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. We're on vacation, but that doesn't mean we don't have a great show for you. Congressman Brendan Boyle joins us to talk about the incoming dysfunction in
the next Congress, the one hundred and nineteenth Congress. But first we'll talk to historian and Democracy Americana newsletter author Thomas Zimmer about how we prepare for Project twenty twenty five's assault on the America we know.
Welcome back to Fast Politics.
Thomas, Well, thank you for having me on.
Last time we talked, we talked about Project twenty twenty five.
Y're an academic.
You have been writing about this endlessly so smartly. I am a fan and also have tried really hard to put the focus on some of the stuff you're doing because it's so important. So I want you to talk to us about what you're doing with this and where you are in the trajectory of your life and also of this Project twenty twenty five coming into fushion.
Yeah, I mean, I'm by a profession, I'm a historian, I'm at Georgetown University, and I work on the relationship between mainstream conservatism and the radical right and since sort of the nineteen forties or so, and I guess, you know, over the past almost ten years now, there's no way if you're working on this as a historian, there's just no way that you're not talking about Trump and trump
Ism and how do you get to that point? And so for me, over the past few years, I've tried to sort of grapple with, you know, these more radical forces within the broaders of right wing coalition within the Republican Party and why they have come to dominate the Republican Party and the American right more broadly, why they are so clearly in charge over there. They have always been there, This is not entirely new, but these more radical, really extreme factions and ideas they have moved so clearly
to the power centers of conservatism. They have taken over the republic Party and they are in charge. And now they are back in power, or not quite yet, but there will be. And I think, to me, this is what sort drew me to paying attention to Project twenty
twenty five. So this of big landing operation on the right that is spearheaded by Heritage, because it seemed to me this was really capturing these radical ideas on the right and how much they had sort of managed to take over what you know, maybe twenty years, thirty years, forty years ago was more of mainstream conservatism, not quite so radical. That's what made Project twenty twenty five interesting
to me. That's what we always talked about, right, So if you look at these plans, right, this is the clearest window that we have ever had into what their vision is for American society, what they want to do to America and with America. And I think what we're seeing now and there was never any doubt about this that this is going to play a big role in what the incoming Trump and administration wants to do.
Yeah, exactly.
Here's the difference between John and Roberts and Clarence tom Right or Sam Alito.
Right.
One, you have radical, radical, radical, you know stuff that you wouldn't you know Fox News, fever dreams, the rantings of Rush Limbaugh, and the other you have that ethos, but distilled in a much more genteel package. Project twenty twenty five sort of takes the mask off I would say.
It does, and it does not, because it still comes in a way, it still comes packaged as all these people, right, they're all still they dress like you would expect like a very respectable conservative to dress, and they it's the Heritage Foundation.
It's not.
You know, they will say, oh, this is not some fringe right wing whatever online blog. No, it's the Heritage Foundation, which has been since the seventies really one of the nerve centers of conservatism. But yeah, if you actually look beyond just the packaging and you look at what they are saying, they could not possibly be clearer about the fact that they are just simply not on board with this idea of America being or becoming increasingly becoming an egalitarian,
pluralistic kind of democratic society. They don't want that, right. They think that is actually not just America changing. They think that is America being destroyed. And so they have outlined very clearly what they think needs to be done in response to this quote unquote threat of egalitarian democratic pluralism, and that is kind of takeover government. They present it not as conservatism. They are very explicit about this is
not a conservative project. This is a counter revolutionary project. I think that shift is really really important because for the people behind Project twenty twenty five, and some of them again are now going to hold some pretty influential positions in the next White House in the Trump administration, they think there is nothing left to conserve. They think
the radical left revolution has already happened. The radical left has already taken over all these institutions, including these government institutions, and so you can't do conservatism anymore. You have to
do counter revolution. And that is really kind of the project that they are outlining here, how to stage this comprehensive counter revolution takeover of American government in order to transform it into an instrument with which they can impose their vision for America against the majority of the American people onto the entire country.
Yeah, so explain to us what we're seeing, like the rest of announcement Toledomb. That seems like the clearest indication so far the Project twenty twenty five is Trump.
So I'll say two things about this. I wouldn't even say Project twenty twenty five is Trump. I would say Trump Project twenty twenty five and all these other factions on the right, because there are other factions on the right that are kind of feuding with the Heritage people. Right, there's the America First Policy Institute, there's the Trump campaign people.
They're not all the same and there are rivalries there, but what they all share, right, what they all share and what is expressed in Project twenty twenty five is this more radical consensus on the right that we need this kind of more radical or quote unquote counter revolution.
Right.
And this guy Russell vadd And I know you've written about this guy, and I'm I've been working on some of a deep dive into his ideology that will probably out by the time this conversation comes up. He is a key figure in this because he's going to be the director of the Office of Management and Budget or and B, just like he was at the end of the first Trump administration. So why is it worth paying
attention to this? This is not I'm assuming most of the people listening to us think Office of Management and Budget. That doesn't sound like, you know, the most important position, But he really is a He's one of the key figures, not just any contributor. He is one of the key architects behind Project twenty twenty five. And he's also a truly radical figure. He's a self identifying Christian nationalist, not at all on board with like a pluralistic democratic society,
not at all. No, and he demands what he calls He fancies himself like an intellectual leader. What makes him kind of an interesting subject, you know, for someone like me he was trying to understand what's going on on the right. He's interesting because he fancies himself an intellectual leader. He will spell it out right, he will write down what he thinks the problem in America is and what needs to be done. And he calls it radical constitutionalism.
And that is precisely this idea that says, look, well, don't even live in a constitutional order anymore, because the radical left has already destroyed it. And so in response to that, he calls for this again. He calls it radical constitutionalism, which basically amounts to you destroy the constitution in order to save it. And you do that because you can do this now. Because he really believes Trump is a kind of God sent chosen figure to lead
this kind of counter revolution. So he really he combines sort of this kind of radical ideology with a great deal of competence. And this is really important. I think because as we're all kind of grappling with how much of what they want to do are they going to be able to actually do, actually able to be implemented, right, Because I mean in the first Trump administration, there was this thing, you know, it was of malevolence tempered by incompetence, right.
It was sort of a famous saying in the early Trump administration, and that was definitely true. Right, these malevolent people, they just didn't know what they were doing. And if you look at some denomination chaos and the Mattgates story and Pete hex seven, all these people, it's very easy to come to the conclusion that this is just that all over again. These people are obviously incompetent, they don't
know what they're doing. But then on the other end of the spectrum, you have someone like Russell Vadd who has worked in and around government for twenty years at every level, like starting as like a low level aid, a congressional aid, and making his way through all these different stages and institutions, and he really understands government like few other people. He knows what he's doing, and he
combines that with sort of a very radical ideology. And so I think that is, you know, again, as we are trying to calibrate our expectations, where on the scale of you know, incompetence to sort of malevolence, are we going to land with this, Someone like Russell vadd is sort of, I think a reminder that you know, this is not just going to be a bunch of incompetent duphesis.
There will be quite few of them also, but there will also be the Russell Vaultz, and I think they will provide the kind of counterweight to that.
Yeah, it is really so important to realize, Like, in my mind, a lot of this stuff in Project twenty twenty five. The reason why it was so unpopular when when people started googling about it and Trump had to disavow it, which was, by the way, I love that all of his disavowing stuff, he was involved and worked right. He was like I mean, like voters really did believe. He was like, yeah, we're going to kick abortion back to the States.
He overturned Robbie Wade.
And then they're like right, Like, I just love that. At every point he was like yeah, yeah, this is what we're going to do, and people were like yeah, okay. So he's like I know nothing about Project twenty twenty five, and voters are like, Okay, he says he knows nothing, and there are things in there that really run counter to trump Ism, and I'm hoping you could talk about, like, for example, things like they're war on pornography, right, because like he went on all these bro podcasts and he.
Was like, I'm one of you.
We're all gonna have beers like talk to me about like this is Christian nationalism. And sooner or later they come for the pornography.
Yes, and they come for the pornography, not just because they are so religiously you know, secat whatever. Yes, yes, no, but also because throughout if you read, you know, they put out there's a thousand page policy agenda thing. They call it a mandate for leadership. And if you look at whenever you know, they talk about pornography, they're not
actually talking about pornography or just pornography. They try to link pornography to kind of sexual deviancy, and that's dangerous and that's trans people that that's all the same thing for them, right, So when they say we're banning pornography, what they actually talk about is we're going to ban everything and everyone who dares to deviate from our st you know, very very sort of conservative Christian understanding of sexuality and gender. And so it's not actually about pornography
so much. It's more about imposing this very very reactionary Christian understanding of what the societal order should be. And I think that is I mean, look, this is Trump's kind of superpower, right when he goes on Joe Rogan or whatever, and he will just riff. And it is kind of true that Trump doesn't care whether or not pornography will be banned, Right, that's not his thing.
Well, details are not his thing.
No, he doesn't hold specific policy positions so much. Right, it's the same with abortion bands. Trump doesn't care is it going to be a six week ban, a ten week ban. He doesn't want to think about that kind of stuff. Too many people mistake that to mean Trump actually doesn't have ideological convictions or he will never implement this kind of radical stuff because he doesn't really believe it.
But the thing is Trump does have a very clear ideological vision, at least in the sense that he has a very clear vision of how power should be distributed in society. He has a very clear understanding of who should be at the top in society and who should be the like who should be people like him, rich white men, powerful men. You truly believe that they should be in a position to, you know, exert power over everyone. They want to exert power over, especially women, right, and
they should be in charge. I agree. That's not the same as like a fully fleshed out ideological He's not going to sit down and write his manifesto, right, clearly not. He's too lazy for that anyway. But that doesn't mean there isn't an underlying vision of how society should be ordered, of how society should be structured, of how power should be distributed in society. And he has a very clear
vision of that. And so no, he doesn't care about specifically how you're going to set up an abortion band. But what he very much clearly cares about is, you know, all the radical feminists and all the loud women, and all the women who are now like not gonna let
him touch them anymore. Whatever, They need to be put back in their place, right, they need to be reminded, No, this is a society in which people like me Donald Trump can do as they please, and they can exert power as they please, and that is a very clear ideological understanding of how society should work. And so yeah, he can go on Rogan and say pornography don't care, abortion band don't care. And then people hear this and think, oh, he's not going to implement this radical stuff. But that's
I think a categorical misunderstanding. He will implement things that will again restore, or entrench or re entrench the kind of societal order in which he truly believes, and that is where he meets these kinds of people like Russell Vaud and Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, because they also share this vision of what is fundamentally white, patriarchal Christian dominance.
So what I think is very interesting here is that it's almost as if these two people Donald Trump and MAGA, because Donald Trump bis MAGA and this Project twenty twenty five crew, which is really sort of different ideological bent. It's a marriage of convenience, is that right?
Yeah? Absolutely, they meet on the basis of I think two things. One is they share this understanding that something has gotten out of control in America. The Woks are running wild and the feminists and the crazy identity activists and yeah, those are not my terms. This is the kind of how they talk, right, and something has this is not right, and we need to restore order. And by order they mean a kind of white Christian patriarchal dominance in all spheres of life. That's not just politics.
That's also the family and the public square and the workplace and schools and all these places, right, all spheres of life. That's why they come together. And they also share again, they share an enemy. They are convinced that it's time for retribution and revenge and that you have a more traditional conservative politics just hasn't gotten the job done. They share this good disdain. Or they talk about it as the republic like an establishment and the conservative establishment,
and they want nothing to do with that anymore. They think it's time for much more radical measures. And that's where they sort of come together, right, I mean Trump, It is true like Trump is not in some way. Right, Trump is sort of a not an ideal vessel for the kind of radical project that is outlined in Project twenty twenty five, because he's not gonna sit down and read a thousand page policy report, and he is erratic
and he is lazy. That's all true, right, That's that's absolutely and you will always infuse chaos, that's absolutely true. But then on the other hand, if you want something radical, like you know, again the vision that is outlined here in Project twenty twenty five, if you want that to be implemented, you need a radical figure in the White House who doesn't care about norms and doesn't care about precedent and only cares about again retribution, revenge and imposing
his will on society. And that is Trump, right, And that is what these people understand, people like again Kevin Roberts and Russell Waud, that's what they see in Trump. They don't care so much. They know and understand that this is not someone who who has been a a social conservative his whole life or a religious conservaive. Trump
has never been any of that. They understand this. But they see him as someone who will come in, take off the gloves, don't care about norms, don't care about precedents, and implement this radical stuff.
Right.
He will not shy away from being radical and doing the kind of radical stuff that they think is now a sort of high time to move beyond conservatism. Move beyond traditional republicanism and move to something much more radical. And that's what they see in Trump. And I think they got that right in January.
What's the thing that worris you the most?
Yeah, what I think is really coming and coming right away is going to be the mass deportation stuff. This is also another of you know, another example for how Trump maga Trump campaign Project twenty twenty five, for how that all is not one thing but very much complimentary. That was Trump's number one promise throughout the campaign. That was his promise, We're going to do this mass deportation thing. And then you look at someone like Russell Vatt, who was in charge of one of the big planks of
Project twenty twenty five. They call it the one hundred and eighty day Playbook, basically a kind of sort of emergency immediate measures they want to take in the first
six months back in office. And when he talks about that, what he really means is we have been drafting dozens, probably hundreds of presidential executive orders that are going to be ready on day one, and all sorts of regulations ready on day one to be implemented on day one by Donald Trump and much of that is centered around deportation,
mass deportation. Right when he there was sort of a you know, a secret recording of a conversation that VOD had in during the summer when he's of proudly because this one hundred and eighty day playbook is secret, right, that's the one part of Project twenty twenty five that they have not made official. They want to keep that secret.
But he was recorded talking about it, and he very explicitly said, look, we have these executive orders ready and a lot of this is going to be about mass deportation, and I think that's absolutely coming. Like again, that doesn't mean they will succeed at deporting fifteen million, twenty million, twenty five million people within a short span of time. It's very unlikely that they will be able to do that, and there will be chaos, but chaos doesn't mean moderation,
and chaos doesn't save anyone. Chaos causes harm. So it will be extremely chaotic and it will be violent, and they will absolutely go ahead and do this. And I think, again, this is the big difference to twenty seventeen. When they came in in twenty seventeen, there was no one who
had drafted dozens or even hundreds of executive orders. They didn't even know how to draft an executive order, right, that was the big deal with if people remembered the so called Muslim band that Trump tried to institute early on, like right away in his first presidency, the executive order was so badly written, right, that was very easy for courts to come in and say, okay, this is nonsense, stop it. Right, But this is not going to be
the case this time. This guy Russell Vaught, he knows how to draft an executive order, and he says he's drafted them, and I see no reason to not believe him, right, And so I think that that is the type of stuff that we are in for this time, and that might be very different from last time.
Yeah, the one hottest take is I thought for sure they would build camps, but now I think they'll use private persons.
They may not have this faith in private persons, right.
No, I think there will be a lot of chaos, right, And just drafting executive orders does not mean that this is going to work. And I want to be maybe say this towards the end of our conversation. If people feel like, oh my God, that is also depressing. Have
we already lost? Is it even worth I don't now pushing back or you know, Look, there is a vast gulf between the aspirations of absolutist power from the Trump people and the realities of a complex modern society and modern state, because modern societies and modern states are enormously complex beasts, and any any authoritarian regime, regardless of how competent, will always struggle to make you know, modern society and
a modern state fall in line. And in that gulf, in that gap is where the conflict will happen, and there will be enormous conflict, and there will be potential to push back and to fight back, and you know, to oppose these things. It would just not be the same as in twenty seventeen because we're looking at it completely. We're looking at a radicalized right. We're looking at a
right that is better prepared than in twenty seventeen. And I know, again it's kind of hard to say this because people would then point to Pete Hexav and say, yeah, but that guy is not And I agree, again, it's not across the board, right, It's not across the board. And that's why there will be chaos, and there will be incompetence, and sometimes they will shoot themselves in the foot.
That will all happen, But I think we need to be prepared for the fact that there's also going to be the Russell Vauds of this world in this administration, and they again, they have a plan and they will try to implement it, and there will be space to
push back. But what have seen so far has not been very encouraging because instead of being very clear about the fact that this incoming trumpst regime is not normal and it's not just a normal, you know, incoming administration, instead we've seen a lot of sort of normalizing and legitimizing from our elected leaders, from our sort of nominally
at least anti maga institutions. That has really frustrated me because we will need at some point, right we will need the American public to be prepared to push back. But if we spend the time from the election through inauguration saying, oh, no, this is a this is a totally normal, totally legit government coming in. When I say legit, I don't mean like, please don't indulge in kind of like, oh, the election was stolen stuff that is as conspiratorial, stupid
nonsense today as it was. Well, it's also just we know it was no exactly, So that's not what I'm saying. But when I hear like, I don't know, CNN or NPR going on about, you know, the musk Ramaswami Department of Government Efficiency as kind of like and they talk about it as if it is a kind of a good faith, serious effort at government reform, and that is ridiculous. It is not. We should not be legitimizing this kind
of stuff, right. We need to prepare people to look at this and say, no, this has no legal or constitutional authority, and these guys shouldn't be anywhere near political power, and so we're not gonna accept this kind of stuff.
And that is I think where again, that's where the conflict is, and that's where so maybe the job for someone like you or maybe me is to kind of tell people, look, no, let's not accept just because Donald Trump calls it the Department of Government Efficiency doesn't mean it's a department and it's had it has no legal or constitutional authority, And.
Don't take the orwelly in no no descriptions seriously or literally.
No, absolutely not. And don't don't buy into the bravado either, Like, don't listen to Steve Bannon and all those Oh we're so strong, we're so No, don't take any of that right, don't accept any of this nonsense that we have won and we're now in charge. No, it's going to be. Politics hasn't ended, and politics is not going to end on January twentieth or whenever the inauguration is. It's gonna
it's going to continue. It's going to be conflict. But in order for people to be able to again see what is coming and push back, we need to be careful now and not again have Democratic senators go on television and say, oh, I think this is really a good idea because we really need government reform. This is ridiculous, right, So let's not do that. Let's be clear eyed about what is coming. Let's pay attention. Yeah, and then the conflict will continue.
Thomas, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you so much for having me on.
Always a pleasure.
Congressman Brendan Boyle represents Pennsylvania's second district. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Representative Boyle.
Yeah, great to be back with you.
I'm so delighted to have you here because we're actually friends, which is nice. You've heard some of my insane theories before. It is the end of the two hundred and eighteenth Congress. How many bills did my Johnson pass?
I think it's a little over twenty.
I know, by some numbers, it's the least productive session of Congress since nineteenth century.
Congratulations, Yeah, thank you, thank you.
It is a real testament to the Republican majority we have right now that there were about as many votes for Speaker as there were bills that passed the United States House Representatives under this Republican majority.
That is an incredible statement, a statement you probably thought you would never make, you.
Know, especially when you compare it to what we did in twenty twenty one. In twenty twenty two, dealing with the pandemic and with the same small majority that they had, and we were able to pass very meaningful legislation, from bringing down the cost of prescription drugs to the biggest infrastructure packaged since the nineteen fifties, to the chipsack, to all sorts of things.
It's a big difference.
Yeah, you want to talk about legislation and doing things for the American people.
I'm here to tell you that's for cover.
Silly me, silly me, it's so retro.
Job of Congress. What is the job of Congress?
There are two kinds of members of Congress. There are the legislators and they're the performance artists. And what we see on the other side, whether it's Marjorie Taylor Green or Nancy Mace and her current jihad on bathrooms.
Or Lauren Bobert or.
YadA, YadA YadA, they are filled with performance artists don't really give a damn about passing meaningful legislation, but unfortunately they are able to con a significant number of people into thinking, that's what we're supposed to do.
How do we get here?
And that is a.
Longer subject than we probably have time for. I mean, going back many decades. I think part of it is the media ecosystem that is built up on the right that you're beginning with talk radio and Rush Limbaugh and his incredibly successful popular show, to then Fox News, to then all of the Limbaugh imitators who now are on social.
Media and TikTok, etc.
It didn't happen overnight, and in many ways, Donald Trump's rise was enabled by that in a way that it never would have happened in a previous generation when you had more mainstream media being basically the entirety of media. So I'm far from an expert on this, but I don't think it's a coincidence that you see the rise of someone like Trump and all these other characters now in a way that you just didn't do it in more boring, normal times.
Yeah, I mean, I also think it's a really good point.
Right.
The reward structure is such that you have a Congress, it's heavily gerrymandered, so districts are more red or blue. When they're more blue, that means fighting for things like dental right glasses. When they're more red, that means fighting for things like bullying Sarah McBride into not being able to use the bathroom.
Yeah, it's exactly right.
I mean, they are pretty expert at using the cultural issues to inflame people to distract from the fact that their agenda is all about enriching the one thousand billionaires in this country. You know, you look at the infamous ad now with the tagline She's for they them, President Trump is for you, And what did that ad include transgendered prisoners, and illegal or undocumented immigrants all in the same AD.
I mean that was sort.
Of like a Poe Prie of Republican punching bags all into one ad. But that has been the playbook for a long time. Twenty years ago an election that I think was actually pretty similar to this one in two thousand and four, with a similarly close result and Republicans narrowly winning the White House. That was about a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage at a time when we had war raging in Iraq and a pretty weak economy.
So this is hardly the first time Republicans have used those sort of cultural issues to distract people from the fact that their economic agenda is not on the side of the world class, in the middle class in this country.
I want to talk about that AD because a lot of people think that AD was one of the things. And again, there's no one thing that made Donald Trump president again, right, he got these low propensity voters out there, He did a lot of things that changed the electorate. But I want you to talk about that AD because that was an AD. When it came out, I heard a lot of anxiety from people in the political classes
about how it actually did speak to people. So it's an ad and it uses a clip from Harris during the twenty nineteen primary cycle when people were asked to sort of make sense of things that were maybe more progressive than where the party was going, or more progressive than Harris was for sure.
Just talk us through it.
Yeah, I mean it was an ad that I must have seen hundreds of times. I mean, I literally live in the Philadelphia area, the biggest swing state, and I know it is an ad that they played a lot during sports and I watch a lot of sports, So I'm a Pennsylvania voter, I watches a lot of sports, and a male, so I was pretty much their target demo. I think that the lesson here is whether it was Ducaucus eighty eight or John Kerry getting swift voted, or
Kamala Harris with that ad. Any time that you are attacked, you need to punch back, and you need to punch back hard. Do not just ignore it and assume people will figure out that the ads and exaggeration were flat out false. I also think, though to your first point, you know this in the end, both in Pennsylvania and nationally, it was about a one and a half point race, one point six percent to be exact, in the national popular vote, and one point seven percent here in Pennsylvania.
So anytime you have a race that is actually one of the closest in American history, you can point to any one of one hundred things that you can say, oh, that made the difference because.
The margin was so close.
So I do share with you the kind of caution against saying there was any one thing that determined this race. But I do think we need to relearn the old lesson of you know, when your opponent is hitting you, you can't ignore it, as absurd and as crazy it
may be. This is why in the ninety two campaign, James Carville, Paul mcgalich, and the Clinton campaign created the war room, because they learned from the eighty eight to Caucus experience that, hey, anytime the other side throws that garbage, we need to be fierce and batting it back down and fighting back on it.
Yeah, talk to me about Pennsylvania. That's your state. It is a state that Democrats must win or else they lose. As we saw just now.
Yeah, this is the third consecutive presidential election that was decided here by a point and a half or less. The only other state that can say that is Wisconsin. So we are by far the two closest swing states, and if you're a Democrat, you have to have this unless you dramatically overperform, you know, south in the sun Belt, which is just more difficult. The reality is that we're the state that closest reflected the national popular vote for
a reason. I mean, the state here looks a lot like the rest of the country, urban suburban, rural, fast growing suburbs as well as inner cities, rural areas that are shrinking. Basically every part of America is replicated here in just this one state. So I was on TV a lot saying that whatever the national popular vote is, it'll probably be about the same in Pennsylvania, and that proved to be right.
Well, that's good, you or right.
I wish I weren't, to be clear, I would have been very happy. I always said it was going to be closer to election. I thought it would be basically decided by.
A point or so.
I would have been very happy for a Democratic blowout and to have been proven wrong.
It's funny because it's like we're about to enter four years of being right and it being horrible.
Yeah, t is out.
What we win for being right is nothing, absolutely nothing.
Right the dystopia when the sense that we knew this was coming. I'm going to make you talk about something that's actually a little annoying and maybe you don't want to be asked about it, but too bad. Pennsylvania is a state that has never elected a woman at the top of the ticket, and before she ran for president,
that was something I thought a lot about. I want you to talk about gender in this election because people are not talking about that, and I guess we're not supposed to talk about that, but it clearly seems like I mean, just looking back on the last three elections, like Democrats have tried to run a woman twice and both times the state of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin have said no.
Yeah, I mean, this is a tough and somewhat depressing subject we talk about. No, but we have to be This would have been a great time for our connection to go out, by the way, but the connection is strong, so I guess I'm talking about it.
I have a ten year old daughter, as you know, and man.
Just telling her the next morning that Trump had won again she was so dejected the rest of the day, wouldn't talk.
And it does depress me to think.
About the message this election is actually sending to the other ten year old girls throughout this country. And I do think that we have to acknowledge that perhaps it's not just a coincidence that both dimes Donald Trump narrowly won in this country both times she was up against a female Democrat, and that, unfortunately, we do have to recognize that misogyny still exists in the United States, and.
There are still some voters.
They're hardly a majority, but they're more than zero who are just either unwilling or at least reluctant, either consciously or subconsciously, to vote for a woman for president. I think we will eventually overcome that, but obviously we haven't yet.
Yeah, and again, I'm sorry to ask you that question, because clearly everyone in the world, in the pendent class is trying to avoid answering it.
So it's really unfair of me to ask it of you. But we are.
Friends, that's okay.
And you do have a daughter, and I do know I also have a daughter, and I do know how completely crushing it is to tell them that you had a very competent woman and a felon, and yet again the felon prevailed.
Yeah, I would rather deal with it realistically though than pretend that it doesn't exist. It's hardly the only reason why she lost and Democrats didn't do as well in
this election. I mean, let's just take a step back and acknowledge it's not a coincidence that this is the first year since nineteen oh five in which every party in power has lost the inflation crisis that was sparked as we kind of turned the economy back on as we recovered from the pandemic that has hurt parties in power from the UK and Germany to Japan and South Korea,
South America, Canada and the US. And it doesn't, by the way, didn't end up making a difference if it was a conservative government, a liberal government, a centrist government.
Every government in power.
The last couple of years has paid the price for that, and so that in the end, I think was by far the biggest factor. But there are also these other factors as well, and I think it's better to be open and honest about it and discuss it.
Yeah, and I do think the anti incumbent headwinds were you know, it was a perfect glass cliff scenario where anti incumbent headwinds party and power that had very low approval ratings. Really she was set up in a way that was almost impossible. So last night, this is like, we're already in another Trump term and he hasn't even took office yet. He decided that he's going he's going to go tariff mad. He was elected to make things cheaper, but now he is going to indulge in tariffs.
Make it make sense.
You know, it's going to be an unfortunate reality if these tariffs come to pass. For the you know, working class voters in my district, and I have a very working class district, racially diverse, White working class, Black working class, Latino, and Asian working class.
All four groups swung more.
Right in their voting patterns than they had been. It's going to be a rude awakening if these tariffs come to pass. The goods that they're buying today will be instantly more expensive because of these tariffs. It's one of these things that maybe sounds good in fury, and yeah, we're going to stand up to them, these foreign companies
and put on a tariff. But at the end of the day, it's American consumers who who pay the price, and the people who are the most impacted by it are those who have the least amount of distressal income. One thing, you know, economists are famous for being very on the one hand, but also on the other hand. One area in which liberal economists and conservative economists agree is that tariffs make things more expensive. You know, we had a broad spectrum economists saying that Trump's policies will
make things more expensive. And that's the reality we're soon going to face if these tariffs actually come into existence.
It could be he's bloviating. Wouldn't be the.
First time I think that we need to stand up in Congress and do everything we can. I mean, I'm on the committee that actually deals with trade and tariffs.
Are you the ranking member of it?
I'm the ranking member of the Budget Committee, and also Ways and Means Committee as well. They're going to be a big part of the fights that we see in twenty twenty five.
Make me feel better about Russ fought, since this is just therapy for me, make me feel better about restaught.
Okay, so you want me to lie to you?
Yes, ro let's give for the people. We're not severely in this nightmare. Russ Vaught is now going to be Trump's head of omb Office of Management and Budget. He is now going to try to prevent the federal government from spending the money that Congress allocated to it.
You are the ranking member on budget discuss.
Yeah, I mean, and it's our committee that is oversight in this matter. And I have to tell you that, and think of the low bar here that I'm talking about. Of all of the Trump appointees, one of the ones that concerns me the most is Russ Fought.
Yeah, mine too, I actually just wrote a column about it.
Sorry, go on, Yeah, no, So you and I are not surprised. You and I are like minded on this. He is a true ideologue and an extremist. He is one of the masterminds behind Project twenty twenty five. He desperately wants to return the American government basically to what it was in the nineteenth century, before you had the New Deal, before you had Social Security, before you had Medicare, medicaid.
A lot of the language in there about.
What to do with the federal workforce and politicizing it. He has his fingerprints all over it, and we've dealt with him before because he was in this position during the first Trump presidency. He is indeed a very extreme person. If we want to be optimistic here, I would remind everyone that one difference from eight years ago and now as they eight years ago, House Democrats were pretty deep in the minority. I was entering my second term, we
didn't even have two hundred House Democrats. They had over a forty seat majority. Well, now they're looking at a very thin majority. In fact, if we pick up these two final races in California, it looks like the House of Representatives in early January could be as close as two seventeen to two fifteen, because it would be two twenty to two fifteen at full strength.
Gates has already resigned.
Another Republican from Florida, Walls, is out the door on January twentieth, and then presumably at least to fanic we'll leave shortly thereafter. That would drop them to two seventeen. So we just need in mad scenario, we literally just need one House Republican to join with us to be able to stop any sort of thing that would require legislation to be passed where we'll have more difficulty. Are those things that Trump can do by executive order?
Yeah, that's where we are. Would you please come back.
I I'm a proud listener and I'd be happy to come back anytime.
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