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 Jadie Vance is now the most unpopular vice president in the history of Poland that's pretty fun. We have such a great joke for you today. The Lincoln Project with Wilson joins us to discuss Trump blocking the straits of Ramoose and other strategic blunders. Then we'll talk to Ed Fitzgerald about his run for Ohio's seventh
district against Congressman Max Miller. But first the news, Smiley.
We are seeing inflation, we are seeing gas prices close it and mister Trump is going to be here to the rescue.
Oh wait, no, he's not here.
He is talking to the money honey, Maria Bartiromo, and she looks horrified as he says this.
Oh I love a clip. Let's go. So, do you believe the price of oil and gas will be lower before the Mitrom election?
Yes, I hope. So.
I mean I think it could be all the same, or maybe a little bit higher, but I think it won't be longer. All she wants is for him to say it'll be a lower.
It's so funny because her eyes just bug out of her head, like, no, you fuck an idiot.
I was trying to let you eye. If you didn't, if.
You have a little time, go on the internet and search that interview with Maria Bartaroma, because it's like a masterclass in him cycling through various anxieties. At one point he's like, you know, the Iranians had nukes. We knew they were going to blow us all up. He goes into a hole like they were going to blow us all up thing, which is something. It's clear his levels of desperation, of anxiety, of you know, it just isn't
a truly insane bit of everything bad. It's absolutely worth listening to.
I'm gonna admit I was wrong about something on this podcast.
What we never learned from our mistakes here at Fast Politics Continue.
Would I see politicians like Jbi Raskin say Trump needs a head example, I'm like, I hate this kind of performative.
It's like distractions.
When I watched that interview, I was like, all right, up, bub tea brasket here, this guy's fucking gets saved.
Well, you know, he's seventy nine years old, and like that is old. I mean, you know, there are some seventy nine year olds who are sharp as attack. My man is not one of them.
Yeah, okay, so let's talk about some real ugliness in our congress. So, as we learned this weekend that Eric Swalwell has been having a few affairs here and there, it seems.
It best he's a fuse. Yeah. Well, at worst it's something much darker, right.
Yes, So it looks like in Congress the compromise is that there's been a lot of people whose behavior has not been so good. We've had, you know, other Congress people who have bet ethics.
Tony Gonzalez who's sexually harassed scatpers and one of them set themselves on fire and killed theirselves. I'm gonna need to step on the soapbox here for a minute about Beric. You know, Eric swahe and I have been friendly over the last couple of years. I did not know that he was capable of this kind of thing. And I'm telling you this all has to be investigated. He needs to step down, and these women need to have be listened to. I have a number of thoughts about this.
The biggest thing in my mind is that there are multiple women The allegations range from the distasteful to the illegal, and they all need to be listened to. I was really heartened to see that Alvin Bragg, who is really I have to say, I got to talk to him recently, and I just thought, this guy is really a good egg. That Alvin Bragg is taking this really seriously, and that he's not going to do partisan hacker, that he is going to despite the letter next to his name, investigate
these allegations. Look, we give up the moral high ground the minute we dismiss stuff like this. It leads us to a place that none of us want to be. And there is a lot a lot of these members of Congress are given all sorts of, you know, second chances. And this is not that this is a person who needs to be investigated. This is behavior that is not okay. And I'm really glad to see Democrats taking this very seriously. You can't be the good guys if you enable stuff like this.
Yeah.
So what's interesting is it seems there's a compromise in Congress with some people are calling taking out the trash where they're going to vote to expel it looks like four different members to Democrats to Republicans. But what's interesting that you and I were talking about is we immediately
wouldn't looked at their cook PBI. So for people who don't know, the cook PBI is about how much a district leans left or right, and the two Dems are over twenty points cook PBI, so they're very safe DEM seats. But both Republicans, in this environment where conservative estimates are D plus ten swings away. Both of these are swinging Republican favorite districts and could go to the Demos.
So let's talk about this for a minute. Swawa is in a D plus twenty district, so that is not going to go to Republicans. Tony Gonzalez, who is his sexual harasser with by the way, six kids, Okay, jesus, I know six kids, and the staffer kills herself and there's other staffers, and I mean it's just this is like we have to take these women seriously, like we are either the society where women count, where their voices matter,
or we are we are lost. So he is in an R plus seven, then they are the two other people with the Republican is Corey Mills. He's in an R plus five. He is in Florida, and he has all sorts of allegations. And then the other one is Shila Shurface McCormick. She's in a D plus twenty two. This is a case where she got by accident a check for five million dollars instead of I think she was supposed to get a five hundred thousand dollars check, and she just spent the five million dollars. It's fraud.
I'm sorry, guys, like as much as like it is a little bit hilarious, you can't spend the extra four and a half million dollars. But it was a COVID relief funds I think. And she's now in the middle of an ethics investigation. I think there's a criminal trial coming. I mean, I get that people want not to be as hard on the people on their team, especially in light of the fact that Donald Trump the Republicans have opened the door to this kind of like, it's not
fraud if our guy does it. But you don't come back from Donald Trump by letting people still five million dollars. That's it. You just can't. You can't do it. And that's why it's both true with Eric and with share all shortfullest, you just can't do this. You gotta go. So look, I hope that they do this in a way that's fair because there are a lot of people who need to be expelled from the house right now.
And I think if the next chapter of American democracy involves no longer allowing this kind of sleazy shit, then that's where we are. So I'm glad to see it.
Yes, agreed.
So you know, well everyone else in America has gotten a memo that affordability politics that you know, no longer allowing workers to be robbed is a way to get popularity. The Trump administration is hard at work and making sure that doesn't happen.
So this is nurses, Okay, nurses. This is not something where it's like a fringe lefty issue. Okay, these are nurses. And as you know, we are in a healthcare crisis. Basically, Minnesota, friend of the Pod, Tim Walls, had this minimum wage floor for nursing home workers. By the way, nursing home workers like this is this is an unsexy job where people do the kind of work that families don't want to do for themselves. I say this as someone who
has a mom and a nursing home. Like, I know how important the people who work in nursing homes are, Like this is you know, you won't have those people and you have everybody comes to live with you. You know. So this is a big, big, big deal and it is like really good stuff. It's what the government should fucking be doing is making sure that people who work
in nursing homes get money. And the Trump administration because they have to be on the wrong side of every issue, those fucking guys are against the payment of nursing But if you want to do fraud, if you want to do nursing home fraud, there for that. Oh yes, yes, yes, yeah, that's a big one.
You'll probably get a pardon if you do it, or.
You know, yeah, or a cabinet position.
I was gonna say, you could become the Senator from Florida if you do the work Dedicaid fraud of all time. Yeah, okay, speaking of total grifters in common. One of my favorite things of doctor Oz was when his first investigation when after Armenians, because as a guy who votes in Turkey, that's what you do. But what we've now seen is he's had a huge error in his Blue State fraud probe, and you'll be shocked to hear a lot of this was cooked up and totally botched.
Yeah, I wonder if doctor Oz went to go vote for on this time, doctor Oz, who could not win for Senate and so instead, by the way, he probably would have been better than anyway. I don't want to talk about it. You know what I'm talking about.
I think we all picked up when you were played down.
So doctor Oz just cited wrong numbers. He said that the New Yorkers who used personal care service was between six and seven percent of the state's medicaid and role is that is wrong? It is wrong. Now because it's a Trump administration, not everyone is buying this is an innocent mistake, of course. So I've seen your public information officer from York Department of Public Health told AP that Oz's false claims about the program where he targeted attempt
to obscure the facts. She can just say he's a liar. Again. It goes back to Molly's rule of the Trump administration never trust their statistics because it's an administration filled with lying liars who are Rick Wilson is the founder of Lincoln Project and the host of the Lincoln Project podcast, Rick.
Won Molly, what an amazing weekend we're having.
Blocking the straits of hormuse.
Nothing says strategic genius like turning the whole world against you.
Weren't they already blocking the straits?
Oh no, we're blocking the strates now. But we were blocking the straits. Was very very bad.
Yes, and now we're doing now we're going to block the straits.
Here's the problem with this whole thing. Yeah, Donald Trump truly believes this is some move like eighty seven dimensional quantum string theory chess. Yeah, when in fact, in the all time in the all time list of dumb shit. Yeah, land war in Asia? Check. Already there blocking the straits, which turns off the entire world economy. Yeah, that means everything. That means they're not making any more semiconductors in South Korea and Taiwan because we'll be cutting off the helium supply.
We're not shipping any energy out of the Gulf to Asia to China. China is now like, well, I guess we'll just send some anti aircraft systems over to a run because they clearly need them.
Yeah, it is.
The whole thing is just it is this is a string of genius moves on Donald Trump's park.
And I don't know if you read today in the Wall Street Journal, which has been killing it on the reporting side because they hired only one that Jeff Bezos fucked at the Washington Post, and so they had an incredible piece today about how the Trump administration was warned that this was going to completely fuck up the whole economy. Oh yeah, and it's like at every point we see they're warned this is a bad idea. Sure, they decide to do it anyway, because Trump gets tricked by net Yahoo.
Or whatever, right or whatever.
And then they end up being like, we didn't know, you know.
Trump, we could have foreseen except for everyone.
Trump was on Maria Bartaroma's podcaster was gonna say podcast, television show, this morning, podcast on Fox Business. Professional, yeah, less professional on Fox Business where the elite meet, and he was like, they were gonna have a nuke. Huh.
I thought we had obliterated the nukes. But call me crazy. I mean but when when she asked him, Molly, I mean you you. I must have played that clip ten times today because when she says, well, interview prices and gas prices to be higher or lower by November in the life He's like, I don't know, maybe maybe a hoopsu but could be it could be the same, or it could be higher. One of my editors was like, dear God, sometimes we sometimes he writes the script for us.
It's long term.
Pain for no term game game.
I mean that by the way, they had like this Maga messaging thing where they you saw them on all the Fox chat, you know, be like short term pay and long term game. It reminded me you saw this. Ashley Saint Clair had a video this week.
Can I just say I was impressed by her. She made a cogent's argument about the MAGA influencer ecosystem and talked it through. I thought, in a very I mean, that was a concise, ten minute briefing. Yes, that a lot of people sort of intuitively feel, but I thought it was actually well.
Done and it's what we've heard from these other exfluencers. The dom whatever is named Luger dom Luger, which is basically if your MAGA influencer, just like Charlie Kirk had bot farms, these guys get paid for they get paid for endorsements.
Again, as we learned as we learned America's alpha male banana eating Gunther Eagleman. Right God, who has got a real name like Joe Smith? Right Hey, gun Through Eagleman is like a retweet is three hundred dollars.
The price is the price, Yeah, Gunther Eagleman. This crew is all just getting paid. And and I think the secret, which Ashley Saint Clair explains in a really smart way, I think he is the baby mama of Elon Mush. What she explains is that the part of the secret of this is just lockstep messaging.
Stay on message, stay on message, stay on message, and if you're confused about it, stay on message.
And this is since you are one of the architects of some of this, I love you for it. I know you major. You've made your piece with it, right, You've made penance. But I would love you to just like do a minute or two on how you get from Pap Buchanan w to this sure sure look.
The Republican Revolution that was the seed corn of the eventual Tea Party movement which became the MAGA, started in nineteen ninety one when my old boss, George Herbert Walker Bush to be a responsible adult, decided that he and the Senate would make a deal on a tiny, marginal bullshit tax increase. It essentially was so marginal that it made very little difference in the depths, a little bit,
a meaningful but not sweeping number. But the political consequence of that was that Pat Buchanan and a group of these incredible paleo conservative dipshits went out and ran a primary against a seeded president. Was not done at the time. That did not happen back in the nineties or the eighties or the seventies, It didn't really happen. Yeah, so Buchanan loses, gets his ass handed to him, of course,
but then Bush loses the general election. You got Ross perrot who comes in also in that sort of space, Ross pro was like the original AstroTurf, though he had guys cheering for him who were just paid to cheer for him. And there was no social media then, of course, so we grow through the Tea Party. Still no real social media, but there is a bit of online messaging, a bit of online organizing through early platforms. Somebody reminded me of the day that Yahoo groups used to have
all these Tea Party communications channels in them. Okay, back in the day when I hadn't thought about yeahoo groups for like a decade, but then that grew as social media expanded, really blew up on the scene in twenty sixteen. Race. These people are running these organizational chat groups and Twitter in their direct messaging, on Telegram, discord other platforms that
are not as visible. But they follow a rule that was as old as when I got into politics, which is the thing every Republican consultant learns the day you are you get your first campaign one, stay on message two, just win. If you're confused about rule one, consult rule two. Confused about rule two, consult Rule one. Stay on message is the gospel. It is the Catechism. It is the singular moment that everybody in the Republican universe believes all
the time. Democrats could not stay on message. If you have them like on a on a railcar and they were they were told this is the station you used get off at and you say my name is John Smith, they will fight about who they are. They will fight about every Oh, we're gonna get off at a different station. We're gonna do this differently. We're gonna take a plane.
Republicans get on and stay on message. The unification of that message ramifies from Fox News to Newsmax to bright Bar to o An two to all these influencers online, whether they're on Rumble or YouTube or Twitch or wherever. And the superpower they have is they don't really care what the message is there. The point scoring system for them is are they on that message? Are they with
the group? Are they in the pack? And so Donald Trump could say tomorrow that you know, our next cart, We're going to invade the planet Venus, and they would be like, it's about time somebody invaded Venus. And they'd all say it with absolute conviction. They'd all say it with absolute belief that as long as they were the loudest voice in the room, they were going to get a pat on the head, or they were going to get monetized for that tweet, or they were going to
get rewarded by somebody sending them a Venmo. And it works.
I kind of want to talk about Tucker Crawlson's numbers. I don't know if you saw that article two days ago. Yeah, So Tucker Crawlson is actually and I was a little bit surprised by this. He's going through the same kind of thing that Ben Shapiro is going through, though probably for different reasons.
Well, look, there was a period right after Tucker left Fox.
His numbers are way down the point right fus.
His numbers are way down, not only in the polling but in his ratings and his listeners. There is a moment happening inside MAGA right now for Tucker that is surprising because right after he left Fox, his numbers with Republicans were through the roof. He was a king maker, it was very popular, Ratings were amazing. There there was a real world where you could see Tucker winning a Republican presidential primary. And I'm not saying that jokingly.
It's a nightmare scenario, incredibly.
But what has happened now is not a symptom of Trump, but a symptom of the MAGA base fracturing very quickly. And for some of them, Tucker is now an apostate and an enemy of Trump, so they're going to not listen. For some of them, he's not going far enough against Trump, so they're not going to listen. It's weird, and and I think there are some Tucker stands out there who
like that flavor. But he also put himself in a box as this leader of of the anti war, anti interventionist guy who also somehow ends up on the side of every you know Orbon in the world, somehow ends up on Putin's side on everything. And there's just a sort of sense that that he played out all his cards and ended up with a Paara tubes.
Yeah, it's wild, like you think that guy should not have fucked himself.
By the way, folks should remember, Tucker is not stupid.
Yeah, he's not a stupid No. I mean, that's why it's so dangerous. Ben Shapiro continues to create. But that I think is a marriage of pro zion as an anti Semitism.
Ben Shapiro the Mark Levin of Yes, it's the Mark Levin of YouTube.
We got to go across the Atlantic, Yeah, we do, to a country helmed by Victor Orbon, loved by conservatives worldwide. They sent in Jadi Vans the.
Closer JD Vans. I would just like to introduce mister Orbon to an exclusive international club. Everything Trump touches dies and.
Everything and everything JD vance, such as including the pope.
Working destroyed and this this election was a absolute nuclear SmackDown As of the time we're recording this, Peter Magyar and the Teasa Party is somewhere very close within one or two seats in Parliament to a super majority. I think they need one thirty two and they were at one thirty when I saw it last. It probably will update. Obviously Orbon has conceded, which everyone has kind of shocked about, myself included.
Which is good sign. By the way, that is good.
Very good, sorry, very very good sign, very good.
Yes.
Yeah, but you know this is another thing. This The people in the conservative movement, Steve Bannon, Matt Slap, jd Vance, Peter Teel, who were deeply, deeply invested in in Hungary did so because they thought Orbon was the model for America. You could scale it up. He was the champion of illiberal sort of window dressing democracy. It looked like a democracy. It still had elections, but they were rigged. It's still
had courts, but they were all his friends. It still had private enterprise, but they were all owned by his family members. But they really saw that as the model. And think about it. If you do that scaling exercise in your mind, that is what they're trying to do in America. Oh, no question, and Orbon was a beloved figure in that space, and now I believe he'll be joining the Shield of America to help Christine know he's good.
That's right, She's Christino. By the way, underreported story in the Daily Mail, which is breaking all the news these days.
Right, I don't know. I don't know, is.
That the Christy Nome bedjet is now going to Yeah, she will not be using that bed with her husband to discuss.
I don't think she's used the bed with her husband sometimes in the last twenty years. Yeah, I would think, like right after you have a kid and your husband gets caught banging porn stars. No, I'm going to pass on that anymore. That the horizontal mambo, no, thank you sir.
Yeah, I think that ship is sailed.
And I mean that that presser she did at the end of the week, Oh that is that is a dark hole from which no logic emerges yet except I look at it. I've been thinking about it since the day it happened. I look at it now as how do I get out of my prenup without more lawyers?
I mean, the Millenia presser can be one of two things. One is she spends all day reading stuff about herself on the internet, and she's like, they're coming for me, And so she thinks that if she does this somehow it helps her. Or the other is she really just wants she wants to think them.
I really want her to be that little girl on the meme who looks back at the camera and the house is burning down behind her.
I mean that that I'm telling you. You know, I've talked to so many people this weekend who kind of know a lot of stuff and nobody can make any sense out of it.
No, And I've talked to a lot of people too. I did pick up from somebody adjacent to that to the Trump Averse that the person described it to me as it was like a nuclear bomb, not a Ron style nuclear bomb, but a nuclear bomb went off because they did not know what she was doing. She didn't give them an they knew she was doing something. They thought it was some sort of be best you know, Milania, the power people and the children love goodly. Yeah, vetish husband for shovel.
Yeah, okay, so orbon jd Vance Jade Vance is now the Elon Mosque of elections.
Yes, he's he's basically He's basically the kiss of death for as Trump's electoral ambassador. But remember Trump put in he was calling over there, he was tweeting about how we were going to make Hungary's economy expand and explode and be great again. And Marco was on the same ticket as well, and all of them. I think it says something good for the world that Hungary was in
the hands of Orbon. Peter Magyard, the guy who won today, started out when he was a young man, had a poster of a young Victor Orbon in his apartment because Victor Orbon after the Cold War was a pro democratic hero in Eastern Europe, and unfortunately he slipped into the corruption net that he made for himself. Wanted to get rich,
wanted to have power great. It shows you that eventually even the billionaire class, and in a small country, even the super powerful in a small country, even a crooked court system in a small country like that, cannot sustain. And I think it's even harder to sustain over time in America, at least I hope so. But folks, the right wing movement around the world put in a full court press on this. They had a lot of American consultants over there who are Trump consultants.
Yeah, yeah, a lot of them.
They have not been uh, they've not been talking much today, which is kind of fascinating because normally they're a bunch of big mouths. But yeah, it is. It's a good day.
It's a good day for democracy. A day that Victor Obamd loses is a good day for absolutely and a day that JD. Vans. I mean, that's the other thing about JD. Vance. And I want to talk about this for a minute because I feel like people are always you know, there are a bunch of doomers on the internet who are like, they're just trying to put in JD. Vans for Trump, and I'm like, you guys, bat dog, don't hunt.
Don't hunt. Even if Peter Teele put it all in, shoved everything in the kitty in the middle of the table for JD. Vance, there's a reason why Trump sent him to do the two shittiest jobs in government, first negotiating with the Iranians with nothing to negotiate, and second trying to get Victor orb On a dictator reelected. While he goes with Marco, who looked absolutely like whacked out of his mind, at that at that event last night.
It's the big shoes the USC. It may be the big shoes the USC event where you know, we're in the middle of a very consequential war and Trump has uh, well, let's put this way. Yesterday was golfing, then last night he was at UFC, and today he's golfing. So we're in great hands with JDA right now.
It is amazing to me like that Donald Trump, he can look at his numbers, which are have they I don't know? Is he the lowest he's ever been.
He's the lowest he's ever been. Yeah, cataly low.
Right, he can look at his numbers and be like, you know, w who again I disagree with him a lot of stuff and who has been very quiet when we could use him saying stuff. I know, I know, longer story another day, but that he did knock golf during golf war. No, he made a real point not to golf because of the because partially because the optics. So like these are optics. You're already UFC fight. You're
not going to make Joe Rogan love you. I mean maybe he can, but Joe Rogan is you know again, so at this UFC fight, there was a moment he saw all of his MAGA influencers. He saw Joe Rogan, he saw that horrible guy Fury with the stupid hair.
He saw what was that about.
I didn't even know he was MAGA, but guy.
Fury like making out with Andrew Taate. Okay, I didn't have enough reasons to not like you, but I now I do. Yeah, and you saw all those guys discuss.
Donald Trump is now the guy who was the high school quarterback five years ago, and he graduated, and he went to community college for a year, then he dropped out. Now he works at a gas station. But every Friday night he still takes that corvette or that trans am. He circles the parking lot like that was my place, man, I loved it. That was when I was at my peak. And Trump feels like this is like, it feels like this could not be a more friendly audience for him.
But I think that too has come to a sort of diminishing returns point.
And then some yeah, I think that's right.
Edgar, Donald Trump, you really want to be hanging out with Andrew Taate, a child sex.
Trafficker, unbelievably bad.
Rick Wilson as always my friend.
Ed Sir Gerald is a candidate for Congress in Ohio seventh District. Welcome, Welcome, Ed, Hi, Mike, let's talk about Ohio because you are running for Max Miller's congressional seat. You have run for office before in Ohio, and I feel like it's probably like one of the very few moments where Democrats can win in Ohio because of the craziness of the White House. Is that your calculus and talk us through it.
It's a different vibe than I've ever seen before, let me put it that way. So I've been elected to local office. I was a mayor locally, and I was a county executive locally. So we can win, especially in northeast Ohio. And basically Democrats do win in the bigger cities like they do across the country, right, But this is a suburban district and it's a little bit of a rural district.
But I've never seen a vibe like this.
I mean, I mean, we've done We've done twenty two town halls in the last I think four months, and the level of anger and just confusion about what the country is turning into, I've never seen anything like it. And so that creates a moment that you wouldn't see in a place like Ohio.
Typically, the big story that the mainstream media is missing right now is it as uncomfortable as all of us in TV Land are with what's happening, the American people are ten times more furious and scared. And so tell me what it's like in these town halls. And also, first I want you to tell us the district you're running for is the what are the calculus like how republican is and then I want to talk about maximili So the.
District is a district that Donald Trump won with about fifty five percent of the vote, and it's the Cleveland suburbs. It's the West Cleveland suburbs, and some suburbs that are south of Cleveland. And then it's three counties that are south of Cleveland that are more rural. They're kind of urban, but they're also kind of rural. So that's what the that's basically what the district is. Some parts of the
district are kind of high income, high education. Some of them are much more like what used to be called Reagan Democratic areas.
These are suburbs, by.
The way, that all the presidential candidates, whether it was Bill Clinton or Barack Obama or George Bush, used to always go to these suburbs because they can swing one way or the other.
So that's what the district is.
The vibe that you get when we've done, like I said, we've done twenty two town halls. Max Miller hasn't done a town hall in two years. He's one of these people that's hiding out from his constituents. And I can see why because I have talked to these folks and they are pissed off. The thing is Molly that it's tough to describe in one sentence, but I'll do my best to do so is what it is that they're
mad about. The way that I describe it is that they have this sense that the richest people in the country have teamed up with the most corrupt people in the country to hijack the government. The way that that unfolds in their personal life is a lot of times different. Sometimes that needs its higher grocery prices or higher gas prices. Sometimes it needs because they're being they're getting screwed over on healthcare, but they just know that something is seriously gone off the rails.
I want you to talk about MaTx Miller. So Max Miller is a I don't even know how to explain him. He's a person from Trump world. He has a long and salacious history with ladies that includes allegations of domestic I mean, just talk me through. Like he's a very galvanizing candidate.
I think he's one of the most vulnerable Republicans in the entire country. When you've been accused credibly by three women, including the daughter of Senator Bernie Marino, of abuse, you're in big trouble.
Woke leftist Bernie Marino go on yes.
Right, And by the way, the other woman that went on the record was Malania Trump's press secretary. So it's not like these were people that maga people can say, oh, well, these were crazy liberal acts of this that are making, you know, outrageous allegations. So he's just a very troubled guy. Let me put it that way. He's a trust fund baby.
He comes from one of the wealthiest families in Cleveland, and he was a Trump staff person who win the previous Republican member of Congress voted for impeachment.
He was one of those congressmen. His name was Anthony Gonzalez.
He wasn't very nationally prominent, but he did vote his conscience and he voted for impeachment. Well, they pressured him out and they plopped Max Miller in. And he's never really developed a rapport with the district and that's only been heightened by the fact that he's just such a mess. And then when he doesn't really campaign much because he's not very good at it, but when he does speak out, you can see his.
Lack of talent, quite honestly. So give you a quick example.
After the Minneapolis shootings, he immediately made some really disgusting comments that basically blamed the victims there in Minneapolis.
Wait which Minneapolis shootings, Melissa Horton and her husband, or the two American citizens who got josh.
The two American citizens. So what he said after that was that anybody that has it served in the military or in law enforcement needs to shut up and not say anything about that because they don't understand the situation. And by the way, I've been in law enforcement before, and that's not how I feel.
I used to be in a special.
Agent with the FBI, So look, that doesn't give me a special right to talk about when people's human rights are being violated, and you know, people might think that's just a liberal issue.
It's not.
There are very conservative communities. For instance, we have a big Ukrainian population in the district. Well they've been affected by ice, and so I just think this guy is completely out of touch. This is not a crazy, crazy right wing district at all. He only got fifty one percent of the vote, by the way, in twenty twenty four, so I think he should be at the top of the list. I'm not just saying that because I'm running, but I guess I have an extra reason to say that.
Yeah, I mean, I've known about this guy as someone who writes about domestic violence or tries to make sure to highlight when I see that happen on the left or the right. The fact that there were so many women and he kept having you know, I just couldn't that really. I was really shocked there hasn't been any kind of follow up there. And the fact that it's
not an extreme maga district. You know, even though we're seeing today we have Rome Georgia doing runoff your campaigning in this district the suburbs of Cleveland, and I've been there I'm curious to hear what people tell you are the big concerns, because that I think is very useful and important to know.
Yeah, people do care about the corruption. I mean I talked about corruption a lot because my background wasn't investigating it, so I do focus on it a lot. The incredible scams that are going on that we find out out about on an almost daily basis, that really gets under people's skin because when you're struggling to make it and you know that other.
People are getting rich off the system.
That really does resonate with people when they talk about things though that how that kind of works out into their daily life. The biggest thing that we do hear about is healthcare. So Max Miller was one of the people that voted against extending the subsidy for the Affordable Care Act. That affected about forty thousand people just in this district. So that's a huge percentage of people. And by the way, that hit people harder in the rural areas than it actually did in the suburban areas. So
we hear about that a lot. And everybody has a personal story about that.
I mean I do.
In my family, almost everybody has a story about how they're either underinsured or uninsured, or they can afford the premiums, or they can't afford the deductibles, and so that really hit people hard. So there's about twenty five thousand people that are scheduled to get kicked off of Medicaid. There's about forty thousand who just have their premiums go through the roof. So that's something we hear about a lot,
and it's one of the reasons. I mean, I'm for Medicare for all, and I find that that issue really resonates with people. Not that Medicare is perfect, but they know it, they understand it, and they see that as I'm not just telling them.
Hey, I feel you're pain. That sucks.
I'm also saying there is a way to get there. We can finally get serious about this in this country.
I would love to talk about Like, you're in a state that's been very republican. You have this governor who sort of was able to walk the line. Now he's turned out right, so you had shared shared's running again.
Like I'd love you to just talk about the landscape, Like because I remember going to Ohio in twenty sixteen and getting the sense that this this state was really going to vote for Trump, Like, I just really like I didn't see any Clinton lawn signs or I saw very few, and I thought, this is not going to be a Democratic win. You can sort of feel it, So tell me what it's like.
Yeah, I was around in politics for long enough that I kind of saw the whole thing coming. I mean, I'm old enough that I remember when we had Democratic governors in the eighties. But we basically the state wide party has, with the exception of Shared Brown, has been on a pretty big losing streak since nineteen ninety.
Now, the exception to that was back Obama.
But I gotta tell you, Molly, that was different because they put so many resources into the state and they had so many volunteers. I mean, they had so many young people that we reactive. Two thousand and eight was incredible, although two thousand and four was also very competitive at the presidential level, but two thousand and eight was incredible.
You just felt it on the ground and then kind of the air went out of the balloon and you started feeling in twenty ten is when it all started to kind of go wrong in the state, and you could just feel it on the ground. What's happening, and I think it's happening in other states like Iowa's really interesting. I think also Iowa, you see, they're kind of getting
buyer's remorse. We've had a Republican government for so long in this state, Like I said, I mean except for four years, since nineteen ninety, every governor has been Republican, except for four years. That people are saying, you know what, we are getting screwed, and at what point in time do we need to start holding the people accountable that are actually running this state.
So there's just a lot of buyer's remort. We did two polls against Maxi Miller.
We were winning in both of them, one by two points, one by four points. And what was surprising was not that the Democrats were voting for me. It was how many Republicans and independents were saying, Okay, I finally had enough.
I just think we're at a tipping point.
It's funny because I'm thinking about the Bernie Marino Senate race from the twenty four cycle, and like it really did from the outside. Remember I'm not in Oha, but from the outside it certainly seemed as if Bernie had been like crypto had come in and just been like, no more Sharon Brown. Bernie Marino's our man. And like when you hear him, he seems real sleazy compared to Sharon. Right. You know, I'm not friends with him, but I know him a little, and like he seems pretty folksy and
Bernie seems really sleezy. Like it seemed like Shared might be able to hold on to seat. You think there's remorse there? I mean, do people talk to you about that at all?
Well, twenty twenty four was a really crazy political year here, and I'll tell you why. First of all, your instinct, right, I mean, Shared Brown has had a long, long relationship, I mean goes back into the eighties with the voters, and he's always been somebody that can can it, talks like a regular person. And Bernie Marino I don't think has that ability at all.
But he owned car dealerships, right, He's a.
Car dealership guy, and I don't think people knew what his background was.
But here's the thing.
Over sixty percent of the ads, and if you lived in Ohio you saw this. Over sixty percent of the ads that Bernie Marino ran were negative ads against Shared Brown.
And it was almost always on one issue. You want to guess what it was trans in sports exactly.
You could not turn on a television here without somebody saying, I just can't vote for Shared Brown again because I don't think that men should be playing on women's basketball teams.
Insane.
It was the ultimate distraction operation, and it was I'm telling you, it was overwhelming. And there's all this bullshit going on where the super PACs, as you said, the crypto industry and so forth, they were running the same ads.
Right, Supposedly these are independent, but that's all bullshit.
They clearly are coordinating, and it was just absolutely overwhelming. The question is when you're living your daily life and you can see that your life did not get better because of all those commercials, and you're actually still struggling to make it. You don't have gas, that's a dollar fifty, it's four bucks. At what point do you in time do you say, you know what, I got conned by this? And I think we are getting Some people are going to be conned and they're never going to figure it out.
But I do think a lot of people have figured it out.
Have you had people say to you like, have we got conned?
Yes, absolutely.
And the other part of a winning an election is that your own base has to be motivated, and our base is I mean, look they said, listen, we thought think terrible things were going to happen. We didn't know it was going to be this terrible. I mean, every single day, I have a line that I always tell these tell these town halls.
What do we do them? I say.
I used to say I had to check my phone, you know, the morning of the town hall to make sure it's something crazy. Now I have to check it five minutes before.
Yeah.
And there's just this sense that the country is slipping out of control. So I think the combination of buyer's remorse plus a motivated base adds up to Max Miller taking an early retirement.
Today is a really good example of you. Donald Trump threatened to basically just blow up all of Iran. Not entirely clear why he decided to do that today, but it certainly feels like we are a country run by Matt King who has very little accountability. Congress out of office for the holiday because God to have spring break. When you're talking to people, do they sort of remember what government looks like that we've been in this thing for a decade.
It depends how old they are. Yeah, I'll give you example.
So my kids, I've got four kids, they're my youngest is twenty six. Okay, so my daughter Bridget is twenty six. She doesn't really you know, her last ten years of her life and all of her adult life as a citizen who can vote right, has all been about this madness. So one thing that I am worried about is we do have young people show up at the town halls. But even if you look at No King's Day, which we had some great No King's Day protests here, it
still was an older crowd. Because I think a lot of people that are on the younger side have said this is soft up, that maybe it can never work again, because these are people a lot of times that barely remember Barack Obama. I know that sounds crazy, but if you're young enough, you don't really remember that or that's part of your childhood, and all they've seen is this dysfunction. And those are the hardest questions to answer, I'll tell
you at town hall. I mean, look, I don't know when this is going to air, but yesterday I saw the president basically promising war crimes while standing next to the easter bunny.
Yeah, it's surreal.
So you get to a point where you're like, look, I get it, while why you're so cynical and you don't think that things can work. So I always tell people, look, I don't want to over promise. I do think Democrats are going to take back Congress, and then we are in for two more crazy years until these assholes are totally out of office, because it's.
Never going to be normal while they're there.
That may not be an uplifting message, but I'm trying to be straight with people, and I tell people one of the reasons I think I'm a good candidate is I've seen a lot of stuff politically. I've done a lot of things in my career. I thought i'd seen the worst of the worst. Well, these people are the worst of the worst, and we're not going to get rid of them just because we have a good election this year. We've got to buckle up and get ready for two more crazy years at Fitzgerald.
When it's the.
Primary primary is on May fifth, and actually early voting starts on April.
Seventh, Is it a crowded field.
It's a crowded field.
But look a few years ago the Democratic Party had to scramble to find somebody to run in this district. And now there's all kinds of people running. But I think it looks pretty good for us. But we'll see what We'll see what happens.
All right, we'll come back.
Banks appreciate it.
No moment, Rick Wilson, Hey, Molly, it always must be that if there is a moment of fucker ey, it is somehow tied to Trump corruption. And if it's Trump corruption and it's attacking your enemy, is in a very well be fancy rich by friend of Trumps.
Yeah. So a guy that most of us don't pay a ton of attention to except you and I, of course, named Bill Paulty. Inside the administration, he is a huge friend of the president. He runs the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which is the group that's been responsible for quote unquote finding these bullshit mortgage fraud accusations against Tis James and who god knows who else. Right, they've all turned out
to be nothing burgers. But he is an eager Trump asked Kitter of the highest degree, and now Finance can has found out that Paulty gave sixty five thousand dollars to a charity Aham called One World love LLC.
Yes, that's right.
Here's the thing. One World love LLC was built by one of the partners at the Banal Law Group, the benal Banal Bi n All. But the way it sounds is the way it is.
Michael Wolfe said, I say banal things on television.
You know what. Michael wolf has thousands of emails I know, and you don't. So there you're go, yeah, there you go.
Keep going.
Anyway, this was during a period of time where they were paying Banal Law Group. Trump owed them jillions of dollars and this looked like a charitable payment or charitable deduction, but it turns out it was just to pay Trump's fucking legal bills. These people are so shady. And now, since this was a five oh one C three, mister Polti, who apparently is a stickler for the rules, because everybody's mortgages have to be examined with a fine tooth, call
miss party maybe entering the finding out territory. Oh, it's not always the big corruption. I mean, sixty five thousand dollars in Trump corruption money is like nothing. But I mean it's still the point. It's the point. Rick Wilson, Molly John Fast I'll see you next week.
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