dumbest, I think, dumbest possible timeline.
Yep. Speaking of the Appeals Court has let the White House to spend or end billions in farn eate, which, for those who are not versed and with this is shorthand for a whole lot of death.
So I think there's two important points to the foreign aid question. One is, morally, it's a reprehensible, right. These are these kind of investments that are pretty small in the grand scheme of spending, you know, not as much as blowing up the moon or something that the Trump administration might be interested in doing or money to elon for whatever. These are really, you know, pretty small investments,
and there's two reasons why we do them, right. One is because it's morally correct, But the other reason is because people hate us. Right as a country, we are hated, and one of the reasons we're hated is because we've tried to, you know, bring democracy the world and they haven't loved us for it. So one of the reasons why we do this is big return on investment. You stop a pandemic in sub Saharan Africa, you a protect yourself, you be saved some people, and you see you prevent
a group of terrorists from emerging from there too. You know, there's just a lot of reasons why America got involved in soft power, and none of it was because they're good people. It was mainly because of the ROI. So now Trump has been like, yeah, that's a waste, right, four billion dollars on global health. By the way, four billion dollars on global health. We spend that on like whatever we spend. You know, Trump is going to spend that on like four planes. Yeah, exactly, six billion for
HIV and AIDS programs. He thinks that the foreign aid spending is wasteful versus like Jadie Vance's vacation budget, which is just muney well spent to raise in Ohio and find out what the people in the Cots world think of shady bands.
I was personally told, they hate us for our freedom. But whatever you say with this revision in history, So Molly, there's always these things now where you know, Trump is finding himself between a rock and a hard place with the base and the influencers are in the base, because the influencers in the bass always have to do this thing where they're waging a class word and they're like,
you liberal potheads are so awful. But Trump really keeps thinking about how he keeps himself preserved, and he's like, maybe some weed reform will make me a little more popular. What do you see in here?
Marijuana reform is super popular. There are a lot of people who are getting older and older, including baby boomers right who are probably in need of like meddicinal marijuana. It's legal in a lot of states. So the idea that they're not going to reclassify it. I think that the reason why Trump will classify this is because he thinks it will help him electorally. But the reason to reclassify it is because it's ridiculous. It's already not illegal
in many places. So I think it's like one of these things where you know, the worst person you know has good ideas, right, the worst person you know meme.
Yes, Yes, I'm very, very very familiar. And I think that this is the thing, is that marijuana reform is a very smart thing that will also lessen the burden on our country of people being in jail who shouldn't be there, which is also ruining lives.
Yeah, I'd be shocked if Trump world is going to be releasing people from jail. Sure, but I do love that. Matt Walsh from The Daily Wire very mad. No country of podheads has ever thrived or ever achieved anything at all. Every city that legalized is it becomes a bigger shitthole. Basically overnight. America deserves better, Our kids deserve better. I don't want to be smelling weed anytime I take my kids to a city or national park. That's Maga podcaster Jack Pasobiac.
Yeah, I got bad news for them. A lot of our American innovation has been fueled by someone smoking pot and having a great idea.
I totally disagree with that, and I think that pot makes you really stupid, and I'm sober.
You know, obviously, yes, but there's also scientific evidence that that's not correct.
Oh No, pot definitely makes you stupider.
Pot makes you stupider, but it also inspires better ideas than the present that's scientifically proven.
No, it's not. You sound like Joe Row.
Yes it is.
We'll get a scientist on here and we'll talk about it.
I wrote a book on creativity and science. If you were called, I actually am an expert on this subject. There's countless universities that cite this that don't want to smoke pot and brag about it. They reluctantly admit this.
If you're listening to this podcast and you think Jesse is wrong, please send me a DM. I have open dms on all the platforms.
He's going to pull out this textbook from University of Chicago's Creativity program that shows this study.
Jesse is going to get schooled, so please text me.
Okay.
So debs are claiming victory at Texas redistricting and they say that they killed this corrupt special session. I feel like there's a lot of battles left to go here, Molly, what are you thinking?
So again, we've been covering this because it is really Look, if they redistrict, they corruptly can keep the house, and it's the beginning of possibly the I mean, I don't know, I feel like every day is the beginning of the end of American democracy. But this seems really, really, really really bad. And the good news here is that he's going to adjourn this session and he'll probably call another session.
But their Democrats are going to keep fighting. I mean, this is something that really fucking matters if you want, like you know they talk about like sliding into its oraitarianism, it's everything right, It's like them getting the house. It's this, it's that. So if you care about this, like find out what METO is doing to raise money here, because this is like actually a smart thing to spend your
money on. I don't know how you support these guys, but they're going to basically have to be out of the state until November in order to keep this from happening. And Trump is going to try it in other places. But the hope is that Republicans there will be enough Republicans who don't have brainworms and that this won't get through.
We'll see it is really just absolute nightmare fuel. Mike Tamaski is the editor of the New Republic and the author of The Middle Out, The Rise of Progressive Economics, Welcome Too Fast Politics. Mike Tamaski, Hey, hi, hi, I feel like everything is getting worse every week, every week. Right.
Yeah, there might have been one week in June where you took a little bit of a break, but I've kind of been tracking it week by week, and except for that one week, I can't remember where it was.
Things have gotten worse every single week, and they certainly got worse this week.
I want to start with it what's happening in DC, because I don't know that everyone understands why it's bad. I think there are smart people who don't understand what it means, why it's meaningful. I was on a panel with some one today who was saying, well, you know, crime is a problem, which again, and the Democrats shouldn't say crime isn't a problem. I agree that it's not good to not talk about what's happening, you know, like saying inflation isn't a problem. But I also think you'll
notice something Donald Trump does. But I think that when you look at what's happening with these government occupiers in DC, they can't actually prevent crime or homelessness. Right, What is their job these people?
Yeah, their job is to go arrest some black kids and get footage for Fox News of them them putting handcuffs on black kids.
But they can't actually arrest people. The DC police are the only people can arrest.
They can do what they want. Donald Trump does what he wants, and people who are under his orders can do what they want until the courts demonstrate otherwise. Look, first of all, yeah, the numbers are real, the crime members are real. They're down. It's down. I live a few miles from the district up in Maryland since the pandemic, and we don't have an office down there anymore. Even I don't go down there that much, but sometimes I do go take like long bike rides on a Saturday
or Sunday afternoon. I go through all parts of the city. I mean all parts. I go through Southeast Anacostia, you know, where some people would have got to go. I've never felt anything. I've just never felt anything. Now that's not to say that other people might not. And they're apparently carjackings specifically are approblem and that's a scary thing. You know, you're sitting at a red light at ten o'clock at night and all of a sudden these people come and
smash their car windows and take care. That's terrifying. So if that happens to people, you don't care. They don't care about the statistics. I get all that, But like, if Donald Trump wanted to come in and say, gee, I'm concerned about these car jaggings. I want to give the DC Police Department some help in addressing this problem, then they'd work with the police department, they'd work with the mayor, they'd work with the police commissioner, who they've
been making fun of for the last two days. And you know, they'd say, where do we need to be? Well, you need to be at the intersection of Rhode Island Avenue and you know, seventeenth Street northeast or wherever. I just made that up, but that's the kind of part of town where these things might be happening, and they'd deployed people there and they'd do that. But instead, currently they've got people standing outside the Lincoln Memorial and the
Jefferson Memorial. Yeah, I bet you there hasn't been anything more than a pickpocket at the Lincoln Memorial or Jefferson Memorial in years. You know, he's not trying to He's just trying to do divert from Epstein and do some kind of bullshit racist thing of the sort that he always does. And you know, all you had to do was listen to that press conference Monday and just the way he talked about not only Washington but cities in general. It's Archie Bunker all the way.
No. Absolutely, And so the question then becomes, he had the force in Los Angeles they laughed, right, because there wasn't really anything for them to do. He's going to have it in DC. The question is he can only, by the way, legally, he can only do it for thirty days. Not that legality matters to any of these people, but if you were technically that is I think relevant. But I just am curious, like, what do you think? What's the goal here?
Is?
The goal is for footage for Fox News and to just draft. The goal is I think to scare people.
Yeah, it's all those things. Yeah, I suppose in his mind these are trulydangerous hellholes, and he's saving people. But I'm sorry. I live near the District of Columbia. It's not a hell New York City's not a hell hole. You know, there are certain neighborhoods of all cities. Of course, there are more dangerous than other neighborhoods. But if you want to do something about that, it takes commitment, it takes time, it takes money. I think I know the route.
I've plotted it out anyway on Google Maps, from the White House to Trump National Golf Course, and I know that he goes past this thing on this place called the street called the East Street Expressway, and there's where it broadens into the thing that connects you to Interstate sixty six. There's this little green sward and there are some tents. There are four or five eight tenths there. I guess they're gone now, but he drove past those handful of tents, and that's probably the whole thing.
Yeah, that's probably what it is. And you know, these people will not necessarily fix homelessness at all.
No, that a lot of money. I mean, you know that takes a lot of money. So he says these people are going to be given a place to stay but far from the capitol. Well, let's see what that is and let's see how long that is. You know, they're probably going to put them in some hotel in Prince George's county for two weeks or something like that.
It reminds me of New York mayors putting homeless people on the bus to Florida.
Yeah, or the southern governors, you know, putting migrants on the bus to New York and then took it. And of course we know that they took a billion dollars and a big beautiful bill. They took a billion dollars out of District of Columbia fund. So it's an abomination and it's police state stuff. And you know, it's getting edging us closer and closer to the point where the
military of the United States can arrest citizens. You know, we're not there quite yet, but we're getting to the point where the military of the United States, which is supposed to go out and fight wars, will be arresting the citizens of the United States. And that's fascism. Where the capital is.
You and I have been doing this for a while, you slightly longer.
Than I have, with great results.
Right because I'm much younger than you are much It seems like even in twenty sixteen, there were people who were poised to at least look like they might get us out of this mess. It didn't happen to be true. But there was a Bob Maler, there was this.
It was that.
It doesn't strike me that there's anyone like that at this time. And the redistricting stuff seems pretty ominous, right, I mean, Texas is really interested in redistricting, which giving the Trump five more seats, So maybe that happens. If it happens, California goes down that road, and then you know, that's five seats in California. I mean, it really negates
the entire democratic system. You know, we're starting then there's a seat here and a seat there, and Republicans can probably make it so that they keep the House by redistricting. I mean, it's not impossib but it's certainly possible. It strikes me as really bad, So talk us through that.
It's totally possible that they could keep the House. And you know, first of all, let's just back up and say this is insane that this is happening in twenty twenty five I don't know the history well enough to say definitively that there's no precedent for it. Somebody probably tried this somewhere along line, I guess, but it's in the Constitution. They discussed it at the Constitutional Convention at length. I read James Madison's notes. They decided to do it
every ten years. That was a big compromise. After they debated about a lot of stuff. They decided to do it every ten years. They decided a congressional district was thirty thousand seats I think it was, and then on the very last day of the Constitutional Convention they changed that to forty thousand. My point being, it was a subject of heated conversation the court Supreme Court cases in the early nineteen sixties that gave us what we call now one man, one person, one vote, used to be
one man, one vote. Those were hotly, hotly contested. So this has been a very controversial thing redistricting for our entire history. But no president that I'm aware of, has ever said, in the middle of the ten year period, I want you to do this now, and the governor, any governor so approached, should say, mister President, I'm sorry Constitution says every ten years, I can't do that. It's so that alone is just an absolute abomination against the Constitution.
The fact that they're considering and now I see Abbot's talking about maybe eight seats instead of five. This came up just today, I think so. And is he really good to arrest? Is he going to send troops?
He can't arrest people because what happens is it's not illegal, so you can try to or I mean, this is the thing. It's like Trump World has gotten so removed from what is legal and what is illegal that they've sort of just started making stuff.
Yeah, well, if Donald Trump tells Texas Rangers, I say, you go arrest them, what are they going to do?
The good news, if there is good news here, is that if members of the Texas House stay out August nineteenth, the session ends, and so Abbott will call another session and then he can call another session. But November is meant to be when it's over. So I don't know that they don't try to push a pass November. But November is the filing deadline, so you could theoretically right out the clock on this.
We could and I go, I know, works Packice like curarently paying their hotel bills. Hope, I hope Richie Liberals get it together. It said, you know, pay for these people to stay out of the state for as long as it takes.
I mean, the hero of this story, if I'm correct, is bad All Rourke, who has fundraised this money for these guys. Because as much as Pritzker can be helped, he's had to really be careful about the money situation, because there's all sorts of ethical I mean, this is
like the joke. We got Trump doing bitcoin and selling sneakers and financing this with that and doing every extra legal maneuver in the book, and then we have Democrats worried that they're going to do something that's going to run a foul.
Well, you know, they care about the law, they have consciences.
Well, and they'll also go to jail if anything goes you know. I mean, it's just a totally different standard, right.
Yeah, completely different standard. Who's going to prosecute Donald Trump?
Let's talk about that. You know, I spend so much time thinking about this, like scenario of say Trump isn't able to do this redistricting thing. You really do see how much he believes that if Republicans lose the midterm, it's like he knows what he's doing is unpopular.
Yeah he does, and his agenda is dead, and you know he's going to be investigated like crazy. Jamie Raskin is going to be running the Judiciary late, which has the power of holding impeachment earings and doing other kinds of sect and it rains to be seen. I guess we might run House oversight. But I hope they give to somebody aggressive.
I hope they'd made right now it's Robert Garcia.
Garcia. Yeah, it's been really good, really good. So you know, that's two aggressive people with subpoenas. Now they'll like or subpoenas and they'll just as they did last time, you know mcgahann and all those people, So they'll like nor subpoenas again, and the Supreme Court will probably say, who knows, you know, they don't have to I don't know, So
it'll just be a stalemate. But at least they'll be able to adduce evidence of a lot of wrongdoing, I think, and show the American people what this administration has been up to. So yeah, Trump's got to be.
Terrified of how we got here, Like, if we were just to have a minute about how we got here to this place where democracy feels so tenuous, it strikes me that the Supreme Court is the original send here. To have a legal body that does not believe in the legality of certain things feels like the original sin.
Yeah, I mean, the immunity ruling is absolutely shocking, and we have yet to see that play out fully because Trump hasn't really done anything that just utterly. He's done a lot of very shocking things, but he hasn't quite yet done anything that just makes your average person go, wait, what was that? But he'll do that, and the Supreme Court said, okay, and then where will we be? So yeah, the Supreme Court, for sure, But the Republicans in Congress,
you know who, are taking no institutional responsibility. And I don't know, the Democrats aren't blameless. I mean, if you look at it another way, the problem is that Joe Biden decided to run again. The Democrats had had a normal process and had come up with a strong candidate through a who was tested in a process. There's a better chance that that person might be the president today.
Yes, that's true, but some of this was unstoppable. I mean, certainly Biden got us here, for sure, but even someone who wasn't Biden, I mean, the stuff that the Republicans have done, Like I thought for sure there would be a moment where Republicans would say, like this is too much, And that has not happened.
No, I don't know if that moment will come. I mean, if a woman who was at the time a girl comes forward with a certain set of allegations, maybe, but even then, only maybe, even then, only maybe. I mean, there is such a person. Katie Johnson is the name that she has gone by, and I've read her testimony about what supposedly allegedly happened. I'm sure you've read it. If Katie Johnson or some other Katie Johnson came forward, well that would be a whole other thing to grapple with.
But even then, unless there's like pictures video.
Yeah, So there's a theory going around, And by going around, I mean Jesse and I and a couple of other people have talked about this idea that maybe the centrism that we have for so long been told is the only way to win elections is actually not the only way to win elections. And in fact that what voters want is more of a sort of working class vision, and that even though we've had people on this podcast who've said, well, Mondannie can only win in New York
and it's not the same. But you know, in Nebraska we saw Dan Osborne had a message it was very close to Bernie Sanders and Mondannie, and it was pretty popular. And Sanders has had a pretty popular message. So I'm curious what you think about this sort of divide in the Democratic Party, since you are actually a Democrat. Usually asked never Trump Republicans and they say, pooh, pooh, that's totally wrong. Corporatism is the way. But what do you think.
I think that we tend to be a little too focused on this center versus left thing. I think Mondani has other things going for him. He speaks plain English. He doesn't sound like he's been handed a script by handlers. That's number one. That's really too many Democrats sound like they're just afraid they're walking on eggshells. So he just talks like a normal human being. He's talking about things that people care about in their everyday lives. City run
grocery stores. I think that's a really cool idea.
Right, we actually have a city run grocery store. Believe it or not.
Oh really, where is it?
Yeah? It exists. I mean the thing is when the government incentivizes things, it works, and when the government descentive you know, it's like the difference between oil companies and flavored vape company is. But anyways to go on.
Yeah, no, got he's got personality, he's got style, he's got swear. He seems cool. Nothing about the Democrats seems cools. The brand is like so, you know, and they're their lowest popularity. That's not because they're true left wing. That's because they're just as a party. There are many good ones. We just named some Jamie and Garcia, and there are many others. Just overall, they're just kind ofly They're just like not the kind of people you'd invite to a party,
And they don't take enough chances. They don't they're afraid to make any enemies. That is a huge problem. I could talk about that for another half hour next time I'm on. Maybe they're afraid to make enemies. They're afraid and Donald Trump has a version of swagger, you know, no wonder young people kind of said, oh, he's interesting. Democrats just aren't interesting. So Mandani at least is interesting and has some Panash.
Mike TAMASKI, will you come back, Lui Ta. Miles Taylor is a former national security official and the author of the Substack Treason. Welcome to Fast Politics, Miles Taylor.
Great to be with you always, Mile, It's great to be with you.
I actually want to talk to you because, I mean, you published an anonymous book during the first Trump admin. You know, you had this op ed, this incredible op ed that you wrote about taking a piece of paper off his desk and how important you know, how much the people around him were able to prevent the unthinkable from happening. I want you to talk about what it's like this time to watch it happened without those things going on.
Yeah, well, you know, I think both you and I would agree that this all was very foreseeable. And yeah, you know, I think a lot of folks felt this way. I mean, there's never been a slow motion brain wreck like this in the history of American politics. I mean, it was so noble that he was going to come in so a second term that was focused on revenge,
and that was noble, and he said it. He said it, but it was noble even years before that, because during that first administration, that was the bulk of a lot of his orders that our lawyers determined were in many cases illegal or unconstitutional, as he wanted to use government agencies to go after his enemies to reward his allies. I mean, this was a very familiar pattern of behavior.
And look, you know, Molly, I get anyone who would say, yeah, but you know, you know, it's not your job to fill in and sell the president of what he can and can't do. And it is Interactually.
Isn't it actually your job as staffers.
Well, here's here's what I would coveyat is when I talked about an internal resistance within the Trump administration, I wasn't talking about a group of people that were saying no to the things that he, as president, was allowed to do. What's a group of people saying no to things?
They're just not legal? And I have to reemphasize that every time, because you know, there's this popular narrative that's a president and his allies of popularize that his deep state was preventing him from doing from implementing his agenda. That is untrue. There was a group of people preventing him from doing things that are illegal, and you swear an oath to the Constitution and to not break the law,
and you don't swear an oath to a man. And so, you know, a lot of those things that we blocked in term one, of course, have become his priorities in term two. And that includes, as we're seeing now, these very very disturbing uses of the United States military that we now have coast to coast initial deployments of troops from LA to Washington VC. But these are things he
fantasized about in the first terms. And make no mistake, you know, in his mind, the ostensible reason for doing these things was something like immigration or law in order. But he relished the possibility of having a standing presidence of US forces in cities that didn't agree with him, in democratic cities, and that was something that the time kind of rolled their eyes and said, yeah, but he probably really doesn't think that, right, He doesn't really want
to put these in democratics. So they said, no, that's absolutely what the president wants to do. And true to form, as he always does, he has now spelled that out in black and white there's that truth so post from like six weeks ago where he says I want to go into Democrat cities. I mean he has said the quiet part out loud and we need to take them seriously.
Yeah, for sure, So talk to me about like this idea of sending he sent the national California National Guard. He federalized the Guard and sent them in to Los Angeles. You know, they had no place to sleep, they had nothing to eat, they were there, nothing really happened. Now they're gone. Now he's doing it in d C. Explained us as someone who worked in the administration why he wants to do this, because I think it's important. I think it's lost on some of us why he wants to do it.
Well, first, I'll say it's pretty remarkable that Donald Trump can deploy the National Guard to stop petty theft in Washington, DC, but seemed unable to do it to stop an insurrection. On January sixth, I mean everyone should be talking about that.
There was an incident involving one of his political appointees, one of the DOSE staffers I think known as big Balls, and you know big Ball all gets punched in the face and Donald Trump deploys the National Guard into Washington, DC, Yet hundreds thousands of rioters storm the United States Capital and he sits on his hands and watches from the outer oval. That's really disgusting to me as an American.
Look putting that aside for a moment, what I think happened in la is I genuinely think Donald Trump and Stephen Miller were disappointed that the people of Los Angeles showed so much restraint, and I didn't even think that was going to happen. I was very worried that the presence of troops was going to lead to molotov cocktails and really serious attacks on folks, which is I think what the White House was hoping for, so they could induce a further craft down on the region and on
the state. But people really really really held back, and I think that that's very important, and so ultimately they rolled back that presence. But now you're seeing this being done in Washington, d C. I don't imagine this is
going to be like Los Angeles. I would bet that for the rest of the Trump presidency, at least, either the National Guard or other federal agents des floyd on those streets because Donald Trump is saying right now, it's just because there's been a spike in theft in Washington which turns out not to be tearor there's been to define in Prime and Washington, DC over the past two years. But in reality, he's been talking for years and years
about federalizing Washington, DC. And that's what you always have to look at with Donald Trump is you have to look away from the proximate cause he says, this is why I'm doing this thing right now, it's because of a caravan that's coming forwards the US border. No no, no, no, no, You've got to go back in time and see what he's been talking about. Take picture, and he has been talking about reclaiming that city, not only staying away from DC statement, but taking Washington, d C and putting it
fully under federal control once again. That is I think his endgame here, and you're going to see it likely happen in gradiations starting with this crackdown on street crime right their number.
It never is really about what he says it is. It's always about something weird and also some kind of weird history. He has one of the things that there are like small things that I think are worrying and problematic, like his Mara lagoing of the White House. Can you explain why things like that which seem very stupid actually are very important, because I think they actually are. But I'd love you to explain why.
Some people hate this author. Some people love this author. But I'm a cider in this instance because she has a really good essay along these lines from a half century ago. Heinrand wrote this essay sometime during the Cold War, and I think it's all you know, something like the monument Men, And it's an essay about why autocrafts build monuments,
and especially monuments to themselves. And the crux of it is that, you know, people who have such a high opinion of themselves in positions of government want to centralized control, make themselves dictators for life. They have an insecurity, they know that that legacy will not last forever, and deep inside they know the faulty logic that has led them to demand centralized control, and as sort of a projection to cover up for that, they go build monuments to themselves.
And not only is this a disgusting sort of thing, to witness its total misuse of taxpayer dollars and resources is to build up the image of one man who's in charge. And we see this all over autocratic countries throughout the twentieth century. It looks back. I mean, go through Hell. You just travel today through Eastern Europe and you can find still relics of Stalin's reign statues to Joseph Stalin that he himself had put up. This is a hallmark of autocrat is could go build these government
structures for themselves. Now, Donald Trump claims that, for instance, this new ballroom he's building at the White House to leave his imprint on that property, is not going to be funded by taxpayers. It's going to be privately funded, and he says he himself is going to fund it.
We know that not to be true. Many times throughout Donald Trump's career he said he's going to pay for something, you know, including checks to charities that he's pledged money to, and he ends up trying to find someone else to put the bill in the endgame. So I wouldn't be surprised at all if the taxpayers do end up putting a good chunk of this bill, or he crowdsources it
to his supporters. And if that sounds incendiary looked no further than Donald Trump when he was crowdsourcing payment for a new debt for himself to his supporters back during the early days of the twenty twenty four presidential campaign. So I can see that happening. But the bigger thing here, Molly, as you allude to, is just what this symbolizes. And it symbolizes a man wanting to create monuments to himself, which is also just scratches the surface of all of
these other autocratic tendencies. Seeing in the second term of Donald's.
Brump, one of the things that I'm struck by, and I'm curious what you think, is it feels like there's just not a ton of resistance to him. I think people are actually really mad at him and are resisting him. But it feels like the institutions, like the billionaires, the people were supposed to be sort of stalwarts of whatever, seem to have really caved. Why do you think that is? And also what do you think that sort of where do you think that gets us? Right now?
I've been sort of toggling back and forth the past few weeks, from little moments of optimism to a great deal of cynicism. About what's happening. And you know, No King's Day when that happened, that was sort of the apex of my optimism. There's actually a lot more people that came out and mobilized than I spect especially for what was a hot day and a lot of cities across the country. That was encouraging to see. However, as you point to the elites, the institutions that are under
fire are largely capitulating. And this is really, really, really worrisome to me. And you know, I'll take an examples Tim Cook. People who know Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, know him to be deeply in his core opposed to Donald Trump and everything he stands to. And yet you had a Tim Cook last week who went into the Oval Office, gave Donald Trump this twenty four carrot gold gifts and allotted him rhetorically right there in the Oval Office, and then stood by as Trump verbally attacked his enemies
and sort of flaunted his abuses of power. These sort of things are happening every single day where major organizations and institutions that he has threatened are demonstrating very clear fealty. And what I've been saying the past few days is we need people to wake up to the fact that
it's not just the elites that are under threats. Yes, people like New York Attorney General Letitia James and Senator Adam Schiff all the way to myself are under investigations by Trump's administration has pure and clear retaliation for having opposed him, or investigated him, or spoke out against him. It would be easy enough to be a listener at home and say, I mean that sucks. I like those people. I don't want to see that happen. But how does
that affect me? Well, the answer is one, it's made it easier, just from the strophe of a pen for the President of the United States to investigate whoever he wants. But the bigger picture is the legal institutions in our society, the schools that we go to, the businesses that we buy products from, the media that we consume, all of it is very slowly being warped because of his decisions,
because of his intimidation. I mean major news outlets. There are people who are avoiding covering stories because they just don't want to folk the bear. Now, they themselves wouldn't think they're avoiding covering those stories because of a lack of courage. But it's just a path of least resistance. Okay, maybe not poke the bear, Maybe not cover that story. Because journalists are getting fired and people like Stephen Polder
are getting fired. Educational institutions are capitulating and giving the administration what they want because they're launching these sham investigations and with folding federal aids to force those institutions to change their policies. It's actually changing what people are going to learn in the classroom. It's going to change the people they are surrounded with. And this is resulting in real numbers. Foreign students start coming to the United States.
People are starting to boycott American products. He could go on and on and on. Prom's revenge is changing the
world that we live in. And not long ago, I sat down with a friend whose family escaped Putin's Russia early when Putin was president, and he said, look, this is very similar to how it felt in those early days of Putin as the country had been very optimistic, Russia was democratizing, and then all of a sudden, this guy came in and started to intimidate every sector of society to demonstrate loyalty to him and his administration, and
it started to have these really really perverse effects. You couldn't get good legal representation, you were worried about people ratting you out. It got really weird, and we're seeing that. I mean, Laura Lumber, one of the presidents closest outside allies, now has a tip line to allow people to phone
in tips about disloyal government employees. You never had anything like that in the history of the United States, even with Parthyism, didn't have a one eight hundred number or email address that you could send in a tip about
someone who was being disloyal to the presidents. This is really scary stuff, and it causes changes in behavior that are hard to see from the surface that have enormous secondary and tertiary consequences as people start to self censor, from the billionaire CEOs all the way down to people in the classroom. That's what we're talking about. Here is a full nationwide in past from this revenge campaign. I mean, this is something I think about all the time. How
do you get back from something like this. You've worked in the federal government, you know obviously this is a real problem. You know, there's all sorts of stuff happening that's like, you know the kind of stuff that Nicks, I mean, making Nixon look like Lincoln, right, yep, just.
At every stage. So I wonder, like, what do you think a sort of I mean, clearly Democrats have to win back power and this cherrymandering. I mean like like
let's talk about Texas adding five seats. If Texas adds five seats, like right, so so talk us through kind of like I mean, is there a way to push back on you know, I mean clearly what's happened here is Texas has sort of I mean, I feel like overturning SBA, then the repeal of Roe, like you can see a straight line from you know, how we got to a place where now Texas is really a state that has is become a sort of a cunt of its own that is going to influence everything.
Yeah, and I think that you are seen right now in other states, especially democratic states, so far a very interesting kind of restraint. I thought what Gavin Newsome did the past couple days was extraordinarily clever, which is he proposed poessentially to tack any action that happens in California
to what's happening in Texas. In other words, rather than just come back out and say California, you're going to retaliate by Jerry Manderin and doing the same thing to balance out the seats, he instead said that if Texas does go forward with this, it can potentially trigger it happening in California, which might change the incentives in Texas, because if you're a legislator in Texas and you know that essentially what California does is going to nullify what
you do, then you may not want to go forward with it. But also importantly, it's newsome showing we're not just going to engage in tit for tat revenge and just go forward with it no matter what happens. We're going to wait and see and give them an offering. And I think that's what's important and interesting here is we've got to figure out an off ramp from getting into the twenty first century Jerrymanderin wars, because this could
get very very ugly, very quick. And if we think our politics is broken right now, just wait until every single state in the Union we're trying to carve up every locality in awkward ways to win more seats. I mean we will be an endless legal and political warfare if that ends up happening. So I'm glad that Newsom has shown that restraint, but it is overall, I think, a very very bad signal about where things are headed.
And make no mistake, this comes from the top. I mean, Donald Trump is so worried about the back two years of his administration that there's no telling to what lengths they will go to try to rig the system to get the right number of seats to prevent it from falling, saying the Democratic cans. And I want to say one more thing about Molly your point on how do we get these institutions to push back? And there's a really simple answer here, and it's what you see when individuals
need to push back against something. I call it a bystander phenomenon. And I always use the example of you know, if you got a crowded subway and you see someone getting eaten nuts. We read these stories in the news and we're appalled when a whole subway car full of people fails to save someone from getting attacked. The scenarios that turn out differently are usually because one person in that crowd said, you know, and it's going to be scary to dive into that mess, but I'm going to
do it knowing that it's they breaks this deal. A second person, a third person, a FOURD person will do it. But it's really scary to be that first person. And I'm not saying I've been that first person in my life, but I've been in the early waves of people.
You've been the first person. You wrote the anonymous op ed from the admin.
Well, and I'll say this, I want people to think that somehow, I, you know, felt like I was Superman behind the scenes. It was scary. It was scary, and I knew when I came forward it was going to rock my life, and it did. But in doing that, in coming forward, it made it a lot easier to recruit friends of mine from the administration, cabinet secretaries who had spoken out in private but not public, to get
them to come forward. And I spent years after that really trying to get more of those people to come out, and the more that did, it made it easier and easier and easier for the next person. This applies to the big institutions in our society, and we've already kind
of seen it with the law firms. Thank god, some of the big law firms pushed back, fought these unlawful executive orders from Trump to punish them, fought them in court and got a good outcome, and it started to make the others that capitulated looked very, very bad, and that I think prevented it from getting a lot worse. With the law firms. We need to see the same thing with universities in this country, with news organizations, with
other institutions that are under fire. Some of them are going to have to step up and show courage, and that's going to cost a lot of pain for them in the short run. But you know, there are glimmers of hope with some of those institutions that this will happen.
The place I have less hope is with businesses. I've seen none of the Silicon Valley tech executives say that Donald Trump's economic policies are terrible for tech and terrible for the United States, because immigration policies are terrible teching terrible for the United States. None of these people who know better and think differently in their personal lives actually showing it back down. Now that could change, especially if
there's an economic downturn. There's an economic downturn, you're going to see CEOs jump off the Trump bandwagon and start criticizing the administration. But that's not what it should take. So you know, look, we're still early in this administration. But I have been, like you, very alarmed that a lot of these institutions that are under fire have capitulated and not wanted to be the first to fight back.
Miles Taylor, thank you so much for coming on.
This was great, Molly. It's always wonderful to be with you. Thank you for your voice and for shining a light.
No moment.
Jesse Cannon.
So, Molly, Gavin some is out here tweeting in the style of Donald Trump. It's really hard to read, even when you're making fun of him and you're cleaning up some of the language. But it seems he's going through with this mid decade district redrawing.
What are you seeing.
Good for Gavin? I mean that's the thing, Like, I don't care why you're brave, as long as you're brave. I don't care if you're brave because you want to be president? Fine, right, I mean, like, what are the other choices? Nothing so good for him? You know, do it, redraw the maps, fight fire with fire. You know, the way we got here was Democrats saying like they're the good guys. They're not going to do the bad stuff. Only they're going to let Trump just waffle over them.
So good for Gavin. Redraw the maps, get going. This is like really really scary and bad and this is the only possible way that we keep our norms and institutions. So again I say, good job, Gavin, do it. Just don't have Charlie Kirk on your pod cast. 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.