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 the FDA may outlaw food dies within the.
Next few weeks. I will be delighted and shocked if that happens.
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The Lincoln Projects.
Rick Wilson stops by to discuss the state of American democracy spoiler it's not great. And we'll talk to Wisconsin Democrats Chair Ben Wickler about.
His run to head the DNC. But first the news Somali.
Mister Trump did a little appearance on Meet the Press with Kristen Welker, and a lot of crazy shit was said. Mostly that alired to me is the idea that he's going to start dealing Congress people.
Not good. Not good.
So one of the things that we're trying to do here is protect norms and institutions, and one of the ways we do that is by not allowing the president to ail his political enemies.
Now again, this is like always the.
Problem when covering Trump is like he says a lot of stuff, He talks a lot of stuff.
Some of that stuff he ends up doing. Some of that stuff.
He doesn't end up doing some of that stuff he says so that people will get upset, and then his people will say, well, we never were going to do that, so again, and then sometimes he'll say stuff like I'm going to jail my political enemies. This is by any measure, absolutely one hundred percent not appropriate for a leader to be saying in a democracy.
Now, maybe he's saying this because he.
Wants reporters to report it and then him not to do it, and then them to look like they were overreacting, who knows, But the reality is he's saying it.
It's bad, it should not happen.
People need to push back against it because it's not what we do in a democracy and it's dangerous. And so he said the quote is everybody on that committee dot dot dot. Because this is Trump, so he never says things in grammatically correct ways for what they did. Yeah, honestly, they should go to jail.
Again. Not good, not what we do in a democracy.
It is absolutely flouting all the norms, breaking the norms, setting the norms on fire.
Real important that none of this happens.
But again, it's Trump, so he could be just saying stuff in the hopes of getting other people upset so that then he can say that people are overreacting. He said that Liz Cheney and Bennie Thompson, those are the former coheads of that committee, were behind his federal prosecutions. As we know, there's no connection between federal prosecutions and a congressional subcommittee, zero zip zulch. The Department of Justice is a completely its own thing, not connected to the presidency,
not connected to Congress. And Trump then again said, however, they should go to jail for what they did again, and should go to jail for investigating a former president. And he even said, I think that everybody on the panel, that anyone who voted him favor should go to jail.
That is wrong. That is a flouting of norms.
The people on the panel, just for just to remind everyone, Benny Thompson, Zoe Lofgren, Adam Schiff, Pete Aguilar, Stephanie Murphy, Jamie Raskin, Representative Luria, Liz Cheney, and Adam Kinsinger. So there'll be more, will definitely see more on this topic. But just remember again, we must protect norms and also two things can be true. We must protect norms and also Donald Trump says a lot of stuff. Some of
it's true, some of it's not true. Some of it he wants to do, some of it he doesn't want to do. So just always remember that when you hear Trump say things.
I have a third theory that he really just likes the sound of his own mouth yapping.
Yeah, well that's true, Liz Cheney responded. And really the important thing here when we're protecting norms and institutions is to stand up against Trump's trying to destroy them.
So she responds.
This morning, President elect Trump again lied about the January sixth elect Committee and said members of the committee should quote go to jail for carrying out our constitutional responsibilities.
Here is the truth.
Donald Trump attempted to overturn the twenty twenty election and seize power. He mobilized an angry mob and sent them to the United States Capitol, where they attacked police officers, invaded the building, and halted the official counting of electoral votes. Trump watched on television as police officers were brutally beaten and the capital was assaulted, refusing.
For hours to tell the mom to leave. This was the.
Worst breach of our constitution by any president. In our nation's history. Donald Trump's suggestion that members of Congress who later investigated his illegal and unconstitutional action should be jailed is a continuation of his assault on the rule of law and the foundations of our republic. Yet again, this is why we have to stand up to Trump. We have to protect norms and institutions. And this Liz Cheney
response is absolutely pitch perfect, good for Liz Cheney. Sorry, so I know every time I praise Liz Cheney, a little piece of you dies.
But it's true. It's true. So I have an alternate theory about why mister Trump says all these things. It's more that he loves the side of his voice, that he loves the yep. But he continued to app beat the press about how he's going to repeal birthright citizenship.
So birthright citizenship.
This is like, I understand that Trump wants to repeal birthright citizenship, but he doesn't get to And I'm going to read you exactly this is it's actually, believe it or not, birthright citizenship is in the Constitution. I know how much Trump and Republicans love textualism. It's Amendment fourteen, Section one point one point two citizenship Clause doctor in fourteenth Amendments, Section one.
All persons born or.
Naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the state where they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States, Nor shall any state deprive a person of life, liberty, or property do process to the law. So I'm just saying Trump, well, may he may want to strip birthright citizenship. He cannot do that.
That is illegal. It's against the Constitution. And if the Supreme Court wants to be total hypocrites and it's just not okay. He cannot edit the Constitution. So this is a no go for Trump. He may try, but he can't.
Yeah, I'm sure America First Legal will be up fighting this battle thoroughly. So the last thing that he apped about, of course, was how much he loves the word tariffs. It seems that he's so in love with them that he's going to push this through.
But it doesn't seem so confident about the BALI.
I mean, remember when he was running for office, he said tariffs are going to make everything cheaper. His mandate, if he has a mandate, was to make things cheaper, right, That was the one thing voters really wanted from him. So he told Walker that he can't guarantee anything. He can't guarantee tomorrow, but I can say he can't guarantee that tariffs won't make things more expensive. Hauhu exactly what everyone said when he was running for office Somali.
With the assassination of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, we've seen a reaction that I think has puzzled a lot of people because I think a lot of people did not see how mad everyday Americans are at the healthcare system.
So you and I had to talk about this, and you were like really furious, and I didn't totally get it.
I was furious at the healthcare system because I've had Obamacare until literally three months ago, for ten years, and I told you I would in I did the calculation, and every year I pay for worst care and I'm paid three times as much as I did a decade ago.
Yeah, And so we were talking about it, and I have health insurance and I it's not very good, but you know, I have come from a lot of privilege married to someone who is very privileged, and so you know, if I have problems with health insurance, I just pay for it myself and it ends up being thousands and thousands of dollars. And so you were like, look, Mo, like people are fucking pissed about healthcare because it's just
they are just being taken advantage of. And what we're seeing since this news cycle of this CEO who was murdered is that Americans are just enraged about.
Their health care.
And it's very hard to find people who are writing about this who can sort of separate the murder from their rage about health insurance.
And look, it really is.
So the comments online are people saying, you know, eat the rich. This needs to be the new norm, people expressing frustration about their healthcare. And even people like Ben Shapiro, who is on the right and who you wouldn't think would have followers who were so angry about their healthcare, which you should be angry obviously, but it's funny. Ben Shapiro said, you know, it's terrible to murder people, which is not you know, he's had certainly had worse takes.
And then the comments are basically this is not a left or right issue. This is a working class versus a wealthy issue, which is shows really how far we've gotten because I'm pretty sure that the working class are largely supposed to be represented by the Democrats, even if that has not been clear, and maybe perhaps Democrats have not been representing the working cloud the way they're supposed to, but real interesting realignment.
Yeah. I think that there's like a really interesting thing in these Ben Shapiro comments too, because like one of the highest voted things with thousands of up votes on the comment is this is the first time I've ever
seen Ben get cooked by his own comment section. A lot of people saying it's not a non partis issue, and I think that that's one of the things is that when we look at the political views as just purely a left right issue and not an XY access, you ignore that almost every American who's not making enough money to be liquid has been victimized by some sort of thing where they didn't feel they had any say
in what the health insurance company decided for them. They have no way of having reproach and having a say in life and death and often serious preventative health matters and that seems to me why a lot of people are not showing a lot of sympathy for this.
Yeah, and you know, this is a big story that we may get more and more from.
And this rage that people.
Have about the way they're being treated by their healthcore company and largely the way they're being taken advantage of, my guess is going to be a really big story and that this ground swell is real and we're going to be talking about this for a long time, so stay tuned. Ben Wickler is the chairperson of Wisconsin Democrats. Welcome Back Too Fast Politics, Rick Wilson, let's talk about the United States Senate. I don't want to give them
too much credit. And again, like, if I've learned anything from this cycle, it's that I am a cock eyed optimist in a horrible way. But doesn't it seem like behind the scenes, with the exception of maybe Tommy Tuberville, that there's some amount of advice and consent going on.
I would say there seems to be a touch of advice and consent going on. I am not a cock eyed optimist about this, knowing these people for what.
They are, but I will say this, there's a degree to which the automatic obedience to Trump that everyone is expecting, especially in Trump world, has not yet emerged, which is kind of nice.
The other thing I think is that everyone is on each other and freaked out about this idea of obeying an advance. I want to talk about something here for a minute, because this is the Timothy Schneider, the idea
that you're not supposed to obey in advance. But then there's also what all of us did in twenty sixteen, where you know, everything was a five alon fire, and that is also Trump is very easily manipulated and manipulative but manipulated, and he's very transactional, So there is as much as you don't want to obey an advance, Like when you see Bernie Sanders making overtures towards Elon Musk, Do I love that? Well? I think that he's trying
to get Elon Musk to do what he wants. And Republicans have been a lot better at appealing to nefarious billionaires than Democrats have. But you know, if you could make the case.
Are there farious billionaires lately?
No? Yeah, exactly, talk me through this.
Yeah, Look, I think what we have right now is a moment in Washington, where there's a lot of there's a sense in the Senate. I talked to the Senate senior staff member the to day for a Republican who said to me, well, there's a kind of vibe right now that you know, the crazies are going to fall apart and he's going to end up nominating some regular people. They have a sort of twenty seventeen vibe going the way I'm looking at. I think that is an inaccurate assessment.
I think, you know, some of the crazies are going to get knocked out gates already. Hexit is on thin ice. But I think they're being optimistic for reasons that are not as solid as they would like them to be.
Does that make sense, Yeah, go say more.
They're giving Donald Trump too much credit. We are seeing some of that. And again this has got a very strong rights previous twenty seventeen vibe. Oh, he'll have competence safe, the same people around him, and they'll make sure that he does the right thing. I don't know if I buy that. I really don't know.
He's definitely not gonna do the right thing. I mean that I think we I am not real confident in that regard. Yeah, no, No, I mean I think the more optimistic case is these guys are just not that good at any of this, so it's going to fall apart.
Yes, I think that is definitely. The more likely scenario is that is that a lot of them that are on the on the Trump list this time are much more extreme, much more crazy than the folks we saw in the first iteration. There was a there was a sense in the first administration of Okay, you still have a Rex Tiller Center, Jim Mattis or Gary Kohane and it's not all Steve Bannon and the cuckoo parade. I
don't think you have that saying vibe this time. Even the ones who aren't overtly insane are still pretty bad. And I just think that that is a caution for people to process a little bit, even in this early going, not to get too optimistic about where this thing ends up.
Yes, I also think that if you want to feel better, the way to feel better is to look at the Congress that is ending just now, this Mike Johnson Congress, where they had one seat more of a majority than they will have, and they are just terrible at governing, Like it's just a fucking disaster. Like they can't pass anything, they can't get together, they can't you know, they can't figure.
Out well, they can barely order lunch at this point.
Yeah, and so there is certainly a feeling if you want to feel better, the way to feel better is not that there are grown ups in the room. It's that these people are completely insane and do not get along and they really, you know, they just completely destroy each other. Yeah.
I think that's right. I think there's a there's a degree of that that kind of like the lunatics are in charge of the asylum in the house and that is not great. That is not as good for the house as they.
Think it's right, exactly. And I also just think, like the thing that I always think about is, you know, will cash Battel go after us, Sure, but will he also go after Republican senators who displease him? Yes? Right? Trump Ism is not the same brand as Republicanism is discussed.
Yeah, Look, I mean, and here's the other part of what's happening in the Senate. The Senate is shifting from the McConnell era to the Thune era. That's not particularly great, honestly, for the Senate. It's not particularly great for how you you look at whether the Senate's going to be effective and whether it's going to be you know, manageable. There's a caucus in the Senate now of crazies. They're going to be you know, the Cidy Head Smith's, the Tommy
Tubber bills, the Josh hall Is com Cotton, all those lunatics. Right, those people are a majority now in the in the in the caucus. It's not pretty. I think that or there are a plurality.
Let you recraise that.
It's not for you.
It's not easy anymore for that caucus to be like it was under the McConnell era. Does that make sense?
Yeah, no, I do. But I also think that the McConnell is a gifted legislator. We don't know that Dune is going to be that.
You are one hundred percent correct. We do not have a similar grasp of whether John Thune is going to have that persuasive power over the majority that he wants to and in fact, interestingly enough, the guy that ran very effectively, I may add, the Senate Leadership Fund Stephen law today announced that he was retired, which is very interesting.
To me, because that is the organization that over the last two decades has raised a couple of billion dollars a couple billion dollars with a bee for Republican candidates. There's a very different vibe on the legislative acumen as well as the political activity. It's a real open question as to whether that is going to sustain itself. Makes hast Yeah.
And also I would say, like the question is when we're talking about this, and we're talking about they are a couple of legislative things they really want to do when they get in power, and one is this is making these enormous tax cuts permanent, which is why so many rich people got so excited about this election. You know. The other thing I was struck by is so this week Andrew Ross Sorkin, who is really great, had this deal book a conference and he had one of the panelists.
One of the guests was Ken Griffin, who's a huge billionaire hedge fun guy, big GOP donor, and he spent the time talking about how important it was that the FED be independent of the Trump administration. Right, So, like this is like in twenty sixteen, you would not have a billionaire donor of Donald Trump being like, here's what I want you to not do. Here's a guardrail I think is important. Don't screw up.
The thing that has made stability in our markets possible over the last multiple decades. Please and thank you.
Right, and like you had a deal book, you had Jeff Bezos being like, Donald Trump is great hair feurer. I want to fight autocracy. I want American democracy to survive. In my mind, that is job one. That said, I understand exactly what Jeff Bezos is doing, and I think that if you want to do rockets, that's what you have to do right now.
You have to strategically kiss ass with these people. It's not a great look, but it's a real thing.
Well, it undermines his seriousness in every which way. But like, if he wants to launch rockets, and maybe he doesn't want to launch rockets, but like that's what it is, right, Like.
Oh, he wants to launch rockets. He wants to compete with Elon in the rocket launching biz. A lot of ass kissing is going to be necessary to stay in the rocket game, which, as Humble famously said about that, no Bucks, no Buck Rogers, So you're gonna see those guys like like bezos come out and say, oh, you know, this was necessary. I had to. You know, you may think it's distasteful, but I had to. I had to make this distasteful move in order to serve the greater
good and to fulfill a better mission. And so you know, And and I talked to somebody recently who I wouldn't say he's like super close to Jeff, but he's close enough where he said, you know, he hates Elon so fucking much, you'd be shocked how little heat, how little pride he has because he hates Elon so fucking much. Like what he'll do to fuck Ehon is it's an infinite number.
Well, we're still sort of on this Elon Trump first buddy situation. How long does it last? And that there's we don't know, right, we don't know.
But look, no human being has ever in the history of Trump interactions, Not one time ever has anyone survived the curse of Trump's disloyalty. It is the one constant in the Trump universe is his disloyalty. The one thing you can always count on is that he will screw over people he says are ascrits. It has never once failed. In the history of Maya and other observations of Donald Trump, it never fails. He will screw his own people. You're
you're the greatest thing since prepared mustard. On day one, You're a goat, You're an idiot, you're a moron, you're a coffee boyed intern. On day five, you never. No one survives it.
Right, I mean, yeah, so we'll see what happens. But it does. It certainly seems like there is an absolute sense in which this does not seem like this relationship is forever.
Now, as in all these things, you can count on Donald Trump to be inconstant and unfaithful in whatever interaction he is in, whether it is personal or whether it is financial. You can always count him to be shit. He's a highly technical.
Term, right exactly. That's the that's the medical diagnosis. Let's just have another minute here to talk about what this all looks like. Now we have the House is done, Republicans lost a seat the Senate. Trump can only lose four. We have Hegsith trying to stay in it, and we have then like a number of completely crazy other nominees coming down the pike. I feel like the conventional wisdom is that Republicans will only let one get to committee.
I think they're going to feel like they have to give him a couple They're going to say, you know, we can't just completely shut him out. Then he'll be angry with us. Then we'll have to do even more horrible things. And I don't disagree with that analysis on their part. They're not completely wrong about that. If they don't give him something, he's going to really get angry
in that regard. You know, One, if you're a Republican, especially if you're John Thune, you don't want Trump to fuck up your primary season by saying, oh, a contrere, you thought you were going to get it off easy. I'm going to intervene in all the primaries to put in my people if you don't do what I want. Yeah, like Charlie kirk Out threatened people last night about that, if you don't put in Beata said, it's primary time for all of you. Okay.
I mean that's the thing. It's funny because it's like it used to be in a time when things mattered if you were a purple state, a Republican who voted you know, in some insane way, it could be used against you when you're running for reelection. Is that still true?
There is now a premium for insanity in the market, and so people can do crazier things than they used to do, and vote crazier ways than they used to and in fact they're kind of required a lot of the time to do that, which is not pretty. That's not the world we should live in as a serious country, but it is the world we do live in as a fairly unserious country. I look at this moment where in Molly with like the risk factors in these guys
face are almost entirely on their right flock. They don't feel and correctly so, they don't feel like they wake up in the morning and go, oh man, if I get the Chamber of Commerce, mad, I'm going to have real problems. What they do get is, oh fuck, if I piss off some right wing video blogger, I'm gonna have a shit ton of problems. Oh no, Benny Johnson's
coming to attack me or whatever it is. Right, You know, that stuff is really that has really become a very ugly element of the GOPS like day to day existence. Somebody resurfaced that clip yesterday, people walking after Lindsay Graham just after January sixth, screaming abuse of the guy which everyone loves to scream abuse at Lindy Graham. And he's certainly, I'm sure paid good money for the same kind of thing.
But it's so not the kind of the kind of behavioral thing that makes sense if you're if you're or candidate or an elected official that do you want to take that or do you want to avoid that? You want to avoid it?
You know, you got Elon and Vivak on Capitol Hill yesterday. Imagine how insane those meetings have to be.
Oh bonkers, batshit, cuckoo town crazy.
Oh yeah, Oh fantastic, I mean fantastic. I don't want to feel bad for Mike Johnson, but I almost feel bad for Mike Johnson.
I don't.
I can constrain my desire to feel bad for Mike Johnson. This is you know, he bought the pony.
It is amazing. Now like he's going to have to try to explain government to these guys.
Well, look, I mean the scary ones that I think people need to pay more attention to, like the russ VOTs of the world and the other people that are decidedly insane. You know, we're going to have to We're gonna have to as a country recognize that, you know, people are going to be trying to destroy this nation. Inside the Trump administration, We're going to try to tear down every conceivable element of sane governance. And I you know,
you kind of get that, you understand it. It's just not it's not pretty much you understand it if we don't put ourselves in a position I think you know pretty quickly to start thinking about like not just blocking or exposing or minimizing the impacts of the you know, Pete Hexit is one thing. Some of these other folks are truly as far out on the rim as you can get.
I would say, Pete Hegsitt, if the limb is pretty far.
Oh no, Pete hegg Sitt, this is completely like.
Lack of doodle, yeah, but in insane, but with.
A magnificent head of hair.
And isn't that really what counts? Well? I think that that's you know, you running the DD is to eighty percent looks yeah, I'm it's eighty percent looks at a hundred percent sass exactly.
Rick Wilson, Molly John Fast that's all, my friend.
Good to talk to you. Rick Wilson is the founder of the Lincoln Project and host of the Enemy's List. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Ben, great to be back with you. Molly so famously like the best Wisconsin Democratic state chair ever, and now you're going to run for the big job.
I'm running for national teen Treo Carey. Yes. So, Wisconsin is a state that kind of experienced a preview for what we might be about to experience nationwide. Wisconsin had a bunch of like really deep progressive history and traditions as a birthplace of the labor movement, of the progressive movement. The Republican Party started as an anti slavery party in Wisconsin, but it also had this far right strand in its
history Joe McCarthy and the John Birch Society. And in twenty ten Republicans took over the state government and an election that was kind of a lot was happening in twenty ten, but it was not a year when the public was demanding that Republicans come in and totally rig the systems so they'd never lose, and then sell off the state government to Shovel Monu to the richest people,
and that's what they did. They ask unions, they suppressed the vote, that jerrymandered the living daylights out of Wisconsin. They massively defunded public education, and it has been the work of years of thousands of people. And I've been proud to play a role working with everyone as our state party chair for these last six years to fight back through that and peace by peace to dismantle the
systems Republicans used to stop Wisconsin from manion democracy. And we finally we defeated the gerrymandered maps because we won state Supreme Court races and stopped Republicans from doing an unconstitutional impeachment of a Supreme Court justice and had able to elect and re elect Governor Evers are amazing Democratic governor who's been a brick wall with these Republican attacks.
We've fought in legislative races up and down the ballot, and this year, even though this was a national big red shift year six points across the country, in Wisconsin, we were the closest state in the presidential race in the whole country was less than one point, and we flipped fourteen state legislative seats this year. On the maps
that are finally fair. We re elected Tammy Baldon this year in the US Senate, and what we found is that if you run a permanent, year round campaign, you're organizing everywhere and communicating everywhere, including reaching out to people who are not trying to tune into politics all day. You can punch above your weight. And the reason I work then C chair is that vision. Nationally, it's to unite the party around a vision of fighting in every state.
A fifty state strategy means fifty states and a strategy in each state for what are the fights we need to take on to be able to unlation new era of progress and democracy and most critically, of delivery for working people instead of ringing the system for the ultro wealthy at the very top, which is Trump's actual goal that he is currently playing out in front of our eyes.
Can you explain to us a little bit about what a Democratic National Committee chairmanship, like, how does this election happen? Explain to people who are not totally read in here on what happens next?
Totally This is like this weird combination of a big national story that has national significance and also it's four hundred and forty eight voters. So it's like, you know the size of a small town city council race, or a student council race, or a papal conclave or whatever whatever you want.
To lave if you're yeah, it is.
A group of people with no infallibility. It's a situation where there's a group of people. Every one of them is there either because they're appointed as an at large appointee by the current DNC chair Jamie Harrison, who is a great friend who worked with President Biden and appointed the seventy five appointees, or they are elected in their states either to become the chair or vice chair of their state party or committee man or a woman in
their state party. Or they're there in a kind of institutional capacity as to senators, to governors, you know, the kind of roles that reflect the different parts of the Democratic Coalition, to mayors and municipal officials, and so everyone is there, you know, by dint of a role in how democratic politics works, and they all represent the interests of their state or the type of office that they that they are part of, but also share a kind
of commit meant to the Democratic Party being strong and effective. And my job as a DNC chair candidate is to connect with each one of them individually. And if you're a DNC member and I haven't called you yet, you are on my list and I look forward to connecting with you soon. And if I've left your voicemail, there's no judgment. I just look forward to reaching you next time I call you. I both reach out to them.
I also talk to folks in the press and talk to you today here ROLLI about the vision for what we want to do, because part of this job is to be a spokesperson for the party, and part of what DNC members are looking at is can someone explain the strategy in a way that can help to inspire people to volunteer and to donate and to get involved
in these fights. And then the third part is really about the kind of vision for where the party needs to go and that ultimately, people choose who to vote for for a mix of those different reasons, but they want someone who is going to be able to work
with them to empower DNC members and state parties. And we work with our elected official partners and candidates to win a ton more elections than we'd otherwise win because the stakes are so big for so many people, especially for working folks who are about to watch the kind of basic foundations of middle classic existence in this country get systematically dismantled or attempted to do by the billionaires
running the Trump administration. We have to have a strong Democratic party to have a future for folks in all communities across this country economically and when it comes to their basic freedoms.
So let me ask you. It strikes me that Biden did a lot of amazing legislation and they couldn't ever get it out right, Like, they couldn't ever transmit this information to voters, right, that was ultimately the big problem, Right, voters never knew what it was, you know, so many of these investments, like they just were not able to transmit them. And is it a messaging problem or is it like a messenger problem, or is it a not doing media problem or is it a need to create
new media problem? I mean, what is the problem here? Because obviously the legislation is good.
The legislation is great, and I think there's two big, big problems. So the first is that we've passed really good bills that are going to have a long term, giant impact on people's lives, and that, to me is the only true measure of our work is the impact that has on people's lives. How are we making a
difference for working folks across the country. But the problem is we've passed a lot of COVID relief legislation democratic votes under Trump, and then the Democrats in the Democratics are effected at the beginning of the Biden administration that made a huge difference in people's lives and then went away.
And so even though they successfully prevented the economy from melting down and kickstarted it, in the economy that is the envy of the world, with wage growth highest at the bottom, it's still the case that if you're making forty thousand dollars a year, the growth in your wages has not come close to the loss in support that you experienced when the child tare attax credit went away and expanded unemployment went away, and the stimulus texts, and
so people actually experienced sharp drops and income in the bottom especially bottom half, bottom third of the economic letder and they also experienced rising prices and the sort of second half of the policy thing is a lot of the benefits from these major infrastructure and chips ACKed and
these different bills they're going to come over years. There's a lot of work to do, and there's a big public discourse around abundance and the idea of like clearing the way to be able to move much more quickly on deliver around this stuff. But we're we're planting seeds that are going to turn into trees that the sapling or the sprout coming out of the ground. It doesn't move votes because it hasn't reshaped the kind of opportunities and communities already at the pace that it would have
needed to. So when we look at the data in this election, the first thing we see is the people who said they were hit hardest by inflation, who felt that the things were toughest, and who didn't hear democratic or Republican messaging were the ones who are most likely
to either not vote or shift towards shrump. And I think that is a situation where they lived reality of having that help and having it go away, having prices go up, and it doesn't feel like anyone that'd help you, that mose votes away from you, And that happened to every wealthy country government in the world. Left right and centered this election, and it happened here too. So there's
things about policy design that suggests. But the other side of this is about message, which is right now, the places where the candidates campaigned the most and spent the most on ads and did the most, the shift towards
Trump was the least. But even in those places, the shift was concentrated among the people who were not paying attention to what candidates were saying, and who don't watch TV, and who maybe get you know, information from totally different sources, like they're spending a lot of time watching you know,
stream you know, twitch streams and video games. And as democrats, I think we need to better learn how to go to those places, and how to build up a kind of progressive media ecosystem and deploy messengers on conservative ground who can effectively convey a message even in really hostile territory. And we have to do all those things because and communicate in ways that people actually comprehend that makes sense. That are concrete, physical things that we're talking about, not
just big abstractions. Because we are on people's side, and that is not landing with the people for whom it make a difference.
It's insane, right, Yeah, So.
We have to change how we communicate, where and who the communicators are and do that on a year round basis and really get into where are people learning about what's happening in the world, and go to those places. And at the same time you recognize that just as the prostration and the pain of hardship, of prices going up, of housing being unaffordable, especially, it's maybe the most central thing for so many people, groceries, all this stuff, prescription drugs,
that pain. There's going to be a new version of that, which is Trump trying to smash the healthcare and supportful working people across the country in order to give giant tax cuts to the ultra rich. So is about to be on Trump's foot. His policies are so bad for
so many people. And if we can narrate and explain what is going on when they try to sell off the kind of the public square for parts to the ultra rich, then I think we have a chance to demonstrate to folks that we are fighting for them against people trying to break the system from the top of their own benefit, and that allows us to then make a ton of gains that we then need to turn into policies that make a difference that actually build that
trust that we are fighting for people. That's the long term play is for people to see that if they vote for Democrats, they get change that they want, and then you can build a positive loop. But this loop kind of happened in reverseless time and it's going to take a lot of fighting to come back out the other side.
Like, there are a lot of people who are really despairing about where we are. Can you give them like a two minute pep talk? Absolutely so, and by them I mean me so on one hand.
No sugarcoating it. This is a bleak, challenging moment. Republicans control the presidency, they control the House, they control the.
Senate, but by one seat.
Well that's the other side of the point. So the consequences of Republicans having power. Trump has appointed this fleet of mega billionaires with gigantic conflicts of interest to try to create this explosion of corruption at the very top. And Republicans in Congress are most likely to rubber stamp everything terrible Trump wants to do. And there's going to be bad stuff that we're going to have to fight against.
And that's real and They're going to attack all kinds of communities and try to take away people's basic freedoms. And that is real, and that is scary. The other side of the coin is that their victory was minuscule. They have the smallest House majority. This was the closest presidential election this century since the two thousand election, one of the four closest in one hundred years. The public has not given up on the core values that make
this country great. They've not given up on the idea that the government should be on the side of working people, or that people should have freedom and dignity and respect. Those things are still deeply popular. A lot of the people who shifted or didn't vote were the people who had the least sense of what Trump was about to try to do to the country or what Democrats wanted
to do. So have courage and recognize that if we do this work, if we actually do show up and organize all over the country and communicate in every place, in every platform, we can win enormous games in twenty five, six, seven, eight. I'll give one example. Wisconsin right now is gearing up for a Supreme Court election on April first, that once again, like the one in twenty twenty three, it'll determine the
majority in our state Supreme Court. And there's a far righta Republican who's the former right wing Attorney General, Brad Schimmel, who's running for that office and he's trying to sound just like Trump. And Susan Crawford is the the great judge who as in private practice, represented planned parent who she's running for the thatt seed. And Democrats can organize and fight and win that and prevent Democrats from Republicans from rejerymandering our state and open up or pass for
freedom an opportunity in our state. That election is happening in just a few months, and we can fight on that. We can fight in New Jersey, in Virginia, and then in twenty six all over the country. There's a chance to make dramatic gains that can turn into real change in people's lives. And that fight. When we join together and do that fight based on our deepest values, people
will respond. And we're going to win elections in a moment that feels like a crisis for democracy and for everything we care about, and we will find hope and energy that comes out of that work. So That is the good news in my mind, is that the bottom did not fall out. The Republicans speak in by a
hairsbread and they're about to lose all that power. When the public sees what they want to do and they see how we are fighting for them, that is the next step, and that is what I want to do at the DNC, and that's what I hope we can bring everyone back together to wave those fights that really matter.
Tell us what your idea of a fifty state solution would look like.
So the fifty states, and it's a fifty seven state party strategy because there's the territories and Democrats abroad. The fifty seven state party strategy is in every state and
every state party. You work with your elected officials and candidates, with the national committees, with your partners and allies and the labor movement and grasstrates organizations, and you look through across these next four years and beyond, what are the fights we're going to need to win in some in super red states, often that's municipal elections or state legislative races that would allow you to break a Republican and
super majority. In really blue places, there's some there's going to be some areas where there's a right wing county sheriff for people running a school board who you can focus on making sure you can defeat and replace with
someone who shares our values. And then there's a lot of states where everything's up for grabs, or there's major pieces up for grabs that if Democrats win a super majority in the state legislature, they can override the Republican governors be there, and of course they have a governor's race in two years. You build a plan based on what are the fights you are going to take on, and once you have that strategy, then the National Committee
partners with all those states to find resources. You figure out all the different folks who have a stake in making sure that you can win those fights, and you build the kind of year round organizing and communications infrastructure that we built in Wisconsin and a few other states where you do that in every state, purpose built for the fights we have to take on. And when people get involved in something that can actually win and move
the needle, it energizes them. You can raise more money, you can recruit more volunteers, you get candidates who to step up and jump into these races in a different way when you know that you're part of something bigger. And that to me is the fifty state strategy, the opportunity we have now because there's people are hungry for hope,
and I get that. I feel that myself, and hope comes from actually seeing a path, even if it's a faint path, seeing a path something better that if you put your energy into it, you can actually move forward along that path and it. You know, they're all over
the country right now. There are people who are dreaming of running for office or be involved in a campaign that they can make things a little bit better for the folks in their communities, and we want to give them a chance to be able to take action.
And do that. Explain to us when you are doing this, what's the difference, Like your state party chair Wisconsin, you would be like DNC chair, What would that mean exactly? What does the job look like?
So there'll need more time on the road, but instead of going to counting these across Wisconsin, they'll be going the states across the country. At the Washington d C
still raising my family in Wisconsin. It's a whole different order of magnitude of complexity and intensity because every state has different complex challenges and relationships, and of course DC itself, the DNC, the building as they call it, and the web of the different networks of the House and the Governor's Association, attorney generals and lieutenant governors and state legislators and municipal officials and mayors, and all the different parts
of this ecosystem, and our allies organized labor and the union movement and all the big grassroots organizations and civil rights groups and all the kind of big movement of people that share fundamentally this idea that this country should work for working people, and that every person, no matter what they look like or where they live, should have
freedom and opportunity and dignity. Everyone involved in that work has a stake in what happens at the DNC, and so there's a political component to help to build a vision big enough that everyone has space in it and work with folks to define that. There's fund raising to make sure we can support the work to do it.
There's management to make sure we have amazing people who are doing the best work of their lives in partnership with all the different allied groups to be able to do this there's communication to both go after Trump as he tries to pass themulti trillion dollar tax cut for billionaires and take on the GOP, but also to build up and support a ton of other communicators. Will have vice chairs of the DNC that will be criss crossing the country and communicating in every place, in every platform.
And then there's the actual elections, and you need to mobilize huge numbers of people, hundreds of thousands and millions of people to get involved. And I think at heart, I think of this as an organizing challenge, because organizing is the art of getting a bunch of people to work together for a common goal. And there are so many people who want to do that, and there's so many big goals that we have to be able to win.
And my campaign slogan is unite to fight Win. It is to unite the party around that vision, to fight in the fights in every state to be able to do this. And if we do all that, we can win and we can make a difference in people's lives. That's the reason I'm running for DNC chair. And it gets me fired up just they came about it.
Thank you, Ben, thank you, Molly.
Really grateful.
There no moment. Jesse Cannon Somali.
One of the things we knew when Trump on is that this would also be an emboldening moment for the right to try to take away women's reproductive health rights. And in Missouri, we're seeing that chicken come home to roost.
Missouri lawmakers prefile over a dozen bills resolutions on abortion in response to Amendment three plassing. So Amendment three is what they were trying to enshrine abortion in the constitution, and they voted for it. So this was a real interesting thing that happened in this cycle was that people voted for abortion protection in their constitution, but then voted for Trump. So they said, we're going to have a Republican president, but we're going to protect abortion in our constitution.
Here's the thing, And I kept thinking about this and kept thinking, the legislators are never going to let this go.
They're never going to enact these legislations.
Because we even saw in Florida, Remember, voters voted to allow felons who had serve time to be put back on the voter rolls, and the Florida legislature made it so hard to do it, made it so expensive that it wasn't able to be enacted, and I sort of thought, this is what they're going to do with these abortion amendments, is that voters are going to vote for them, and then Republicans are going to not allow them to be enacted.
This is incredibly shortsighted by Republicans, and if Republicans were smart, they would let these things be enacted, even if they were perhaps not in exactly the way they had been written in the text of the amendments. Because what's going to happen here is that here are these people. They voted for abortion rights, they're not going to get them. They voted for Trump. You know, whatever can be taken away when it comes to choice will be taken away, and then we're going to end up having a lot
of really angry voters. All of this stuff that Republicans are doing works for them if there aren't more elections, but if there are more elections, I don't think.
It's going to help them.
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