Rep. Katherine Clark, Carlton Huffman & Roben Farzad

helps the American people. Then we'll have Republican Operative Carlton Huffman, who accused SEPAC chairman Match Lap of unwanted sexual advances. But first we have the host of NPR's Full Disclosure, Robin Farzad. Welcome to Fast Politics, Robin, thank you, Molly. Good to be back. So we got to start with the bank run. Talk us through Silicon Valley Bank. I did not become aware of this until my husband disappeared for three days. But explain to me what happened here?

What makes this run different from all others? That's right? For this run, we sit reclining, we eat only bitter herbs. Yeah, so explain to us what happened was Silicon Valley Bank. This started on Thursday. Well, here we are a week ago. You know, concentrating on the world of the Fed, probably raising by another half a point. All eyes are inflation. The system is hail and hardy. Nobody's really worried about

any bank runs. And here you have otherwise pretty successful regional bank out in Silicon Valley, out in California that has to do a capital raise because it has a bit of a hole in its balance sheet or it took on a paper loss. The hole was caused by what inbarstment. Look at it this way. You take on depositor money. Typically it's great, but in this case it was almost an embarrassment of riches. And everybody got complacent

in this environment because that depositor money. In a zero yield environment, you have to reach out farther on the yield curve or take on more incremental interest rate risk to get any yield right. The way the bank makes money is it takes depositor money in this case pays nothing and hopefully wants to collect a couple of points over that. You could do that by loaning it out in net interest margin whatever it was. It has a

very homogeneous client base. It went out because there was no yield to be having had in short term safer securities, and it bought longer term treasury and mortgage backed securities. And then the Fed does this whiplashing shift last year and hikes interest rates in one year more than it had I think since the early eighties. In a concentrated period. You go from zero interest rate policy to about four and a half percent, where we are right now on

the brink of five. And these guys get caught unawares. I was like, oh, well, they could have privately gone out and raised some money to plug the hole in their portfolio, because a paper loss is a paper loss, right, You're gonna have to sell those bonds. But the thing that happened at the same time was you had all these depositors, with the slowdown in Silicon Valley and everything in cash flow issues being different, drawing down on these accounts.

So to make to pay out those depositors, they had to raise some money. Had that been done quietly as opposed to them coming out and fessing up to this. Add to that the social media aspect of it, yelling fire in a crowded movie theater and everybody on Twitter as an expert, and you have self important venture capitalists and private equities ours and hedges by the way, some of whom I have short positions, that's right, and who

are trying to serve themselves on their shores. One minute you have the sixteenth largest bank in the United States. The next you have a client of the state and the second biggest bank failure in history. Now we don't have subprime stresses or anything else. No two crises look the same, like the SNL crisis or OH eight. But this was just getting pretty and getting foolish. I take the criticism that deregulation after the financial crisis was a

big reason why this was allowed to happen. I want to get into this for a minute, because it is interesting that you have the train deregulation and you have four Norfolk Southern derailments this year, and then you have the deregulation of these regional banks and you have a collapse. So a lot of members of the right will say they don't I don't know if you know this, but they don't like regulations. They feel that it's anti capitalists

and they're wrong. But I want to get into this with you for a second, which is they will say their favorite thing to say is well, regulation wouldn't have prevented this. Tell us why that's bullshit. And I'm still trying to read between the lines here. But deregulation, I

mean after the pendulum always swings. Clearly, we were underregulated before the Great Financial Crisis and subprime and you had all these investment banks rolling subprime falafel in the interest of extending the American dream and country ide and blah blah blah blah blah. But in the end, it was it was a big game, right, it was a diffusion of responsibility. We're passing that onto the taxpair. It was kind of a perfect crime, and very few or no one went to prison for it. Right in this case,

you have no one really betting on anything. Nobody's speculating, but kind of stupid risk management or being pretty in a period of zero interest rates just makes people complacent and they do stupid things like a Minsky moment. A Minsky moment. Can you explain a Minsky moment for our listeners? As I understand it that even in a great economy, prettiness is going to sow the seeds of its own demise, that reckless speculation that in a bullish period you're gonna

have people to kind of poke the bear. And I've mixed the million metaphors. But you saw Bear Sterns do that, You saw Lehman brothers do that. And so a sudden decline in in sentiment out of a period of quiet and zero interest rate policy and complacency causes everybody to shift the pendulum to oh, my gosh, the world is ending. And that's kind of arguably in hindsight, they might refer

to this as a Minsky moment. I you know, I think about this, and yes, this was a very calm environment just a week ago, and you had a very routine thing. But interest rate hikes the weight the likes of which we saw last year are going to hurt people. It's going to hurt consumers, car dealerships, and it hurts the market, and it hurts confidence. In this case, you can't hike rates as much as you did without revealing

which banks were out there kind of speculating. But it wasn't done in the interest of you know, I think raw avarice or anything or greed. It was kind of done in complacency and sloppiness. And shouldn't a bank that was sloppy be taken out and executed summarily like this, And that's a big question. Can Peter Tell be blamed for any of this? You know, the yelling fire in a crowded movie theater. It's one thing. If we're dealing in a world of press releases and fax machines and

copper wire phones, it's another one. We're all experts on Twitter, and if you're a VC and you could barket your portfolio companies, get out of this situation, get out of this situation. You're effectively it's the self. You control the self fulfilling prophecy, you control the destiny, and you could look smart afterwards. Well, look, I told you it was going to fail, and it did fail because you pulled your money out right, so you can create a crisis

and then look good. That's what bothers me is the asymmetry of it. It's still private profits and socialized risk. Because in the end, the FED did show its hand, the FDIC showed its hand, Treasury showed its hand and said we're going to make depositors whole, and this is just one example in the market. Meanwhile, goes out and shoots no shortage of regional banks and forces them to come out and say that we're hail and hearty and opens that opens them to that kind of that downward speculation.

Say it again, the line I that you just said privatizes profits and socializes risk. Yeah, that was that was the knock in subprime private profits, socialized risk. All these bankers who made these securities and everything they profited, they didn't comback their profits. The risk was ultimately borne by the taxpayer. Now you have DC saying that the taxpayers

not bearing these risks. But for yeah, after one hundred billion dollars of whatever the FDIC account that's depleted and whatever levies that you charge on the industry, which by the way, they lobbied against. What about this FED window, this FED facility to buy um, you know, subpar securities off of banks. Who's paying for that? That's a being a question mark to me. I mean, it's a kind of an existential question. Is the FED just not Is it just its own entity, its own balance sheet? Does

that not recourse to the taxpayer? All sorts of moral hazard has been kind of re revealed and rekindled by this. Yeah, that's my feeling too. I want to talk to you about now the anxiety this weekend was that there was going to be contagion. Right, There was a lot of anxiety about contagion. So is the pandemic over the pandemic I mean COVID or the anxiety of contagion and the anxiety of contagion. The echo chamber is thing like it was.

And they go back on YouTube and look at videos of the crash of eighty seven or the Savings a loan crisis. There. We weren't even tweeting this much, not nearly this much in two thousand and eight and two thousand and nine. You just have these prominent financiers and self made experts out there saying that I sent a problem with this or I heard this. That's not regulated.

You are effectively allowed to yell fire in a crowded movie theater, and whatever the feds want to do, whatever bumpers they want to put up, whatever backstops, it's still up to the consumers to pull their money. Some atavistic tendency takes hold, like you're thinking, all right, it's my money cut the BS do. I have to get it out. As I've said before, when I have Iranian relatives call me and ask me about something, it's hit a certain

trip wire, which it did. I had a cousin contact me, you know, five days ago, and say, should I be spreading money around several different accounts in Los Angeles? I was like, well, you're with Wells Fargo. You know. The asymmetry of this is Wells and City Group and Bank of American JP, Morgan Chase, some of the original sins of prime. They're too big to fail banks. They're going to become even bigger. Right. That's another worry that a lot of people have, is that the too big to

fail banks are now going to get bigger. I want to ask you, was this caused by woke banking? I mean, I love this Republican talking point. The Silicon Valley Bank has the money of founders fund, Peter Teel, many Peter Teel portfolio companies. It is run by all white guys, and yet somehow this is all the fight of woke banking. Explain that's a canard in this case. I just don't. I don't buy any have that it was. Was there nosed the function of kind of woke board governorship, I

mean corporate governance? I mean, you had you had strange people on that did anybody at any point say here, come prick my finger and show me how this thing works. Yeah, the risk controls were terrible in this case. And they

teach you in finance one on one. But the thing about finances, and I saw Elizabeth Warren on TV, I think she was Rachel Maddow is there are people out in the world that think banking should be boring, and there are others that believe banking is a kind of a calling your lubricants to kind of capital formation, and you're doing good for society, making a market, and you should be able to make a killing at the same time.

And they don't want it deregulated, just like the airlines don't want you telling them that you can't pack your jetliners and then refuse somebody their seat because you have load capacity numbers and you have this tried and true formula of paying a person for getting bumped. They don't want that. They want to avail themselves of complete flexibility, complete pricing power, and that to the banks. They've had it here. They've had zero interest rates for the longest

time you could be in hog Heaven. I think JP Morgan in twenty twenty one had more than a forty billion dollar net profit. What's not to love. You're getting money for nothing, in the words of Dire Straits, and yet one of the most successful banks in the country managed to turn that into a catastrophe. I mean, what's wrong here? Yeah, no, I know. So now we got these in place numbers today. I'm sure you saw all those different alerts where some are saying this was good

news and some are saying it's bad news. Inflation is going down, it's just taking longer than anyone hoped. And you know what, this is stale news at this point because what just happened this week is certainly psychologically a deflationary shock. But the market's trying to force the ft at the very least say we're done hiking, and in fact the worm is turned soon we're going to be cutting rates because this is, unfortunately the codependency that's been

set up this century. We've had so many years of emergency low interest rate policy that people have come to expect it, and if you don't do it, it's like crying. I'm crying uncle. Look, the market's crying uncle. The banks are failing. It's bloodshed out there, and that forces the Fed's hand. I need you to talk through this for a minute. I know what you're talking about, but I

need you to go slower on this. What happened with the failure of Silicon Valley will ultimately have a deflationary effect. Can you explain that? Yeah, people perceiving that there was a shock just Silicon Valley and isolation that for a good twenty four hours. There were many portfolio companies and many vcs are like, WHOA, our slowdown right now is a downright crisis because there are firms that are going to fail if they can't get their cash out. I

have no idea. Tell me more. BuzzFeed, Fox, Roku companies worried about making payroll. Perhaps company is worried about making Yes, Yes, I have the vcs we know and love. Perhaps spent the whole weekend screaming about how we had to yes, and some to their credits said, will be a backstop, will be a bridge loan to these companies to make payroll. But what they wanted all along was for that above two hundred and fifty thousand dollars insurance thing, that taboo

to be shattered, and they effectively got that. But they had to tweet a lot about it. First, they had to tweet a lot about it and wax wax, kind of martyr about this. We're dying to the cause. I now, poor bunnies. But look at everybody else. Look at first Republic had to go through a hell, Charles Schwab, all

these other things. And meanwhile everyone around the country is calling everyone else and saying, should I move my money to JP, Morgan Chase or a Well or one of these things that is already the designated is a too big to fail bank, And that's just going to worsen the outlook. If you're expecting to get money on your deposit to compensate for inflation and everything. The big banks don't want to do you a favor. The small banks are there to hold your hand and get through payroll

and everything. Right now, they're just scrambling into telegraph to the market that we're okay and that that kind of talk is cheap. And I wonder why the FED doesn't have a kind of a good housekeeping seal or a real time you know, like even in New York, you eat at a dumpy sushi restaurant and you can see that it says BC on the outside and you're taking your life into your own hands. You can't you know, you can't with the bank because many are are not

susceptible to these stress tests. I don't get it. I know that a lot of people I know and love are mad at Elizabeth's Warren. But this is a regulatory failure. I think it is because they're not being regular related the way the larger banks are. Federal banks have a different regulatory standard and which they lobbied for. All of

these guys flew under the radars somehow. That do you tell me how that a majority of their deposits were uninsured, i e. Over the two hundred and fifty thousand dollars FDIC protection limit and the FED or no mechanism came in and said, you need to husband a ton of this cash in the event that something happens. Suppose I don't know. Suppose it's an awful earthquake, the big one, the nineteen oh six one that hits the Bay area again, they're going to see runs on everything. You're going to

see a regional depression. Why wasn't anybody there simply for that pH test. That's what's stocking to me. And I can see why Elizabeth Warren and Sheila Bear and the like are kind of apoplectic about this. Yeah, and I do think like, ultimately, you cannot trust these companies to regulate themselves, which means and I want to just have two more seconds on this. If we have banks doing shit like this, and we have trained companies doing shit

like this, imagine what tech companies are doing. But here's a problem. Here's where I don't have faith the many octogenarians in the Senate, in the House. You're gonna have to present this on a CD ROM to them like they're gonna be fighting the last battle. Look how long, Look how long it took them to kind of you know, Sarbanes Oxley and all the subprime deeds that were kind of the crimes of two thousand and three to two

thousand and seven. And now we've already we already kind of took care of this after subprime we regulated the banks. They were all saying, this is deeply unfair. You get a president who comes in whose deeply deregulation, as Ronald Reagan was in his first term, and you kind of undo things like this. It could have been somewhere else. You could have seen bodies buried elsewhere. Nobody really expected this to emanate from Silicon Valley, which is one of

the foremost think about its Silicon Valley Bank, Molly. I had a doorman when I lived in New York from Tanzania, right, and I remember during the financial crisis, he called me cousin, and back and forth, I'd call him cousin. He comes from the cradle of civilization. I would that if you do a cheek swab test, we're probably distant cousins. He was a day trader, and he would day trade on the side, and he always talked to me about apple

options and everything. And at some point in two thousand and eight, two thousand and nine, I think Bank of America stock was in the low single digits, and he turns to me as I'm going to work or going to catch the bus outside, and he goes, cousin, do you really think the Central Bank, the Federal Reserve will let Bank of America fail? Think about it, cousin. And so similarly Silicon Valley Bank. I mean, that's so iconic.

Would you let the Bank of New York film? We danced with it with Lehman Brothers, and it was catastrophic over a weekend. And that's where speculators have everybody else kind of over a barrel. And that's that's still rankles, you know. So the fan won't raise rates now because they're too free down. I just don't know how they come out and do this. You can't have a special rate that's for let's say real estate which is too hot, or fomo hospitality spending which is too hot, but the

banks pay another rate. You're having the banks effectively send distress signals to the Federal Reserve. They might at worst kind of put them on a hold. And let's see to what extent the system can kind of the panic can heal itself through the summer. But this is a treacherous time. That's why no one has ever no one has ever remembered a period where the Fed is hiked this much without causing a deep recession. Right, And the thing is we have now because of this bank run.

This should cool the economy. I feel it's deflationary. Like what I said about those firms, is all of them if they're suddenly trigger shy, if you were going to go get another round of venture that's already been slow, everybody else is thinking about signing off on an investment or something, but more worried over the last you know, seventy two hours about cash management and getting their money back. It's about return of your capital, not return on your capital,

and that's always chilling, you know. Yeah, so interesting, Thank you so much. This was great my pleasure. Mount Congresswoman Catherine Clark is the Democratic whip and represents Massachusetts fifth Congressional district. Welcome to Fast Politics, Congresswoman Clark, Oh, I am so pleased to be here with Yumali. Well, we're delighted to have you. I think we should start with the budget. This is like such an interesting and I

think kind of brilliant development. The Biden administration offered up a budget. The Republicans are now coming back with the budget. The House Republicans. This may actually be someone playing three dimensional chas you know, a budgets. There always a reflection

of our values and what we see. And President Biden is that he sees us, he sees women, he sees families, he sees communities, and that is reflected in what he's proposing, you know, whether it's childcare, the reinstating the child tax credit, paid leave addressing maternal health, having people of high wealth and large corporate rations pay their fair share so we can invest in climate rescue and invest in in our families in this country. That's what his budget is doing.

And what we are seeing from the Republicans is not much of anything. They are refusing to put forward a plan, and they're trying to distract us from what they already said they would do, which is roll back the inflation rejection at roll back the cost savings we've already put in place, and double down on their anti healthcare, anti abortion,

cuts to social security and medicare agenda. So let's talk about abortion, because those of us who cover abortion and those of us who watch our rights being taken away from us. You know, there is a case in Texas, Texas the place where all women's civil rights go to die with the pills right now, and there's a judge who may end up making it impossible for women to get these pills, which are used also in miscarriage management.

You have been very public on your miscarriage. Talk to us about what it's like to watch our rights being taken away and what you think Democrats in the House can do. It is terrifying to watch what is happening to watch this judge out of Texas. That really is one of the worst cases of form shopping to get

these cases in front of this particular judge. And you know, we will see what this opinion ends up being, but we are anticipating that this judge is very willing to substitute his personal beliefs and opinions or an FDA approval process and meditation that has been safely used for decades.

And that should be frightening to any American, no matter what your views on abortion are, because that is such a government intrusion and putting one person's belief systems over science over healthcare for so many And I recently went to Texas and met with providers and navigators and advocates, and it was one of the most chilling visits in conversations that I have had, just to see what women are struggling with to get basic healthcare and being told

when they had a situation that is very common one that I lived through where you have a miscarriage but it is partial and you need to have abortion care to prevent infection. These women are being told to go home and wait till infection sets, so they spiked a fever and the tails of sepsis, of women losing limbs because of sepsis because they could not get the care they needed. This should not be America in twenty twenty three,

but it very much is, and it is terrifying. Yeah, and I mean and it's also I mean, I think a really important data point here is its minority rule. Right,

American people are largely pro choice. This is a really a safe and I would actually, I'm hoping you could talk just for a minute about the FDA approval process that these drugs go through, because they actually go through a higher standard of FDA approval than normal drugs, that's right, And it is a rigorous process, and you know with abortion medication, it is one that took place in decades ago.

So not only do we have a very top approval process for these drugs, but we have decades of use where we know they are safe and affectives and what we are seeing your point about the American people understand what is at stake here, but this is a fundamental freedom and that if local politicians are going to come into your life and tell you if and when to have children, regardless of your family situation, your doctor's advice, your particular faith. That is an intrusion into fundamental liberty

and it is an economic issue. And so I think it's why we saw that when abortion bands were on the ballot in Kansas and Montana, in kntuct that they were defeated because people understand and the American people are for access to healthcare and the GOP is way at a step with where we are, but in certain states, in fourteen states, this has taken the holes. And the danger of this potential decision out of Texas is that

it really is a step towards a national band. That is really hard to comprehend how we are in this situation and how we need to stay together to fight back with everything that we have. I mean, I agree, and it's completely almost shocking. So I want to ask you this weekend, it was a pretty rough weekend for those of us in the tech sector and all tech

adjacent with the Silicon Valley bank situation. Can you talk me through just a little bit of how was the decision to backstop that and how and the things the government is doing now to make sure that this doesn't that there isn't more contagient. The weekend was definitely spent on the phone with people who were impacted. And in my communities, right you have a lot of tech in Boston too. We have a lot of tech in biotech. Fifty to sixty percent bank with Silicon Valley Bank because

they are quite established in this area. And I also heard from childcare centers that also bank there because they took over a Boston bank a few years ago. And so it was everything from small businesses too large that were very concerned they weren't going to be able to

make payroll. And as we are on the cusp of implementing all the climate protection policies and programs and construction that we were able to put in the inflation reduction, that this threat to the tech sector was really brought home, and this threat to small businesses in my communities and

around the country. So our priorities were very clear. We had to protect those businesses, investors, stockholders, they could ride this out, but we needed to make sure that people who for no fault of their own, were caught up in this. And we're looking at payroll not being met and all the ripple effects of that furlough notices and layoff notices being sent out because companies had to get rid of their payroll that they were afraid they weren't

going to be able to access. So I commend the administration and Treasury in the FDIC for prioritizing those businesses and making sure that when these banks opened on Monday, that that was there, that depositors knew they could get a hundred percent of their money back, and that was our number one priority in making sure that their needs were met and that at this still challenging post pandemic part of our economy, that we were not going to

see widespread layoffs and failure to make payroll around the country. Is this a regulatory failure? It could be. I think we have to look at where we are at some of the regulatory rollbacks from the Trump administration. Our number one priority was making sure people could access their money and make sure that these businesses, large and small, we're

not going to be forced to shut down. And we wanted to make sure this did not become systemic with regional banks around the country and that we stopped the run on these banks. But we have to look into the full investigation of what happened here, and hold those bankers responsible for what they did, and also look to our regulatory schemes and how we can further strength and our banking system to make sure that they are operating with stability and not taking too big a risk with

depositors Funday, yeah, exactly. Republicans have this very small margin, but they still do have the House. How worried are you about this debt ceiling crisis? It's not a crisis yet, right theoretically. I mean, this whole crisis is one that they had made up to further take a blow at

families in this country. It is a manufactured crisis, and we only have to look back to the Trump administration where one quarter of all the debts, all the deficit in our country was brought on us by the Trump administration, which is really one of the few areas of overachievement of that particular administration that they could do that or

sort here. I shouldn't laugh, because we all suffered. But yes, and then you know, then what we saw during those four years were the GOP coming without any reservation to raise the debt ceiling because they understand that that is debt that they have already accrued, and that is what we need to do. I mean, if we think this banking situation was a crisis, I can't even imagine what is going to happen if Republicans allow our economy and

the global economy to go over the cliffs. And what they have said consistently until very recently is this is the way that they can cut Social Security and Medicare. And now the times to you know, cover that off and backtracked on that. But it's out there. It's what they wrote down, it's what they said on video on television,

and they don't have a plan. They want to say, you know, the president needs to come and negotiate with us, all right, put your terms out there, but they don't want to show their cards because they understand that it will be totally rigged against the American family and that

they are very clear who they work for. The first build they put on the floor in their new majority could have been about a million things that American people care about, what's lowering the cost of healthcare, creating good jobs, paper communities. But instead they protected high wealth tax chiefs. That was their first of all, and their second and

third were about further anti abortion measures. So that's what they are, and how they come out of this get feeling crisis that they have manufactured is going to be up to them. But we are here with the President's budget that reflects the values of creating an autonomy that works for everyone, and we're ready to negotiate with them on all of this. But their focus isn't on the American people. It's with power. It is with consolidating their

own power, and it's rewarding the very wealthy. And we just can't let them make the winner circle in this country so small. And we're going to continue to push for all all those pieces of the budget and our autonomy that work for families, because that's how we regain our economic strength and grow for the future. I mean, it's such a small majority, and you know, I mean it's four or five seeds and Santos. The fact that he's still even in there as kind of mind blowing.

I mean, do you think there's a world in which Democrats are able to do I mean, if you just look at the math, some of these candidates have one in these very swingy districts. I mean a lot of them won in New York. I mean do you think there's a world where you could lull one or two? You know, you really only need to lull like three

or four right over. I think that we have the ability to work around like, let's say, the death feeling that there are Republicans who understand how devastating taking our economy into a deep recession. I don't think we really even understand what would happen if we jeopardize our economy in this way. So I think we're going to continue to reach out and look for those partners. But we are so focused on they have a five person majority and we need to win the House in twenty twenty four.

And I can tell you that Democrats are optimistic. We are energized, and we are fueled by meeting the needs of the American people, putting people over politics, and we're going to continue our work of loring costs, creating great, paining jobs, and safer communities. That's where our focus will remain, and the American people are with that agenda. It's why we were able to defy political gravity in twenty two, and it's why we're going to win in twenty four.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. Congresswoman Clark Thank you so much, Molly. So good to be with you. Carlton Huffman is a Republican operative. Welcome to you Fast Politics, Carlton. Definitely a pleasure to be on the show, even if

I regret the circumstances. First of all, how did you meet matchlap I just happened to be working on the Hershel Walker for US Senate campaign as a regional director for the Atlanta metro region, and he was coming to Georgia for an event in Perry on October the nineteen and needed a ride back to the Hilton Garden End that day, and that was the first time I'd ever met him. Explained to me a little bit about whatever you feel comfortable telling. Man. It started out as a

normal day. We were coming back from Perry, where I had picked him up, and we drove back to his hotel in Atlanta that day, and it was an interesting conversation. He talked about Disney firing him for his comments about Black Lives Matter, spoke very fawningly about Kerry Lake, and managed to sneak in some compliments to Victor Orbond throughout that nation. While processing all of that got him back

to the hotel. Thought that that was the end of it, and thought that would be the last guy I'd ever see of him. And then I found out that he had technically invited himself to a rally the next day that was going to be in Macon, Georgia. And then I received a text from him that afternoon invited me to come out to drinks at the Capitol Grille and

Buck and seemed to be a normal livitation. I had been around a lot of Principles before and surrogates and had been invited to dine or have a beer with multiple ones, and thought that this was going to be just like one of those, when it ended up going quite the opposite direction. When did you realize that this

is not what you thought it was? I would say at the Capitol Grill whenever he had finished dining with a donor, he came out from that dinner and then joined me at the bar, and at that point seemed to make the conversation entirely about personal things and tried to focus the conversation on me as opposed to keeping it at a professional level, and made the point multiple times that he was sorry that the bar was dead, and seemed to want to go to a livelier place.

And then that's whenever I suggested Manuel's Haven there close to midtown Atlanta, and we went down there, and definitely, within a few moments of sitting down at Manuel's cavern, it took a turn from the weird to the very uncomfortable.

Can you say a little more about that. So it's a bar stool set up, and so we're sitting next to each other on the bar stools, and I've been with friends to that place, and I never got as close to them as he got to me too, literally to the point that he had full thigh on thigh contact and it was sustained contact, and I tried to move away from him. I tried to make it subtle so it didn't seem too obvious and make the situation awkward. And that's whenever he turned into me very closely. And

that's whenever he bumped into it. Being Georgia a constitutional carry state, so I was carrying my firearm with me and he bumped into it and he asked what it was, and I said, it's my sixth hour and he goes, what's a sixth hour. I'm like, it's my firearm. And then mister defended the Second Amendment goes, well, I grew up in Kansas, so I don't know that much about guns, and but that was how little close that he was

to me. And I was like starting to get very uncomfortable at that point, and so I intently turned away and was focused on the baseball game that was only at the time. And then he said to me, in a tone that I will never forget for the rest of my life, do you have a problem looking at me? Yeah. I turned and made just very brief eye contact with him and just tried to alk, really say, well, we're just two dudes having a drink watching sports. But just the look in his eye I could tell that it

was not an innocent look. And I was very quickly at that point wanting to get out of that bar, get him back to his hotel, and be done with that night. And then you still had to drive him other places, right, I had to drive him back to his hotel, which was a Hilt Garden in in College Park. And that's when the most agregious grouping went on. Yeah.

So literally after we af you turn off of Highland Avenue, you turn onto the John Lewis Freedom Parkway, and before you get on the interstates and you see the entire Atlanta skyline spread in front of you. And it was right at that point. I mean, there's about a fifteen twenty minute drive, and but then just a few minutes of that drive starting, he put his hand on my leg and left it there for pretty much the duration of the drive back to the parking lot of the hotel.

So were you completely surprised by this or had did you have some hint that this was not totally unusual behavior for him. Subsequent to this happening and talking to more people that are in his orbit, became aware that he did have a certain inclination. But before that I had no clue whatsoever. I definitely would not have accepted an invitation to go out that evening. And also, you know, you should be free to go wherever you want without being harassed. I mean, you know, even if you knew that,

he still doesn't have a right to do it. Yeah, for me, it's a kind of a weird thing too that in my head I would have probably if he had kept it to what happened at the bar, I probably would not have said anything. I would have just chalked it up to the fact that the man's been drinking. He had at least eight Tito's and bob Ga and water Jesus at evening. So I would have chalked about to say, okay, the man was drinking and forgot himself,

and I would have left it alone. But the that, but after his hand was on my leg, just as we were getting back to the Hilton Garden inn is whenever he reached over and groped me for at least five seconds. Then he texted you after that. He actually called me too, he asked after he had groped me, and I was just since dounn silence up to the entrance.

He asked if I wanted to come up with him, and I declined, both out of just number one, just shock at what had just happened, and also just wanting to I mean, I've been wanting to get away throughout most of that evening, but now I definitely wanted to

get as far away from him as possible. And shortly after I left, he called, and I just was eager to just get the conversation over with, and so I just told him like, yeah, this is the plan for tomorrow morning, and at what time do we need to be ready, and I immediately began texting and calling several close friends and folks that I've been talking to throughout that day and began to let them know immediately what

had happened. And by the time I got to the place I was staying at in Atlanta, just broke down. Tell me about your decision to come forward. The very next morning, I just knew that I had to tell the campaign because I was not going to be alone in a car with him to me, and if I had gone through with it, I'd have been alone again in a car with him for hours that day, and I just was not going to do it. And so the Walker campaign. Whatever else folks may say about that campaign,

the folks that handled the situation handled it perfectly. They believed me, They took every action that could to protect me, and I cannot say enough great things about those individuals on the campaign. It's good, I will say. As far as publicly coming forward, I just knew that I could not let him get the opportunity to do this to anybody else without the world knowing the kind of man that he is. He came forward to the people in the campaign. But when did you decide to really come

out with the allegation. I knew that in the campaign I wanted to keep off the radar. Obviously, the October was not the kindest month to the Heart Correction campaign. Yes, I mean, and it felt like I mean, I am a hartisan Republican. I wanted us to win that race, so I did not want to serve as a distraction. But I knew if he had attempted to disrupt my professional well being at that time, I would have said something.

But I definitely knew that as soon as the campaign was over at the right time, I was going to say something to be sure that whether he's held to account by a judicial standard or not, that the world is at least going to know the kind of man that he is. Yeah, and when that happened, what was it like? I mean, like a lot of people will have experiences like this, don't want to come forward because

they're worried about what happens once you come out. So tell us a little bit about what happened when you came out. I would say for every person who has had trepidation about coming forward, I mean, I can definitely

speak to that experience firsthand that it is rough. I will say that I have had the blessing of people believing me, But at the same time, the opposition has been very vociferous, if not just downright ruthless in terms willing to go through every bit of my past, and I will admit that I do not have a perfect past. It's a past that I've turned away from in many regards. But still at the same time, it comes out in

this context, it's going to be used against you. And I've suffered as a result of this because Tom Tillis said you were a very good campaign aid. Like I said, I cannot send up nice things about Senator Tillis personally and politically. Like I said, he's a good man. And I've had a lot of other folks too behind the scenes that have been willing to give words of support and encouragements, and not just words, but have taken actions

as well. So I consider today that dedicated my professional life to the advancing conservatism and advancing the Republican Party. This episode has definitely disrupted that and will likely do so indefinitely, But I still consider it worthwhile if it means that not one more person has to go through what I went through at the handsome match lap because the behavior that he exhibited that night, it was not behavior that you would say as a one off kind

of episode just because that they were drinking. Do you feel like there were people who turned away from you because your allegations were about their guy? I would say that, I mean the majority of people, at least that I know firsthand. I mean, I have not had anybody in my personal or professional life turn against me because of

the allegations. I know that some people have had to distance themselves from me because of the APO jumps that the other side has done on me, and I definitely understand their reasoning for it, because I've never wanted to be a cause of damage to anybody that I've worked for or worked with. I want to like talk through the timetable of this. So you come out as an anonymous source, yes, but people behind the scenes know who you are, but not publically. And then at some point

you are forced could come out publicly. Can you explain what happened there? Well, you had several folks that were associated with the slaps that went ahead and put my

name out there. Right, that's a very trumpy thing, right, And without getting into the who and their background, but they went ahead and put my name out there, and it was shortly thereafter that someone who was associated with some Shenanigans during the twenty twenty campaign that I worked with was the one who put together the APO that was sent to the North Carolina Legislature that calls me

to resign my position. The OPO contained views that I had once expressed that I had long walked away from. But at the same time I acknowledged the ugliness of them and regret them and definitely don't just apologize for offense that they caused anybody else, But I mean they are an offense to me that I ever helped them. But I can sit here and say that I turned

away from them, not just in words but indeeds. The fact that I expressed Coro Confederate views and nationalist views gave way to a place in my life where in twenty twenty, I attended a Black Lives Matter rally in support of the memory of George Floyd and a mod Rbory and definitely have made a point of standing up and saying that black lives matter to the point that it cost me several conservative friends, because I felt it was the right thing to do so the ugliness that

I once held in my heart back in the late two thousand oughts and then the early two tens gave way to a very different person by the time two twenty had come around. But at the same time, when it comes to politics, people are going to dig, and I unfortunately gave them some opo to use and they used it. So this lawsuit made it so you had to come out. You revealed yourself to the Washington Post. Yes,

and that was a pretty big deal. What happened then, Well, the other side definitely, I mean definitely come out at trying to dig and try to put out other stuff as well. I will say, as far as the issue of Raleigh that was reported, can you talk to us about the nineteen year old woman Without getting too much into detail about it, I will just simply say it was a party that took place from the night of February the fourteenth and to the night or to the

morning of February fifteenth. With that incident, it was investigated by the Raleigh Police Department. It took both their testimony and my testimony, and I will just simply refer back to what the Raleigh Police detectives who investigated the case said to me, a crime did not occur here. The case is closed. And so if I was in any way guilty of any or at least had given enough calls for any kind of behavior, I would not be

standing here just as a plaintiff. I would be sitting here in a very opposite way in terms of the criminal justice system. Right, but this woman was granted a protective ordiner who was Can you just is strapolate on that for a minute? Is that sort of standard? This is my first time dealing with the situation like this, so a right, I mean beyond just the fact that I'm confused by the situation, by the simple fact that the Roley Police Department investigated it and found no calls

for charge. So why after the fact that protective order was sold and granted. I can only testify that that's the decision of the judge in that case. Right explained us where you are now, You're out there, people know who you are. You are. I mean, what is the next step here in your case against match Lab? We go forward with my name on the case that we are going to go forward and we'll see, I mean,

what the timeline is on that one. It is something that could stretch well into later this year or into next year. But at the same time, I know the truth about what happened on occover of the nineteenth, twenty twenty two, and Matt knows it too, and we're going to do I mean, as far as myself, I'm going forward on this case and the truth will be bore out. Have you heard from anyone else? I would say privately, quietly, I have heard from some folks, but nothing, nothing with

any specificity. So that's sort of interesting. Do you think that there'll be other people coming forward? I can only speculate. I can definitely say if people witness what is happening to me, I can understand any trepidation about coming forward about stuff like this, whether it's in regards to the

specific individual or others. But for me, I feel that the victory has already been one in the sense we'll be able to protect themselves against anything that Matt Slat will do, whether it's behavior that is tied with alcohol or it is who he is periods. But I can just sit here and say that I am satisfied that people will be able to protect themselves in regards to him, and that's a victory in another itself at the end

of the day and makes whatever I'm going through worthwhile. Carlton, thank you so much for joining us and talking through this. I know that there's a lot of not the funnest use of twenty minutes for you, So I really appreciate you joining us. I appreciate to you give me the time and your coverage of this. Molly junk Fast, Jesse Cannon. So my moment of fuckery today is about an industry that is near and dear to my heart because my

beloved husband is a venture capitalist. It's about venture capital. Over this weekend, the sixteenth largest bank in America, Silicon Valley Bank, had a run on It was unable to raise the capital it needed and was seized by the federal government. And over the weekend a lot of Silicon Valley people were pretty freaked out. And in the end, the federal governments stepped in on Sunday and did the right thing and shored up the bank and was able to prevent a bank run, which was very good. Now again,

is it good. It's good that there wasn't a bank run. Is it complicated, Yes, it's complicated. Our venture capitalists now congratulating themselves mercilessly. Yes, you guys, the government helped you shut the fuck up. And I say this as someone who loves many venture capitalists. It looks very bad when you take a victory lap when you've had help from the federal government, especially because a lot of you are not big fans of the federal government. And for that

it is my moment of fuckery. I feel like all these people thought they were John Gulf before the weekend and then really have changed over to really loving that government subsidy. I would say they and rant and found out that's really good. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday and Friday to your the best minds in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard, please send

it to a friend and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.