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 five year old Liam Ramos and his father have been released from an ice detention center.
We have such a great show for you today.
The Lincoln Project's owner Rick Wilson joins us to discuss.
The fallout of the Epstein.
Files and what Democrats winning in deep red Texas means.
For their mid term chances.
Then we'll talk to a reporter, Christopher Matteas about his new book, To Catch a Fascist, the fight to expose the radical right.
But first the.
News Smiley Keem Jeffries has told Mike Johnson that he should not count on DEM's votes to end the government partial shutdown.
Yeah, so Democrats in leadership get a lot of static and some of it is very much deserved. But I do think they are deeply trying to tow the line on all of this. And let me just talk about what's happening right now. The Senate basically set it up so that the government would shut down over the weekend but reopen starting on Monday.
And they did this.
They passed all of the minibus bills and then they just did a two week.
Patch on the homeland security.
Why did they do this because most people are pretty horrified by what ICE is doing and they want Democrats to get something on these, you know, before they write a blank.
Check for billions of dollars. What are the things people want?
Well, a lot of state houses and a lot of state legislators are trying to change the rules so that if you are abducted by ICE, you can sue them if they do something to you. They're trying to sort of change the immunity the way the immunity looks. Look, this administration likes to lie and say that these border patrol agents or ICE has absolute immunity.
They do not.
They have forms of immunity, but they do not have absolute immunity. And so, in fact, there is some way to be made whole.
By some of this.
But the idea here is to make it so that there's more civil protect so you can sue these people if they bash up your car, so you have some you know, when you're marched out of your house in your bathrobe, when your ninety year old father is marched out of the house in his bathrobe, that you can in fact sue the government. Part of what people want, though, really is they want them to stop being masks. They want accountability, they want you know, checks and balances. We'll
see if they can get it. This is a two week funding patch. But I think what is important here, what he Keem is saying is that Mike Johnson may not get those Democratic votes, and if he doesn't get those Democratic votes, he can't end the shutdown.
This is good.
What we need democrats in power to do is hold Republicans accountable. Historically you haven't been able to do that when you don't control the House. But because the margins are so small and because Mike Johnson is so incompetent, we've really seen Democrats be able to do a lot more than you would think.
Yeah, and you don't have a Senator like John Fetterman there to say that ice are good boys who deserve a pat of the head.
So it could happen.
Yeah, I mean you have Democrats who vote for shitty crap, I mean shared golden Yeah.
We saw Congressman Tom Swazi face the wrath of his constituents with it this week, and.
Man, let's see what happens.
So Mammy, Usually if I heard the saying bye Chic. I'd think I was watching Austin Powers or something, but instead we're in another nightmare of Trump conflicts of interest, where the whole economy is being rigged for him to grift. This story for the Wall Street Journal is fucking bananas.
I think it's important to just take a minute here. The Wall Street Journal has done some incredible reporting.
I have to bow down as a hater.
Yeah, I know, and you're a hater, and I am very conflicted about their ed page. But the reporting they've done has been great, and so kudos to them. Remember, reporting is expensive. You need lawyers, you need fact checkers. It's much harder than just like a substack. That's your opinion, which is not to say sebstack isn't great. So here's the deal. Five hundred million dollar investment for forty nine percent of world liberty came before the United Arab Emirates
one access to the tightly guarded American AI chips. So here's the deal. There's a lot of controversy about selling these advanced AI chips to countries like China, just selling them internationally. Then this spy chic not chic that he might be Also she bought half of a tightly a very trumpy owned company which at least thirty one million dollars of that was slated to flow into entities affiliated
with the family of Steve Woodcoff. You'll remember Steve Woodcoff as being a random rich guy who's friends with Trump, who also is negotiating peace in the Middle East as one does. This is just like exactly the kind of shit that we see. And it's a catocracy, right. This is a president who is unchecked, who is unmoored, and who has basically treated the presidency like piggy bank, like just trying to make as much money as humanly possible.
And that's what we're seeing.
Yeah, and truly this really as you go through this report, it just gets uglier, all the implications speaking of very ugly firing chemical munitions at peaceful protesters, including children, which I did in Portland this weekend.
Yeah, so again, these guys are out of control, and like they think this is good because Trumpers like it. They think this is good because they are so online that a lot of Steven Miller's people, you know, they're in the echo chamber, just like Biden people would always say Biden was in the echo chamber.
That's the same thing. So you got Steven Miller goes on.
Twitter like, yeah, it's cool the gas kids, I mean, to your gas and then we have situations like this. The problem for Republicans is like Indies hate this crowd. Indie voters, the people you need to win elections, don't like to see their democracy, to see the government gasing children. I can't imagine why they don't like it. It's a mystery.
Yeah, and particularly too, no one wants this in their city. Like, no one wants to see people who were just staging as sit in get chemicals. It's strange city budgets because we have to treat people for these things, like it's crazy, Like our tax dollars going to this is ridiculous.
Oh yeah.
I mean, first of all, it's a couple things. One it's bad for them politically. Two it's expensive. Three it's dangerous for It's not what we do in this country. Like the First Amendment is the first one. Our freedom of speech, our freedom of protest. It's the first cause of the First Amendment. I mean, this is not even like we're talking about some amendment that was added, you know, I mean, this is number one. This was the first thing they said was the right to protest. And that's
because these people came from a mad king. They had lived under a mad British king. The founders, you know, they wanted to have accountability. They wanted a democracy where people could protest things they didn't like, like the Tea Party. And so the fact that this administration is so obsessed with hurting protesters, I think is like one of the many, many red flags.
Yeah.
So, speaking of horrible implications of Republican policy, the ACDA subsidies are set to expire, and right as that happens, there's an economic survey where voters site health costs as the top economic worry for them.
Yeah. So look, well, Donald Trump is busy building a giant arch, redoing the east wing right so that he can have a big, beautiful ballroom that can fit nine nine nine, one hundred people. God knows why he wants that number.
It's not first friend Herman kan to remember him?
Oh the nine nine nine for Herman Kane. He killed Herman Kin?
Did hermon Caan di have COVID?
Oh?
Yeah? At a Trump probay, Yeah.
I remember that from season one two out of three American survey at sixty six percent, or worry about paying for healthcare more than other household necessities which have also grown up utilities, food and groceries, housing and rent, gasoline, and transportation. But they can also add to their list of worry is getting deported to a country they did not come from, even if they're United States citizen. Look, it's thirty billion dollars to pay to keep these subsidies
from expiring. Donald Trump is suing the Irs for ten billion dollars. So if he can just do that three times, he could donate the money to paying for ACA subsidies.
Something to do.
Rick Wilson is the founder of the Lincoln Project. In the host of the Enemy's List, Rick Wilson, Well.
Junk fast, how are you this fine day?
Oh?
I'm just living the dream.
It is a dream, isn't it.
So Ebstein files they can only ever released them on a Friday.
Of course, it's the news dump of all news dumps, three million pages. And folks, I mean we've already talked through. Everybody's already talked through many of the revelations. There will be many more.
Let's talk about what's happened now we have Elon Musk tweeting through it.
So we emails that said things like are you going to have a party? We had it.
The most embarrassing email was Galaine trying to tell Elon that they weren't at the place anymore, so he shouldn't bother comes.
Somebody said, oh, I bet they turned off the lights when his helicopter flew by, right.
I mean it did feel like but he and he and it was like an absolute Everything he had said about Epstein was a lie, just like it.
Looked, just like Howard Nutlck and all these other people, all these thirsty bastards who now are like Jeffrey who what No. Their emails are like Geezer, may I come to your party? May I watch the nude women? May I have another girl?
Yeah?
I mean I've been thinking about this a lot. I wrote about it over the weekend. This guy was evil, and this Department of Justice came out a few months ago and said there's nothing there no victims in the Epstein files. Pam Bondi said those words, there are no victims in the in the Epstein files.
Oh really?
He said that Epstein had not trapped to anyone, but himself.
Yes, that is correct, and that was a gigantic lie. Todd Blanch said something on Friday that I thought was the most disturbing question. These images include death and sexual abuse.
So there are three million more files.
Yeah, that this was bad.
If this was bad, it'll be the weekend he nukes Greenland or something that they released the next three million, because the the recursive irony of this is they release Epstein foul material to take away the fact that they're murdering Americans in this street and what's next? How bad does it get? Well, look, let me talk about consequences though for a minute, because I think, yeah, I think we've we've seen a.
Very I just want to pause for one second just to go back to that. So Todd Blanche was on ABC today telling George Stefanoppos the review is over, that they're not releasing anymore because they have death and violence in them.
Three million files with death and violence? Are you fucking kidding me? In my mind see a serial killer as well as a fucking child trafficker. I mean, it's it's outrageous.
Like in a point a special Master do hearings like explain the emails which they should have done with this stuff too.
Go on what has happened here as ironically and bizarrely proven that QAnon was right. The world has a power elite who are who are degenerate. Some of them are pedophiles. They abuse women, they abuse people, they abuse children. But those degenerate elites turned out to a lot of being the Trump administration.
Yeah, a lot.
We're friends of Trump. You see why that You can now see why. And I think even the MAGA audience and there's a reason they've been kind of muted until late Sunday when they started to get their act together on the pushback, because the indefensible nature of this is
something they've been called to defend now for years. They've built a mythology and a legacy around around this idea that we're gonna these files are gonna be chock full of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and George Soros sacrificing. And it turns out it's Jeffrey Epstein and this incredible circle of powerful people who have faced no accountability for this, face no judgment for this, who aren't even shamed, right Musk Elon Musk, Leon Black, all these Howard Luttene. Kevin
worsh the new head of the FED. Turns out he's in bed with Jeff Well, he's.
At he's at somebody's house in St.
Bar's.
I mean, and you've gotten the reason.
Can I just say one thing about this One of the things that I think is unconscionable about how this stuff was released is that it has totally unproven allegations next to real emails of Elon and Epstein. So it creates a world where you almost question things which you know are legit can take correct.
I think some of the most disturbing stuff in here is about Steve Bannon. You we have a multi hour Steve Bannon media training Jeffrey Epstein's so Jeffreys, you can come back into society in some way. We have cozy emails of Bannon and Epstein talking about how they're going to use all these right wing groups that are funded by Russia, which we now know from their contemporaries emails
across Europe to impose this nationalist populism. We've got Epstein writing that he's going to help putin establish a new world economic order that is definitionally by the way of folks pro Putin and not pro American. You've got the deep involvement of the Russians in Epstein's operations. You've got Ahood Barak, the Israeli for former Prime Minister Ahod Barock,
former Israeli intelligence official. This whole thing shows us that this world that they projected of power elites out there with no accountability for abuse.
It's true.
What makes me so upset about this whole job is that it was meant to be. The administration felt they had to do it, and they hoped that there was enough part to send stuff to make it a partisan food fight, because the truth is a lot of these people were Democrats originally. I mean, Lutnik invites Epstein to a fundraiser for Hillary. Correct, this is not a partisan exercise, and I think that's.
Most of their credit. The Democrats have been like, oh, Bill Clinton's done there, well, he should face the face the music. Plaskin, Kathy, Kathy Rumler. You know, I think some of the most bizarre stuff that we're seeing here is this network of people in this loose ban in orbit. But this nationalist, populist, woke, rejectionist movement, whatever you want to call it. I don't have a name for it. Right now, You've got Nelly Bowles, who is Barry Weiss's wife because Epstein got.
I mean she interviewing Barry Weiss just hired.
Right, that's worse for you, doctor Peter, who.
Has over a thousand emails back and forth with Epstein, including one that was very disturbing that something like like you know, being your friend, but I can't tell a soul about the details.
Of your life, right, all right?
Yeah, no, I mean that's the kind of thing that should theoretically ruin someone's career. And I think this is going to be the real question of Epstein is does this stuff matter? Do these people get the kind of pass that Donald Trump has gone?
Right?
I think legally a lot of this would have to come from the DOJ at this point, and it's not coming from this DOJ.
But it's certainly clear that like CBS should not have a person working for them who is a doctor who has a thousand emails with Jeffrey Epstein.
Right.
Look, the accountability here can come in a couple of forms, and say more legal accountability is one thing that's the most difficult, because this DOJ will not do it. We know why they've been holding this back because these are people.
That Trump likes. That is orbit.
The second layer is financial and business level accountability. Do not do business with Leon Black. If your company is working with Leon Black, you should not be doing that. And then that goes for a lot of these other people too. Cultural and social accountability is the third, and that's like, you know why Seve Bannon is popular still, It's because he's a great source for a million mainstream reporters. He talks, He talks inside Baseball with a million mainstream
reporters every week. Is this the guy you really want to trust? A guy who was who had formed an alliance and was in business with Jeffrey Epstein. As a culture, we try to hold people accountable with shame, but shame doesn't work with everybody. You've got to cost them money. You know, you got to cost them, these people money, You got to cut them off. I mean, I think the war Room is on Serious XM or whatever podcasting network is carrying Steve Bannon.
Are you kidding me?
You're okay with this guy who was a business partner and a buddy and strategizing with a with a known pedophile and sex trafficker after he was already convicted of being a known pedophile and sex trafficker.
Come on, yeh yeah.
I think that's a really good point.
And that's what we need to start talking about, is what does accountability look like and what you know? Trump got away with it, but most Republicans don't. Right, Matt Gates no longer in office, yep.
And there's an interesting thing. It's like the transitive nature of Republicans believing, Okay, if you knew, if you knew a pedophile, you therefore are a pedophile. If Hillary Clinton knew George Soros and George Soros knew Jeffrey Epstein, therefore they are all in the same mix. But Trump gets an exception. A lot of these other people don't. A lot of Republicans live a life that is very fake,
very closeted. There are a lot of married Republican members of Congress who are gay as the day is long, and a lot of same thing in the influencer space, in the podcasting space. Of these right wing macho manly men, they have never been held to account for lying to their people about who they are. I think this is in a weird way, so pervasive. It's so widespread, it's so disgustingly distributed across our culture of the people. He
drew into this terrible orbit, you know. And it's like, not everybody who emailed with Jeffrey Epstein was a pedophile, but in these emails that have been released, they all came after the point that Jeffrey Epstein had been convicted in in Palm Beach and been given a sweetheart deal for mysterious reasons, when he's already known to be a sex trafficker and a pedophile. These people knew this. This wasn't a secret.
I want to talk about something really important, which I think relates to all of this, but is really the fundamental reason why we're probably going to I want to talk about John Burns Murdoch. Did you read this piece today in the Financial Times? No?
I have not seen it.
So basically talks.
About democratic backsliding and the kind of situation we're in right now. But it says the democratic backsliding has moved at such a rapid pace because Trump is unfettered and doesn't care. And it's just what it says is that the one thing that is probably going to save us knock on Wood is the courts, and I want you to talk about the lower level courts that have done some good checks and bout. I mean, also, if Democrats
lose the midterms, we're all fucked. But if Democrats win the midterms, they'll be accountability.
I'll be looking for I'll be looking for a cave somewhere in a foreign country.
Talk to us about accountability.
Look the courts right now, And interestingly, the lower you go in the federal court system, the more even Trump nominees in the federal courts, and certainly many Bush and Reagan nominees in the federal courts, have said no, absolutely not. Trump has relied on the DC Circuit and the Supreme Court to bail them out over and over again. But that doesn't work universally. Right now, that is a very thin line between autocracy and the rule of law. The
unwillingness of this administration to obey that law. As we've seen in Minnesota with multiple federal court rulings against the ICE and DHS where they have completely ignored them and run rough shot over them. That is a little more problematic because there's yet to have been a sanction or a penalty or a punishment for the administration from these courts that has caused them any actual legitimate level of hesitation or pain.
Yeah, but there is the political calculus, like they are. They did return the five year old in the blue fluffy hat, so they do see that they.
Will have to still have elections. I mean, they're going to try to do that.
They're going to.
Try to play screw around with it, but they the states still run their elections. And the problem for Trump canceling the elections, which a lot of people kind of breathlessly talk.
About, yeah, which is by can you just talk about cancels the elections?
It's not just pick and choose. It's all these Republican members of Congress, all these republic and office holders across
the board are delegitimized as well. And then special elections are going to have to be held once this thing goes through the courts, and that's going to be at a point where the voters are freaking furious and they're livid about this, and they know they will get blown out even worse than they're going to get blown out in twenty six right now, and I am never a guy who goes one special election.
Is the whole pattern.
But now we've seen about forty races across the country in twenty five and twenty six, from local stuff down to state wide stuff. Texas fly this weekend, Texas, you saw a state Senate district overperform seventeen points by seventeen points, a twenty one point net swing, which is crazy town. And by the way, the type of Democrat who won, he's like a machinist union official.
He's a blue.
Collar kind of guy. He wasn't out there like my eight hundred page plan on tech reform. No, he was out there like these people are crazy. I'm not going to let it keep going. We're going to fix it. We're going to make your jobs better. We're going to stop this insanity. If that scales up. If I was a Republican right now, we've even seen seats like like cook political moving Florida from from solid Republican to.
Likely and then that makes you so happy, Florida.
Movie even a notch like that crazy.
I just want to take a minute here, because you know you and I are friends.
You're so happy about the David Jolly talk us through like Florida, because I mean, look, there is a democratic mayor in Miami.
For the first time in a jillion years.
Yeah, twenty one years, I think. So talk us through how excited you are about Florida because it's cute.
Look, I'm still I'm still a jaded skeptic about my home state because I helped build a machine that ran it now for the last five years. Sorry, folks, but right now Hispanics in Florida, who went overwhelmingly for Trump have broken back the other way. The Cubans, who have been the loyal, most loyal Maga voters there are Trump is in the absolutely at this moment preparing to deport
three hundred and fifty thousand Cubans back to Cuba. These aren't voters, but they are family members of voters, and those people are panicking. You got a member of Congress down there, Alvira Maria Salazar, Republican, who is now one of the only Republicans like attacking Trump.
You must stop this. This is wrong. You were insane, sir.
Latinos for Trump, right, isn't she the head.
Of No Yeah?
Yeah, but actually, by the way, the Latinos for Trump guy, the executive director, was just deported this week. What ironies abound but Florida is starting to slip with in the South, with Hispanics, middle class. Florida is taking an absolute beat down economically. The housing market here is collapsing. In North Florida, You've got farmers, soybeans, cotton, hogs, everything else. They're not selling their products overseas anymore, and they're finally figuring out
who's to blame. Does that mean Florida's going to go blue?
No? Does it mean they have to spend money and do work. Yes.
The Republican primary for governor has now got like five people in it, and they're all tearing each other limb from limb. The front runner who is endorsed by Trump Byron degenerate, Byron Donalds is a degenerate, and that story will come out will people will go, oh, of course, And I will tell you something about the Republican base
because I know these people. Even though the guys endorsed by Trump Byron Donalds is an African American and north of by four is basically Alabama, and I see how that works out.
Yeah, And I think it's important also to mention that in Florida and in a lot of red states, you do see blue governors sometimes make it.
You know, we've seen in Louisiana. We've seen it.
I mean not right now, but we've seen in Kentucky, North Carolina. Red states will elect blue governors.
It does happen, and statewide officials in red states. Florida is a rare exception in a lot of ways because we haven't had a Democratic statewide official for twenty years. But the machine that was built down here, built under in the Bush era, that was built down here. DeSantis has been a spectacularly bad governor for Republican morale. He
and Trump are at war still to this day. He and his wife are being investigated for a forty million dollar fraud that's going to trickle down to other Republicans as well. The battle to replace him is turning into, as I mentioned to a six or seven way food fight. All these things do not make it inevitable for a blue candidate to win. But if you're David Jolly or you're alex Vinman running state wide, you know what, roll the dice. Roll the damn dice. This is your year
to roll the dice. If you think you're a long shot and the state is generically R plus eight, which it is this year, You've got a chance. And that's what's happening in Texas. I mean, look, tall Rico has a real chance to win in Texas if they have named Keim Paxson's the nominee, and I think Maxon will be the nominee. I don't think Tallarico could beat Corny, but I think you can sure as hell beat Packson.
If you see a statewide Democra to emerge in any big red state, any red state for that matter, or a medium sized North Carolina is gonna elect a Democratic senator this year. If you see that start to happen, there is an inevitable process that begins where the money flow in terms of campaign donations starts to change. Where suddenly the lobbyist who would have gotten his people together to write a million dollars worth of checks for somebody goes, hey, listen,
I know I love you, man. Trump's a great guy, but you know, John Smith is the Democratic senator from here now, and I got to I gotta make sure he's good with us so he doesn't do anything to.
Us in the in the what cheated process.
And if Democrats start to win these seats, by the way, play hardball.
Say more.
Let's put this way.
When Kevin McCarthy was Speaker, he went to lobbyists all over d Seed and like, you give the need Democrats money, I'm gonna fuck you over. I'm gonna take away your appropriations. That is the kind of hardball that needs to be played here. That is the kind of like you come to me with some maga maga. You know, lobbyists, you're
not coming to mind office. Come to me with some with some I find out you've donated to to you know, Democratic congressional districts in my Republican congressional competitors in my state. We're gonna have an issue. Hardball is real. It exists behind the behind the nice cities of DC, and Democrats when they take back the House are going to have
to learn to play it quickly. And that is going to in part be choking off the money that feeds the maga machine from these corporate interests around the country. I mean, they need to call Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg and Elon and the rest of them are like, all right, motherfuckers, here's how it's going to go from now on.
Your appropriations are going to grind to a hall.
None of the ship you want is going to happen, and we're going to pass a National Data center ban.
How about that? They got to play.
Hardball, Rick Wilson.
I'm here to advise as always.
National Data center ban. I like it.
Christopher Mattatos is a reporter of for outlets like The Huffington Post, The Guardian and ms now. He is also the author of To Catch a Fascist, The Fight to Expose the Radical Right.
Welcome to Fast Politics, Christopher.
Thank you so much for having me, Molly.
How you doing.
You know, I remember the days of you at.
The huff Post. We're just all getting older and older, I know. So talk us through To Catch a Fascist? How you got involved in this and sort of what this looks like the shadow war waged to defend what's left of democracy.
Back in twenty seventeen, like you said, when I was a reporter at huff Post, I found myself in Charlottesville, Virginia for the United the Right rally, which obviously was you know, the largest white supremacist gathering in generation, and died with the neo Nazi killing a counter protester driving
his car into a crowd, killing heather Higher. When I got back to New York, my editor at the time, Woudio Paulgreen, told me that this was my beat now, that I was going to be covering the far right, and that kind of started this decade long journey to figure out who was in this kind of insurgent fascist movement, this kind of like resurrected invisible Empire, like trying to recreate the clans invisible Empire. There were so many secretive white supremacist groups and I was trying to figure out
who was in them. Very quickly I learned that the people doing the best research into these groups was Antifa. It was, you know, this kind of radical underground network of anarchists and socialists and communists who often deployed spies into white supremacist groups, into Nazi groups to gather intelligence.
And over the course of the last ten years, these anti fascists identified thousands of pseudonymous American Nazis, revealing them to be you know, people in positions of power, politicians, pastors, police officers, professors, teachers, and in the process, these anti fascist spies ended up destroying multiple fascist groups that belonged to the so called al right.
It's interesting we talk about out antifa because the right is obsessed and the Trump administration obsessed with Antifa. They believe it's like a huge organization with the headquarters and of this and of that.
So I'd love you to define what is antifa.
Yes, So there's so many misapprehensions about antifa, and no one can really tell you what it is, and no one in America really knew what it was before twenty seventeen. You know, at the end of twenty seventeen, Webster Dictionary added antifa into his dictionary. Oxford Dictionary shortlisted it for word of the Year, and the reason for that was because this like in bold and far right kept showing up on the streets of America and we're getting punched.
And most people associate antifa with Nazi punching, which is a part of it. So the way I define antifa is basically, it is a underground, decentralized subculture or network of radical leftists dedicated to destroying the far right by
any means necessary. And they subscribe to a few basic tenants, which is that the far right fascists need to be confronted in the streets, sometimes violently, that fascists should have no platform to speak or organize, so that means, you know, trying to get their permits revoked, to hold a rally, trying to get them deplatform from social media for violating
terms of service. And then finally, the like final really important tenet of kind of militant anti fascism or antifa is that the state and law enforcement cannot be trusted in this fight. So they do not believe that cops can be trusted to fight fascists. They see police kind of invested, inherently invested in like a white supremacist project.
And you know, I think antifa the word itself is obviously just a shortening of anti fascists, and obviously I think we all hopefully listening to this would consider ourselves anti fascist. But antifa itself, I think refers to this very specific kind of militant tradition that grew out of the punk scene essentially in the eighties and nineties in America.
But there's also a research component, and that is what you're talking about here, is the sort of anti fascist research. What did you find that was surprising to you when you looked into this world?
Basically, you have of this network of activists doing some of the most remarkable journalism in the country, even though it's not called journalism, you know, not recognized as journalism by the mainstream press. These are anonymous activists and they stay anonymous to prevent reprisals from the far right, to protect themselves from violence. But they started doing this work mostly because they had brushes with fascists in their communities.
There was an anti fascist activist I talked to whose good friend lost a family member in the massacre at the l Pass and Walmart, and that's what started her doing this work. But you know, the MAGA and Trump have created this hysterical caricature like you mentioned of antifa, right, this kind of like highly regimented army of black clad radicals that are going to like bombshit and like you know, are anti Christian and want to turn your kids tran and on all this stuff. You know, in reality, they
are everyday Americans. They are soccer moms, they are rednecks.
They're researchers largely right, They're largely researchers.
And what they do is they do open source intelligence investigations. It's basically the digital equivalent of ripping the wide hood off of a Klansman. They look at all of these fascists that hide behind user names and avatars online and figure out who they are. A big part of what they did was use spies, and this is the main characters in my book are anti fascist spies that go undercover into this new generation of fascist groups in the
Trump era and gather all of this intelligence. They you know, secret they record secret audio, they take covert photos, they
take photos of license plates. But one of the most important things they do is that they acquire hundreds and thousands of gigabytes of data of private messages that these Nazi groups send to each other, and then they post those messages in an open source database on why on a website called unicorn Riot, which is doing fantastic job on the ground in Minneapolis right now, by the way. And then anti fascist researchers go through these messages to look for clues and morsels that can be used to
identify these Nazis. And what they end up finding is that a lot of these Nazis are in positions of power. A lot of these Nazis are involved with the Republican Party, you know. Essentially, I think what antifa and anti fascists find out before anyone, or you know, I think raise alarm about before anyone, is that America is headed in a very dark trajectory.
What are they doing in Minnesota?
So anti fascists activists across the country right now are monitoring what's happening in Minnesota, and for a long time, like I said, for the past decade, have been involved in identifying this new generation of fascists. Right now, they've repurposed their investigative skills to identify ICE agents. So they are involved, actively involved in figuring out, you know, taking the masks off Trump's secret police that are terrorizing places
like Minneapolis. I have a story coming out this week that identifies an ICE agent seeing Pepper spraying a protester at point blank range while he's on the ground. That identity came through anti fascist research. And they're doing this
to create accountability for being an ICE. They want to create a social cost for being an ICE agent and basically tell ICE agents that if you don't leave this secret police force now, you will never be able to like wash away this shame like you will be name and chained for the rest of your life for having been.
A part of this, it doesn't work.
I think it works. Basically. Antifa, you know, destroyed multiple fascist groups by depriving them of the anonymity, depriving them of the ability to work in the dark. Of course, like we are in this mask off moment in fascism right right now, where what supremacists are in power, so in a way, like the ability to dock someone to
create a consequence for being a Nazi is diminished. But you know, it's important to create that social came and preserve that's social costs, and to warn your neighbors about who in your community is a fascist and might want to harm them. So I think the work is still very important. And I think especially right now with identifying ICE agents and figuring out who this secret police force is coming to your cippy's, there's already growing opposition to
ICE and support for the phrase abolish Ice. You know, that's reaching record highs. So I think anti fascist work that leverages that growing on popularity is important, and I think it's good.
Yeah, No, it's obviously very good, and it's very necessary.
Am I dumb?
But wouldn't this be the job of the FBI and a normal America?
Yeah?
I mean because isn't this what.
The FBI is supposed to be doing, like people do crimes figuring out, Yeah.
I mean totally. I mean, you know, there's plenty of examples of the FBI going undercover into white supremacist groups. You know, I think for from the military anti fascist perspective, the FBI is you know, never going to do enough, you know, especially under the second Trump administration. You know, they are certainly not prioritizing going after white supremacist groups,
and there's been reporting to that effect. What the FBI is being directed to do with the DOJ is being directed to do is to go after Antifa, to go after anti fascists. You know, in September, the Trump administration claimed to designate Antifa a quote domestic terrorist organization, which is absurd. There is no federal statute by which to
declare any group of domestic terrorist organization. And moreover, Antifa isn't even an organization, like you said earlier, there's no headquarters, there's no leaders, there's no like rich benefactors giving it money. So yeah, you know, like on a normal timeline, sure, yeah,
maybe the FBI should be in charge of this. The argument my book makes is that over the last ten years, even under the Biden administration, I think the work that Antifa is doing, going under cover into what supremacist groups and doxing its members did more to destabilize those groups than law enforcement.
Right, No, for sure, for sure.
And there's like is the government incompetent or is the government corrupt?
Right?
Right? Right?
Or in this case, you know, is are these white supremacist groups do they share the same mission as the Trump administration?
Right?
Which they do for sure?
And this question they do.
So I don't want you to docs anyone, but I want you to give us sort of a character, either who is out of the game or who.
You feel comfortable talking about.
One of the main characters of the book is an anti fascist named Vincent who goes undercover into the Nazi group Patriot Front, and he spends about six months in Patriot Front basically doing method acting, you know, pretends to be a Nazi, and he goes on their pikes. He goes on their missions, the vandalists omissions, He is their meetings.
He gains enough trust of this group that they name him the official photographer, so he is taking photos for their propaganda and kind of you know, stealing away those photos and photos of their faces, and then you know, after about five or six months, his infiltration leads to anti fascists acquiring four hundred and forty gigabytes worth of messages that Patriot Front members are sending to each other.
These messages end up being put online and anti fascist researchers across the country use them to ultimately identify about eighty members of Patriot Front. Ultimately there is an effort, you know, Vincent, I call him Vincent the character. He remains anonymous, but Patriot Front ends up figuring out who he is and files a lawsuit against him, which was
just dismissed last week. But I think stories like Vincent, there are many stories like Vincent's, many stories of people that very bravely were confronting the far right in their communities, kind of operating under this axiom of we protect us right that like the government ote that law enforcement isn't going to protect us, it is up to us to
stop this. And I think that ethos is exactly what we're seeing on the streets of Minneapolis right now, where the community came together and realized that these masked police being deployed. I would argue for a fascist project, for a project of ethnic cleansing. You know, no one's going to stop them. The police Department's not going to stop them. The Democratic Party is not doing anything to stop them.
So it's up to the community to stop them. And you know, what they did, what Minneapolis was doing, bears a striking resemblance to what anti fascists were doing in the first Trump administration with fascist groups on the streets. They were monitoring them, they were you know, identifying them. They were pressuring venues and hotels not to host them, they were doing noise demos. They're basically creating it, like I said, creating a social cost for being a part
of this and saying you are not welcome here. You are terrorizing this community, and there needs to be shame for what you're a part of.
Yeah, and I think that's a really good point, and I think like that is ultimately the goal here, especially one it comes to what's happened? What are you seeing with these groups right now? Because there's been such a sea change even from when you started in twenty seventeen. They are now the mainstream. So are they more hidden less hidden? Interacting with the government like what do you think the trajectory is for these sort of people who have been under the radar for a long time.
Yeah, I mean there was like this explosion, you know, obviously of fascist groups at the beginning of the first Trump administration, you know, secretive groups, and you know, in retrospect, I think those groups kind of acted like a vanguard, like shock troops of the for the Magro project. They were they were pushing the Overton window open wider and wider for the GOP to accept more and more vile
ideas and like explicit white nationalists ideas. You know, it's interesting when you look back at the stolen chats that Antifa obtained from these Nazi groups, you see them using all these terms that the Trump administration is using now. For example, well you can see the moment the word remigration arrives from Europe to America in Nazi chats. Now, remigration is a term you hear all the time from Stephen Miller and the Trump administration. Remigration is just a
European euphemism for ethnic cleansing. It's very explicit. You also see the arrival of the Great Replacement conspiracy theory in Nazi chats. In twenty seventeen and twenty eighteen, you know, chats obtained by Antifa, and then a few years later you're seeing the rights talk about the Great Replacement all the time. So a lot of these fascist groups that were involved in this project in popularizing these terms, you know, have since disbanded in a way, you know, they're no
longer useful. And I draw this comparison to the First and Second Clan. You know, the first plan was created to destroy Reconstruction, and when Reconstruction was abandoned, they kind of disbanded, you know, they exchanged the anonymity of the hood for the anonymity of the lynch mob. I think
there's a similar dynamic at play right now. When fascists wear they want to create a world in which they won't need to wear masks at all, and we are kind of living in that mask off moment, and I think it's important for us to consider a world in which ICE agents are comfortable not wearing masks. Part of the anti fascist project right now is stopping that world
from being created. So that's a very long winded explanation of saying a lot of the fascist groups that I document in my book aren't as active anymore as because they don't need.
To be Christopher. That was so upset.
Even Booboo doesn't like it. Thank you, thank you for joining us.
Thanks so much for having me by.
No moment, Rick Wilson, is it that time?
It's that time?
I love that time.
What is your moment of fuckery?
My moment of fuckery is that Donald Trump's pillaging of the American treasury continues unabated this week, with him suing the IRS for ten billion dollars because an IRS official leaked to tax information at some point. Yeah, look, the IRS should not leak tax information. Now, it's a crime. The guy that did it has already been punished for it. But Trump suing the IRS for ten billion dollars, which the IRS will give him. They will settle and say, yes, sir,
here's your money. Yeah, that is just flat fricking robbing the US taxpayer. What harm was done by that leak to Trump?
Nothing? He's in office, then something for being in office.
They may have actually, he may have missed the statute of limitations on it.
Maybe maybe I'm I'm not a lawyer, so I'm not positive on that. But here's the thing. Trump is going to threaten to sue a lot of people in the coming weeks and months.
Are you listening, ABC?
Yeah? Are you listening? And Michael Wolfe again.
You know in ninety nine point nine nine percent of all Trump lawsuits are meant these days to make money for him.
This IRS lawsuit is no exception.
It's a pure corrupt ca robbery of the American taxpayer.
Correct, Rick Wilson.
Molly Drug Fast as always, I'll see you next week.
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear the best minds and politics make sense of.
All this chaos.
If you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
Thanks for listening.