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 more than thirty Republican congressmen have announced there leaving conference, we have said you great Joe for you. Today, the Lincoln Project's own Rick Wilson joins us to discuss the Trump Administration's attempt to cover up the murder of Renee Good, and we'll talk to the New Yorkers Johnathan Blitzer about how the Trump administration is
making Democratic Congresswoman le Monica mcgiver's life hell. But first we have the stories the media is missing Somali.
We are known haters of AI and it wiped out four hundred billion dollars for the stock market this week. And one of the funniest things is this week is as this is happening, we find out that a bunch of tech bros tried to create a hyperstition for those who don't know hyperstitions where you say something and try to make it real even though it's not real, and
you know it. That these claud bots were all talking to each other that AI has said to you, it's well, it's well at more advanced than it actually is, and because of all this mythologizing, we are seeing a massive re structuring of our economy.
I'm going to make this clear. AI is not doing what they told us it was going to do. It is not this sentient super being. It is just better computing, but is not changing the world. We are not going to all lose our jobs because of AI. This is good news, This should be good news. The problem is our entire economy is puffed up on the fantasy that
AI is supercomputers. And so either what had to happen was that the stock market was going to create or AI was going to replace all of us, and we were going to live, as Elon Mush says, live care free in the world of Elon Mush, and we were all going to get universal basic income, not from him, of course, and not from our government. Well here's what's happened. The truth is AI is good and getting better, but he's not going to replace all of us, and that's
really probably good news. And if our stock market had been normal, we would be fine. But instead it has puffed up our economy and so everybody's going to lose a lot of money. And that's what we saw this week. AI four hundred billion this week in paper returns in the market. So that sucks, and it sucks for people like Cora sam Altman, who felt useless and sad using his own AI to code. All right, honestly, fuck all
of them. We could have avoided all of this if people hadn't been fucking liars, and that is how we got here, so conned again by stupid white guys.
And as a side effect, we all get higher electricity fees.
But I'm just glad that there are enormous data centers built everywhere in our country using water to make AI slop of Donald Trump. So just say no to AI. Don't use it, don't post the photos, don't let them fuck up stuff, just let it go.
So in really ridiculous news and something that I uh.
Find Mark Ebstein, I'm sorry. I see the headline of Jeffrey Epstein's brother, and I know and by the way I say this, I take no pleasure to report that. This makes me so angry. But you go and then I'll tell you why Mark Ebstein makes me furious.
Okay, So over the weekend, what we saw is that first there is a big controversy where Jeffrey Epstein's death statement is dated the day before it happened, which there is some rational explanations for this. But another thing everybody's been discussing all week is that Mark Epstein submitted a tip that Donald Trump ordered the execution of his brother Jeffrey Epstein to cover up for him naming names. And he confirmed to the Independent that he did indeed submit this tip.
All right, listen, here's the deal. What if the conspiracy is not any of these conspiracies, but it's a conspiracy that a rich, white, sociopathic guy and his horrendous British girlfriend got away with sex trafficking thousands of women and girls. What if that is the scandal. What if that is the conspiracy. What if the conspiracy is a conspiracy of silence. What if the conspiracy is that people still let these
people be in government. What if the conspiracy is that Donald Trump was friends with Jeffrey Epstein, that half of his cabinet did business. I mean, you got Letnick doing business with jeffff You got John Phalen riding in Jeffrey Epstein's plane. Michael Wolfe has a huge substack and he is was giving media advice and getting free shoes from Jeffrey Epstein. Jeffrey Epstein spent ten thousand dollars buying underwear
for Woody Allen. What if the conspiracy is that these fucking guys get to serve in our government and walk among us. What if that's the conspiracy. What if it's the fact that no one got prosecuted except Glayne, That, in my mind is a bigger conspiracy than anything else. And am I saying that Jeffrey Epstein wasn't murdered. I don't know what happened to Jeffrey Epstein, but I honestly care more about why there are not other people being
held accountable. And that is what makes me the most furious. So that is why I say, do not get involved in the conspiracies. Get involved in the larger conspiracy, which is we do not believe women victims. That should be the conspiracy. Women are being treated terribly. They're being raped and assaulted and abused, and people are not listening to them. And is year twenty twenty six. That is a conspiracy that I think deserves your attention.
Agreed.
So we saw a big controversy this week where apparently Donald Trump wanted a bunch of things named after him and exchanged for unfreezing some funding. And this week we saw a US judge unfreeze the funding for the Gateway Tunnel, which would go from Central Manhattan to Union City, New Jersey and help lots of trades move faster and really help our economy.
What do you see it here, Molly.
It comes back to this central law of Trumpism, which is Trump is trying to do a lot of illegal shit, and if you fight back in the courts, he loses. And that's what this is, right, Donald Trump said, I'll give you the money. It's not his to give. Okay, it's federal money put together by the federal government and Donald Trump briefly as president again, but that does not make this money his. And like, the problem with the Trump cryptocracy is that my man behaves like a monarch
and everyone's like, oh, it's his to give. It's not his to give. I mean, this is one of the big problems of where we are at this moment. A lot of this is just norms and not laws. So we expect our president to behave a certain way because of norms, when in fact we should have laws in place because when you get someone who doesn't follow laws, like oh, Donald Trump, this is what happens. So again the judge unfreezes the funding. It was frozen by Trump.
It's sixteen billion dollars. It was allocated to this tunnel project. Donald Trump has been playing I'm not going to give it to you unless he told Chuck Schumer that he want a Penn station named after him. Again, why anyone would want Penn station named after you, I don't know, but it's a good point, Like none of this is his. You know, you just have to keep going in court.
The illegal stuff will not stay. You know, we do think God have judges and laws and we are not of an honor republic, and so people have to just fight. And you know it's unfrozen. They'll be able to eventually build this tunnel. Donald Trump will costs us all billions of dollars. And you know he's doing this because he's mad that none of us voted for him. Because he's a fucking criminal, and that is where we are, so none of us should be surprised. It's just what he does.
This is how we got here, this is what it is, and we need our Democrats to fight, fight, fight and protect our norms and institutions and also you know, everything else and everyone else.
So to go back to the beginning of this broadcast where we were talking about AI and how it's pretty incompetent. You know what, I don't want it doing what scanting photos of ice protesters and then removing people at scans from the TSA pre check. It seems like nothing will go wrong with that, definitely not.
The other thing that's kind of amazing about it is it's such a like trumpy idea. It's like, we're going to make it harder for them in the airport. That's how we're going to stick it to them. It's just a completely stupid I think that this is very stupid. I think that it's not going to work. I think that at every point they're trying to interest closer to a police state. The good news is the technology is not there. But next time there's going to be a
president and the technology is going to be there. And the question is when we have the laws in place to prevent him from doing the kind of stuff that Trump has tried to do here. And I think that should be something that all of us are thinking about all the time. Rick Wilson is the founder of the Lincoln Project and the host of the Enemy's List. Rick Wilson, how are you?
I am.
Very cold in the northeast here. Things are not Mistakes were made, and we all now we're long underwear speaking of mistakes being made. Tell us the Gabbard. First of all, you know some of the worst people in Trump's administration. I take no pleasure to say this are Democrats. Talk us through this whistleblower.
Sure, sure, so. Last year, sometime prior to June sixth, we know that part the National Security Agency picked up a person quote unquote close to Trump discussing intelligence matters concerning Iran with someone in a hostile foreign intelligence service. That's what we know so far. Gabbered, instead of reporting this appropriately throughout the intelligence community to develop countermeasures for it,
et cetera, took it directly to Susie Wiles. This is way outside the normal procedure that one would do on this, and gave it to Susie Wiles for unknown purposes. After that, someone in the intelligence community said, whatever happened to that? And they were told basically shut the fuck up and
to pay no attention. And so they reported it through the inspector general system in the intelligence community in the d and I apparently Tulsi Gabbard decided not to follow the rules and the law where that has to be made known within thirty days to the Gang of Eight in Congress, this the eight senior bipartisan Intelligence and Defense Oversight members. Because of that, we had to wait a
year almost until we found out about this. And Gabbard has now been out lying about the sequence of events, lying about the timeline, lying about what the Inspector General said, And she is in some deep, deep, deep deep shit. This is one of those things that's like the intelligence community. People that are still around, they give a damn about their job, they give a damn about the country and the security, and she has put us in danger.
There are sort of all these different national security protocols and ways that it's supposed to be done. Tulsey flouted those. But also the security the information that's been leaked or had that she leaked is like the highest level. Can you explain that.
Yeah, this is something that is so compartmentalized. So folks have all heard about secret and top secret, and a lot of people now have heard about what they call sci compartmentalized information, and a compartmentalized program could have a thousand people in it, or it could have four people in it. This is at a level apparently that is so above and beyond because of both the nature of the target whoever this foreign intelligence person was, and the
collection system from the NESSA that got the information. So this is something incredibly sensitive Crown Jewels level stuff, to the point where it could not have been transmitted outside of a group of probably like a dozen people in the entire government. This is a very like blazing red flag about Gabbard's inability and lack of temperament to do this job.
Is it worse or better than being at than adding the editorom chief of The Atlantic to a signal chat about bombing around?
This is wild worse.
So how bad can it be? That seems good.
Because that foreign intelligence person almost certainly will now become aware that we are targeting them in a certain way using a certain method, they will communicate differently. The other part of this is what it implicates in the Trump administration. We have seen in what we know of the complaints so far, is that the person they were talking to
was quote close to Trump. This does not mean it is a government official, given Donald Trump's propensity for using outside actors Steve Whitcoff, Jared Kushner, et cetera, who are not government officials to conduct diplomacy and intelligence and foreign policy. I'm deeply concerned that somebody inside the Trump government told what say it was Jared. I have no evidence that it was Jared someone, but let's say it's someone like a Jared who gets on the phone and calls another person.
By the way, many investors, did you.
Hear about this? Correct? Did you hear about this thing that we're doing. I don't think this that's.
The scenario you're describing.
I don't think it right. I don't think it's Jared per se, but it is. I think it is a person in that category, most likely, because if it had been a government official, they would have said a Trump administration official in the.
Compute, and they would have been fired.
Hypothetically in a normal admiration, in a world where you and I were in charge, they'd be right.
I'm going to actually want to move on for a minute to something that is not on our schedule, but I think is important. Is like this week, there was huge reporting out of the Wall Street Journal about the crypto scam amazing and how the Trump kids, the boys, even Barren are involved in this making handover first money in crypto and then cashing out before the investors.
Yes, you know why they're Actually they may not be a smart family, but they recognize when they're in a con and they're gonna rug pull people, they need to get out before the rug gets pulled.
But half the rug was sold to the United Arab Emirates.
Discuss one of those many many things where if you added up all the bs that the House Oversight Committee claimed that Hunter Biden was involved in, they said, oh, Hunter Biden and the Biden family brought in twenty seven million dollars.
The Biden crime family.
Biden crime family. Yes, exactly twenty seven million dollars so far, as the Times outlined, we're talking about five hundred million, five point fifty. I think it was from the UAE, from the Shadowy Prince as they called him, who runs the UA's intelligence services, because that couldn't possibly be a conflict at all, who also does a lot of business with China.
Yeah no, no, I mean the klepto krat stuff. The kryptocracy is just astounding. And it's so astounding that Andrew McCarthy talk us through that, because that is so when you've lost.
From yeah, lost Andrew McCarty. Now look, let me let me describe it. Andrew. Andy McCarthy is I know, you know, Andrew McCarthy is a Republican attorney, former DJ Guy conservative, no fan of either Barack Obama or Joe Biden by any conceivable circumstances. But I will give Andy credit on something. He's been a very straight shooter on the Trump corruption issue. And he has said quite openly and to the and to the very ugly reaction of their readers, to the
readers of National Review, this corruption stinks on ice. It is unbelievably enormous and consequential and dangerous for this country. And Donald Trump is running basically a racket. And he wrote a very very strong piece about it. You know, he continued to condemn the Biden's fine whatever, but he he laid out this unbelievably powerful case against Trump. And the right wing reaction has been very like, how dare you, sir, point out the criminality of our criminal.
Yeah, And and I mean I think that's the problem that you see these people are incentivized to go along with everything because the base is so radicalized and the base is so convinced that anything any kind of criticism of Trump is you know, but I want you.
To get They think it gives the Libs a.
Win right, exactly as opposed, and the road to just a complete dictatorship is paved with don't let win right and and just this insane propaganda that Trump world needs. And by the way, I mean that's why I want to get to this Renee Good stuff, because.
Yeah, there's more.
It's think every day is just a nightmare of news. Renee Good, she was murdered by Ross Jonathan Ross, an ice agent. Now there was that one video where it almost looked like she They had one video which was from like ten miles away that made it look like maybe she was trying to hit him, But every other piece of forensic evin and shows.
It exactly was the case.
Yeah, she was turning the car, she was driving away. She was I'm not mad, bro, and he was any shotter. So talk to us about cash Battel.
We now know that when the FBI agents assigned to the Minneapolis Field office began to do what they were required by law to do, which is to their education, their jobs, to open an investigation of the killing of an American citizen by federal law enforcement officers. They were told to stand down. They were examining Renee Goods vehicle when they were told by senior FBI agents now from reporting, including cash Ptel himself, to stop. Why would he order that?
Why would he wandered that, Molly, he would order that because they understand what they did. They understood right away what happened. They understand that if you, if you allow the process of the law to play out, Jonathan Ross and the other FBI or the other ICE agents that were in the street that day are going to prison. Yeah, and Trump cannot afford to let Jonathan Ross or the guys who shot Alex Pretty go to prison. His base
has been conditioned, like you just talked about. The insane propaganda has told seventy million Americans who loved Donald Trump that Alex Pretty was a murderer of domestic terrorists coming there to slaughter ICE agents, and Renee Good was a radical left wing paid activist, lesbian danger to the lives of these poor innocent ICE agents trying to do their job.
That propaganda machine cannot have those people go down. And so that's why cash Bettel directly intervened, suborting a legitimate civil rights and law enforcement investigation into the murder of Renee Good to protect Donald Trump, and to protect worse than just protect Donald Trump, to protect the Magan narrative. If you're saddened and disgusted by it, folks, that's the reaction of a normal human being.
I also think that much of the people in Trump's second administration are here to cover for him, Yeah, cover for his bad policy.
Abler, Right.
So it's either you know, they're covering for bad policy and they're covering for poorly trained ice agents, or they're covering for kleptocracy, or they're I mean, like the central theme of this conversation right now is watching members of Trump administration. And again, Tulsea Gabbert is a good example. Like Tulsey knew that somebody in that talk with someone that what she was put in place to keep from getting in trouble wick Cough.
If it's a if it's a Cushner, if it's.
A whoever, whoever.
She she put politics above national security.
Right, And cash Battel put law and order, law and order, and at every point here what we're seeing is an administration that exists largely to protect Trump and protect trump Ism. And by the way, it's a stark contrast to the Democrats, who are I mean, what's going on.
Look, I'm going to give them props on one thing this week because mostly my love is just tough, not just love. But but the Democrats correctly this year held the line on all this redistricting crap. Yes, Texas has blown up on them and the and the whining bitches like ted cruising, how dare you do this? But is it redising? Which, yeah, yeah, you started it, We finished it.
Sorry Pale Virginia.
But look, they need to hold the line on on this Epstein stuff and on Ice. They need to keep the pressure up, not let it go down. And I know the natural instinct of people like Chuck Schumer is like, let's let let's breathe, let's let's all sit and reason together.
Right, that's a by gone No, my.
Honorable friend across the aisle. No, you have no honorable friends across the aisle anymore, buddy, Yeah, they don't exist.
Yeah, And I think there will be a moment when things start to shift back to what American democracy once was in the you know progs would and there is going to need to be real introspection of how we got here. And it means that, as you know, even though Trump was the kleptocrat that you know that was that that really moved us to the next level of democratic rod there were there are ways in which we failed to regulate that Goddess here hundreds.
Of different examples in our current moment, Molly where and it's not always, and it's not universal. Where where normalcy bias made Democrats think, Okay, well, I you know, the Republican My Republican buddies are faking this. It's okay, we'll work it out. Or hundreds of examples of normalcy bias with Republicans who thought, you know, we can uh, he wants to do the silly shit on Twitter, will run
the government. None of those things held up. And they didn't hold up because as an as a country that once believed institutions had power to keep things glued together, those institutions kept handing Trump individually more and more and more and more power, whether it was the Supreme Court, whether it was Congress, whether it was the media, all of these institutions that should have been fighting instead said, you know what, it's too much noise, it's too loud,
there's too much risk, there's too much pain. I don't want to be the one who goes out and loses my job over over telling you know the truth about this guy, and over and over again. I think that really has something. I think you're right, we have to We're gonna have to have a painful reconciliation when this is over Nuremberg and it's gonna Yeah, it's gonna have to people unless some people go to.
Jail, yeah over this and will keep happening.
It will keep happening. The incentive structure of bad action right now has not yet met a single person being punished for the bad actions.
That's right. I think we have to realize that it has to change. I want to talk to you about the This I think is actually kind of a good thing. So Donald Trump did a racist, disgusting thing, which is in case you're wondering his brand.
This should not surprise anyone.
Go on, Yeah, racist disgusting thing, posting a photo of the Obamas apes, a video that had the Obamas apes. I think this is meaningful, and you and I both agree he was condemned.
Even by a lot of Republicans.
Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.
I mean they.
Didn't and a lot of them didn't couch it in the usual like this can't possibly be my beloved Donald Trump, racial healer. Most of them like this is disgusting. Take it the fuck down.
So we had Susan Collins, we had Tim Scott. So what do you think? I mean, I don't think. Look, they know he's a racist. He does a lot of disgusting shit all the time. I think they see the poll numbers.
I think you are absolutely correct. They see the poll numbers and what and inside those poll numbers, And I know this is a weird, like flashback to that redistricting conversation we were just having. When the Texas folks built that redistricting model, they thought all Hispanic voters will behave like they did in twenty twenty four and they'll stick with Trump.
Well, I don't know why they thought that.
They're just not that bright. Yeah, honestly, that's a real that's the true answer. Now they've been in a they've been in a super majority for so long, they're arrogant. But inside those polling numbers, we they're seeing right now not only have the numbers with African Americans including young men, which is where they did make some progress in twenty four, but all African Americans, including the people they won in twenty four, they've gone way back in the other direction.
It's worse than it's ever been for Republicans. Hispanics are have moved way back in most states. In a couple of states it's still lagging a little bit, But in most states, Hispanic have gone all the way back to where they were, or a little worse.
Ask the Democratic Mayor of Miami.
Correct and and and the consequences of ice DHS, the ending of the TPS program throughout the Cuban and Venezuelan communities, all these things are rippling out right now. And that so that damage hasn't stopped, it's only just started. And and when you go out and you use one of the most grotesque tropes about black Americans, mm hmm. If you want to go back to the Jim Crow era, are you want to go back to the to the
to the reconstruction era? What was it? What was the image of black people that was portrayed in in newsprint back then. It was the savage ape. It was the it was the mindless you know, monkey raping women. It's such a shitty, horrible, ancient trope. And by the way, Trump's old enough to kind of remember some of that stuff. Yeah, that was that had not vanished from the white discourse about race, even in Queens in the nineteen fifties when he was growing up.
Rick Wilson Mama drunk Fast. Jonathan Blitzer is a reporter at The New Yorker. Welcome, Welcome, Jonathan, Thanks thanks for having me tell us the story of La Monica Magiver.
Okay, the plot itself is a little complicated, which I think is actually part of the point of why the administration has gone after her in the first place. Lamonica MacIvor is a first term Democratic congresswoman from Newark and has been a pretty outspoken advocate of immigrants rights. Not someone by the way, who campaigned on this when she
first ran for office. This is an issue that I think kind of fell in her lap because she saw the you know, the way the country was going and what was starting to happen in her district, and so what was happening in her district was that the first detentions center to open under the current administration is a place called Delaney Hall in Newark, which almost immediately is controversial, not just because it's involved in the administration's broader sort
of mass deportation campaign, but because local officials from the mayor's office and beyond were saying from the very beginning that the private prison company that ran this facility, called the Geogroup, wasn't getting any of the necessary municipal permits for plumbing, for fire hazard, all the obvious stuff. They were claiming that this was, you know, all happening on
an expedited basis. City authorities weren't being consulted. There was all kinds of complaints about what was happening inside the facility, and so on May ninth of last year, Congresswoman MacIvor and two other Democrats showed up unannounced to take a tour of this detention center. Now, this is something that members of Congress have a legal right to do. It
is written into a statute. Actually, this statute grew out of abuses committed during Trump's first term where members of Congress based decided that you know, if Congress is going
to appropriate money to the Department for Land Security. There need to be some basic checks and basic oversight responsibilities that members of Congress are allowed to have, and that if members of Congress alert detention center authorities that they're going to show up at a given place to conduct a tour ahead of time, then what often happens is the conditions get sanitized, things get clean, detainees are better treated,
et cetera. And so the idea from the very beginning was that members of Congress should have the right to show up unannounced and give it and receive some sort of tour of the facilities pursuant to their oversight responsibilities in Congress. So Congresswaran MacIvor on May ninth shows up with Bonnie Watson Coleman and Rob men Endez Junior to conduct one of these tours, and they're basically stonewall two.
Other New Jersey congress people.
That's right, and you know, both of whom are you know, pretty outspoken immigrants rights advocates, kind of well versed in this procedure.
Bonnie Watson Coleman is eighty years old.
They had recently the three of them visited in another facility in New Jersey, and.
You know, showed up.
Initially, the guard at the front kind of gave them a little bit of a run around. Bonnie Watson Coleman, eighty year old, sort of fierce season member of Congress, produces a printed copy of the statute. They're eventually waved in, given a tour. No problems this time. They're basically railroaded and kind of given a whole run around. An hour passes, an hour and a half pass. Still they're not granted
access to this particular facility. Congressman MacIver is especially annoyed because months earlier, she and Menendez, the other congressman, had actually met with ice officers in the state to talk precisely about doing this sort of thing, and they had both felt like those conversations went well, that they had been totally transparent, that they had acted in good faith, and here they were basically getting stonewalled now before they showed up. And the reason I'm telling you this whole
plot is because it actually matters. So before they showed up, they had coordinated with the mayor of Newark, Ross Baraka to meet them outside the facility after they were done with their tour for a press conference, Baraka shows up. He doesn't see the members of Congress. He assumes that they're finishing their tour because at this point it would have been, you know, at least a couple of hours
since they arrived. He, while standing outside, is basically allowed in by one of the private prison guards who mans the outer gate of the facility. He stands basically in the outer parking lot waiting for the members of Congress to come out. And then what follows becomes the basis of these criminal charges brought against Congressman MacIvor, which.
Is first a bunch of armed DHS agents march out to the parking lot, right past the three members of Congress who have been waiting to gain entry for this tour. They go to arrest the mayor ross Baraka for trespassing. Now, when they first threaten him with this arrest, he eventually, after some initial hesitation, actually leaves the facility. The DHS agents and in this case specifically ICE agents nevertheless go outside the gates of the facility to public property to
arrest him on public property for trespassing. What we now know we didn't know in the moment, but what we now.
Know based on body camera footage was that the lead ICE agent who goes outside to make this arrest is on the phone, and when he finishes his call, we don't know specifically who he's on the phone with, but when he hangs up his cell phone, he turns to the other agents and he says to them explicitly, we have orders from the Deputy Attorney General of the United States, this is Todd Blanche at the Justice the number two at the Justice Department, to go arrest the mayor of Newark,
even though he was now on public property. And so the members of Congress who are on hand are obviously outraged. They try to intercede. What follows is an incredibly chaotic mess of a.
Situation which I've seen videos exactly.
And a lot of people have probably at this point seen some snippet of video, and in the course of this kind of general altercation is these agents try to
surround and arrest ross Broca. Congresswoman MacIver makes contact with two of the ICE agents at two different moments in this kind of whole scene, and at the time doesn't even realize that she did anything that the government found objectionable, because what happened was these ICE agents eventually take ross Baraka away, and the three members of Congress after this whole drama are basically allowed to go on their tour.
And so it's not until ten days later that the congresswoman realizes, in the form of hearing an announcement from the then US Attorney in New Jersey, that she was being charged with a crime of assaulting to federal agents. And when the US Attorney announces that, she simultaneously announces that they're actually dropping the trespassing charges against Ross Barrokka because there was never any substance of those charges to
begin with. And that's what begins this legal saga for Congresswoman maciv.
And is she the only one of that group that's being prosecuted?
That's right?
Why?
Well, it's a good question. You know.
I've thought a lot about this, and I think there probably two general ways to explain. The first is just in terms of the actual plot points of what happened that day. There is no question that Congressman MacIvor, as compared to the other two congressmen there was the most exercised, the most upset, the most willing to dive into the fray.
Not illegal, though not illegal.
Not particularly objectionable, and I will say, by the way, I've now interviewed a number of current and former DOJ
officials who had visibility into these types of investigations. In the past, there used to be an office at the Department of Justice called the Public Integrity Section that basically would be consulted and would need to sign off anytime the Department of Justice wanted to charge a member of Congress, precisely because after Watergate there was this great fear that, if unchecked, the Department of Justice could weaponize the justice
system against political opponents. But you know, a week before Congressman Macchiv was charged, that office, the Public Integrity Section was basically dismantled, And so you know, by any objective standard, the idea that they're bringing charges against her is outlandish and very scary. But if you spend time pouring over this footage, she I think probably looks like the easiest target because she really is upset, she's swearing, she's outspoken.
I will say, for what it's worth, you know, Bonnie Watson Coleman is eighty years old. She's right there next to Maciv by the way, But I think probably a lot harder to make a strong.
Case against an eighty year old member of Congress.
I first, like want to go through those sort of plot preliminaries before I say this, but I do think race has a lot to do with the fact that the government has alighted on Congresswoman MacIvor.
You have a young black congresswoman in her first term from.
Newark, who doesn't have a deep pocket, who doesn't have a lot of resources at her disposal, who has turned into, by the government's design, the kind of face of this,
you know, sort of angry, physical resistance to ice. And that's kind of what the government script has been from the very start, and so to the extent that they can, they've tried to isolate images of just her physically clashing with these agents without really panning out and allowing people to see or understand the broader context.
And at various points.
In this kind of legal saga, which is very much ongoing, the government has actually put out very obvious lies about what happened. And this isn't my judgment, This isn't even my judgment after having watched the tape and interviewed people
and interviewed witnesses and so on. But an actual district court judge who's been hearing this case at a certain point had to issue orders to the Justice Department saying, look, you can't have government agencies putting out lies and misinformation about the details of this case while this case is pending. And at a certain point I was in court what had happened. One of the DOJ lawyers basically shrugged and said, this is all coming from headquarters at the Department of Homelandsecurity.
We don't have control over this, which gives you a sense I think of how this whole thing has been really a kind of political project from the start.
Where is the case now?
The case now is basically in a process of pre trial appeals, so basically comes from Maciver's lawyers tried to get the case thrown out on two grounds. First that this represented a selective and vindictive prosecution of democratic critic of.
The administration, which it clearly did. Which it did, but which.
Like legally, is a very hard thing to prove and was kind of always going to be an uphill battle from a legal perspective. The second claim that Maciver's lawyers made, which I actually thought potentially would have more attraction.
I'm not a lawyer.
But my understanding was that this had a little bit more give was that she had legislative community because she basically showed up that day to conduct oversight. She wasn't there to participate in a protest, and arguably even when she left the facility to figure out what was going on. You know, her lawyers have said, look, Ross Broka, the
mayor of Newark is one of her constituents. I mean, insofar as she's there to oversee ICE's conduct and behavior at this facility, it's not out of the question to characterize her even being outside the facility interceding in that moment, as being some form of oversight. But that does require a bit of an extended legal argument, and the judge so far has refused to accept those claims. And so
this case is moving toward a jury trial. There's going to be kind of a little bit more back and forth in the appellate process, but it seems possible, if not likely, that this case will go to trial this year. And to be clear of the stakes, you know, all the chargers have these kind of maximum sentences. If you add them all up, what she faces potentially is seventeen years in prison for allegedly assaulting these two federal agents.
This is so fucking nuts. Now, I want you to talk about another piece you wrote five years ago when we were all still in our thirties. Actually I was just in my forties, but when we were young and life was good, the salad days. Explain to us this story.
This is about Stephen Miller.
Yeah.
Well, you know, it's interesting because this story about hungressoan MacIvor. In some ways, there is also a story about Miller's
increasing influence from Trump One to Trump too. At the tail end of the first Trump administration, I profiled Stephen Miller, and at the time I was fascinated by his role in that administration, particularly because you know, I spent most of my time covering immigration and politics at the New Yorker, and what I was seeing and hearing from people inside that first Trump administration, whether you know high ranking political appointees or you know career civil servants at key agencies
or in key offices, was that this young upstart Stephen Miller, who for you know, much of his career in Washington, was kind of in the wilderness of the Republican Party and was seen as something of a crank and an absolutely unhinged ideologue on the issue of immigration, was actually punching above his weight inside that administration and getting major things done.
And so the idea was to try to understand how that was happening.
And it's important just to remind people that he worked for the really the absolute worst Alabama senator, is that fair to say, And that's how he came up. Talk about how he came up.
Miller's trajectory is incredibly interesting in striking because he basically went from you know, really being in a kind of circle of the Republican Party that most Republicans wrote off as being crazy and irrelevant. So basically, Miller kind of first came to semi prominence in Republican circles in Washington when he worked as the communications director to then Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions.
Right, who was one of the first Trump endorsements, right.
The first Republican senator to endorse Trump in twenty sixteen. And actually that story is interesting because you know, Sessions was someone who inside the Republican Party had always been probably one of the most conservative, hostile voices on immigration in all forms, not just the idea of border crossings. And so on but specifically wanting to actually restrict the legal immigration system. He's someone who had a kind of deep, thorough going vision of you know, the need for the
US to tamp down on immigration in all forms. And as a result, he again was on the margins of the Republican Party. He didn't have the influence to persuade people to his position, but he and Miller quickly realized that they had the influence to sabotage, you know, legislative
efforts to you know, work on this issue. And so in twenty thirteen, when the Obama administration was trying to shepherd comprehensive immigration reform through Congress, you know, it passed through the Senate and basically languished in the House, which at the time was controlled by Republicans, and the Republican speaker didn't want to bring it to the floor for a vote because it was, you know, kind of too tendentious inside his conference, even though a majority of members
of Congress probably would have supported that comprehensive reform push. And the role of Miller in Sessions in scuttling that deal is quite important because it showed, first of all, that they could have significant influence even though they were on the margins. I mean, Miller is someone who you know, I should say, And this came up when I first
profiled him. You know, I interviewed congressional staffers, members of Congress, the usual suspects in Republican life in DC at that time, who basically said, every day they get these crazy, long, nutty emails for Miller, pushing all kinds of outrageous conspiracy theories or kind of racist views of immigration and immigrants, and they would basically just delete these emails and like to the extent that any of them could ignore the
guy because he was just so far afield. But here in twenty thirteen twenty fourteen, there was this real kind of inflection point inside the party where Miller and Sessions were able to attack other Republicans for being kind of insufficiently conservative on the immigration issue. And this is where they started to flirt with really blasting out lies about
different aspects of that reform bill. They went at people like Marco Rubio, people who at the time had a more moderate bent on immigration reform, and in the process a number of people said to me, Miller kind of got this perverse education in immigration policy and immigration law, because essentially what he was doing was trying to find where all of the bodies were buried in terms of past legislative consensus on immigration policy, because he was now
trying to weaponize this issue to go after other Republicans to get them on sort of more or less on his side, or the very least, you know, lining them up against any kind of productive legislation on the subject. And so this is where Miller really, i think, first
rose to prominence. And when Trump announced his candidacy back in twenty fifteen, there was a fascinating conversation that Joshua Green reports on in his book, which I think remains the kind of definitive account of this conversation what josh Wass book, Devil's Bargain, It's about Steve Bannon and kind of this world. And it was incredibly illuminating to me at the time because it was a conversation essentially in which Steve Bannon had this talk with Jeff Sessions and said, look,
this is your chance. You have had this view on immigration forever, and you're basically and finally you have a guy in Trump who's charismatic enough and who's forceful enough to kind of personify your positions and to actually, you know, be a mouthpiece for a worldview that you've had forever. So you know, endorse this guy and like your agenda
will finally get the kind of prominence it deserves. And that was the basis of Sessions coming out and endorsing Trump and being the first Republican senator to endorsed Trump. And it mattered at the time very much for Trump, who didn't have the conservative credentials among the real ideologues, and so the idea of having someone like Jeff Sessions vouch for his conservatism, you know, meant something to the
ideologus and the party. And Miller was one of the first people to actually work on Trump's nascent presidential campaign at a time when you know, most people wrote it off as a clown show.
And so that began Miller's real assent in Trump's.
Washington unbelievably disturbing and also insane. Yeah, oh yeah, Jonathan, thank you, thank you for joining us.
Oh thanks for having me.
No moment time, Rick Wilson by the junk folst we are at that time?
Is it that moment of fuckery? I have one for this week?
Yes, we hear it. Yes, So if you are a.
Guy brought in by a billionaire to run a fabled, storied journalistic institution like the Washington Post, and then you proceed to turn it into a Trump cheer squad, and it starts to fall apart, you start losing readership because no one needs Fox Light, no one wants diet Fox as I like to say that if they wanted that kind of crap, they go to the Washington Times. And
then you destroy the quality of the paper. Then you fire a third of the staff seemingly kind of at random, and then you go and have parties at the Super Bowl week out in San Francisco and don't even bother to join the zoom call. Firing eight hundred people.
Walk the ropeline.
Maybe maybe when you get fired yourself, it's karma. And I think the karma of him getting fired at the Post is perfection.
And you'll remember that Will Lewis did not want to cover the phone hacking scandal which he was involved in, and that is why Sally Buzby, the editor of the Washington Post, quit, So he has long been a bad actor. During his two year term, he.
Comes out of the rupert versus people right.
Now that said, the Wall Street Journal is doing excellent reporting.
So I got to give the Wall Street Journal a lot of credit right now, Molly, they have been hammering tongs on all this stuff lately, and there seems to be a flavor change over there. I don't know what it is quite.
From the Tucker Baby woman had her own chief. God blesser, yeah, God blesser. But I do think. Look, Jeff Bezos has many billions of dollars. He has bought the Washington Post. He has destroyed the Washington Post. Now he refuses to sell the Washington Post. Right, someday Jeff Bezos, probably sooner rather than later, will pretend that he never did any
of this. Just like when you watch those videos of Jadvan's being booed at the Olympics, you know that this worm is going to turn real fast and these people are going to have to pretend they were never involved in it.
There's a book out right now. It's about Israel and Gaza, but it's called Someday Everyone will have been against this. Yeah, and someday everyone will have been against all of this. Yeah, they will all know. I wasn't me, man, I wasn't that guy. But they all will be that guy the Internet does not forget.
Hopefully that'll be sooner rather than later. Thank you, Rick Wilson.
See Yah.
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